Greetings

Hello and Greatting in Jesus name! Hope you are having the most blessed of days!

same here. yo!

i was poking my head in mostly because i have taken bookoos of those "faith-o-matic" type of quizzes, and quaker ALWAYS comes up as #1 followed by orthodox and catholic. think ill stick around and figure out what it is we have in common if you dont mind.

Feel free to ask any questions

I'm just curious, what's the difference between anabaptists and calvinists? I hear they both love banana bread, also prefer to use analog clocks over real clocks. What else is similar/different?

Thanks!

crosscross66 said:

I'm just curious, what's the difference between anabaptists and calvinists? I hear they both love banana bread, also prefer to use analog clocks over real clocks. What else is similar/different?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Although I do love banana bread I am an even bigger sucker for chocolate cake.

But in all seriousness i would say anabaptists and calvinists are almost complete opposites. We reject election and believe the Lord wants ALL people saved. We reject limited atonement and believe the Lord sent his Son Jesus to die for ALL people. We reject once saved always saved and believe someone can be saved at one point but turn from their faith therefore loosing their salvation. We reject predestination and double predestination and believe the Lord has given his children free will.

crosscross66 said:

I'm just curious, what's the difference between anabaptists and calvinists? I hear they both love banana bread, also prefer to use analog clocks over real clocks. What else is similar/different?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

According to GAMEO:

The main controversial issues from the side of Calvinism (see also Calvin) were: rejection of infant baptism, non-swearing of oaths, refusal to bear arms, refusal to serve in governmental offices, and the practice of avoidance. Occasionally the Mennonites were also charged with false doctrines such as unorthodoxy in regard to the Trinity, and denial of the deity of Christ and the atonement.
--van der Zijpp, Nanne. (1953). Calvinism and Mennonitism (Netherlands). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 25 July 2011, from [unable to post link]

There is a very early record of a despute between a Calvinist and an Anabaptist (Hutterite)... although, technically, the Anabaptist is a prisoner of the Calvinist and was being interrogated. By reading the dispute (interrogation), we can see differences stand out between them. Here are a few parts of that as taken from the translation in Leonhard Dax's Encounter With Calvinism, 1567/68 by Leonard Gross in Mennonite Quarterly Review.

Calvinist: because public preaching and the instituting of ministers cannot and dare not take place without a special calling, you should prove that you and your church have the power and authority to institute churches in all lands and thus to preach in public, like the apostles.

Anabaptist: What the first apostolic church had the authority and power to proclaim is not a sin for the last church with its servants also to proclaim and to equip witnesses for itself to all the peoples . . .

Calvinist: you assert that the present-day church has the authority and right to do what the apostolic church did. . . .

Anabaptist: I say and confess that as baptism, evangelization, preaching, laying on of hands, binding and loosing, retaining and forgiving sins through faith, commissioning, receiving and excluding all had their command and basis for doing these things in the first apostolic church; so also the last church, in the fear of God, may officiate in commissioning, teaching, baptizing and believing. . . .

Calvinist: Since you confess the same foundation with us, namely Jesus Christ, in that he is our justification, why do you separate yourselves from our church in which the foundation is correctly laid . . . ?

Anabaptist: because you boast of Christ with your mouth and perform heathen deeds, we have sufficient reason to separate from you and other false churches . . .

Calvinist: it is definitely provable that not only from the apostles' time up to the present was infant baptism the practice and usage, but also during the Apostolic times infant baptism was customary . . .

Anabaptist: the mature should be baptized who come to faith as a result of the preaching of the gospel of God's grace in Christ— those should be baptized; but children who do not have faith, knowledge or understanding of the grace of God and cannot distinguish between good and bad, these should not be baptized . . . Therefore I say—not I but the eternal truth, which is God—that before being baptized men must repent, confess their sin, and have true faith in Christ as stands written in Acts: "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ," and as the dear Apostle Philip also practiced this ordinance in Samaria where he baptized men and women.

Calvinist: Baptism has come to us and our children in the New Testament to take the place of circumcision in the Old Testament. . . . The new birth is not only acknowledging sin, hating it or desisting from it, and loving truth and righteousness, but also having manifested pardon and forgiveness of sins for the sake of the bitter suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The elect infants have this merit . . .

Anabaptist: I . . . by no means grant your argument that if infants are not baptized with water they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. . . . God will neither damn nor save infants because of their belief or unbelief, baptism or lack of baptism. . . . because children are still ignorant of the sin within them, but have not yet been able to commit sin, I reckon and confess truly that God will save them all forever without water baptism, on the basis of his bitter suffering and death.

Calvinist: since the children of believers are in the covenant of the grace of God they should be baptized. . . . You err in supposing that baptism is only a seal by which we consent to die to the old man and promise to lead a Christian life which infants cannot yet promise . . .

See the article for more.

mighty2save said:

Although I do love banana bread I am an even bigger sucker for chocolate cake.

But in all seriousness i would say anabaptists and calvinists are almost complete opposites. We reject election and believe the Lord wants ALL people saved. We reject limited atonement and believe the Lord sent his Son Jesus to die for ALL people. We reject once saved always saved and believe someone can be saved at one point but turn from their faith therefore loosing their salvation. We reject predestination and double predestination and believe the Lord has given his children free will.

Click to expand...

Amen! This sounds very familiar. I have a coworker that is a Calvinist. I have been working with him over Spiritual things for over a year. He is very knowledge of the Bible, more like than me even; not to mention he is 2 times older than me. We constantly debate or sometimes argue, I must confess, about freewill and about how Jesus died for all and He will help us if we come to Him, not the other way around. He thinks all he have to do is to just sit around and wait for the Lord to do all of the work.

But I did do research about Calvinist and about T.U.L.I.P (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints). I am trying to find verses to counteract with this, but he will say "Well, it does mean what you think it means."

Also, I believe in the election, but not the one that they are thinking about. The Bible talks about "the Elect." But what does it say? The elect are the people of God. The elect are the Christians. In John 1:12 says "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." If we allow the Lord to change us and to make us clean (Which by the way is the conversion from a sinner to a Christian), He will gives us power to become the sons of God, or He will give us power to become the elect.