I hope the above post helps the Calvinist understand what we do not believe about their theories of the unBiblical TWO wills of God.
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If God is not willing that all unsaved sinners perish and they still perish that presents a problem. Ephesians 1:11 teaches us that God works all things after the counsel of His own will. So then, if God's will is for something to come to pass (in this case, the salvation of everyone) and it doesn't come to pass then something stopped God from bringing His will to pass. If that could happen we have another problem because Isaiah 14:24,27- teaches us that when God purposes to do something it will come to pass. So, the text shows no one who God purposes to save will ever perish (see Matthew 1:21 also - He shall save His people -not all people - from their sins)
Good job of cutting and pasting I suppose.I hope the above post helps the Calvinist understand what we do not believe about their theories of the unBiblical TWO wills of God.
I was not lying to you, but I also made it clear several pages back that I wanted to hear from a Calvinist.Good job of cutting and pasting I suppose.
But even if that article is correct and Calvinism is incorrect or whatever happens to be true about anything doctrinally - the fact remains that what you portrayed to me that you desired from me in post #2215 in so far as desiring open dialog was, in the eyes of God as well as mine, nothing less than lying to me.
I'd put all of the discussion of doctrine on hold until you learn not to lie to a brother in Christ.
Again - shame on you.
Ok - so in your view you were not lying to me. That, hopefully, truly being the case - I'll try this one more time.If you still feel the above, then I am sorry you feel that way and if I mislead you, it was not intentional. ............I was not lying to you, but I also made it clear several pages back that I wanted to hear from a Calvinist.
Actually - I have heard many of them at least try to dialog with you. But it always ends up the same way.They start these threads and then do not live up to answering hard questions.
Think what you want to think. Free country, but no free will. Maybe it's the nature God created me with.
What I will do is stop waiting for any Calvinist to explain their theory Biblically and I'll just get my answers from Google about them and their beliefs. Much quicker with less foundless theories, hopefully.
You should see @ToBeLoved at work in the LDS threads. You definitely seem to have nailed what I've thought in regards to his/her contributions in this thread.No you don't "gots it".
What I get though is that there is no difference between you and all the rest of the argumentative types here.
You pretend in one post to be seeking understanding of the other side's points and intelligent dialog - when all you really want is an open avenue to vent your spleen.
You are no more worthy of a serious reply like the one I gave to you than the vilest participant in this forum.
I've made the mistake of taking you to be a good person before only to be disappointed. It won't happen again.
You seem to be a little lacking in the skills it takes to express yourself. Many here have noticed that before of course and told you so.
I've blamed that lack of ability for my misunderstanding your intent in the past and did it again here.
As I say - I won't be making the same mistake again.
Shame on you.
Interestingly I actually received a personal request from her a while back to come over to that L.D.S. thread to help her out when she was getting nowhere with her own methods . And - that after the two of us had locked horns here and elsewhere a few times before.You should see @ToBeLoved at work in the LDS threads. You definitely seem to have nailed what I've thought in regards to his/her contributions in this thread.
I seems that you are in conflict with every systematic theology book ever written in this. There are two wills of God and everyone says so no matter be they Calvinist, Arminian, Mormon or Catholic. It is a doctrine that cannot be denied if you believe the scriptures.
Theologians refer to half of the doctrine of two wills as "permissive will". On the other hand - many "non-theologians" just talk in a very general way about God "allowing" things to take place that He would rather not have happen. (Certainly either way of expressing the dilema is an accurate way of saying it.)
But the theologian is attempting to explain how this condition (the presence of evil) could have ever happened with a good and all powerful God on the throne.
The difference, it seems to me, between Reformed and non-Reformed people is that Reformed people would say that God planned all along to "allow" evil to take place as part of a perfect plan -- and non-Reformed people, on the other hand, would say that God just had evil thrust into His creation without His seeing it coming (or at the least certainly not planning for it to come along), as it were.
Non-Reformed believe that God is "reacting" to sin's occurrence and working toward an end to this awful situation as best He can.
The Reformed believe that God is "proactive" concerning sin rather than "reactive". That is to say that He has always and from the beginning planned that the "end" result will come about "through" the use of sin which He would allow.
His just and perfect decree that there be a perfect world in eternity future where sin will not and indeed cannot exist is decreed to be brought to fruition through evil being allowed to run it's course in this present age.
In the ages to come, He wishes to not only display His grace through salvation. He wishes also (and has always planned) to display His justice and wrath in the ages to come.
How a just and good God could plan to use evil and sin in the process of bringing about a good end and not be, Himself, accused of being evil - is the $64,000 question. Reformed people struggle with the question all the time. How could any compassionate Christian not?
