Does God want to save the world but can't? Can you prevent Him from carrying out His will?

[Rescued One]

This thead is a very satisfying, and informing conversation!

 

[The Liturgist]

Depends on whether the details get dismissed or not in these texts. #25



We also get that a lot when any doctrine is brought up where we differ with Catholics -- they always claim we should not rely so much on the Bible and look more for the traditions of man to solve it.

But a lot of us prefer the Bible "anyway".

Christ points out that there are a great many places where tradition contradicts scripture Mark 7:7-13

Again, our Lord is referring to Judaism.

In this case, ironically, tradition is on your side - the tradition of the ancient Church supports a non-Calvinist non-Determinist approach. Given that the scriptural evidence is deadlocked, without a preponderance of verses supporting Determinism or Free Will, contrary to what hardliners on either side believe, it comes down to interpretation, and if we use the oldest known interpretations, except for those of St. Augustine, we get a non-Determinist reading.

 

[The Liturgist]

God is completely sovereign - all things are ordained by Him, and all things are to His eternal glory. Nothing that was, is, or will ever be is contrary to His eternal purposes. Nothing can be done that God Himself does not decree.

In the temporal sense - the here and now - God has shown His good will toward everyone in that the gospel is being freely preached to all. And God does not will, in the here and now, that any should perish. Today is the day of salvation.

Ultimately, however, once God brings out His people, those who were not predestined for salvation from before the creation of the world will be cast into the lake of fire.

And all things are to the glory of God.

I don’t think casting people into the lake of fire with no opportunity to repent glorifies God.

 

[The Liturgist]

But He is using certain people as vessels to help to transport Satan's evil spirit to hell. So, He is using a number of humans for this purpose.

I share @Mark Quayle ’s reaction with that - seriously dude, that’s a pretty ahhh unique and strange exegesis. What do you mean “helping transport Satan’s evil spirit to hell”?

You do realize God is omnipotent and all powerful and our adversary the devil only has such abilities as God permits, for the benefit of our faith? See the Book of Job.

 

[com7fy8]

What do you mean “helping transport Satan’s evil spirit to hell”?

I mean He includes humans in His purpose of what He is doing.

Romans 9:21 says He has vessels for His purpose. Vessels help to contain and control things . . . but how God has this working for His purpose.

 

[renniks]

That doesn't answer the question.



Is He omnipotent?

Whenever people start demanding answers to these kinds of questions, one has to wonder about their view of the cross.
A Christ centered view of God will have you understanding that God doesn't work through forcing people to be saved.

 

[Ceallaigh]

2 Peter 3:9 and other verses say God wants none to parish and all to come to redemption. My belief is that in the long run God will get what He wants.

 

[Sam Saved by Grace]

2 Peter 3:9 and other verses say God wants none to parish and all to come to redemption. My belief is that in the long run God will get what He wants.

Your belief is blatantly contrary to scripture. You cannot take one verse out of context and magnify it a thousand times to the exclusion of all else. That is the common origin of all heresy.

In the here and now, God has, for the sake of His elect (to be proved in the fullness of time), extended His good will towards all men in the preaching of the Gospel. All who thirst are bid, "come".

But from eternity past, God has purposed it that a remnant - a people for Himself - shall be called out and saved. And these elect souls are chosen, predestined to salvation, for His Son Jesus Christ.

Those who are not chosen will be judged fairly. God owes us nothing.

 

[Ceallaigh]

Your belief is blatantly contrary to scripture. You cannot take one verse out of context and magnify it a thousand times to the exclusion of all else. That is the common origin of all heresy.

In the here and now, God has, for the sake of His elect (to be proved in the fullness of time), extended His good will towards all men in the preaching of the Gospel. All who thirst are bid, "come".

But from eternity past, God has purposed it that a remnant - a people for Himself - shall be called out and saved. And these elect souls are chosen, predestined to salvation, for His Son Jesus Christ.

Those who are not chosen will be judged fairly. God owes us nothing.

There's more than one verse about what God wants for His creation. Do you need me to post more of them for you?

And it's not about us and what we want and deserve. It's about God and what He wants and deserves.

Btw, loved that dressing down you gave me. You sound so authoritative it gave me goosebumps.

