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Because to suggest a person's will isn't so injured by Adam's transgression that he can make an act of faith (choose to love God), is contradictory to 1Cor2:14 & implies imho that God doesn't in fact save, our decision to "accept" or "receive" His gift is (to put it pointedly) the deciding factor.
So that ipso facto makes that specific, indispensible piece of glory our own doing.
Doesn't it?
Pinkman, I believe the following scriptures will answer this for you: (by the way, I am not listing these as though they are easy to read or with a heartless attitude, but because these scriptures say what they say).
Romans 9:22..."What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?
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You make repentance out to be some great achievement. Repenting is what the young son did in the pigsty and resulted in his returning home (Luke 15). I do not see any glory in anything the young son did and it is not because it is suggested the father (God) caused it (made it) to happen in the young son. The Bibles says while the son was in a dead state he came to his senses. Coming to your senses is nothing more than reviewing the reality of what you have done, where you have gotten yourself to, where you are going and what the alternatives are."God commands men everywhere to repent"... Acts 17:30
None of us can obey any of God's commands in and of ourselves. If we can choose to obey His commands, apart from His enabling, then we get the credit.
Let's put it another way:
Can we keep every letter of the Law? Can we keep the 10 commandments? If we break one of these commandments or one letter of the Law, we are in sin of tresspassing against the entire Law!
Why then does God give commands we are unable to keep in our own strength? Some would argue that since God gave the command, then "man" must be able to make a free-will choice to obey that command. However, we see that the Command was given to SHOW we need Him to bring us to repentance. Just as the Law was given to SHOW us sin! Paul said that "I would not know sin unless it was for the Law." We couldn't keep the Law anymore than we can obey the command to repent!
Every command God gives is to show us that only He can fulfill that Law/Command IN US. His Spirit carries out His own commands in and through us and He gets the credit.
With all respect, Arminians argue that if God commands it, then logic dictates that we must be "able" to carry it out. This is not true. If this line of reasoning is true, then why don't we ALL obey the Law in it's entirety? The Law/Commands were given to SHOW sin and the need of God to "Work and will in us to accomplish His good pleasure."
"Apart from Me, you can do nothing, the flesh profits nothing."
If we can repent, which is a command given by God to His own, then we don't need the work of the Spirit to enable this. We can do this by ourselves, which gives us the credit for repentance. Repentance is a gift of God.
Again, God commands us things we cannot keep in order to show us that He is the One living in us to accomplish that very "will" He commanded.
"Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me." He must do the washing, He must enable us to repent, we cannot do either ourselves. It's all His work IN us.
Quite right........ as you've shown by pitting Rick's supralapsarian leaning view (Gill - who holds to double predestination) against a infralapsarian leaning view (Spurgeon........ who holds to the single predestination view).Calvinist, Charles Spurgeon, states: But it does not say anything about fitting men for destruction; they fitted themselves. They did that: God had nothing to do with it.
Spurgeon adds: My soul revolts at the idea of a doctrine that lays the blood of mans soul at Gods door. I cannot conceive how any human mind, at least any Christian mind, can hold any such blasphemy as that.
At least not all Calvinists agree.
Calvinist, R.C. Sproul, comments: It sounds like God is actively making people sinners. But that is not required by the text. He does make vessels of wrath and vessels of honor from the same lump of clay. But if we look closely at the text we will see that the clay with which the potter works is fallen clay. One batch of clay receives mercy in order to become vessels of honor. That mercy presupposes a clay that is already guilty. Likewise God must endure the vessels of wrath that are fit for destruction because they are guilty vessels of wrath. (Chosen By God, p. 153,
More of R C Sproul
..his distortion of positive-positive predestination clearly makes God the author of sin
who punishes a person for doing what God monergistically and irresistibly coerces man to do. Such a view is indeed a monstrous assault on the integrity of God. This is not the Reformed view of predestination, but a gross and inexcusable caricature of the doctrine. Such a view may be identified with what is often loosely described as hyper-Calvinism and involves a radical form of supralapsarianism. Such a view of predestination has been virtually universally and monolithically rejected by Reformed thinkers.
Spurgeon's middle voice interpretation ("they fitted themselves") is easily refuted when given the context of the potter and the clay as well as upon examining the lexical issue. Does clay form itself? No. This sermon, however, is a good example of a five-point Calvinist that shys away from the harsher elements of biblical theology, exegetical precision, and consistent theism.Calvinist, Charles Spurgeon, states: But it does not say anything about fitting men for destruction; they fitted themselves. They did that: God had nothing to do with it.
