Get on The Horse

You can be a sad determinist or some variety of Calvinist and believe that everything is preordained. I chose to exercise my freewill and went for a ride. Don't be a fatalist, I muttered grimly to myself, get on the horse.

We started off slowly, trotting along in the clear air of a crisp, sunny Texan morning and posted off down a trail in the Mesquite. As I understand it, posting trot isn't very "Western" but so what, it's good for the horse's back and the rider's sense of rhythm, to say nothing of muscles. They got a good workout.

After a little while it seemed right to open up and off we galloped, not too furiously but plenty fast enough. It's a great feeling, moving at speed with a horse through the countryside.

We finished with some uphill galloping, Go on! Up that hill! followed by a brisk trot back to the barn. I say barn, but it's more of a walk-in with a trailer doing duty as a tack room, and what's wrong with that? Nothing at all.

Ride over, I drove the country route to Waco, down 933, cleverly avoiding the heinous I35, and visited the sick in hospital. One of them's made a pretty miraculous recovery. I thank God for that. And remember, God's knowledge is necessary but it's also eternal and simultaneous, or present tense. 

That doesn't contradict free will. Speaking of which, I'll clean some guns after Stations of the Cross. There's nothing, ahem, predictable about that, at all.

Stay on the horse,

LSP

The Weber Thesis

Grill

Back in the mists of antiquity, "going to town" mostly meant a visit to London, these days it means a drive to Dallas. And if it rains, which it almost always doesn't, you can grill under cover.

More bullets, please

Result. And while we're on topic, why does the DHS need 1000 more rounds of ammo, per person, than the Army. Surely our rulers aren't scared of anything? Or maybe they're just trying to disarm us quietly, which amounts to much the same thing.

Buy ammo if you can find it.

LSP

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Mayflower Pilgrims were Calvinists, escaping from Stuart despotism in England in order to start a new life in a new world. I suppose they gave thanks to God on the first Thanksgiving for their escape from the evils of bishops and kings, perhaps too for their assurance of final perseverance and election to heaven. 

I abhor Calvinism and find it strange that Christians who believe God to be a loving and merciful Father should ascribe a wickedness to Him infinitely in excess of the worst imaginable human parent. Viz. From all eternity he chooses some for damnation and others for salvation. Nasty bit of work, the Genevan devil-god and so maybe we shouldn't be surprised that  the Pilgrim's New England descendants turned Unitarian within a century or so of landing in America.

That aside, have a great Thanksgiving. I'm off to the Dallas compound to beat up on some turkey. 

Cheers,

LSP

The Feast of All Souls

Today is the Feast of All Souls, when we pray for the faithful departed. Atheists think that's stupid because they don't believe in souls, God, heaven or hell. Good luck with that. Some, though not all Protestants think that prayers for the dead are stupid because they believe in something called "soul sleep." 

No such thing as hell?

According to soul sleep theorists, you fall asleep when you die and if you're asleep you can't benefit from prayers offered on your behalf. More serious Protestants, such as Calvinists, believe that God has made up His mind from all eternity as to whether you're going up to heaven or down to the fiery pit. So there's no point in praying for the dead and to do so reduces the Lord's sovereignty. There is, they argue, one mediator between God and Man, who is Christ. Prayers for the departed, they feel, diminish that.

Reformers smashing it up

But soul sleep is problematic because scripture reveals the saints to be alive, albeit not on earth. We see this on the Mount of Transfiguration, where Our Lord converses with Moses and Elijah.  According to the Transfiguration, holy souls are alive instead of snoring, whether gracefully or not, under the horns of the heavenly altar.

No sleeping at the Altar

Bearing in mind the eternal simultaneity of God's knowledge, this allows us to pray for departed and ask for their prayers, which reduces the mediatorship of Christ no more than asking one another for prayers. In fact it adds to it, as all prayer, properly made, is directed to Christ and hence to the Father.

So don't be a soul sleeper, pray instead for the holy souls and ask them for their intercession.

May they rest in peace,

LSP