Hello my Arminian Brothers and sisters! I have yet another question for you.
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I understand this.
Do you not agree that the point of the parable was that we should love our fellowman (i.e. the bloodied traveler along the road) ?
Is not the Samaritan the example of Godly love in the parable ?
Did God not call us to love, even, our enemies (Matthew 5:44-45) ???
Matthew 5:44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
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I do not disagree with this conclusion.
Unfortunately, this is internally contradictory.
If your "choices" are controlled, ... then they are not choices.
Once again, a personal challenge ... even as a believer, some of your choices are not in obedience to God. Does God control those choices, too ???
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It amazes me that God-extolling Calvinists claim that God could only make puppets. I can make puppets.
My God is more marvelous than that ...
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, of that my soul is most sure. Psalm 139:14
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OK, it's incredibly simple.
The Father had a plan, where he declared the end from the beginning. Part of that plan were a group called the elect. The are the elect because he decided who they would be when he came up with his plan. Nobody chooses anything other than what God has declared will be chosen from the beginning. Many are called, few are chosen, not "many are called, but few choose"
Stop trying make scripture conform to church doctrine!
The Father had a plan, where he declared the end from the beginning. Part of that plan were a group called the elect. The are the elect because he decided who they would be when he came up with his plan. Nobody chooses anything other than what God has declared will be chosen from the beginning. Many are called, few are chosen, not "many are called, but few choose"
Stop trying make scripture conform to church doctrine!
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- May 28, 2018
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Hahaha. "About time you were honest."? I've been saying this all along. In every thread where you and I butted heads, in fact. Choice DOES exist in Calvinism, and I won't call you dishonest for saying otherwise. You don't call it choice because to you, somehow, if God controls only he is responsible. You don't seem to understand the immensity of what God is, nor the enormity of sin. This does not depend on us.
You seem to want a mechanical fact to provide us with eternal life upon our activation of it. I repeat, our decisions are not strong. Regeneration, and the gift of faith by the Spirit of God, is the gift of God --not the work of our firmest decision nor our wisest understanding nor our most heartfelt need. We are nothing, and can do nothing, apart from Christ.
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I'm not sure I understand you. Are you saying that Calvinists claim God can only make puppets?
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An animal makes choices, though we like to say it is only instinctive. Even a robot makes choices. And the choices of Both are controlled. What makes our choices any more a cause than an effect? There are no little first causes running about. There can be only one.
Would you not admit that the Law of Causality prevails in all things logical? Even Atheists admit that our choices are caused, though they deny God the control of all causes. I say, if our choices are indeed caused, what difference does it make as to whether they are real when God is the primary cause of them. It makes no difference how many links there are in the chain of causality --God still caused it all.
Your challenge is an easy one. Have you not seen that God planned all this --including the rebellion of Satan and the fall of Adam? How else do you suppose he could have made a people particular for himself, whose adoration of him can satisfy him?
Read one of my favorite passages, where God entices a spirit to deceive Ahab I Kings 22 and II Chronicles 18. Or see where he has total control over Satan's attacks on Job. We Christians are careful to say "allow" but here we see him causing, and yes, he uses means to accomplish his ends, including our disobedience and sin.
I hope you are not also confused by the idea of God's will being that Adam (or whoever) sin. He has his declared will (his command) and his secret will (his plan). The two hardly compare --I don't even like to call the one his will, but the Bible does, so I must.
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John Mullally
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The term Armenians is laughable because I don't think very many modern day Christians would even have heard of him except that we are being told that we associate with him by not accepting the elaborate Calvanist framework (AKA TULIP).
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Arminian to far "left" and Calvinism to far "right"? Most Christians are somewhere in between, I believe.
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God has always chosen.
God made Abraham a promise, that his descendants would be like the grains of sand on the shore. Isaac was the child of the promise; it was physically impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have children so his birth was miraculous. Isaac was the child promised by God. Abraham got tired of waiting for God's promise to be fulfilled and tried to make it happen himself. Ishmael was also Abraham's descendant but not the one promised by God.
God rescued Abraham's descendants from Egypt and gave them his covenant and his word. From all the tribes of Israel, one was chosen, and from that came King David and Jesus, who was the Messiah.
