Can mankind understand the gospel message?

And I believe Arminianism, if it is wrong, causes little ones to worry and fret that if their little toe steps outside of some line, they are going to be tortured by God in hell, because of the man-centeredness of Arminianism.

I take doctrine seriously. That's why I contend so ferociously for the truth of God's salvation plan in this forum against those who would distort it.

In essence you are telling we Calvinists, are you not, "Even if your doctrine is 100% accurate, you should keep it to yourself just for the outside possibility that you might have at least one small item wrong in your teaching."

So, what would you have us to do? 1)Simply sit on our hands and not spread the gospel, or 2)Teach what we believe to be false gospel teaching, or 3)Teach only partial truth and not what we believe to be the whole counsel of God?

I don't why you keep telling us to shut up anyway. You know we aren't going to obey you.

 

See there's an example of you telling me and my fellow Calvinists to shut up. To which I reply, "Make me."

I know that sounds stupid and childish, but so does your continuing demand that we Calvinists shut up.

 

You know, for someone who in a statement is trying to counter a like-argument, this sentence is so wrought with quite a blantant and irresponsible statement! You may be thinking about Pelagianism, but Arminianism says no such thing. In fact, it states the opposite, and I think that deep down, you know it.

 

Bald-faced Arminianism(regardless of whether Arminius himself did) teaches that a saved person can be lost. I know that some Arminians inconsistently believe in once saved, always saved. Just as some Calvinists inconsistently believe in general atonement.

 

Arminius did not believe that a person could lose his or her salvation. Can we not assume that the theology that bares his name would be based on him instead of others who come after him?

Oh, wait - that would be too much to ask! It's so much easier making some kind of straw man argument.

And the jury is out on whether Calvin himself believed in limited or general atonement. He himself makes a variety of statements that lean strongly toward general atonement.

 

1)My desire is to be truthful, not objective.

2)I do.

3)I don't.

4)I don't.

5)I do.

6)Different words, but the same intent.

7)Wow! I am just 4 years removed from the Church of Christ denomination and now I already have a hardened tradition.

Anything else you want to order me to do, sir?

 

Please read what I wrote, Scott. I did not say Arminius believed in a saved sinner being lost. You have to admit that the remonstrance promoted by his followers allowed for the possibility of a saved sinner being lost.

 

Please read what I wrote, Scott. I did not say Arminius believed in a saved sinner being lost. You have to admit that the remonstrance promoted by his followers allowed for the possibility of a saved sinner being lost. </font>[/QUOTE]I did - I'm challenging the assumption that "bald-faced" Arminianism is something other than what Arminius actually though. Many Calvinists truly believe that Arminius said a person could lose their salvation.

The Remonstrants themselves said that a person may or may not be able to lose their salvation, and that there was not consensus in that view. Then again, those who postulated TULIP after Calvin's death, added limited atonement in the Calvinist doctrine, even though it has been shown by scholars that Calvin believed in general atonement.

 

According to the Bible, the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit enables repentance and belief. Hearing can take place at any point prior to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

And I am not going to argue with the Bible. </font>[/QUOTE]According to the bible God Killed all the living save for 8 humans and a male and female of all other species. I wouldn't argue with that either.

The bible says that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. You say that hearing cannot come except the one needing to hear be first regenerated. Seems to me that is not in accordance with the written plan. But then John even told us that not all that Jesus did was written down, so I guess it all boils down to what one wants to believe the scriptures say.

 

It has not been shown. Those are just some opinions of people of your ilk. Stop promoting something that is not true.

 

I never said any such thing. I said hearing takes place before regeneration. You completely reversed what I said.

If we had a penalty box like they do in ice hockey, you would be sent off the ice for a 5-minute major penalty.

 

mmmmmmmm...mmmmmmmmm...mmmmmmmm!

 

Enda, As you will see, I do not agree with your post of April 26, 2003 05:26 PM.
The bible teaches with absolute clarity that man, by nature is dead : Romans 5:12.
Romans 5:12 is not a good scripture upon which to make the claim that the Calvinists make, which is, that man is spiritually dead. for surely this scripture does not address spirituality but natural death that is the consequence of sin.
The bible teaches with absolute clarity that man, by nature is dead :

This scripture does not say that man is dead. It says that man dies because of sin, which is the way that God established it. If you sin You die! And because you do sin, death awaits you. Then Paul goes on to tell us about Jesus, atonement, and so on.

