Freedom Events in the Okanagan — Penticton, Oliver, Kelowna
PENTICTON: Gathering every Sunday. Now being held at Lakawanna Park during the summer months
Moving to Lakawanna Park for the summer gives our events a more family-friendly name and environment as part of reaching out to the community around us. Lots of families at the beach. Lots of folks are out strolling.
Laureen’s table with important information and a petition to end BCs Bill 36.
Elsie’s table with Druthers newspapers, Vaccine Choice Canada handouts and more, for parents and curious others.
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Please arrive early (12:30) to help set up the stage and the tables, and to invite passers-by to join us.
Miss a week and you miss a lot!Fighting for freedom is more fun with friends. Bring a few. Suggest a topic or a speaker, and we’ll be happy to find someone to share their knowledge with us. ——————————- o0o————————————- OTHERS’ EVENTS · Kelowna CLEAR Rallies – 1st Saturday of each month at noon – Stuart Park, Kelowna · Oliver Rally – in front of city hall – Saturdays at 12:30 p.m.· Local A4C – Every Tuesday at Noon Protesting with Purpose: Richard Cannings 301 Main Street Penticton· Check online for school board meetings and city council meetings in your area. They’ve been changing dates lately.——————————————- o0o————————————————- EVENTS Kelowna September 2nd ——————————- o0o————————————-
Here you will find compelling evidence from experts that runs contrary to government messaging and media hype. Personal stories of loss and suffering, and heart-breaking accounts of how COVID policies negatively impacted the lives of Canadian people.
NCI’s purpose:
TO LISTEN TO LEARN TO RECOMMEND
A Citizen-Led Inquiry into Canada’s COVID-19 Response … comprehensive, transparent, and objective national inquiry into the appropriateness and efficacy of these interventions, and to determine what lessons can be learned for the future. Get started with this brief summary of Day 2 in Toronto. Michelle Leduc Catlin is the spokesperson of the NCI. She has worked professionaly as a TV host, broadcaster, actor, writer, filmmaker, director, producer and podcast host.
Renowned psychologist and bestselling author Jordan Peterson lost his court challenge against Ontario’s college of psychologists today. The college sought to force Peterson into training on how to conduct himself on social media as a condition of remaining a licensed psychologist. Peterson took the matter to an Ontario court, which ruled today that the condition doesn’t actually hinder his right to freedom of expression. Canadian Constitution Foundation lawyer Josh Dehaas joins the Andrew Lawton Show to discuss.
Also, Catherine McKenna thinks Conservative politicians need their own mandatory education on climate change. True North’s Andrew Lawton weighs in.
Plus, is artificial intelligence leading to the end of thought? Christopher Snook tackles that question in an essay for C2C Journal titled “AI, the Destruction of Thought and the End of the Humanities.” He joins the show to explain.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
Plato
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Falsified assault charge
Kelowna Courthouse
R v David Lindsay s. 266 Criminal Code Assault
Court trial update:
Two days for final submissions were originally set for Dec. 13, 14, 2023. Apparently, the judge was not happy with this and forced a short hearing two weeks ago. At this hearing, she insisted upon a hearing date before then. This date has now been set for Sept. 12, 2023.
Further, she demanded that I provide all my submissions in writing to the Crown prior to that date. That is not going to happen.
Had a hearing taken place as schedule on Dec. 13, I would have simply showed up with my submissions.
I am not going to give my defence to the Crown months or even weeks in advance for Mr. Grabavac to start e-mailing every prosecutor in the country for Crown responses and help. That is neither fair nor just to me.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General filed her Motion to Strike my RCMP challenge and served me on Friday morning with it. Her claim is that it is moot (ie: the reason for it no longer exists) or would have no impact on the trial.
The Crown is dependent in my case upon all law enforcement by the RCMP, including investigation, interrogation of witnesses, and Crown Report. If the RCMP have no jurisdiction, because policing is a Provincial matter under s. 92 of the Constitution Act 1867, then all evidence obtained was obtained without jurisdiction to so do, and must be thrown out. Once that happens, the Crown has no evidence to rely upon, not that it has any to begin with.
The informant was an RCMP officer. The Crown is trying to claim that under s. 504 of the Criminal Code anyone can lay an information. That is true…but the informant did not lay the Information as a member of the public or ‘anyone’, he laid it in the capacity or as the person of an RCMP officer. Being so, again, once determined that the RCMP have no jurisdiction in B.C. then the Informant also had no power to lay the Information against me in that capacity.
Although a Provincial Court cannot strike down legislation, if the judge finds it to be unconstitutional, they simply cannot apply it pursuant to s. 52 of the Constitution Act 1982.
Thank you for all your support, despite having two enemies in the courtroom – the Crown and the Judge!
See you Sept. 12 9:30 a.m.!
In freedom
David
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Update — Petition to ban Kelowna Protest/Rallies
David’s Documents now up on the website! The document titled “Response” is the legal argument David has filed.
The Response or legal argument, to the Petition is now up as well as all supporting affidavits. One affidavit needs to be corrected however as it is not appearing properly formatted for some reason on the site. That will be corrected shortly.
The City is attempting to rush this into a hearing the week of August 28, however as I told the City’s counsel, it is likely to take 5-8 days for hearing of my Constitutional Challenge and other defences. It is simply not possible for me to be ready in this time period in any event.
This has now been adjourned to the week of Oct. 10 (no specific date is given until Friday the week before). Shortly, I will be filing my SLAPP application. This is done under the Protection of Public Participation Act of B.C. Essentially, it was passed to prevent governments like the City of Kelowna, from trying to stop people exercising freedom of expression and criticizing these governments, exactly what is happening here.
Once I have filed this Application, I will let everyone know and post it online as well. It will likely take a full day to be heard, and I believe that this Oct. 10 date will also be adjourned as the legislation requires that no other steps in the case can take place until this is heard.
This is the biggest attempt to control our freedom of speech and assembly in history.
The media has already confirmed to me that they were instructed by the Gov’t not to print anything contrary to the Gov’t COVID-19 narrative. If they deny us our freedom to protest where it is most effective, then other cities will follow likewise by banning our protests, and without any media assistance, the Gov’t will be free to do whatever it wants with no public exposure. Pure Communism. This is the most critical time in our struggle for freedom….right now.
Unfortunately, this case will have significant repercussions for every protest rally in British Columbia, and indeed, in Canada, as it is being heard in a superior court in this Province. This will be an incredibly complex case.
Donations would be very much appreciated as costs are now starting to come in.
E-transfers can be done to: clear2012@pm.me or cash donations can be mailed to: PO Box 21113 Cherry Lane Mall, Penticton BC V2A 8K8
To follow my court case as a public member, you may email the CNO at HearingsAdministrationGroup@cnomail.org Reference my case: Sarah Anahid Choujounian Abulu and ask them for the links
Reminder this case is no longer under CFLN therefore the e-mail and links to donate are different. There are a few ways to donate, and I want to specify that this is more of an investment in the future of our children than just a simple donation.
You can also help by connecting me with people who can interview me or host a fundraiser at which I can may be able to attend…and please share, share, share
Every Wednesday Action4Canada hosts the Empower Hour, an online zoom meeting open to everyone. We have a special guest each week, who will educate, inform and answer your burning questions.
To be kept informed of these webinars sign up for our Email Updates so as to receive advance notification along with details on how to pre-register for each Empower Hour webinar.
“All I know is in my province we have 650 fires and 500 of them were human caused, so we have to make sure that when people know that when it’s dry out there and we get into forest fire season, that they’re being a lot more careful because anytime you end up with an ignition that happens, it can have devastating consequences. And so, that’s what I wouldhope that we can educate the public on, on that front as well.”
Combined with geoengineering issues detailed by Bettina and Nadia and others, it is readily clear that there is no climate change causing fires. The graph below shows that, if true, this year’s fires are man made – figures do not change to this extent in less than one year – especially after a year with record snowfalls!!!
