No no I agree with you...in fact most Calvinists that I know focus even more heavily on the "hellfire and damnation" aspects of Christianity.
Interesting. That has never been my experience.
Although I've gone back and forth on Calvinism vs "free will" I have never been able to reconcile Calvinism and any theology involving eternal damnation.
Whether churches are Reformed, Free Will or Semi-Pelagian, all churches/denominations that I know of within the pale of Christian orthodoxy teach the eternal, conscious damnation of the reprobate (and have done so throughout the history), so you would need to move to a fringe church or a cult to find a group that doesn't teach it.
Well I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of 2nd Peter but I agree with you that the Timothy and Ezekial passages are even stronger arguments in favor of the free will/ armenian viewpoint. How do you interpret those verses?
My assessment of 2 Peter 3:9 is Biblically correct, but many on the Free Will side use it as support for their belief in a conditional election nevertheless (because the second half of v9, taken out of context, seems to say what they need it to say).
As for....
1 Timothy 2
1 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,
2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Ezekiel 33
10 Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus you have spoken, saying, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?” ’
11 Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’
....what God desires, He doesn't always get (for instance, most/all choose to sin every single day irregardless of the fact that He wishes/desires that we wouldn't, because He gave us free will).
This was also His plan from the beginning, that all would be with Him forever, but we all rejected Him and chose sin and death instead of obedience, both in our first parents and us personally as well (so there is a sense of "all" mankind in these verses, that He really would have preferred that all were saved, and that He truly takes no pleasure in anyone's eternal death, even though all of us rejected Him .. e.g.
Romans 3:10-12, 23).
However, since He promised His Son a bride, He chose to save a remnant of us so that He would, so that ALL would not be lost. The question I cannot answer is why He didn't choose to save everyone else too?
I would also say that, generally speaking, when the Bible speaks of "all men", it means all of mankind w/o
distinction, you know, both Jews AND Greeks, men from every tribe and tongue, people and nation, not every man, woman and child w/o
exception.
Yours and His,
David
We are, in fact, known for teaching that the atonement is limited by God (the "L" in our little acrostic, TULIP, stands for "Limited Atonement").
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