Ask a Philosophical Calvinist Christian

Tree of Life said:

This is one reason but not the only reason.

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Why do you think there are so many varying views, that have created numerous denominations?

bhsmte said:

Would you agree, different interpretations of scripture, is the reason there are so many denominations of Christianity?

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If I may, quite a few--perhaps a majority--of existing denominations owe their existence to something other than some dispute over the interpretation of scripture. Quite a few exist to serve a particular ethnic group although their beliefs are essentially the same as some other synod or church body of the same denomination, and many others owe their origin to disagreements over leadership or some such administrative matter.

I believe the churches as seven, as presented in Revelation...

Ephesus - Apostolic - Paul tells of all of Asia as having forsaken him
Smyrna - Early Orthodox -Foxes lists the persecutions as ten
Pergamos - Orthodox - Pergos is a tower... Needed in the dark ages
Thyatira - Catholic - The spirit of Jezebel is to control and to dominate.
Sardis - Protestant - A sardius is a gem - elegant yet hard and rigid
Philadelphia - Methodist-Pentecostal- To be sanctioned is to acquire it with love.
Laodicea -Pentecostal-Charismatic-Independent Rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing?

Is Calvinism unique within the Sardisean church age

TOL, do you have views on the Transcendental Argument for God - how good an argument it is, whether it's properly a philosophical or a theological argument, and so on?

I once had tea at Van Til's house. We were all quite in awe of him.

When I was a student, some of us went to visit him. I don't remember much of what he said, but I remember that he had a cat. An appropriate animal friend for a self-described "bookworm." His wife brought us tea and pastries. Some of the guys were asking him about various questions about Rushdooney and Dooyeweerd, I think. I sort of vaguely recall van Til saying that D. didn't start out from scripture in his thinking, but I could be misremembering.

I'm not sure how far I want to get into the topic of van Til's writings. I shall venture, though, to put forth this, which I find baffling.

Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, wrote:
“In the first place, it is possible in this way to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at every point in the sense that always and everywhere man confronts that which is already fully known or interpreted by God. The point of reference cannot but be the same for man as for God. There is no fact that man meets in any of his investigation where the face of God does not confront him. On the other hand in this way it is possible to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at no point in the sense that in his awareness of meaning of anything, in his mental grasp or understanding of anything, man is at each point dependent upon a prior act of unchangeable understanding and revelation on the part of God. The form of the revelation of God to man must come to man in accordance with his creaturely limitations. God’s thought with respect to anything is a unit. Yet it pertains to a multiplicity of objects. But man can think of that unit as involving a number of items only in the form of succession. So Scripture speaks of God as though he were thinking his thoughts step by step. All revelation is anthropomorphic. When God reveals himself to man he reveals something of the fullness of his being. In God’s mind any bit of information that he gives to man is set in the fullness of his one supreme act of self-affirmation” (IST 164-165).
This seems to me to boil down to:
at every point – if man knows something, God already knows it better
at no point – if man knows something, God already knows it better.

??

Van Til’s distinction seems either not a distinction or incoherent.

Elsewhere in that passage (164), van Til says that man "knows something about everything ... and on the other hand... does not know anything exhaustively..." This is somewhat clearer, but it leaves me thinking that van Til's desire to construct antitheses led him into a muddle over the "at every point / at no point" polarity.

When he goes on to say that man's knowledge must remain analogical, I think he opens the can of worms another turn or two, but I shrink from getting into the univocal/equivocal/analogical debate.

Tree of Life said:

I think your question might be: what does church membership tell me about someone's moral integrity?

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Being an atheist, he is probably a Pelagian. Not without reason, he probably thinks that Pelagianism is a theology typical of quite a few Christians as well.

lesliedellow said:

Being an atheist, he is probably a Pelagian. Not without reason, he probably thinks that Pelagianism is a theology typical of quite a few Christians as well.

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It is. I have conversations with Christians all the time who tell me they believe I'll be permitted to Heaven, despite my atheism. This includes my entire extended family.

It's extremely popular among liberal Christians, though very few of them probably know it by name.

Growing up I attempted to go to school and work too. I had a paper route as a pre-teen and would work hay fields and restaurants during my teen years.

What money I made was used to purchase Mad Magazines, beer, and cigarettes. I also filled my ears with the likes of Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the likes. What times I would try to read the bible I would make it to Exodus and then was lost with the construction of the temple and the vestitures of the priests. Having been brought up in the Marine Corps and living in the arctic tundra of Michigan during the time I could not imagine there being a God.

All that changed when I fell in with the Pentecostal Holiness church. When the Holy Spirit entered the spiritual man I begin to take an interest in the word of God and never looked back.

There was a teenage girl who got drunk in the Holy Spirit during a revival. All you could get out of her was a sweet little laugh. Well the next night of revival I was waiting for a testimony. She said that she did not sleep all night for reading the word of God. This was good enough for me that she indeed get something from the Holy Ghost... The Holy Spirit will stir up interest in the word of God.

RW Schambach preaches a message in that the Word and the Spirit of God are representative of the two trumpets in the old testament. They are of the same piece. When you get the Spirit you will take interest in the Word of God. Having the Spiritual witness inside all doubts as to God's existence will roll away.