Finally Free To Love...

[seer]

Now I do not say that all those who hold to Calvinism and inerrancy have experienced what I am about to suggest. Certainly in my life time I have met some tenderhearted Calvinists - especially my old pastor.

But I personally found that as went deeper into inerrancy and Calvinism the colder my heart grew towards my fellow man. Right doctrine became much more important than right relationship and love. Right thinking became more important than right being.

When I finally let go of both inerrancy and Calvinism, I began to notice that I more freely loved my fellow man. I took Christ, His teachings and example, as my ultimate source for the character God.

As such, I see a God who loves His enemies. A God who forgives even those who kill Him. A God who, through His parables, saves His harshest rebukes for those who treat their fellow man with unkindness and unforgiveness.

So I now filter all OT and NT doctrine through the example and teaching of Christ and what texts don't clearly line up (Ps.5:5 is an example) I discard. And I can not tell you how that has changed my attitude towards my fellow man, and how it has once again freed me to love. Christ, the Christ of the Gospels, is my all and all. He is mine now, more than He has ever been....

"And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." Aeschylus

[ChrisChillin]

I don't think holding to inerrancy is so much a problem as a hard literality that fails to take into account linguistics, context, etc. For example, in Psalm 5:5, what does "hate" mean, and does it have the force we attribute to it? Especially given the Semitic propensity to hyperbole..
But yes, I agree that understanding of Scripture must be Christocentric.
Personally, inerrancy is a moot issue for me. I don't care all that much whether or not we got the right number of horses in Solomon's stables, for example. What matters is the authority of the Bible as it speaks to matters of the heart.

[johnnybanano]

I am so pumped to hear this! I praise God for starting this change in your heart. I think it's incredible. I am not opposed to Calvinism, but I know that the view of God that it has shown me is one which would make it easy to forget how important it is to love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV):

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Posted by ChrisChillin on 06-22-2003 05:11 PM:

I don't think holding to inerrancy is so much a problem as a hard literality that fails to take into account linguistics, context, etc.

I agree, I believe that inerrancy is misplaced. God is inerrant. Books don't tend to be.

I always liked to think of the Bible from this perspective:

The Bible is often that in which people invest their faith. The Word of God is that in which people should invest their faith.

That sounds like my new signature.

Anyway, God bless you Seer. You should share this w/ as many people as you can!

Posted by seer on 06-21-2003 10:15 AM:
So I now filter all OT and NT doctrine through the example and teaching of Christ and what texts don't clearly line up

Posted by ChrisChillin on 06-22-2003 05:11 PM:
But yes, I agree that understanding of Scripture must be Christocentric.

Amen!
That's really what anyone who believe's that Jesus is the Son of God should do. I assume that most Calvinists believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

Love and Respect

[seer]

Welll thank you johnny....

[Solly]

This is supposed to be Q&A, not soapbox corner.

However, in answer to the question you never asked...

Who says Calvinists don't love, and unto death...?

2000 french protestant ministers, trained by Calvin, and sent back to France and near certain death.

George Whitefield
William Carey
David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards, and the others of the Great Revival, and to the Amerindians
John Paton
Adoniram Judson
Robert Murray McCheyne - who died, hoping to get to Israel, but in Hungary, out of whose labours we had Adolph Saphir and Alfred Edershiem
David Livingstone

That's enough for now. Read some history.

[seer]

...That's enough for now. Read some history.

You mean like the 4,000 or so Anabaptists killed by Reformers? How many Catholics did they kill? And how much harm did John Calvin cause to his fellow man?

The fact is Solly, you do not find any such evils done by classic Arminians.

...Who says Calvinists don't love, and unto death...?

You mean like Calvin loved Servetus unto death?

[Hermeneutic]

Hello Seer,


Please know before i say anything that I mean no harm in what I am about to say, so please do not be offended.

