Can you Solve this Riddle?  Â
From Waak en Bid / Watch and Pray by Thomas Lessing
I assume you already know that the Reformed fraternity is celebrating the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth on 10 July 1509 this year. You don’t? Well, then it’s about time you dust off the cobwebs from your history books. First off, I must warn you that this is a Calvinistic riddle and they are usually tougher than a genuine South African Boere-toffee. Those of you who do not know the real meaning of the words ‘world, whomsoever, and all men’, should not even try to solve the riddle and rather bow out right now. OK! Let’s set the scene with a few very potent quotes from the lips of some of the most famous and distinguished Calvinists.
Many professing a desire to defend the Deity from an invidious charge admit the doctrine of election, but
deny that any one is reprobated (Bernard. in Die Ascensionis, Serm. 2). This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite, reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he adopts for salvation. It were most absurd to say, that he admits others fortuitously, or that they by their industry acquire what election alone confers on a few. Those, therefore, whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children (John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 3, Chapter 23, Sec. 2226)
Scripture clearly proves that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. - (John Calvin: Institutes oof the Christian Faith, Book 3, Chapter 7, Sec. 2210)
