Is Calvinism a form of Gnostic Christianity?

Well, the Bible is either right on this point, or it's wrong. What are we meant to say --- that it's right in theory but wrong in practice? (How about you say the same thing about Genesis, eh?)But it is manifestly the case that people do lose their faith. This happens to folks. If we take Calvin seriously, we must say that such people lose their faith because before they were born God did eeny-meeny-miney-mo (or whatever) and decided that they should first get faith, then lose it. The flip side of free grace is arbitrary perdition. So you can't say that he couldn't or wouldn't have predestined you to the same loss of faith, so that he can have all the fun of frying you in hell (a strange hobby, I think, but then I'm not God). Right up until the moment after you die, you won't know whether he intended to save or damn you.You can hope, of course.

All I meant was that God's sovereign will operates all the time but we aren't in a position to see it in operation. Calvinism does require us to believe that an apparent losing of faith means the faith was superficial to begin with, which is often the case with people raised in the church. They learn all the "right" words and doctrine and can even preach it, but it's all at an intellectual level and if seriously challenged can be lost. Many people have experienced a personal turning point where they suddenly GET the faith they always assumed they had, now realizing it was all superficial up to that point, and now it has become real. This often happens in revivals. But also people can seem to lose their faith, or lose it for a long time, and eventually come back to it. I'm quite aware that I could have gone all my life without ever becoming a believer. I have deep gratitude that that didn't happen. But it could have and I would never have known it. But now I do know I can't lose my faith.I realized when I said His character as shown in the Bible is how I know I wouldn't just suddenly lose my faith, that His character ends up being the main thing that matters. You picture a whimsical God who does unpredictable things but I picture a faithful God who is very tender with us mentally handicapped human beings, who shepherds us gently, who knows exactly what's good for us and nudges us along through years of training in getting to know and trust Him. Sometimes He puts us through some very hard trials, and it took me a long time to trust that He knows what He's doing at such times. But He's a good Father, He does know what He's doing even when I don't have a clue and am squirming and complaining at what I have to go through. We have a RELATIONSHIP with Him, this isn't a matter of being at the mercy of the whims of a remote Being we can't know. We are encouraged in scripture to know Him and over time we do. Much of scripture is involved with teaching us about God's faithfulness and trustworthiness, His mercy, His goodness. That's what we come to depend on.No, I won't be in doubt up to the last minute. Scripture, mostly the gospel and letters of John, is very clear that we are meant to know and trust that we are saved, we are not meant to be in the dark about this at all.We are also told in scripture that God's judgments are His "strange work," not at all something He takes pleasure in. This is said in a number of ways.Those who go to perdition don't even believe in it, you know. What happens to us is in accord with our own character and choices, it isn't something alien that is imposed on us. That's the problem with this abstract artificial sort of discussion. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

"A tedious philosophical abstraction" -- that describes Calvinism quite well, and is why I never bought into it.

But this appears not to be the case. I picture a non-existent God. Calvin pictures a whimsical God. Well, that sounds very nice. Calvin, on the other hand, pictures a horrifying grotesque psychopath who planned in detail, in advance, every single murder, every rape, every act of torture, and by whose explicit will these things are done. One can hardly expect that such a being is bound to be nice to you.

So much for that I guess. Sorry.

I'm just telling it how it is. Look, this is what Calvin wrote in his Institutes:* "God bends all the reprobate, and even Satan himself, at his will." (1.18)* "Satan himself performs his part, just as he is impelled, and succeeds only in so far as he is permitted." (1.18)* "These things, which men do perversely, are of God, and are ruled by his secret providence." (1.18)* "The wills of men are so governed by the will of God, that they are carried on straight to the mark which he has fore-ordained." (1.16)* "All the wicked did nothing but what the hand and counsel of God had decreed." (1.18)* "Thieves, murderers, and other malefactors are God's instruments, which he uses to execute what he hath decreed in himself." (1.17)* "Nothing is more absurd than to think anything at all is done but by the ordination of God." (1.16)So --- according to Calvin --- here we have a deity who drew up the blueprints for Belsen, who scripts the career of each sadistic serial killer, who picks out the victims for each pedophile rapist --- so on what grounds would we expect that a God of this sort would be nice to you, rather than, say, crushing you like a bug? That he hasn't done so yet? But all his victims could have said that once. "God hasn't had me tortured to death by a serial killer yet, so obviously he's not going to" ... it's not really valid logic, is it?

