Featured Cage Staged Calvinism

Well sure. We serve a Covenant making, and Covenant keeping God

 

In context. [laugh]

I start out by not losing sight that the chapter opens and closes with references to Biological Israel. So we are applying something specific to a more general application. While not invalid, it carries some inherent risk.

Then I read the verse in its immediate context ... anything less than a paragraph is dangerous to pluck out and view alone for building real understanding:

[Romans 9:19-26 NASB]
19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And [He did so] to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24 [even] us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. 25 As He says also in Hosea, "I WILL CALL THOSE WHO WERE NOT MY PEOPLE, 'MY PEOPLE,' AND HER WHO WAS NOT BELOVED, 'BELOVED.'" 26 "AND IT SHALL BE THAT IN THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS SAID TO THEM, 'YOU ARE NOT MY PEOPLE,' THERE THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF THE LIVING GOD."​

Then I read both what it actually says and what it does not say.

Romans 9:21 (Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?) is speaking to the rights of God. I agree that God the Creator has the right to make an Israel and a Gentiles. God has the right to choose some of Israel and reject other parts of it. God has the right to choose some gentiles and elevate them above the rejected Jews. God has the right to save one man and to not save another ... or to save all ... or to save none. The clay (people) answers to the potter (God); the potter does not answer to the clay.

Romans 9:22 (What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?) opens with a statement that God is willing to demonstrate His wrath and make His power known, which sends a chill up my spine. I read in that that God is not reluctant to punish evil and that the punishment of evil by God is a display of the power of God. I may be a little guilty of esigesis here, but I think that displaying God's power to to demonstrate God's wrath brings glory to God by placing His Holiness and Justice and Might on display and front and center.

"Endured with much patience" tells me that God's wrath is only being postponed for a little while. The wages of sin will be paid in full. "Endured" is also not a word that implies that God is happy about waiting, rather it implies that God waits because something other than displaying his wrath is more important.

"Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction" is clear about some things and ambiguous about other things. So here is a place to exercise caution in reading what it says, not what I want it to say. There is no doubt that there exist "vessels" (that would be people in this metaphor) that are "of wrath". A flour pot, stores flour. A water jug, holds water. So does a vessel of wrath store up within itself 'wrath'? I have a mental image of the dishes at a Greek Feast provided explicitly to be shattered on the ground as you shout! "Prepared for destruction" means what, exactly? One "prepares" firewood for burning by simply stacking it in a pile to age. Could the vessels of wrath be 'prepared' by God "giving them enough rope to hang themselves" (as the saying goes). The downward spiral at the end of Romans 1 is what I have in mind ... where God progressively just "gives them over to ..." again and again. That they will ultimately end up in destruction is clearly implied (although Ephesians 2 reminds us that at one point, we were just like them).

Romans 9:23 (And [He did so] to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,) once again presents that fascinating paradox. It clearly states that the "vessels of mercy" were prepared by God beforehand for glory in a way that it does not clearly state that the vessels of wrath were prepared beforehand.

So the best my limited intellect can make of it is that the Elect are born predestined from eternity past to be recipients of God's grace, and the rest are born with the freedom to go through life storing up for themselves the wrath of a Holy God.

 

Right, but Covenant Theology takes it to a level not found in Scripture.

 

That would be another whole thread.

 

I’m not a Calvinist, I’m a Primitive Baptist.

 

How do you know?

 

If you have ever discussed it, you know.

 

Roman Catholics believe in a God that allows for people to save themselves ... through works. Therefore God is not sovereign... not completely anyway. Therefore they can’t believe Adams sin passes to his offspring. I know I didn’t believe that as a Catholic. All I had to do is say an Act of Contrition or go to Confession and God would forgive me. Never was I confronted with a God who really held me accountable for my thoughts and actions... just repent with a quick prayer and I was forgiven. But there was conditions....1) must go to mass. 2) must receive the sacraments, 3) must be a Catholic in good standing. So I always wondered, “is that it?” and for a Catholic, yea that’s it! God does not Lord it over you if you sin, God doesn’t do systematic theology and he only suggests to you that Roman Catholicism is the right and only path to God. And this thinking allows for great evil in the world.

Until one day, when I was driving home from classes I was taking in college I put on a disk/ The Method of Grace by George Whitfield. God/the Holy Spirit spoke to me directly for the next hour. He dispelled much what I had been taught by theRoman Catholic Church for 34 years and Whitfield convicted me of my sins. And in that sermon message the Doctrines of Grace shines through.

Subsequently my heart was changed, I began to grow a conscience, read and study scripture, learn from others through their books. Calvin,through his book taught me allot, but so did Spurgeon, Lloyd Jones, the Puritans like Owen and many more.

So I’m not going to fight people on doctrine, dogma and theology... I’m content that God has saved me and brought me down this road for a reason. In addition he has given me back my wife from the jaws of death and let me see a path to the future.... and even shown me a picture of a church I’ve been agonizing about for over 10 years. He is good, sovereign and my Lord & Saviour.

 

Method of Grace audio

 

In considering what is called by Calvinists the cage stage a few observations can be made

1] it is a temporary period of time.

2]it takes time to unlearn the false ideas previously taught.
3] it is not that Calvinism is wrong, but rather that the presentation of these truths needs more grace.
4] those who oppose themselves by not studying these things with a Correct motivation use this term to try and negate the true teaching.
This fails.

 

Who is more effective at advancing the Calvinistic doctrine? An aggressive cage state hurts your position. The mature Calvinists advance it. I would think that Calvinists would oppose and object strongly to cage state cals. They hurt you and help the non Cals.
D James Kennedy rarely mentioned Calvinism but did more to advance it than anyone in the modern era. He was subtle in his teaching.

 

It takes time for any Christian to mature.
Being an ex Catholic it took time to see the Rc error, study it in detail. Then there is a period of growth in grace and knowledge in how to present the doctrine.
As a non cal you like a nice soft presentation, like Dr. Kennedy....you are comfortable with it.
You are comfortable but not influenced to change yet.
Dr. Kennedy reached many, but God uses some who are more direct also.
On sermonaudio, look up Rolfe Barnard on the sermon..Do you know God...
On jn17:3

 

I will look for it. Kennedy brought me closer to Calvinism than anyone else has. He brought me to the point of realizing it can not be defeated in honest debate. It and Classical Arminianism both have their thorns. Neither have as many thorns as "traditionalism."

 

Spurgeon recognized and lamented how this sort of thing's a permanent state for many:

 

John Piper • Why Are Calvinists So Negative?

 

So Piper believes that Calvinism draws a certain mindset.

It draws hostile people.

It draws people to the doctrine without conversion.

What does that say about Calvinism?

 

When the doctrines of grace had full impact on me that's exactly how I felt; that up until that time I had been lied to.

 

Agreed. The interesting thing is that the New Calvinism is causing an equally large group of non Calvinists to become just as annoying and obnoxious as the cage Cals.