Films about how religion has impacted our world + Dead Man analysis

You should quote the entire paragraph you're ostensibly responding to. Here's the (very important) part you excluded:

And I'm looking forward to watching the film 'Silence' "that resolves itself into a single thought: if a believer is forced to recant, yet maintains a hidden impregnable core of secret faith, a hidden finger-cross, is that a defeat or not?

This renders your reply a non-sequitur, as the OP is clearly not making a claim about God's grace in general, as you seem to be implying. And I think this is pretty obvious to anyone not going out of their way to get into spiritual tussles.

Yeah, I think Zeroni was referring to secrecy on the part of people who privately maintain their relationship with God, even when they've been forced to publicly (pretend to) renounce their faith.

__________________
"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."

The calvinist approach would be predestination in the form that while you do have free will, God through omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence already knows who will be saved before we come to faith by what we conceive as our choice. Calvinism emphasizes the sovereignty of God and his eternal decrees. Calvinism also holds strongly to that once redeemed one cannot lose their salvation. This is often compared against the Arminian view, in which Jesus Christ died on the cross to save all of humanity and it was fully up to the individual whether or not they chose to believe in Christ Jesus. Arminianism also takes the side that one can lose their salvation. Hebrews 7:25 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 6:1-7What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin. As a christian we a redeemed and forgiven of sin but we are still of this world and this world is engulfed in sin from the fall. We will sin everyday but that doesn't mean that we should go out and continue to purposely sin because we are forgiven. We are to follow as the law of scripture. We were made in the image of God and should act and live in accordance so that we may be a light of Christ to others.

Awesome! Thanks for the clarification.


One thing I wondered as I read your post: I understand that a person who is saved should be above rushing out and gratuitously sinning, and ideally a person's relationship with Christ should make them want to act righteously, but does Calvinism provide for any further behavioral incentives after salvation is secured?

Oh shoot, the original contained links to the reviews, but had to delete them because newbie, hope not too many people confused that for my writing, they were just references. The reflections on beginners movie is mine.

But yea, didn't take it to mean they were portraying God as hiding from people, just that their way of practicing their faith had to take on a different form which was individual solace in a harsh land that kept everyone in terror of openly practicing it.

Just a tad bit late, I realize, and I don't know why I didn't think of them before, but "Fiddler on the Roof" and "The Frisco Kid" both portray people dealing with adversity through their orthodox Jewish faith (even when, in the case of "Fiddler", the adversity stems -- perhaps ironically -- from outsiders' hostile reaction to the Jewish characters' religious and ethnic identity itself). Both terrific, entertaining movies in any case!

Great suggestions, I still haven't watched Fiddler on the Roof, classics are always harder to invest energy in watching, but I always enjoy them so much when I do. Might try to save watching it for Jewish activist friend who just came back from Palestine. "Live and Become" was really poignant "a 2005 French drama film about an Ethiopian Christian boy who disguises himself as an Ethiopian Jew to escape famine and emigrates to Israel."

"Live and Become" intrigues me, since I've read a lot of Holocaust literature that usually involves people trying to hide their Jewish identity. I just added it to my queue.

I'd be interested in your and your friend's thoughts on both the movies I mentioned, as well as your use of the name Palestine. (Reminds me of my college friend Ali meeting a guy in the campus library. Guy: "I'm from Israel. Where are you from?". Ali: "I'm from Palestine.". Instead of hate, this exchange apparently led to a civilized conversation. Great couple of guys!)