The Wolves Complaining Of The Lambs

"But how deservedly soever we complain that the doctrine of truth was corrupted, and the whole body of Christianity sullied by numerous blemishes, still our censurers deny that this was cause sufficient for so disturbing the Church, and, in a manner, convulsing the whole world. We, indeed, are not so stupid as not to perceive how desirable it is to avoid public tumults, nor so savage as not to be touched, and even to shudder in our inmost soul, on beholding the troubled condition in which the Church now is. But with what fairness is the blame of existing commotions imputed to us, when they have not been, in the least degree, excited by us? Nay, with what face is the crime of disturbing the Church laid to our charge by the very persons who obviously are the authors of all these disturbances? This is just the case of the wolves complaining of the lambs….Nor is this calumny against us without precedent. With the very same charge which we are now forced to hear, wicked Ahab once upbraided Elijah, viz., that he was the disturber of Israel. But the holy Prophet by his reply acquitted us; 'I,' says he, 'have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and thou hast followed Baalim,' (I Kings 18:17, 18.) It is unfair, therefore, to load us with odium, on account of the fierce contest concerning religion which this day rages in Christendom, unless, indeed, it be thought proper first to condemn Elijah, with whom we have a common defense. His sole excuse is, that he had fought only to vindicate the glory and restore the pure worship of God, and he retorts the charge of exciting contention and disturbances upon those who stirred up tumults as a means of resisting the truth." (John Calvin)

Are Protestants underestimating Mary?

Ben Merritt of Cleave to Antiquity recently produced a video in which he interviewed an eyewitness of the Zeitoun Marian apparitions and concluded that he accepts the apparitions as appearances of Mary. In the comments section, Sean Luke of Anglican Aesthetics said that he holds a similar view. Other commenters also said that they're Protestant and accept the apparitions as appearances of Mary. In another recent video, Myles Christian of Canon & Creed provided "a historical survey of giants in Protestant history who held Mary in high esteem". He cites their belief in concepts like Mary's perpetual virginity, her becoming sinless after conception, and her assumption. Elsewhere in the video, he refers to a problem with Protestants "overcorrecting" errors about Mary. He asks at another point, "Are we possibly missing something that they [earlier Protestants] saw from scripture?" One portion of the video refers to an argument for Mary's assumption based on fetal microchimerism, but doesn't explain how it allegedly leads to the conclusion that Mary was assumed. He ends the video by commenting, "But if men like the reformers, who were radically committed to sola scriptura, sola fide, and the purity of the gospel, if they could hold Mary in high esteem without compromising their convictions, then maybe we can too."

Crushing Our Sluggishness And Arrogance

"On the one hand, we know, men are often so dull that when they hear that grace is offered them through Christ and that they may enjoy it through the gospel, the message is brushed off as if it were worthless. On the other hand, we are not easily persuaded to abandon our silly pride: we fancy we can find some way or other of pleasing God and of winning his favour. Something strong is needed to excite our sluggish spirits and to remedy, or rather crush, our arrogance....How often, instead, are we excited by the trivia and nonsense of this passing world, and by our own sinful pleasures, so that we fail to glorify God as he deserves, and speak so feebly of his grace that it is clear we would suppress it if we could." (John Calvin, in Robert White, trans., Songs Of The Nativity [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth, 2008], 124-25)

Silently Allowing The Master To Be So Insulted

"It is no common zeal for the house of God which ought to penetrate and engross the hearts of believers. When, therefore, the Divine glory was polluted, or rather lacerated, in so many ways, would it not have been perfidy if we had winked or been silent? A dog, seeing any violence offered to his master, will instantly bark; could we, in silence, see the sacred name of God dishonored so blasphemously?...Were a dog to see an injury offered to his master, equal to the insult which is offered to God in the sacraments, he would instantly bark, and expose his own life to danger, sooner than silently allow his master to be so insulted. Ought we to show less devotedness to God than a brute is wont to show to man?" (John Calvin)

