My Detractor Stated it Well: Why John Calvin and His Followers are Heretics
I have a detractor who has stated one of my positions against the Reformed false gospel very well. I want to capture his assessment in this post, and it will be used in two of my upcoming books; TTANC 2, and The Reformation Myth. Here is the statement:
“Paul Dohse takes exception with Calvinism not because its evil, not because of predestination, not because of its easy believism that rejects morality. Nope. He takes exception with it because it thinks that the Law is the standard of justification, and Paul (the so-called apostle, not Dohse) says that it’s impossible that any law could ever GIVE life. Here is Dohse quoting himself from the article at the top of the article:
‘Moreover, the Apostle Paul states with all certainty that there is NO law that can give life. If Christ kept/fulfilled/keeps the law for us in order to keep us justified, that is saying that there is a law that can give life.’
So Dohse’s problem with Calvinism is that he thinks it contradicts Paul’s heresy in Galatians 3:21
Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. (Galatians 3:21 KJV)
The problem here is that Dohse has accepted Paul’s FALSE premise that we need to be GIVEN life” (James Jordan: Descriptive Grace blog; Paul Dohse’s pointless struggle against Calvinism while continuing to accept Paul’s Galatian heresy, Sept. 7, 2013).
Right he is, I have accepted that premise, and he states my position on NO law in justification very well. If the law has to be upheld perfectly to maintain our justification, as taught by the Reformers, the law is giving life. Who keeps it is beside the point.
That’s one reason among many why Calvinism is a false gospel.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
James then my advice- give up on the whole idea of Jesus all together. The only version of Jesus is stated in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Wherever you are getting another version of “Jesus”, whether from a man made book or person or your OWN conclusions (which by the way is a dangerous road) then that is the false Jesus. To claim that Jesus is not God is a false belief. It is clear, CRYSTAL CLEAR that Jesus states otherwise. My way of understanding the Word of God is to listen to the Holy Spirit himself who is God, not man. If you are, you are heading the opposite direction and into a boatload of confusion in the end.
John10:22
22 At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; 23 it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. 24 The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, “How long [b]will You keep us in suspense? If You are [c]the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. 26 But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 [d]My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are [e]one.”
I am not going to get into semantics about this but just to say plainly you are reading another gospel if you have come to the conclusions you have and it is a waste of time to argue something that is so obvious. Take your beliefs somewhere else.
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@trust4himonly-Faith, Its telling to me that you appeal to John rather than Matthew or any of the synoptics. You are reading “another gospel” yourself.
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Bridget, I did not recommend the Westminster book by Marshall but now you are making me want to read it!!!
I usually recommend Stepchildren or the Reformation about everywhere I go. It is great! It will give a overview of those precious saints who stood up against the state church and wolves since the time of Augustine. (The footnotes are in German but thankfully there are translation sites online now. Verduin did his homework)
The challenge you have with Marshall, I had with Verduin. Who WAS this man??? Strange that he went to Europe to research Stepchildren after WW2 on a Grant from the Calvin Foundation. I have always wondered about that. I know he was a scholar and also a chaplain at the Universtiy of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And as a student of history I know many church/state archives in Europe were not really open to American researchers until we were pretty much rebuilding Europe after WW2. That is why you see authors such as Zweig (Austrian agnostic Jew who wrote about Calvin) having access but not many Americans.
Zweig’s book on Calvin (The Right to Heresy) can be accessed for free here and I highly recommend it! Zweig was a great author and researcher.:
http://www.gospeltruth.net/heresy/heresy_toc.htm
I get the feeling Verduin went against the Calvin strain in his neck of the woods and that is why you don’t see his books on most Reformed book sites. He makes no bones about the tyranny of the Reformers. But back then (early 1950’s) scholarship was taken more seriously Now it is more about agenda’s.
But the book by him I am reading now, Anatomy of a Hybrid is so deep it is taking me a long time to get through. I stop and make notes and reread. It is incredible.
About the same time I purchased Stepchildren I also bought Martyrs Mirror. It weighs about 10lbs! It is a documentation of those persecuted by both Reformers and Catholics. Get out your tissues. Many times there were n names as there were mass executions and they were listed by village. Or perhaps, blacksmith and his wife drowned on such and such date.
What evil in the Name of Christ!
Anyway, these books we are discussing make the books written by the celebrity pastors today look like the ramblings of 13 year old boys. They don’t make you think and dig deeper. They TELL YOU WHAT to think.
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Paul, Here are my recommendations both out of print!
http://www.amazon.com/Reformers-Their-Stepchildren-Dissent-Nonconformity/dp/1579789358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381258191&sr=1-1&keywords=stepchildren+of+the+reformation
The Reformers and their Stepchildren by Verduin
http://www.amazon.com/anatomy-hybrid-study-church-state-relationships/dp/0802816150/ref=la_B0028F01E0_1_1/181-2476148-5343957?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381258165&sr=1-1
Anatomy of a Hybrid by Verduin
He was a treasure to the Body that was lost and now found again.
I feel the same way about him as I do Katherine Bushnell’s, “Gods Word to Women”. She was a precious saint, missionary to China and medical doctor who did massive research in Hebrew and Greek and had her lessons critiqued by linguists and scholars by snail mail!! Her book was found in an attic and republished. To all our benefit.
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Word-Women-Katharine-Bushnell/dp/0974303100/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381258458&sr=1-1&keywords=god%27s+word+to+women+bushnell
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“The Law, being GOOD, does not need man to act in service to it, because it is already utterly and completely good in and of itself. Bringing man into the picture can only ever present an offense to the pure GOOD of the self of the Law.” (Argo)
This is pure Gnosticism, Argo. The idea is not for many to “serve” the Law to make the Law more good. The idea is that the Law is there to instruct man so that man can stay good. Without such instruction, many don’t stay good. Just look around. And where the Law is bashed, man don’t stay good. Just look around. I mean, seriously, you do live on planet Earth right?
Your problem is that your view of the Law is so very similar to the Calvinist view of the Law. In their view, if you break one tiny part of a law you should then break all of it. So if you speed 1 mph over the limit, you should just go ahead and go 120 mph over the limit too. What’s the difference? In their non-working logic they can’t see any. You, on the otherhand, look at it slightly different: The Law is perfect, so how dare we humans diminish it by trying to keep it. The law that says don’t go over the speed limit is so perfect, that Argo wouldn’t dare defile it by obeying it, so instead he’ll go 200 mph over the limit just to keep the law sanctified. How wonderfully logical that is.
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Hopefully there’s nobody so absurd as to not understand the speed limit thing is an analogy.
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James,
You pulled my quote completely out of context. You don’t read. Or you are purposefully deceitful. The question is why is obeying the law good? What is the standard of good to which the law appeals? If it appeals to itself as the standard of good, then man’s obedience offers nothing to good. The LAW is good. Mans obedience cannot make the law any more good, and mans obedience cannot make man good because the LAW is good already, being the standard, without him.
The operative word in my scenario is IF. You are right. IF the law is the measure of good, then you have Gnosticism. If you had read the comment thoroughly before knee jerking to your own premeditated conclusions, you’d see that I argue that MAN is the standard of good. Making the law subservient to his life and this his individual context. Which means the law cannot make man good (so that without it he “stops being good”) because man is already good without it. The law then ceases to be salvific but merely instructive…teaching man to avoid real sin, which is not a violation of the law, but a violation of human beings.
Your point is clearly stated. You believe man is good only as he obeys the law. You admitted the law is needed to keep man good. This is a gnostic appeal to the law as the primary consciousness. The standard of good is not man. It is outside of him. I will never concede this. YOU are the Calvinist.
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