Is Calvinism a form of Gnostic Christianity?

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He's just saying we can't attribute it to the creation, I don't see that he said not to think about it.

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No, the last sentence says that we should attribute "judgement" to human corruption without considering how predestination figures into it.Here it is again:

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I'm convinced enough that if God isn't sovereign over all things then He gets depicted as weak, and I've had personal experience of the effects of that in Arminian churches. I'm also convinced that God is good and cannot commit sin in any way so that the way He is sovereign is not THAT way

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If you want humans to be solely responsible for their sins, that requires that humans make decisions and do things contrary to God's will. Things that are not an intentional part of God's plan, although God can use them. Although I have to say that this raises huge questions that seem to me to imply limitations on God, I can also say that there is scriptural support for such a view.

I don't see that Calvin is saying not to think about it. He's saying he's answered it, that it doesn't work to explain it in terms of the "hidden and incomprehensible" cause of God's predestination. He doesn't say he hasn't or others haven't thought about it or that we shouldn't, he just says he's thought about it and that explanation doesn't work. It doesn't make sense to think he said anything remotely like "don't think about" something. Yes, it limits God too much if you go all the way over to the Arminian view. But we could say there is scriptural support for both points of view in a sense. There is plenty of support for Calvin's, some of which I've posted. We have to say we do act against God's will while at the same time we can do nothing and nothing happens without God. Both are true, and I think Calvin says as much.You questioned where I got the idea that I can't raise my arm without God raising my arm, but I think this is implied in the view of God as in everything that happens without sharing in our motivations for it. The Trinity is impossible for our minds to grasp, so is this.If we were always in God's will we wouldn't have to pray "Thy will be done" because we'd know it's always being done, but in this sense it isn't, we are at enmity with God, we oppose His will by nature. Calvin could not possibly have overlooked this. He may not have resolved the seeming conflict well enough -- I don't know, maybe he did somewhere -- but he couldn't possibly have ignored it.

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He's saying he's answered it, that it doesn't work to explain it in terms of the "hidden and incomprehensible" cause of God's predestination. He doesn't say he hasn't or others haven't thought about it or that we shouldn't, he just says he's thought about it and that explanation doesn't work. It doesn't make sense to think he said anything remotely like "don't think about" something.

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I read it differently - in fact I think that is the whole point of saying that we can't understand predestination. Which is not really true in any relevant sense. All we need to know is whether God bears primary responsibility for the sins or not. And Calvin's view of Sovereignty clearly says yes.

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Yes, it limits God too much if you go all the way over to the Arminian view. But we could say there is scriptural support for both points of view in a sense. There is plenty of support for Calvin's, some of which I've posted. We have to say we do act against God's will while at the same time we can do nothing and nothing happens without God. Both are true, and I think Calvin says as much.

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No, Calvin clearly says that God even COMMANDS sinful actions. The two views are logically contradictory. It is not possible that God wills an action that is against his will.

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If we were always in God's will we wouldn't have to pray "Thy will be done" because we'd know it's always being done, but in this sense it isn't, we are at enmity with God, we oppose His will by nature. Calvin could not possibly have overlooked this. He may not have resolved the seeming conflict well enough -- I don't know, maybe he did somewhere -- but he couldn't possibly have ignored it.

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I'm sure that Calvin would say that God's will is always done, regardless of our desires.

No, you're reading Calvin wrong. I've been over this. See post #82.More later, I'm busy.

Since you referred me to [Msg=82] here it is and my answer:I read the Institutes years ago and I'm VERY familiar with Calvinist teaching through sermons galore, and never once had any notion that Calvin was making God the author of sin EVER. Some quotes you posted here raised that question in my mind for the first time, but I think that's because of how YOU and others here think of it. I think I also understood Calvin better years ago because I was thinking about it all then and it's now become blurry.HOWEVBR, to your post #82: This is about God's control, not authorship. This is also about God's control, without a shred of implication that He has authored the "mischief" or its plan or its execution, but only that they can either do it or not do it at His will. They could dream up all kinds of evil deeds, even demolishing New York City with a hundred stolen airplanes, but not be able to do it unless He commands it. Which He would only do if New York or the nation as a whole deserved judgment to that extent. No authorship by God here either. He knew rebellion was in the heart of the man and all its consequences -- according to Calvin's view which we were just discussing -- and supposedly He could have arranged it in many ways, could even have chosen to prevent it altogether, but in any case it is He who arranged how it would come about. And since scripture tells us that God is love and God is good we believers know, what you don't want to know, that His arranging it was good.(Thinking about it now, what good would it do to prevent the expression of a rebellious inclination in the people anyway? If it's there, as Calvin supposes it was, it needs to play out, not be suppressed. And then we become thoroughly familiar with our sin nature instead of not knowing we even have such things in us. And then when we do come to know and love God all that will have been worked through and repudiated. Just a thought.) Do you unbelievers sit up nights trying to find the worst possible motive for everything a believer says?But anyway. Yeah, He decided it was the right thing to do so He ordained it, arranged for it to occur. God knows what He's doing and He has the power to do it and He always does the righteous thing. I searched for commentaries on Calvin hoping to find comments on this passage but read too much in the first one I found which didn't comment on it and now I'm not up to reading more. Perhaps later. As I read the quote you give I just think you are reaching for accusations and complaints. Calvin doesn't deserve that kind of treatment.For one thing, as you yourself keep saying, Calvin doesn't shy away from imputing everything that happens to God, right? So why would you think he's doing that here? He's certainly not going to come to any conclusion that contradicts scripture and scripture says God does not sin, end of THAT subject. So what he means here isn't as clear as you'd like to think it is. I still tend to read it more as his saying that searching out hidden and incomprehensible causes in predestination is fruitless work, especially when we have at least a proximate cause in the nature of humanity. Certainly he has no idea that if he did search further he'd find some kind of smoking-gun proof that God is evil as you'd like to think. Calvin simply does not think that way.However, perhaps I'll find an orthodox traditional respectful comment on this passage if I keep looking through the commentaries on Calvin listed on the GOOGLE PAGE.

