God exercised His saving power for all people by sacrificing His own son on a cross

Monday, August 25

God exercised His saving power for all people by sacrificing His own son on a cross

Thank you for your comments, Dusty.

First off, I had no idea you were a Roman Catholic.

I am not.

I just figured if you could argue what appeared to be a Calvinist position without claiming to be a Calvinist, I could mention Roman Catholicism without being Roman Catholic. :)

(I was fairly horrified that you characterized me as a representative of Calvinism, as if the statements I had made in order to shine some light on some of the monstrous implications of your own theology were meant as straight representations of Calvinist thought.)

It appears that you don't really understand "my" theology.

if you believe in an all-powerful God Who has sovereignly decided to send people to an eternal life of total misery, oftentimes after enduring an earthly life of total misery, simply for not believing in Him, even though He has the power (being all-powerful) to save them.

God exercised that saving power for all people by sacrificing His own Son on a cross.

The problem here is the assertion that God sends people to Hell "simply for not believing in Him."

What does God say? "The soul that sins is the one who will die."

All sins -- not just unbelief -- send people to Hell.

(What would you do with the murderer? Rapist? Pedophile? Genocidal monster? Mohammed? Yet Christ died for his sins, too.)

UNBELIEF REJECTS GOD'S SAVING POWER. That people end up in Hell is not evidence of His cruelty or indifference, it is evidence of people's utter wickedness.

If one rejects Christ and His payment for sin, there's only one payment left, and it's coming out of your own pocket.

To blame God for punishing sin is like hating a cop for arresting a rapist. It is perverse.

You're appalled that the God of Calvinism has "created people for Hell"... Fair enough.

Thank you.

But you don't seem to understand that your God, in His omnipotence and omniscience, has essentially done the exact same thing

No, creating people for Hell is not dying on a cross to take away their sins.

Is that not obvious, even to someone with "latent Calvinist tendencies"? :)

since you believe that Hell is populated with souls that He knew full well would end up there before He laid the foundations of the earth (i.e. before He decided to go ahead and create those souls, despite His foreknowledge of where they were gonna end up).

6 of one, half dozen of the other, as they say.

Foreknowledge is not predestination.

Knowing that your child will suffer (perhaps terribly and chronically) and die (pretty much guaranteed!) means that you should have never given birth? Or committed infanticide?

a diatribe offered by a person who believes in a God who created hell for millions of people

What does God say? Hell was created for the devil and his angels, not for man.

Man was created for Life, and even though we reject it -- even though we make ourselves enemies of God! -- in His mercy Christ died for the sins of the whole world.

The Calvinist denies both those essential points. He says that God created only a few for Life (the rest for Hell), and that Christ died for only a few.

THE CALVINIST DENIES GOD'S SAVING POWER TO MANY.

The contrast couldn't be more stark.

(Yes, obviously I do have Calvinist sympathies--particularly from a purely academic and intellectual standpoint--but I have severe enough problems with all rigid theological systems, including Calvinism, that I can't rightly call myself by any of their names.)

Which is why it is best to ask, "What does God say?"

On the fall of Constantinople

"[...] the great church of Hagia Sophia was filled to capacity. Thousands of people were moving towards the church. Inside, Orthodox and Catholic priests were holding liturgy, the last Christian service after almost 1,000 years. People were singing hymns, others were openly crying, others were asking each other for forgiveness [...].

"Bands of Ottoman soldiers began now looting. Doors were broken, private homes were looted, their tenants were massacred. Shops in the city markets were looted. Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped; many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving, went on and on [...].

"The great doors of Hagia Sophia were forced open, and crowds of angry soldiers came in and fell upon the unfortunate worshippers. Pillaging and killing in the holy place went on for hours. Similar was the fate of worshippers in most churches in the city [...].

"Thousands of civilians were enslaved, soldiers fought over young boys and young women [...] the invaders broke the heads of those women who resisted on the floor of the churches and they raped them dead. The famous icon of Apostole Loukas was totally destroyed.

"The sultan asked for the young sons of Duke Loukas Notaras. Their father refused and Mehmed was ready to take their heads. Notaras asked him to kill him after his sons so that he was sure that they were dead and not disgraced from the pervert sultan.

"And this is what happened."

Black Tuesday, The Last Day of the World, the twenty-ninth of May, anno Domini MCDLIII

On American Liberty

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776

"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson Washington, Mar. 23, 1801

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

The truth about Mahomet

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled -- the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Winston Churchill, Churchill, Winston S. (1899), The River War, First edition, Vol. II, pp. 248-250

A war of twelve hundred years

"And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man, was the early object of his mission; and the authoritative demonstration of the immortality of man, was that, which constituted the more than earthly tribute of glory to God in the highest [...] The first conquest of the religion of Jesus, was over the unsocial passions of his disciples. It elevated the standard of the human character in the scale of existence. [...] On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE.

[...]

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE

[...]

"Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant. [...] While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”

John Quincy Adams, Blunt, Joseph (1830),The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9, pp. 268-269

Impossible Islamophobia

Nearly one and one-half millennia of slavery, rape, and slaughter in Allah's name ...

80% of American -- not Pakistani, not Saudi Arabian, not Iranian, but American -- mosques teach jihad/Islamic supremacism ...

Nearly twenty-seven thousand documented jihad attacks since 9/11 alone, and ...

Islam's "Ideal Man" Muhammad -- Allah's "beautiful pattern of conduct" for those who want to please it -- preached and practiced genocide, pedophilia, rape, slavery, torture, mutilation, anti-Semitism, theft, extortion, arson, wife-beating, polygyny, religious and gender apartheid, sedition, treason, deceit, and blasphemy and warned his devotees that "Allah made me do it, and you will too, or else!"

No, "Islamophobia" is impossible. Merely pointing out simple facts regarding a genocidal, malevolent, and totalitarian ideology is neither phobic nor intolerant. It is highly rational and moral.

We are in only the latest phase of an ancient and existential struggle, Allah's war against humanity.

Speaking the truth in love

Never surrender

"we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone [...].

"we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end [...] we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender [...]."

Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940