[UA] Calvinism Vs. Free Will

[Emily Dresner-Thornber]

> God makes some people to be saved.  They will be saved.  God makes some
> people to be damned.  They will be damned.  Because human actions are
> meaningless next to the immensity of God's power, only faith can produce
> salvation.  So your actions have NO EFFECT on your salvation.  It only
> matters if you believe at the moment of death.
>
> Some of the people who are born to go to hell are going to lead godly, holy
> lives but have a moment of doubt on their deathbeds and be condemned to
> eternal torment.  Some of the people who are born to go to heaven are going
> to be evil shitweeds for 99.9% of their lives, but will have a deathbed
> conversion and will be blessed with eternal bliss.

Like it or not, this is spot on.  The logic works a bit like this:

Once upon a time, the Church ran out of money.  To make money, the Church
went into business for itself, and sold indulgences.  "That's right,
folks," they said, "if you give some cash to Mother Church, you get out of
one sin For Free."

The logic of this did not escape Martin Luther, who suspected that giving
money to the Church did not actually absolve you of anything, let
alone personal sin.  He said as much.  Luther also had written that man's
will is enslaved to either God or Satan, not to the Church, and it was
God's job to do the absolving and indulging.  He wanted a metaphor to use
as his position in discussing free will, sin, and the power of God.  It
made sense at the time.

A generation later, a guy named John Calvin came along and got it all
mucked up.  Being an educated man, he made the logical leap that, if you
no longer had to go through the Church to be absolved of personal sin, you
no longer had to go through the Church for _anything_.  If you believed in
the literal word of Jesus Christ, Jesus would absolve you of all sin and
you would be let into Heaven.

Here's the bit from those good Jesuits who put together the Catholic
Encyclopedia, which I thought was funny:

"His "pure doctrine" is gained by appealing, not to tradition, the
"deposit" of faith, but to argument in abstract terms exercised upon
Scripture. He is neither a critic nor a historian; he takes the Bible as
something given; and he manipulates the Apostles' Creed in accordance with
his own ideas. The "Institutes" are not a history of dogma, but a
treatise, only not to be called an essay because of its peremptory tone.
Calvin annihilates the entire space, with all its developments, which lies
between the death of St. John and the sixteenth century. He does, indeed,
quote St. Augustine, but he leaves out all that Catholic foundation on
which the Doctor of Grace built."

It's only a few more hoops to get through to get to Chick Tracks,
honestly.  He whipped out First Cause and beat it to death; now the
concept of First Cause is the single overarching concept in Calvinism.

If you want a UA spin on it, think of it this way: the doctrines of John
Calvin are hinged on Adam's Fall.  By Man's fall, Man is inherently a
sinner while God stays good and pure.  God deamed it was necessary for the
existance of Man, so he could decide who was "Good" and who was "Evil."

By theory, then, since the Comte is the First Man, he was created "evil"
by God, and because he cannot ascend until Man is "Good" again, he must
bear out all of human history.  In the mean time, only those who are
"created good" during the "First Cause" are those who ascend to the Clergy
because God created only those to be worthy of Heaven.  If God
chooses someone by destiny to ascend and kick someone out, they
will do so.  Everyone else roasts in Hell, regardless of how they lead
their lives.  They might get some dispensation for being "saved," but
they will not be permitted to join God.

"It is an awful decree, I confess, but none can deny that God foreknew
the future final fate of man before He created him -- and that
He did foreknow it because it was appointed by His own ordinance."

(There's a good KULT bit in here, I know it.)

**********
Emily K. Dresner-Thornber
Freelance Writer
zenith at evilkitten.org

"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."


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