Calvinism and the modern Presbyterian church

[BryanW92]

Do you think God foreordained all of us to be sinners? Do we have any free will in our ability to attempt to reject sin?

Yeah. We can reject some sin. But we can't reject it perfectly, which is God's standard.

 

[SPB1987]

Yeah. We can reject some sin. But we can't reject it perfectly, which is God's standard.

So God foreordained some of us to not be saved? If this is the case....did God foreordain the fall of humanity?

 

[AMR]

If and only if by foreordination you mean, God predisposes all that is to come to pass and the conditions in such a manner that all shall come to pass according to God's eternal plan, including acts of of necessity and contingency. Moreover, these events may come to pass via the free actions of moral agents (both saved and lost), or via God's causative acts, then the answers are "yes" and "yes".

Foreknowledge presupposes foreordination, but foreknowledge is not itself foreordination. Misunderstandings of these terms have led the uninformed to claim that the related Reformed doctrines are fatalistic.

From these misunderstandings, we see incorrect statements such as the following:

Necessity of a hypothetical inference...
If God foreknew the Adam would sin, then Adam cannot refrain from sinning. (Incorrect)

The interpretation above wrongly interprets God's foreknowledge as impinging upon the Adam's moral free agency. Note by "moral free agency" (that is, "free will") I mean that we choose according to our greatest desires at the moment we so choose. That is, we always choose according to our greatest inclinations when we choose.

The proper understanding is:

The necessity of the consequent of the hypothetical...
Necessarily, if God foreknew Adam would sin, then Adam does not refrain from sinning. (Correct)

In other words, the actions of moral free agents do not take place because they are foreseen, the actions are foreseen because the actions are certain to take place.