Calvinism, Arminianism, how can we find what is the true doctrine from God?

Walpole, while I do not identify with Calvin because he was an anti-Semite, I find nothing scripturally incorrect with the TULIP acronym associated with Calvinism. Your charge against Calvinism is very strong and warrants a scriptural basis to support it.

Below is a previous post of mine (#55) giving scriptural support to each of the letters comprising the TULIP acronym. I challenge you to refute any one of these points with scripture.

In other words, put up or shut up.

Post #55

 

Yes, the God of Calvinism is one who acts with pure will and uncontrolled wrath. He is remarkably similar to the God of Islam. He acts contra-Logos.

The God who loves His man came so that they may have life. He loves man so much He became one. This is Christianity 101.

The God of Calvinism conquers hatred by unleashing more hatred, whereas the God of Christianity conquers sin by love. Calvin's God unleashes wrath on the most innocent, turning the Son into his personal whipping boy.

Yes, I am ready to meet Him.

"Come, Lord Jesus."

 

Put up what?

The God of Calvinism acts with pure will, and hence He is very similar to the God of Islam. It is only for a God who acts with pure will does TULIP work.

It is the antithesis of the God of Christianity, who is Logos.

 

Your claims are made out of ignorance to the gospel. I showed you what Jesus said and what Peter confirms. You can keep making assertions, but with no scripture, they are empty.

As someone else told you, what John Calvin and others read in scripture is not some fiction. It's not a second hand catechism. It is what God declares.

So, you can believe what you wish, but what you assert has no scriptural support and is revealed in the fact that so many Roman Catholics are dead in their trespasses and sins. They cling to a legalism of works that falls short and brings their souls to hell with their churches teachings.

I wish you well for as long as you have breath.

 

Not even close. The God of Islam and Roman Catholicism is a God of legalistic works in an attempt to convince God to be merciful. Rituals, prayer beads and rote confessions all designed to discipline the body while doing nothing to redeem the spirit.
In both instances the follower of this legalistic view of God can never say they are saved and secure in God. Instead they must beat themselves into self-righteous submission on the hope that perhaps God might show them mercy at the moment of death.
No assurance, no confidence in Christ, no knowledge that the grace of God chose them and made them alive at the time of redemption.
Only unsure terror that they may have failed in the end.
That is the God of Roman Catholicism and Islam. You own that, Walpole

 

The similarities between the nature of God in Islam and Calvinism are nearly identical. For example, both believe God can and does act with pure will; both believe in God's determinism; both believe in God's fatalism; both believe God can and does deceive; both believe God is an iconoclast; both believe in divine dictation; both believe in sola Scriptura.

Here is the main difference between the God of Calvinism / Islam and the God of Christianity: God is either Logos or Voluntas; that is, either reason or pure will. In Calvinism / Islam, God acts with pure will, above and contra-reason. He is unconstrained by any principle or any reason and hence capriciousness is essential to His very nature. Thus He can and does act completely arbitrarily. In Calvinism and Islam, God acts Voluntas.

In Christianity, He is the Logos, and thus by His nature He acts with reason and love. Therefore to not act in accordance with reason and love would be contrary to His very nature.


Other similarities between the God of Calvinism and Islam...

Fatalism ---> God actually creates some for the sole purpose in taking pleasure in their destruction. He dooms them from the womb for destruction and they are created for this sole purpose. For example...

“Now, since the arrangement of all things is in the hand of God, since to him belongs the disposal of life and death, he arranges all things by his sovereign counsel, in such a way that individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction.” (John Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.6)

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.” (Ibid, 3.21.5)

“We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction.” (Ibid, 3:21.6)

In Islam, God too creates some for destruction and takes pleasure by sending people to hell.



Deceptive ---> In Islam, God can and does deceive. Again, this is because they believe God acts with pure will. Therefore, He is not even bound by His own commands. This nature of God is shared by Calvin, who too taught God can and does deceive. For example, Calvin taught God deceives people by illumining their minds into thinking they are elect, only to pull the rug out from under them at the end...

“Nor do I even deny that God illumines their [reprobates] minds to this extent, that they recognize his grace; but that conviction he distinguishes from the peculiar testimony which he gives to his elect in this respect, that the reprobate never attain to the full result or to fruition. When he shows himself propitious to them, it is not as if he had truly rescued them from death, and taken them under his protection. He only gives them a manifestation of his present mercy.” (Institutes, 3.2.11)

So the reality is YOU have no assurance either. God may be deceiving you into thinking you are one of his elect, when in reality you may be one he created just to take pleasure in destroying.