Directed energy weapons?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/iHnLJFg7ciNe/
Learn the truth on the false “97%” of scientists agree humans are driving climate change:
We need to get the story out about what’s happening in the Shuswap. Can you guys please post this everywhere. Send it to everyone you know. Please help us.
My name is Stef and my husband Jorne and I own a home at the end of Meadow Creek road in Celista BC. The fire department and forestry lit a back burn around 4pm on Thursday Aug 17th knowing there were 30km winds coming. No news outlet is talking out this. My husband has been monitoring the winds and the Adams creek fire for weeks. On Tuesday Aug 15th we knew the winds were coming. The fire was approx 15km away from us. We don’t know who decided to light a back burn knowing the wind forecast. They lit a 14km back burn right to our back door and never notified us. My dad who lives in Kelowna knew about a “out of control back burn” before we did. They didn’t even come to tell us. They notified the locals by posting it on a piece of paper at the gas station.
At 845 pm we saw the fire just over the ridge. And by 12pm it had reached meadow creek road and was in back yard. Without the back burn we could have had a whole day to prepare. We did have sprinklers up, water tanks loaded and generators ready to go. We knew we were pretty much on our own and would not receive much help. The fire department did come down the road and were there briefly. Once they deemed the fire out of control they left. When the fire came into the valley we watched it burn up the sides of the mountain due to the humidity dome created with all the sprinkler and water. The fire department abandoned us. About 2 hours had passed when some locals came down our valley with resources and help. I was notified the fire department was sitting in a field having coffee so I went t to get them. When I got there I asked them to come help us, told them the situation.
One of the firemen told me they wanted to help but had orders to sit. I yelled at them to get in their trucks and come help us. They said they would. I went back down the road to notify our crew they were coming. I sat and waited but no one came. About 15 minutes had gone by so I went back up the road and found them sitting about 1km away. They told me they were assessing the situation. I asked how they could assess if they couldn’t see it? I again asked them to come help and they finally did. Everyone ran around putting hot spots out. We wore water packs and half masks with headlamps for the next 3 days making sure our houses made it through.
In the initial days after the “superfire” the locals were able to get water, gas and supplies but now there is a heavy police presence. They have the roads blocked off saying they are preventing looting. The locals are being told to return to their homes. They are not allowed to be helping at all. There are spike strips on the roads. Police blocks everywhere. There are people trying to get essential supplies in such as water, gas and food by boat. They are being turned away. Police are patrolling the roads and water. They have the gas stations blocked off.
We need the real story to get out so we can get help.
We are more than equipped to help put this fire out but are being stopped. We need resources such as gas, diesel to keep us going. They’re trying to starve us out so they can let it burn.
My number is 250-509-0400 Please feel free to post my number. I’m willing to talk to anyone who can help us.
NOTE: Similar incidents occurred in the 2003 Okanagan fire. It appears that the management prefer to let these fires get out of control rather than stop them at source, in the hopes they will burn out. They rarely do and get out of control, then they all pat themselves on the back for all the dedication to put them out.
Now no doubt there are tons of committed firefighters doing their best – it appears this is a top management and financial issue.
The original reason CLEAR was founded was to expose the fraudulent usury (interest) based banking system. You should obtain a copy of the short book, USURY by Hilaire Belloc, as was as Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People by Joe Thaughberger. Understanding the fraudulent banking system is the fundamental key to opening up the knowledge of freedom.
Every single problem in societies the world over, is traceable back to the fraudulent money system.
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An incredible examination into the reasons people blindly obey even tyrants. A must read for everyone who believes in peaceful civil disobedience.
In the absence of rallies every Saturday, we don’t get the funding we used to that allowed us to print all the resources we provide at the CLEAR booth, as well as the inserts that go into the Druthers newspapers for our Sunday paper deliveries. Thanks to your past donations, we have delivered over 8000 copies of Druthers, plus various inserts, in Kelowna and W. Kelowna, with lots more to go!
Future protests are being strategically planned right now for City Hall, the courthouse, and other locations.
Many people believe that the COVID-19 issue is over – and it is not. Freedom is a multi-generational struggle, where we hope to leave a better place for our children. Other serious issues are lurking ominously in the near future that we will need to focus on: 15 min cities; legal actions; digital ID and digital currencies to start. These will require ongoing research and production of signs and materials for public education. The digital ID and currency issues are two of the most critical and going to involve significant amounts of education for people.
Please give generously by e-transfer to: clear2012@pm.me or our endeavours
to educate the public we will not be able to educate people as effective as we are doing now. You can also mail cash (this remains safe) by Expresspost to: P.O. Box 21113 Cherry Lane Mall, Penticton, BC, V2A 8K8. Cash of course, would be the preferred method to protect everyone’s privacy.
These are unfortunately the only methods available right now to accept donations outside of the monthly rallies. Everything we do is on a volunteer basis and if you are not able to volunteer, your cash donation is what keeps the freedom wheel turning.
We do need volunteers to join our Fundraising Focus Group. If you are good at event planning and have some time to devote to organize regular fundraising occasions, please come see Linda at the CLEAR booth this Saturday or contact CLEAR.Linda@proton.me.
We need volunteers who are:
Proactive
Can work independently
Able to collaborate with others
Responsible and Dependable
Trustworthy
Enthusiastic
Result-Oriented
Committed
Motivated
If you possess these qualities and want to make a difference right now as a Freedom Activist, please add your name to the Volunteer List at the CLEAR booth this Saturday or contact CLEAR.Linda@proton.me to get more information.
Freedom requires time, energy or money. Thank you all for your help, in any form you are able to assist with. Everything you do for the sake of freedom is a seed planted. And although you may not see where it lands, trust that it will grow and bear fruit! Otherwise, why have the City, Province and Feds continually tried to shut us down?!! We are effective with one of the lowest vaccination rates in BC and Canada – thanks to YOU!
Sunday Paper Deliveries
Next delivery day: August 27, 2023
(Weather Permitting)
Add your name to the delivery list and make sure to check your email on Sunday mornings for confirmation that our paper delivery will take place that day
Make sure you arrive before the designated time so we can all get going ASAP!
Every Sunday at 11:30 am
August 27, 2023
Sign-up on the Newspaper Delivery list so that you get an email confirming the deliveries for each Sunday. With winter in mind, we will only do this if roads are bare and it’s not snowing. The advantage of delivering this time of year is that nobody is hanging out in their front yards except for the odd snowman.
We meet at the Capri parking lot between A&W and De Dutch Pannekoek House
Bring a large bag for carrying the papers if you want
Grab a free small Kelowna mapbook that can help you get situated. Your cell phone will be tracking and tracing you. Learn how to read maps again
You will be provided with a printed google map of the area you will be delivering to. Bring a yellow marker to indicate which streets you completed. You may run out of papers or you may end up with extra
We ask that with every paper you deliver, you remove the inserts and place them in the mailbox in front or behind the paper. That way, someone who may hastily throw out the paper will still be forced to see each individual flyer
Please deliver only one paper per mailbox, regardless if you have different papers (we usually have a combination of different papers and editions). Some houses may have up to 4 mailboxes; put one paper in each as they are for different tenants
Sign up as a Volunteer to participate in one of the many focus groups we are working to organize. Most people are too busy to commit to fighting for freedom. I guarantee you will have plenty of extra time after Canada becomes a full-fledged communist country and your jobs & businesses are gone. Time to add freedom-fighting to your list of priorities. Much of the help needed can be done at home and even one hour per week will be helpful. Even if you don’t want to join a specific group, maybe you have something you can offer to help out. Let us know!
3 Simple Things Freedom Activists can do to WIN this War:
Spread the Word by delivering papers and flyers everywhere:
1 Knowledge is power!
2. Replace your cell phone with a flip phone:
Think of your apps as TRAPS!
3. Use CASH:
Hand out the “Use cash cards” and “pay cash” business posters
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REMINDER
New Credit Card Fees & Lack of Privacy
It is starting – Use cash as much as possible – use credit cards or digital only if there is no other alternative.
