Although this is one of the most infuriating & saddening things I’ve ever read, I think it can be helpful to have a good understanding of our most extreme opponents 
I’m glad he at least notices the ammunition he’s giving Atheists 
It’s not all frustrating, he at least mentions some of opposition’s arguments:
Johnson - Rejoicing seeing people suffer in ECT.pdf (566 KB)
Thanks for posting this Alex. A superb textbook example of the smug, vindictive, self-righteous evil fruit of Calvinism. The trouble is, of course, that an atheist or agnostic reading this - or more likely encountering this sort of thinking in a Calvinist friend or colleague - isn’t necessarily going to know that this sort of vicious cruelty is not only unbiblical, but is in fact the polar opposite of the true gospel message. And hence, unless exposed to a balancing Universalist or Arminian view of scripture and God, they are highly likely to throw the baby out with the bathwater and reject the gospel altogether.
Which is why this sort of ‘religious’ Calvinist pornography needs to be rooted out and flushed swiftly down the toilet where it belongs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Calvinism is a far greater evil, and far more damaging to the spread of the Kingdom, than even the most militant forms of atheism. Indeed, if Calvinism were the only religious show in town, the only right and moral thing to do would be to become an atheist.
Cheers
Johnny
The easiest way to counter Calvinists is to show how it is unjustice (since they appeal to God’s justice for hin being without blame) for God to punish people with eternal punishment. The argument goes like this:
Man is not presented with an infinite good in this life - he cannot/does not behold the essence of God.
Therefore, when he sins it is not an infinite good that he is rejecting.
Therefore, it is unjust to punish him with infinite punishment, as justice as such is the fair or just recompense for wrong done.
That’s socking it to ‘em logically Chris - a great syllogism; and Johnny you have scrutinised the emotional subtext with customary polemical aplomb (which I always enjoy famously)
From a historical point of view …we are talking here about what I reckon Universalists should call the name given it by our merciful Doctor Frederick Farrar – that is, ‘the abominable fancy’. I think that’s the proper term for it. I wouldn’t recommend the paper Alex gives the link to for anyone feeling at all afflicted by despair. Also I would note about this paper – that pretends to be an academic submission – the evidence given is weighted one way. Of the many authors cited since Tertullian who have promoted the ‘abominable fancy’ only one Universalist and two notorious atheists have been cited against as far as I can see (although I didn’t read it with massively close scrutiny – but I’m sure this is just about so and that the universalist was meant to be contaminated by rhetorical association with the atheists). There have been many, many more voices raised against the ‘abominable fancy’ in Christian history – and a broader selection should have been cited in any paper pretending to academic objectivity. And, by way of irony, I note that one of the exponents of the abominable fancy listed – the Anglican Jeremy Taylor – was the friend and sponsor of George Rust, the first Anglican Bishop to write a defence of Origen’s doctrine of Universal salvation.
Alex I’m taking a break for Lent – and I really need to take the break - so don’t worry that I’ve disappeared for ever. I wish you and your family and your Dad much happiness –
Dick
A hundred and forty pages!!? 
Holyyyyy . . . um, Smoke!
I’ve heard/read this before (stated rather more briefly) and every single time I hear it my gut twists up like the stuff you find in tennis balls when your dog’s been allowed to chew on one too long. BTW, I hear that’s toxic to them. 
So’s this. THIS is the Calvinist who has in fact thought it through, and if you’re going to insist that God doesn’t plunk down the ransom money for each and every one, well this IS in fact the logical conclusion. Amnesia doesn’t work and out of sight/out of mind certainly doesn’t work. Glad about it is absolutely the only way to explain how the saints can be blessed in the joy of their Lord.
Of course when you take into consideration the character of God, the unfailing nature of love, and what it means to have unending mercies and faithfulness, this doesn’t work either. Calvinists insist (for the most part) on biblical inerrancy. Put the whole package together and it all flies apart. I don’t know how anybody can stomach this . . . um, Smoke.
