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God doesn't directly inspire the words and actions of sinful men. He doesn't put sinful thoughts into people's minds, but rather he allows the Devil to do this. Luther likened God's role in energising sinful humans to someone in control of lame horses. The horses travel badly, although this...

Vanity is thinking that humans have free will and autonomy, and that everything revolves round their decisions and not God’s. Why be a believer in free will and a theist when you can go the whole distance and be a full blown atheist? That’s where the notion of free will ultimately leads. You are...

No I didn't take the fanatic's position, I took Luther's position. The person I was replying to was asserting that if absolute predestination was true then God is evil, and I replied to him with that passage I quoted (about the fanatic) to the effect that God wills evil and sin to occur, but in...

I wouldn’t join the ELCE, because like the LCMS, it endorses the Formula of Concord’s teaching on predestination, which I regard as a denial of God’s sovereignty over both salvation and damnation. I agree with Luther’s position in The Bondage of the Will that God predestines people to both...

The passage below in red was from Luther's Commentary on Romans which dates back to before the Reformation, and his comments (below) don't represent his mature teaching. He definitely believed in unlimited atonement, and taught that Christ died for everyone, later on in his life. These...

I'm not arguing that all forms of sexual immorality should be made illegal, but only that certain gross examples which have a particularly corrupting effect on society should be made illegal. Freedom is a relative term. No society allows absolute freedom to it's citizens to behave in any...

I think uncontrolled sexual immorality is harmful to a third party - that is to everyone in general - because sexual immorality corrupts society and contributes in the long run to destabilisation and wild living. If people’s sexuality is given free reign then things can only deteriate until...

I can apreciate that from your vantage point of not yet being a Christian and still being heavily influenced by the unbelieving world that I will appear to be an extremist in my views. But in reality it isn’t extremist to argue that society should be governed by certain principles of...

I don’t agree with you that society should tolerate sexual immorality. Pointing to an extremist Islamic state isn’t a convincing argument for saying that western societies should go to the opposite extreme and allow people to freely indulge their base passions. I’m not...

The moral law which was codified in the Ten Commandments is the universal moral law which applies to everyone not just to Christians. It teaches what God requires of all those He has created, and therefore all human societies should uphold this law. God has written on the conscience of everyone...

What you raise is a whole different argument. I was only addressing myself to sexual immorality. Human greed is of course endemic in the sort of capitalist society we’ve presently got but the solution isn’t socialism which has always failed where it’s been tried. Socialism might work if...

This means that we shouldn’t condemn anyone who is guilty of sinning because we’re all guilty of sinning in some way ourselves, and that if we do condemn anyone we’re liable to be condemned ourselves. It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t define what is sinful. God has defined sin for us in the 10...

One of the reasons why I think that western civilisation has become so sexually immoral is that the state no longer takes an active role in suppressing sexual vice. It allows prostitution to thrive even sanctioning it and defending the right of prostitutes to ply their trade in controlled...

Coming from an RC background, which I came from myself, I can appreciate that it’s a bit of a wrench to free oneself from RC teaching on clerical authority and come to a Biblical and Lutheran understanding where every Christian is equal, and a pastor is simply a representative of the rest. A...

The keys are held jointly by all Christians and pastors only exercise them on behalf of everyone else, so it’s a case of confessing to a pastor who communicates God’s forgiveness to a person on behalf of everyone else, who all individually are also able to communicate God’s forgiveness to a...

I'm not in full agreement with the Book of Concord because I disagree with its teaching on predestination (I agree with Luther's teaching in The Bondage of the Will that God predestines people to both heaven and hell), but the BoC contains a lot of valuable teaching, and Luther's catechisms are...

You're failing to make a distinction between church and state. How Christians should act towards immoral unbelievers and how the state should act with respect to law breakers are different. An individual Christian's response to someone guilty of immoral or antisocial conduct is to try and...

I fail to see how the passage that McCain quotes from Luther's Commentary on Genesis 29 refutes that Luther held predestination to hell. To me the passage confirmed that Luther held double predestination because he (Luther) affirmed in it that "everything is absolute and unavoidable"

There's no disagreement between us on the fact that Christians are not yet in full possession of eternal life because the resurrection from the dead and the end of the world has not yet occurred. However the subject of the thread was the proposition that salvation and therefore justification was...

What you say is true. We do stay saved the same way we get saved by believing the Gospel and remaining in faith, but my point is that it’s possible, if God allows it, to fall from faith and justification and indulge in unrepentant sinful behaviour as happened for instance to David who...