Calvin vs. Jefferson

[A.J.]

These observations are both sobering and fascinating all at once. How do Calvinists/Presbyterian & Reformed Christians cope with an American system of free thought based in Jeffersonian progressivism with (il)logical conclusions that have led us where we find ourselves today? How do we maintain the American values we hold dear when they’ve ultimately turned on us? This is the fatal outcome of a type of freedom facilitated by men ’living’ in spiritual bondage.

I always knew Jefferson was not a fan of Calvin. I’m not familiar with this author, but I like how this article lays out (in my interpretation) whether our lesser magistrates act as Calvinists or Jeffersonians, which reveals why the Westminster Confession of Faith seems so inapplicable.

https://mereorthodoxy.com/john-calvin-thomas-jefferson/

“Jefferson scoffed at Calvinist intransigence. He hated Calvin for many reasons, but he held an especially impassioned loathing for the French Reformer’s throaty trinitarianism and the doctrine of election. Calvin, in Jefferson’s reading of history, represented the clearest intellectual successor to the medieval Christian order he despised. He compared what he called the “simple” doctrines of Jesus—his phrase for Unitarianism—with “the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.” Jefferson objected to the mysticism and anti-rationalism of Calvinism. He believed that Calvin was an enemy to reason.

Jefferson despised the Calvinist obsession with the incomprehensible nature of the divine. He called Athanasius and Calvin “impious dogmatists” and “false shepherds.” Athanasius’ and Calvin’s “blasphemies” drove “thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed author himself, with the horrors so falsely imputed to him.”

If the doctrines of Jesus had been preached “always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian.” Jefferson rejoiced “that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving.” That genuine doctrine was Unitarianism, and Jefferson trusted

“that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian. But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established, its votaries will fall into the fatal error of fabricating formulas of creed and confessions of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed the religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they will give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are the Quakers, who, agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, schismatize about no mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common sense, suffer no speculative differences of opinion, any more than of feature, to impair the love of their brethren. Be this the wisdom of Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its charitable circumference all who believe in one God, and who love their neighbor.”

Jefferson need not have worried about Virginia. The changes made to the Westminster Confession in 1789 took the last serious teeth out of Calvinist political theology, and most serious Protestants in the Commonwealth saw disestablishment as prudential, if not good.”

 

[Thunderian]

This may not be strictly on topic, but it kind of is.

If God’s sacrifice and our salvation are everything that they’re cracked up to be, we must have the freedom to reject them. God has given us freedom of will, and without that, none of the rest of it means much.

It follows that if God has granted us the freedom to make our own choices, then we must grant our fellow man the freedom to make his own choices, too. That includes the choice to reject God, and to lead any kind of life that appeals to them, as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s freedom.

Of course, there are those who don’t want to acknowledge the freedom we are all given by God. Show me a country or a religion that severely restricts human freedoms, and I’ll show you a totally godless institution every time.

 

[A.J.]

This may not be strictly on topic, but it kind of is.

If God’s sacrifice and our salvation are everything that they’re cracked up to be, we must have the freedom to reject them. God has given us freedom of will, and without that, none of the rest of it means much.

It follows that if God has granted us the freedom to make our own choices, then we must grant our fellow man the freedom to make his own choices, too. That includes the choice to reject God, and to lead any kind of life that appeals to them, as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s freedom.

Of course, there are those who don’t want to acknowledge the freedom we are all given by God. Show me a country or a religion that severely restricts human freedoms, and I’ll show you a totally godless institution every time.

No, thats fine, I expected some brush back. I’m not saying America had to follow some Puritan code. But Jefferson’s brand of Unitarian belief is coming to full fruition. When accommodation trumps a universal standard of morality & moral absolutes, don’t be surprised when deep state luciferians take over. There are ultimately only 2 ways this can go. Middle grounds can only be sustained for so long , eventually the whole thing goes south.

 

[A.J.]

I guess I would argue that lack of freedom will come about when faith in God becomes too little, both in depth and reach. https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/