You stated that when you held to innerancy and Calvinism you found yourself growing cold, and unloving. But when you let go of innerancy and Clavinism you found yourself to be more loving and forgiving. Forgive me, but it seems as though you have made a grave missunderstanding. You seem to be blaming your emotions, your cold feelings, actually to be honest...you seem to be blaming the fact that you were walking according to the Flesh and not according to the Spirit, on the fact that you held to Biblical Innerancy and Calvinism. I would argue that there is hardly a serious student of the Bible or theologian who does not struggle with at times being more focused on figuring out truth than walking with the Lord, but it is completely unbiblical to claim that a hardcore focus on right doctrine causes unGodly living. It is a struggle, but it is only by the power of Christ that we are able to do it. By walking faithfully and renewing our minds, we learn to focus so purely on Christ that when we study our Bibles we learn true doctrine and isntead of it purely being "head knowledge" it is heart-life changing knowledge. I do not doubt that you may have experienced a struggle maintaining a Christlike attitude but I would guess that it is not becuase Calvinism and innerancy is incorrect, but rather, you experienced such a struggle becuase you allowed yourself to be more focused on knowledge (which puffs up) rather than the ultimate Glory of God in all things.

Another thing that I want to encourage you to think about is this: It seems that your primary purposes for throwing away innerancy and Calvinism is your personal experience with them, not the Word of God. To judge anything as right or wrong, correct or incorrect by how we "feel" or by our "experience" is drasticaly dangerous. If 2 people get married and have a bad experience, or suddenly have a "feeling" they should not be married...should they determine that God is telling them to get divorced? of course not. We are depraved creatures saved by Grace who can walk according to the flesh if we choose to, we can walk according to our old sinful nature if we choose to, whcih will cause negative attitudes and lifestyles. Should WE be the judge or right and wrong or the Word of God?

Also, to say that you simply disregard texts that don't line up the teachings of Christ is SO dangerous. Becuase to say "I do not think this lines up with Christ's teachings, so I will throw it away and claim it is an error" is to live under the assumption that you yourself have a perfect understanding of Christ's teachings. Should you make yourself the judge of what is the Word of God and what is not? Are you infallible in your understanding of the teachings of Christ? Have you exhausted all exegetical and hermeneutical tools and processes to the degree that you have the authority to claim error on the Word of God?

Also if we do not have an innerant Bible and it is up to our understanding to determine what is the Word fo God and what is in error, and we as human beings are imperfect. How can we ever be sure a single verse we read is the Word of God. You said you filter all Scripture through the teachings of Christ, but if the Bible is in error, how can you even be sure what the Bible has to say about the teachings of Christ is correct? How do you know the Gosples are not tainted with the error of man? I want to challenge you to study innerancy, study what has been written on Biblical Innerancy, study works that have been written that support innerancy and if you want, balance it with the other side. But study, and be consistent, brother.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, i will admit that your post did upset me. I'm sorry if I reacted in an emotional and unGodly way, I hope i did not offend you. Forgive me if I did.

I do say all of this out of love. An innerrant Bible and Calvinism do not at all taking away from God's love and forgiveness. What causes us to view God's love and forgiveness in a negative way is our Flesh.

Prayerfully,
Hermeneutic (Frank)

[seer]

Well thank you Hermeneutic, I understand your concern and your points. But the fact is I can not reconcile the teachings of Christ and His example (forgiving even those who killed Him) with much in the rest of scripture.

I simply do not see Christ or our Heavenly Father (who is kind and merciful to the wicked and unthankful Lk.6) uttering things like this:

Jeremiah 19:9

"And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them."

Now I understand that at times God needs to be severe, but some things are just beyond the pale for a good God. And if I'am wrong I pray that God forgives me, but I just can not hold to these contrary views of God any longer.

[Hermeneutic]

Hello Seer,

Thank you for responding, and sharing some more of your thoughts with me.

