Well let's see. Calvin says that people "can will nothing but evil." Institutes page 196, that is "he is under a necessity of sinning?" Institutes page 183 God created people. So as a Calvinist would you not agree that when God created you, from the instance you were born you have been incapable of willing or doing anything but evil? Even prior to you committing sin? If so what you're saying, and what Calvinists are clearly implying, is that when God creates people he programs them with the inability to will or do anything but evil. That about right?
I would think that people who exercise rational thought should be able to clearly see through the contradictions of the implications of Calvinism. Let's see, God holds people accountable for things which He knows they don't have the ability to do seeing as from their very creation at birth he decreed that be the case. And yet Calvinists claim that God is just, holding people accountable for things over which they have no control. How can such people be reasoned with?
Calvinism is nothing but a strawman's argument powered by threats.
Good Day,
Surely in need of context the assertion about it being due to creation is refuted categorically by Calvin.
So to source pg 183 is irresponsible and fails or shows a lack of ability to understand the point being made on Pg 196:
1. Enough would seem to have been said on the subject of man’s will, were there not some who endeavour to urge him to his ruin by a false opinion of liberty, and at the same time, in order to support their own opinion, assail ours. First, they gather together some absurd inferences, by which they endeavour to bring odium upon our doctrine, as if it were abhorrent to common sense, and then they oppose it with certain passages of Scripture (infra, sec. 6). Both devices we shall dispose of in their order. If sin, say they, is necessary, it ceases to be sin; if it is voluntary, it may be avoided. Such, too, were the weapons with which Pelagius assailed Augustine. But we are unwilling to crush them by the weight of his name, until we have satisfactorily disposed of the objections themselves. I deny, therefore, that sin ought to be the less imputed because it is necessary; and, on the other hand, I deny the inference, that sin may be avoided because it is voluntary. If any one will dispute with God, and endeavour to evade his judgment, by pretending that he could not have done otherwise, the answer already given is sufficient,
that it is owing not to creation, but the corruption of nature, that man has become the slave of sin, and can will nothing but evil that man has become the slave of sin, and can will nothing but evil
In Him,
Bill