I love our Calvinist brothers & sisters but I as Cindy said, they arrive at this awful conclusion because it’s the most logical way to hold together ECT & “no sadness in heaven”. We need to beg God to open their eyes, as I think most of them see it as the only biblical option that they have to accept or they risk ending up in ECT 
I find it odd that he acknowledges “the depths of horror” & “dreadful fate” but still thinks we should praise God for it & let it “motivate hearts to love”. If any other person was like this, sustaining such horror & doing nothing to stop it, it certainly wouldn’t motivate me to love them!
(Thanks [tag]Sobornost[/tag], I hope you have a rejuvenating break!)
Ah, you see it, Cindy, you see the true horror of Calvinism. It isn’t just honest theological error; it is deliberate dishonesty against the revealed truth about God; wilfully calling the demonic holy. In fact it is the blasphemy of the spirit of which Jesus warns in such stern terms in Matthew 12: 30 - 37.
Given the gravity of this diabolical twisting of the gospel it seems almost trivial in comparison that Calvinism adds hypocrisy to its list of sins. But consider the passage Alex quotes - how dare the Calvinist pastor talk of ‘motivating’ anyone to anything! The concept is purely Arminian, and hence meaningless. The reprobate can no more be motivated to repent than a cancer can be motivated not to destroy a man’s liver. As if horror of ECT could ever motivate true love anyhow! The concept is quite absurd.
Cheers
Johnny
[tag]johnnyparker[/tag] I totally agree with you that it’s infuriating & that it’s really, really hard to see how their conclusion doesn’t ends up portraying God as a monster (which I’m sure He’s not happy about!). However, in my experience, it isn’t “deliberate dishonesty”, as my Calvinist friends will say, “It would be nice is UR was true, it’s just the Bible doesn’t teach it”. Upon closer examination, disturbingly this is often “our church/denomination” doesn’t teach it. That’s still not dishonesty but simply misplaced trust. This is compounded when some churches preach that “respecting authority” equates to never disagreeing with them 
Now I think we should respect & obey authority, that it’s perfectly natural to trust our leaders. It’s just I think our loyalty to Christ should be above that. Again this isn’t simple because many are taught that “loyalty to Christ” is never disagreeing with the church 
Another thing worth thinking about is that for many Christians it seems it’s just as much a matter of not trusting God enough, not thinking He’s attractive enough to attract everyone (it’s surprising how many Calvinists flip to Arminianism when pressed! Saying things like “God would’ve elected more people but He knew some people just wouldn’t believe”). But as I know it’s hard for me to believe something I don’t believe, I try to have compassion on them & pray that God helps them to trust Him more (not saying I perfectly trust God, far from it, to my shame I often don’t).
This is one of those situations where heresy is in fact exacerbated by having an organized established hierarchy in a position of power. The hierarchy was originally created to protect the church from heresy (if you take an optimistic view), but in its lack of trust for the Holy Spirit’s guidance of every believer, it has often resulted in institutionalized heresy. I’m not sure what the answer is here. I guess the tares (both the lies and their propagators) will go into the furnace at harvest time. It’s lucky for the, well, misled, not to mention the misleaders – that they’re wrong about all that never-ending torment stuff. 
Meantime, we can set our lamps on the lampstand so others might see them if they’re able.
I expect it would take at least 140 pages to chew through all that, and I have other multi-hundred-page things to be doing.
But out of curiosity, how did you run across this paper, Alex?
Alex
I see where you’re coming from on this. And I agree that we should have compassion for those who have, for whatever reason, been seduced by the evil lie of Calvinism. But I’m afraid we must be brave about this and face the truth that Calvinists must bear a degree of responsibility, of culpability, for subscribing to their demonic theology. I’ll try and explain through an extreme analogy.
In the OT we learn of the hideous cult of Moloch. Moloch worship involved child sacrifice - an abomination that God expressly forbade. Now I don’t think any of us would feel any kinship with somebody who advocated or indeed practised Moloch worship today. In fact we would condemn them as evil in the extreme. Now a Moloch worshipper might defend themselves by arguing “But I’m only doing what I sincerely believe to be right. I’m following my tradition, my holy texts and the instructions of my priests, and they tell me that God demands the sacrifice of children.”
To which we would respond, “I don’t give a fig for your tradition, your holy texts or your priests. What you’re doing is beyond evil and if you can’t see that you’re either insane or evil yourself.”