Dead people don't get the opportunity to hear, so Paul was talking to living people. Paul wanted them to know that they can hear the truth and believe in Jesus and have eternal life. If they don't believe then they will surely die. If they do believe, they will just as surely live...and forever.

It tells us that men are bound : 2Tim 2:25

Nothing here speaks of "being bound"

It shows us that men are blind and deaf : Mark 4:11

Jesus was speaking to believing Jews who were "the elect". His own elect, who already believed in Him enough to follow Him away from their jobs and homes. He was speaking of the Jews who had already been hardened perhaps because of the 400 years of silence of God. He was speaking to those hardened Jews in parables because he did not want them to hear the truth and believe, because it was now the threshold of the time of the gentiles.

This scripture does not support your point that mankind is deaf and blind, but rather As Bro. Bill and Ray Berrian have exausted themselves trying to tell you, it addresses the hardening of the Jews in favor of the time of the Gentiles. Thank God for such hardening, for without it, we gentiles would not know Jesus.

It shows us that we are uninstructible : 1 Cor 2:14 I tried to find a place in 1 Cor 2 to break the flow of thought down to be able to isolate on verse 14, but I cannot. So the context of verse 14 does not lend itself to such isolation, so I start with vers 13 for what is said in 13 thru 16.

You say verse 14 shows us to be "un-instructable". I say that Paul is declaring to believers that believers receive from the Holy Spirit the discernment of spiritual things, but unbelievers who do not have the Holy Spirit are not able to discern spiritual things. I believe that the "Spiritual things" that Paul speaks of are not the basics of hearing the Word and believing, but rather things like baptism and communion and atonement, etc. Once one becomes a believer, the Holy Spirit is able to provide the discernment of spiritual truthes.

So this scripture does not support your contention that man is not instructable. It is clear that man must pass through the milk-of-the-word stage before man can digest the meat-of-the-word. Man is instructable!

Naturally sinful , by birth (Psalm 51:5) and by practice (Gen 6:5)

Well this is a stretch, but yes there have been times among mankind when sin abounded greatly. This time of Noah is one of those times, and it caused God to think, "Water, Water everywhere..." and alas, there was water, water, everywhere! But God spared mankind 8 individuals with which to continue His Created man, and I might add, the story of man for without it, we would not be discussing this topic. Does this scripture support you point of man being sinners? Sure, but that's not the best part. The best part is God's Grace for Noah and his family and the animals. The bad part is that Noah too was a sinner, and sin continued upon the earth.

So what is to be said of David's expression of recognized guilt after Nathan pointed out the sin to this "man after God's own heart". Again to isolate on only verse 5 of David's lament is to take yet another verse out of context and miss the whole story. To say that man is "naturally sinful, by birth" is to imply that man is totally sinful having no value in the eyes of God. This lamenting King of the Jews also had much to say about the value that God assigns to man. For Example:

You say, "This then is mans natural state."

I say, Hogwash. That may fit your theology, but it does not fit God's scheme of things. Man sins! Man is addicted to sinning, and like addicts, cannot find their own way to freedom from sin. We still have the ability to hear and believe. We are in the lineage of Adam, and have inherited an appetite for sin. So I guess one could say that we are born that way. Those conditions you named do afflict man, but Man's "natural" position in relation to God is as David stated in Psalm 8. As I have been saying for months, man did not lose any of what God created man to have with the exception that sin separates us from God.

Because of the conditions that afflict man, God made a way for man, He became man for our sake, taught us the way, then paid the penalty for all sins of the world, so that when we believe in Him, we can once again be free of the afflictions of sin and take the rightful place God made for us through out eternity.

 

Since the Creation, God has certainly paid a lot of attention to man, so why shouldn't man's religion of God place man at the center of God's attention?

God's written and spoken Word has, it seems, always had man for it's target audience.

Calvinism would be wise to focus more on man and less on telling God how to run his business.

 

Never heard a Calvinist that believed in general atonement! Most post that there is atonement for the elect, but not general atonement that applies to everyone.

