Get Underground, CA
Oct 14 2006

Fine Young Calvinists

[ Paul Mathers Contra Mundi ] – 10.13.06 – by: Paul Mathers

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A seminary student tells this story about the first day of a class.
The professor was the well known Reformed theologian and Presbyterian
pastor R.C. Sproul. Sproul stormed into class on the first day,
slammed his Bible on the desk and said, "You are all very very bad
and
God is very very mad!"

I plan on telling that to my children before they go to sleep every
night.

There’s a movement growing in young protestants in America over the
past decade or so. It’s called Calvinism and there are pastors
around who would kill all the babies of this generation to keep it
from spreading. I’ve seen how ugly people get over this issue.

I’ve seen men who are supposed to be representing a benevolent God do
and say some of the most twisted, manipulative and hate filled things
to anyone guilty of the sin of thinking God is too big and powerful
in the past two years. I’ve seen pastors silenced for teaching that
people are called to Jesus. I’ve seen families ran out of churches
that they wanted to worship in because they happen to think that God
lead them to Him. I remember even hearing some guy somewhere say
something about how if you don’t love your neighbor you don’t love
God.

This is a broilingly divisive issue, in my experience usually made
divisive by the opposition to Calvinism, and I’m a little surprised
it’s not being reported on. If Calvinism continues to grow our
great-grandchildren may see the hatred in the church go away because
of the necessary inbreeding and natural selection that will go on
with isolationist Arminian pastors. You’ll see weird little Arminian
communities with big walls and signs on the gate that say "Entrance
permitted only on your own free will."

But first a little background. Most of the major American Protestant
churches are Arminian in their view of how they obtain salvation.
Arminianism is the highly emotionally charged, reactionary,
theological opposition to Calvinism. Joseph Arminius believed that
John Calvin’s
theology made God into a tyrant and humans into automatons (although
they didn’t really have a word for that back then. He may have said
words like puppets instead) because he seems to have given the matter
about five minutes of thought. Actually, as is often the case with
fired up intellectuals, all Arminius really did was make famous the
prejudices of one of his favorite professors. And it’s pretty much
just a theology where they take everything that John Calvin said and
say they believe the contrary (kind of the James Dean school of
critical thinking.)

Of course America is the land where Free Will often stands in for God
Himself. But Calvinism doesn’t preclude free will at all and in
fact makes the non-believer completely responsible for their
damnation. It just says, as Charles Spurgeon said, "My hope arises
from the freeness

of grace, and not from the freedom of the will." Which is to say
that nobody was ever saved by free will but a lot of people have been
damned by it. And, of course, it makes a lot of sense that the
American church would go for an intellectual dwarf like Joseph
Arminius.

Just in case I haven’t alienated every reader yet, let’s take a look
at the specifics of the Calvinist system of theology. The first
point of Calvinism says we are all wicked scum to the core. Our
nature is bald, stinking evil. We are walking sacks of sin and it
seeps out of our pores. Your cookie baking, charity supporting
grandmother is just as danged evil as any old Hitler any day.

That’s because the standard isn’t what one does. Reconnection with
God is not through "works." One must repair the relationship with
God, and one can only do that by faith which is a gracious and
undeserved gift from God. A system of salvation by works leads to
situations where, for example, the church decides that you plebes can
buy hundreds of years out of Purgatory. Then they use their
salvation-mafia to fund Crusades and other bloody church-related
activities. It’s a steaming load of papal bull.

Salvation by faith alone in Christ alone is Biblical, and the
Bible’s, the book we have to work with in this system. That’s all we
have to work with really. If we’re dealing with a system where the
Bible is the standard and considered the inspired word of God, it’s a
lot easier to respect the people who aren’t trying add things too it
or twisting meanings to their own pet doctrines. If they start
making exceptions there’s really no point in stopping. Once one
twists the first time,
one may as well throw their standard away and just start making
things up. You may as well have 15 beaten wives and shoot people who
disagree with your politics on sight or on suspicion or on direct
revelation from God.