After reading your e mail, i understand a little bit more about where you are coming from. Though I do still dissagree. But im sure your not the only one who feels that the Biblical portrait of God being loving and forgiving does seem to contradict with the images of God we have in the Old Testament (such as the one you just cited). But throwing away the innerancy of the Bible is not the way to go, i want to strongly urge you to rethink your position, brother. Because if you believe some of the Bible is in error, how do you know what parts are right and what are wrong? How do you know the Scriptures which talk about Christ being forgiving and loving are not in error? Without innerancy there is no surety in the Scriptures, and it all just comes down to what we think "feels" right, or what is agreeable to use personally, and we wind up painting our own God, making Him who we would like Him to be (even if we do not do it on purpose).

I want to encouage you to study Hermeneutics. I chose hermeneutic for my name on here because I feel that next to a faithful heart for God, sound hermeneutics are the most important thing for any student of the Sriptures-for any believer for that matter. Hermeneutics is the "art and science of interpretation". We all have them to some degree. We all have principles we follow when reading something, be it a newspaper or the Bible, by which we understand and interpret what we read. We all understand the daily paper because we have an understanding of our culture, how it is written, the literary style etc..so we emply the proper hermeneutics, and we understand. So we must be sure that we have proper Biblical Hermeneutics. We can learn about hermeneutics by studying the Bible itself, specifically how the Biblical authors spoke of and used the Scriptures. There has also been scores written on the subject and we should be faithful to take advantage of the resources that we have due to the work other saints have done who have gone before us. We must consider hermeneutics becuase our hermeneutics determine our theology.

A common hermeneutical error that we all commit from time to time is the error of assumption. We all have assumptions (or presuppositions) when it comes to God and the Bible. What i mean by assumption is, something that we already believe to be true that we bring to the Bible when we read it. Some assumptions we are aware of and some we may not be. We may have assumptions because it is what we were taught, its what makes sense to us, or it might be more agreeable with us emotionally. Not all assumptions are bad, but we can begin to see the danger of having assumptions especially when they contradict Scripture. Often times we may find outselves disagreeing with the Bible, or missing the clear teaching of Scripture because it contradicts what we already believe to be true. This happens when what we believe about God and the Bible is not a conclusion come to through carefully studying the Scriptures, but are things we believe to be true apart from the Scriptures. So we find ourselves saying things like "well this verse can't mean that...", when in actuality it might but our failure to let go of our assumption in light of Scripture causes us to miss the true teachings of the Bible. So we can see how important it is to study the Scriptures faithfully so that our worldview and our assumptions will more clearly line up with Scripture. By staying open to God's Word, our assumptions may change into conclusions-beliefs clearly drawn from the faithful study of the Scriptures.

It seems to me from your post, that you may be bring a rather large assumption to the Bible. (forgive me if any of this sounds like an accusation, that is not my intention, and please correct me if I am wrong about any of this). It seems as though you are coming to the Bible with your own idea of what it means for God to be loving, and are claiming the Bible to be in error becuase you have found portions of Scripture which do not line up with your own personal idea of what a loving God is. I want to encourage you to seriously think about this. If this is the case, then you are elevating yourself above the Scriptures, you are basicly saying that because the Bible does not agree with you, then the Bible must be wrong, rather than saying "well the Bible does not agree with me, maybe I am wrong." We must be careful not to place restrictions on God and put Him inside a "box". Often times we place God inside a box, with very specific ideas of what we think God is, or what we want him to be, and when it comes to the Bible we are not open to being wrong. We must be willing to let God out of the box in light of Scripture. We must be open to the Scriptures and be willing to change our assumptions, our worldview, we must be open to change anything in our lives that does not line up with the Bible. Do we have the authority to say that a loving God could not say what He did in Jeremiah? Should we have such restrictions? Or should we be open to redefining what we believe a loving God to be?