Looking Beyond Initial Reactions

"We are, indeed, desirous, as we ought to be, that our ministry may prove salutary to the world…If, to punish, partly the ingratitude, and partly the stubbornness of those to whom we desire to do good, success must prove desperate, and all things go to worse, I will say what it befits a Christian man to say, and what all who are true to this holy profession will subscribe:—We will die, but in death even be conquerors, not only because through it we shall have a sure passage to a better life, but because we know that our blood will be as seed to propagate the Divine truth which men now despise." (John Calvin)

If These Things Fail To Move Us

"God's endless mercy and the kindness shown to us in his Son are daily confirmed to us in the gospel. They should be the flame which kindles our love for God. The pity is that much of this passes us by. There are so few people who appreciate what we owe to Christ's blood and to the eternal salvation he has obtained for us….What change is visible in the lives we lead? The truth is that we plod along, as the saying goes, like Brown's cows, having little relish for what we are taught. Yet the very stones would break in two to hear the message of God's mercy that we hear, a message which lays open God's very heart! If these things fail to move us, is it not because Satan has bewitched us? And because we are so hardened that there is more feeling in blocks of wood or in stones than in us?" (John Calvin, in Robert White, trans., Songs Of The Nativity [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth, 2008], 105-6)

Did Calvin teach secondary justification?

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2020/02/did-john-calvin-teach-doctrine-of.html

Though dead they still speak

And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead (Heb 11:4).

There's a sense in which dying words aren't necessarily your last words. Have you ever noticed how many rich folks are buried? Some of them have ostentatious private family crypts or mausoleums. Even in death they are still striving to impress their neighbors. Even in death, they have a message for the living: "I'm somebody! I'm more important than you! I'm higher on the social ladder!" Even on the way out, that's how they want to be remembered.

Of all times and places, people should be humble in death. Death shows how powerless the powerful ultimately are, how worthless wealth ultimately is. Death is the great leveler.

People whose tomb makes a proud worldly statement aren't just signaling their neighbors, but signaling the God of the living and the dead. The very last thing a dying person should wish to do is flaunt his social pretensions before his Maker and Judge. It's striking to compare their attitude to John Calvin:

He was buried on Sunday in an unmarked grave at a secret location somewhere in Geneva. In one of the last commentaries he wrote, he commented on the death and burial of Moses, "It is good that famous men should be buried in unmarked graves."[1] This conviction guided his own burial. He rejected the superstitious veneration of the dead and wanted no pilgrimages to his grave. he had lived to make Christians, not Calvinists. He had perhaps written his own best epitaph in his Institutes ". . . we may patiently pass through this life in afflictions, hunger, cold, contempt, reproaches, and other disagreeable circumstances, contented with this single assurance, that our King will never desert us, but will give what we need, until having finished our warfare, we shall be called to the triumph." Robert Godfrey, John Calvin, Pilgrim and Pastor (Crossway 2009, 198-99).

The Power Of Christ's Righteousness Imputed

"For, even as Jesus Christ is stronger than Adam was, so is his righteousness more mighty than the sin of Adam. And, if the sin of Adam was sufficient enough to make all men sinners and children of wrath, without any misdeed of our own, much more shall Christ's righteousness be of greater force to make us all righteous, and the children of grace, without any of our own good works; which cannot be good unless that, before we do them, we ourselves be made good" (The Benefit Of Christ's Death, 19)

"Hence also it is proved, that it is entirely by the intervention of Christ's righteousness that we obtain justification before God. This is equivalent to saying that man is not just in himself, but that the righteousness of Christ is communicated to him by imputation, while he is strictly deserving of punishment….This is most clearly declared by the Apostle, when he says, that he who knew no sin was made an expiatory victim for sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21). You see that our righteousness is not in ourselves, but in Christ; that the only way in which we become possessed of it is by being made partakers with Christ, since with him we possess all riches….'As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,' (Rom. 5:19). To declare that we are deemed righteous, solely because the obedience of Christ is imputed to us as if it were our own, is just to place our righteousness in the obedience of Christ. Wherefore, Ambrose appears to me to have most elegantly adverted to the blessing of Jacob as an illustration of this righteousness, when he says that as he who did not merit the birthright in himself personated his brother, put on his garments which gave forth a most pleasant odour, and thus introduced himself to his father that he might receive a blessing to his own advantage, though under the person of another [Genesis 27:1-29], so we conceal ourselves under the precious purity of Christ, our first-born brother, that we may obtain an attestation of righteousness from the presence of God." (John Calvin, Institutes Of The Christian Religion, 3:11:23)

