Making Friends with Calvinists

[Username1]

If the God of Calvinism is, somehow (although incomprehensibly so) the all-loving Lord I’ve come to worship, then somehow – in a way we cannot fathom – He is perfect and worthy of all praise. If this is the case, there is surely some divine spark of understanding that we’re missing.

However, I figure playing “Calvinist advocate” here is paradoxical – God is perfect in whatever He wills, but the Bible clearly states that “[The Lord] does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent” (2 Peter 3:9). Therefore, debating and defending the goodness of a god who wants his children in hell is completely unbiblical in the first place.

Precisely, Kate. Calvinism is both illogical and unbiblical, and riddled with contradiction and paradox from soup to nuts. It is impossible to believe in all its doctrines simultaneously, hence the massive cognitive dissonance of which I spoke earlier.

The Bible states, plainly and unequivocally, that God is love. Jesus - who is the exact representation of God - showed us the truth of this in his self-sacrificial life and death. And to my mind it is an obvious fact that God must, ontologically - in his essence, if you like - be perfect love.

I’m not good on philosophy, but I think this was one of Aquinas’s ‘five ways’ or proofs of God’s existence. Whatever, for me it’s axiomatic that there is such a thing as love, because even I, a rubbish, sinful human being, have experienced and can give and receive love. And it is also axiomatic that if God exists at all he must be more loving than me, or he could not be God. And if we extend that as far as we can, God must be more loving than even the most loving person who has ever lived, or the most loving being that can ever be imagined (because if there were a being more loving than God, that being would, in fact, be ‘greater’ than God, which is nonsensical. Hence God must be infinite, pure love.)

Which is where Calvinism comes a complete and utter cropper. Because under Calvinism, and as Tom Talbott has argued so eloquently in this brilliant piece - evangelicaluniversalist.com/ … nation.pdf - God simply does not love the reprobate in hell. Hence God is not always loving, hence God is not love. Which leads to direct denial of Biblical truth, hopeless contradiction and massive cognitive dissonance for the ‘good’ Calvinist.

Cheers

Johnny

PS my current avatar is the late, great Frankie Howerd, a wonderful and very funny British comedian and actor

[Sobornost]

Hi Johnny you are fine at philosophy what you have done here is adapted the thought of a great medieval thinker (God is greatest Being)to make then more in tune with the teachings of Jesus (God’s Being is greatest Love)

The chap you have adapted is Anselm rather than Aquinas -

Wiki will do here - I’ve read the proof a number of time in scholarly works so I know WIki speaks true when it says -

It is widely accepted that the first ontological argument was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in 1078 in his Proslogion. Anselm defined God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”, and then argued that this being could exist in the mind. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, a greater being is possible—one which exists in the mind and in reality.

[Sobornost]

HI James

Consider yourself un-biffed

[Kate]

Precisely, Kate. Calvinism is both illogical and unbiblical, and riddled with contradiction and paradox from soup to nuts. It is impossible to believe in all its doctrines simultaneously, hence the massive cognitive dissonance of which I spoke earlier.

The Bible states, plainly and unequivocally, that God is love. Jesus - who is the exact representation of God - showed us the truth of this in his self-sacrificial life and death. And to my mind it is an obvious fact that God must, ontologically - in his essence, if you like - be perfect love.

I think a major flaw within Calvinism is its complete emphasis on justice. While Calvinists speak of God’s love in many, many contexts, eternity simply isn’t one of them. I found an interesting passage from a Calvinist website – gotquestions.org – which attempts to explain predestination in a way the general public could understand. This site is where I first discovered predestination – and it terrified my young brain. As I reread this explanation, however, knowing what I now know about God’s infinite love and mercy, I find the argument entirely unconvincing, because it completely obliterates the infinitely loving nature of God’s character. It focuses solely on “justice” – or at least the Calvinist interpretation of it.