So it is with Calvinism. It doesn’t matter that Calvinists ‘honestly’ believe the Bible teaches their vile theology. The fact is that they choose to practice a horrible, evil religion which, as I said earlier, makes Moloch worship look like the Boy Scouts. Because a baby sacrificed to Moloch suffers only in its death, but the reprobate hated by God under Calvinism suffers for all eternity.
Even without the Biblical injunctions against it, simple logic and morality show us that Moloch worship is evil. And so with Calvinism. It flies in the face of the plain truth of scripture, which explicitly states over and over that God is love, that He loves all his creatures, and that he wills their salvation. It flies in the face of reason, logic and compassion, and offends our deeply-rooted, God-given sense of justice and fairness.
What, then, are we to make of those who subscribe to Calvinism? They must fall into one of the following categories:
They accept Calvinism only because they were brought up in that tradition and have never thought to question its validity, never bothered to find out about it for themselves.
They accept Calvinism because they accept the prima facie Biblical arguments in favour of it, but have never bothered to think these through to their logical conclusions.
They have properly thought through what Calvinism entails, and they subscribe to it outwardly while inwardly not actually believing it - in other words, they opt to live with the cognitive dissonance Calvinist belief necessarily entails.
They’ve thought it all through properly and accept it in all its horrific, demonic ‘glory’. They are prepared to worship a capriciously sadistic deity who creates sentient creatures purely to torture them for all eternity. They call that god ‘holy’ and ‘just’.
Now I put it to you that it’s a pretty miserable state of affairs to be classified in any of these four categories. All entail a degree of either ignorance or self-deception. And one - number 4 - brings us squarely into the territory of Moloch worship. In fact, substitute the term ‘Moloch worship’ for ‘Calvinism’ in all four categories and see where that leaves us.
Like I say, misguided beliefs - honest error - are one thing. But dishonest beliefs - beliefs which violate both morality and Scripture and blacken the holy name of God in the worst possible way - well, I for one find it very hard to see how we can do anything with these except denounce them in the strongest possible terms.
Of course, and I cannot emphasise this enough, the principle of ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ applies here just as it does with any sinful behaviour or belief. But let us not excuse the sinner while loving them, or excuse them from condemnation so long as they continue to promote their sinful beliefs.
All the best
Johnny
preach it, brother!
Keith DeRose was rightly criticising it on FaceBook.
Johnny, unlike Moloch worship, I’m really glad Calvinists don’t physically sacrifice their children, even if they do think God might, which is still very tragic 
In my experience they usually fall into 1 to 3. I think we should strongly reject many aspects of Calvinism, but somehow do so without hating the people ('m glad you’re trying to do this too).
Agreed, Alex. And despite appearances to the contrary I do believe there are lots of good ‘1 - 3’ Calvinists out there. I may even know some of them 
. As for the 4s, well I like to think they are few and far between. Although when I read people like Johnson quoting Tertullian in support of their beliefs I do worry …
Anyway, I’ve said as much as I’m going to say on this depressing subject. What was that Nietzsche quote -
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster … for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Cheers
Johnny
Please also keep in mind that our rules about demonizing other people’s beliefs have to apply to everyone, or else we’re only being hypocritical if we ask non-universalist members to tamp down on calling us intentional deceivers serving Satan (and then take steps when they refuse to tamp down on this), while allowing universalist members free reign to accuse non-universalists of worshiping and/or promoting Moloch through dishonest beliefs.
Those rules weren’t put in place because we’re not “courageous” (and therefore cowards). They were put in place by the site owners because they wanted a site where non-universalists could feel safe coming here to dispute with us soberly on these issues.
Universalists naturally want to feel safe from being oppressed by non-universalists here for our beliefs, and that’s understandable, but what am I supposed to do when people like “True Disciple” show up to spit their hatred in our direction? If I ask him to stop while allowing other people to do the same thing back in his direction–or in the direction of the Calvinist who showed up in that thread asking (the Arminian) TD to tone it down for our sakes–then I’m merely being an ideologue using my power to suppress dissent from people I don’t agree with.