No, we don't have to. All we do is read and listen to what believers write and say and watch what they do and receive the clear message that is being expressed so plainly. In contrast, believers must be carefully training in what to think and how to interpret and how to decide what they must infer the Bible to be saying. In sharp contrast, non-believers simply read what the Bible actually says.It's the believers who have to spend many hours of study and training, including sitting up nights trying to figure out how to keep their story straight and how to re-interpret everything, even their own founders' writings, to fit their current theology. Non-believers simply read and listen and see what's actually there.Slight tangent here that is still somewhat pertinent. Some years ago, I stumbled upon a British atheist site that carried a wonderful story; I really wish I had saved that URL, but alas I had not. The story involved a village whose inhabitants were atheists by default, since they had never any contact at all with any religions, including Christianity. Into this village walks a Christian missionary. As he starts conversing with the first inhabitant he meets, he learns of the village's great ignorance, so he starts to tell that person about Christianity. The fellow is very interested to hear this great message and he calls over everybody nearby, who in turn call over others, so that the entire village is soon standing there eager to hear what this stranger has to say. Before this group, the missionary began to preach the Gospel. The village listened attentively and with great interest, but they had questions. In fact, everything the missionary said raised a question, so they had to interrupt him repeatedly with their questions. They were puzzled about the things that the missionary had long taken for granted and, when they asked for explanations, the missionary's answers just raised even more questions. Faced with having to provide answers about the most basic tenets of his faith, questions that he himself had never asked and hence could not answer, the missionary simply turned and left the town despite the cries and pleas from the villagers to remain and teach them. As I recall, the villagers finally simply shrugged their shoulders, forgot all that foolishness, and went about their lives happily and prosperously.Of course, the author of that story had a lesson he was wanting to impart, which I believe was that an honest and direct examination of Christian doctrine would reveal its faults which believers cannot see because of their indoctrination and conditioning. The application I can see for it here is in how you and other "true Christians" have to be carefully trained and thoroughly indoctrinated in order to view everything as being consistent with your particular narrow theology, whereas someone without all that careful training and indoctrination, someone viewing these things through the eyes of someone seeing and hearing these things for the first time, would see something completely different.Another way of viewing that may come from what a creationist had told me a bit over a decade ago on a Google forum. He had just used a weak old PRATT (sodium residence time in oceans, as I recall) and I had demolished his claim with the truth about residence times. Then I asked him why he had to depend on such unconvincing arguments such as that and the other PRATTs he would use and which were all shown to be false. He told me, {EPIPHANY!!!}"The only reason you don't find them convincing is because you are not yet convinced yourself."{/EPIPHANY!!!} That one response answered so many questions I had had about creationist behavior.You are already convinced, so you are able and obligated to twist and distort everything to continue to support your narrow theology. We are not already convinced, so we simply read what has actually been written. It's kind of like when we write something. We "know what we have written", so every time we look at our own writing see what we "know is there". That is why we need to have somebody else look at what we've written, someone who does not know "what we know we have written", but rather who will see what we have actually written.To take another approach, I've encountered two types of teachers of a skill: 1) those who have practiced the skill for so long that it comes naturally to them, and 2) those who still remember what it's like to be a beginner. My Russian professor described that situation in foreign language instruction. His opinion was that, while you should have a native speaker as a teacher later in your instruction, in the first year you should have a non-native speaker. Beginning students make a fairly consistent set of mistakes when starting to learn a particular foreign language; those sets of mistakes are also contingent on the students' original language -- our French text in my French phonology class, in describing each sound in French would also list the problems normally encountered by native speakers of various other languages. A teacher who had also been a beginning student of the language would understand why a student had made a particular mistake and would be able to explain that mistake and correct it, whereas a native speaker would only know that the student had made a mistake and would not know why.Faith, you should remember what it was like to be a beginner. You should try to draw on that experience.

