The Rationalizing and Speculative Calvin

 

"John Calvin, he was much more engrossed in speculations concerning God than in the observation of mankind. God is, so to say, the fixed center and starting-point of all his thoughts. He meditates and imagines, and if I dared, I would say that he presents God to us, and describes Him as if he knew Him thoroughly, and had exclusive possession of Him. He then summons man into the presence of God, and denies or calmly rejects everything in him which does not accord with or cannot be adjusted to the God whom he has conceived and depicted. He denies free-will of man and affirms his predestination, because he imagines that man's free-will is opposed to the idea which he has formed of the omnipotence and omniscience of God, and that his predestination is necessary to it. Calvin had a very imperfect knowledge and understanding of man because he professed to know and understand too much about God".

-- M. Guizot

Quoted by P.A. Peter, The Tendency of the Calvinistic Doctrine of Absolute Predestination To Vitiate Some Doctrines of the Christian Religion -Columbus Theological Magazine Volume 11 (1891)

• It is never good to impose your speculation about God over Scripture. We cannot rely unskeptically on our rationalizing mind on how we understand God to be.  It should be reverse, we allow Scripture to tell us who and how is God in his being not the otherway around.
• There is arrogance in Calvin in thinking he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt who is God in his being.

Your personal faith or how the Holy Spirit DOES NOT BELIEVE for you.

 

HT: Pr Dr Gregory Jackson - The Ichabod

Many Synodical Lutherans what my associates call Waltherians love to quote Luther's Small Catechism's Article II.III, namely...

🔗I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; 

They stop there, to emphasize Sola Gratia. Did you notice, there is more continuing sentences after that? In fact Luther tells us what the HS does in turning us to become believers. Emphasizing Sola Gratia to the point of excluding or minimizing Sola Fide is like falling on the other side of the horse. It skews the facts and misleads - the one teaching it and the one following it.

Scripture taught a lot about personal faith, see this as examples...

Then Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well - Lk 18:42

When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you. - Mk 2:5

And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. - 1 Cor 15:14

In my mind, I am ready to abandon respect for Luther if he did not teach what Jesus and the Apostles taught. Thankfully he taught the same - he taught of personal faith of the sinner...

This is from Luther's Sermon 

Luther's Sermons - Mark 7:31-37. Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

(Emphasis: Dr Greg Jackson and mine)

11. Now this I say, that you may know how far the faith of others may be of use to us, and how your own faith can help you. Other people’s merits will help you to attain a merit of your own, and nothing more. And though all the angels, yea, the mercy of God itself, were ready to stand for you, it would avail you nothing, unless you cleave unto it with a faith of your own. But it may effect this, that it will assist you to obtain a faith of your own, which will help you. Furthermore, even if Christ did die for us, and pledged and gave his body and life, blood and flesh for us, and became our advocate; yet it would avail nothing, unless we believe in him. But he can assist us in this way, that he appears before the Father and says: “O Father, this have I done for mankind; do thou give them faith, in order that they may enjoy it.” This then, will help us, if we feel assured that his works and merit are our own. In the same manner one should also speak of the other saints, that no saint’s intercession and merit avail unless we ourselves believe. You observe this also in our lesson. There lies the poor man, unable either to speak or to hear. They who bring him to the Lord can speak and hear. But they cannot make him speak by their hearing and speaking, and even though they all had come near him and said: “We will speak and hear for you”; yet he would, in spite of this, have remained speechless and deaf continually, and would never have been able to speak.

further...

13. Therefore say: I must neither rely upon your works nor you upon mine; but I will, by my own faith, pray God to give you a faith of your own. This is what is said, that we all are priests and kings, that we, like Christ himself, may intercede for one another before God, praying for personal faith.

Thus, if I happen to notice that you have no faith of your own, or a weak faith, I go and ask God to help, you to obtain faith, not by giving you my faith and my works, but your own faith and your own works; so that Christ may give him all his works and salvation through faith, as he hath given them to us by faith.

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Likewise my friend, I am not here just to sermonize but to serve you in prayer - let me know what interecession you need. God bless.