Iconoclasm ---> Iconoclasm is a rejection of the Incarnation. By virtue of the Incarnation, God has revealed Himself to be the first and ultimate iconographer. By becoming man, God has entered into His creation and thus now given man an image of Himself. In Christ, we now have the “image of the invisible God.” (cf. Col 1:15)

Icons are strictly prohibited in Islam, as well as in Calvinism.


Sola Scriptura ---> Adherents of Islam and Calvinists are sola Scriptura and both do believe in divine dictation. Mohammad was commanded to write and Calvin also taught divine dictation...

"But as the Lord was pleased that doctrine should exist in a clearer and more ample form, the better to satisfy weak consciences, he commanded the prophecies also to be committed to writing, and to be held part of his word. To these at the same time were added historical details, which are also the composition of prophets, but dictated by the Holy Spirit;" (Institutes, 4.8.6)


Calvinists, Jews, Muslims and Atheists are all enemies of the Incarnation and the Cross.

 

A king gets his will will done.

No your God "sovereignty" and Your idea of God cannot control that.

Remember under your theology, God has mindwipe you himself, Doesn't matter if there is covid around or God showing up in person can't even convince a person.

Like a Robot. God has to hit the right switch.

You will. have to answer in the judgement for believing God is evil and stupid.

 

Does God have judgement and wrath stored up for all who have rejected Jesus to save them from their sins?

 

If Jesus Himself did not take in full your due penalty for sins, then you will have to!

 

He really needs to read on the Potter and the Clay Paul discusses!

 

BIG differences between God of Bible and Allah, as in Koran not ANY word describing God being love, and no way to atone for sins ever provided for, as all either heaven or hell before even born!
The "calvinist" God, God of the Bible, is love and also Holy and is Judge, so he provided a means to save lost sinners, but also judges all who reject that provision!
God is love, but also Holy and a Judge!

 

Far too long and splintered for me to address.

God is The Word (Logos). All Christians agree (that includes all Calvinist's, which you despise).

However, I have shared the Logos with you continually and you keep repelling from the Logos and assert, instead, empty assertions not shared by the Logos. All Christians reading our dialogue, no matter where they land in their theology, can go through the thread and see how the Logos has been shared with you.
Your response to the Logos is entirely on you.
The God you have fashioned is not the God who is the Logos. If He was, the Logos would say so. This, is therefore the difference between the Reformed and the Roman Catholic. The Reformed go to the Logos for answers. The Roman Catholic goes to church tradition and catechism for answers.

 

And since Rome despises Pauline Justification, preach another Gospel!

 

This is all your figment of imagination about what God has revealed in scripture and therefore it is your accusation against God, not me.

 

You've presented not the Logos, but the God of Calvinism, who is a God of Voluntas, arbitrarily electing some while creating others for the sheer pleasure in destroying.

You don't even know if you are one of Calvin's elect, as his God can deceive people into thinking they are elect, only to pull the rug out from under them in the end.

Whether you are eternal pulp wood or elect is as good as a flip of the coin in Calvinism. By contrast, the God of Christianity (Orthodoxy and Catholicism) offers ALL men salvation through Jesus Christ.

 

The idea of God unleashing His wrath on a naughty Jesus (a.k.a. penal substitution) is a Calvinist belief, not a Christian one. The Christian understanding of the passion is that it is the greatest act of love, not wrath. Needless to say Calvin's doctrine of penal substitution, with God pouring out wrath and rage on his naughty Son, stands in stark contrast to the Christian understanding of the act of Christ's offering of Himself to the Father out of love...

John 10:18 ---> "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

Ephesians 5:2 ---> "...and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma."

Hebrews 9:14 ---> "...how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God."


Calvin's Penal substitution destroys the Trinity (dividing God against Himself) and makes God an unjust monster, unleashing wrath on the most innocent of all. Here is a good illustration of Calvin's concept of atonement versus the Christian concept of atonement...

 

Since God controls everything then he is obviously making me tell you that you are wrong.

Ergo take up your argument with God.

 

Same pagan and gnostic idea re-skinned.

Volcano God angry demand human sacrifice.

If volcano God like you then you saved, if he hate you then your toast.

The entire calvinist gist is right there^.

 

Bingo! Calvinism is simply a new spin on the old primitive and pagan concept of throwing virgins into the volcano to appease the gods.

Keep up the good work you are doing here and God bless.

Here's some Lenten reading for you during these difficult times...

A Clerk of Oxford: The Long Lent and the History of Quarantine

 

Yes, as does "our God" but we see that he also provoded definite salvation for His own, not a "maybe"