 

[Sam Saved by Grace]

There's more than one verse about what God wants for His creation. Do you need me to post more of them for you?

And it's not about us and what we want and deserve. It's about God and what He wants and deserves.

Btw, loved that dressing down you gave me. You sound so authoritative it gave me goosebumps.

I am sure you are well aware that Paul Washer is a Calvinist and preaches hellfire. And yet, you quote him.

I see your tendency to pick and choose only what you like isn't limited to just the Bible.

You are a universalist. Universalism is heresy. It is contrary to orthodox Christianity. As a new member, I wonder how it is that you are allowed to post here.

 

[Ceallaigh]

I am sure you are well aware that Paul Washer is a Calvinist and preaches hellfire. And yet, you quote him.

I see your tendency to pick and choose what you like isn't limited to just the Bible.

Pro tip: you should stick to the topic instead of making personal attacks.

 

[Sam Saved by Grace]

Pro tip: you should stick to the topic instead of making personal attacks.

That wasn't a personal attack. I was merely noting the irony that you would argue with one biblical Calvinist while quoting another. I was also noting that such cognitive dissonance is entirely fitting, considering your universalist slant.

 

[Ceallaigh]

That wasn't a personal attack. I was merely noting the irony that you would argue with one biblical Calvinist while quoting another. I was also noting that such cognitive dissonance is entirely fitting, considering your universalist slant.

That's all ad hominem. You're going after the person rather than the position he's maintaining. This thread isn't about me. Stick to the topic please.

 

[Rescued One]

Whenever people start demanding answers to these kinds of questions, one has to wonder about their view of the cross.
A Christ centered view of God will have you understanding that God doesn't work through forcing people to be saved.

Arminians don't like Calvinism neither do Universalists. What's new? God doesn't force people to be saved. So if you think He does or doesn't why haven't you started a thread?

 

[Rescued One]

Whenever people start demanding answers to these kinds of questions, one has to wonder about their view of the cross.
A Christ centered view of God will have you understanding that God doesn't work through forcing people to be saved.

When people ask questions it's usually to gather information, not a demand.

 

[renniks]

Arminians don't like Calvinism neither do Universalists. What's new? God doesn't force people to be saved. So if you think He does or doesn't why haven't you started a thread?

Lol, I love Calvinists. I just disagree with them.
I have no desire to start a thread about it.

 

[renniks]

When people ask questions it's usually to gather information, not a demand.

Well FYI then: God's love is most clearly revealed to us in Christ's sacrifice for us.
Calvinism often seems stuck with an incomplete OT view of God.

 

[The Liturgist]

You are a universalist. Universalism is heresy.

On CF.com Universalism is considered Heterodox but can be discussed along with full preterism, annhilationism and a few other peculiar beliefs which are still Nicene-compliant in Controversial Christian Theology, but my understanding that the anti-Nicene heresies of Arianism, Pneumatomacchianism and Gnosticism are now no longer discussed or in the case of J/W Arianism, are limited to Christianity and World Religions, due to past problems of flamewars that happened before I joined.

However, it is my professional opinion as a scholar of theology and the senior presbyter of two conservative High Church Congregationalist parishes that the views expressed by @MMXX are not Universalism but rather represent a hope, also expressed by CS Lewis, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Isaac the Syrian, among others, for Apokatastasis, which is different from stating that Apokatastasis or Universal Salvation is an absolute certainty, which we see for example in The Book of the Bee by Mar Solomon of Akhat, the 13th century Bishop of Basra in the Assyrian Church of the East, which even then is a specimen of apokatastasis and not Universalism.

