Featured Why Arminianism can rot your bones

You have asked that particular question in about 50 million different ways, and in roughly 25 different wordings...no answer has (to my knowledge) been forthcoming....It won't happen.

 

I refuse to accept the premise that every single Calvinist reading these threads know they have no answer, and therefore evade the answer to avoid revealing total spiritual inability is false doctrine.

But when I read "because they are vessels of wrath" it does flit across my mind that some may evade on purpose.

 

Do you hold that Gods wrath does NOT abide upon sinners who have chosen to willfully reject jesus as Saviour?

that he MUST Love all, sinners/saints equally?

 

Same as the unforgivable sin. The pharoah (I can never seem to remember how to spell that word. lol) witnessed huge miracles that testified who God was. The bible says that he hardened his heart, and also that God hardened his heart as well. Twice mentioned. A person's only chance at redemption is to have God move upon him and open his mind if you will, so that it can accept the truth about God. If a man rejects God, and continues to do so, God eventually simply steps back and lets him have what he wants. Now the question is why? Why does it mention this at all if he was not predestined? The answer is, I think, that it's simply letting the reader know how far depraved this individual had slipped into his depravity; a slip so far beyond any hope. God already knew what would become of his fate; he knows everything before time. (Some say it's the sin unto death mentioned in scripture that we should not pray for. Therefore, Pharoah would be doomed!) Everyone has a hardened heart by our will, but when God removes his light from man he truely is hardened, lost forever. We never know about a person if he is or isn't elect, we have to keep trying to witness. I believe this account of pharoah is simply letting the reader know he was doomed completely. With all the amazing plagues and curses that pharoah witnessed, the reader should be astonished why he did not come around. The fact that it mentions that God hardened his heart answers this for the reader. He was lost.

We walk in a veil of darkness, and unless God lifts that veil we are doomed to eternal death. Only the elect will have that veil lifted.

 

Either point, Pharaoh's heart was hardened removing the ability to respond to God's direction. Therefore total spiritual inability is demonstrated false. Was Pharaoh being punished for his sinful life? Nope. So that God's glory would be increased.

As I think Skandelon wrote, why blind those born blind? Why would Pharaoh come around if he was blind already? No, the obvious answer is right before us. Pharaoh was hardened because he had some limited spiritual ability and it served God's purpose for him to continue to reject God's direction.

But thanks for at least trying to provide an answer.

Now, concerning those pesky unbelieving Jews who were hardened so that rejection by the Jews would facilitate spreading the gospel to the Gentiles. Why did they need to be hardened? No need to redefine hardening as God's way of telling us they were doomed from birth.

 

Shuck and jive and change the subject. Calvinism cannot be defended biblically so we get evasion.

But just for grins, does any Calvinist know what scripture says that everyone is a child of wrath, Ephesians 2:3. So just how could someone who has been chosen for salvation be a child of wrath. Remember no charge can be brought against God's elect. Therefore, when we are children of wrath, we cannot be the elect per Romans 8:33. Just saying....

 

If he wasn't then he definitely deserved to be: we all deserve to be punished for a sinful life.

Because as long as God blinds we are truly hopeless! The unforgivable sin. We are all born hardened, but still capable of being enlightened (a.k.a. unhardened by God.)

Again; because, we are all born blind already. If God allows us to see his light then we can un-hardened!

This too is the calvinist belief.

Np! We may disagree, just so long as we do agree on the important stuff, that God died for our sins. If we believe in the gospel message then you are still my brother.

Again we all have hardened hearts before salvation. God allows us to see and un-hardens us to allow sight. But when God hardens a heart' it's not as if he does so against our wills. He gives us what we naturally, in our accursed state, already want: and woe to any who this is done to. But, if they were not hardened, then after seeing so many miracles they may have been saved, and then the gentiles would be in trouble! Man's heart is hardened to not yield to God's will, God hardens a man's heart to hold him to it. The Jews were already resistant to the Gospel, they were content with living in their man made laws and regulations, not the heart of the law. Therefore, God blinded them in order for the Gentiles to be grafted unto the tree. It is a method to show the world, how not to worship God. He is using the Jews as a method to show the world, and remember as Paul believed this is not a permanent blinding to all Jews as I believe (being dispensational) that God will bring about the Jewish nation in the end of days.

 

I am sorry but if we are blind, God does not need to harden to keep us from coming around, He would simply do nothing.

By the numbers, if Total Spiritual inability were true, God would never need to harden anyone's heart to prevent them from responding to God's message. To say God hardens to preclude God from unhardening is absurd.

The reason God hardens hearts for His purpose is to take away what limited spiritual ability a natural fallen unregenerate person has. Ditto for the lost's actions to harden their own fallen hearts by the practice of sin, they are removing what little spiritual ability they possessed to understand the milk of the gospel.

 

Just a quick note on the "unforgiveable sin." According to Calvinism, everyone not individually chosen before creation, is born into an unforgiveable state. They will not receive forgiveness for any sin, thus every sin is unforgiveable. Just saying....

 

This is correct. This, I believe, is the method of God hardening someones heart, due to the fact that it takes God's action to un-harden us. But by his doing nothing leaves us with nothing.

Again this hardening is simply the Bible's way of saying that God left them to their own to hardened sinful ways. He did not bring them into enlightenment of the truth. God is not the author of sin, nor does he cause someone to sin., he simply allows them to pursue their own dark desire by giving them what they want. To say that God moves upon someone to cause them to reject him against their will is to say that God forces them into darkness and that he is in that sense the author of their sins. This is false. God Hardening = letting them have as they wish, leaving them alone to their own desires.

