Post by gloryintruth on Sept 6, 2007 18:11:20 GMT -5
MY EXPERIENCE
Many years ago when I was struggling with the Faith, I discovered the writings of the Reformers. This, it seemed, was a treasure trove of intellectual consistency. I embraced in fullest measure the Calvinistic doctrines, and went throught the same process that all men must when they take Calvinism into their worldview hook-line-and-sinker.
I experienced "conversions" eight or nine times a day. I "apostated" from the faith eight or nine times a day, as well, every time I percieved that I had sinned. (I once came across a website of a pastor who detailed the exact same experience when he first contacted the Reformed doctrine of Predestination).
I started to become fatalistic. If Augustine is right, and all volition is inspired by God, and all moral action is prompted by God from before the foundation of the world, then the entire creation exists within a prism of fate. I would watch the leaves of the trees swaying in the wind, and the words of the Islamic Hadith would spring to mind: "Allah has ordered everything; the slightest rising and falling of a leaf on the tree has been ordered by Allah. Allahu Akbar!".
Then came a stream of existential questions. Upon what basis does God choose some and shun others? How is this fair? If man's good moral actions are prompted by God, then another man's evil moral actions are prompted by the same God. We are therefore nothing but marionettes hanging from wires in the wind. For a time, the fear of damnation and the fear of God drove me to enormous spiritual efforts. My devotions took three or four hours each night to complete.
But the fuel of holy terror of not perhaps being predestinated by God cannot sustain a man's vision, mind, spirit or faith. It is a fuel that thrusts a man forward, but does great damage to his mental and emotional mechanism as it passes through. For by this belief, a man is nothing but plastic in the hands of an inscrutable God - and who could know the mind of God? I was routinely stricken with terror, with self-hatred and loathing, with enormous pride (for I knew more doctrine more thoroughly than any man upon the earth), and with an arrogance that was exchanged at times with mortal humiliation.
The circular existential answers were themselves a torment. I would ask with absolute horror when reading of some atrocity, "Why is there such evil in the world?" The Reformed answer was, Because God has predestinated that it should be so. (For the Reformers believed that God even predestinated the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden). "Why has God predestinated such evil?" Because God so wills, and who can know the mind of God? My experience of those days I can describe as running on the hamster-wheel of torment. Augustine's shadow loomed large.
I am convinced that such thinking did damage to my faculties. I become absorbed and obsessed with predestination to such an extent that I tried to find reasons and rationalisations for everything that happened. I saw "signs" in the most trival of events. If I walked down a path in the forest deep in thought and a bird started away and gave me a fright, I would reason that God was unhappy with my thoughts and was trying to stop me from thinking them.
If I cut myself I would reason that God was chastising me, and there was a message in my wound. If the wound was on the palm of my hand, I would interpret that to mean that I was disrespecting the nail prints of Christ in some way. If the cut was on my arms, I interpreted that to be a mystic whipping.
It was not long before I hated God with a passion. I worshipped him but hated him. I hated the world he created - Fallen into sin, everything twisted and evil and nothing good in it at all. I hated humanity - myself most of all, but everyone really. I wished God had consumed the earth at the beginning with a ball of fire. I wished, indeed, that I had not been created. I cannot describe how much I hated life - the very concept - and dreamt of suicide (although never courageous enough to take the step, because God would of course assign me to hell). I lived in a circle of terror: on one hand was an awful life, a sinful world, and contaminated existence which I loathed and wanted to extinguish, but on the other hand was God's disapproval for destroying his "gift" of life, and the fires of the bottomless pits of hell.
My sins I could not overcome. I fasted. I prayed. I strayed. I wept so much. A twisted ruin I had become.
PELAGIUS
I am not going to plough through Pelagius today, for much has unfairly been written of the man that Protestants and Roman Catholics alike villify as a heretic (which suggests he may have been onto something!).
But Pelagius maintained a number of things (not all of which I agree) that make sense:
1. Adam and Eve were not created to live forever.
2. When we sin, we imitate the behaviour of our first parents
3. Children are not born stained with Adam and Eve's sin
4. It is possible for a man to live a sinless life, but it has never been done and never will be done
5. Grace is absolutely necessary to salvation (Pelagius anathematised anyone who believed otherwise).
6. Evil actions exist because we choose to commit evil.
7. Good actions exist because we choose to commit good.
8. God did not issue commandments it was impossible for man to keep.
9. All men can be saved.
10. True Christianity lies in striving with all our being toward a moral life - works of faith - which we ourselves choose to enact
More that can be written, but I will leave that to later.
Peace be unto all.
