Paulomycin
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BTW, are you making all this stuff up on the fly, or did someone teach you this? And if you learned it from someone else, then which pastor/author? Does this soteriology even have a name?
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God took David's child's life - a contradicion in the Bible?
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BTW, are you making all this stuff up on the fly, or did someone teach you this? And if you learned it from someone else, then which pastor/author? Does this soteriology even have a name?
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I do not say otherwise; I agree with your words here. Unless somehow you think this means he cannot cause all things. The fact he predestines all things actually proves this to be true!
Several things:
1. It implies we are like God in a way that even the Angels are not.
a. They do not, for example, operate out of weakness, barely getting by. We see Christ constantly taking things to the edge, yet never failing. We too, are taken by God to the edge, often even past the edge, by our assessments of the facts, yet always in order to produce what he had in mind all along, concerning us. Even the bare fact that Christ operated on earth in the same way we could, were we to depend on God how he did, instead of acting like we think God would --overwhelming power and authority --big CG Effects!-- his power and authority are shown by his complete control through weakness, the mundane, the hard way, the suffering, etc. --Christ living here among us that way proves he was God.
b. The angels are far more intelligent than we are, I believe. More knowledgeable, more willing and able. So the notion that we are like him because we are more intelligent or sentient than animals isn't what is meant here
c. I find it very interesting that the Angels "long to look into these things" concerning why God would even bother with us. I think they love us because they love God, and they see his mercy, tenderness, compassion, patience, and his great attention to every detail concerning us. I think they know that WE are what God has made for his own Glory, and they know in the end, our state will be above that of the Angels. (And I reckon that this pleases them very much.)
2. The Body of Christ is made of us.
3. This question would make a good featured thread!
4. There is something here impinging on the subject of freewill. I sympathize with believers to some degree, who assume freewill, by virtue of the fact that yes, we humans ARE made in God's image. There IS a difference between us and all other creation, even to include Angels. The best as I can tell, the Ang
els are the only other beings who ever were able to rebel, and at this point I don't see any Scripture saying they are able to repent, or the good angels are given the ability to disobey. (Regardless, the bad ones are not seen in Scripture to repent, nor the good ones to disobey, and it is pretty obvious that the bad ones know it. I think they know they are ultimately doomed.)
Animals are not generally attributed (by us) with sentience, but angels are. So I don't think it is sentience that makes us in his image, though there may be some use of that notion that is true. I don't know.
5. We, again unlike the Angels, will be ONE WITH GOD in some way they are not. To my mind this hints at finally some sort of freewill, that is the very opposite of what we want it to mean down here in this temporal frame. It is gaining some use of God's autonomy THROUGH BEING ONE WITH HIM --He being our very sustenance and Christ himself indeed being our very existence.
I once remarked to a relative of mine that reading John and others, I am almost led to believe that in Heaven we are like a 4th person of the Trinity! He said (and I respect him) that he believes we are! --as the Bride of Christ. I don't take it that far, because to me the Bride of Christ is also the Body of Christ, part of him, "bone of [his] bone and flesh of [his] flesh'. It will be interesting just what this all means when we are there.
6. I'm guessing that when we are finally there, we will (figuratively) 'smack our foreheads with the heel of our hand' and wonder how we were so blind not to have understood the riddles we saw while down here. I'm guessing that the answer(s) are plainly and repeatedly stated in Scripture and probably even demonstrated in nature, and we did not have the eyes to see it.
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The autonomous free will choice I am referring to does not mean it was not very limited to just one mental only either/or choice. The mental decision of the person comes from their heart’s desire. God is very much involved in limiting the choice, but it is still the person’s choice between at least two options.
So, God programmed them to eat from the tree?
Philosophically, “autonomous free will” would be the same as “will”. You are using a unique definition of will that fits your theology, making two definitions of will and thus impossible to discuss. “Will and choice” is free will.
You did not explain how God can have humans making a freewill offering without humans having free will?
You are saying it is all up to God and not “had they done this or that”.
Quoting you: “had they not turned”, but that is issue! They made the free will autonomous choice to turn and God reacted by not destroying them as He said He would do.
Jonah did not go to Nineveh and say: “Change, as God has programmed you to do”, but “warned them”.
What God did to Nineveh “warning them”, was the same thing God does for us in “warning us” to change, but, like Nineveh, it is up to us (“It is our choice”).
When others talk of “God’s will” they refer to: “God’s desire” and What “God foreordained to happen”?