God also chose people to be judges, kings, prophets, apostles, and chooses people today to be ministers, missionaries, teachers etc etc in his church. That doesn't mean that only these people are saved.
No, we were all created by God, in his image.
He did not say "you are all made in my image and are all sinners, but I'm choosing to save only some of you, at random".
Jesus is not "a part of God"; he IS God.
There are no "parts" to God.
God is Trinity; 3 persons, 1 God. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
??
Jesus came to die on the cross, Mark 10:45, John 12:27.
Jesus died for sinners, Romans 5:8. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, John 1:29. We are reconciled to God because Jesus died, Romans 5:11.
Isaiah 53 says that the punishment we deserved fell on him.
God knows, and always knew, that certain people would reject Jesus. That doesn't mean that he he created them for that purpose, or made it so that they were unable to do anything EXCEPT reject Christ.
Scripture also says that ALL have sinned, that Christ died for sinners, that God doesn't want anyone to perish and that God made all mankind in his image.
As I said, God chooses people for certain purposes. That doesn't mean that he loves only them - but to a Hebrew, it meant just that. If God chose someone, it meant that he loved them; if he didn't choose someone, it meant that he hated them.
Jesus told his disciples not to love only their friends and those who loved them - even the pagans behaved like that. Instead they were to love their enemies and be perfect as God is perfect, Matthew 5:44-48. If God only loved those who loved him, only only saved those whom he had chosen, he would be doing the very thing that Jesus told us not to do - which would make him a hypocrite, not perfect.
That would mean;
a) Jesus chose someone who was cursed by God to be his disciple,
b) someone who was cursed by God was able to go, drive out demons and heal - Jesus sent out his 12 disciples to do that; not everyone minus Judas.
c) God's entire plan of salvation rested on Judas. It didn't; Jesus came to die to reconcile us to God, and even if Judas hadn't betrayed him, that would have happened.
d) if what you say is correct then Judas carried out God's will for his life. If he was destined to do that, he obeyed God and did it. He should be thanked and rewarded by God, for doing what God always wanted him to do.
Scripture says over and over that God made everyone in his image; that God is love, that he is light with NO darkness in him at all, that he is perfect, that he wants everyone to be saved, that Jesus died for sinners (and we are all sinners), that he has reconciled the world to himself through Christ.
Yet all some people do is ignore the clear evidence on paper that God is love, and loves and forgives everyone.
Otherwise, what is the Gospel; what do you say to people?
"Good news! God loves you and Jesus died for your sins, (I hope)".
"Trust in Jesus and receive forgiveness and eternal life, (if you are lucky enough to have been chosen by him)"
"God can give you peace, joy, forgiveness, healing etc, (if you are one of the luck ones he has chosen to love)".
I can't think of anything worse than living your life in fear and uncertainty what God may not love you after all.
Yes it does.
It would mean that God is selective - that he knows that all mankind are sinners and can do nothing to save themselves, but that he chooses to save only a few people. It would mean that we would be worshipping God knowing that he had created some people just to be able to condemn them to hell.
I doubt that an earthly father who allowed his partner to have his child, knowing that he was going to hate and disown it, would be nominated for father of the year - so how can we believe that God, our perfect heavenly Father, is able to do such a thing?
Also, if a person was destined never to know God, they when they died without knowing him they would have fulfilled their destiny. Why would God punish someone for all eternity for not having done something (believed and accepted Jesus), when he had planned that they never would? If you chose to make a coffee table out of wood, would you then hate and destroy it because it wasn't a chair? Or if you knitted a jumper; would you be angry and condemn it for not being a scarf?
No? Then why would God create someone, plan that that person would never know and accept him - and then punish them for doing just that?
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I cannot possibly read/reply to every post when there are currently nearly a hundred of them. But what I will say is I understand your viewpoints and im wondering about these scriptures as well:
Matthew 7:13 & 7:21-23, also Matthew 25:31-46
First Matthew 7:13 & 7:21-23. Doesn't Jesus here talk about human pride and easy believism? Mainly people who think they have proper faith in God. They think that just merely "believing was enough but, its not. The Bible says over and over ago that repentance and fruit that God does through us are required for salvation.
