The Preterist Blog ~ 100% Hyperpreterist Free|we can haz rezurekshun?

I do loves me some bacon! And BACON.

I have a hashtag I use over on Twitter as alternative to the YRR (Young, Restless and Reformed) crowd. It’s MATaR: Middle aged, Tired and Reformed. #MATaR

You guys bring the BACON, I’ve got the MATaR’s!

In a quantum universe i don’t see why one can’t be 100% Calvinist and 100% Arminian. Even closer to home, I don’t see why one can’t be both a post- and a pre-millenarian. OK, I’ll confess I don’t know anything about physics or even whether Schrodinger’s cat is alive or dead. But I do know that human language is not adequate to frame propositional statements about eternal realities. This isn’t relativism…things which occured in time (and in the scripural account of time) like the resurection are subject to the law of non-contradition. It either happened or it didn’t. But we can’t be led into bad metaphysics by the soterological speculations of the 16th and 17th centuries…Calvin and Arminius respectively.

Thats all I wish to say on this issue. Except that I would highly recommend Karl Polanyi on the “tacit dimension” and the limitations of language and cognition when people try to make pseudo-exact statements about things which can never be exact.

Mark,

Are you the same Mark Sunwall who posts at Lew Rockwell?

Mark, if you can say that, then you don’t understand the real issues between the two views.

Basically what you are proposing is that we can be Muslim and Christian (not comparing those two views to that, just using your logic that nothing is contradictory).

If you don’t know anything about physics, you shouldn’t be using it to get around the plain meaning of the text. This isn’t about what Calvin said, it is about what the Bible says.

I don’t buy the emergent nonsense that we can’t formulate truth because we are limited by language. That is nonsense.

Seems to me that the God of creation (and this creation includes language, obviously) would be able to communicate what is necessary in order to know who He is, as well as what is expected of His children, and He’d be able to do that via the very languages that He has given to us.

Aren’t you simply preferring the “bad metaphysics” of the 20th and 21st cent. over the “bad metaphysics” of the 16th and 17th cent.?

Amen, Dee Dee. Plus, if you can say one is biblical and the other is not, you don’t understand the shortcomings of each view either. The conundrums of Calvinism are answered by Arminianism. And the conundrums of Arminianism are answered by Calvinism. Both systems must assert certain extra-biblical sub-issues to get around their problems. Neither system is perfect (i.e. without conundrums as viewed from the other perspective), but both are perfectly biblical.

BTW, these are not my independent ideas, the above statements are based on two books:

Against Calvinism by Dr. Roger Olsen
For Calvinism by Dr. Michael Horton

Each wrote the forward to the other’s book.

Yes Jonathan, I occasionally have dabled in Austrian economics. Quantum Gregg, you said pretty much what I wanted to say. No Dee Dee, I am not an “emergent” and I don’t attribute the problems of systematic theology to language. As bad as 16th and 17th century metaphysics might have been, they are certainly head and shoulders above 20th century relativism and 21st century post-modernism. If you think I’m hard on Calvin you should hear what I think of Wittgenstein. But Sola Scriptura presumes understanding what scripture is about. Scripture is annalistic. It is about events. It is not a text on metaphysics. It is not a book of theology written by men. It is an anthropology book written by God. And a lot of what it has to say is pretty ugly. So you can put me down as a one point Calvinist who believes in total deprevity. But also try to understand that if you take the first point seriously, then the remaining four points are impossible to verify as human speculations. Again, because of intellectual depravity…not because of the “limitations of language”…the latter is the liberal position, and I have nothing in common with it.

That is still nonsensical. By that reasoning, you can’t understand anything in Scripture. Total depravity doesn’t mean that all things become unverifiable. Not even the ones you don’t like.

Dee Dee,
I think you are mixing up verification, understanding and assent. The Bible is understandable enought to human minds, that is the great priniciple of perspecacity which Luther restated during the Reformation. Being understandable one can give assent, through faith, to propositions about events which are mentioned in the Bible like the creation and the resurrection. But assent cannot be confounded with verification. If the truths of the Bible could be verified, what would be the meaning of faith?

No I am not. What you wrote was perfectly clear. And nonsensical.

Greg, I missed your comment before. No, they are not both Biblical. They teach contradictory things. They can’t both be right.

