Theological Issues
Specific Doctrines
Awareness Level of
"God"
Calvinism
Destiny of Man
Determinism &
Foreknowledge
The Question of Blame
Understanding Forgiveness
Punishment of God
Personal Relationship
with God
The Case for Unity
The Gift of Miracles
The Issue of
Brotherhood
The Judgment of God
What about Death?
Who WAS Jesus?
Why God not More Involved?
Sin and Evil
Adam & Eve Allegory
Meaning of Word Sin
The Problem of Evil
The Devil and Satan
The Unpardonable Sin
Resurrection
Credibility of the
Resurrection
Proposed
Resurrection Scenario
The Issue of Physicality
Second Coming
Traditional Advent
Waiting for Godot
Why God Waits
Belief
Contrast of Believers
The Issues of Belief
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As for logic and internal consistency, these mundane rules do not
apply to
sacred writings and never have... - Robert A. Heinlein
Calvinism Theology
Updated:
11/19/2020
Taken from Compton Encyclopedia:
Calvin's theology is a statement of the teaching of the
Bible, couched largely in the traditional terminology of the church but
directed towards 16th-century theological problems and in particular against
three contemporary forces: the doctrines of Rome, the neoclassical paganism
of the renaissance and the Anabaptists. In the Institutio, which is
a systematic presentation of biblical doctrine, he sets out to expound the
redemptive revelation of God in Jesus Christ. This he does within the
framework of the four parts of the Apostles' creed: Book 1: The Knowledge of
God the Creator; Book II: The Knowledge of God the Redeemer; Book III: The
Receiving of the Grace of Christ; Book IV: The External Means of Salvation.
His argument runs as follows: man, confronted with signs of God's divinity
in his creation, is inexcusable in that he does not recognize him as he is
and fails to honour and worship him. But God comes to man's help and
reveals himself clearly in holy scripture as the triune creator. Thus, on
this level, scripture is an interpretation of the universe as God's
creation. In Calvin's metaphor, it is the spectacles through which alone
man sees the universe aright as the creation and without which it remains to
him an enigma. Yet (Book II) 'to know' God signifies, not merely the
knowledge that he is creator, but, properly speaking, that he is the father
of men by means of the reconciling and redeeming work of his son, Jesus
Christ.
Man is completely a sinner. He is unable to change his sinfulness
into righteousness. But Christ, by the obedient sacrifice of his whole life
and particularly by the voluntary offering of his life on the cross,
undergoes the condemnation of God upon the sin of men, in which he has not
participated but the guilt of which he transfers, according to the will of
God, from men to himself. Thus God has annulled the wrong relationship of
enmity between man and himself and has established the new kinship of father
and children in Christ.
These blessings (Book III), already actual in the
work of Christ, come to realization in man's life by the inward activity of
God the Holy Spirit. Through him man believes in Jesus Christ, thus being
united with Christ so intimately that his possessions become the believer's
as well as his cause the believer's cause. In the power of the Holy Spirit
the believer sets out on his course of the Christian life, a pilgrimage of
faith, repentance, self-denial and prayer and the end of which is his
reception into the heavenly glory where Christ reigns at the right hand of
the Father. But this is a course on which he has not embarked arbitrarily.
He has been called to it by God, yet before he was called it had been God's
determination from all eternity that he should be his child in Jesus
Christ.
Others were given over to reprobation and destruction. Calvin's
doctrine of predestination was in fact derived from Augustine and
Aquinas and represented a venerable tradition in the church. But (Book IV)
man's regeneration does not come about by means of an immediate inward
working of the Spirit, but through external media. The church is the body
by which Christ, the head, effects his purpose of restoring man and the
creation. By means of its ministry the elect are called, justified,
sanctified and led to the threshold of glorification. This ministry
consists in the declaring the gospel about Christ the reception by baptism
into the communion of the church, the building up of its members by the
gospel and the Lord's Supper (see EUCHARIST) and, connected with this, the
purifying and correcting of the church and its members by discipline-i.e.
admonition and, as a final resort, excommunication.
Calvinism appears in many reformed confessions, including the
Heidelberg Catechism (I563) and the Westminster Confession
(1647). Although hardly anywhere will there still be found the slavish
adherence to its teachings that was characteristic of 'high' Calvinism of
the past, there has been a renaissance of Calvin study in many countries in
the second quarter of the 20th century, largely inspired by the work of
Karl Barth.
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