A true faith will always bear fruit. You cannot just go to Jesus and say "I believe you died on the cross for me, but because you died for mh sins I can now go out and do whatever I want." That's NOT salvation and Christians who are like that are the goats Jesus warns about in Matthew 25:41-46. But the very sheep of God prepared for by Bod from befre the fundaton of the world are secure, will repent, will have fruit because they have the very spirit of God living in them. Guiding them through gheir lives and their hardships throughout their lives.
A true faith shows action, the bible and prophets have said it over and over again.
Matthew 7:13 & 7:21-23, also Matthew 25:31-46
First Matthew 7:13 & 7:21-23. Doesn't Jesus here talk about human pride and easy believism? Mainly people who think they have proper faith in God. They think that just merely "believing was enough but, its not. The Bible says over and over ago that repentance and fruit that God does through us are required for salvation.
A true faith will always bear fruit. You cannot just go to Jesus and say "I believe you died on the cross for me, but because you died for mh sins I can now go out and do whatever I want." That's NOT salvation and Christians who are like that are the goats Jesus warns about in Matthew 25:41-46. But the very sheep of God prepared for by Bod from befre the fundaton of the world are secure, will repent, will have fruit because they have the very spirit of God living in them. Guiding them through gheir lives and their hardships throughout their lives.
A true faith shows action, the bible and prophets have said it over and over again.
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Which would then mean your salvation is based upon "things"...Things that are out of your control. Things that are simply happenstance.
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God allows elements of His creation to influence creation in ways that are contrary to His desire, IOW ... sin.
This is the first moral lesson in the scriptures. The first man and woman were tasked with obeying the voice of God, ... and they failed. God allowed it, yea even placed the man/woman in a context where they would have to face the temptation to sin, ... yet their sin, in itself, was not in alignment with the will of God, though God ... ever the perfect manager, ... already had a plan to deal with their sin.
I trust your scriptural bonafides, so I will speak as to my conclusions from my decades-long study of the scriptures. It is only fair to mention that I have read through the entirety of the scriptures, and, am thus, have a familiarity with it.
In God's creation of humankind, Gods desire is to generate images of Himself. In my conclusion, this means sentient creatures who are capable of making moral decisions. Hence, the first real test for Adam and Eve in the garden ... of whether to obey ... or disobey God. And, of course, we know how they chose ... and the results of that choice.
In our own households, we tolerated episodes of disobedience from our children ... not because we were indifferent to the evil of the disobedience, ... but because we were dealing with immature creatures.
I would note that God styles Himself as our Father, so it is not unreasonable to assume that He would do the same. That He does is not an indictment upon His desire for a perfect good, but rather is evidence of His wisdom in allowing us to participate in a process of growth ... which will bring us to the pinnacle of His ultimate desire for us.
That some who are being "raised" in the same context will, ultimately fail to reach that pinnacle ... is, again, a consequence in common that of our experience as parents. All children do not turn to be good, productive citizens, whether or not they were raised to be. Which is why our prisons are full of murderers, thieves, and con artists. That, being aware of the uncertainty of our endeavor, choose to bring children in to the world anyway, ... does not indict us with the charge of desiring to perpetuate evil in the world, ... but, rather, demonstrates our understanding of the necessity to "take the good with the bad", as we say.
God does the same ... to achieve the maturation of benevolent human creatures, He allows the conditions in which those creations are enabled to choose the good, and not the evil, though some choose the evil.
Moral fortitude is a strength made stronger through exercise, which is, in itself, explanatory for why Adam and Eve fell so quickly in the garden. Having no experience with evil, those naively choose to perpetuate evil, ... through choices which they likely would have made differently ... had they had experience with the fall.
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John Mullally
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Agree. Their "own little world" includes overloading the definition for freewill. They could reduce confusion by creating a new term to describe what they mean by freewill (as done in the scientific community) - but they already have enough problems with TULIP.
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All Glory To God
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We started this with the nature of God,specifically you claiming the creator loves all people. The believer and love thy neighbor is off topic.
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StillGods
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no it's more a collaboration between me and God. He extends the gift of faith and I accepted it. I didnt have to accept it indeed many do not accept what Jesus has done for many reasons but He offers that gift for any who would believe.
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