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I'm not a theologian, but my understanding is that 5-point Calvinism actually claims all people are bad (total depravity of Man) and that Christians shouldn't t

by KMag 4y ago

I'm not a theologian, but my understanding is that 5-point Calvinism actually claims all people are bad (total depravity of Man) and that Christians shouldn't think they're better than other people, since it's not the person's choice if they believe in God or not (irresistible grace). Though, maybe in practice Calvinism deviates from theory.

jmainguy 4y ago
Man is fallen, we are all equally fallen and sinful. No man is better than another, nothing man can do would ever be enough to make up for our sins.
mabbo 4y ago
Specifically, the concept I'm referring to is Predestination[0], or the more extreme version 'Double predestination', wherein God pre-ordained who the Good people are and who the Bad people are, and you know you're the Good people because bad things aren't happening to you, and you know that that person must be a Bad person because bad things happen to them. If you're born to a wealthy privileged life, this belief says that you deserve it because you're one of God's chosen- that's why life is so good. And it's a good thing that all those bad things happen to other people because they are bad people. God didn't choose them. This is an extreme view, but the seeds of it are everywhere in our society. Just the term "bad guys" is used to imply a generic evil that we need to stop. Meanwhile real life is far more nuanced (with most true sociopaths actually doing very well in finance and politics). [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination
- KMag 4y ago
  Again, I'm not a theologian, but this sounds like some mixture of predestination and prosperity gospel, not merely predestination. Most of Jesus's most influential early followers were hunted down and tortured by the Roman authorities, which wouldn't seem to jive with the proposed criteria.
  - plorg 4y ago
    This reads like you are suggesting that Calvinism is the same as early Christianity. There was no single organized Christian belief to speak of, and very likely what organization there was looked nothing like the church of 16th century Geneva let alone that of 18th to 21st century America.
    - KMag 4y ago
      I'm saying if the way to know that you're predestined to be saved is that bad things aren't happening to you, that doesn't square with Jesus, Peter, and Paul, and many other early leaders having been tortured and killed by the Romans. Presumably, the Calvinists believed that Peter, Paul, and others were predestined to be saved, and that Jesus was on the right side of history. This is the first I've heard that John Calvin preached that bad things don't happen to people who are predestined for salvation.
- claar 4y ago
  What you're describing is more commonly known as the "Prosperity Gospel" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology - which is a niche theology that claims believers will experience "health and wealth" on earth. Predestination is a much more mainstream Christian doctrine that has nothing to do with "good people" vs "bad people", or even "good actions" vs "sinful actions". Predestination means some people are "destined" to salvation and others are not. Predestination is a challenging theology that has to balance God being all knowing (omniscient) and free will.
plorg 4y ago
All 5 points are just different facets of the belief in predestination - that we are ultimately incapable of changing our moral standing, our fate, that only God can do that for us. In practice it means that there are an elect few who are capable of good (and in my educational experience, are tasked with "building the kingdom of God", aka running things) and everyone else deserves what is coming to them even if they could incidentally do good by the accident of common grace. There really isn't any incentive to not treat everyone not in your church as garbage and deserving of punishment. The only difference is now there isn't, for any one believer, a good reason to even try to listen to the pleas and arguments of someone outside your belief structure, because you're both under total depravity, but you feel, and are assured by those who believe the same as you, that you have God's blessing and are incapable of losing it. Obviously not everyone believes all of it to the same extent, and they may have a softer padding between these beliefs and how they act within the real world, but based on my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities) most people who take the title Calvinist, and even most who rather take the label Reformed (because Calvinism has earned its bad name) do believe this to a fair extent.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities Disappointing to see your unusually extensive first-hand experience downvoted to the bottom of this sub-thread.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Indeed so, but by the same logic it's not the person's choice to be hypocritical while reaping the mundane rewards of apparent piety. Philosopher Slavoj Zižek argues that it is religion/ideology that allows for the commission of atrocities, by ascribing cosmic importance to otherwise banal conflicts over resources and prior injuries. In nature, predatory animals might hunt prey to extinction and then die off themselves. But this is more likely to happen in theoretical models or very isolated/extreme environments with an unusually narrow 'fault tolerance. In more complex environments, adversarial populations wax and wane chaotically, selection pressure yield evolutionary innovations and arms races that allow breakouts from local minima, and so on. A History of Warfare by John Keegan is a good introduction (with an excellent bibliography) to the anthropology of warfare, and has a particularly good treatment of initially adaptive social mores can end in catastrophe when they bump into resource limits or experience an external shock. Keegan emphasizes the role of technologies (both physical and social) which confer overwhelming advantages in conflict, which may or may not be sustainable. For example, pastoral herding/hunting practices developed on the large scale of the Mongolian steppe allowed nomadic hordes under leaders like Genghis Khan to overwhelm less dynamic agricultural societies. But lacking deep administrative foundations (quite literally, due to a lack of construction materials and incentives) they were unable to lock in their massive tactical advantages over a longer timescale. War by Azar Gat has a deeper exploration of competition between socio-cultural systems and incorporates fresher scholarship, but at the price of being somewhat more tendentious and a much less engaging read.