The most common objection to the doctrine of predestination is that it is unfair. Why would God choose certain individuals and not others? The important thing to remember is that no one deserves to be saved. We have all sinned (Romans 3:23), and are all worthy of eternal punishment (Romans 6:23). As a result, God would be perfectly just in allowing all of us to spend eternity in hell. However, God chooses to save some of us. He is not being unfair to those who are not chosen, because they are receiving what they deserve. God’s choosing to be gracious to some is not unfair to the others. No one deserves anything from God; therefore, no one can object if he does not receive anything from God. An illustration would be a man randomly handing out money to five people in a crowd of twenty. Would the fifteen people who did not receive money be upset? Probably so. Do they have a right to be upset? No, they do not. Why? Because the man did not owe anyone money. He simply decided to be gracious to some.

So while God *would *be perfectly just in allowing all of us to spend eternity in hell, such an action proves biblically incongruous with His perfect, unending love, and it also undermines the all-saving power of Christ sacrifice on the cross. Seems to me that predestination sacrifices a lot of plainly biblical tenets to achieve even a basic explanation.

Whatever, for me it’s axiomatic that there is such a thing as love, because even I, a rubbish, sinful human being, have experienced and can give and receive love. And it is also axiomatic that if God exists at all he must be more loving than me, or he could not be God. And if we extend that as far as we can, God must be more loving than even the most loving person who has ever lived, or the most loving being that can ever be imagined (because if there were a being more loving than God, that being would, in fact, be ‘greater’ than God, which is nonsensical. Hence God must be infinite, pure love.)

When I first struggled with the concept of predestination as a child, my mother – although completely unacquainted with biblical philosophy – put things in similar terms. She told me to consider the love of my grandma – the most all-loving individual I know. She asked me if God’s love was greater than my grandmother’s, and I said “yes.” She mentioned that there is *no way *I’d cower in fear at the thought of meeting my grandma today, but my greatest fear is death – where I will come face-to-face with a Father infinitely more loving than my grandmother. So why fear Him?

But that story goes better under Dick’s thread of wisdom in foolishness. Although my mother grew up in a Calvinist church, she never learned about predestination, election, or anything of the sort – Rather, she just trusted in God’s love, and that proved much wiser than all of our debating here.

Love to all my fellow fools,

Kate

[Kate]

Also, I’ll just leave this here. We had our nutters, but Schaap is something else.

My eyes!

PS my current avatar is the late, great Frankie Howerd, a wonderful and very funny British comedian and actor

I will have to find him on YouTube. I think he looks a bit like Gene Wilder, one of my favorite comedians from “back in the day.”

[Sobornost]

Can I add the Florence Nightingale story to yours Kate?

Nightingale was a believer in universal reconciliation. She would sometimes comfort those in her care with this view. For example, a dying young prostitute being tended by Nightingale was concerned she was going to hell and said to her ‘Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time’. The nurse replied "Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or can ever imagine

[Kate]

Nightingale was a believer in universal reconciliation. She would sometimes comfort those in her care with this view. For example, a dying young prostitute being tended by Nightingale was concerned she was going to hell and said to her ‘Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time’. The nurse replied "Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or can ever imagine

How lovely! This story should be more well known! I think I’ll have to print this out so I don’t forget. Thanks, god-father Prof!

[fatherlearningtolove]

But Calvinists make God into a monster, in my opinion. But there’s a quote of George MacDonald’s I read that gave me perspective on this - I can’t find it now, and maybe someone can remind me which one it is. But basically, MacDonald says that sometimes people state that they believe one thing, but then show by their actions that they do not believe this thing. So when Calvinists declare a belief in what I like to call “monster God”, but then live in a way that shows kindness, I try to remember this principle.

I found it! Haha! It was in the sermon I thought it would be in, but I had to read most of it to find it again. I have copied it into a document of MacDonald quotes this time, so it will be easier to find next time!

Here is the quote I was thinking of:

Yes; for to hold a thing with the intellect, is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by; and that which the man I mean lives by, is the love of God, and obedience to his law, so far as he has recognized it. Those hideous doctrines are outside of him; he thinks they are inside, but no matter; they are not true, and they cannot really be inside any good man. They are sadly against him; for he cannot love to dwell upon any of those supposed characteristics of his God; he acts and lives nevertheless in a measure like the true God. What a man believes, is the thing he does. This man would shrink with loathing from actions such as he thinks God justified in doing; like God, he loves and helps and saves. Will the living God let such a man’s opinions damn him? No more than he will let the correct opinions of another, who lives for himself, save him.

• George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Second Series: The Truth in Jesus