Lizzie
i hear calvinists often explain their concept of predestination as god’s sovereignty bc god is “so other”
but honestly the god who makes people so they glorify him by going to hell doesnt seem all that strange to me, it just sounds bad. apophatic theology seems much better suited to treating god as ‘so other’
djsumdog
My first thought is to wonder if the world that John Calvin lived in didn't care deeply with the philosophical questions about freewill. Sure it was discussed by the Romans and others previously, but maybe this just was just watered down or forgotten by the time of the reformation.
When you look at people downstream from Calvin, such as the 1600s Puritans and even modern PCA Presbyterians, they tend to not be overly evangelical. They believed in "the elect," and God would bring those to him with irresistible grace. Calvinist missionary work is still very different from the born-againers looking to get people saved.
But I don't fault the ideology in general. To believe in an absolute all-powerful god, that god would have to know the future, while also allowing the free well of creation to make that choice. There are paradoxes in all fields, including mathematics with set theory and varying sizes of infinity.
azalea
@lizzie it [the calvinism thing] feels utterly pointless because its so predictable
like, if youre a being with infinite time and space and power, eventually destroying things has to get boring, right?
if you make something to worship you, and it worships you, who cares? you throw a ball up in the air and it comes down. of course its gonna happen, it says nothing about the ball or you, so who cares?
djsumdog
:gummythink: yea .. and they'll also argue God gives individuals the choice, he just knows who is going to choose. It gets pretty academic after a point.
I'm more interested in reading Sapolsky's book Determined, where he apparently argues we don't have any freewill at all.
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea i mean kinda the key thing from a calvinist perspective is that grace is not resistible, so anyone who is not saved is so bc God chose not to give them that regenerating grace
djsumdog
Lizzie
@azalea @djsumdog btw if you want an image of monergist resistible grace, look to lutheranism regeneration (through baptism) happens regardless of the state of your heart and no particular action is required for salvation (they would emphasize that we still need to be reborn every day. its not like american evangelicals would have it). its more a matter of not fighting against gods grace (resistible grace!). the reformed anathematized the lutherans for saying you could choose against god when given grace
basically: no, the reformed do not believe in free will in the conventional sene at all. it isnt a “god knows ahead what you’ll choose” thing. god chose specifically for you to choose. they do believe in something theyd call free will but its absolutely not what you were talking about from what i saw
Lizzie
@azalea @djsumdog iirc presbyterians do allow a little more leeway than the continental reformed but i dont remember what that actually entails. PCUSA has a LOT of liberty on the topic but thats bc they kinda let people entirely break from the confessions (which isnt a bad thing imo, just makes it kinda not calvinist in the sense im discussing here)
barth’s interpretation is confession compatible but a bit unusual
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea like, “TULIP” isnt at all a focus on what actual presbyterians etc hold dear (and is meant as a summary of the synod of dort, which was dutch reformed), but perseverance of the saints and irresistible grace are indeed parts of reformed soteriology. there is no free will here
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea “god gives individuals the choice” okay so this requires either resistible grace (not reformed) or choice before grace (semi-pelagianism (aggressively not reformed))
Lizzie
@azalea @djsumdog lizzie’s biased summary is that the process of creation isnt so much that there was nothing and then there was, bc even if one is to accept that God is outside of time, youre still kinda putting God in some sort of meta-time. creation instead is more of a process of the ‘real’ (God) taking on an otherwise illusory existence through the incarnation and crucifixion. through being killed by it, God kinda makes sin real but its not something that exists as all that exists is redeemed through sin’s rejection in the crucifixion
Lizzie
@azalea @djsumdog https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/11/14/st-maximus-the-confessor-on-the-cosmic-fall/ i think about this article a lot
azalea
@djsumdog @lizzie what azalea means is trying to get at something slightly different
its not really “do people have free will” as much as .. why would you create something and then call it “””evil”””? or- call it “against your will”? didn’t you make it?
this world isnt a world that could be made by an entity which actually desires to “destroy [or remove the existence of] anything ‘bad’ “. [and, its not sure that sort of entity could exist at all; it would never create something “bad” and if it truly was “all-powerful” it would have nothing to destroy]
thats what its trying to get at.
georgia
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea i go to a lutheran church presently bc of my current circumstances but im an episcopalian in my heart (and intend to go to an episcopal church when i move)
lutheran and reformed were the two wings of the reformation. lutherans see luther’s interpretation of augustinian theology as a necessary correction to problems that had developed in the roman catholic church.
