Calvinism doesn't exist in early christian writers till Augustine

Jesusthekingofking said:

does the early church fathers teach Calvinism?

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Calvin quotes prolifically from Augustine and Paul. His position, he believes, is well grounded in scripture. Augustine, again, relies on Paul, not to the exclusion of other scriptural writers. Both argue their positions are well grounded in scripture. The question is, what happened between Paul and Augustine to bring about a different emphasis?

Here is Augustine describing [sarcasm] the EVIL of God saving him in August of 386 without first begging for his permission and yielding the Divine Will to the carnal human will [/sarcasm]:

• Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.

public hermit said:

The question is, what happened between Paul and Augustine to bring about a different emphasis?

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Since Paul died around AD 64/67 and John died in AD 100, the question is what happened in the Church between AD 100 and AD 400 that the ECFs were focusing their attention on.

• (AD 50- 150) Early Gnosticism:
  • Man must obtain freedom from Yahweh, a jealous god that enslaves people.
  • through wisdom, the human soul can become divine.
  • Christ as a spirit being that reveals the spirit realm as the true home of men through a mythical story.
• (AD 100-180) Valentinius: Taught that scripture was to be read allegorically rather than literally ... references to Jews and Gentiles represent conflict between people who are only semi-spiritual and those that are fully open to the spiritual.
• (AD 100-325) Docetism: Taught that jesus only appeared to be human, but was never actually human.
  
• (AD 170 - 325) Montanus: Taught that the Holy Spirit "possessed" prophets and spoke new revelation through them that superseded even the Apostolic writings.
  
• (AD 150-160) Marcion: Taught God the Father of Jesus and the God of the Old Testament were two different beings (one good and one evil); and Jesus was Divine Spirit but not literally flesh and blood.
  
• (AD 150-225) Classic Gnosticism: ("inner truth revealed by Jesus")
• (AD 180-325) Adoptionism: First taught in "Shepherd of Hermas" (book) and championed by Theodotus of Byzantium, this heresy claimed that Jesus was born a normal man and adopted by God.
  
• (AD 200-325) Orthodox reaction and decline of Gnostic heresy:

In AD 325, the First Ecumenical Council of the Great Church (the undivided Christian Church) met to discuss several issues and write a creed to settle the question of the nature of God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit which the ECFs had dedicated hundreds of letters and scores of books arguing against heresies over. The result was the Nicene Creed of 325:


Thus it was that in AD 386, a scholarly Augustine was chosen by God for salvation (per Ephesians 2) and was free to ponder something other than the Trinity and God-Man nature of the incarnation.

At least that is how I see it.
YMMV

Jesusthekingofking said:

The Lutheran was augustine student too, Luther is an augustinian monk, why we don't see 2 denominations agree on the same thing?

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Lutherans and Calvinists do not disagree on the fundamental MONERGISM of salvation. They disagree on the role of tradition in defining Dogma.

John Gill quotes the church fathers and demonstrates their "Calvinism."

The Cause of God and Truth (eBook) | Monergism

https://www.grace-ebooks.com/library/John Gill/JG_Cause of God and Truth The.pdf

You can flip through the contents in the link below to see which fathers he quotes.

The Cause Of God And Truth I, II, II, IV. : Dr. John Gill, editor David Clarke : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Reformers did read the fathers. East, West, Apostolic and Ante Nience fathers.

If anyone has read Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion he cites the early church fathers everyone other page. The single volume is a cheaper edition but the two volume edition contains all of the footnotes and translations from the Latin. The entire institutes follows the same theological pattern of the Apostles Creed! On the doctrine of the Holy Trinity Calvin remains in line with the early church and was declared "orthodox" on this doctrine by a Roman Catholic Bishop no less. Calvin departs from St. Thomas Aquinas and his view of divine simplicity, preferring the thought and method of the Cappadocian Fathers. On this doctrine alone he cites Justin, Ignatius, Basil, the Council of Nicaea, Augustine, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hilary, Cyril of Alexandrea, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nazianzus. I'm sure they are more but that's all I have written down in my notes.

