Predestination of sin, false teachers and their teachings?

[Dave L]

You can say whatever you want, but whatever you believe, for whatever reason, are not willingly to share it. Will be nothing new. You will be labeled if you like it or not. But by the sound of your speak, I believe you are either, Pelagian, semi-pelagian or Arminian.

Paul implied that denominationalism and factions are a result of carnal mindedness when people claimed to follow other people.

 

[Dave L]

You caricature Classical Calvinism not to be confused with Hyper-Calvinism. That's why.

Do you think the Westminster Confession is hyper-Calvinistic?

 

[ladodgers6]

I think the Westminster Confession provides the scriptural teaching on the matter. Do you agree with it?

I prefer the Cannons of Dort.

 

[ladodgers6]

I think the Westminster Confession provides the scriptural teaching on the matter. Do you agree with it?

Or the Heidelberg Catechism

 

[ladodgers6]

Paul implied that denominationalism and factions are a result of carnal mindedness when people claimed to follow other people.

So are you suggesting that Jews were not a faction of religion from the rest of the world?

 

[ladodgers6]

Do you think the Westminster Confession is hyper-Calvinistic?

I believe he Westminster Confessions were composed by Puritans. I am not a Puritan, though there is a lot of which do I agree with.

 

[Dave L]

So are you suggesting that Jews were not a faction of religion from the rest of the world?

Jews are those who practice Judaism, a false religion. They are not a race. They are not biblical Israel. God removed the unbelievers among them from Israel.

 

[ladodgers6]

Paul implied that denominationalism and factions are a result of carnal mindedness when people claimed to follow other people.

What do you believe and why do you believe it?

 

[ladodgers6]

Jews are those who practice Judaism, a false religion. They are not a race. They are not biblical Israel. God removed the unbelievers among them from Israel.

Well now you have pointed out two factions of religion.

 

[Dave L]

What do you believe and why do you believe it?

I'm just a Believer who studies the bible. I have no denominational ties.

 

[Doer not just hearer]

What is it that causes you to think that God predestines sin or false teachers and their teachings?

Or Predestined Salvation for that matter. If "Predestine" is true, then didn't God just set Adam and Eve to fail? I don't think so. It was Eve's disobedience "FREE WILL" that got them out of the Garden.

 

[mcarans]

Or Predestined Salvation for that matter. If "Predestine" is true, then didn't God just set Adam and Eve to fail? I don't think so. It was Eve's disobedience "FREE WILL" that got them out of the Garden.

I think the Calvinist way of wriggling out that trap is to say that Adam and Eve had free will but once they ate from the tree, they lost their free will. Hoping a Calvinist will confirm that's how they explain it.

 

[Yahkov]

I believe in both predestination and free will. The Bible consistently emphasizes choice. The Bible also consistently speaks of predestination. One thing that bridges them both is God’s foreknowledge. Those whom he foreknew, he predestined. What did God know? I don’t know. How is this possible? I don’t know. Trying to understand anything more than this is just speculation. All I do know is that I have a choice and I find comfort that God has already established my steps.

 

[sdowney717]

I believe in both predestination and free will. The Bible consistently emphasizes choice. The Bible also consistently speaks of predestination. One thing that bridges them both is God’s foreknowledge. Those whom he foreknew, he predestined. What did God know? I don’t know. How is this possible? I don’t know. Trying to understand anything more than this is just speculation. All I do know is that I have a choice and I find comfort that God has already established my steps.

In the New Covenant, you will find no scriptures that say we chose God, all the scriptures say we are chosen by God.

 

[JM]

Jerome Zanchius is articulating that God to be the architect, designer, etc of sin. I have no problem with this idea and Reformed [Calvinistic] Christians shouldn’t either, especially the way Zanchius explains how the ultimate end will result in good…somehow.

God, as the primary and efficient cause of all things, is not only the Author of those actions done by His elect as actions, but also as they are good actions, whereas, on the other hand, though He may be said to be the Author of all the actions done by the wicked, yet He is not the Author of them in a moral and compound sense as they are sinful; but physically, simply and sensu diviso as they are mere actions, abstractedly from all consideration of the goodness or badness of them.

Although there is no action whatever which is not in some sense either good or bad, yet we can easily conceive of an action, purely as such, without adverting to the quality of it, so that the distinction between an action itself and its denomination of good or evil is very obvious and natural.

