I delivered some of this to my study group some weeks ago, regarding how the issue of predestination (as defined by Calvinists) seems to have too much in common with what Islamic scholars say about the matter. We find these two philosophies in lock-step with regard to the deliberate and foreordained damnation of hapless souls to whom God never intended to give a chance. :o
Below are some quotes, randomly cut and pasted, juxtaposing Calvin's views (taken from his "Institutes of the Christian Religion") on predestination with those of Mohammad, in his Quran. I'll put Calvin's words in green, and those of the Quran and Islamic scholars in orange...
Calvin said, "We call predestination God's eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all
are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others.
“And if your Lord had pleased, surely all those who are in the earth would have believed, all of them; will you then force men till they become believers? And it is not for a soul to believe except by Allah’s permission; and He casts uncleanness on those who will not understand.” S. 10:99-100
With Augustine I say: the Lord has created those whom he unquestionably foreknew would go to destruction. This has happened because he has willed.
......salvation is freely offered to some while others are barred from access to it.
“Had Allah willed He could have made you (all) one nation, but He sendeth whom He will astray and guideth whom He will...” 16:93
"But since he foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take place, they vainly raise a quarrel over foreknowledge, when it is clear that all things take place rather by his determination and bidding."
Risaleh-i-Barkhavi (Islamic scholar) says: “Not only can He do anything, He actually is the only One Who does anything. When a man writes, it is Allah who has created in his mind the will to write. Allah at the same time gives the power to write, then brings about the motion of the hand and the pen and the appearance upon paper. All other things are passive, Allah alone is active.”
Orthodox Islam teaches the absolute predestination of both good and evil, that all our thoughts, words and deeds, whether good or evil, were foreseen, foreordained, determined and decreed from all eternity, and that everything that happens takes place according to what has been written for it. (sound familiar)??
Geisler wrote, "While many Muslims wish to preserve human responsibility, they can only succeed in doing so by modifying what the Qur’an actually says. Consider the very words of the Qur’an: “Say: ‘Nothing will happen to us Except what God has decreed for us” (9:51); “Whom God doth guide, -- He is on the right path: Whom He rejects from His guidance, -- Such are the persons who perish.” (7:178-179)…"
Calvin wrote: "Man falls according as God's providence ordains, but he falls by his own fault." HUH???
Calvinist, R.C. Sproul, "clarifies": “The distortion of double predestination looks like this: There is a symmetry that exists between election and reprobation. God WORKS in the same way and same manner with respect to the elect and to the reprobate. That is to say, from all eternity God decreed some to election and by divine initiative works faith in their hearts and brings them actively to salvation. By the same token, from all eternity God decrees some to sin and damnation and actively intervenes to work sin in their lives, bringing them to damnation by divine initiative. In the case of the elect, regeneration is the monergistic work of God. In the case of the reprobate, sin and degeneration are the monergistic work of God.
Let us also look at the following Hadith by Bukhari [Bukhari 6:60:473]: "While we were in a funeral procession in Baqi Al-Gharqad, Allah's Apostle (Mohammad) came and sat down, and we sat around him. He had a small stick in his hand and he bent his head and started scraping the ground with it. He then said, "There is none among you, and no created soul but has his place written for him either in Paradise or in the Hell-Fire, and also has his happy or miserable fate (in the Hereafter) written for him.
And how many pillars are there in Islam? Five,
yes. And how many "points" of Calvinism? Five again. Coincidence?
Maybe. But five in the Bible is the number of division ("from now on
there will be five in a family, three against two, two against three")...
so it's something to think about. My guess is that these two heresies have a common author.