Case in point I'm afraid. I said nothing to deserve that, and neither did Calvin.As for trying to recall the mental state of a beginner I suppose after twenty five years of believing I have unfortunately lost that perspective, but also at EvC i'm always being confronted with sophisticated theological challenges rather than beginner level issues.

No, that is not true. Please stop playing the martyr, because everybody knows that that is pure bullshit. Here is what you said: My reply was primarily that unbelievers simply respond to what they hear and read, while it is the believers who have to work so hard to manufacture all kinds of convolutions and contrivances. You, as a believer, must twist and distort and apply only "orthodox" interpretations to everything, even to what Calvin himself had written and even to what the Bible actually says (choosing instead what you can force the Bible to "infer"), whereas unbelievers can simply look and see what's actually there. Hence, in direct response to your specific comment quoted above, rather it is the believers who have to sit awake at night dreaming up new sophistries, while the unbelievers can use that time to sleep soundly. Pity. I also contribute on a C programming forum. Even though I have been programming since 1977 (hence, nearly 40 years, compared to your 25), I constantly try to keep in mind what the beginner is going through. My ex-wife thoroughly hated math, especially algebra, because her father's degree was in math. He would try to help her with her algebra homework and it would always collapse into a one-sided shouting match ("No comprendes?" "No" "No comprendes?" "No" "No comprendes?" "No", etc, etc, etc). Her father was like a native speaker of a foreign language, it was all so natural and self-evident to him that he could not understand how anyone could possibly not understand it. Similarly, when she "tried to teach me how to dance" after she had herself been dancing since early childhood, her entire syllabus was quite literally, "Just listen to the music and do what it tells you to do." As a listener, which is a purely mental exercise, that told me absolutely nothing, gave me absolutely nothing to work with, and led to her spending the next two decades brainwashing me that I had absolutely no sense of rhythm and could never ever possibly learn to dance. Since then, I have proven to be a partner dance with excellent leading skills and have frequently been complimented on my "natural rhythm", while the reports that have filtered back to me are that my ex is still a horrible follower. BTW, despite her hatred and total rejection of algebra, I observed my ex instructing my son in mental calculation tricks that required algebra -- she hated algebra so passionately that any mention of the very work could send her into a rage, or at least into a rant, yet here she was actually employing it. Plus she once won a "how many jelly beans are in this jar?" contest by employing the shell method, a multiple integration method that's covered in third semester calculus.Faith, try to think back to what had converted you. Supposedly, at that time you were not yet convinced. Try to think of what had convinced you.

Beginner's mind? Faith, you are quite the opposite.

Beginner's mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgements and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see "things as-it-is." I think of beginner's mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. "I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?" Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgement, just asking "what is it?"

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Lecture on Beginner's Mind

Unlike the beginner, you seem to be searching for the truth, intending to put it under house arrest if not having it shot at dawn.

Sigh. There are so many options you all miss, so some kind of motivational pattern is there whether you are aware of it or not. There is no excuse for most of the accusatory stuff that goes on here.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

True, I know what I know, it's too late even to recall the learning phase.

But Calvin writes: "they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived [...] unless in so far as he commands". They can't think of doing wrong unless God makes them do so. Otherwise, what becomes of his sovereignty? And obviously in order for them to think of it, he has to think of it first. Well of course he did; he put it there. We'll come back to that. For now the question is what Calvin's theology is. No, I took the much quicker and easier expedient of reading what Calvin wrote. That's just what he says, Faith. Again, I'm just saying what Calvin said. I don't. I said that he did impute it to God, you, I gathered, were trying to deny it. Did we switch ends at half-time or something? Right. But in saying so, he is not denying that there's a cause in predestination. He's certain that there is.

Oh, yes, there are so many options. What caused you, or what causes anybody else to follow the path that they/you have? So many different paths, all following different options. Most of which nobody is aware. So what?!?!?!?Of course, if you could offer up some of the options that had led to your present position, that could have led to some kind of support for your position. No such reasoning for your present position exists? OK, soit! (French for "So be it!") Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Oscar? Assuming you are totally unfamiliar with military terminology, that stands for "What the fuck? Over!" (the "over" indicates end of transmission for you land-lubbers). What "accusatory stuff"? Are you trying to play that same old "Christian persecution" bullshit? We've heard that bullshit far too many times before. Three quesses where that gets filed -- the first three guesses don't count (think "round").But seriously, even though it is totally lost on your lost and fallen mentality: what had caused you to forsake reality and proceed down the paths of our theology?

I meant options for understanding Calvin's motivations in this specific case, but any believer's motivations.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Oscar????Calvin's "motivations in this specific case"? Who the fuck cares???Did he in fact say what he said? Since you freaking Calvinists accept what he said as Gospel, then what is this bullshit of "oh, gee, what were his motivations in this specific case?" Are you yet again trying to play up to that "relativistic morality"card you had pulled some months ago?But let us lend our scrutiny to your latest post itself: What is "but any believer's motivations" supposed to mean? I cannot discern any possible meaning that that clause could possibly have.