And how was Jaxxen, someone who unlike TD was capable of sober and serious discussion, rewarded for standing up for us? He was accused of intentionally (if perhaps self-)deceptive worship of and service for a horrible demon. Just like TD had accused us. Which Jaxxen had defended us against.
Jaxxen has every good reason to leave our forum and never come back. Which of my Calvinist friends, or the Calv friends of some of the other members here, will take our forum seriously, or feel at all comfortable trying to respectfully discuss and work our our differences here?! Sure, my Arminian friends and family and acquaintances might be willing to chime in with a “preach it, brother”, when Calvs are the ones being hung on the cross to have refuse thrown at them; but we’re supposed to be reconciling both sides of a broken soteriology with one another.
I am outright EMBARRASSED at the thought of ever telling the Calvinistic friends of my brother’s family that I am an administrator and guest author at the Evangelical Universalist forum. Because God forbid, they might actually take a few minutes to look it up for themselves, and then utterly shut out any possibility of taking me seriously in my beliefs again, for supporting such a place.
sigh
And what would my most beloved think, who isn’t even a Christian at all, if she (God forbid) came on this forum and found my own side pissing in the mouths of fellow Christians? We’re no better than those other people she rejects! At best she’d be sad and confused as to why I was supporting this site, and would secretly wonder whether I myself was no better after all than she had thought I was.
[Edited to add since there was misunderstanding on this later: that strong way of putting it was my expected description of how [u]SHE WOULD SEE IT. My way of putting it was “hanging them on a cross to throw refuse at them”. Once upon a time that was how a bunch of people thought traitors to God should be punished. People who regard Calvinists as willfully participating in worse than Moloch worship must be regarding them as fundamental traitors to God. True, the chief priests and Pharisees might not be hurling trash at the traitors hanging on the cross, but their expressions of rejection amount to the same thing. That they wouldn’t normally by their own principles agree to hanging criminals on a tree, only shows how much they think it’s important to hang the current criminal by contrast.]
Sure, being awesomely charitable she’d understand the technical distinctions involved, that people here are upset because other people are willing to abandon some people to never-ending misery or annihilation. She’d understand and sympathize and even agree with our feelings about that. But then she’d see how we put our beliefs into practice: not by doing our best to reconcile with people who have sinned against us (doctrinally speaking or more directly), but by doing our best to drive such people away from reconciliation, by actively insulting them with what we believe to be the truth about them–no different from the behavior we reject when it’s aimed at us by the TDs of the world.
We aren’t doing to others as we would have them do to us.
She would think we aren’t real live Christians after all.
Please brothers: I know there are strong feelings involved in this, and I know it’s possible to work out the logic in such a direction – I think I can say with some assurance that I am one of the few people on this forum, perhaps the only person (I can’t think of any other), who goes to some time and effort promoting and defending the idea that Christ was seriously threatening strong punishments to followers of His who embraced the concept of hopeless punishment. But that is a hugely incendiary position to take, and so I try to present it in as acceptable a manner as I can, such as by making it a self-critical test, or expecting that those who technically but sorrowfully accept it will be exempted. Even Christ didn’t make it altogether explicit (which is why proponents of hopeless punishment have ironically tended to take those statements and apply them hopelessly to those-people-over-there!)
But these are things that people need to come to conclusion about themselves, ideally in regard to themselves, not in judgment against other people. Such judgments might also be accepted coming from people they regard as being in rightful authority over them–just as we ideally ought to be willing to accept the judgment of God against us if we have somehow been involved in promoting a hellishly twisted notion of God. But presuming for sake of argument that was true, how many of the people here would take seriously such accusations against you from strangers whom you regard as having no authority over you?!
If this was a private backchannel on Yahoo with only a select invited group, we wouldn’t have a public image to hurt by indulging in a good screed of frustration at what those-heathen-people-over-there-are-really-worshiping. If the forum had been set up for the purpose of indulging in such invective, maybe the forum would have no public image to hurt that way either (although the cause of Christian Universalism itself would I think be hurt by the existence of such a forum. Which I would not accept taking part in, by the way.)
But this isn’t a private backchannel forum, and it was set up to reach out to those who are different from us, from whose ranks almost all of us have come.
Please don’t stab the hands of those who dare to reach back to us.