In the name of Christ our Saviour who gives peace.
Many years ago when I was struggling with the Faith, I discovered the writings of the Reformers. This, it seemed, was a treasure trove of intellectual consistency. I embraced in fullest measure the Calvinistic doctrines, and went throught the same process that all men must when they take Calvinism into their worldview hook-line-and-sinker.
I experienced "conversions" eight or nine times a day. I "apostated" from the faith eight or nine times a day, as well, every time I percieved that I had sinned. (I once came across a website of a pastor who detailed the exact same experience when he first contacted the Reformed doctrine of Predestination).
I started to become fatalistic. If Augustine is right, and all volition is inspired by God, and all moral action is prompted by God from before the foundation of the world, then the entire creation exists within a prism of fate. I would watch the leaves of the trees swaying in the wind, and the words of the Islamic Hadith would spring to mind: "Allah has ordered everything; the slightest rising and falling of a leaf on the tree has been ordered by Allah. Allahu Akbar!".
Then came a stream of existential questions. Upon what basis does God choose some and shun others? How is this fair? If man's good moral actions are prompted by God, then another man's evil moral actions are prompted by the same God. We are therefore nothing but marionettes hanging from wires in the wind. For a time, the fear of damnation and the fear of God drove me to enormous spiritual efforts. My devotions took three or four hours each night to complete.
But the fuel of holy terror of not perhaps being predestinated by God cannot sustain a man's vision, mind, spirit or faith. It is a fuel that thrusts a man forward, but does great damage to his mental and emotional mechanism as it passes through. For by this belief, a man is nothing but plastic in the hands of an inscrutable God - and who could know the mind of God? I was routinely stricken with terror, with self-hatred and loathing, with enormous pride (for I knew more doctrine more thoroughly than any man upon the earth), and with an arrogance that was exchanged at times with mortal humiliation.
The circular existential answers were themselves a torment. I would ask with absolute horror when reading of some atrocity, "Why is there such evil in the world?" The Reformed answer was, Because God has predestinated that it should be so. (For the Reformers believed that God even predestinated the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden). "Why has God predestinated such evil?" Because God so wills, and who can know the mind of God? My experience of those days I can describe as running on the hamster-wheel of torment. Augustine's shadow loomed large.
I am convinced that such thinking did damage to my faculties. I become absorbed and obsessed with predestination to such an extent that I tried to find reasons and rationalisations for everything that happened. I saw "signs" in the most trival of events. If I walked down a path in the forest deep in thought and a bird started away and gave me a fright, I would reason that God was unhappy with my thoughts and was trying to stop me from thinking them.
If I cut myself I would reason that God was chastising me, and there was a message in my wound. If the wound was on the palm of my hand, I would interpret that to mean that I was disrespecting the nail prints of Christ in some way. If the cut was on my arms, I interpreted that to be a mystic whipping.
It was not long before I hated God with a passion. I worshipped him but hated him. I hated the world he created - Fallen into sin, everything twisted and evil and nothing good in it at all. I hated humanity - myself most of all, but everyone really. I wished God had consumed the earth at the beginning with a ball of fire. I wished, indeed, that I had not been created. I cannot describe how much I hated life - the very concept - and dreamt of suicide (although never courageous enough to take the step, because God would of course assign me to hell). I lived in a circle of terror: on one hand was an awful life, a sinful world, and contaminated existence which I loathed and wanted to extinguish, but on the other hand was God's disapproval for destroying his "gift" of life, and the fires of the bottomless pits of hell.
My sins I could not overcome. I fasted. I prayed. I strayed. I wept so much. A twisted ruin I had become.
PELAGIUS
I am not going to plough through Pelagius today, for much has unfairly been written of the man that Protestants and Roman Catholics alike villify as a heretic (which suggests he may have been onto something!).
But Pelagius maintained a number of things (not all of which I agree) that make sense:
1. Adam and Eve were not created to live forever.
2. When we sin, we imitate the behaviour of our first parents
3. Children are not born stained with Adam and Eve's sin
4. It is possible for a man to live a sinless life, but it has never been done and never will be done
5. Grace is absolutely necessary to salvation (Pelagius anathematised anyone who believed otherwise).
6. Evil actions exist because we choose to commit evil.
7. Good actions exist because we choose to commit good.
8. God did not issue commandments it was impossible for man to keep.
9. All men can be saved.
10. True Christianity lies in striving with all our being toward a moral life - works of faith - which we ourselves choose to enact
More that can be written, but I will leave that to later.
Peace be unto all.
In the name of Christ our Saviour who gives peace.