by KMag 4y ago

jmainguy 4y ago

Man is fallen, we are all equally fallen and sinful. No man is better than another, nothing man can do would ever be enough to make up for our sins.

mabbo 4y ago

Specifically, the concept I'm referring to is Predestination[0], or the more extreme version 'Double predestination', wherein God pre-ordained who the Good people are and who the Bad people are, and you know you're the Good people because bad things aren't happening to you, and you know that that person must be a Bad person because bad things happen to them. If you're born to a wealthy privileged life, this belief says that you deserve it because you're one of God's chosen- that's why life is so good. And it's a good thing that all those bad things happen to other people because they are bad people. God didn't choose them. This is an extreme view, but the seeds of it are everywhere in our society. Just the term "bad guys" is used to imply a generic evil that we need to stop. Meanwhile real life is far more nuanced (with most true sociopaths actually doing very well in finance and politics). [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination

KMag 4y ago
Again, I'm not a theologian, but this sounds like some mixture of predestination and prosperity gospel, not merely predestination. Most of Jesus's most influential early followers were hunted down and tortured by the Roman authorities, which wouldn't seem to jive with the proposed criteria.
- plorg 4y ago
  This reads like you are suggesting that Calvinism is the same as early Christianity. There was no single organized Christian belief to speak of, and very likely what organization there was looked nothing like the church of 16th century Geneva let alone that of 18th to 21st century America.
  - KMag 4y ago
    I'm saying if the way to know that you're predestined to be saved is that bad things aren't happening to you, that doesn't square with Jesus, Peter, and Paul, and many other early leaders having been tortured and killed by the Romans. Presumably, the Calvinists believed that Peter, Paul, and others were predestined to be saved, and that Jesus was on the right side of history. This is the first I've heard that John Calvin preached that bad things don't happen to people who are predestined for salvation.
claar 4y ago
What you're describing is more commonly known as the "Prosperity Gospel" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology - which is a niche theology that claims believers will experience "health and wealth" on earth. Predestination is a much more mainstream Christian doctrine that has nothing to do with "good people" vs "bad people", or even "good actions" vs "sinful actions". Predestination means some people are "destined" to salvation and others are not. Predestination is a challenging theology that has to balance God being all knowing (omniscient) and free will.

plorg 4y ago

All 5 points are just different facets of the belief in predestination - that we are ultimately incapable of changing our moral standing, our fate, that only God can do that for us. In practice it means that there are an elect few who are capable of good (and in my educational experience, are tasked with "building the kingdom of God", aka running things) and everyone else deserves what is coming to them even if they could incidentally do good by the accident of common grace. There really isn't any incentive to not treat everyone not in your church as garbage and deserving of punishment. The only difference is now there isn't, for any one believer, a good reason to even try to listen to the pleas and arguments of someone outside your belief structure, because you're both under total depravity, but you feel, and are assured by those who believe the same as you, that you have God's blessing and are incapable of losing it. Obviously not everyone believes all of it to the same extent, and they may have a softer padding between these beliefs and how they act within the real world, but based on my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities) most people who take the title Calvinist, and even most who rather take the label Reformed (because Calvinism has earned its bad name) do believe this to a fair extent.

anigbrowl 4y ago
my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities Disappointing to see your unusually extensive first-hand experience downvoted to the bottom of this sub-thread.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Indeed so, but by the same logic it's not the person's choice to be hypocritical while reaping the mundane rewards of apparent piety. Philosopher Slavoj Zižek argues that it is religion/ideology that allows for the commission of atrocities, by ascribing cosmic importance to otherwise banal conflicts over resources and prior injuries. In nature, predatory animals might hunt prey to extinction and then die off themselves. But this is more likely to happen in theoretical models or very isolated/extreme environments with an unusually narrow 'fault tolerance. In more complex environments, adversarial populations wax and wane chaotically, selection pressure yield evolutionary innovations and arms races that allow breakouts from local minima, and so on. A History of Warfare by John Keegan is a good introduction (with an excellent bibliography) to the anthropology of warfare, and has a particularly good treatment of initially adaptive social mores can end in catastrophe when they bump into resource limits or experience an external shock. Keegan emphasizes the role of technologies (both physical and social) which confer overwhelming advantages in conflict, which may or may not be sustainable. For example, pastoral herding/hunting practices developed on the large scale of the Mongolian steppe allowed nomadic hordes under leaders like Genghis Khan to overwhelm less dynamic agricultural societies. But lacking deep administrative foundations (quite literally, due to a lack of construction materials and incentives) they were unable to lock in their massive tactical advantages over a longer timescale. War by Azar Gat has a deeper exploration of competition between socio-cultural systems and incorporates fresher scholarship, but at the price of being somewhat more tendentious and a much less engaging read.