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Ronald Ricketts
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Date Joined Jan 2002
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   Posted 10/5/2003 10:18 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Earlier I posted a suggestion to read Smedes's My God and I. On page 59, Smedes sums up his Calvinism in 4 sentences,
1.In the beginning God made the world wonderfully good.
2.Near the start, the human family brought evil into the world's awesome goodness.
3.In the end, God will come to fix his world and make it altogether good again.
4.In between, his children are to go into the world and create some imperfect models of the good world to come.

Now fellow pilgrims, this Calvinism does not sound like the Calvinism of Piper, Ware, and others. I can live with this style of Calvinism.


Ronald

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 10/5/2003 11:58 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Ronald Ricketts

Earlier I posted a suggestion to read Smedes's My God and I. On page 59, Smedes sums up his Calvinism in 4 sentences,
1.In the beginning God made the world wonderfully good.
2.Near the start, the human family brought evil into the world's awesome goodness.
3.In the end, God will come to fix his world and make it altogether good again.
4.In between, his children are to go into the world and create some imperfect models of the good world to come.

Now fellow pilgrims, this Calvinism does not sound like the Calvinism of Piper, Ware, and others. I can live with this style of Calvinism.



Ron, Scottish Realism produced something that the Continental Reformed did not.

What you have is:

  • 1. Creation

  • 2. Fall

  • 3. Redemption

  • 4. "Office" (Since full redemption only comes at the resurrection -- but there is a now/not-yet active now.)



Do you want me to say more?
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Ronald Ricketts
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   Posted 10/6/2003 5:31 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Please say more about Scottish Realism, etc. I loved your reply or post.Ron


Ronald

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GregBoyd
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   Posted 10/6/2003 8:43 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I don't recall where I read it, but as I understand it, Smedes' gradually abandoned his strict Calvinism over the coarse of his life. Unfortunately it seems he did not have an intelligible alternative to replace it with. Consequently, he suffered as a result of this. The problem of evil gnawed at him tremendously and eroded his personal relationship with God.

An article on him in Christianity Today several months ago touched on this matter.

Doc


"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10.

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Ochuk
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   Posted 10/6/2003 11:03 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
He should read God At War. Eyebrow


Researching


Read my blog at ochuk.gizzar.com

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 10/6/2003 11:38 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Ronald Ricketts

Please say more about Scottish Realism, etc. I loved your reply or post.Ron



The worldview of the Scotts (as in the Westminster Conf.) differed from that of the Continent (Germany, Netherlands, France, Etc.)

Hodges is in the Scottish tradition. He influenced lots.

The Dutch Reformed have a differnt "take." John Vanderstelt did some scholarly work of the differences. The Scotts are more dualist. Most of the "Calvinists" that you hear of are in the Westminster vein. (I could attempt to charaterize the difference by saying that they tend to work more with ridgid boxes. The Reformed don't spend any time talking about "TULIP.")

--------------------------

I have a friend who dated Lewis Smedes in college. Another who's parents were very good friends with his wife. He is thought highly of.

Did you see the portion of his book on our relationship IN CHRIST that I posted on this site?

Tell me if you need a LINK.

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Ronald Ricketts
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   Posted 10/7/2003 11:45 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Dear Pot On Wheels: If I read you correctly Charles Hodges & the Scottish common sense philosophers would say that Gensis 3 is real, rather then being symbolic of something. But after writing the above, I am stuck. What is the continental reformers take on Gensis 3. Would they say that it was something other then real? Help! Ronald


Ronald

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 10/7/2003 6:19 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
quote:
Originally posted by Ronald Ricketts

Dear Pot On Wheels: If I read you correctly Charles Hodges & the Scottish common sense philosophers would say that Gensis 3 is real, rather then being symbolic of something. But after writing the above, I am stuck. What is the continental reformers take on Gensis 3. Would they say that it was something other then real? Help! Ronald



Huh?

I don't think that you know what "Scottish Realism" is. That comes before wondering why you decided to apply a misconception of that to a random Biblical passage.

But then, you did know the phrase "common sense philosophers." So I cant' guess how to help you. What are you doing???

Your question is too wierd to answer.

Sorry.
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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 10/8/2003 1:19 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I don't know if I can find what I'd have to look for.
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Ronald Ricketts
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   Posted 10/8/2003 9:47 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Dear Pot-On-Wheels: Please excuse my confusion.Carl Henry has a brief reference to Hodge & the common sense philosophers (God,Revelation & Authority, Vol.1, page 185). Then I was reading about Hodge in James Leo Garrett (Systematic Theology, Vol.1, page 471, 488). Garrett says that Hodge & older Calvinists felt that the fall of man was not myth but "real". Now here is where I think that I jumped the gun & assumed that Hodge & his "realism" about Gen 3 was somehow connect with Scottish Realsim. I now see that I was wrong. I ask for your help again. Please. Ronald


Ronald

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 10/8/2003 12:11 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Boy I hate being faces with pure ignorance on my part!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry if I sounded rash.

I think it might have been an article by Lee Irons (studied with Meredith Kline) that pointed out the spread of a narrow idea to a wide audience through Hodges.

Here is an article that is way over my head -- but it gives you an idea of what high-flying Calvinists might talk about... www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/vantil-list/archive-Jan-1998/msg00053.html (Notice Irons, Vanderstelt, and Til's names.)

But members.aol.com/MGrass7222/reformed.htm says:
"Old Princeton Seminary theologians (the Alexanders, Hodges and Warfield) and other Scottish Presbyterians (e.g., Dabney, Thornwell) had a significant impact on the development America from its beginning."

Here's a site: capo.org/capohome.html


Then, on "Scottish Realism" I just found this site -- MAYBE I CAN LEARN WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. www.franciscan-sfo.org/TXC/SCOTREAL.HTM "A popular movement in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, which attempted to overcome the epistemological, metaphysical, and moral skepticism of the Enlightenment philosophy of David Hume (1711 - 76) with a philosophy of common sense and natural realism."

I THINK that the gist of what John Vanderstellt would suggest is the difference between continental Reformed thinking and the Scottish-Realist influenced thinking of the Princeton school is that the Reformed begin with God, with relationship with God, with God's self-revelation in Christ. And then they add knowledge and thinking where possible. But they -- LIKE THE EASTERN ORTHODOX -- do not presume that their thinking and observations will lead them eveywhere or tell them all about everything. GREAT humility is exercised. Faithfulness in stewardship and worship is much more highly valued than mastery of of all knowledge or control of everything.


Vanderstellt wrote some articles in ProRega (Dordt College's scholarly magazine). He is empassioned about the difference.


On Gresham Machen: 216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:Q5WCWb9WNWMJ:www.kosmosdalebaptistchurch.org/PDF%2520Files/CL-SH.pdf+%2B%22reformed%22+%2B%22scottish+realist%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


Tried...........
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Ronald Ricketts
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Total Posts : 50
 
   Posted 10/8/2003 3:31 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Dear Pot-on-wheels. Thanks for your reply. You have given me some homework to do. I may call on you again. Ronald


Ronald

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