Featured Devil's Advocate for Doctrines of Sovereignty and Grace

False argument, if God has foreknowledge, he can infallibly know who will believe.

 

Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God: Heb 3:12

Only the regenerate have a bona fide choice of who they will serve. The natural man has no choice whatsoever in the matter.

 

This verse says absolutely nothing about the unregenerate having a choice or not.

Why is a warning necessary if a person is irresistibly caused to believe? If Irresistible Grace is true, the elect cannot help but believe, and the non-elect cannot possibly believe. Any warnings such as this would be nonsensical and unnecessary.

The unregenerate have a real choice. We know Cain was unregenerate, but God himself said he had choice.

Gen 4:6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

God himself told Cain if he offered a right sacrifice he would be accepted. He was not "passed over" by God.

There is no such thing as IF in Irresistible Grace. The elect will irresistibly believe, the non-elect cannot possibly believe.

 

I'm curious why God's preservation of the 7000 must be linear, as His choosing them was the basis for them being the remnant and their obedience not being the reason.

 

Winman, Winman is that the best you can do. You will go to any extreme to deny the truth The passage states:

Acts 13:48. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

Now read the underlined part again Winman. as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

What does it say? It says that as many as were ordained {appointed, NASB, NKJV, NIV} to eternal life believed. Winman, it is absolutely dishonest for you to attempt to obfuscate the meaning of this passage by rearranging the structure. It says what it says and that is: God chose, ordained, appointed, elected certain people to eternal life and those so elected BELIEVED. Now you can squirm and try to twist this passage all you want but it demonstrates as FALSE your insistence that God in his omniscience knew who would believe and then chose them. If I am not mistaken you are one who denies the omniscience of God. For Shame!

*************************************************************
ordained: to establish or order by appointment, decree, or law :

appoint: to fix or set officially, to name officially

*****************************************************************
[NASB] Acts 13:48. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

[NKJV] Acts 13:48. Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

[NIV] Acts 13:48. When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honoured the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.

 

:thumbs::thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:

 

webdog,

That really is a great question (and no, I'm not being a cheeky). Of course, the both of us possessing a different view of election, our presupposition plays into it. I am going to say that since God decreed there would be a remnant then there would be a remnant. Did the actions/choices of that remnant play any part in it? I believe so. I believe God always planned to choose Noah, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD (Noah 6:8). Why did he find favor? We do not know exactly because the text is silent. It is a reasonable inference that Noah at least tried to live righteously.

I know the reactions against monegists gets a bit visceral when we say that man chooses freely once his will is first liberated. But when faced with God clearly making decrees He intends to keep, it places the free will position in a conundrum. webdog, if we (and by "we" I mean both camps) are honest with ourselves there are some tough passages that we have to deal with. These passages seem to undermine our position while others seemingly undermine the other guy's position. That is why we have to exhaustively examine the whole counsel of God. And, may I add, I fully expect to be corrected on many lapses and errors in my theology when I get to glory.

 

Perhaps God is still on the learning curve, Winman.

 

Old Regular, I don't care if you try to portray me as a heretic, this is all you've got. When you can't respond to scripture, you simply attack the person. Nobody is fooled.

You cannot deny that Jacob prevailed over God in a wrestling match. You cannot deny in this instance that God must have limited his power.

Likewise, you cannot explain away when God told Abraham, "for NOW I know that thou fearest God"

Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

Your debate is not with me, I simply believe what the scriptures plainly say. Your debate is with the word of God.

 

:applause::applause::applause::applause:

 

You are applying the word "ordained" to the word "believed" when it is applyiing to "to eternal life". There is a huge difference.

If it was saying that a person is ordained to believe it should have said, "and as many as were ordained to believe, had eternal life".

It would be like saying, "and as many as I invited to the wedding attended". Now, if I said this, you would in no way understand me to be saying that my invitation to the wedding CAUSED these persons to attend.

This verse is not saying these persons were ordained to believe. You are reading that into the verse.

 

Oh if only we all could be so honest and admit such. Then there might be a little more grace between fellow believers.

 

:thumbs::applause:ular;1873261]

:wavey::applause:

 

I thought I responded to you, I am not sure what you are talking about now.

Are you talking about Acts 13:48? If so, I answered it. The verse says, "and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed". It is not saying that a person is ordained to believe in the sense you take it.

Again, I will try to explain by analogy. Again, lets say I said, "and as many as I ordained to attend my son's wedding attended".

Now, if I said this, would you understand me to be saying I CAUSED these persons to attend? NO, you would easily understand they attended of their own free will.