SOME of the Fathers terrify us beyond our strength and throw us into despair; and their opinion is well adapted to the simple-minded and trangressors of the law. Others of them encourage us and bid us rely upon Divine mercy; and their opinions are suitable and adapted to the perfect and those of settled minds and the pious. In the 'Book of Memorials' it is thus written: 'This world is the world of repentance, but the world which is to come is the world of retribution. As in this world repentance saves until the last breath, so in the world to come justice exacts to the uttermost farthing. And as it is impossible to see here strict justice unmingled with mercy, so it is impossible to find there strict justice mingled with mercy.' Mâr Isaac says thus: 'Those who are to be scourged in Gehenna will be tortured with stripes of love; they who feel that they have sinned against love will suffer harder and more severe pangs from love than the pain that springs from fear.' Again he says: 'The recompense of sinners will be this: the resurrection itself will be their recompense instead of the recompense of justice; and at the last He will clothe those bodies which have trodden down His laws with the glory of perfection. This act of grace to us after we have sinned is greater than that which, when we were not, brought our nature into being.' Again he says: 'In the world which is to come grace will be the judge and not justice.' Mâr Theodore the Expositor says: 'Those who have here chosen fair things will receive in the world to come the pleasure of good things with praises; but the wicked who have turned aside to evil things all their life, when they are become ordered in their minds by penalties and the fear that springs from them, and choose good things, and learn how much they have sinned by having persevered in evil things and not in good things, and by means of these things receive the knowledge of the highest doctrine of the fear of God, and become instructed to lay hold of it with a good will, will be deemed worthy of the happiness of the Divine liberality. For He would never have said, "Until thou payest the uttermost farthing," unless it had been possible for us to be freed from our sins through having atoned for them by paying the penalty; neither would He have said, "he shall be beaten with many stripes," or "he shall be beaten with few stripes," unless it were that the penalties, being meted out according to the sins, should finally come to an end.' These things the Expositor has handed down in his books clearly and distinctly.

This is of course a particularly nasty form of Apokatastasis, because, if ome accepts, as I do, the soteriological argument of His Eminence Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Diokleia (auxilliary bishop in the UK) and Emeritus Professor of Eastern Christian Studies at Oxford, the soteriological argument that the one thing God cannot do is force us to love Him, because of the mutual synergia that true love entails, and in this case it appears that Mar Solomon believed it could be coerced, but still, his soteriology quoted above, which I should note is not official Assyrian doctrine, is still apokotastasis and not universalism per se, whereas the universalist blindly argues that everyone is saved, whereas those who argued for apokatastasis ranged from pointing out, as CS Lewis said, that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside, to arguing in the manner of Mar Solomon that given the enormous amount of time, a restoration of creation to its original glory or a newer and more perfect condition becomes something of an inevitability.

Thus, one can identify a subtle but important distinction between the accepted belief of some church fathers in apokatasis, and the monergistic imposition of salvation even on misotheists, who Byzantine theologians argued would experience the all-consuming fire that is God’s infinite love as pure agony.

 

[BobRyan]

Again, our Lord is referring to Judaism.

Judaism was the nation religion started by our Lord. He is not condemning His own religion but rather tradition, and He uses Moses to condemn them. His condemnation is not of Moses or the OT or the Judaism nation-religion our Lord started at Sinai.

7 And in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
9 He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘The one who speaks evil of father or mother, is certainly to be put to death’; 11 but you say, ‘If a person says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is, given to God),’ 12 you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or his mother; 13 thereby invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.”

The contrast is between Judaism (Moses said, Commandment of God, Word of God .. i.e. O.T. ) on one hand -
-- vs--
(Tradition of men, your tradition, you say, tradition handed down, many such things as that)

 

[BobRyan]

Yet, you can't show that construction from Scripture. It is forced.

If that were the case then when I quote these texts -- there would be nothing but affirmation and applause from Calvinist readers.



1 John 4:14 "God sent His Son to be the Savior of the WORLD"
1 John 2:2 "He is the atoning sacrifice for OUR sins and not for our sins only but for the sins of the WHOLE WORLD"

John 1:11 "He came to His OWN and His OWN received Him not"

Isaiah 5:4 "What MORE Was there to do than that which I have already done? Why then when I expected good fruit did it produce bad?"

Free will.... sovereignly ordained by God "Whosoever will may come" -- by His supernaturally "drawing All mankind unto him" John 12:32


When Jesus said "How I WANTED... but you would not" Matt 23,
When we appeal to the Lost with "We BEG YOU.." rather than "we beg God..." 2Cor 5
When in Luke 7 the pharisees "rejected God's purpose for THEM"
When God "is not WILLING that any should perish" and yet many do perish - 2 Peter 3.

Then we see the proof of free will

"I STAND at the door and KNOCK, if anyone hears My voice AND OPENS the door - I will come in" Rev 3.