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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (38524)	5/25/1999 12:07:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

How those folks got all the way from Jesus to Predestination is beyond me Fairly simple line of reasoning, really. If God is omniscient, then of course he (since we speak of Presbyterians I adopt the masculine pronoun, though I am less convinced than they) knows what we will do before we do it, even before we are born. Thus he already knows, and has no need to observe our lives to decide. If that is the case, one wonders why he doesn't just scrap the whole project and put everyone where they belong. A degree of sadism might easily be suspected. If one adopts the more interesting view that there is a degree of free will involved, then the whole argument of works vs. faith becomes quite irrelevant in my mind. Are not works the measure of faith? Who believes, the one who shouts "praise the lord" 5 times daily, or the one who obeys the commandments? Faith cannot exist in the absence of works (except in extreme cases where the individual is utterly powerless: a paralytic, for example). Protestations of faith, without works, must be considered fakery. Works can, however, exist in the absence of faith, and often do. Where this fits in the Christian calculus I do not know, not being a Christian. Perhaps one who is will enlighten me.

To: jbe who wrote (38524)	5/25/1999 1:57:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

You've got to remember the racket that Calvin (and the other Protestants) were fighting -- i.e. the Roman Catholic Church as run by Pope Leo X and his henchmen. The wonder to a thinking man was that anyone at all, as filled with sin as they were, could be saved. To Calvin it was a wonderful gift of (Amazing) Divine Grace that anyone could be saved despite his manifest evil -- and it was the belief that one was saved by divine unmerited election that made it possible for the poor miserable sinners could go on living in this miserable world. As a marketing policy, the RC Church had the superior product. Confess, repent, buy (or earn) an indulgence, and be saved. The Lutheran belief that one could be saved by faith alone made for some hard praying (with many doubts) and Election could hardly sell at all. I don't believe I have ever met anyone who believes in divine election now, but this is an amazingly theologically ignorant age. Few people, even atheists, are sure about what they don't believe. (Combat film) Old sarge to shivering recruit: "You'd better pray!" Shivering recruit: "I'm an atheist." Old sarge: "That's all right. I guess we all believe in the same God anyhow!"