Of course Calvinists are no angels either. One of the stereotypes of
Calvinists is a condescending attitude that really is only matched by
atheists. This is because Calvinists have a strong Biblical basis
and boy golly do a lot of them know it. It seems like some young
Calvinists may just get into the ideology because it’s a good way to
win pissing contests against Arminians. The old "who’s more
hardcore" game.

You see it around college aged Calvinists who decide everyone else is
wrong and heretical. But one really should bear in mind that their
passion stems from a drive to uphold truth with no compromise. Which
is really sexy. All of them aren’t smug. Some of them also try to
follow

other biblical passages like the loving and the not being divisive
bits you hear so much about. In fact most of the Calvinists I’ve met
have been some of the most loving Christians I’ve ever encountered.
Those outside of monotheism seem to have a really hard time with the
word "sin." Actually they seem to have a hard time with all of this.
But remember, 44% of Americans attend church regularly. That means
144,000,000 of the people around you get up early and worship
mostSunday mornings. That means when you’re out in public, if you
don’t go to church, chances are the person closest to you does. This
doesn’t speak at all to personal conviction or earnestness
(Kierkegaard’s earth shattering revelation in his day that just
because you live in a
Christian nation, go to a Christian church, and all of your friends
are Christians does not make you a Christian.) I’m fully convinced
Sturgeon’s Revelation – "90% of everything is crap," and if you come
away from this column with nothing else, remember that truth – applies
to the
church just as much as it applies to the rest of our lives.

Personally I think that the church is mainly just a social club and a
place for the petty to go to wield a modicum of power over their
peers if they have a family or are just too much of a wuss to go
start a bar fight. I guess I don’t have to point out that all but
one president has claimed to be a Protestant. And the one who wasn’t
got his head shot off! I probably shouldn’t have to point out why
understanding these trends is important even for the most
unregenerate sinner.
Oh yeah, I was talking about sin. Sin is really just saying humans
have a rift in their relationship with God. If sin were the color
blue, everything we do would be some shade of blue. We are flawed,
wicked, evil, wretched beings to our core. That was the first piece
of any theology that ever made sense to me, because I observe it in
myself and everyone around me every waking moment I’m on this -the
rectum of the Universe. It’s the theology of how much we suck. I
know of no more honest a point.

A Calvinist follows up sucking with the concept that God draws his
followers by making His grace overtake His elect. This is one of the
points that Armenians like to twist into something it’s not. They
like to twist it into we are God’s will-less marionettes. That’s
really just setting up straw men to knock them down. No reputable
Calvinist would say that. The Bible teaches that no one comes to God
on their own and that the only ones who come to Christ are the ones
the God the Father gives to Him.

An Armenian would say that the Holy Spirit sort of woos the believer.
They say God can attract believers but he can’t actually do anything
to get them to believe. God sits on His cloud wringing His Hands
saying "*****, I hope they like Me." Which begs the question, when an
Armenian
prays for the salvation of an unbeliever, what exactly are they
praying to God for? What do they expect Him to do? According to
them He doesn’t have that power.

The Calvinist prays and knows that God is all powerful and sovereign
over all things. Also that God’s will is what will happen and not
humankind’s. Now, the individual retains responsibility while God is
sovereign. This is called compatibilism. The two concepts don’t
contradict one another and anyone can tell you that all free acts
have causes. People who have a problem with this are probably
thinking of Christ in too small of terms.

As for the moment of salvation: the person about to find it has
probably been working things out in their head, thinking on these
things, deciding, and probably being preached to and taught because
of the draw of the Holy Spirit. I know a lot of believers had a time
where they were immersed in study and interest in Christianity but
something was holding them back from accepting Christ. Their
depravity was holding them back.