Clearly there is no way to alter your view of this, and I hesitate to try to say anything more on the subject.But what I would say is, first, that Calvin is merely interpreting scripture. That's what "Calvinism" is, a very thorough exegesis of scripture, and you would find Luther and others agreeing with him if they wrote on such subjects to the extent he wrote on them.And second, Calvin takes everything back to God's sovereignty in an unnerving way if you isolate those events as you do. But they are things we know really happen in this world already, without knowing anything about why and where they come from, and Calvin is just going behind the scenes to give us the scriptural background. From our point of view we do things according to our own will, and things also just happen to us without any clear cause, but Calvin is showing us how things look from the point of view of God's sovereignty.And there is a practical side of this too. He is really telling us that evil can't get out of control because God controls it all. So for instance we can learn that we are not subject to the whims of Satan because God controls Satan. (On this subject by the way Luther said "The devil is God's devil" just a shorthand way of saying the same thing that Calvin says in more detail.) Believe it or not this can be very reassuring after hearing way too much from the Arminians who are so allergic to the idea of God having anything to do with the evils in this world they elevate Satan to a power that can't be controlled, and we KNOW that Satan is a malevolent hater of humanity while God is said in many ways in scripture to love humanity.WE know that, obviously you don't.But anyway, the Arminians with their insistence that Satan is the cause of all the bad things in life, can make Satan seem equal to God or sometimes more powerful than God. I remember being made quite nervous by the idea in some churches that Satan just does as he pleases while God sits back and can't do anything about it.* Maybe He wrings His hands, hating to see us suffer so etc. But this is the problem with Arminianism, first it's not scriptural, and second it makes God weak, not a strength to depend on at all.You are no doubt beyond ever seeing God as good, from the sound of it, but I know God is good, and I know this world is saturated with sin and evil because of humanity's original disobedience, often provoked by the devil, and it is actually reassuring to me to know that it can't get out of control because God holds the reins.God is very very very good, and from scripture we do learn that those who sincerely love and follow Him can trust that everything He does is for our good. Bad things do happen to us, and that gets into a lot more complicated theology, but it's still based on a knowledge that God is good and His purpose in everything is to do good to us. Satan and original sin are the cause of all the suffering in this world, and God allows it, because we could not be free responsible agents if He didn't, but God also restrains it. I'm sure there are theologians who have said this a lot better but there's my stab at it.ABE: You would object to the phrase "allows it" because Calvin makes God the initiator of it. All I can say is this is the best Creation possible given the nature of God and of good and evil. There is no other way it could have been done, but those who love God do have His protection, and the ultimate result will be gloriously good. 'ABE: *When the twin towers were attacked on 9/11 the predominant response from preachers across the nation was that God didn't have anything to do with it, God doesn't do bad things like that. I was among the few who understood it to be God's judgment on the nation because I have the "Calvinist" view that God is sovereign over all things. There were four preachers I heard on the radio who said the same thing and they had to say it apologetically because people react to this idea the way you are reacting. But again, to me it is reassuring to know that God was in control of the event, it could go so far and no further. There are many miracle stories of people saved that day. The towers didn't fall over and do more damage, they fell straight down and the damage was minimized. Hundreds of thousands could have died instead of three thousand. I could go on.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Given the Calvinistic views you've expressed, IS God good ?According to those views, God intentionally arranged the Fall. God arranges every sinful act. Hell is not a punishment, it is God's whim. The whole convoluted (and apparently masochistic) plan of salvation is aimed only at creating a comparatively few exceptions to the general plan - the creation of eternal victims and a phoney justification for the torment.Forget "for God so loved the world..." - it's more "for God so loved torture..."How can you call that "good" ?

I've done my best to explain it, if you don't see it you don't see it. I believe everything scripture says about God's goodness and you don't, and I experience Him as good and a God to put my trust in. End of subject.

You can reduce the idea of God's "goodness" to something meaningless if you like. Because if you don't then it's pretty clear that Calvinism contradicts the idea that God is good.

Just wanted to say one last thing before leaving you and PaulK to carry on about how evil God is.None of this is whimsical or arbitrary as you see it, it all follows a complicated plan or network of interaction between good and evil, most of which we haven't any ability to sort out, but one thing a believer knows: we can call on God for help and He answers us. There are always causes for any evil event although we usually can't track them with any certainty, but they certainly aren't whimsical. In the case of God's judgment on a nation it's not hard for a Christian to compile a list of reasons for it that may not be complete but certainly must be implicated. In the case of sufferings of individuals we simply can't ever know, we just know the world is shot through with sin and evil, all of us inherit sin from our ancestors in varying degrees and types, and the killer and the victim are both heirs of such a lineage, and all this goes on within the judgments of God. But God also tells us to pray for those who are suffering, to pray for the protection and blessings even on our enemies, and never to be happy about His judgments. If everybody suddenly believed in God as good and trustworthy, obeyed His commandments and called on Him in prayer, ALL THIS WOULD STOP and we'd find ourselves living in a worldly paradise of goodness, plenty and safety. People who put all their trust in God will find He is worthy of that trust. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No one has said God is evil Faith; what they have said is that the God you try to market and you claim to worship really is evil, vile and only deserves condemnation, ridicule and contempt.

Excuse me, yes, that is what they are saying, but I know Calvin's view of God is scriptural and correct so it is really God you are all calling evil.I also know that God is love, God is good, and wholly to be trusted.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You're the one saying that that view is true, and you don't really argue otherwise. Engaging in doublethink is not an argument. So you're the one saying that God is evil.It's not even as if scripture - taken as a whole - clearly agrees with Calvin. There are plenty of scriptural arguments to the contrary.You expect the stories of the tortures of the Inquisition to persuade us that the Roman Catholic church is evil. How is this any different ?

That's one of the great things about scripture Faith. It is so filled with contradictions and false information that you can support just about any position by quote mining scripture.That does not change the fact that the God you try to market is evil and deserves nothing but ridicule as contempt.