Companies will not use digital currency if we are not using digital currency! It will cost them too much in lost business.
Here is an awesome poster you can distribute to all businesses to put on their entrance doors, advocating for the use of cash. Print on 8 1/2 x 11 glossy hard stock for best results.
For Business owners:
The dangers of digital gov’t ID and currencies are here… you need to use cash as much as possible. As recognized by Freedom Rising, there are many inherent dangers of using digital currency. What do you do, not if, but when:
The internet is down
There is a power outage
The card reader malfunctions
Your phone battery dies or doesn’t work for other reasons
WE SUGGEST YOU CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING AS WELL:
Your phone is stolen
Your passwords are co-opted
Your credit/debit card strip is damaged – needs replacing
There are errors in relation to the quantum of $$ on your card
Gov’t limits your purchases/CRA liens the balance on your card
AND MANY OTHER DANGERS
CLEAR has promoted the non-use of digital currencies and credit/debit cards as much as possible, for years.
Suggestion:
Withdraw money on Saturday/Sunday from the bank or bank machine, and then leave your money at home if you are scared to carry it with you, and just carry the amounts of cash for each day’s purchases for the week.
NO MORE CARDS!!!! NO EXCUSES!
USE CASH $$$$$$$$$
Do you want to be the next person to be “unbanked” because of your political beliefs????
Get these cards below at the CLEAR booth to give out everytime you use cash – or print your own to hand out!
Make Business sized cards to hand out at all your cash purchases!
Thanks Nadia for this link:
Find out which institutions near you Support Digital ID
The Digital ID System is being supported by a rapidly growing number of provincial and federal governments, financial institutions, networks for payments and for identity verification, technology service providers, strategy and integration experts to name a few…
Even though COVID-19 restrictions are, for the most part, no longer in effect, other freedom issues have arisen as gov’ts use the cover of COVID-19 to introduce other more formidable liberty restrictions, including privacy violations.
Freedom is a multi-generational struggle – our legacy is to leave a better place for our children, not simply to quit after an issue appears to be over and anger diminishes; and of course, it rarely is truly over.
We urge you to provide designs (clear2012@pm.me) and/or your own signs for upcoming threats, including Digital ID
Digital currency and no cash
Climate change fraud
Further health, property, rights and freedoms restrictions
In my last essay I demonstrated that contrary to the view sometimes put forth by overzealous Low Churchmen of a Reformed-in-the-continental-sense bent that our English branch of Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church affirms her Protestantism in a Calvinist as opposed to Lutheran way in her reformed Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, these instead are worded in such a way as to side with neither Wittenberg nor Geneva absolutely on the controversies between the two with the result that while on the matter of the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper they lean towards Calvin without excluding Luther, on the matter of Predestination they lean towards Luther without excluding Calvin. On several other matters – prioritizing the truths confessed in the Catholic Creeds over other doctrines, retaining the Apostolic episcopacy rather than adopting a presbyterian government (some Lutherans, such as the Swedish, are like us in this regards, others, such as the German, who were unable to retain the episcopacy, did not adopt the Genevan model), the normative principle (what is not forbidden by Scripture is permitted) over the regulative principle (what is not commanded by Scripture is forbidden) – Anglicanism, as confessed in the Articles is far closer to the Lutheranism than to Calvinism.
An interesting response to this came in an online Anglican group. The matter of the Lambeth Articles of 1495 was raised and the person who brought it up seemed to think that this document invalidated my entire argument by providing an official Anglican declaration that Article XVII (On Predestination and Election) is to be understood in the most Calvinist way possible. What made this response so interesting was that the answer to it was so obvious – the Lambeth Articles are not official Anglican doctrine. They were denied royal assent twice, first by Queen Elizabeth I, then by King James I at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604. Thank God for the divine right of kings! It was not a matter of the monarchs refusing out of personal theological prejudice to allow the Church to teach what she wanted. At the same time as the events leading to the drafting of the Lambeth Articles the first volumes of a lengthy treatise defending the Elizabethan Religious Settlement against the arguments of Calvinists who wished to overthrow said Settlement and introduce something more radical and less Catholic appeared in print. The way in which this treatise was subsequently embraced by Anglicans of every party demonstrates that Queen Elizabeth and King James knew what they were doing in not allowing a narrower, much more rigid, interpretation of the difficult doctrine of predestination than that which appears in Article XVII to be imposed on the English Church.
The wisdom of the royal judgement in not allowing the Lambeth Articles to become the official doctrine of the Church will become all the more apparent as we look at the history of how this would-be addendum to the Articles of Religion came to be.
The Lambeth Articles indirectly testify to the fact that Article XVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles does not require those who affirm or subscribe to it to accept the interpretation of predestination that is taught in the Lambeth Articles. If it did, there would have been no need for strict Calvinists to draw up the Lambeth Articles and try to make them enforceable upon the clergy.
The Most Reverend Matthew Parker had been chosen to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury upon the accession of Elizabeth I in 1559 and he was consecrated and installed in that office in December of that year. Contrary to lies spread by the Jesuits, this was done properly by four bishops at Lambeth Palace, preserving the Apostolic succession, not in some untoward way in the Nag’s Head Tavern. Nor are the arguments against the legitimacy of his Apostolic succession raised by Roman Patriarch Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae (1896) valid but that is a subject for another time. One of his first accomplishments was the revision of the Forty-Two Articles, written by his predecessor Thomas Cranmer and briefly made the official doctrine of the Church of England in 1552 at the very end of the reign of Edward VI. These were revised into Thirty-Nine Articles in the Convocation of 1563, with much of the work of revision being done by Parker himself. While a couple of changes had to be made before the Articles received royal assent in 1571 for the most part the Thirty-Nine Articles were what they would ultimately be in 1563. The following year John Calvin died.
John Calvin’s death removed what had up to then been the chief restraint preventing the Genevan school from running to seed on the doctrine of predestination. It seems strange to think of it that way today, when Calvin’s name is virtually synonymous with predestination, but compared to those who came after him he was quite moderate on the topic. Like Dr. Luther, he was strongly influenced by St. Augustine of Hippo, who in the early fifth century led the orthodox Church in condemning the heresy of Pelagianism (the denial of Original Sin and assertion that the human will unassisted by God’s grace can move towards God). In defending Augustinian orthodoxy, at least as he understood it, in On the Bondage of the Will (1525) his answer to Erasmus, Dr. Luther had taken a strong view of predestination that was very similar to that of Calvin’s. It did not have as important a place in his theology as it did in Calvin’s, however, just as in Calvin’s theology predestination was not near as important is it would become among Calvin’s followers. While later in his life Dr. Luther continued to regard On the Bondage of the Will as his favourite of his own writings, he clearly saw the danger of fixating on the doctrine, especially if it is considered apart from Jesus Christ and the Gospel, and warned against this danger, reminding people of the difference between what God has revealed to us and what He has kept hidden, and that it is inadvisable to focus on and speculate about the hidden things (he argued this at length and in several places in his Lectures on Genesis). In the larger Lutheran tradition predestination and election are affirmed only of those who will ultimately be saved, there is no teaching of reprobation to damnation. Jesus is proclaimed as having died for all, with the Grace He obtained for all on the Cross brought to man in the two forms of the Gospel, Word and Sacrament. Faith, the sole means of receiving the Grace so brought to man, is itself formed in the human heart by the Grace contained in the Gospel, again Word and Sacrament, without any contribution from our own will. The Grace in the Gospel is sufficient to produce saving faith in all, but resistible, so that salvation is entirely of God, damnation entirely of man. Dr. Luther and his tradition took care that the doctrine of predestination not be taught in such a way as to either undermine the assurance of the Gospel or encourage licentious behaviour.