For the record, Jason, neither I nor anybody else here (so far as I have seen) has ever accused either Matt personally or Calvinists generally of worshipping Moloch. This isn’t the first time you’ve got your metaphorical knickers in a twist in this regard. I said quite clearly that I was illustrating the evils of Calvinism through analogy - and I stand by that analogy, unpalatable though you or anybody else might find it.
Since when did it become verboten to challenge the promotion of evil in the name of God on this forum? Presumably if Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church infamy were to set up a user account here you’d defend his right to preach that God hates fags, and slap down anybody who held his doctrinal position - based on his sincerely held Biblical beliefs, naturally - up to ridicule?
Consider the parallels: Phelps preaches that God hates a particular group of people - gay people - and is going to parcel them off to eternal torment in hell. Calvin and his adherents do likewise with the so-called reprobate, ie all those human beings who God in his infinite and inscrutable wisdom chooses not to save, even though he could if he wanted to. You talk about being embarrassed that your Calvinist friends or family might see their beliefs held up to uncomfortable scrutiny on this site. Maybe you ought to be asking them why they aren’t embarrassed - not to say ashamed - to be holding those beliefs in the first place.
I get it in the neck for speaking out against a theology that is reviled by everybody - Christian, atheist and agnostic alike - who doesn’t actually subscribe to it. And yes, I consider it cowardly to remain silent on so great an evil, an evil that probably does more to keep thinking agnostics outside the Kingdom than Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens could ever dream of doing.
And if your stance on this issue represents the official view of the forum, well it makes a guy wonder if it isn’t time to pick up his chips and find another game.
Cheers
Johnny
I suppose I should add an addendum in regard to the recent blow-up on MIss Tea’s thread.
I realize that the people who were calling Jaxxen’s theology those horribly insulting descriptions thought he was attacking Miss Tea at a time when she was feeling emotionally vulnerable.
I certainly agree that TD (the Arminian) was doing so. But Jaxxen was not doing that. (Even TD wasn’t doing that at first; he was trying to warn Miss Tea away from us to keep her from being hopelessly punished by God for following the wrong gnostic doctrines or whatever.)
What Jaxxen was doing was trying to provide Miss Tea more reassurance against fear of God’s wrath, than he thought purgatorial universalists like me (and he specifically referenced me) were able to give her.
Jaxxen didn’t notice that she was afraid for other people, too, but he didn’t try to reassure her about other people. He was following a standard Calvinistic concept that those who are concerned sorrowfully about God’s wrath wouldn’t be that way unless they are of God’s elect; and on his notion of penal substitutionary atonement (which many of us also reject) God’s elect absolutely don’t have to worry about being punished with God’s wrath, not even His loving wrath, in any way.
He didn’t insult our idea of God or call it a sadistic tyranny fit for Hitler. On the contrary, he went out of his way to acknowledge that our notion of God’s wrath isn’t like that at all. All he argued was that if his beliefs are true, Miss Tea doesn’t have to worry about even the slightest and most loving wrath of God. That’s a big selling point for Calvinists in dispute against Arminians, and notably an Arminian had already been on that thread making tons more trouble, so it made sense from Jaxxen’s perspective to try to help Miss Tea the way we were trying to help except (he thought) even better.
Jaxxen wasn’t attacking Miss Tea; and he wasn’t attacking Sobornost after Dick replied with a post that concluded with very insulting denunciations of Calvinistic beliefs about God. True, Jaxxen didn’t anticipate that those of us who noticed that Miss Tea was afraid for other people might retort that his position offers less than no reassurance for them – although by Jaxxen’s standards the only people who have to worry about the wrath of God are those who literally never once give a damn about being good in the least, so he wouldn’t think any people would be seriously worried for the sake of such people. But we (and Miss Tea) are concerned for such people, too, not just for good people! Even Calvinists are supposed to be concerned for people who haven’t yet shown any evidence of giving a damn about being good, because they might still be of God’s chosen elect–but until such people show some signs of being moved by the Holy Spirit, they can’t be (on this standard) assured of also being among the elect.
