Calvinism/Reformed Christianity AMA

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Were you brought up Reformed or are you a convert?

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Which of the five points of Calvinism have you found non-Calvinists understand the least or react the worst to? I have issues with all of them but limited atonement is the only one that actually pisses me off.

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There's a bizarre parallel as this attitude shows up in both liberal mainlines looking to abandon Paul and conservative Evangelicals looking for special revelation.

There's at least a few other bizarre (and deeply uncomfortable) parallels I could talk about here wrt attitudes towards the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.

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There's a bizarre parallel as this attitude shows up in both liberal mainlines looking to abandon Paul and conservative Evangelicals looking for special revelation.

There's at least a few other bizarre (and deeply uncomfortable) parallels I could talk about here wrt attitudes towards the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.

Would you mind elaborating? I'm familiar with the criticisms of the standard Evangelical approach, but not the liberal mainline parallel.

The terms I like to use are left-Marcionism and right-Marcionism. Both make a lot of noises about "muh legalism" but left-Marcionism adds this weird patina of attempted reductio ad absurdum where it's presented as self-evidently unreasonable to expect anyone to take Old Testament law seriously (apparently entirely forgetting that there's a religious minority deeply embedded in the culture of America's largest city that tries to do just that). The point at which I went from just finding this vaguely distasteful to actually seeing something sinister in it was when I learned that there was an extensive rehabilitation of Nazi theologians like Walter Grundmann in ostensibly-liberal German theological circles after the war, and that they taught a lot of the next generation of both German and American academic theologians.

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I have a fairly maximalist Mariology and even I think "Co-Redemptrix" is a bit much, but I don't see any burning need to make people stop using it.

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I have a fairly maximalist Mariology and even I think "Co-Redemptrix" is a bit much, but I don't see any burning need to make people stop using it.

I'm kind of surprised by that. Language is quite important. The Church had quite the fight over Theotokos vs Christokos, and co-redemptix is much less nuanced than that. Co-redemptrix implies putting the Virgin on the same level as Christ. As such, I'd be quick to discourage it, even if I had a higher Mariology.

I don't interpret it as necessarily implying that--I read the implication as in "co-pilot". I definitely think some sort of study needs to be done of how the people using this term actually think, and if it turns out they are in fact putting the Virgin on the same level of Christ, then shut use of the term down until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I have a fairly maximalist Mariology and even I think "Co-Redemptrix" is a bit much, but I don't see any burning need to make people stop using it.

I'm kind of surprised by that. Language is quite important. The Church had quite the fight over Theotokos vs Christokos, and co-redemptix is much less nuanced than that. Co-redemptrix implies putting the Virgin on the same level as Christ. As such, I'd be quick to discourage it, even if I had a higher Mariology.

I don't interpret it as necessarily implying that--I read the implication as in "co-pilot". I definitely think some sort of study needs to be done of how the people using this term actually think, and if it turns out they are in fact putting the Virgin on the same level of Christ, then shut use of the term down until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

You highlight an interesting difference. To steal Realistic Idealist's phrasing, I'd say Rome and Canterbury are much too willing to put unity over discipline, while Geneva is too quick to split at the first sign of imperfection.

This reminds me of pre-conversion John Henry Newman's analysis in an 1839 article (revisited post-conversion in his Apologia) that the Key Charge of Anglicanism is that "Rome possesses the Note of Idolatry" while the Key Charge of Catholicism is that "Canterbury possesses the Note of Schism". Presumably the Key Charge of Calvinism would, then, be further in the 1839-Anglican direction.

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Giving this a final bump before I let it go. Anymore questions?

Very simple but also very broad question: What is the life of your parish like in practical terms? What does a typical Sunday service look like, what are the social dynamics of the parish, and so forth? Would you say this is representative of PCA parishes in particular? Of Calvinist parishes in general?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Giving this a final bump before I let it go. Anymore questions?

Very simple but also very broad question: What is the life of your parish like in practical terms? What does a typical Sunday service look like, what are the social dynamics of the parish, and so forth? Would you say this is representative of PCA parishes in particular? Of Calvinist parishes in general?

Could you elaborate a bit on what you're asking for in the bolded portion?

I'll get started drafting the answers to the other questions.

Like, is parish life mostly just services? Are there social events? Charity work? Does it all happen in or around the church, or do parishioners do things in one another's homes too? Is the minister in charge of everything, or does he mostly handle the actual services while laypeople handle the other aspects of parish life? Things like that.

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Does that answer your questions?

It does, yes! This was actually a very enlightening read; thank you.

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From Lucy Maud Montgomery's Wikipedia article, which I was reading because I was trying to explain to somebody why some of the later Anne books piss a lot of people off:

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IMO one of the biggest flaws in Calvinism is that it can lead to situations like this where somebody who struggles with behaving morally concludes that they must not be one of the elect and thus it's pointless to try harder. Even if this doesn't lead the person to utter despair like Reverend MacDonald, it still strikes me as the opposite of something a theological ethics should encourage. How would you respond to this?

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First, I must say that we ought to be chiefly concerned with whether Calvinism is true, not what 'it encourages'. If I thought Catholicism were true, I'd have to swallow a lot of Marian dogma, despite it encouraging the wrong things in my opinion. Not that you subscribe to that foolish brand of liberalism, but I take issue with your wording.

Point taken. I certainly didn't mean to imply an instrumental or consequentialist view of why one should adopt a theological position, only that I doubted that a theological system that was true would have this particular problem (but as you point out I'm sure you'd say the same about some of the superstitions that Marian dogma "encourages", and I think that would be a fair criticism!).

Thank you for the rest of your answer; it's a compelling defense and one that I hadn't considered.

(One novel that I've read recently is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, which is among other things a a Catholic convert's critique of the assumptions and culture of Scottish Presbyterianism, and, yeah, the glibness and unconcern with continued spiritual and moral formation that the doctrine of assurance can lead to is one of the things it discusses. To be honest, I wasn't sure it was an entirely fair critique, and I say that as someone who'd be naturally inclined to agree with it.)

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Interesting. I had a convo with a catholic guy one time who was very adamant that all protestants were deterministic, lol. I guess that was just his bias talking.

Or is Protestantism different from Calvinism/Reformed? 

The funny thing is that Catholicism never settled the means of grace controversy between Jesuits and Dominicans, so being a determinist is explicitly allowed within Catholicism, and in fact, some would argue a more faithful interpretation of Aquinas than the libertarian one.

This isn't false but I think it's important to point out that the non-libertarian Catholic position is compatibilist rather than "hard" determinist.

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Interesting. I had a convo with a catholic guy one time who was very adamant that all protestants were deterministic, lol. I guess that was just his bias talking.

Or is Protestantism different from Calvinism/Reformed? 

The funny thing is that Catholicism never settled the means of grace controversy between Jesuits and Dominicans, so being a determinist is explicitly allowed within Catholicism, and in fact, some would argue a more faithful interpretation of Aquinas than the libertarian one.

This isn't false but I think it's important to point out that the non-libertarian Catholic position is compatibilist rather than "hard" determinist.

Indeed, but I'm not sure why you think the same is not true of Calvinism. To use only a representative quote from the Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter III, 1-2):



I. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

II. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

Honestly, most of what I know about the details of Calvinist theology I know either through DC or through an overview in a class that, while not outright hostile, was probably slanted by the professor's Arminianism-Wesleyanism.