If one looks at the work of Calvin you just can't deny he read the church fathers and used their work to build upon. Check out the Lutheran Confessions as well, their Reformation was much, much more conservative, they cite the fathers more liberally. Prosper of Aquitaine comes to mind.

Yours in the Lord,

jm
PS: There is an entire book titled, "John Calvin Student of the Church Fathers" by Lane

Jesusthekingofking said:

Lutheran and Calvinist both affirm morgnersism.

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That’s what I said (although it may not have been clear being worded as a double negative).

Jesusthekingofking said:

What do you mean the Lutheran quote the church father more liberally?

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lib·er·al·ly /ˈlib(ə)rəlē/

adverb

1. in large or generous amounts.
2. in a way that is not precise or strictly literal; loosely.

I think he means in sense #1 of the word from the above definition.

Jesusthekingofking said:

I would say the reformed misused the church father to blindly support their system. Rc, EO, Lutheran read the fathers but never approve calvinsms, why do you think so? Because it's quoted out of context.

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I also think you need an Ativan salt lick to help you chill. You seem to be going out of your way to take offense or court a fight. (I could be wrong; tone is very hard to convey in written form, but your’s appears belligerent.)

Cormack said:

I believe Calvinism misses the heart of the gospel by making God into the Levite or the Pharisee, passing over the robbed and wounded man dying by the roadside.

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The flaw in your analogy is that God is passing over the robbers, not the man on the side of the road. All are “guilty” and not “innocent victims”. Paul invests the first few chapters of Romans making that point very clear. (Or the opening verses of the second chapter of Ephesians.)

Jesusthekingofking said:

does the early church fathers teach Calvinism?

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Nope. Not a one that I've seen.

Jesus was a Calvinist.

atpollard said:

lib·er·al·ly /ˈlib(ə)rəlē/

adverb

1. in large or generous amounts.
2. in a way that is not precise or strictly literal; loosely.

I think he means in sense #1 of the word from the above definition.



I also think you need an Ativan salt lick to help you chill. You seem to be going out of your way to take offense or court a fight. (I could be wrong; tone is very hard to convey in written form, but your’s appears belligerent.)

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A third possible meaning: “He quoted the Institutes liberally’ could. also mean, “In quoting the Institutes, he put the most generous construction upon awkward passages in them”.

IOW, a manner, as well as a quantity, can be liberal.

There are also “the liberal arts”. The L-word has a lot of shades of meaning.

renniks said:

Nope. Not a one that I've seen.

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But they did teach a lot of heresies.
(In many respects, I think the ECF are over rated.)

atpollard said:

But they did teach a lot of heresies.
(In many respects, I think the ECF are over rated.)

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Such as?

renniks said:

Such as?

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Origen taught Creation of the Son (like the Jehovah’s Witnesses) and subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father (not eternal co-equality among the Godhead).

This is not to diminish his remarkable accomplishments, rather it is to caution that all the writings of the ECFs are not “God-breathed” even if many choose to quote them as if they were.

Jesusthekingofking said:

I think your reading of the church father is loose. I'm arguing a few pastristic lean denomination like rc, eo and Lutheran read the church father but refuted calvinsms. Calvinisms have less root looking back at pastristic teaching but more on reasoning. You don't claim something when you haven't do your homework right.

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I have the choice to either take the use of “you” as personal and respond defensively to the accusation that I ‘have not done my homework right’ (since I personally hardly ever read the church fathers), or I can take the use of “you” to be more generic (“you all”, “Calvinists”).

When in doubt, I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the best. So my response …

That is why “Sola Scriptura” is so important to Particular Baptists like myself. We look to Scripture rather than Commentaries on Scripture as our “final word”.

atpollard said:

The flaw in your analogy is that God is passing over the robbers, not the man on the side of the road.

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Under Calvinism God leaves every unsaved person in their spiritually sick or wounded state, there’s no “innocent” man to pass by because no natural man is innocent according to the Calvinist.

The point of the Good Samaritan story however is that it’s the Samaritan who stops and helps, whereas the two supposedly more admirable characters ignore the victim.