In John Calvin’s writings, while predestination has a larger role than in Dr. Luther’s, it is by no means the doctrine to which all other truths must be subordinated that it often seems to be in the teachings of many of his followers. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he devotes four chapters to it, towards the end of the third (out of four) volume. The third volume is about salvation, following after the first, which is about God the Creator, and the second, which is about God the Redeemer. He turns to election in this volume, only after extensively covering Grace, Faith, Regeneration, Justification, Assurance, the Christian Life, and Christian Liberty. It is very much a subordinate doctrine, that he derives from the sovereignty, omnipotence, and omniscience of God, but without the puerile manner in which some who bear his name today taunt those who do not believe exactly the way they do with the accusation that they preach too small a God, then wonder why nobody else is impressed with their “my God is bigger than your God” type arguments that sound like nothing so much as a boy in the schoolyard telling his playmates “my dad can beat up your dad”. He expresses the same concerns about the abuse of the doctrine as Luther and from his Institutes it appears that his pastoral counsel to someone troubled by an undue fixation on predestination was almost identical to Luther’s, that is, look to Christ as revealed in the Gospel, not to the hidden councils of God. Later Calvinists had trouble doing this because of their doctrine that Jesus died only for the elect. The closest Calvin came to teaching this doctrine was in his remarks on 1 John 2.2 in his Commentary on the Catholic Epistles. That was published in 1531. In his Commentary on the Gospel of John, published two years later, his remarks on the most beloved and comforting words in all of Scripture, the familiar sixteenth verse of the third chapter, exclude all possibility of a Limited Atonement interpretation: “And he has employed the universal term whosoever, both to invite all indiscriminately to partake of life, and to cut off every excuse from unbelievers. Such is also the import of the term World, which he formerly used; for though nothing will be found in the world that is worthy of the favour of God, yet he shows himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life”.
Article XVII, both as Cranmer had originally written it in the Forty-Two Articles, and in the slightly edited form in which it stands in the Thirty-Nine Articles, speaks of predestination only in reference to the saved not the lost. In this, it affirms what the larger Lutheran tradition affirms, without affirming what appeared to have been Dr. Luther’s position in 1525 but what the Lutheran tradition and possibly Dr. Luther himself in his later years moved away from, and what the Lutheran tradition would explicitly reject in the Formula of Concord six years after the Thirty-Nine Articles were adopted by the Church of England, that is double predestination. Double predestination is rejected in paragraphs three and four of Article XI of the Formula of Concord, the only Article in all of the Lutheran Confessions on the subject of Election. There is no Article on election or predestination in the Geneva Confession of 1536, or the Gallican (French) Confession of 1559, the only Confessions written in whole or in part by John Calvin himself. It appears in the Second Helvetic Confession, however which was written by Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, shortly before Calvin’s death, and published shortly after. In the Three Forms of Unity of the Reformed Church, the Heidelberg Catechism written by Ursinus in the same year that Parker was revising the Articles of Religion makes no mention of predestination, unsurprisingly perhaps in that it is a Catechism, that is to say, intended to be introductory and basic. In the other two, however, Article XVI of the Belgic Confession (1561) is on Election, with the weak form of the doctrine of reprobation affirmed and the Canons of Dort (1619) are entirely in defense of the doctrine of Double Predestination. This shows how the doctrine became much more important in the Calvinist tradition as it developed.
The Anglican Article XVII neither affirms reprobation like the Calvinist tradition, nor positively rejects it like the Lutheran tradition in the Formula of Concord. What it does affirm about predestination is much more Lutheran than Calvinist though. The second paragraph begins by saying that it is a comfort for the godly. This, however, is only true if we heed the advice of the final paragraph. Here, Parker’s revision of Cranmer’s original, was perhaps unfortunate. Cranmer wrote “Furthermore, although the Decrees of predestination are unknown unto us, we must receive God’s promises in such wise as they are generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture, and in our doings, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God.” The italicized portion was removed in the Thirty-Nine Articles. It is stronger in the original wording, but the meaning still stands in the revised version, and it is identical to the advice given by Dr. Luther in his Lectures on Genesis, that we should not concern ourselves with what God has not revealed to us, His secret counsels from all eternity, but with what God has revealed to us in the Gospel.
Cranmer in 1553 and Parker ten years later could not have known the direction that the Reformed tradition would take after Calvin’s death, but they seem, like Dr. Luther, to have recognized that predestination is a doctrine that can easily take someone who runs with it into any number of ditches, and to have written Article XVII to guard against this possibility. The Most Reverend and Right Honourable John Whitgift would have been well-advised to follow the lead of these his predecessors. He seems to have attempted to do so at first but in 1595 committed the blunder of signing off on a document that, had it received final approval, would have imposed an interpretation of predestination on Article XVII that was more extreme than could be found in any then-extent Calvinist Confession. Ironically, his intent in so doing was to restore peace to the campus of Cambridge University, where he himself had been a professor earlier in his career at the beginning of the Elizabethan Age.
The man who had upset the peace at Cambridge was William Barrett, who was the chaplain of Caius College at Cambridge University. On 29 April, 1595, Barrett gave a sermon from the pulpit of St. Mary’s Church, in the course of which he blasted the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and asserted that predestination and reprobation were based on human holiness and sin respectively. The main target of his attack, however, was the more basic doctrine of assurance of salvation. He denounced as arrogance, the confident assurance of one’s salvation. This raised a ruckus and he was immediately brought before the Vice-Chancellor of the University, who chewed him out. Unrepentant, the heads of the various colleges were brought in, and they joined in denouncing him, so he was forced to make a retraction on 10 May. He came across as somewhat less than sincere in his retraction which did not satisfy the academic authorities. As a matter of fact the heads of the colleges went to the Vice-Chancellor demanding his expulsion. At this point the affair was brought by both sides to the attention of Archbishop Whitgift who asked Hadrian Saravia, a prebendary at Gloucester Cathedral and a member of Cambridge’s rival Oxford University, and Lancelot Andrewes who was his personal chaplain at the time, for their opinions on the matter. Their opinion was that while Barrett wasn’t entirely in the right, the Cambridge authorities had gone too far in forcing that retraction on him. The Archbishop, satisfied with this opinion, sent a message to the Cambridge authorities dressing them down and reminding them that they could discipline a chaplain for speaking against the Articles of Religion but not for speaking against whatever was currently in vogue in Geneva. He then made the grave mistake of assigning further investigation to William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
This was a mistake because Whitaker was the man against whom Barrett’s sermon had been directed in the first place. Whitaker had himself given a sermon on 27 February against “those who assert universal grace” by which he meant Peter Baro, who was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. Baro was originally from France, like Calvin he had studied law and then he went to Geneva to study theology under Calvin. He was ordained into the ministry by the Reformer himself. When the Huguenots (French Calvinists) faced persecution in France in the 1570s, he fled to England where he was appointed to one of what were then the only two endowed professorships of divinity at Cambridge, which he had held for twenty one years at the time this controversy broke out. In the meantime, like Beza’s student Arminius, he had moved away from the strict view of predestination that Beza had been working to make stricter. Whitaker had held the other endowed professorship in divinity for almost as long, having been appointed to the post in 1580. He had also been appointed Master of St. John’s College in 1586, and about the time Archbishop Whitgift asked him to look into the Barrett case, was made a canon of Canterbury. He very much seemed to be a man on the rise at the time of this controversy. In part this was due to his scholarly achievements. His scholarship was acknowledged, even by Cardinal Bellarmine against whom his magnus opus, Disputations on Holy Scripture, was written, to be second to none. The other part was due to his being protégé of both Whitgift and Lord Burghley (William Cecil – Elizabeth I’s Lord High Treasurer, spymaster, most trusted adviser, and basically, although the office was not yet created, Prime Minister). He was also, however, the most extreme Calvinist among the Church of England’s clergy at the time, outside of the Puritan faction. Needless to say, the theological differences between the Regius and the Lady Margaret Professors of Divinity, had led to the formation of bitterly rival factions in the school of divinity. Whitaker accepted the task of investigating Barrett from Whitgift but, although he himself had been the target of Barrett’s sermon, it was not Barrett he was interested in so much as Baro.