The next point is Limited Attonement which we probably don’t need to
get into here. Suffice it to say a Calvinist would say that Jesus
Christ’s death attoned for the sins of the elect. Some say it also
attoned for all sins but only effectively for the elect. Some say it
attoned just for the elect.

Now, as for this elect thing, this is the buzz word most people think
of when they think of Calvinism. It says that before time began God
knew everything being all powerful, sovereign and all knowing. So,
before creation or anything He elected His people, set the
circumstances, nothing can change it and that’s the way it goes.
There are those He didn’t elect (which seems to a lot of us like the
bulk of humanity.) Being God and entirely sovereign over all things
He works
all things out to His glory, which means those who are elected to be
His people and to have a repaired relationship with Him are made so
to glorify Him and those who are for all eternity will be separate
from Him also will glorify Him in spite of what they may mean by it.

And the last point of Calvinism is that those who are elect will
persevere in their walk with God. It does not mean that someone who
raises their hand at a Harvest Crusade and then lives the rest of
their life as a the rottenest villain what ever growed is still going
to go to Heaven just because they accepted Christ once. One who you
see as Elect is going to spend the rest of their lives seeking God
(and stumbling and failing and so forth but honestly seeking.) They
may
fall off the wagon but they will quickly get back on. This doesn’t
mean salvation by works either. It means that they’re hellbent for
election. Being saved and surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses they run with perseverance the race that is set before
them. An Arminian would say that one can lose their salvation which
is completely unbiblical. A Calvinist would say that if someone
falls away from the faith it’s clear that theirs was not a true faith
of the
elect to begin with.

Why is this important except in the heads of the Calvinists and
Arminians? Well, doctrine dictates lifestyle and Calvinists go about
their spiritual walk a little differently than Arminians. An
Arminian goes out to shake the unregenerate sinner by the collar
saying they must decide to believe or will be damned to Hell for all
eternity. In fact with the Arminian point you’d have to be a pretty
hateful rat bastard not to. I mean if you don’t bully, badger, hound
and by any
means necessary convey a person you are in effect damning them to
Hell by withholding information.

A Calvinist would lay out the foundations for anyone to hear or read,
make sure the information is out there, and trust whoever is supposed
to profit from it will be lead to profit from it. A Calvinist is
assured that God is sovereign over everything and if he wants to
convert one lone child in the jungle somewhere where the people have
never seen anyone outside of their tribe, He’ll make it happen. A
Calvinist believes every bit of grain pecked by a chicken was
ordained
by God from the beginning of time. So while a Calvinist is called to
teach their theology, they are not responsible for convincing anyone.

Rather changes the tone of the whole process of evangelism you see.
If their was a significant swing back to Calvinism in the American
church, the whole process and focus of the protestant church would
change. And speaking of which, I should probably say that this column
isn’t always going to be heavy theology every week. I did this as an
introduction and because we’re kind of in between religious news.

For example if I’d written this a week ago it would be on the Pope
quoting anti-Muslim texts from the middle ages. Which I had a touch
of schadenfreude over when I heard it at seven in the morning on NPR
and then found around ten that same morning I was reading out loud to
a
small group a piece of someone else’s writing that I thought was
terrible. I realized if someone had a tape recorder a similar "look
what Paul Mathers said" kind of thing could happen.

If I’d been writing this two weeks ago I’d be writing about how
Calvary Chapel Capo Beach has been muscled out of the Calvary Chapel
movement like a dog that peed the carpet which is most interesting
because the pastor there is Chuck Smith Jr. and the founder of the
Calvary Chapel
movement is Chuck Smith Sr.

And next time I’m planning on writing about the Reformation unless
The Ancient Ones rise from the ocean between now and then. In the
future I’ll have interviews, personal reactions, news, and a whole
lot of opinion. Mainly what I expect this to be about is truth and
lies both
in abundance. And I expect to rant a lot about things I hate or like
which is probably what will keep you coming back. We are hate-filled
critters at heart.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress