Why are so many Anglicans Calvinists?

[file13]

That link doesn't seem to take me to any post of yours.

I did for me. But it's just my previous question to MKJ in this thread (#58) where I engage the actual article.

You're apparently assuming that the secrecy relates to whomhe predestines. However, whether or not his workings are secret or unknowable, that doesn't mean that he's predestining individuals to salvation, etc.

Again, please see my response above, because I don't think there's any assuming on my part given the text. It also seems to be quite clear that this election is of individuals and leads to salvation.

The best I can probably do is ask you to read that Article carefully and without any preconceived idea, based upon the title, of what it's going to say. At the same time, be aware that Reformed-type Predestination was the predominant POV of the church in that century, regardless of how the Article on Predestination itself is understood.

I gotcha and thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me. But yeah, it could be that it is indeed Reformed in content which we might expect given the CoE of the time. Of course, even if so, I'm not trying to get anyone to change their theology. I just honestly want to know where the alleged ambiguity is.

 

[MKJ]

Ok, but where does the article identify predestination with only God's foreknowledge of who would choose Him? It seems to plainly say that it's not foreknowledge, but a secret decree:

...he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour.
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Again, I don't see anything here that indicates that God's decree is based on some kind of foreknowledge of who would chose Him or it would not be His "secret counsel." Also, dosen't this seem pretty plain that it's saying that God decreed to deliver those who He has chosen, and thus, by plain and irresistible logic, that He didn't do so for those He didn't chose, especially in light of article 10?

This is why I'm asking, because I just don't see how you can not get a Reformed view from this article if you read them as the declaration says, in their plain and literal manner. I'm open to suggestions and even the idea that the articles are indeed ambiguous. But I just haven't heard any.

When I read about God's "secret counsel" I immediately think of apophatic theology. Even in the most classical understanding of God's providence, a central point is that his ways are above ours, we cannot see how it will all fit together, God's reason, if we can use that term, is not linear like human reason. My immediate thought is towards an understanding of creation's relation to God's providence as described by Boethius, with God as both the central point and the circumference of all creation. We and our reason and choices are taken up into God's understanding/nature/being, but that nature as it is in itself largely opaque to us and is above our way of being.

We do not and cannot understand how it is that God graces us with the space to make free choices so that we can actually be a sort of primary cause of our own destiny, any more than we can understand how leviathan is chained in the deeps.

To me it reads as talking about God's providence. I can see that it is trying to walk the line of appealing also to a Reformed perspective, but it isn't exclusive to that understanding.