Whitaker gave Barrett a questionnaire full of questions designed to elicit answers from the man which would enable Whitaker to accuse him to Whitgift, not just of Arminianism, a word that had barely made it to the English shore at this point in time, but of the far more serious charge of popery. Usually Calvinist accusations of popery against those who did not agree with their view of predestination were nonsensical slurs but in this case it seems to have been justified. After these events he left England and joined the Roman Church. Whitaker sent Barrett’s answers, with his own commentary, to the Archbishop and then, in September, the Vice-Chancellor and college heads wrote to Whitgift asking for a final ruling, and permission to discipline Barrett. Whitgift, wanting neither to let Barrett off on the points where he seemed to be supporting Romanism nor to force him to agree with the entire recantation that the Cambridge authorities had drawn up, asked Barrett to give an account before him at Lambeth Palace in November. The other members of the tribunal were Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, and Richard Vaughan, who had been chosen as the next Bishop of Bangor but would not be consecrated and installed until the following year. Whitaker and Humphrey Tyndall, the President of Queen’s College and Dean of Ely, were sent along as the representatives of the Cambridge authorities. The matter of Barrett was fairly easily disposed of – he agreed to another recantation. Then Whitaker handed the Archbishop a set of nine Articles, clarifying in the sense of significantly narrowing, the Church’s position on predestination, and asked him to make it binding on the clergy. This would have opened the door to his having Baro ejected from his seat at Cambridge.
Whitgift, after consulting with the Archbishop of York, made with the other bishops on the tribunal a few revisions to the Articles and then signed them on 20 November. One consequence of this has been that Archbishop Whitgift, the staunch anti-Puritan, has ever since had a reputation for being a far stricter Calvinist than he actually was. Here are the Articles in the form in which they were signed:
God from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto life; certain men he hath reprobated.
The moving or efficient cause of predestination unto life is not the foresight of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of any thing that is in the person predestinated, but only the good will and pleasure of God.
There is predetermined a certain number of the predestinate, which can neither be augmented nor diminished.
Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall be necessarily damned for their sins.
A true, living, and justifying faith, and the Spirit of God justifying [sanctifying], is not extinguished, falleth not away; it vanisheth not away in the elect, either finally or totally.
A man truly faithful, that is, such a one who is endued with a justifying faith, is certain, with the full assurance of faith, of the remission of his sins and of his everlasting salvation by Christ.
Saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not communicated to all men, by which they may be saved if they will.
No man can come unto Christ unless it shall be given unto him, and unless the Father shall draw him; and all men are not drawn by the Father, that they may come to the Son.
It is not in the will or power of every one to be saved.
Whitaker returned to Cambridge to prepare for the prosecution of Baro. He caught a cold on the way home, however, which developed into a fever, and two weeks after the publication of he Lambeth Articles he died. Before he died he met with his other patron, Lord Burghley, who among his many other duties was Chancellor of the University, and discussed the matter, most likely expecting Cecil’s support. The Lord High Treasurer, however, recognized immediately the threat to the peace of realm and Church that the “Lambeth Articles” posed and went directly to Queen Elizabeth with the news that Whitgift had essentially held an unofficial Convocation behind her back in which he had added to the Articles of Religion in such a way as to force a narrow interpretation of a contentious point on them. Queen Elizabeth summoned Whitgift to appear before her and her Privy Council to answer for this illegal behaviour, for which he could do nothing but apologize and beg her pardon. Whitgift received her pardon – but the Lambeth Articles were vetoed. Baro was allowed to finish his term and retire peacefully, and the queen appointed John Overall to the Regius Professorship vacated by the death of Whitaker. Overall was a young clergyman, born the year of the queen’s accession, and ordained only four years prior to his appointment to Cambridge. Later he would work with Lancelot Andrewes on the translation of the Authorized Bible, a few years after which he was consecrated Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield before being translated the very end of his career and life to the See of Norwich. He was already known to be a moderate on the matter of predestination in 1595, however, and it was for this that he was chosen as the replacement of Whitaker.
The Lambeth Articles, although originally drafted to narrow Anglican orthodoxy to a strictly Calvinist position on predestination, in the modified form in which Whitgift signed them, still left room for non-Calvinist interpretations. The second Article, while affirming “the good will and pleasure of God” as the sole cause of predestination to life, makes no such statement about reprobation and, indeed, the fourth Article by asserting that those not predestinated to life will be damned “for their sins” places the cause of their damnation, and hence their “reprobation”, in themselves rather than God. The ninth Article, of course, can be affirmed by any Augustinian, for not only is it true that “it is not in the will or power of every one to be saved” it is actually “not in the will or power of any one to be saved” because salvation does not come from the will or power of the one saved but from God Who does the saving. “With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God” as our Lord put it. None of the Lambeth Articles asserts the most problematic of the doctrines that would be adopted by the Synod of Dort in response to the Arminian Articles of Remonstrance in 1619, the anti-Scriptural and blasphemous doctrine of Limited Atonement, that Jesus died only for the elect. This is why the fifth Article can assert “A man truly faithful, that is, such a one who is endued with a justifying faith, is certain, with the full assurance of faith, of the remission of his sins and of his everlasting salvation by Christ.” This assertion is inconsistent with the idea that Jesus died only for he elect. Justifying faith is faith in Jesus Christ as He is revealed in the Gospel. The Gospel is not a revelation of what God has done in secret, into which category fall election and predestination. It is a revelation of what God has done for mankind out in the open for everyone to see, by the giving of His Son Jesus Christ, Who made Atonement for dying for the sins of the world, then rose again from the dead. The difference between “historical faith”, which does not justify or save and “saving faith” or “justifying faith” is that the person with “historical faith” sees in the Gospel only events that are some place, some time, distant and unconnected to himself, while the person with justifying faith sees in the Gospel the message that “Jesus died for me” which information is absent from the Gospel if Jesus died only for the elect, and indeed, if Jesus dies only for the elect, the information about whether Jesus died for any particular individual will not be available this side of the Last Judgement, so what is asserted in the fifth Lambeth Article is utterly impossible if Jesus died only for the elect. Indeed, assurance is difficult to square with the concept of double predestination. The early Dr. Luther managed to do so, as did John Calvin, but this was because both men recognized that it was unwise to dwell on what God has not revealed, His secret counsels, but must direct our faith towards what God has revealed in Jesus Christ.
One who did not follow them in this was William Perkins. Perkins was born in the last year of the reign of Mary, studied at Cambridge University, and remained a fellow of Christ’s College at Cambridge until the year before the controversy that produced the Lambeth Articles. He was a Puritan, considered a moderate in that he was neither a separatist nor a rebel, but was very severe in his Calvinism. He died almost twenty years before Limited Atonement was formulated but he accepted Theodore Beza’s supralapsarianism, the form of extreme Calvinism that started the chain of events that led to Dort. He developed the doctrine of “experimental predestination” for when his obsessive preaching on predestination caused people to ask the question “am I one of the elect”. In this he advised people to make use of a practical syllogism – everyone who believes is a child of God, I believe, therefore I am a child of God – that separated assurance from the direct look of faith. Worse, he told them to look for evidence for the second premise, if they doubted their faith was the saving kind, by looking inward for the fruit of sanctification. This didn’t work out too well in his case. His biographer Thomas Fuller records that he died “in the conflict of a troubled conscience”. Perkins’ writings were more influential than any other Puritan of the Elizabethan Age on subsequent generations of Puritans and this problem of dying in the conflict of a troubled conscience recurred over and over again. There were also cases of people living in the conflict of a troubled conscience because of this doctrine and being driven mad by it. William Cowper, the Olney poet and hymn writer, is a classic example of this, although to be fair, the evidence suggests that given his extremely melancholic temperament he might have ended up the same way no matter what doctrine he had been taught.
