The, Death And Blind Sheep

When talking about human nature many answers starts appearing depending on who you talk to. With many atheists claiming procreating and survival of oneself are part of human nature, but that should be considered our instincts. As many other species of animals are capable of demonstrating this trait and not considered human nature. The bible describes our nature of being good when God first created Adam in the beginning of genesis 1:31 “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.“ It was not until the fall of man that created sin and lead to the corruption of the original design that God had created. The mystery of original sin by Shuster describes the fall as “What went wrong in the beginning marks everything that follows. Adam’s sin not only

Regardless of how civilized people are, given certain surrounding environmental circumstances, can produce changes in human nature to the point where they can turn into savages.

One objection to his doctrine was that it portrayed God as tyrannical, condemning people who, before creation, had done nothing wrong. A second related objection was that if God willed humanity’s fall in Adam—as Calvin maintained —why does he condemn those in the sinful condition he willed? Moreover, are such people justly condemned for sin they could not avoid? Who can resist the will of God?

Ever have an unfortunate event happen to you and then think to yourself, why me, why did this happen to me, what did I do to deserve this punishment? When something bad happens to us, we turn to god and question him, if he truly is watching out for us then why did he let such a bad thing occur in my life? Theodicy, before taking this course I had never really heard of this word before, and even as this assignment came up I had no clue what it meant either. Theodicy means a justification of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil. Why does god allow evil in the world? It all comes out to a balance in the world, if there is a god there is the devil, if there

I believe that human beings, who have the image of God, are the best creature in the world. Therefore, they can instinctually recognize the existence of God and have capacities to choose somethings and to create somethings creatively. For John Wesley, human beings are created by God in the image of God, which means that they have similar characteristics to God. Scott J. Jones insists, “we share God’s nature in that we are immortal spirits who have various divine capacities: understanding, freedom of the will, and affections.” In this view, in the beginning, the human beings have capacities not only to understand God in the communication between God and them, but also to choose and do anything which they want. However, at the Fall, their characteristics given by God became malfunctioned by Adam’s exploiting their free will not obey God, but disobey God, which generates the original sin. John Wesley explains about this in his sermon ‘The New Birth,’ “The natural consequence of this is that everyone descended from him

Humankind was created in the image of God; He gave them like characteristics such as compassion, love, and faithfulness. In Genesis 3 we learn of the Fall of Humanity, which introduces not only sin into the world but also pain. (“Lecture 3”, 2015) After the Fall human nature is then scarred by sin, humans are born sinful by nature. In Genesis 4 Cain brings murder into the world; from here we see humanity relentlessly depart from the wisdom of God. (“Lecture 3”, 2015) Only by accepting Jesus Christ into their hearts, can they atone for their sins and get right with the Lord.

already appointed who were going to heaven and hell, so all Calvinist tried to live

The Baptists and Evangelical methods were becoming fast-growing religions in the country. The Evangelical instinct favored average people over privileged and high classed people. The reason to this was their belief that deliverance was more important at the moment. Evangelical churches were determined by the idea of travelling from place to place. It also included the Calvinist tradition, which emphasized upon the thought of shallow corruption of the nation. Their idea was that a single could only be rescued through the assistance of God. Otherwise, the new evangelical settled their belief that an individual could claim their “free will” in determining to be relieved. By that suggestion, the salvation was wide-open to

That God decreed to leave some in the common misery and not to bestow on them living faith and the grace of conversion. Calvin also believes that God predestined everything for everything that it does, such that God predestined me to be writing this report right now for my religion class, so that this isn't my own free will but it was God's set plan for me. Zanchius, a Reform Theologian, writes that there is most certainly a double predestination and gives passages to prove through God's Word that there is no other way. II Cor. 4:3 "If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing." I Peter 2:8 "They stumble because they disobey the message-which is also what they were destined for." II Peter 2:12b "…They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish." Jude 1:4a "For certain men who were marked out for condemnation long ago have secretly slipped among you." He concludes his arguments by saying that God could not erase a name that has been placed in the book of life or add a name because it was from eternity. He quotes Luther with, "This is the very thing that razes the doctrine of free-will from its foundation, to wit, that God's eternal love of some men and hatred of others is immutable and cannot be reversed."