But what we complain about in Calv soteriology is that if anyone did live and die without any attempt by God to save them from sin, then they were created as sinners merely to be the targets of God’s wrath for ultimately His own purposes–and that undermines the whole structure of reassurance that Calvinists otherwise rightly insist upon: a reassurance any universalist (whether we believe in further wrath of God or not) must technically agree with, that those whom God intends to save will surely be saved from their sins by God’s competent persistence–a persistence we agree God does not have to be convinced into.
Because, even aside from the question of whether an omnipotent tyrant who creates people to be condemned to show off his greatness can be trusted not to let some of those non-elect mistakenly come to think they are of the elect, so that he can show off his greatness in some inscrutable way in that fashion, too (and there are scriptures which indicate there will be people who think they are of “the elect” who are nevertheless punished by God with eschatological punishment) – even aside from that, it’s horribly disheartening to think that the best we can ever expect or hope for is that the heartless tyrant of the universe might spare us for his own purposes while destroying others. To say that we ought to worship such an entity anyway, because that’s what we were made for and besides he’s the greatest power, reduces down to mere worship of power to cause effects, which is merest slavery whichever way it is looked at.
I know that’s why people thought Jaxxen was attacking Miss Tea with despair when her heart was vulnerable. He wasn’t, but he wasn’t thinking out what the results would be from trying to reassure her like that: which could only be a partial reassurance (insofar as she is worried about other people) and, ultimately, no real reassurance at all.
But there are ways of trying to get across our concerns about that without accusing Matt, or other Calvinists, even if we think they’re being outright hateful (which Matt was NOT!–not in the least!) We have an obligation, to them and to God, to try to find ways of communicating our concerns so that they don’t just shut down in insulted rejection.
Fred Phelps wouldn’t be here to sincerely participate in sober discussion, and he would be asked pretty quickly to voluntarily depart or be booted if he didn’t sober up. TD was on his way to a fairly quick exit, too. Jaxxen, and several of the other Calvinists who have come here, aren’t Fred Phelps and making the comparison to him by analogy is highly unwarranted.
Meanwhile I expect Christian universalists to act better than Fred Phelps. There are different ways of doing things, and this is not the place for Fred’s way of doing things.
If you feel horribly insulted and upset that I just analogized your behavior with Fred Phelps, then keep that in mind next time you only analogize Calvinist behavior with worshipers of Moloch: being told it’s only an analogy doesn’t reduce the hurt made by the comparison.
If a Calvinist comes here (like for example Steve Hays, whom by the way I also lost my temper with and accused of Moloch worship), and arrogantly defends what amounts to Moloch worship, and suggests if we don’t fall in line we must be of the non-elect, and willfully mischaracterizes our position in order to make his position look better (all of which Steve demonstrably did), then I wouldn’t blame members for nuking him–but we still ideally ought to be and do better than him.
Paul Manata, to continue the Triablogue comparison, is not like Steve Hays, and deserves a higher (an even higher) quality of respect from us.
[Edited to add since there was strong misunderstanding about this later: in order to illustrate that the ad/mods have a duty to protect people on this forum from having certain kinds of language thrown at them, I am about to pick up Johnny’s retorted example of how we ought to protect homosexuals from hateful language–which protection [u]I AGREE WITH–and insert that topic back into a large selection of quotes from Johnny regarding Calvinists posted in this thread no more than 48 hours previous. People would expect us to rein in Fred Phelps if he showed up talking this way about homosexuals; the owners and founders of the site expect us to also rein in, as gently as we can, other people talking this way about Arminians or Calvinists or really just about anyone at all. This isn’t the forum for those kinds of denunciation.]
There are ways for people to try to get across that they believe active acceptance of homosexuality is a sin which (in itself and other things being equal) will be punished by God so long as it is impenitently held; but “God hates fags” isn’t it (or anyway that way of putting it isn’t what this forum is about)–even though Fred Phelps may be putting it that strongly because he’s genuinely concerned that people will be led to an unimaginably horrible ongoing end if they don’t stop supporting gay whatevers, and really truly believes he’s thereby bravely… well, why not pseudo-quote him on it?