Keep on studying, i really want to encourage you to do that. Determining the Bible is innerant is not the best way to deal with difficult texts, in fact I feel that it would be very irresponsible of us since God has entrusted us with the ministry of sharing the Gospel and the truths of His Word with the nations. We must be diligent to keep on studying, and with difficult texts think of things like: What is the historical background? The literary background, what kind of literature is it and how was it written during htat time period, what kind of langauge and imagery was employed? What is its theological significance in light of the rest of Scripture? Where does this verse fit in the grand scheme of redemptive history? What covenants were in place? How was God working with Israel during that period of time? What light does the original Hebrew or Greek grammar and language shed on this? Don't see difficult as problems, but be excited at difficult texts. It only means that we are about to learn something about God that we did not know before, and that God would bestow us with so much grace as to reveal Himself to us in so many ways through His Word is absolutely amazing. Praise be to God!

(I'm sorry I am so terribly long winded...i'll try to watch that from now on.

--Hermeneutic (Frank)

[SaintMorpheus]

Seer, Hermeneutic, the rest of y'all. Greetings in the Lord.

Though we should be open to the possibility that the Church has been in error in its consideration of what is Scripture and what is not Scripture. There are many candidates for Scripture, obviously (given the apocrypha, etc), and when it comes down to it, people had to decide what counts as Scripture (though you can say, perhaps rightly so, that God guided the people). There is no verse in Scripture that says "Consider this list of books as Scripture and none others : X, Y, Z." So, inherent with trusting what the Bible says is also trusting that you've got the right Bible, which is to trust that God has worked through other media than the Bible (the historical process of putting together the Bible must also have been inerrant if the Bible is to be inerrant). That being said, having an attitude of open-mindness about the possibility of certain parts of the Bible not actually being the Word of God frees one to listen to God, to a certain degree. Desperately clinging onto infallibility and inerrancy in a book can stem more from the need to be told what to believe more than the desire to know what God says. Bibliolatry is as dangerous as any other kind of idolatry or generally imbalanced perspective. After all, as we know, given the thousands and thousands and thousands of Christian sects, Scripture is NOT perspicuous. We all may say it is perspicuous on the so-called "important points" but who is to say what the "important points" are? Everything is a matter of interpretation (this is not to say there is no truth -- of course there is -- but it doesn't come easy). So, when you get right down to it, you can't have a book simply tell you what to believe, because you will always have the burden of interpreting it. And right interpretation takes attentiveness to God. And since nowhere in the accepted Bible does it say "These books are Scripture _____ whereas these are not _______", attentiveness to God requires being open to the possibility of an incorrect canon.

Consider what Jesus said:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Mt 5:38)

BUT

Exodus 20:22 Then the LORD said to Moses…
Exodus 21:1 “These are the laws you are to set before them…”
Exodus 21:23-25 “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

Leviticus 24:13 Then the LORD said to Moses…
Leviticus 24:15 “Say to the Israelites…”
Leviticus 24:19-20 “’If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured.’”

In other words, the Pentateuch claims that GOD said "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth" but Jesus says "it" is said, and furthermore commands essentially NOT "eye for eye, tooth for tooth." It's as if Jesus rejects the idea that the Pentateuch is divinely inspired in this instance. It's as if He's saying that what Moses said is wrong.

As for Calvinism. Perhaps certain theologies do lend themselves to hardened hearts. Calvinism not necessarily so. I think perhaps what is really happening is that obsession with theology and doctrine tricks one into forgetting to think about and love God, but I can't judge for sure. I know in my personal experience, when I was a Calvinist, in retrospect, it wasn't so much the theology itself which was the problem, but it was the heavy heavy emphasis on intellectualism and "mental" Christianity, as if Christianity were all about accepting the right doctrinal formulation of this or that concept. Reading stuff from the Reformation and post-Reformation era can lead one into sort of a confrontational frame of mind, as if the essence of Christianity were to oppose Roman Catholicism. It's not. You both know that.
Some thoughts.
In Christ,
St. Morpheus

[seer]

...Because if you believe some of the Bible is in error, how do you know what parts are right and what are wrong? How do you know the Scriptures which talk about Christ being forgiving and loving are not in error? Without innerancy there is no surety in the Scriptures, and it all just comes down to what we think "feels" right, or what is agreeable to use personally, and we wind up painting our own God, making Him who we would like Him to be (even if we do not do it on purpose).