At the same time, did I determine or ordain they would attend? YES. They could not have attended unless I determined it and sent them an invitation.

God has ordained or determined that all persons who believe shall have eternal life. No person could have eternal life unless God ordained it, and no person could believe unless God ordained it. But that is not the same as saying God CAUSED a person to believe, just as when I say that all I ordained to attend my son's wedding attended. They could not have attended unless I determined it and sent them an invitation, yet they all attended of their own free will, I did not irresistibly cause them to attend.

Can you understand that? You probably can't, because your mind has been conditioned to interpret this verse to conform with Reformed theology.

I simply believe the scriptures for what they say. You know as well as I do that Gen 22:12 says "for NOW I know thou fearest God'. It is you that has a problem with this, I simply believe what it says. This is not some obscure or difficult verse, you don't need a PhD in theology to understand it, a small child could easily understand this verse. You simply don't like what it says because it doesn't agree with your personal concept of God.

You'll get over it.

 

Old Regular...

Me...

You...

No, its BECAUSE I interpret them in the context of other scriptures.

 

With respect to the OP:

Deu 30:15 ¶ See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
Deu 30:16 In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.
Deu 30:17 But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;

Jhn 7:17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or [whether] I speak of myself.
Jhn 7:18 He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.

Rev 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Jhn 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Jhn 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Jhn 3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Isa 55:1 ¶ Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Isa 55:2 Wherefore do ye spend money for [that which is] not bread? and your labour for [that which] satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye [that which is] good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.
Isa 55:3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, [even] the sure mercies of David.
Isa 55:6 ¶ Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
Isa 55:7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Isa 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.



There are numerous verses which command men to make a choice, which imply free-will, and even suggest man can seek after God. Given Joshua's command to the people...Whether it is directly in relation to "Salvation" or not...is really immaterial. What the passage in the OP does is establish that there is indeed "Free-Will". As far as I can tell, Joshua's command to the people of Israel to "choose" is simply non-sense in a Calvinist schema...it would be akin to Joshua commanding a weather vain to point in the direction of its own choosing.

Why command people to make choices if they are pre-determined?
What was Joshua telling them to do? Weigh the pros and cons?
What difference would it make?


I maintain that if deteminism were true....Joshua was commanding a marble to choose between rolling either downhill or in another direction of it's own choosing.

 

The mistake here made by my brother is that he makes a terrible assumption: that God telling people to do something necessitates that they are able to do it.

That idea seems sound. The problem is that it is man-made and not even REMOTELY scriptural. We think that because it is wrong for one human to command another human to do something that he cannot do, then it is wrong for God to do so. This is a TERRIBLE line of reasoning though.

It is wrong for one man to command another man to WORSHIP him.

Is it then wrong for God to command men to worship Him?

No.

God does not give his commands as one of our equals. He gives them from a position of infinite superiority. God does not abide by man's pitiful standards of fairness. God commands us to abide by his standards (which we cannot) and dares anyone to command Him to abide by his/her standards.

God commands all men to be perfect. He knows that NO MAN can. yet he commands him to.

He commands men to keep ALL of his commandments. Yet God knows that no man can keep all of God's commandments.

So why does he command people to do what He knows they cannot do?

I'll answer that when somebody responds to this post.

 

God gave them the Law(including the TEN Commandments) to show man how helpless they are, and that they need someone "higher than I", to lead them. The law was/is our schoolmaster, that leads us to Christ. After we are in Christ, we have no more need of the schoolmaster(Law), because we are under Grace/in Him.

 

No such assumption is being made....Even plenty of Arms know that full well. Nonetheless, Joshua is literally commanding people to choose.

Not really, some may make that mistake...but I don't, and I doubt most non-Cals here do.

True

Right....and...JOSHUA...a man, was commanding the people to make a choice, and provided himself as an example of one who had already done so. It isn't a question of whether it is "fair" or "just" (not every question in the world revolves around that, as though the Arm's ONLY complaint is ..."hey, no fair!") It is rather that Joshua's commanding them to make such a choice would (given determinism) be simply non-sense.

It would be terrible reasoning indeed...and I do not ascribe to it.

Seconded

Joshua is functioning in this passage as the Head of the people of Israel/Chief Executive/General/all-around general-purpose super-stud...He was not functioning as a prophet who merely was providing a "mouth-piece" for direct Divine revelation...He was doing what leaders of sorts have done many times throughout History....Drawn a line in the sand, and told the people to choose which side they would stand on. I think it would be torturous to conclude that Joshua was asking them to do the impossible. His command to "choose" implies their capacity to "choose".

The objection isn't: "No-fair" it's "Non-sense".