Not everything God desires “wills” to happen does happens, but everything God foreordains “wills” to happen does happen.
You are saying something similar but add the idea, everything is foreordained, but in the back ground. This would be highly misleading on God’s part to tell us it is up to us when it is not up to us.
It is an oxymoron to say: Man has a choice and say God makes all man’s choices for them prior to them choosing His choice.
God is certainly not “pressuring people” by making it their choice, but allows them to become like He is, in that they can have Godly type Love. To not provide people with a very limited amount of autonomous free will, makes them nothing more than robots.
The “refusing” is man’s free will part he played, since God is doing the inviting (wanting them to come). A person can certainly be fleshly, hostile to God, not wanting to follow the Law, be righteous, worthy, honorable and so on, but this is an invitation hungry and poor people to a huge wonderful free banquet, it would take a much greater effort on their part to refuse than accept.
To be a real choice the person has to be able to make, without any change from outside interference, another choice, then the one they made. They “…refuse to come to me that you may have life." (John 5:39-40) That is their fault if they could have chosen to accept without changing the outside interference, but you seem to be saying they could only choose to accept with outside interference which would cause them to accept. This makes God at fault for not providing the right outside interference.
It is not that complicated and what I just said: To be a real choice the person has to be able to make, without any change from outside interference, another choice, then the one they made. They “…refuse to come to me that you may have life." (John 5:39-40) That is their fault if they could have chosen to accept without changing the outside interference, but you seem to be saying they could only choose to accept with outside interference which would cause them to accept. This makes God at fault for not providing the right outside interference.
I am not saying: God is not participating in the person’s selection because God is a huge part of the selection (inviting, providing the gift and banquet, sending servants out to persuade people (but not kidnap them), providing wedding garments, hosting the event personally, and Loving them. The fact is it should be extremely hard to refuse, but the person can still refuse.
The difference between the person saved and the person hell bound is not the sin, but the acceptance or rejection of undeserved charity (forgiveness). The sins are what they are punished for, but both deserve the punishment.
I was not “made with original sin.” I was made with a conscience which provides knowledge of good and evil.
God makes man because God’s Love would compel God to make being which could become like Himself in the they have Godly type Love for the sake of those few who would humbly accept undeserving Love.
God made us all “very good” by God’s standard of “very good”, but that is not perfect like Christ is perfect, since God could not make clones of an uncreated being (Deity). “Very good” by God’s standard would seem to be as good as a being could be made, since God does everything as good as it can be done, so how could God do humans better?
I do not have a problem with accepting=receiving, but the invitation to the banquets might have been received and discarded (refused), while accepting the invitation means you will go to the banquet.
The faithfulness, Love, obedience, righteousness, justification and Spirit all come as undeserved gifts, after the acceptance.
We are made in God’s image which means there are things we have been given over all the other animals that allows us to become like He is.
I fully agree salvation is God alone and grace is not earned or deserved, but our difference is with God not forcing His Love on a person who does not want God’s Help. If God were to try to force His Love on a person, the love received would not be Godly type Love, but a robotic type of love. The person willing to accept God’s help is doing it the selfish reason of needing undeserved help (charity) and thus being willing to accept undeserving help from even his hated enemy (God).
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OK agree, but we can quench the Spirit.
John 3:11… but still you people do not accept our testimony
You can quench the Spirit.
Luke 14:11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Everyone good or bad today will be humbled at some point so humility is not a spiritual gift given only to the elect. Being humble is nothing: righteous, worthy, glorious, or holy, but is something everyone can do.
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Paulomycin
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Where is that written? I'd really appreciate it if I didn't have to ask for a Biblical citation from a professing Christian here.
That verse alone doesn't explain why it's not accepted. It could be because they're dead in sin, or it could be due to your wild claims of free will, which you've never proven.
Ephesians 2:1
Dead
Ephesians 2:5
Dead
Colossians 2:13
Dead
I call. I got 3 aces. You're bluffing.
Proof by repeated assertion fallacy doesn't prove anything.
The parable taken out of context never shows the initial cause of humbling oneself. You're simply assuming that everyone does so based on their will alone. . .instead of God's will.
I was always told to beware of the person who talks about how humble they are. Because those who do so are exalting themselves.
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If the mental decision of the person comes from their heart's desire it is not without cause. It is genuine choice --i.e. it is definitely as they will, and they are responsible for the decision, but it is NOT without cause.