Spurgeon adds: My soul revolts at the idea of a doctrine that lays the blood of mans soul at Gods door. I cannot conceive how any human mind, at least any Christian mind, can hold any such blasphemy as that.
At least not all Calvinists agree.
Spurgeon's middle voice interpretation ("they fitted themselves") is easily refuted when given the context of the potter and the clay as well as upon examining the lexical issue. Does clay form itself? No. This sermon, however, is a good example of a five-point Calvinist that shys away from the harsher elements of biblical theology, exegetical precision, and consistent theism.
Spurgeon adds: My soul revolts at the idea of a doctrine that lays the blood of mans soul at Gods door. I cannot conceive how any human mind, at least any Christian mind, can hold any such blasphemy as that.
Still stands
Spurgeon adds: My soul revolts at the idea of a doctrine that lays the blood of mans soul at Gods door. I cannot conceive how any human mind, at least any Christian mind, can hold any such blasphemy as that.
Still stands
Quite right, a problem of quote mining. From Spurgeon's Jacob and Esau sermonSpurgeon must be read in context.
ANDSpurgeon said:The fact is, God loved Jacob, and he did not love Esau; he did choose Jacob, but he did not choose Esau; he did bless Jacob, but he never blessed Esau; his mercy followed Jacob all the way of his life, even to the last, but his mercy never followed Esau; he permitted him still to go on in his sins, and to prove that dreadful truth, "Esau have I hated."
From where I sit, the Pinkman is implying in this thread and others (through the "puppet" theory caricature) that the Reformed folk in Soteriology are "hyper" Calvinists.Now, the next question is a different one: Why did God hate Esau? I am not going to mix this question up with the other, they are entirely distinct, and I intend to keep them so, one answer will not do for two questions, they must be taken separately, and then can be answered satisfactorily. Why does God hate any man? I defy anyone to give any answer but this, because that man deserves it; no reply but that can ever be true. There are some who answer, divine sovereignty; but I challenge them to look that doctrine in the face. Do you believe that God created man and arbitrarily, sovereignlyit is the same thingcreated that man, with no other intention, than that of damning him? Made him, and yet, for no other reason than that of destroying him for ever? Well, if you can believe it, I pity you, that is all I can say: you deserve pity, that you should think so meanly of God, whose mercy endureth for ever. You are quite right when you say the reason why God loves a man, is because God does do so; there is no reason in the man. But do not give the same answer as to why God hates a man. If God deals with any man severely, it is because that man deserves all he gets. In hell there will not be a solitary soul that will say to God, O Lord, thou hast treated me worse than I deserve! But every lost spirit will be made to feel that he has got his deserts, that his destruction lies at his own door and not at the door of God; that God had nothing to do with his condemnation, except as the Judge condemns the criminal, but that he himself brought damnation upon his own head, as the result of his own evil works.
Spurgeon's middle voice interpretation ("they fitted themselves") is easily refuted when given the context of the potter and the clay as well as upon examining the lexical issue. Does clay form itself? ......
I'd say it'd be beneficial to ponder whether the entire "lump" of clay on the Potter's wheel is fallen mankind as a whole? or is the lump in some other condition?Precisely.!
I have yet to see a lump of clay on the potter's wheel yelling up at the potter and saying, "I insist that You make me a cup or a bowl or tray"... the clay is totally powerless in the hands of the Potter. Clay does not "fit themselves" for anything. We are jars of clay in His hand.
I'd say it'd be beneficial to ponder whether the entire "lump" of clay on the Potter's wheel is fallen mankind as a whole? or is the lump in some other condition?
The point being that Calvinism places the hardening of man as a knowledgeable accountability of the person, making them "without excuse". Romans starts there, and it's no different in Romans 9 than in Romans 1.Spurgeon adds: “My soul revolts at the idea of a doctrine that lays the blood of man’s soul at God’s door. I cannot conceive how any human mind, at least any Christian mind, can hold any such blasphemy as that.”
Still stands
I'll stick with the comprehension of the WHOLE sermonOriginally Posted by Pinkman
Spurgeon adds: My soul revolts at the idea of a doctrine that lays the blood of mans soul at Gods door. I cannot conceive how any human mind, at least any Christian mind, can hold any such blasphemy as that.
Heymikey80
The point being that Calvinism places the hardening of man as a knowledgeable accountability of the person, making them "without excuse". Romans starts there, and it's no different in Romans 9 than in Romans 1.
I will stick with Spurgeon. If the reprobate had no choice to be created the way he was then he had no choice. Saying God did id is the essence of Calvinism. Which not just posters here object to but Agustine, Spurgeon and many more.
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