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7i hear calvinists often explain their concept of predestination as god’s sovereignty bc god is “so other”
but honestly the god who makes people so they glorify him by going to hell doesnt seem all that strange to me, it just sounds bad. apophatic theology seems much better suited to treating god as ‘so other’
@lizzie it [the calvinism thing] feels utterly pointless because its so predictable
like, if youre a being with infinite time and space and power, eventually destroying things has to get boring, right?
if you make something to worship you, and it worships you, who cares? you throw a ball up in the air and it comes down. of course its gonna happen, it says nothing about the ball or you, so who cares?
My first thought is to wonder if the world that John Calvin lived in didn't care deeply with the philosophical questions about freewill. Sure it was discussed by the Romans and others previously, but maybe this just was just watered down or forgotten by the time of the reformation.
When you look at people downstream from Calvin, such as the 1600s Puritans and even modern PCA Presbyterians, they tend to not be overly evangelical. They believed in "the elect," and God would bring those to him with irresistible grace. Calvinist missionary work is still very different from the born-againers looking to get people saved.
But I don't fault the ideology in general. To believe in an absolute all-powerful god, that god would have to know the future, while also allowing the free well of creation to make that choice. There are paradoxes in all fields, including mathematics with set theory and varying sizes of infinity.
yea .. and they'll also argue God gives individuals the choice, he just knows who is going to choose. It gets pretty academic after a point.
I'm more interested in reading Sapolsky's book Determined, where he apparently argues we don't have any freewill at all.
@azalea @djsumdog iirc presbyterians do allow a little more leeway than the continental reformed but i dont remember what that actually entails. PCUSA has a LOT of liberty on the topic but thats bc they kinda let people entirely break from the confessions (which isnt a bad thing imo, just makes it kinda not calvinist in the sense im discussing here)
barth’s interpretation is confession compatible but a bit unusual
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9@azalea @djsumdog btw if you want an image of monergist resistible grace, look to lutheranism regeneration (through baptism) happens regardless of the state of your heart and no particular action is required for salvation (they would emphasize that we still need to be reborn every day. its not like american evangelicals would have it). its more a matter of not fighting against gods grace (resistible grace!). the reformed anathematized the lutherans for saying you could choose against god when given grace
basically: no, the reformed do not believe in free will in the conventional sene at all. it isnt a “god knows ahead what you’ll choose” thing. god chose specifically for you to choose. they do believe in something theyd call free will but its absolutely not what you were talking about from what i saw
) but I mostly went to a PCA church every Sunday. I did some missionary work in Indian in he 90s too.I went to one PCUSA church out West in 2000. I remember they had both wine and grape juice during communion, and I talked to one of the elders for a bit after the service on the church's stance on homosexuality. @djsumdog @azalea i go to a lutheran church presently bc of my current circumstances but im an episcopalian in my heart (and intend to go to an episcopal church when i move)
lutheran and reformed were the two wings of the reformation. lutherans see luther’s interpretation of augustinian theology as a necessary correction to problems that had developed in the roman catholic church.
the other traditions (presbyterian, continental reformed, anglican) were all reformed (though anglicans ended up being more conservatively reformed long term)
then jacob arminius proposed some level of free will, and the arminian protestants split off from the reformed (remonstrants, methodists, and a lot of anglicans). the bulk of american protestants fit in this category
@djsumdog @azalea the progressive church is a broad spectrum tbh. like you have people who are kinda just doing whatever theologically with little understanding of the faith (same is true of a lot of evangelicals but they get away with it bc they’re politically conservative), and some who arent dissimilar from myself. i think something a bit progressive is the best way to express the apostolic faith
rapture theology? probably heretical.
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