There is a balance that is needed concerning God’s love and plan for people, and God’s show of his own greatness. Unfortunately, I think most Calvinists have a all too zealous “either/or” mentality. Here’s Volf’s quote:

“Consider, first, what Luther calls human love, but which is better described as distorted love. It’s elicited by the object of love; it’s basically passive in the sense that it depends on the object of love, Its only activity, says Luther, consists in “receiving something”. A person sees beauty – or goodness or truth – and wants to have it. As a consequence, people who love in this way seek their “own good” in those they love: they don’t bestow any good on them. A man may shower a woman with gifts, but he may be doing it so that he can ingratiate himself to her, enjoy her, keep her, or even worse, so that he can display her as a trophy. When we love in this way, we are receivers, not givers.

Contrast this kind of possessive love with divine love. First, divine love never had to come into being at all; it wasn’t elicited by its object. It simply is. It doesn’t depend on the truth, beauty, or goodness of the beloved. Second, as Luther stated, because God’s love isn’t caused by its object, it can love those who are not lovable…Luther concluded, “Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good”.

Such divine love is supremely manifested on the cross on which Jesus Christ took the sin of the world upon himself. “This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good upon the bad and needy person”. Unlike merely human love, divine love gives and doesn’t receive.

Some theologians claim that all God’s desires culminate in a single desire: to assert and to maintain God’s own glory. On its own, the idea of a glory-seeking God seems to say that God, far from being only a giver, is the ultimate receiver. As the great twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth disapprovingly put it, such a God would be “in holy self-seeking…preoccupied with Himself”. In creating and redeeming, such a God would give, but only in order to get glory; the whole creation would be a means to this end. In Luther’s terms, here we would have a God demonstrating human rather than divine love.

But we don’t have to give up on the idea that God seeks God’s own glory. We just need to say that God’s glory, which is God’s very being, is God’s love, the creative love that wants to confer good upon the beloved. Now the problem of a self-seeking God has disappeared, and the divinity of God’s love is vindicated. In seeking God’s own glory, God merely insists on being toward human beings the God who gives. This is exactly how Luther thought about God. So should we.

Yet have I now come full circle, inadvertently embracing God the Santa Claus, who gives without demanding anything? No, and the difference is this: Unlike gifts received from Santa Claus, whose gifts are the end of the story, God’s gifts oblige us to something further. To what do God’s gifts oblige us? What is the nature of the obligation? Let’s examine the second question first.” pages 38-39

In the physical world we’re told that the color red is actually a range of frequencies. Yet the question “How do I know this apple is red?” is not the same as “How do I know that this apple reflects light within a given frequency range?”.

I’m totally with you on most of this. The attacks on Olson were largely ludicrous. Questioning someone’s salvation is (IMHO) something that should (at most) be private. And unequivocably stating the non-salvation of others is nothing short of blasphemy — it is setting oneself up to be “like God”, and we all know how well that worked out for Lucifer. And I will freely admit that this latter thing is something that largely comes out of the reformed (clears throat) Camp.

I have two points of disagreement though.

1) Maybe it’s the fallacy of the written word and internet, but you seem to be over-generalizing. Not ALL of us Calvinists are [insert favorite pejorative noun here].
2) If you think it logical that one cannot ask God to do something that He’s already “made up His mind” about, you haven’t read Psalms lately.

I think Josh presented the trump card here: systematic theology lives or dies by its hermeneutic. None of us can escape our own theological paradigms and rationalities, but we all are accountable for what we do with Scripture. Either we submit to it, as to a message from beyond our finite scope, or we assume mastery over it as if it were a tool in our hands. The Ark of the covenant is an apt symbol: we either approach it for worship or we take it into our own hands, push it on the Philistines, and lose it because God withdrew from us for attempting to “use” His Presence.

The question for both sides and all kibitzers is Josh’s question: have you been true to Scripture AS IT IS PRESENTED

That is a logical conclusion. I have seen all the arguements and all a lot of begging the question.

What irks me the most is how Calvanists load the term “sovereign” up with all sorts of sytematic theology connotation. That is, they take the term describing God as king out of context and redefine the term to mean “total control.” If someone objects to the determinism, they say “oh, you don’t believe that God is sovereign?” Then they call you a heretic or say that you were “never saved.”

I am not defending Arminanism or anything. It just really pisses me off when people read their own definitions into biblical concepts or perform outright eisegesis. When someone like Olson challenges these things, they recieve an ad hominem attack.

I love scholarship because it keeps people honest. Olson’s words might have been somewhat inflammatory but the response of doubting his salvation or anyone else that disagreed was pretty pathetic.

I will not argue for a moment against the fact this seems to be an unwritten rule in TR-dom. However, mischaracteriztion of the other side’s perspective is the sport of choice on both sides of this debate. Case in point — less than an hour later in the comments we see this:

Josh: You can’t pray for someone to be saved if it’s God’s sovereign choice. Right?

This is closely related to illogical conclusion #249. I am sure that there are those who embrace Calvinism who also hold a fatalistic view of God’s sovereignty, and see no point in prayer or evangelism. But to imply that belief in God’s sovereignty in matters of salvation means that one must be fatalistic is wrong.

Besides, if you’re going to tell others what they believe, you have to do it in motivational poster form.

I am not arguing a “correct” view, I am merely questioning yours. I don’t know the answers.

I think your view of God’s attributes and the WCF don’t agree, and I don’t think the WCF makes sense here (III.ii-iii.) Then again, Romans 9 doesn’t make sense. And when God declares Himself in Exodus 34:6-8, He declares mercy and wrath, and Moses worshipped. I can’t understand election, and I can’t understand God’s character, but I know it is revealed to contain both mercy and wrath. Logically I can punch holes in the WCF and your argument, but I don’t claim to *know* a better explanation than to quote those verses to you. I will stand by my comments above, and let you have the WCF here, you can wrestle with it

Because even in the first generation of Patristic fathers, grace vanishes from their writings. They become very legalistic. Within a few hundred years, baptism became linked with regeneration and if you every denied your faith, in most of the Christian world you could never be received back into the church, and according to that theology; no church = no salvation. Just beause they are closer to the source doesn’t mean they go just as wrong as those further behind.

Grace wasn’t “rediscovered” until Athanasius started working on the person of Christ in his theology against Arius. And then Augustine got his hands in it too.

Yes, *some* Reformed commentators come up with wacky interpretations, anyone can come up with a wacky view. But what makes the most sense out of most of the data? There’s a reason why a good number of Bible scholars hold Reformed views, and it’s not dementia.