Calvins Camels - article from Inplain Site

I just ran across a good article on Calvinism -- and it's rather long, so here are a few quotes from the beginning part of the article:

INTRODUCTION Having read John Calvin’s Institutes and having studied the writings of many Calvinists both ancient and contemporary, I am convinced that Calvin was guilty of straining at gnats and swallowing camels. To accept Calvinism (in any of its forms) is to deny the plain teaching of dozens of Scriptures.

The Calvinist will doubtless argue that I simply don’t understand Calvinism properly, and to this I reply that if Calvinism is that complicated it can’t be the truth.

Of course, Calvinism is not simple by any means and this is one reason why it produces an elitist mentality. To understand Calvinism one must deal with compatibalism, monergism versus synergism, electing grace vs. irresistible grace, effectual calling vs. general calling, effective atonement vs. hypothetical atonement, libertarian free will vs. the bondage of the will, objective grace and subjective grace, natural ability and moral ability, mediate vs. immediate imputation of Adam’s sin, supralapsarianism, sublapsarianism, infralapsarianism, desiderative vs. decretive will, and antecedent hypothetical will, to name a few!

The fact is that every time I have studied Calvinism I have come away convinced that it simply contradicts too many Scriptures, that it is built more upon human logic and philosophy than upon the plain teaching of God’s Word. Whatever divine election means, and it is certainly an important and oft-taught doctrine of the Word of God, it cannot mean what Calvinism concludes, because to accept that position requires one to strain at gnats and swallow camels. The gnats are Calvinist extra-scriptural arguments and reasoning and the camels are Scriptures understood plainly by their context.

Thus, according to the Calvinist, Jesus’ statement in Matt. 23:37 does not teach that God’s will was ever thwarted by man’s will but merely expresses the human side of Jesus’ compassionate nature. According to Calvin, God cannot be disappointed, because that would means He is not sovereign (according to Calvin’s own predetermined definition), but this flies in the face of the Scriptures in literally thousands of places.

EFT on blogtalk radio, Facebook and other stuff

I just signed up on Facebook about 10 days ago, and discovered there are a few EFT related groups on there that I've joined. Some of them are pretty new, it appears -- one of which is 'EFT from a Christian Perspective'. Stop by and say hi!

Also there's one for an EFT class on blogtalk radio. I haven't listened to any of the shows, and when trying to pull up the page I keep getting a 'page load error' telling me the server was reset while the page was loading. I tried again after allowing javascript from blogtalk radio (I use the Firefox browser with NoScript add-on) and got the same message, so you may have more success pulling up the page than I did. Just be warned that the shows may or may not be 'Christian-friendly'.

Lastly, while on the topic of 'social networking' sites, I'm also on Twitter with the user name of CiaW , at the moment I don't send many updates or messages there but feel free to add me or invite me to your updates if you'd like.

Update Feb. 24 -- I have also started a group on Facebook called 'EFT for Spiritual Warfare', and I'd be happy to have you join that one too, as well as the Christian Perspective group another practitioner started, if you're on Facebook.