the other traditions (presbyterian, continental reformed, anglican) were all reformed (though anglicans ended up being more conservatively reformed long term)
then jacob arminius proposed some level of free will, and the arminian protestants split off from the reformed (remonstrants, methodists, and a lot of anglicans). the bulk of american protestants fit in this category
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea the idea is that the baptism is sufficient, and we experience this every day by looking to our baptism. we can also reject our baptisms more explicitly
georgia
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea the progressive church is a broad spectrum tbh. like you have people who are kinda just doing whatever theologically with little understanding of the faith (same is true of a lot of evangelicals but they get away with it bc they’re politically conservative), and some who arent dissimilar from myself. i think something a bit progressive is the best way to express the apostolic faith
rapture theology? probably heretical.
djsumdog
Lizzie
@georgia @djsumdog @azalea yeah this is the complaint i was making about calvinism/reformed theology at the start
djsumdog
djsumdog
SpudHead
@lizzie @azalea @djsumdog @georgia how even is heresy defined?? like by your “ denomination “ or what have you
Lizzie
@djsumdog @azalea @georgia there’s a lot of stuff i would say is bad but not heretical. the reason id go so far as to call it heretical is that it posits the goal of christianity as escape from creation rather than its being made whole
Lizzie
@djsumdog @georgia @azalea yeah exactly. the believers get sucked up into heaven and then everyone else has to deal with a bunch of bad stuff and then the full eschaton is established after that
djsumdog
azalea
@lizzie @jorgaborg @djsumdog @georgia ah, the anti-physics teacher rule
no spherical jesus in a vacuum
Lizzie
@jorgaborg @azalea @djsumdog @georgia technically “jesus is an orb right now” is a specifically listed heresy by ine if the councils
Lizzie
@jorgaborg @azalea @djsumdog @georgia oh yeah how thats defined varies by denomination. non-protestants would define it by ecumenical councils while protestants often just point to the creeds. others before me have argued that the rapture is a direct contradiction of “the resurrection of the body” as traditionally understood which appears in the apostles creed.
im a bit biased against rapture theology bc this principle of christ as the resurrection is a guiding theological principle for me and without it id have to reject what ive seen of the church fathers.
whether or not something is formally heretical or not isnt the most important thing in the world. what matters is if something is of spiritual danger and that i woild say even less hesitantly is true of the rapture
djsumdog
i think, therefore.,, uh,,, .. ,
goon
SpudHead
@lizzie @azalea @djsumdog @georgia i think, therefore.,, uh,,, .. , u,m
SpudHead
@azalea @lizzie @djsumdog @georgia philosophy is bs imo; people just do shit
Lizzie
@jorgaborg @azalea @djsumdog @georgia this too is philosophy, just bad philosophy
SpudHead
@lizzie @azalea @djsumdog @georgia absurd; again we just need empirical evidemce in atheism. we can see/interact with it? means it’s real vro
azalea
@jorgaborg @lizzie @djsumdog @georgia atheism runs into some pretty big problems when trying to talk about philosophical things (or, trying to apply “science” to philosophy), but tbh christianity has the same problems with being really structure-y, so it basically cancels out
Lizzie
@jorgaborg @azalea @djsumdog @georgia there were a bunch of conflicts over origenism and so origen got anathema(oomf reference)tized for a bunch of random bullshit he may or may not have actually ever taught
SpudHead
djsumdog
SpudHead
@lizzie @azalea @djsumdog @georgia ok this deepconversationthing hurts my brain in large doses; imma get back to shitposting now. good talk tho! nice to learn about religion in a looser sense
Lizzie
@jorgaborg @azalea @djsumdog @georgia i mean religion and metaphysics overlap a lot
SpudHead
@azalea @lizzie @djsumdog @georgia “be nice and help people” is a religious thing?
Lizzie
@jorgaborg @azalea @djsumdog @georgia more that if you try getting really rigorous about what “be nice and help people” means, you end up with something approaching religion
azalea
@jorgaborg @djsumdog @georgia @lizzie tbh if you dig down in the first principles deep enough you sometimes get to something that looks similar to some religious stuff (this isnt a bad thing)
azalea
@jorgaborg @lizzie @djsumdog @georgia yeah but how do you know what “not being good” is without thoughts on meaning and purpose
SpudHead
@djsumdog @lizzie @georgia @azalea my meaning and purpose is to make as big of a stink as is humanly possible about shit not being good, and then fix that. and then do some other shit. maybe go to Titan if i have the time. idk
djsumdog
the "new atheism" from the 2010s sorta fillzed out because it couldn't really deal with basic questions about meaning and purpose. It fell hard into scientisim. It couldn't address using rationalism to deal with historical controversial topics (9/11 truth, JFK, WW2). I heard reason rallies became their own circle-jerks.
djsumdog
SpudHead
@azalea @djsumdog @georgia @lizzie (food, water, basic income needs, etc)
SpudHead
@azalea @lizzie @djsumdog @georgia eergh. mmfuckign,, socialism is awesome imo. people should get what they need
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.