They had genuine choice --they had will-- and the fruit appeared desirable. Where is the programming?? No God did not 'program' them. That is obnoxious. Did he cause them? --of course he did!
Romans 8:28 is one of my favorite verses, because you can concentrate on many aspects in the verse to gain a true statement for each. "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." The one that I am interested in at the moment is the word, "all", which some Arminian-leaners will claim is all-ways meaning 'absolutely all'. Here, I see no reason grammatically, contextually, culturally, rationally, etc why this should not be referring to absolutely all things. So God works ALL things for good.
"Programming"? Huh?
Whose philosophy is that? You say 'would be' which leads me to think you are making a mere assertion. If I say that "free will" only means 'will and choice' are you going to tell me you are happy with that? No, you are NOT happy with that. You insist on autonomy!
Are you going to say that our will is the same thing as God's will? So, you too have two definitions. Or are you going to say that Man's Will is equal to God's?
I thought I did. But again, if all 'freewill' means is will and choice, and not autonomy, or 'un-caused-ness', after already admitting we do according to our heart's desire, then yes, it means freewill. Otherwise, it is merely referring to a sacrifice that is not obligatory, not commanded.
You are misrepresenting me. I did not say it is all up to God and not "had they done this or that." You are trying to make it sound like there is a contradiction. I am not claiming there is a contradiction.
Again, you continue to fail to show that both willing, and both choosing, is a logical contradiction.
So you assert --'they made the freewill autonomous choice'. By mere say-so you establish truth? But I understand you are frustrated. I would be too, trying to support your thesis with any intellectual integrity.
Reformers love 1 John 1:9 "IF we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness." Here we see God's actions contingent on man's action. The Reformers have no problem with that. But somehow you do, claiming it shows that God does NOT decide all things. I ask you HOW? Where is the contradiction?
In determining your concepts, you show a habit of placing God at a distance from willed beings. You want him issuing grand designs from afar, that he must fly by the seat of his pants to accomplish, or maybe he saw ahead what we would choose, through the telescope, and planned accordingly?
You do not see God's intimate involvement? Then HOW, I ask, can you contradict Scripture that says the lost CANNOT please God and CANNOT submit to his law AND WILL NOT. Do you need me to re-post the references I posted before, or do you have them?
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No wonder you don't accept the doctrine of Total Depravity! You think that those in slave to sin are actually capable of doing something worthy, in and of themselves! (Btw, that is not humility.)
Compliance with the law is only that --not obedience, not submission. So with faith --it is not salvific if it is spawned from the person and not by the Spirit within the believer. So with humility. It is a structure, maybe even self-abasement, done for selfish reasons, if God is not doing it in the person. True humility does not come from the heart at enmity with God.
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Yes it does:
Luke 14:11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Everyone good or bad today will be humbled at some point so humility is not a spiritual gift given only to the elect. Being humble is nothing: righteous, worthy, glorious, or holy, but is something everyone can do and will do.
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Paulomycin
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You keep forgetting that nobody (as-in "no one") is born inherently "good," and you're contradicting every verse that we have over you.
Total Depravity Verse List
^ So many verses that you can't handle.
If you have to be humbled, then you're obviously not "good."
You are so careless with the words you're throwing around.
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Paulomycin
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Great. You're contradicting yourself. God's word never contradicts itself. So I'll give you three guesses who messed up.
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God does not predestine our accepting His charity, which would also mean God predestined some to not accept His charity, making it God’s fault some go to hell.
Several things:
In the context angels are not mentioned, but animals are.
Gen. 1: 24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Like the Father in the prodigal son story, the most glorious thing for him would be to have his sons to grow up to be like he is, in that they will have this glorious Love like he has. He does or allows everything to he can to happen to allow his sons to become like he is. A wonderful earthly father would not give to a rebellious disobedient son who virtually told him: “I wish you were dead so I could have my inheritance” his inheritance early, but that is how God works with us. We squander the good God gives us to begin with. The Father knew the son well enough to know what that son would do, but stopping him would not help him become like the father. Those sons were in the image of their earthly father (with the abilities to become like him), but the father (like God) could not make them unselfishly Love others of their own free will (like he does).
Being made in God’s image does allow us to become like God Himself in that we have totally unselfish Love, but to obtain such Love requires a free will choice of accepting that Love as pure undeserved charity.
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1 Thes. 5: 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
Jesus is saying this about them, so if they could not accept due to stuff outside of their control, Jesus is misleading us, since Jesus says “you people” and not God has kept you from accepting.
