I've been made to understand that whatever educational, and more importantly factual, leaps and bounds I demonstrate you will reiterate the same tired old statements.
Huh?
Let's see... you've been around since 2003 and if you didn't miss it, this silliness of "Reformed thinkers are ultimately just Greek thinkers" was blown out of the water with post #15 here:
http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53669 I somehow doubt you've ever read the Westminster Confession of Faith either, otherwise you would know there are manifestly more influences than Calvin, and you would know exactly how most Reformed thinkers contemplate double predestination.
So where's the sudden hostility coming from?
I've read it many times as I've also read the Canons of Dordt, The Smalcald Articles and probably any other document you care to name. They are all quite easily available on a number of websites, my favorite of which is Reformed.org which is the website for the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics. They used to have a web forum similar to this one where I had the pleasure of debating many different points covered in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
It's more than a little evident, reading your own past material, that "you're just wrong" has for some time now been a cop-out in the face of having to demonstrate why you're right.
On the contrary. I make it a habit to explain why, although there are exceptions depending on the context. It is I who is seemingly always stating to the Calvinists that saying it doesn't make it so.
I'll think you'll see, if you go back and check, that I've told you that you were wrong twice and that both times I explained specifically what I meant by that.
It is impossible to educate someone, or talk with that person about material requiring sufficient education, if they demonstrably despise education and correcting themselves.
This statement is factually true but does not apply to me in the least. The level of your education does not impress me in the slightest. I've seen people on this website who at least claim to have a PH.D. in theology and claim to be an employed professor of theology say some of the most mind blowingly idiotic things you can imagine, not to mention blasphemous.
What impresses me is reason. Make an argument. I'm not interested in your opinion or how much money and time you've invested in formulating it. If you can't or won't make an argument then you're education is worthless. In fact, in such a case the education is worse than worthless because it likely has you entrenched into whatever belief system you've invested all that time and money into.
In fact, I canvassed a few heavily educated Reformed thinkers here, and the only quibble I heard from one of them was that when I defined double predestination near the beginning of the thread, I left the reader's mind open to assume that either predestination was exactly the same kind of predestination.
That's them being nice to you. Push them on it and see what happens. Push hard enough an it won't be long before you're accused of denying the gospel itself. I've seen it right here on this website a hundred times.
You can pretend like I'm just making all this stuff up as I go if you like but that won't change the fact that there isn't one educated Calvinist you can find anywhere that will deny a syllable of what I've quoted from Calvin's books. Not one syllable of it! Look all you like. Look here on TOL, or go to any other website you want, or read any book you want. Quote Pink, Van Til, R.C. Sproul, C.S. Lewis, D. James Kennedy, or whoever you want! (authors, all of whom I've read, by the way.) You won't find one that admits the existence of a single rouge atom in the whole of the universe or who will deny one word of the quotes I've posted of Calvin here and elsewhere.
Now, if its all the same to you, I'd like to continue what was on its way to being a productive discussion. I'll be 100% as intellectually honest as you are.
Resting in Him,
Clete