The weekly sermons taught by my Christian leaders were viewed as simple and one dimensional to me, as no man could ever believe the suffering we endured on this earth would be rewarded in another dimension. In fact, I began to think this was it! That this reality was the final one any of us would ever know and the righteous ones ascended into higher realms to be with the Creator ages ago. Dreams seemed to be brief memories from past lives that we all once lived quickly stripped from us once we woke like the innocence I once was draped in as a child. Then finally, free will and free thought were simply unrealistic as no “thought” is 100% original and free will was a luxury only wealthy white men could attain. After wrestling with it for so long, I began to agree with the Calvinist concept of predestination. It seemed to explain the other modes of thought I subscribed to in place of my former perceptions of life (i.e. the ability to define one’s own life). Though even these new perceptions about life were tainted with dissatisfaction as I did not agree with them completely. For a number of years, I retracted from myself most forms of metaphysical thought and tried to exist without any further

A normal day as it always was, until,“beep beep I’m a sheep, I said beep beep I’m a sheep” it was the sheep!!! It had been, the four sheep called, sheepton, the classy top hat wearer, sheeper, the cool one of the sheep wearing some wiggity wiggity cool shades, sheepy, the brotacular backwards hat wearer, and Bob, the… sheep , that also goes beep. Bob does not talk very often nor wear anything extra, Bob must plot things, many, many things. The four sheep and that cow over in the distance, their name is Kevin, we don’t talk about Kevin a lot. The four sheep had,”Beep beep” once again, in unison, the beeps from the sheep had come, then suddenly, *DUN DUN DUN* the leader. They had been a floating head, and no body or limbs, only a head, when they had talked, their jaw and the rest of the head above the jaw, had separated completely while talking, the floating head had hypnotised a nearby small town, that head, and the four sheep had made the people become beep beeping

Adam and Eve obeyed God and did exactly as he had planned for them too do. It was up until the Fall, when our first parents disobeyed God, mankind had true freedom. As soon as they rebelled what God commanded him, man lost their inherent true freedom; they went against what God had planned for them. And because of the sin of Adam and Eve, original sin, the consequence of this first sin that is a transmissible stain with which we were born with, we are all constantly bent towards sinning. “We now sin because we are sinners, because we have a habit, and because the habit has damaged our judgment and will,” (Plantinga, 56). If we have a broken judgment and a broken will, humans cannot obtain true freedom on our own; imperfection cannot create something a hundred percent perfect or utterly true. It’s impossible. There’s good news though! Since Christ died for all our sins, we can obtain this true freedom, you really (even though you might not think that’s what true freedom actually is) looking for. De Young and Gilbert note, “Everything is once again as it was before the fall- and even better! -for there will longer be even the possibility of sin in the redeemed, glorified people of God,” (124). Surrender to God and his will and you’ll get the true freedom you’re longing for.

Ever since the fall we have not been unable to physically restore our glorious Eden experience, nor could we fix the mistake that Adam started with either good living or hard work. No council could be gathered; no theologian could negotiate his or her way out of our deserving judgment. We were indebted with sin, unable to choose right from wrong. God’s creation was just running around since birth with no clue as to who are or what was if any power was in us. We are like blind sheep aimlessly moving about with no direction, guidance or supervision. But is that the case? Are we helplessly wrapped in flesh and “totally depraved” as normal human beings?

Although Martin Luther impacts history greatly, people must remember what role John Calvin has to offer as well. Born in France in 1509, John Calvin is raised as a Roman Catholic by his family. His family is so devoted to the Roman Catholic Church that his dad aspires for his son to become a priest (John Calvin- Calvin College 1). John Calvin later reads Luther’s works and converts to the ‘faith of the Reformation.’ He strongly believes that salvation is achieved through faith and predestination (Cowie 44). In 1537, John Calvin publishes, Institutes of the Christian Religion. In this book, John Calvin states his beliefs on Christianity. He proposes that God has been veiled by the devotion of the people to the Virgin Mary and the saints. He also insists in his book that predestination is how God determines who goes to hell and who goes to heaven. John Calvin writes, “We call predestination, God’s eternal degree, by which He determined that He willed to become of each man.

John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is arguably one of the most important results of the Protestant reformation. Predestination is the belief that “salvation[entrance into heaven] is given to only those whom god has chosen”. The chosen people were called the elect. John Calvin wrote this important belief during the era of the Protestant Reformation. People often formed negative opinions on predestination or let it rule their lives. Some people who did not think like Calvin loathed predestination because they believed that