Mmhmm but as a Calvinist, you don’t believe in libertarian freewill. If you do believe in libertarian freewill, meaning the ability to do otherwise in any given situation, then you’re not a textbook Calvinist. At best, while maintaining the label of Calvinist, you could house your beliefs about freedom in compatiblism. Compatiblism is the belief that redefines the classical understanding and experience of freewill into “acting in line with ones nature,” not as the ability to do otherwise (the actual definition and what you and I experience everyday.)
The chances are you’re a compatibilist and not a believer in libertarian freewill.
I'm a compatibilist according to one use of the word, and not according to another. I have heard Arminians called compatabilists, and I am most definitely not Arminian.
Of course the Calvinist couldn’t couch their language in that way, rather my point about Calvinistic beliefs was the one I’d stated more than once in the same message, namely that sinners can’t respond to the gospel or God or hold any love for him, not until he first loves them.
Calvinists do insist that the offer is genuine but they can’t share why it’s genuine in plain English. Again they would insist we’re lost in the constraints of language.
Hardly. While it is true that full understanding is lost in the constraints of language and temporal thinking, not to mention human-centric thinking, over and over I've said why the offer is genuine. IF one was to come to Christ, they would be accepted.
Perhaps your lack of understanding of the depth of depravity, and of the meaning of Total Depravity is why you think Calvinism can't share why it is genuine. From 'spiritual' unbelievers and Arminians I constantly hear, "but they do have some love for God" or "I do obey God, with all my heart" and, "What about altruism?" etc. But the depravity described in Romans 8, among many other places, is at the core of the will. Not on the surface feelings and acts. Obedience is not compliance, but submission. Again, this is not something the will of the lost can accomplish.
As an example try this. Christs sacrificial death upon the cross was only for the elect, that’s the L of the TULIP, and since that sacrifice was only for a select group there’s no chance of the subsequent Holy Spirit and new life residing in anyone but the elect.
True enough, (though I reject the whole notion of 'chance' along with the idea that the will of the lost can come to Christ on its own). The Holy Spirit will not reside in anyone but the elect, but he can do anything he pleases within the lost, without effecting rebirth.
Yet Calvinists are told by God to offer the free gift of life through the death of Christ to the whole world. That’s a cynical offer since for many of the people who are being offered that gift, there’s nothing there for them.
Again, no. The offer is genuine. You have not shown how it is not. Again, the will of the lost is the problem —not the act, or lack of action, on God's part.
Sure. God can believe in the potential of someone, for example. By believe in I mean to trust in. Although it’s telling you want to dig into the more ambiguous point of the two rather than dipping into my other more obvious point about love. If someone offered me a ride to work in their car I could either believe in them when they show they’re good intentioned, or I could disbelieve.
There is none good, but God. What God believes in is his own word and his own plan.
In that section I was pointing out that Calvinists believe that regeneration proceeds faith. So yes I think that’s very safe to insist upon.
You also said that God believes in someone. Calvinists don't think that way, certainly they don't teach that. Nobody, apart from Christ, has integrity.
I’m not an Arminian. I disagree with their views on the need for prevenient grace amidst other things.
Which puts you Pelagian, or at least semi-Pelagian. You believe in the ability of man, apart from the work of God, to choose to obey God, in contradiction to Romans 8.
Well, according to many Calvinists God hates sinners. That’s the point. God doesn’t change and he’s always had a total and complete knowledge of the sinner that he hates. He knew them before their creation and hated them. When do I think they existed? At the moment of conception.
Sadly Calvinists believe God will stew in his hatred for an eternity going forward, since sinners will burn in fire forever going forward. Yet it’s hard for you to believe he’s stewed in the past.
No, he does not stew in his hatred. But I guess you reject the Biblical notion of a forever Lake of Fire.
While it’s true that Calvinists have an incredible capacity for double think and retarding the consequences of their views, these questions do come up both inside and outside of the camp in philosophy and religious contexts.
Have I already been through the logical extrapolations of your own thinking, with you?
But you have yet to show me anything self-contradictory, nor illogical, about Calvinism's beliefs. It is you —not what Calvinism says— that comes to the such conclusions as, "But that denies the Love of God!".
Yes but that’s part of the whole disingenuous Calvinist construct. “whosoever will may come!” But you can’t even want to come unless God wants you first. It’s not an open invitation as we might think at first glance, while the global nature of the invitation leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth when we discover the lack of provision for the sinner.
You blame God, when you consider Calvinism. But Calvinism puts the blame squarely on the lost sinner. I can only conclude that you think God owes everybody an equal 'chance' to receive him, and that God respects humans as fellow-entities, and not as his creatures.
Unfortunately we don’t really know much of what Pelagius believed, his writings were preserved only in the form that his detractors wrote. You can imagine how badly my views might be preserved by yourself or vice versa.
Obviously!
I’m not. Even so far as the detractors of Pelagius wrote, I don’t agree that man is the first responder or that they can get right without an initial step from God. In short I think God is seeking man and mankind can either respond positively or negatively to Gods first contact.
My soteriology views are nearer to a contemporary speaker like Dr. Leighton Flower.
For whatever it is worth, I don't consider myself full Reformed or full Calvinist. In some regards, I think they don't go far enough. Also, I have a problem with the trust some seem to have in the wording of things, or even the Calvinistic concepts, as being of themselves complete. But I won't go so far as to say that that last is typical of Calvinists —they just sound that way when they talk. (For example, I have a problem with the concept of Trinity, but I accept the Westminster Confession (and others) on the matter. My problem with it is that the Bible doesn't use the word, nor even show the three as all being God himself, in any one immediate context. But the conciseness and accuracy of the confession, by reason of its brevity, allows for the full truth, whatever it turns out to be.)
Sure. Dr. James White, “flattening the arguments out” (code for mystery,) “two parallel lines meeting in eternity,” antimony. These are all very popular Calvinistic style talking points that result in incoherent types of thought and double think. It’s a punk to mystery.
That's a lousy way to make your quote. You give no context, no link, and even have to provide your own interpretation to make it sound how you want it to.
We can all follow a circle my friend.
Clever! *snort*
