The No-Straw-Man Calvinism challenge.

[dad]

Let's explore that:

To our human sensibilities and decades of post-modern victim class mentality, yes I see why people demand that everyone has a 'fair' and equal chance to choose Christ. Scripture however, does not support this.

Nothing to do with that. It has to do with seeing who Jesus was and how He was when here. Example: the woman at the well. Jesus went out of His way to give the woman a fair chance (and her town as a result also).

If she was pre destined to hell or heaven, why bother?

6For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Ha. So He did die for all of us, I notice here a verse about the Rapture also...how we will not go through the wrath

10For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

Ah there it is again, talking about how enemies of God can be reconciled because of what He did!

11And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Yes we chose to do that. We now have a way to heaven if we accept it. Or, conversely if men reject Him, they cannot enter in. Nothing here about some weird fixed pre destined outcome regardless of what we wish!

12Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— 13for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

Even the old testament believers were saved by Christ...that He would one day come.

15But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. 16The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.

Right, Jesus paid the price so we could have the gift.

17For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

THOSE WHO RECEIVE!!! There it is, the choice.

18So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men

Well well, what have we here?! To ALL men! All can have the gift if the want! As we know not all will choose life.
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I think if one gets original sin which Paul calls "through the one man's disobedience" right a lot of our doctrinal differences would be solved. This is not Augustine or Calvin. It's the Apostle Paul. The language is clear above.

True, but suggests nothing remotely similar to what you thought!

This is why we are dead (spiritually) in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). No matter of human free will can change this but the Power of the Gospel for those who have ears to hear and eyes that see.

What our choosing changes is that we choose to accept His gift of eternal life that He gives all who ask.

Why pretend that the free will itself is what saves??

We get this power from God as while even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace we have been saved) (Ephesians 2:5).

How do we get it!? By asking/choosing!

So what about our choices? The 'so called' free will of humans? We do have a human will which makes choices. However, the Libertarian free will you are promoting does not exist.

Free will exists, and is part of what it is to be in the image of God! Fallen man still has a degree of free will, enough to be able to choose Jesus or not! Nowhere does it say we cannot knock, or ask, or come to Him, or hear, etc etc. It does not say we wake up one day with the gift of eternal life (unless we are a child of a believing parent, but that is another issue)

Nor do we wake up damned to hell because we were destined that way!!

Our human will is in bondage to either sin leading to death or in bondage to righteousness and Christ:

Romans 6: NASB

Only after we choose it to be one or the other!

8Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The dying spoken about here is people choosing to lay aside their own ideas and will, in favor of God's wonderful will. That does not mean they did not need to choose to first come to Him!

12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Yeah, we should try to be good...just because we had the power to choose to accept Him, does not mean we would no longer have problems with other choices in life later! We will not attain perfection in this life, far as I can tell. You perfect?? Ha.

 

[redleghunter]

If they are destined and created for torment and hell, why die to atone for them?

Did Judas have a fighting chance?

 

[redleghunter]

Please clean up post #726. Your comments are mixed in with mine.

 

[dad]

You missed it again. Yes Judas did what an evil heart would do in bondage to sin. We have this:

Jesus answered them, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70)

Right, one of them chose to reject Him, and yield to the devil.


Don't blame Jesus! He gave him every chance.

“I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. (John 17:11-12)

In every crowd there may be a person that just will not make the right choices. God knew man was wicked, and what would happen. That does not mean He is evil, or that He made Judas reject Him.

So yes Judas chose his course in life. He did so as Christ says as son of perdition. The OT Scriptures even prophesy this.

I guess the question to you is, Judas even before being conceived was predestined to betray Christ.

I mean how 'fair' is that?

You seem to have no real grasp at what is meant by predestination. Knowing about choices man will make is NOT the same as making man make those choices!

 

[dad]

Did Judas have a fighting chance?

Of course.

 

[redleghunter]

Of course.

Then why did the Scriptures predict what he would do?

 

[redleghunter]

Well, there you have it, the only rebuttable of substance.

Your post has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. But start your own. I’m sure you’ll get good responses.

You betcha! I'm ready for another materialistic soul sleeper thread! Been a few months. But not here as the OP indicates.

 

[dad]

Then why did the Scriptures predict what he would do?

Why do they predict what the Antichrist will do, and what would happen to Greece and Medo Persia, and Babylon...etc? Because God is the 'I AM'.

 

[Hammster]

If they are destined and created for torment and hell, why die to atone for them?

He didn’t atone for those in Hell.

 

[Hammster]

Why do they predict what the Antichrist will do, and what would happen to Greece and Medo Persia, and Babylon...etc? Because God is the 'I AM'.

Did He ordain what would happen, or did He learn what would happen?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

our will is the linchpin that determines what happens.

Example: the woman at the well. Jesus went out of His way to give the woman a fair chance (and her town as a result also).

The woman at the well, and the people in the town who went out and listened to Jesus and were saved,
were willing to be saved, yes.

To clarify "that determines what happens" though, (and I don't think you disagree) ,

whatever Yahweh Does whatever He Pleases to Do. He accomplished/ accomplishes salvation in the Ekklesia, as Jesus told the disciples to trust the Father to accomplish their salvation in this life and in the life to come, NOT to trust themselves (which if they did, they already failed from the start) ....

Willingness to be saved may be the greatest need within a person, and still many refuse - not many people are willing to turn to Yahweh to be saved , so they remain lost, condemned, doomed on the wide road to destruction.

 

[dad]

He didn’t atone for those in Hell.

So they were created to go to hell?

 

[dad]

Did He ordain what would happen, or did He learn what would happen?

He knows what we consider to be the future, just as He knows what we consider to be the present before the present existed.

 

[Hammster]

So they were created to go to hell?

They were created to glorify God. They didn’t by their choice.

 

[Hammster]

He knows what we consider to be the future, just as He knows what we consider to be the present before the present existed.

How does He know? Because He ordains, or because He takes in knowledge of what will happen?

 

[dad]

The woman at the well, and the people in the town who went out and listened to Jesus and were saved,
were willing to be saved, yes.

To clarify "that determines what happens" though, (and I don't think you disagree) ,

whatever Yahweh Does whatever He Pleases to Do. He accomplished/ accomplishes salvation in the Ekklesia, as Jesus told the disciples to trust the Father to accomplish their salvation in this life and in the life to come, NOT to trust themselves (which if they did, they already failed from the start) ....

Willingness to be saved may be the greatest need within a person, and still many refuse - not many people are willing to turn to Yahweh to be saved , so they remain lost, condemned, doomed on the wide road to destruction.

So when a willingness to be saved is accompanied by asking, then bingo.

 

[dad]

They were created to glorify God. They didn’t by their choice.

So you think all who go to hell have a choice to go to heaven instead?

 

[dad]

How does He know? Because He ordains, or because He takes in knowledge of what will happen?

It could be ordained that man could have life everlasting, that does not mean all men will. It means He ordained that a way would be provided for those who choose.

If I know the train will come at a certain time, does that mean I made the train and control who goes on it?

 

[Hammster]

So you think all who go to hell have a choice to go to heaven instead?

Sure. But they won’t chose to do so because they hate God. They are slaves to their nature.

 

[Hammster]

It could be ordained that man could have life everlasting, that does not mean all men will. It means He ordained that a way would be provided for those who choose.

If I know the train will come at a certain time, does that mean I made the train and control who goes on it?

That’s a long way to go to not answer the question.