Brian’s Reflection: Friday, July 10, 2009

God preordained, for his own glory and the display
of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the
human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal
salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their
sin, to eternal damnation.

- John Calvin, “reformation” theologian, born on this
date, 1509


I thought (too late) of asking my oldest friend Martin to guest-write this Reflection. We were “raised” together in the Presbyterian Church of Canada. Our parish always had imported Scottish ministers. Martin describes himself as an “Atheist Presbyterian”, and he loves the idea of “predestination”!

I don’t know much about John Calvin - though I once read parts of his “Institutes”. So, I have no idea out of what experiences in his life John Calvin came up with his idea of “predestination”. From my own perspective on the Bible, I do not think the doctrine is Biblical. It may be my Episcopal “messy theology”, but the Bible as interpreted in my tradition upholds free will and the unequivocal freedom from “damnation” (which I don’t personally believe in) through sincere repentance.

So, I will give John Calvin the benefit of the doubt: the basis for his doctrine was in an attempt to exalt, as he puts it, God’s “attributes of mercy and justice”. In other words, humanity can be certain that if they trust in God’s Grace they will be “saved” (something else I don’t believe in as it is generally enunciated in mainstream Christian theology), and if they don’t, into the firepits of Hell you go! It's theological hyperbole for the sake of clarity. I also think that the doctrine of predestination is just another example of the theological scare tactics of the times in which Calvin lived – and which persist in present day Christianity in what I consider to be unevolved thinking, or as a result of the idolization of the Bible. What don’t some people understand about Unconditional Love?

Here’s the skinny according to Brian: none of us are predestined to anything, period. As Einstein said in another context, “God does not play dice”. To be made in the Divine Image simply means that what constitutes the essence of God also constitutes the essence of the human person. If God is free, we are free. Like it or not, our ultimate destiny is up to us – something many “believers” shudder to embrace - by the choices we make and the forgiveness we accept. Any doctrine that exempts a person from the daily striving to be “good” and to “become as Christ” is rot.

You are not a toy being played with by some Deity. You are a being worthy of being inhabited by God – and are!

Stand tall, and shape your destiny. Life in God is no predestined Dead End.

Brian+