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Regardless of John 16:1-3 in how Calvin did not follow Him when he was behind the execution of a heretic, but yes, God has used him. Since he is not without fault, then no one should be calling themselves Calvinists.

Ah, the classic Servetus argument. He simply stated the Biblical fact that a heritic, if proven from Scriptures, should be executed. He did, however, state clearly thqt he did not at all condone killing him, he merely stated the Scriptures view of heretics, as deserving death.

And I am and always will identify as a Christian, however; all Christians do not share my beliefs on such topics as The falsehood of free will, the doctrine of election ect.

So, out of respect for others right to be wrong, ( come on, you know you laughed at least a little)and so as not to convey the wrong idea, I identify as a Calvinist. It would be great if every Christian agreed with some of the Scripture's views that Calvin explained, however this not being the case, we are forced to identify as such.

@Mjh29 O.T. scripture view heretics as deserving death, but Christ did not teach to kill heretics but excommunicate them instead in Matthew 18:10-17 And any iniquity that a saved believer does is the same effect as denying Him ( Titus 1:15-16 ) which in turn they will be denied ( 2 Timothy 2:12 ) even though He still abides ( 2 Timothy 2:13 )

@Mjh29 So John 16:1-3 applies to even saved believers even when they kill or condone killing, He still abides in them even though by that act of iniquity, they deny Him for why He says they do not know Him, nor He them ( Matthew 7:21-23 ) until they repent, of course, when God will forgive them so that they may be received by the Bridegroom when He comes..

@Mjh29 It would be best to identify with those points of truth you agree with Calvin, but it is a sure bet that Calvin would not want you to identify with him by calling yourself a Calvinist and neither would Paul. 1 Corinthians 3:3-6

Yes, Jesus did cast out the heretics, but unlike Calvin... He's Jesus. And the point I was trying to get across was not that Calvin would want us to identify with such a term, but that said term is used out of necessity.

Calvin only recited truths from the scripture as Paul did. So if there was a necessity, they would have start identifying as such back then but not so. They can refer to the writings of Paul per example, but no one ever called themselves Paulist or Paulism when it is really about Jesus Christ; the Truth of the gospel.

A Calvinist might be led astray if he believed he should be seeking the execution of heretics like Calvin did.

@JesusIsFaithful If there is one thing we all have in common as humans, it's that we sin and none of us are perfect. One thing we have to realize is that culture back then during that time period was very difficult when it came to religion. Sadly, a lot of people got killed during that time period.

You want to talk about the execution but probably ignore the own hate in your heart that you have held towards someone before in your life. Oh, Calvin is so bad because of this, meanwhile Christians praise King David and Moses for their mighty acts of faith.

I believe I was leaning towards not exalting Calvin higher than we ought to think. God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh which the way he describes it is as hearing voices for the way a messenger of Satan was buffeting him in the flesh so christians do not think higher of him than they ought to think.

So that is why I believe we should abstain from the appearance of evil spoken on in 1 Corinthians 3:3-6 by not assigning the label of being a Calvinist to ourselves when we are disciples of Jesus Christ in testifying of Him in seeking His glory and not the glory of men since we are not perfect, including me.

@JesusIsFaithful, we are not exalting Calvin above Christ. If you want to continue this convo feel free to pm me so we don't fill up mjh29's whole page, lol.

I dont mind much, maybe we should start a forum discussion

Well, if any of you do start a thread, do leave a link to it here so I'd know. Thanks in advance. BTW To exalt Christ as His disciple, we should not be identified by any other name just to aviod confusion, right?

@JesusIsFaithful, we do identify with Christ alone. It sounds more like you have a personal issue at hand or else you wouldn’t be pushing so hard with this subject.

Just not sure how any one can apply 1 Corinthians 3:3-6 as being a part of their walk with Him when they are calling themselves Calvinists. If they want to refer to his work as Calvinism, then they can do that without calling themselves Calvinists, can they not?

The name is a description of a set of doctrine not an identification with John himself personally. As I mentioned, it is something personal for you or else you would be including all denominations/doctrine/etc and not Calvin himself.