what is Calvinism answer to how God works?

[Bob Crowley]

I have a personal concern due to something my father said the night he died and appeared in my room.

At one point he blurted out (with some alarm) "I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!"

I was an atheist at the time, but I argued back saying "That can't be right!"

He replied "Oh, it's right, all right. You can see that from here!"

But later in the same exchange he said "I was WILLING!" (to act as he did towards us and to consistently do so for over 20 years).

I still have trouble acceping his comment "... I didn't really have any choice!" I don't have any doubt he was condemned - his final terrifying scream just before he departed into eternity made that clear.

If we take Adolf Hitler as an extreme example, I don't think there's much doubt he "always was doomed" but I think we can also take it for granted that he was "VERY WILLING" to act as he did, with the mass murder of so many people.

In that regard, we might question God's goodness in that He was willing to sacrifice so many innocent people at the hands of one man and his cronies. I could make the same comment about Josef Stalin and the Gulags, Pol Pot and ground zero, Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes, and even natural evil such as the Black Death.

Were they all part of God's "loving" plan? Even my old non-Calvinist pastor said to me once "I sometimes wonder if it's true!" (God's love) "He seems to write people off pretty easily".

And on another occasion he remarked "I sometimes wonder if He (God) wants to win. He doesn't seem to help his own people much."

We might need to find out just what God means by "Love"?

 

[Mark Quayle]

I have a personal concern due to something my father said the night he died and appeared in my room.

At one point he blurted out (with some alarm) "I always was doomed! I didn't really have any choice!"

I was an atheist at the time, but I argued back saying "That can't be right!"

He replied "Oh, it's right, all right. You can see that from here!"

But later in the same exchange he said "I was WILLING!" (to act as he did towards us and to consistently do so for over 20 years).

I still have trouble acceping his comment "... I didn't really have any choice!" I don't have any doubt he was condemned - his final terrifying scream just before he departed into eternity made that clear.

If we take Adolf Hitler as an extreme example, I don't think there's much doubt he "always was doomed" but I think we can also take it for granted that he was "VERY WILLING" to act as he did, with the mass murder of so many people.

In that regard, we might question God's goodness in that He was willing to sacrifice so many innocent people at the hands of one man and his cronies. I could make the same comment about Josef Stalin and the Gulags, Pol Pot and ground zero, Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes, and even natural evil such as the Black Death.

Were they all part of God's "loving" plan? Even my old non-Calvinist pastor said to me once "I sometimes wonder if it's true!" (God's love) "He seems to write people off pretty easily".

And on another occasion he remarked "I sometimes wonder if He (God) wants to win. He doesn't seem to help his own people much."

We might need to find out just what God means by "Love"?

Remember that those remarks were typically said from the point of view of someone who doesn't know God. This life isn't for this life. I don't know whom your father intended by "[God's] own people", but 'helping them' is not God's primary purpose, but to turn his own each into those particular members of the Body of Christ, for which he created them.

One thing I might offer is to consider the difference between what "being" or "existence" is, as God, and what it is as mere humans. Can you compare our sentience to his? This is crass, but, do we consider the pain of worms worthy of foregoing a meal of fish?

Last, (and I can't prove this, but the math works): Everything good comes from God, even whatever good there is in a human. When God completely withdraws all that is good from them, there is nothing left but an empty husk at best, devoid of all that we thought human. A wraith, whose hatred for God is bubbling on the surface of their being, full of despair and loathing. There is no "made in the image of God" there.

The only good in any of us is God's doing.

The self-existent God did not need us. But he loved us. It is not up to chance, just whom he saves, but those whom he does not save have no excuse. Nor do we.

 

[ladodgers6]

Is the position on Calvinism, that God created people who he would never save, and they will live a short meaningless life only to burn in hell for all eternity with never having even the slightest possibility of avoiding it?

I'm game, I'll love to have a discussion with you. I used to hold to your position before I recanted and became a Reformed Calvinist. Tell me who about this passage. Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;

Who is the different offspring here?

The other position is everyone has a free will choice to choose or reject God, and because they chose to reject, they go to hell and it's their fault.

Please by all means show a reference where Calvin denies free-will? He states that all sinners sin willingly; nobody coerces sinner to sin against their wills, right? What Calvin does state is that we (sinners) do what we love to do. Which is to sin (John 3), (Eph. 2).​

Suppose you came to the conclusion Calvinism was true all along, are you fine with that, and would it bother you?

And I wanted to give my stance on the matter, I have no idea, and I'm honestly not too concerned I'm more focused on just living the way God would like me to live than figuring out how everything works. If I find out it's true I accept it and move on, I am a believer so I have no reason to be concerned if its true.

But if Calvinism is saying that some believers are not elect and predestined to hell and we HAVE NO IDEA WHO IT IS, and i find that out then yes i would be really concerned.

I too was concerned if I was one of the elect. Simple, do you believe that you are a guilty sinner before a Holy God? Do you believe God that He justifies those who trust in Him? Do you believe in the incarnate, crucified, and risen Christ? That he lived a perfect holy life and sinless life, suffered and paid the price of your sins? That by His obedience to the fulfillment of the Law, He became a curse for you, so that you can be perfect, blameless and righteous before God by His works not your own? It is by His imputed righteousness that we can stand righteous. And be saved. Because of Christ Alone! This sir is the marvelous exchange of our sins to Christ and His righteousness to us who believe this, because this is God's word, His promise, His oath, His covenant. That no one can break. Believe this and you are one of the elect!

 

[Fervent]

I noticed you relented from citing examples.

We've been through it enough that I see no point in going around again and again. It's no strawman I'm 'beating up" on, it's the capricious theological monster Calvinists prop up with their word games about compatibilist "free will" that's not really free will and God who is wrathful with human beings who are just carrying out what He has supposedly decreed them to do in the first place.

 

[Mark Quayle]

We've been through it enough that I see no point in going around again and again. It's no strawman I'm 'beating up" on, it's the capricious theological monster Calvinists prop up with their word games about compatibilist "free will" that's not really free will and God who is wrathful with human beings who are just carrying out what He has supposedly decreed them to do in the first place.

Ok. So you 'support' your self-deterministic position with opinion based on emotion (i.e. on your conception of what "God is love" means and what that conception implies). FWIW you are correct in this: The Calvinist denies the self-contradictory notion of libertarian "free will" in the creature —Only the Creator has that kind of free will. Calvinists also deny that anyone is "just carrying out what [God] has....decreed them to do in the first place." Sentient creatures do willfully decide to do that for which God holds them responsible.

 

[Fervent]

Ok. So you 'support' your self-deterministic position with opinion based on emotion (i.e. on your conception of what "God is love" means and what that conception implies). FWIW you are correct in this: The Calvinist denies the self-contradictory notion of libertarian "free will" in the creature —Only the Creator has that kind of free will. Calvinists also deny that anyone is "just carrying out what [God] has....decreed them to do in the first place." Sentient creatures do willfully decide to do that for which God holds them responsible.

Nope, I support it through experience and the self--contradictory nature of determinism. My criticisms of Calvinistic confusions involving God willing what he would not have isn't emotional, it's highlighting the central lunacy of Calvinism.