In and by the elect, therefore, God not only produces works and actions through His almighty power, but likewise, through the salutary influences of His Spirit, first makes their persons good, and then their actions so too; but, in and by the reprobate, He produces actions by His power alone, which actions, as neither issuing from faith nor being wrought with a view to the Divine glory, nor done in the manner prescribed by the Divine Word, are, on these accounts, properly denominated evil. Hence we see that God does not, immediately and per se, infuse iniquity into the wicked; but, as Luther expresses it, powerfully excites them to action, and withholds those gracious influences of His Spirit, without which every action is necessarily evil. That God either directly or remotely excites bad men as well as good ones to action cannot be denied by any but Atheists, or by those who carry their notions of free-will and human independency so high as to exclude the Deity from all actual operation in and among His creatures, which is little short of Atheism. Every work performed, whether good or evil, is done in strength and by the power derived immediately from God Himself, “in whom all men live, move, and have their being” (Acts 17.28). As, at first, without Him was not anything made which was made, so, now, without Him is not anything done which is done. We have no power or faculty, whether corporal or intellectual, but what we received from God, subsists by Him, and is exercised in subserviency to His will and appointment. It is He who created, preserves, actuates and directs all things. But it by no means follows, from these premises, that God is therefore the cause of sin, for sin is nothing but auomia, illegality, want of conformity to the Divine law (1 John 3.4), a mere privation of rectitude; consequently, being itself a thing purely negative, it can have no positive or efficient cause, but only a negative and deficient one…[end quote]​

Before Zanchius brought us to this point, showing that God acting “directly or remotely” is not the “Author of them in a moral and compound sense,” he teaches in Position 2;

That God often lets the wicked go on to more ungodliness, which He does (a) negatively by withholding that grace which alone can restrain them from evil; (b) remotely, by the providential concourse and mediation of second causes, which second causes, meeting and acting in concert with the corruption of the reprobate’s unregenerate nature, produce sinful effects; (c) judicially, or in a way of judgment. “The King’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of waters; He turneth it whithersoever He will” (Prov. 21.1); and if the King’s heart, why not the hearts of all men? “Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good?” (Lam. 3.38). Hence we find that the Lord bid Shimei curse David (2 Sam. 16.10); that He moved David himself to number the people (compare 1 Chron. 21.1 with 2 Sam. 24.1); stirred up Joseph’s brethren to sell him into Egypt (Genesis 50.20); positively and immediately hardened the heart of Pharaoh (Exod. 4.21); delivered up David’s wives to be defiled by Absalom (2 Sam. 12.11; 16.22); sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab (1 Kings 22.20-23), and mingled a perverse spirit in the midst of Egypt, that is, made that nation perverse, obdurate and stiff-necked (Isa. 19.14). To cite other instances would be almost endless, and after these, quite unnecessary, all being summed up in that express passage, “I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things” (Isa. 45.7). See farther, 1 Sam. 16.14; Psalm 105.25; Jer. 13.12,13; Acts 2.23, & 4.28; Rom. 11.8; 2 Thess. 2.11, every one of which implies more than a bare permission of sin. Bucer asserts this, not only in the place referred to below, but continually throughout his works, particularly on Matt. 6. § 2, where this is the sense of his comments on that petition, “Lead us not into temptation”: “It is abundantly evident, from most express testimonies of Scripture, that God, occasionally in the course of His providence, puts both elect and reprobate persons into circumstances of temptation, by which temptation are meant not only those trials that are of an outward, afflictive nature, but those also that are inward and spiritual, even such as shall cause the persons so tempted actually to turn aside from the path of duty, to commit sin, and involve both themselves and others in evil. Hence we find the elect complaining, ‘O Lord, why hast Thou made us to err from Thy ways, and hardened our hearts from Thy fear?’ (Isaiah 63.17). But there is also a kind of temptation, which is peculiar to the non-elect, whereby God, in a way of just judgment, makes them totally blind and obdurate, inasmuch as they are vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” (See also his exposition of Rom. 9.)[end quote]​

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[Dan1988]

I think the Calvinist way of wriggling out that trap is to say that Adam and Eve had free will but once they ate from the tree, they lost their free will. Hoping a Calvinist will confirm that's how they explain it.

As a Calvinist, I can say that we don't believe that Adam and Eve had a free will. No created beings have a free will, the perimeters of our autonomy are limited by God's will.
Nothing can happen in the universe, unless God allows it. Nobody can understand Gods ways, because His ways are infinitely higher than ours.

 

[mcarans]

As a Calvinist, I can say that we don't believe that Adam and Eve had a free will. No created beings have a free will, the perimeters of our autonomy are limited by God's will.
Nothing can happen in the universe, unless God allows it. Nobody can understand Gods ways, because His ways are infinitely higher than ours.

That implies that humankind's fall and the corruption of the species that resulted was not through any choice by Adam and Eve but was predecided by God.

 

[sdowney717]

That implies that humankind's fall and the corruption of the species that resulted was not through any choice by Adam and Eve but was predecided by God.

The fall was predetermined.
Its the whole reason why He came and who He is.
Revelation 13
8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

1 Peter 1
18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

20 He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you 21 who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.