- Jun 10, 2010
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I'm glad we've finally been able to come to agreement on this point. However, that makes what you're about to say inconsistent.
Paul NEVER established this as the gospel. What is 'this'?
That Christ had died for his (Paul's) and the other members of the church's sins, and not necessarily for their (unbelieving Corinthians) sins. This applies to the resurrection as well. So the gospel is, essentially, that Christ's death and resurrection are only for believers. It isn't for those that God determined it would not be for.
Since you have agreed that, if in the original context Paul preached a gospel wherein Christ's death was intrinsically efficacious for those who believe, he is referring to this message in I Cor 15, why would it be necessary for Paul to make that "explicit." It's what Paul preached, it's what the Corinthians remembered Paul preaching, and it's not precluded by pronoun choice.
You forgot to mention the bit about God compacting with himself what he willed to become of each man. That God did not create all men in equal condition - rather some were foreordained to eternal life, and some to eternal damnation. Where did Paul ever establish this?
You have already agreed that it is not a natural or necessary way of speaking to explicitly exclude the irrelevant. When I tell my wife "I have made reservations for us for dinner," I do not need to actually say "I have made reservations for us only for dinner." I and my wife and all parties who might overhear this are fully aware that when a man tells his wife he's taking her to dinner without qualification, that's a date meant just for the two of them. Paul and the Corinthians and everyone familiar with the Biblical doctrine of atonement as it was understood at least past the point Paul was writing all understood that an atoning death is a thing which reconciles God and man and is efficaciously, not potentially, salvific.
That is false.
We are to preach the Gospel to unbelievers. The gospel is that God, in the fulness of time, fulfilled his messianic prophecies and ransomed Israel through the death of his son on the behalf of his people. But Israel consists not merely of those who are of the blood of Abraham. Israel is a great multitude taken from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. You, o unbeliever, are not excluded from Israel for your lack of circumcision, your lack of bondage under the law, your lack of observance of Hebrew rites. Good news! There is nothing barring you from having been saved efficaciously through the particular redemption Christ has already completed on the cross if you believe. The only thing that can separate you from God is a faithless and unbelieving heart.
If this is your gospel then I cannot see why you consider that you are a Calvinist. Calvin excluded those God reprobated. They have no access to salvation.
That which I have emboldened is a disingenuous statement if you are a Calvinist. Are you?
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