The example of Perkins, and the subsequent generations of Puritans who followed him in this, if not in his moderation with regards to making further reforms to the Church, demonstrates how an overemphasis on predestination undermines in practice the assurance of salvation that it is supposed to bolster. For a good example of how the doctrine can be taught without having this negative effect see the second to last chapter in Getting Into The Theology of Concord (1977) by Robert D. Preus. The book is a commentary on the Lutheran Confessions and under the heading “Predestination and the Election of Grace” Preus, who was president of Concordia Theological Seminary at the time, explained that it was a doctrine that was only to be introduced after one had already been assured of salvation through faith in the revealed Gospel, in order “to give him even greater certainty and assurance of God’s grace”. Preus recounted his own professor’s explanation of predestination as meaning merely “everything God has done in time to save us and make us His children and preserve us in the faith, He determined in Christ to do for us in eternity.” Understood this way, the doctrine is not the threatening source of uncertainty that it has been when overemphasized as it has been in much of the Calvinist tradition. In the Canons of Dort (1619) Perkins’ view of assurance replaced that of Calvin (found in Article XI of the Geneva Confession of 1536, Articles XVIII, XIX, XX and XXII of the Gallican Confession of 1559, and the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, chapter xxiv, paragraph 5) as the official Calvinist doctrine in the twelfth article under the first head (Divine Election and Reprobation – in Dort, the points are ordered ULTIP rather than TULIP):
Assurance of their eternal and unchangeable election to salvation is given to the chosen in due time, though by various stages and in differing measure. Such assurance comes not by inquisitive searching into the hidden and deep things of God, but by noticing within themselves, with spiritual joy and holy delight, the unmistakable fruits of election pointed out in God’s Word—such as a true faith in Christ, a childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on.
The Lambeth Articles were brought to the Synod of Dort and read out in the deliberation there. Although they affirm a strong view of assurance of salvation, and the occasion of their drafting was Barrett’s sermon attacking assurance – Saravia and Andrewes advised Whitgift that Barrett had only denied the impossibility of those justified by faith falling from grace, asserted by Calvinism but not in the Articles of Religion, rather than their present assurance of forgiveness and justification, while his accusers maintained he had denied both – they can therefore be regarded as a step in the direction in which Calvinism was moving, away from the solely outward look to the objective truth of the Gospel of Lutheranism and early Calvinism to the inward look of Puritanism/Dort. It is therefore, most merciful indeed, that by the grace of God, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I prevented them from becoming an official addendum to the Articles of Religion.
Those who wish it were otherwise often claim that the Lambeth Articles represented a consensus of the leading clergy of the Church of England at the time. This is hardly the case. Archbishop Whitgift was by no means as harsh a predestinarian as his signature on these Articles might suggest to some. It is now time to consider another protégé of Whitgift’s who the year before this controversy had published the first four volumes in a defense of the Elizabethan Settlement against those who wished to reshape the Church entirely in the image of Geneva, a defense that gained such wide acceptance that Anglicans of all parties would in the future claim its author as one of their own.
Richard Hooker was born five years before the accession of Elizabeth I and through the patronage of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury and author of an Apology which defended the reformed Church of England against Romanist attacks on the grounds of arguments drawn from the Church Fathers, studied at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. He became a fellow of the College in 1577 and was ordained a priest two years later. In 1585, Elizabeth I, on the advice of Archbishop Whitgift appointed him Master of the Temple, an unusual title for the senior priest of an unusual Church, the Temple Church, which ministers to the Inner and Middle Temple Inns of Court, in what was originally the headquarters of the Knights Templar. The Reader of the Temple, that is to say, the assistant clergy, was at the time, Walter Travers. Hooker and Travers were kin by marriage – Travers’ brother was married to Hooker’s sister, the relationship between the two clergy is usually, if not entirely accurately, described as that of cousins-in-law – but in very different places theologically. Travers was a Calvinist of the type who thought that every Church everywhere needed to resemble in theology, practice, and order the Church in Geneva, in other words, a Puritan. He had been ordained in Antwerp by Thomas Cartwright, who unlike his contemporary William Perkins was not a moderate, as evidenced by a) his ordaining someone without the episcopal authority to do so, and b) his doing so abroad where he was living in semi-exile (he returned the same year Hooker was appointed Master). Indeed, his Puritanism was so extreme that even Edmund Grindal, the most Puritan-friendly of the Elizabethan Archbishops of Canterbury, denounced him as a nut. Archbishop Whitgift, correctly insisted that Travers needed to be re-ordained, but Travers refused. He then wondered why the queen passed him over for the senior position at the Church and gave it instead to his in-law who already had something of a reputation as an opponent of Puritanism. Why, indeed.
The arrangement at the Temple was that the Master, Hooker, would preach in the morning, and the Reader, Travers would preach in the afternoon. Travers’ sermon would take the form of a rebuttal of the sermon given in the morning. While this would have been inappropriate anywhere else, it does seem sort of fitting in a parish where the congregation was made up mostly of lawyers. Indeed, they managed to carry on in this way without it disturbing their personal friendship. Then, a year later, Archbishop Whitgift finally had enough and ordered Travers to cease and desist. Travers appealed this decision to the Privy Council and as part of his appeal accused Whitgift’s protégé, his own cousin, Hooker of heresy.
The basis of the accusation was a series of three sermons on the book of Habakkuk that Hooker had delivered in March of either 1585 or 1586 – there is conflicting evidence as to which year – that he later published as a pamphlet under the title “A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown”. In these sermons, Hooker articulated the doctrine of justification by faith on the basis of Christ’s merits alone and identified several errors of the Church of Rome in relation to this subject. He distinguished between justification and sanctification, and defended the Protestant position that the former, the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer, is not based upon the latter, the righteousness that manifests itself in the believer as faith works through love. The faith that justifies, however, is faith in Jesus Christ, not faith in the doctrine of sola fide, and since the Roman Church confesses faith in Jesus Christ as expressed in the orthodox Creed, neither that faith nor the justification that comes through it is necessarily overthrown by the errors of Rome. It was this last point that twisted Travers’ knickers in a knot. It translates into the idea that somebody is not necessarily going to Hell just because they are a member of the Roman Church. To the twisted and paranoid mind of the Puritan that was tantamount to saying the Reformation was a mistake and we should all bow before the Roman Patriarch.
Archbishop Whitgift, although unwilling to openly endorse the idea that not everyone in the Roman Church is lost, tacitly did so by sticking to his guns on Travers, and not disciplining Hooker. In this he was supported by the Privy Council which removed Travers from the position of Reader altogether. Hooker continued as Master of Temple until 1591 when, seeking a less public position so as devote time to writing his treatise, he became rector of the small country parish of St. Andrew’s in the village of Boscombe, again through the patronage of the Archbishop. The first four volumes of his Of The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie were published about a year before the controversy in Cambridge. Eventually the work would include four other volumes, bringing the total to eight.
Hooker’s Lawes are best thought of as being to Puritanism, what his first patron, Jewel’s Apology was to the Church of Rome, that is to say, an answer to their attacks on the Church of England and the status quo of the same that had been established in the Elizabethan Settlement that employed the language of the attackers. Jewel had defended the orthodoxy and Catholicity of the Church of England, including her Protestant positions, with citations from the Church Fathers. Hooker defended the Anglican Church from the very Scriptures the Puritans claimed as their sole authority. While Hooker also appeals to tradition and reason, these are very much subordinate lower rungs on his hierarchy of authority with Scripture clearly at the top. Hooker uses tradition and reason very effectively in support of his main argument which over and over again is that the Scriptures do not support the radical changes the Puritans were demanding because the Scriptures do not say what the Puritans think and claim they say.
