Calvinism needs to add words to scripture

[atpollard]

"John Calvin was...in favor of beheading and burning at the stake those who disagreed with him" = Horror.
So, we know that God didn't Call Calvin, or Lead him, to do that.

"For as many as are Led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God", Romans 8:14.

Are we going to apply the same metric to Martin Luther and rejoin the Catholic Church?

In his 1543 treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther advocated for severe persecution, including the destruction of homes and synagogues, the burning of prayer books, and the banning of rabbis from teaching. He recommended that rabbis be forbidden to teach under "pain of loss of life and limb," which proposed capital punishment.

Are we going to hold King James 1 to the same standard and reject the KJV Bible?

James I (VI of Scotland) was responsible for widespread witch hunts in Scotland (roughly 1,500 executions, often focusing on women, starting in 1590).

1500 people (mostly women) murdered by King James DWARFS anything that John Calvin may have done.

 

[DaveXR650]

"In his expositions [Calvin] is not always what moderns would call Calvinistic" —Charles Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries

Yeah. I notice that with a lot of theologians, especially if they were practicing preachers also. I seem to see writers all over the place trying to explain Calvin, or Augustine for that matter, and there are people saying Calvin definitely believed in limited atonement and some say no. It's sufficient for me that most Calvinists believe that anyone who comes to Christ will be saved. How that is working will of course be according to your view of determinism and how God's sovereignty works, and we can't forget, your view of precisely how our sins are dealt with by the atonement.

I don't have enough history background to know but it is interesting to try to figure out how the extreme determinism philosophical part of what we argue about on Calvinism came about. I mean when Sproul said that there cannot be one single random molecule that God is not completely in control of did he get that from Calvinist theologians who preceded him, or from philosophers, or has that been deduced since the Reformation and the brief era when Puritans were predominant in England.

Like I have said before, I have no problem with any Calvinist who says that the offer of the gospel is genuine to all who hear it. For myself, I don't believe the atonement is limited in any way and have no problem telling anyone who asks about the gospel and what it is, or will at least listen to someone explain it - that Christ died for them. But I'm OK with the Calvinist statement of "Christ has died, and you now can come". Unfortunately, that is too much for some Calvinists, who insist that it's either all 5 points or nothing and there is no such thing as a 4 point Calvinist. I'm not so sure the terms mean much anymore, except on a debate forum, which is fun if you don't get too carried away with it.