Good morning Frank. A couple of points. I came out of a 5-point church that held to inerrancy. It was the study of Christ's life (example) and His teachings that lead me to these conclusions.

And we know which parts of the bible are wrong,those that don't line up with the PLAIN teachings of Christ. Christ for instance said that God loved the world, and is kind and merciful to the wicked and unthankful. David on the other hand said that God hated all who sin Ps. 5:5. And SaintMorpheus made a good point about the eye for an eye thing.

Also Frank, do you believe that we have inerrant translations? If not do we now throw our bibles out?


....We must be open to the Scriptures and be willing to change our assumptions, our worldview, we must be open to change anything in our lives that does not line up with the Bible. Do we have the authority to say that a loving God could not say what He did in Jeremiah? Should we have such restrictions? Or should we be open to redefining what we believe a loving God to be?

So LOVE causes us to eat our children Frank? If that is the case then we have no clue what love is.

[Solly]

06-28-2003 @ 01:59 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=134688#post134688)
seer:

...That's enough for now. Read some history.

You mean like the 4,000 or so Anabaptists killed by Reformers? How many Catholics did they kill? And how much harm did John Calvin cause to his fellow man?

The fact is Solly, you do not find any such evils done by classic Arminians.

Oh, so those great men of God don't count because of the sins of others? Well done. The Catholic church is not calvinist, and believes in free will, care to take their side?
I am a baptist, a group persecuted by protestant and catholic alike. Doesn't mean I throw out the baby with the bathwater, that is why John Quincy Adams calls baptists the only thorough reformers.

...Who says Calvinists don't love, and unto death...?

You mean like Calvin loved Servetus unto death?


False argumentation. Loved not their own lives unto the death - even Calvin "burnt" himself out, suffering from severe illnesses, yet carrying on for the sake of the Chritstians in Geneva and France.
Death for heresy had been in place for centuries; Christianity as a socio-political force ditto. These things don't change overnight, dismantling the structures of society, that is why Luther eventually drew back froma believers church, he could see his way through.

[seer]

...Oh, so those great men of God don't count because of the sins of others? Well done. The Catholic church is not calvinist, and believes in free will, care to take their side?

I am not speaking of Catholics, though we may share some beliefs. I'am speaking of Arminians - from James Arminus on. You simply will not find the cruelty in Arminianism that you find in Calvinism. And remember the leaders of the present "restoration" movement that wants to go back under OT law (including the death penalty for homsexuals) are all Calvinist/Reformed.


...I am a baptist, a group persecuted by protestant and catholic alike. Doesn't mean I throw out the baby with the bathwater, that is why John Quincy Adams calls baptists the only thorough reformers.

Baptists were not persecuted by Arminians they were persecuted by fellow Calvinists...

...False argumentation. Loved not their own lives unto the death - even Calvin "burnt" himself out, suffering from severe illnesses, yet carrying on for the sake of the Chritstians in Geneva and France.

When are you going to accept the truth that Calvin was a wicked man? An ungodly man?

[Theolog]

Perhaps you have overlooked what the doctrine of inerrancy of is saying. Although there is many definitions of what inerrancy is supposed to mean, most statements I have read state that the Bible is inerrant in the “original manuscripts”, which is an idiotic meaningless statement because there are no “original manuscripts”.

And then we have the version conflict. You’re not KJV only are you?

If you do not understand inerrancy why should I trust you with Calvinism?

So now instead of bashing non-Calvinist you are bashing Calvinist. Guess some things never change. I know you are bashing me in love but it still hurts.