We do know that He does that sort of thing all the time as we read through the scriptures. What men and demons mean for evil - God means for good. I'm sure you know the many prominent examples of this principle from your study of the Word of God.
But it is a question that it seems is only asked and agonized over by Reformed and not the non-Reformed.
The reason that that is true is that, it seems to me, only the Reformed considers ALL of the scriptures in his theology rather than just rejecting part of it because it causes him agony of soul.
The bottom line though, as I have said many times, is that the non-Reformed still are faced, when all is said and done, with the same thorny issues as the Reformed. It's just that they put off dealing with them or try to drown them out by whistling through the graveyard by repeating a sort of "free will" mantra over and over again. .
I hope that helps to see the issues. I went to this trouble because you stressed to me that you were being altogether serious in your questions and not just looking to argue.
I sure hope that that's the case and that I won't be disappointed.
Although I agree with much of what you say - I doubt that a full throttled 5-point Calvinist presentation will do anything to reach someone like "tobeloved".Yes there is God's will that all repent and believe the gospel, God commands men everywhere to repent and believe as it says in Acts 17.
Their refusal to believe regardless even as a sin done in ignorance, is still a sin. And not believing is still a sin even if they have never heard.
Sins done ignorantly still required a sacrifice in the OT and were forgivable.
For wilful sins there was no sacrifice, they were to be cut off forever from the congregation of the Lord.
Then there is what God by His decretive will brings to pass, the salvation of His elect that He has decided to be merciful towards.
This way is fair to all people who hear the gospel message. But God does not have to be fair, God shows mercy and compassion only to whomever He chooses, and His choice to leave others as they are. Entire nations of people have gone on to destruction and still are today without hearing the Truth in Christ. But we do have God's promise the gospel will be preached to all nations before the end.
God's only promise is that some from every nation, tribe, kindred, tongue will be saved.
I have found it is impossible to teach anyone to know the Lord and know the truth. We are simply His witnesses to truth and God is the one giving the revelation that changes people's minds. God withholds from some, certain parts of the truth. The promise is we shall know the truth, but that promise seems for the many won't be realized until the 'perfect comes'. Recall it is the Holy Spirit Jesus says that guides us into all truth.Although I agree with much of what you say - I doubt that a full throttled 5-point Calvinist presentation will do anything to reach someone like "tobeloved".
It seems to me that a bite at a time would be a better approach to discussing the differences between Calvinist and non-Calvinist doctrine with her or someone like her.
I certainly agree with you in that. God is the one who gives the increase. It is not our debating skills.I have found it is impossible to teach anyone to know the Lord and know the truth. We are simply His witnesses to truth and God is the one giving the revelation that changes people's minds. God withholds from some, certain parts of the truth. The promise is we shall know the truth, but that promise seems for the many won't be realized until the 'perfect comes'. Recall it is the Holy Spirit Jesus says that guides us into all truth.
I certainly agree with you in that. God is the one who gives the increase. It is not our debating skills.
I also believe that it is sometimes wise to moderate our arguments a bite at a time - a little along the lines of what Paul did at Mars Hill in Athens and Peter did before the Sanhedrin - or even what Stephen did in Jerusalem at his stoning.
But in the end we can only try to do our best according to our own personalities.
I hope that she'll engage you again and that you will be productive in your approach.
The Bible plainly teaches that no one seeks God, and they never will in their total depravity, it is against thier nature. Only the ones predestined and called will come [Romans 8:30]. The question is now easy for me to answer, only the Elect need to hear the gospel and evey single one will, this make Christ's atonement 100% effecient.Perhaps John 3:16 sums it up pretty well. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
THAT is what God purposed to do, and He did accomplish this. He gave His only begotten Son who became the gateway to salvation for any who would choose to accept that path. In other words, His purpose was to provide the option of salvation. But that doesn't violate OUR will because He still allows us to make the decision as to whether or not to enter.
So allowing is now condoning? (matching tone)So then satan and 1/3 of the angels rebellion is God's will? As well as Adam coming to sin, God's will?
Then we would be adding 'sin' to the perfect, just will of God. So God condones sin now?
It is ridiculous to think God loved the world in the sense that He loved every unrepentant sinner, even by your own Arminian standards. It makes perfect sense to interpret it in the way it was used in the first century, not the 20th century.So, instead of wasting my own time typing out what I believe and have problems with, I'll just share someone else's post that sums it up and saves me some time and new Calvinist theories, seemingly copied from the 5th century.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/03/whats-wrong-with-calvinism/
Basic to Arminianism is God’s love. The fundamental conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism is not sovereignty but God’s character. If Calvinism is true, God is the author of sin, evil, innocent suffering and hell. That is to say, if Calvinism is true God is not all-loving and perfectly good. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” “God so loved the world.” Calvinists must explain this as meaning that God loves “all kinds of people,” not everyone. Or that “God loves all people in some ways but only some people [the elect] in all ways.” Arminians believe these interpretations distort the clear message of the Bible about God’s love. If Calvinism is true, John Wesley said, God’s love is “such a love as makes the blood run cold.” It is indistinguishable from hate—for a large portion of humanity created in his own likeness and image.
