in the literature course i am doing at the moment, we are covering john donne, and at the same covering the early protestant (calvinist and lutheran) theology that gives his writing its context. the writings of the protestant church at this time seems to be fatally flawed. i shall give a breif outline for those that dont know then state the problem.
early in the 13th or 14 century, the great minds of the catholic church got together do decide whether gods grace came before or after our lives. seeing as how he is omnipotent, it only makes sense that this comes before evry thing. now this wasnt a problem for the catholics, as they believe in free will, and that god judges you on the acts that you commit during you life time, meaning that you can be saved if you do good deeds and confess your sins. the problem was that the early protestants saw gods grace being provenient as a problem to free will, as it meant that he wouldnt necessarily know whether you were saved or damned until you died. the decided that god must know from the moment you are born whether or not you were saved or damned.
the problem with this is… why would you then feel compelled to follow the christian moral code if you belived it didn’t affect where you spent eternity? calvin beleived in keeping your “faith righteousness” and never despairing as this would involve you being damned, but the flaw with this is that it shouldnt matter whether you despair or not, as if you do, you were always meant to, or you are to be saved anyway.
Shed light as in make it make sense? Calvinism is so absurd that most Christians even have rejected it. What gave you the impression that it was supposed to make sense?
The calvinistic life is based on obedience. Yes, one’s salvation is already determined by God, but the desire to follow the Christian moral code is in response to God’s love towards oneself. A calvinist would not want to receive salvation from God and also face God without being grateful (a grateful life would be an obident life). A calvinist would not follow a disobident life in fear of not being the elect of God but at the same time not needing to truly take responsibilty because one’s salvations is completly based on God’s sovergnity.
Hi the_patient
Perhaps it is a logic that assumes that God is outside of time and therefore he see’s the beginning and end of a life and lets it run making minor adjustments on the way.
For someone outside of time, perhaps time in ‘this space’ would appear like a line much like we see two-dimensional objects in our three-dimensional world???
C.S. Lewis put it this way (and this is a paraphrase) “If Time is a line, the God is the paper (or plane) that it is drawn on. The choice you make today is the same as you made the minute you were born, or the moment you die.”
