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Hello, I am a Catholic, I come in peace simply seeking understand Protestant thought a bit more from Protestants themselves.
This is what I understand of Protestant anthropology and soteriology, at least according to the primary reformers i.e. Luther and Calvin. Please let me know if I am correct:
The original sin of Adam and Eve destroyed the goodness of man's nature and thereby destroyed the ability of his reason to know God or supernatural things, and also destroyed the freedom of his will thereby rendering him incapable of free moral actions.
Because of man's total depravity of mind/will he is unable to participate in any way in his salvation and thus salvation is a matter of grace alone.
Now the consequence of this which Luther never seems to deny and Calvin affirms outright is that because salvation is by grace ALONE then the difference between those who are saved and those who are damned depends not on human responsibility but on God, hence Calvin's doctrine of predestination.
My first question is, have I understood this correctly?
Secondly my question is this: How does such a theory avoid altering radically both God and man in such a way that God seems to be unavoidably monsterous for creating people who have absolutelly no chance of salvation, and man seems to no longer be a responsible moral agent since he can neither know the good nor does he have any power (even assisted by grace) to co-operate in doing good? If man does not even have the power to co-operate how can we speak of him as a responsible moral agent? And if God, as Calvin insists, is ultimately the only agent in human actions, how is it that man and not God is responsible for sin?
If someone can please help me to understand better I would appreciate it, thanks
This is what I understand of Protestant anthropology and soteriology, at least according to the primary reformers i.e. Luther and Calvin. Please let me know if I am correct:
The original sin of Adam and Eve destroyed the goodness of man's nature and thereby destroyed the ability of his reason to know God or supernatural things, and also destroyed the freedom of his will thereby rendering him incapable of free moral actions.
Because of man's total depravity of mind/will he is unable to participate in any way in his salvation and thus salvation is a matter of grace alone.
Now the consequence of this which Luther never seems to deny and Calvin affirms outright is that because salvation is by grace ALONE then the difference between those who are saved and those who are damned depends not on human responsibility but on God, hence Calvin's doctrine of predestination.
My first question is, have I understood this correctly?
Secondly my question is this: How does such a theory avoid altering radically both God and man in such a way that God seems to be unavoidably monsterous for creating people who have absolutelly no chance of salvation, and man seems to no longer be a responsible moral agent since he can neither know the good nor does he have any power (even assisted by grace) to co-operate in doing good? If man does not even have the power to co-operate how can we speak of him as a responsible moral agent? And if God, as Calvin insists, is ultimately the only agent in human actions, how is it that man and not God is responsible for sin?
If someone can please help me to understand better I would appreciate it, thanks