I say we need to BLAST us some solas in there too: Bible alone, Loyalty alone, Altruism alone, Saviour alone, Thank God alone

Before, the others come back, I do want to say one thing perhaps to stop the conversation that is obviously not going anywhere. This was a light-hearted post. I understand that many readers are not Reformed. I don’t get the impulse that can’t allow the subject to come up in a way that one disagrees with without having to argue about it.

The purpose of the blog is primarily eschatological. Obviously I believe all theology is inter-related HOWEVER, it is not a blog to argue about Reformed theology. I don’t push it on those who disagree, this is not the place for that. There was a concern from some when I changed my position to be Reformed that this would turn into an unfriendly place for Arminians. It hasn’t. But sheesh folks, let me have a light-hearted post.

I believe Reformed theology is right. I make no apologies for that, but I don’t really care to carry on that debate here. It is not necessary to be Reformed to agree on eschatology. I do think it makes the most consistent sense.

In the spirit of this thread, I think I’ve just proven that Reformed theology is a new type of snack: BACON BLAST!

For another inane proof, I think that Douglas Adams and Deep Thought were completely correct about the meaning of life being 42. However, we ‘mere’ mortals can in fact understand it. Here’s how: Six is the number for man, and seven is the number for God. The product of six and seven is 42, and the ‘product’ of man and god is Jesus, who is the meaning of life according to Colossians 3:4. Therefore, Deep Thought was thinking deeper than even it realized!

For some reason I am hungry for bacon this morning. Even 42 slices.

Now that would be a real bacon blast! The Lord’s breakfast, maybe?

Added a yummy image to the post

I agree this thread is heading nowhere and needs to be put to bed. And I do realize it started as an attempt at humor. Perhaps it pushed my button because I was concurently reading “The Other Side of Calvinism” by Lawrence M. Vance. Dr. Vance is a good man, but a more smugly dogmatic Baptistic dispensationalist you will seldom find. So I must have kind have been “driving under the influence.”
Pax Christi

Bacon strips, bacon strips, bacon strips … I can’t help but think of the Epic Meal Time youtube channel—where it’s ALL about the bacon.

FYI, I’m no Calvinist myself (my current position is slightly to the Augustinian side of JPH over at tektonics.org, and admittedly rather muddled on the matter, but I’m not yet settled in my convictions), but I got the point of the post. Put it this way: I’m still tasting the bacon to see if it’s good. Bacon is definitely a blast, that much I know and deeply appreciate, and 42 of anything is always appetizing, so I’m perfectly happy to live and love and worship with the bacon lovers.

I slipped into terminology here I try to avoid. The issue isn’t really Calvinism v Arminianism, at least it is not helpfully put that way. It is between monogerism and synergism.

If you are interested in the reasons why I changed my position to monogerism, I talk about it at the podcast in the episode called Welcome Back Potter.

Mark,

Vance is in the KJV Only camp as well. Watch out now!

Dee Dee,

I prefer those terms as well, or even compatibilism versus libertarianism, but those are more philosophical points than theological, I suppose.

Now off for some bacon. Nom Nom Nom Nom

My dog (who LOVES Beggin Strips) must be a Calvinist.

Francis Bacon?

I don’t think Francis Bacon was a very good baconist.

I have always envied and attempted to emulate the 1960’s femminists and their zero-sense-of-humor attitude and finally this blog has given me the opportunity. Note first of all the snide references to violation of kashrut. I won’t even name the filthy animal that this “joke” started off with. Second, the none too subtle ridicule of the kabbalah with regard to various gematrical formulas. Obviously this is an anti-semetic thread! I’m going back to dispensational Zionism!

And before you start stuffing your faces with porcine products for breakfast go back and watch “Pulp Fiction”…who is more likely to be going to heaven…Samuel Jackson or John Travolta?

“I don’t think Francis Bacon was a very good baconist.”

LOL!

Dee Dee, I didn’t say they were both true. I know that is not possible. It is possible they are both wrong, however. When I say they are both biblical, I only meant that both show complete respect for the holy scriptures, that’s all.

BTW, I can testify this is not a harsh place against Arminians (i.e. me). Neither is Sam’s forum, even though both of you are Baconists (hahahaha). Personally, I believe synergism is the biblical truth over monergism, and if anyone wants to know why they can ask me privately. Ha!

But I do love the sense of humor…! Reminded me of Jim Gaffigan… LOL