 

These are called Amyraldians or as the author of this article calls them Post-Redemptionists -

Post-redemptionism, therefore (although it is a recognizable form of Calvinism, because it gives real validity to the principle of particularism), is not therefore necessarily a good form of Calvinism, an acceptable form of Calvinism, or even a tenable form of Calvinism. For one thing, it is a logically inconsistent form of Calvinism and therefore an unstable form of Calvinism. For another and far more important thing, it turns away from the substitutive atonement, which is as precious to the Calvinist as is his particularism, and for the safeguarding of which, indeed, much of his zeal for particularism is due. I say, Post-redemptionism is logically inconsistent Calvinism. For, how is it possible to contend that God gave his Son to die for all men, alike and equally; and at the same time to declare that when he gave his Son to die, he already fully intended that his death should not avail for all men alike and equally, but only for some which he would select (which, that is, because he is God and there is no subsequence of time in his decrees, he had already selected) to be its beneficiaries? But as much as God is God, who knows all things which he intends from the beginning and all at once, and intends all things which he intends from the beginning and all at once, it is impossible to contend that God intends the gift of his Son for all men alike and equally and at the same time intends that it shall not actually save all but only a select body which he himself provides for it. The schematization of the order of decrees presented by the Amyraldians, in a word, necessarily implies a chronological relation of precedence and subsequence among the decrees, the assumption of which abolishes God, and this can be escaped only by altering the nature of the atonement. And therefore the nature of the atonement is altered by them, and Christianity is wounded at its very heart.

...But the real hinge of their system turns on their altered doctrine of the atonement, and here they strike at the very heart of Calvinism. A conditional substitution being an absurdity, because the condition is no condition to God, if you grant him even so much as the poor attribute of foreknowledge, they necessarily turn away from a substitutive atonement altogether. Christ did not die in the sinner's stead, it seems, to bear his penalties and purchase for him eternal life; he died rather to make the salvation of sinners possible, to open the way of salvation to sinners, to remove all the obstacles in the way of salvation of sinners. But what obstacle stands in the way of the salvation of sinners, except just their sin? And if this obstacle (their sin) is removed, are they not saved? Some other obstacles must be invented, therefore, which Christ may be said to have removed (since he cannot be said to have removed the obstacle of sin) that some function may be left to him and some kind of effect be attributed to his sacrificial death. He did not remove the obstacle of sin, for then all those for whom he died must be saved, and he cannot be allowed to have saved anyone. He removed, then, let us say, all that prevented God from saving men, except sin; and so he prepared the way for God to step in and with safety to his moral government to save men. The atonement lays no foundation for this saving of men: it merely opens the way for God safely to save them on other grounds.

- from www.mbrem.com/calvinism/pos5.htm.

The following is from www.graceonlinelibrary.org/calvinism/full.asp?ID=513 -

There was a time when I called myself a "four-point Calvinist." There are a lot of people who use that term, and, almost all the time, the one point of the five that they reject is the terrible, horrible, "L". Limited atonement. There is just something about the term that doesn't sound right. How can Christ's atonement be limited? And that is exactly what I said until I began to seriously think about the whole issue. It is my experience that most of those who reject the specific, or limited atonement of Christ, do not *really* believe in the complete sovereignty of God, or the total depravity of man, or the unconditional election of God. Most objections that are lodged against the doctrine are actually objections to one of the preceding points, not against limited atonement itself. The "break" in my thinking came from reading Edwin Palmer's book, The Five Points of Calvinism. [Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980) pp. 41-55.] In doing a radio program on the truth of God's electing grace, I was challenged by a caller in regards to the death of Christ. "Why would Christ die for the whole world if God did not intend to save everyone?" I looked at my co-host, and he looked at me, and I made a mental note to do more study into that particular question. I grabbed Palmer's book as soon as I returned home, and began to read the chapter on the atoning work of Christ.

I became a full "five-pointer" upon reading the following section:

The question that needs a precise answer is this: Did He or didn't He? Did Christ actually make a substitutionary sacrifice for sins or didn't He? If He did, then it was not for all the world, for then all the world would be saved. (Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, p. 47.)

I was faced with a decision. If I maintained a "universal" atonement, that is, if I said that Christ died substitutionarily in the place of every single man and woman in all the world, then I was forced to either say that 1) everyone will be saved, or 2) the death of Christ is insufficient to save without additional works. I knew that I was not willing to believe that Christ's death could not save outside of human actions. So I had to understand that Christ's death was made in behalf of God's elect, and that it does accomplish its intention, it does save those for whom it is made. At this point I realized that I had "limited" the atonement all along. In fact, if you do not believe in the Reformed doctrine of "limited atonement," you believe in a limited atonement anyway! How so? Unless you are a universalist (that is, unless you believe that everyone will be saved), then you believe that the atonement of Christ, if it is made for all men, is limited in its effect. You believe that Christ can die in someone's place and yet that person may still be lost for eternity. You limit the power and effect of the atonement. I limit the scope of the atonement, while saying that its power and effect is unlimited!