God we would think is the most noble character, but on Calvinism he refuses to play the part of the Samaritan in the case of the lost sinner.

God (in terms of making a provision or effort at ensuring the lost man’s salvation) ignores everyone he refuses to regenerate and save, at least that’s how things work in the Calvinistic scheme of things.

JM said:

Jesus was a Calvinist.

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I think it is more accurate to say that Calvinism preserves, or strongly emphasises, certain emphases in the apocalyptic sectarian Judaism preached by Jesus, that other forms of Christianity do not emphasise as strongly, or even share. And, like other forms of Christianity, it mainly ignores other emphases in His preaching, constructing its own, often materially Biblical, solutions instead, as have other Christianities.

Jesus was a late Second Temple Galilean Jew who preached an eschatological Messianic Judaism that subsequently outgrew its Jewish origins & (in its catholic version) became a mostly Gentile salvationist cult, before being established by the Roman State within the boundaries of the Roman Empire.

In some respects, Calvinism harks back to the political arrangements of pre-Exilic Israel & Judah. It justified its repression of (what are commonly regarded as) other forms of Christianity by citing OT precedents. By contrast, when James and John offered to call down fire from Heaven on an unwelcoming Samaritan village, in imitation of Elijah's calling down fire upon the bands of soldiers sent to arrest him, Jesus forbade James and John to do so:

51As the day of His ascension approached, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52He sent messengers on ahead, who went into a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. 53But the people there refused to welcome Him, because He was heading for Jerusalem.54When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do You want us to call down fire from heavene to consume them?”55But Jesus turned and rebuked them.f 56And He and His disciples went on to another village.

55 f BYZ and TR include and He said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of. 56For the Son of Man did not come to destroy the lives of men, but to save them.” 

Luke 9 BSB

Calvinism has not always been successful in avoiding a wrong spirit.

The problem for the OT Israelite/Jewish polity, and also for Apostolic Christianity, Catholicism & for much pre-US Protestantism, is that all 3 religions are totalising movements - as are the different types of Fascism & Communism. As is much of Islam. They are totalising, in that they allow no "space", intellectual, moral, spiritual, aesthetic, ethical, political, spatial, to any other polity or creed than their own. Calvinism has exemplified this tendency. Nowadays, totalising Christianity has fallen from favour - which makes little sense, if any.

Calvinism shares another problem found in other forms of Christianity. It has to live within the world, & to provide structures & other means for its continuation as a stable & lasting visible society. It, like other Christian bodies, believes that the Second Coming will occur - but, like them, it has to function as though it did not. In that respect, it cannot adopt the apocalyptic sectarian eschatological Messianic Judaism of Jesus - or only in part. And because, like other forms of Christianity, it is separated by many lands, centuries, & cultures from that in which Jesus lived, it has to accommodate itself to the lands, times, & cultures of today. Jesus did not live in a post-Enlightenment, largely secular liberal, multicultural, Europeanised, politically democratic, multi-State, constitutional federal presidential republic. Calvinists in the USA, do. With the best will in the world, they cannot avoid being influenced by the culture in which they live. And that culture is made up of a mixture of influences, many of them not at all Christian in any sense.

The religion preached by Jesus, and that preached by Paul, were preached to different types of society. Paul preached largely to mostly urban Gentiles, Jesus to mostly rural Jews. A Jewish Gospel full of OT assumptions & notions can hardly make the very same impression on urban Gentiles as on rural Jews living under foreign - and quite recent - occupation. The change from a Jewish to a Gentile audience can hardly have left the act of preaching unchanged - and the differences between the Pauline letters, and the Gospels & Acts, bear this out. From preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God, Jesus Crucified, Raised & Glorified becomes the subject-matter of the preaching in Acts & the Letters. The presence in the NT of these different stages of the Christian tradition has left Christians how to relate them. Which, if either, takes priority over the other, and why ? And, since the Christian Bible includes that of the Jews, how are the Jewish & Christian Scriptures, and their parts, to be related ? The Bible itself gives rather little guidance on these questions. Jesus, again, knew nothing of the NT Scriptures. Calvinism does.