"The righteousness of God here spoken of is just the doing and dying of the Lord Jesus. It is called the righteousness of God, because it is that of God himself. You remember when Christ was a child, it is said he was 'the mighty God' [Isaiah 9:6]…And, in the same manner, the obedience of Christ was the obedience of one who was God; and when he obeyed his parents [Luke 2:51-52], it was the obedience of one who was God….Those of you who are awakened sinners, here is a righteousness that can cover you; behold, for each of your crimson sins, here is a stripe of one who is God. And, brethren, more than that, here are acts of holy obedience to cover your naked soul, here are holy words to cover your unholy words, here are holy deeds to cover your unholy deeds. O brethren! here is a lifetime of obedience to cover your soul….So it is with you; if you have on this righteousness you will be covered, and when God looks down, he will see nothing but the glassy sea of his Son's obedience….When Paul approached the gates of Rome, when he looked at its marble baths, when he saw the multitudes flocking to the theatre, and when he saw the crowds bowing down to the statue of Jupiter or Minerva, the heart of Paul was touched, and why? Because the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against them, and he knew that he had in his hand that which could cover every sinner. O, said Paul, if I could get them to put on this righteousness!…It is like casting a stone into the deep; it sinks, and it is not seen." (Robert McCheyne, A Basket Of Fragments [Scotland: Christian Focus, 2001], 99-101)

The case for Calvinistic hermeneutics

http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r30/CobaltPublic/v4/1d/83/c4/1d83c4f2-2dfe-ae34-632a-8f443cefe762/210-7381072935709338845-The_Case_for_Calvinistic_Hermeneutics.pdf

Final remarks on 1 John 4

http://www.jamesagibson.com/2016/11/03/final-remarks-on-the-1-john-4-dispute-pertaining-to-calvin-and-his-glaring-omission/

For the love of God

Under what conditions and in what context can one justifiably expect a Christian theologian to discuss these texts? If, as a universalist, I should try to construct an exhaustive biblical case for a doctrine of universal reconciliation, one could justifiably expect that I would give at least some account of Matthew 25:46 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9; and similarly, given that Calvin tried to present an exhaustive biblical case for his understanding of limited election, we can justifiably complain that he did not even mention 1 John 4:8 and 16 in that context. 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/tom-talbott-sr/a-case-of-theological-obfuscation/1495732387123488

A basic problem with Talbott's comparison is this: What theological alternatives stood in contrast to Calvin's position at that time and place? Arminianism didn't exist. Although the Eastern Orthodox might give an "Arminian" interpretation to 1 Jn 4:8,16, that's not the framework within which Calvin and his theological opponents operated.  He was a Western European Christian writing to, for, and against other Western European Christians.

To my knowledge, the primary theological alternatives in the church of Rome–which was Calvin's primary foil–were Thomism and Augustinianism. But there's no reason to think a Thomist or Augustinian would offer a significantly different interpretation of 1 Jn 4:8,16 than Calvin. For instance, here's how Aquinas glosses God's love for the "world" in Jn 3:16:

from the condition of the one who is loved, because it is man, a bodily creature of the world, i.e., existing in sin: “God shows his love for us, because while we were still his enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom 5:8). Thus he says, the world.  

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/John3.htm

But that's consistent with limited atonement. 

It's my impression that Luther and Calvin co-opted Augustinianism to such an extent that it delegitimated the Augustinian tradition as a viable option in Catholicism. Prior to the Reformation, that had been a major, honorable option. But when the post-Reformed Jansenists tried to go that route, it was too late. Catholicism had narrowed in reaction to the Protestant Reformation. 

John Calvin and the Love of God in 1 John

http://www.jamesagibson.com/2016/09/20/calvin-and-the-love-of-god-in-1-john/

Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son

Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son

John Calvin as a Greek Father

http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2188730

John Calvin on Islam

http://theologyandthecity.com/2015/01/02/john-calvin-on-islam/

Does God permit evil?