Let me repeat. The most basic issue is not providence or predestination or the sovereignty of God. The most basic issue is God’s character.
Calvinists commonly argue that God’s love and goodness are somehow “different” than ours. How different can they be and still be meaningful concepts? If God’s love and goodness are compatible with predestining people to hell, then the words mean something other than they say. And if God is not perfectly good, then he is not trustworthy. If he can hate, then he can lie. Why trust Scripture to be a true revelation and guide if God is not good in some way analogous to our best ideas of goodness? If God’s goodness is consistent with predetermining large portions of people to hell, then why might it not be consistent with deceiving us? Our very trust in the Bible as God’s true revelation depends on God being good, trustworthy, one who cannot deceive.
The Calvinist, like the Arminian, approaches Scripture with the assumption that God cannot lie. He or she can trust the Bible to be a true revelation of God if it is inspired by God. The moment the Calvinist says “But God’s goodness is different from ours,” he or she undermines reason to trust the Bible. Of course God’s goodness is different from ours in that it is greater, but that’s not what Calvinists faced with passages such as John 3:16 mean. They mean that God’s goodness, God’s love, is wholly different from our highest and best concepts of them—even as revealed through Jesus Christ.
Another difference between Calvinism and Arminianism lies in Arminians’ view of God’s sovereignty in providence. According to Arminianism, God is now, before the coming of his Kingdom of perfect righteousness, sovereign de jure but not de facto. Jesus and Paul both referred to Satan as the “prince” of this world. According to Calvinism, Satan is God’s instrument; according to Arminianism he is a true enemy of God and presently resisting God’s will. Why God is allowing that is not revealed to us; we are only told that God is being patient. So, according to Arminianism, God limits himself, restrains his power, holds back from controlling everything. Why? For the sake of free will. God wants our freely offered and given love, not love that he has instilled in us without our consent. If Calvinism is true, salvation is a condition, not a relationship. A relationship requires free consent. So, in the interim, between the fall in the garden and the return of Christ in judgment, God is sovereign by right but not exercising that sovereignty over everything. He could but he doesn’t. Thus, sin, evil and innocent suffering, and especially hell, are not God’s antecedent will but God’s consequent will. God’s antecedent will is what he perfectly wanted to happen—including our willing obedience out of love and everlasting fellowship with us. God’s consequent will is what God permits to happen that is contrary to his perfect will. It is consequent to our free choice to rebel against God and push him out of our lives and our world. It is consequent to our free choice to obey Satan and make him “god of this world” rather than obey God.
So, according to Arminianism, God is in charge but not yet in control. God is like the king of an enemy occupied territory and we Christians are like resistance fighters who look forward to the day when our hero, God, will return and take back his full sovereignty over our country. Of course, this is only an analogy. Our God is not banished from this world, but neither is he controlling everything that happens, rendering it certain according to his blueprint. If that were the case, our prayers could make no real difference. If Calvinism is true, God’s will is already being done “on earth” and yet Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Calvinism flatly contradicts that prayer.
Of course, Calvinists have their answers to all these objections, but I do not find any of them convincing. They sound forced to me. They say, for example, that our prayers for God’s will to be done are God’s “foreordained means to a foreordained end.” In other words, our prayers are also foreordained and rendered certain by God as a means of having his will done on earth as in heaven. But, at the end of the day, that means our prayers never really change anything.
Calvinists also say that not everything is “God’s will” in the same way. For example, they say that God wishes none had to perish in hell. That’s their interpretation of the verses cited earlier that God is not willing that any should perish but that everyone be saved. God wishes hell were not necessary, but it is—for his full glory. God wills what he wishes he did not have to will.
Perhaps the most troubling answer of Calvinists is the two wills of God—not “antecedent” and “consequent” but “prescriptive” and “decretive.” If Calvinism is true, God decrees that people do what he forbids. God decrees things that violate his prescriptions—commands. God commands “Thou shalt not murder,” but decrees “Thou shalt murder.” Calvin explained in Institutes, and most Calvinists agree, that God does not sin in decreeing that someone sin because God’s intention is good whereas the murderer’s intention is evil. God intends the murder he decrees and renders certain for his glory. The murderer, who could not do otherwise than God decrees, is guilty because his intention is hateful. Not only is this hairsplitting; it also raises the question of the origin of the murderer’s evil intention. If every twist and turn of every thought and intention is under the direct control of God, then even the murderer’s intention cannot escape the all-determining sovereignty of Calvinism’s God. This is why Arminius stated that if Calvinism is true, not only is sin not really sin, but God is the only sinner.
