18
Mar

Moses Amyraut (1596-1664) on the Removal of Legal Obstacles

   Posted by: CalvinandCalvinism   in The Removal of Legal Obstacles

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Amyraut:

Now all of this–that God displays his mercy and the hope of salvation to men in any manner at all–arises from the fact that his justice has been appeased by the sacrifice of his Son and that he has thus removed the barrier that sin placed before the grace of forgiveness, if men do not show themselves unworthy.

Moyse Amyraut, “Brief Treatise on Predestination and its Dependent Principles,” trans., by Richard Lum Richard. Th.D. diss, 1986, 41.

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3 comments so far

Martin T
 1 

For those who can accept it – hallelujah! :-)
What do you think he means by “if men do not show themselves unworthy”? I take it simply as his way of saying something like “provided they believe”.

March 19th, 2009 at 5:50 am
CalvinandCalvinism
 2 

Hey martin,

I think he means something like, those who do not disqualify themselves by unbelief. Calvin uses the same term, worthy vs unworthy to speak to believers, vs unbelievers and impious, ie, those who have disqualified themselves .

Thanks,
David

March 19th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Derek Ashton
 3 

David,

It’s interesting to read this discussion about the word “unworthy” translated from the French. I recently got into a discussion about this word when I posted some quotes from Blaise Pascal, in which he used the same word in a similar sense. Like Amyraut and Calvin, Pascal wrote in French. I’m wondering if there is some type of mistranslation, a semantic sense that simply doesn’t make the transition from French to English. Technically, the English word “unworthy” doesn’t work in some of these contexts. If you’re interested in seeing how some thoughtful commenters theorized about this on my site, the posts are here:

http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/2009/01/pascal-on-gods-self-revelation.html

and here:

http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-from-pascal.html

and here:

http://theoparadox.blogspot.com/2009/01/does-anyone-deserve-grace.html

Your suggestion that “unworthiness” stands for “unbelief” makes sense of the matter. My two years of French aren’t helping much at this point!

Grace & peace,
Derek Ashton

April 15th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

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