1. Calvinists often say God "permits" evil. Some Arminians say it's misleading or meaningless to speak of divinely determinate events as divinely permitted events. 

2. To begin with, the usage varies with the Calvinist. Paul Helm uses permissive language. He's defined and defended what he means by that. Here's one example:

http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2008/02/evil-love-and-silence_01.html

Scroll down to the "willing permission" section. 

Calvin himself was ambivalent about permissive language. Calvin made the elementary observation that you can't drive a wedge between what God wills and what God permits. Divine permission is either willing or unwilling. If unwilling, it would be coercive rather than permissive. But if permission is willing, then God wills to permit evil. Yet in that event, what's the big difference between willing evil and permitting evil? If he wills to permit evil, then he wills evil. To will to permit it is to will it. The circumlocution doesn't eliminate divine volition in the matter. At best, permission indicates God's grudging attitude towards the relative necessity of evil. 

And notice that this applies to freewill theism, not just Calvinism. 

3. Let's compare two questions:

i) Why does God permit evil?

ii) Why doesn't God prevent evil? 

These are equivalent questions. They convey the same idea. The only difference is that the first formulation is positive while the second formulation is negative. 

4. Moreover, this is consistent with predestination since God could prevent evil by not foreordaining evil. Therefore, it's not contradictory for a Calvinist to say God permits evil. 

5. I myself have no particular attachment to permissive language. However, in discussing the problem of evil, I often frame the question in terms of why God permits evil.

An Arminian like Jerry Walls, who assumes the worst about the Calvinist motives, might suspect that I use permissive language to conceal the true nature of Calvinism. If I were more forthcoming, I'd come clean and phrase the question, "Why does God predestine evil?" The fact that I avoid that either means I'm lowballing Calvinism or that I'm conflicted. 

But as I just demonstrated, that language is consonant with Calvinism.

Moreover, I've often defended the claim that God predestines evil. I'm not running away from that fact. 

6. I generally use permissive language for two other reasons:

i) It's the stereotypical way in which the problem of evil is framed. And since that's consistent with Reformed theology, there's no overriding reason to depart from that formulation.

ii) But more importantly, I don't usually phrase the question "Why does God predestine evil" because that has the wrong emphasis.

That formulation suggests the question at issue isn't so much about God and evil, but about predestination. Why does God predestine evil, in contrast to evil coming about some other way. 

But although that's worth discussing in its own right, the problem of evil centers on the divine rationale for the existence of evil in God's universe. Given that God could prevent evil, why doesn't he? What possible reason could he have not to prevent it? 

That's why I generally use permissive language in framing the issue. To phrase the question in terms of predestination would distract attention away from that central concern. 

Moreover, once we discuss the purpose that evil serves in God's world, that can naturally segue into a discussion of predestination. But doing that in reverse is less logical. 

“Equality” and Social Hierarchy in Calvin’s “Two Kingdoms”

Calvin’s Social Agenda:

Calvin’s two-kingdom theology, though affirming spiritual equality in the (spiritual) kingdom of God, does not support the “flattening” of social distinctions (that is, the reforming of social hierarchy into social egalitarianism) in the civil realm; nor does it have much room for what we today call “equal opportunity.” At the same time, it does call for what today would be a rather radical social agenda….

According to Calvin, the spiritual, inward kingdom of God does not “disturb civil order or honorary distinctions.” … For Calvin, consistent with others in the Christian tradition, the hierarchical social order is natural and “it is not without reason that he has been pleased to join us together in this way.”

“Servants must also be cognizant of their rank and station; and everyone must apply himself in the thing which he has been called. It certainly accords well with Christianity that the rich man should enjoy his wealth (provided, of course, that he not devour everything without attending to the needs of his neighbors), and that the poor man should endure his station patiently, and beseech God, not desiring more than is proper.”

Calvin’s Conception of the Knowledge of God

http://reformation500.com/2014/09/17/natural-theology-2-calvins-conception-of-the-knowledge-of-god/

More About “Knowing”

For those who are following along:

Warfield on Calvin on Special and General Revelation.

From Richard Muller:
Echoes of Scotus, Ockham, and Eck in the Reformed Orthodox discussion of faith and reason