Now let’s turn to Arminianism’s alternative view of God’s predestination. Here I return to the TULIP scheme. Arminians agree that fallen humans are totally depraved in the sense Calvinism means—helpless to do anything truly good, pleasing to God, apart from grace. Arminians, however, believe in prevenient grace—that grace of God that heals the deadly wound of sin and frees the fallen sinner from the bondage of the will to sin and gives him or her ability to exercise a good will toward God. We do not know all the means of prevenient grace, but the preaching of the gospel is one. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” The gospel read or heard imparts prevenient grace so that the person is for the first time freed to repent and trust in God. In other words, Arminians do not believe in “free will” but in “freed will.”
Where is prevenient grace in the Bible? Where is it not in the Bible? It is everywhere assumed, taken for granted, presupposed by Scripture. No one seeks after God and yet many do seek after God. That pattern of “don’t” but “do” is found everywhere in Scripture. It is explained by the concept of prevenient grace. Left to ourselves, apart from a special impartation of grace that convicts and calls, illumines and enables, we would never exercise a good will toward God. But with prevenient grace, we can and some of us do.
Arminians also believe in unconditional election, but we believe it is corporate election—God’s unconditional plan to have a people for himself: Israel and the church. Individual election is conditional. It requires faith which is both a gift of God and a response of the individual. Philippians 2:12-13: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for God is at work in you….” (The text and subject of my sermon tomorrow morning) God provides all the ability, the seed of faith, and we freely accept it and use it to repent and trust in God alone. But once we do repent and trust, we see that it was God who made it possible in every way, so we cannot boast. And God foreknew that we would (or wouldn’t) repent and believe. That’s another dimension of God’s election in Arminian theology. Individual election, predestination, is conditional in that we must accept it. If we do, it turns out that God foreknew that we would (Romans 8:29: “Those whom he foreknew he did predestine….”)
One of Calvinism’s main arguments against Arminianism is that if Arminianism is true, God’s salvation is not all of grace. We earn it. Only if election to salvation is absolutely unconditional and grace irresistible, they argue, can it truly be the case that “by grace we are saved through faith.” Only then is salvation a sheer gift. This is, of course, untrue. Think of this analogy. If someone gives you a check for a thousand dollars that saves you from bankruptcy, and all you have to do is endorse the check and deposit it, did you earn part of the money? Was it any less a gift? Absolutely not. What if someone who received such a check that saved him or her from bankruptcy then boasted of having earned part of the gift? People would think him mad or ungrateful or both! A gift that must be freely received is no less a gift.
Now let’s look at Calvinism’s idea of unconditional election. If God is good and could save everyone because election to salvation is absolutely unconditional, why doesn’t he? How can he be truly good if he could but doesn’t? Again, we are back at the fundamental conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism—God’s character.
Arminianism believes that the atonement of Jesus Christ is unlimited in every way. Christ died for everyone; he took the punishment for the sins of all. Does Scripture teach it? Absolutely. 1 Timothy 2:6 says that Christ gave himself as a ransom for everyone. The Greek is clear: it says “all people.” There is no room to interpret this as meaning “all kinds of people.” John Piper, noting the conflict between this verse and limited atonement, which he espouses, claims that Christ did die for even the non-elect. His death affords them many blessings in this life even if not escape from hell in the next. Christ did not die to save them but only to offer them temporal blessings. This is the same as saying he gives the non-elect a little bit of heaven to go to hell in. Piper’s “explanation” is clearly contrary to the plain sense of this Scripture passage which is why many Calvinists cannot accept limited atonement. And yet they cannot explain why Christ would die for those God planned not to save.
But there are other passages that completely undermine limited atonement: Romans 14:15 and 1 Corinthians 8:11. Both passages warn believers against flaunting their freedom in Christ in front of brothers and sisters of weaker conscience because this might cause one for whom Christ died to be “destroyed.” The Greek word translated “destroyed” always only means utterly destroyed; it cannot mean “damaged.” But if Calvinism is correct, a person for whom Christ died cannot be “destroyed” because he or she is one of the elect.
That's how it worked on me.The Bible plainly teaches that no one seeks God, and they never will in their total depravity, it is against thier nature. Only the ones predestined and called will come [Romans 8:30]. The question is now easy for me to answer, only the Elect need to hear the gospel and evey single one will, this make Christ's atonement 100% effecient.
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