The Lawes are not an eight volume takedown of the doctrine of predestination. It is not the Puritans’ soteriology that is Hooker’s focus but their ideas concerning Church Government. This ought to be evident from the title of the work. Ecclesiastical Politie (Polity) means Church Government. It is not William Perkins whom Hooker is concerned with so much as Thomas Cartwright, the arch-presbyterian mentor of his relative Travers. Specifically, it is the Puritan claim that the Scriptures contain not merely everything necessary for salvation, as Article VI declares, everything necessary to answer any question that might arise, including the one true model of Church government and organization (the Genevan, even though this could be found nowhere on earth before the sixteenth century) and a complete set of instructions as to what can be done in Christian worship to which nothing can be added that is not sinful, idolatrous, and blasphemous, that he systematically dismantles. He patiently makes his case, first laying the foundation with a discussion of the nature of laws in general in the first volume, which leads into a refutation of specific Puritan claims that occupies the rest of the first four books, the ones published before 1595. In the fifth book, published in 1597, which is as long as the first four combined, as he examines Scripture readings, sermons, music, Sacraments, liturgy and basically everything that is today summed up in the word “worship” and demonstrates through an extended defence of the normative principle that the established Anglican way of doing these things is not contrary to Scripture, he begins to segue from answering the claims of the Puritans into setting forth the positive case for the status quo of the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion that will occupy the remainder of the work. In making that case, while he rests ultimately upon the authority of Scripture, he does not do so in the same manner as his opponents, he does not mirror their attitude of thinking there is only one way of doing everything. Instead, having shown that episcopal polity, liturgical worship, royal patronage, etc., not to be in violation of Scripture but to be positively beneficial, he argues that all these should be retained unless their opponents can meet the burden of proof in arguing for their elimination, which they have failed to do.
Although it was the Puritans’ demand for changes in the structure, organization, and practices of the Church that Hooker answered in his Lawes rather than their narrow doctrine of predestination, the basic conservatism of his arguments provided the Church with an alternative path to that which Whitaker wished her to take with the Lambeth Articles. Just as the Puritans insisted that there was only acceptable form of Christian worship, the Genevan, the stricter school of Calvinists, Puritan or not, insisted that there was only one way of understanding the doctrine of predestination, that which they attempted to impose on the Church in the Lambeth Articles, and which would eventually narrow further in the continental Reformed tradition into that espoused at Dort. The Articles of Religion, to which clergy of the Church were required to subscribe, affirm predestination, but only in a more general way. They do not exclude an Anglican clergyman from holding to the narrower view of Whitaker’s Articles, but neither do they require it. There was no need to impose a narrower view. Predestination is mentioned in the Scriptures, but only on a few occasions, and not in such a way as to justify the claim that only the strict Calvinist interpretation is acceptable. In the book of Romans, for example, St. Paul brings it up in precisely the way Dr. Preus talked about. First he shows that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, have sinned and therefore cannot be justified before God by their own works, then he talks about how God has justified by His Grace those who believe in Jesus on account of the redemption He accomplished by His propitiatory death. Having established that believers have peace with God through their Saviour Jesus Christ, he urges them to live righteously because through their union with Christ in baptism, they died to sin with Him in His death, and now live to God and righteousness in the newness of His resurrection life. This leads into an acknowledgement of the ongoing struggle with sin, which the Law is powerless to assist the believer in, which is followed immediately by the encouragement that the Holy Ghost provides what the Law cannot, and it is only then, in this context that predestination is raised to strengthen this assurance and encouragement, by telling the Roman believers that what God is doing in them He will see through to completion because He planned it from before the world and that no power exists that break our union with Jesus Christ. The idea of predestination, in this context, should not give rise to speculation about God arbitrarily deciding so-and-so will be saved and so-and-so will be damned, and the language that some might take in this sense in the following chapters is clearly talking about the present state of nations, Jews and Gentiles, rather than the final destiny of individuals. Indeed, as if to avoid dogmatic speculation about the nature of predestination, the Apostle places foreknowledge before predestination. This does not have to be taken in the Arminian way – I do not understand it that way myself – but it is a good reason to be careful in flinging the word “heresy” around about views other than strict Calvinist double predestination. Heresy is a departure from the basic truths of the faith, primarily those confessed in the ancient and universal Creed, and these are truths that are clear and open revelation in Scripture, central to the message of Scripture, and not things that get a mention in Scripture but with the details left to the unrevealed secret things of God, into which it is unwise to pry. Therefore, from Hooker’s basic conservative principles, we can deduce that it was very wise indeed of Elizabeth I, to not allow a narrow formulation of the doctrine of predestination to become official doctrine in the Church. In taking the path represented by Richard Hooker, rather than that represented by the Lambeth Articles, Anglicanism made the right choice at the crossroads of 1595. –– Gerry T. Neal
TORONTO: The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) is disappointed in the result in the judicial review of a case between public intellectual Dr Jordan Peterson and the College of Psychologists of Ontario. The dispute is over professional penalties, in the form of mandatory training, imposed on Dr Peterson by the College. This order for training was a result of public statements Dr Peterson had made on social media. The comments did not relate to the practice of psychology. The complaints were made by members of the public, not by any individuals who Dr Peterson had ever treated as a patient.
The CCF was an intervener in the judicial review, arguing that professionals have private lives and regulators may not discipline for off-duty conduct that lacks a clear nexus to the profession. Where off-duty conduct engages a Charter right, like freedom of expression, regulators have a heightened duty to ensure they have given full effect to the Charter protection.
“We are disappointed in this result, which we think could have a chilling effect on people in other regulated professions, like doctors, lawyers, teachers and accountants,” said CCF Litigation Director Christine Van Geyn. “Professionals should not have to soft pedal their speech for fear that activists will weaponize regulatory bodies so that unpopular speech is penalized, even when there is no connection between that speech and the profession.”
The Divisional Court did not accept Dr Peterson’s argument that his comments were “off duty” and outside his role as a psychologist. Writing for the court, Justice Schabas found that Dr Peterson “cannot speak as a member of a regulated profession without taking responsibility for the risk of harm that flows from him speaking in that trusted capacity.”
“We hope that Dr Peterson will appeal this result, which will have long lasting impacts beyond his case. The right to freedom of expression must be given more weight than the court gave it here, and the mere assertion of risk of harm is not enough. While controversial and inflammatory, there is no suggestion that any of the people Dr Peterson made comments about were harmed in any way, and indeed, they were not the source of the complaints. Complaints were made by members of the public who simply did not like what Dr Peterson said, or worse, how he said it. This is not a sufficient basis for action by the regulator when weighed against Dr Peterson’s constitutional right to freedom of expression,” said Van Geyn.
The CCF is represented in this case by George Avraam, Ahmed Shafey and Juliette Mestre of Baker McKenzie LLP. The CCF is grateful for their hard work and diligence on this case. If Dr Peterson appeals, the CCF will seek leave to intervene.
LATE BREAKING NEWS: Ex-Political Prisoner Brad Love Arrested for Harassing Phone Calls & Letter
FORT McMurray, Alberta, August 23, 2023. At 3:45 this afternoon former political prisoner Brad Love called CAFE from the police station in Fort McMurray. It must be a slow crime week. The RCMP were seen lurking around the doors and peering in the windows of Mr. Love’s townhouse yesterday. Today, they showed up in person to arrest Mr. Love for three counts of harassment.
In woke, snowflake Canada today, calling or writing to a public body with a strong message of protest is considered “harassment” by the vulnerable dears. One charge refers to a letter Mr. Love sent last year to the Fort McMurray Mayor’s Committee on Drag Queens. Two other counts arise from phone calls to his MP and to a native affairs group. “It’s a pile on,” Mr. Love told CAFE.
After previous arrests by the Fort McMurray RCMP, operatives of Canada’s highly politicized justice system, Mr. Love was granted bail the same day after a hearing, either in person or by video. Not today. He will spend the night in prison and attend a bail hearing.
Back on the streets in the world of real crime, there’s a war going on among the city’s vitamin stores. One was recently firebombed. The highly politicized cops have not cracked this arson or the conflict. Far better to hassle an opinionated man who protests the woke policies of government bodies.
