Heck, I'm still trying to find out why it's even necessary.
I always figure when the regular non-Calvinists avoid a thread, it must have hit a nerve.
I find it amazing that you have come to this view that 'it must have hit a nerve'. What do you do?
You started the thread this way:
Acts 16:14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. (Acts 16:14 NASB)
Why was it necessary for Jesus to open her heart? What was wrong with her in the first place? Did she not have the free will to choose prior to that?
The 'nerve' for me is this: I know your Calvinistic agenda when you started this thread, that you've pushed on CF over and over. You seem to want to try to disprove Arminianism. I contemplated not responding to you as your imbalanced view is not what the Bible teaches in its totality.
How do I know of this imbalance?
The very chapter of the Bible that you use, Acts 16, provides the balance (not the contradiction) to Acts 16:14. The Lord opened Lydia's heart to respond to what Paul preached. But what is stated in Acts 16:31? It is a command for human beings to believe:
And they said, [You] Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
The Lord opens the heart but he does not do it without the person believing.
Lutheran commentator, R C H Lenski, explains this balanced view in his exegesis and exposition of Acts 16:14:
We must combine the two duratives 'she kept hearing' and 'to be heeding,' for they imply that Lydia was not converted on that very first Sabbath. From the beginning, however, she heard with a heart that was opened wide (dia in the verb) by the Lord. Little did she dream that Saturday morning what a treasure she was to find in the little retreat by the riverside; but she heard the great Apostle of the Gentiles himself set forth the blessed gospel of Jesus Christ with all fervor and all conviction, and this gospel was corroborated by this three companions. She was finding the pearl of great price.
The Lord opens the heart, but the hand with which he lifts the latch and draws the door is the Word which he makes us hear, and the door opens as we heed, prosechein, keep holding your mind to what you hear. No man can open the door of his heart (kardia is the center of thought and will) himself, nor can he help the Lord to open it by himself lifting the latch and moving the door. The one thing he can do is to bolt the door, i.e., refuse to hear and to heed; and thus he can keep the door closed and bar it even more effectually than it was at first. This prevents conversion (Lenski 1934:658).
So the biblical evidence from Acts 16 (not just v. 14) is that it is the Lord who opens the Lord but human beings believe (and refuse to believe). This has been God's approach from the OT into the NT and today:
Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live' (Deut 30:19)
and,
Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Josh 24:15).
So I'm not restricted to pushing a one-sided agenda when the Bible gives both sides in Acts 16.
It has nothing to do with 'it must have hit a nerve'. It has everything to do with being holistic in biblical presentation.
In Christ,
Oz
Works consulted
Lenski, R C H 1934.
Commentary on the New Testament: The interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers (based on Lutheran Book Concern 1934; The wartburg Press 1944; Augsburg Publishing House 1961).