Jesus defines “Spiritual death” for us:
Luke 15; In the prodigal son parable Jesus could use any words He wanted to best describe the condition of the prodigal son in the foreign land and twice he used “dead” to describe the son, so in a dead state the person can still come to their senses by their own foolish acts and turn from their ways for selfish reasons.
1 Thes. 5: 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
Jesus, again, is the very best communicate for the audience He is directing his word at: Luke 14:11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Is not really part of the parable but the explanation of the parable to those there.
“All those who exalt themselves” would be all sinners elect and non-elect to begin with, so all people exalt themselves and all people will be humble at some time.
To accept pure undeserved charity as charity is a very humbling experience, which most people we do almost anything to avoid doing. So people go as far as to say: humans cannot of their own free will choose to humbly accept pure charity as charity, because that would mean they earned their salvation. The elect cannot humbly accept pure charity, so they didn’t (also saying “I never did”) since God made me do it.
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God Himself has impowered the individual with limited heart control to make a few autonomous free will choices (first cause only decided by the individual that could go either way without changes from outside influences).
Tell me why God cannot: “Himself impowered the individual with limited heart control to make a few autonomous free will choices (first cause only decided by the individual that could go either way without changes from outside influences).”
It is in the individual’s very best interest to allow the individual to have very limited autonomous free will so the individual can (but might not) fulfill his/her earthly objective.
Man’s autonomous free will is extremely limited to a few mental choices, while God will is unlimited and only lacking where He decides to provide individual humans in a short period and few choices, freedom to choose.
You have developed a unique definition of “free will” to allow God controlled choices of the individual to be called free will of the individual. Can you show me in English Dictionaries where to find this definition of will or free will?
You have developed a unique definition of “free will” to allow God controlled choices of the individual to be called free will of the individual. Can you show me in English Dictionaries where to find this definition of will or free will?
We have got to use the same word meanings to discuss using the same words:
You have developed a unique definition of “free will” to allow God controlled choices of the individual to be called free will of the individual. Can you show me in English Dictionaries where to find this definition of will or free will?
Either man is responsible and thus can be held accountable or God is responsible and man should not be held accountable. Are you not saying: God is responsible for everything? If that is true then God should not blame man.
Ro. 9:19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?”
The reason we cannot asks such a question is only, because humans have this limited autonomous free will to make limited mental choices.
Not at all!! God is literally but not physically at everyone’s elbow. God is doing or allowing everything on a very personal level to help willing humans in their fulfilling of their earthly objective, but to fulfill that objective an individual must make at lease mentally some very autonomous free will choices.
It is never pleasing to God to act selfishly nor are selfish acts obedience to God’s Law, but the unbelieving sinner for selfish reasons can humbly accept undeserved charity from his enemy (God) while God is still his enemy. That is an autonomous free will choice the unbelieving sinner can make.
It is not a true choice of the individual if the individual without additional outside influences could not choose to do something else. If there has to be other outside influences on the individual to cause the individual to make a different choice, then the lack of helpful outside influences is the cause of the individual bad results.
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No!!! All mature adults start out sinning and cannot do anything worthy, honorable, righteous, holy, or glorious.
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There you go again, posting a long, sweet account, and ending it hoping to use it to prove freewill both by mere assertion of the necessity of freewill and circular reasoning, using freewill's supposed influence on your narrative to prove freewill.
Meanwhile, don't forget, Reformed Theology does NOT deny will nor choice. In fact, it insists on it! But free?? Hardly! According to Scripture we are all slaves to sin or to Christ. And logic tells us everything is caused by first cause, whether directly or through means. You still haven't show either of those to be false, except by mere assertion of your thesis, by repetition.
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What?? How did I say otherwise?
Or are you saying that I am wrong to claim you are proposing otherwise? You ARE proposing some degree of perfect integrity within the lost, if you think anyone can truly humble themselves before God apart from God's Spirit working within them. But God says the lost are altogether lost, enslaved to sin. (i.e. Total Depravity).
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I think we've answered this enough. You merely repeat yourself, without showing how it makes it "God's fault". It is almost as though you have no concept of the station, the absolute right, of Creator over his creation. FAULT??? "Who are you, O man?" You apparently are unable to see how you elevate your judgement to God's level. Read Romans 9 SEVERAL times.
The clay does not even have the ability to question the potter. Your protests influence God not at all, unless by reaction to the fleshly insistence on self-determination and self-exaltation.
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