Political Prisoner Alfred Schaefer Re-arrested & Sentenced to Six Months for Showing a Prisoner How High His Dog Can Jump
Dear friends, Shortly before noon today, 23-08-23, the uniformed thugs came to pick Alfred Schaefer up at his home to give him his “taxi service” to jail. He is to serve a 6-month jail term for showing his buddy in the courtyard of the last jail he was in, how high his dog Pavlov could jump.
Alfred’s wife heard a commotion and so she opened their front door, to see that the police had already entered the building. They had some strange tools, such as a rusty old spade, and they were on the phone telling headquarters that they had entered the building and were in front of the door of the targetted person. It seemed they had no intention of ringing or knocking. Lucky that Elfriede was already there, or they might have broken the door down, like they did to the old wheelchair-bound man Tom in Munich where they crashed his home in the middle of the night with a dozen police officers, to be sure they could contain him.
Elfriede told these officers that Alfred was down in the garden, and she escorted them there. Two more police officers approached from the other side of the yard. Clearly they were ready to ambush Alfred in case he should run. Alfred had no intention of running. Background information for people who may not be aware: he was supposed to present himself at the jail on August 3rd, but he simply did not go willingly and voluntarily to the jail on August 3rd as per their orders, as that would have been a traitorous thing to do, to go to the enemy and say here I am, your prisoner of war.
Have you ever seen police officers carry rusty spades as part of their tool kit? I wonder what they had in mind. It was good that Alfred’s wife was present to witness all, because you never know what kind of story they might have concocted, just in case somebody got hurt, and then plant the “weapon” and call it self defence? I’m only speculating. Nothing of that sort happened, but the rusty old spade got my imagination going.
That is my news for the day. Please feel free to share this around.
Monika Schaefer
PS: We do not know at this time which jail he will reside in, but as soon as I have his whereabouts, I will post his mailing address on my website freespeechmonika.com and we’ll get the word out.
TODAY, Jordan Peterson’s court battle against the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s is coming to a conclusion!
As you may know, the College is seeking to not only silence Peterson’s common sense opinions on Twitter but they want to “re-educate” him by ordering him to attend radical and progressive Twitter “communication training.”
But, the matter is now before the Ontario Divisional Court which is scheduled to release its ruling by the end of the day.
The court will decide Peterson’s fate and will also decide if the College’s order to send Peterson to Twitter communication “camp”, or else lose his license because they disagree with his conservative worldview, is justifiable.
Please continue to SIGN and SHARE this petition, directed to Zimra Yetnikoff, Director, Investigations and Hearings at the College of Psychologists of Ontario, telling the College to drop all disciplinary action against Dr. Peterson. Thank you!
The College of Psychologists of Ontario threatens to revoke Jordan Peterson’s license to practice psychology within Canada and Ontario over his conservative-leaning political views.
Why are they taking this extreme action against Peterson’s professional life?
Because they disagree with Peterson’s personal beliefs, especially when he expresses them within the public sphere, which includes social platforms like Twitter.
The College is abusing its regulator power over Peterson’s ability to practice in order to control what he can and can not say publicly as a private individual.
Furthermore, they demand that Peterson undergoes “social media communications retraining,” including “coaching” for his Twitter commentary, or potentially face license suspension.
This is all happening to Jordan Peterson because he publicly disagrees with the mainstream progressive narrative, especially when he speaks out against the damage the LGBT community and Trudeau Liberals continually inflict upon Canadian culture and society.
We need your help to push back against their terrible abuse of power, especially when Jordan Peterson is due back in court any day when his fate, regarding his legal challenge against the College of Psychologists, will be decided.
We must firmly declare that no public institution, including the College of Psychologists of Ontario, has the power to strip any individual’s right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We cannot allow the College of Psychologists to silence someone like Jordan Peterson, who has consistently provided a voice of reason, clarity, and common sense against the extreme LGBT madness and totalitarian government coercion here in Canada.
Sign now and take a stand with Jordan Peterson against the College’s blatant attack on an individual’s RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!
Drop the Disciplinary Action Against Jordan Peterson
To Zimra Yetnikoff, Director, Investigations and Hearings,
I request that you drop all disciplinary action against Doctor Jordan Peterson because the College of Psychologists of Ontario is overstepping its boundaries to control Doctor Peterson’s Right to Free Speech.
As a public institution, the College does not have the right to use its regularity power to infringe upon its members’ individual rights as Canadian citizens.
Doctor Peterson has the same rights as any other ordinary Canadian outside of practicing clinical psychology within his office. He has the same rights as any other Canadian citizen to express his personal beliefs publicly.
Stop using the regulatory powers of the College of Psychologists to silence Doctor Peterson because other members of the College simply disagree with his personal opinions on Twitter. [Your Name]
CAFE Protests The Anti-White Race Hucksters of the Kojo Institute Which Led to the Death of a Toronto Principal After a Maoist Style Struggle Session
TORONTO. Friday, August 18, 2023. A dozen supporters of the Canadian Association for Free Expression and the Canadian Nationalist Patriots gathered today outside the south Etobicoke offices of the Kojo Institute to protest the suicide death of retired Toronto high school principal Richard Bilkszto. Bilkszto attended several “anti-racism” seminars put on by the Kojo Institute and its director Kike Ojo-Thompson in 2021. “Toronto school principal Richard Bilkszto was bullied by an anti-racism trainer over ‘his whiteness”’ — his questioning of her assertion that Canada is a more racist place than the United States. In July, he took his own life. … Bilkszto, a Toronto District School Board (TDSB) principal, was berated in a DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) training session after pushing back on the trainer’s belief that Canada was more racist than the United States. (He agreed with the trainer that Canada had a racism problem, but pointed out that marginalized people have better access to education and health care north of the border.)
A week later, Bilkszto’s “resistance” was referred back to as an example of white supremacy in a session the next week. Humiliated, he took sick leave for more than a month (and was awarded compensation by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), which found he had suffered bullying in the workplace). Despite his stellar performance record, TDSB revoked work from him when he returned. In May of 2023, Bilkszto sued TDSB over the matter; last month, he took his own life. Friends and family said that he had been anxious over potential fallout from anticipated media coverage.” (National Post, August 16, 2023)
“Anti-racism is a fraud. Anti-racism is a code word for anti-White,” CAFE Director Paul Fromm said. Most people have a poor opinion of their neighbours, either on an ethnic or racial basis, he added. “The Japanese detest the Koreans and vice versa. I know: I’ve been there. In Africa, in Rwanda the small black Hutus hated the tall Tutsis and, in 1994, genocided about a million of them. So, most people are, to some extent, racist — a fuzzy word invented in the 1930s by communist Lev Davidovich Bronstein, known as Trotsky. However, it is only Whites who are the targets of these race hucksters!”
“The Kojo Institute and Kike Ojo-Thompson must be held accountable for the death of Principal Bilkszto,” Mr. Fromm added. CAFE will be contacting Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce who has promised an inquiry into the incident. “We want the police to investigate whether the Maoist style struggle session and humiliation of Mr. Bilkszto constituted reckless endangerment, or criminal negligence causing death.” Ojo-Thompson and the Kojo Institute hold themselves forth as professionals and experts. As such, her remarks denouncing Mr. Bilkszto for White privilege and, by implication racism and White supremacy are outrageous.
“|The Kojo Institute has made denouncing White people for big bucks — a profitable endeavour,” Mr. Fromm added.
The Kojo Institute website boasts: ” Kike Ojo-Thompson is an award-winning equity thought leader. She is renowned for her work and expertise as an anti-racism and anti-Black racism educator, speaker, and organizational change facilitator. As founder and principal consultant of equity consultancy, KOJO Institute, Ojo-Thompson has spent 20 years guiding public and private organizations across a broad range of sectors towards more equitable outcomes. Notable clients include Canada’s largest school board, the TDSB; the nation’s biggest grocery retailer, Loblaw Companies Limited; top 10 North American bank, TD Canada Trust; and global relief organization, World Vision.