You tell me–if Fred Phelps came to our forum and started talking like that on a regular basis whenever the topic of homosexuality came up, what would you have us do? If you ran across Fred talking like that about homosexuals and the homosexual agenda, and none of the ad/mods happened to be around, would you alert us expect us to do something about it? Would you think we were being cowards if we asked him to tone it down? Would you think we were cowards if we only asked him to tone it down rather than to leave? Would you think we were sticking him in the neck for speaking out like that on something he really genuinely believes to be true?
I mean, maybe it isn’t quite as bad as saying “God hates fags”, but I myself rather felt like vomiting while coming up with that selection from pseudo-Phelps, and I actually agree that propagating homosexual behavior is a sin!
(Then again, I’ve had a touch of the stomach flu all day, so… )
[Edited to add, since somehow some people got from this that I [u]agree homosexuals should be described this way: I absolutely don’t. Originally I had planned to use Christian universalism as the example, and pseudo-quote from a recent Arminian troublemaker who showed up briefly a few days prior to say such things about Christian universalists!–who would have thought, had I done so, that I was looking for an excuse to say such things about Christian universalism and universalists?!? The confusion may have come however because on one hand I do regard promotion of homosexuality as sin–with many qualifications, and not the same category of sin as behaviors intended to hurt other people–and on the other hand I think I made it pretty clear that I agree with the Anti-Calvs more-or-less in principle. From that an inference could be drawn from my comparison of the cases that what I more-or-less agree with the Anti-Calvs about in principle, whom I quoted from in building pseudo-Fred’s diatribe, I also believe to be true about homosexuals and homosexuality. Perhaps if I had regularly spoken up on the forum about what I actually believe regarding homosexual behavior this would have been less of a problem. I talk about what I actually believe later in this thread; readers may skip down to those posts here with a brief addendum also here.]
[Edited by JRP to further add, since there was also evidently some further confusion about what Allen and Cindy say shortly afterward in this thread: they were talking about reaching out to Calvinists without the ethical denunciations. They weren’t at all trying to agree with “pseudo-Phelps”.]
If someone has a loathsome painting on their wall, you can do one of two things.
You can tell them how much you hate it, why is disgusting etc, and offend them deeply. No amount of separating “the person from the painting” will soften the offense. Because you reject something they have chosen, they will take it personally.
Alternatively, you can give them a tremendously better painting. Soon enough, if all goes well, the old will be taken down to make room for the new.
Wow. You go away for a few days and look what happens.
I do think universalists need a place to discuss mainstream doctrine with which they disagree. And the ability to discuss it robustly. Calvinism is naturally a theology that causes great unrest of feeling. I personally hate with an utter hatred the doctrine, whilst loving and respecting many calvinists. I tend to think of them (and I’m not sure they’d like this) as still being blind to God, seeing through a mirror dimly, unable to see the true meaning of His glory. There are those calvinists however that I might deem as also having evil intent. Phelps would fall into that category.
But surely we do need a place to discuss the potential for evil in any belief system? Otherwise you can drift unawares into the consequences. We can’t just be PC. That’s neither reasonable nor sensible. I guess trying to find the balance is difficult and you’re never going to be able to please everyone. I find the expressed views of some on this forum on homosexuality highly rude, insensitive, ignorant and damning to the very soul of myself and many others close to me. There seems to be an expectation that certain ‘groups’ can take it, mostly those that are generally demonised in society anyway. The sad thing is, comments that would make certain people feel like Phelps had attacked them, have already appeared on the forum and yet you appear to have not noticed.
Yet whilst I found the opinions of many here on a huge group of people hard to deal with, I managed not to get into personal insults. That surely is where the real danger lies? Maybe if everyone, be they calv arm or kath could dial it back a bit and try to listen and understand where someone else is coming from, and then, if they still disagree, informing them why in a non personal manner, the forum would be a different place.
For what it’s worth, I think that Calvinism insults the character of God as described in scripture, whom is most beloved to me. And thus I find besmirches on His character heinous. So I will always say that it is a blasphemous doctrine and I make no apologies for it. Yet James White is still a favourite scholar of mine. And I’m more than prepared to hear why a Calvinist thinks I’m a heretic.
Dial it down people please! Let’s stop assuming what the other person meant and play nice again. Please! I don’t want to lose anyone from the forum on either side.