Again this error stems from our disagreement about what hardening is. When God hardens a person's heart he stops striving with us and lets us have what we already want. The first time I sin my conscious bothers me about it, if I keep on sinning evenutally there comes a point where I no longer care and my heart will be completely hardened. However an elect person sins, is eventually convicted and repents due to God's continual pressure upon his conscious. God does not leave him to his desires (aka hardens his heart.)

 

Not quite true!

We would say that ALl could be saved by God, as the merit of the Cross if applied freely to all would be sufficient to save all, as His death is greater in value and effect than ALL sins of ALL persons evercomiited, its just that Gos is the One who predestines and choses unto whom he will apply that saving Grace towards!

 

The unforgivable sin is, I believe, a person who hardens his heart on his own free will so much, that finally God leaves him to himself to eternal curse. We all start out totally depraved, and with some people it takes a long time of preaching and witnessing of the Holy Spirit to gradually bring a person to grace. The reason God points it out is to give a lesson to believers that there can be a point in a person's life when they no longer will receive God's prodding. I think it was given as a teaching to show us that though God is long suffering, man can eventually fall into a state of hopelessness. Even with the non elect, God sometimes strives upon their conscious so that they can have NO excuse!!! And it can also be a warning, in case any one listening to this rebuke and he is one of the elect, it will be yet another prodding, albeit one through fear, to us to finally accept his grace. If you were chosen as an elect, God is going to get you some how some way, and he knows just what it takes to get you and according to scripture he WILL get you. Why it takes longer with some then others is simply because God wills it this way. He is in complete control. (i.e. perhaps it is to his greater glory that a stubborn person is finally changed of heart towards Christ). It can be a warning to so called Christians too! For some who did not truly repent of sins and simply said a quick statements about Jesus and then go on continuing their sinful lives not making Jesus their Lord and savior, will eventually become what is known as apostate. They will pass a point of no return and forver be damned (hebrews 6).

 

Unpardonable Sin cannot actually be done today strictly speaking, as it referred to them who had the messiah in their midst, saw His miracles, heard his words, and yet were so hard against Him said that he was possessed/and or being used by satan!

 

Van, I think you are trying to oversimplify how God works through men. Calvinists believe in total spiritual depravity. Men are dead in their sins. This means, that if GOD DOES NOTHING AT ALL, NNE will be saved. I think you would probably agree with me on that point.

Now, if that is the case, then we at least agree that God MUST DO SOMETHING for man to be saved. The question then becomes: does man HELP, ASSIST, or CONTRIBUTE towards his own salvation? If so, then man CAN boast. This is the probably with synergism, which I see that you seem to hold to.

Let me ask you this question: Do you believe that God RESTRAINS man's wickedness and sin? Does he prevent men from sinning as much as they possibly could? This is very important, because God DOES use both the believers and the unbeliever to accomplish his purposes.

Proverbs 21:1 (NASB)
1 The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.

So, when God hardens Pharaoh's heart, he is not 'forcing' Pharaoh to sin. Indeed, it is not God's purpose for Pharaoh to repent, and so God has not replaced his heart of stone with a heart of flesh. God has not opened Pharaoh's eyes. But think about the fact that not all unbelievers express their rebellion against God in the same way. Certainly all men HAVE rebelled against God. Certainly the natural man is at enmity with God. But not all men express it in the same way. You see 'agnostics' and other people who have a more laid-back attitude, and aren't necessarily trying to destroy the Christian church. But then you have atheists like Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, who openly express their rage and hatred against God.

So it is easy to see that the hardening of someone's heart leads them to openly express even more hostility towards God. God is not 'taking away' what little spiritual ability that Pharaoh has to respond to God. You probably would have agreed with me that if God does nothing at all, then no man will be saved (so where then is this 'spiritual ability' that men have)?

In the end, Pharaoh saw the miracles and power of God, and still willfully rebelled against God. God had granted him great light (just like God later granted the Pharisees great light). Yet as we can see, it was not God's purpose to demonstrate his grace and mercy by saving Pharaoh. It was God's purpose to demonstrate his righteousness and justice by punishing Pharaoh for Pharaoh's rebellion and hatred against God.

By the way, when it comes to God's wrath, Paul makes it clear to his fellow believers that they USED to be children of wrath. You fail to see the distinction that God's eternal decree to save actually TAKES PLACE and is made MANIFEST in history. Was it God's eternal plan to have Christ die on the cross? Was that God's 'plan B'? Yet we see that Christ died IN HISTORY, at a particular point in time. Yet, isn't Christ the lamb slain from the foundation of the world? So when was Christ slain? That is why from an eternal perspective, Christ is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. But from a temporal perspective, Christ died AT A PARTICULAR TIME IN HISTORY. So again, even though the Elect have been chosen by God before the foundation of the world (name written in the lamb's book of life), this Election takes place in time. I was indeed a child of wrath before I was saved. But I am now a child of wrath no longer. Salvation and redemption take place IN TIME.

 

Much of this goes back to the point that many here feel that IF the Lord actually did do the salvation process as cals hold it is done by, would not be fair nor just, of course that is based upon human understandings!

 

Here we have a typical defense, a wholesale rewrite of scripture. Now when scripture says God hardens hearts, what it really is saying according to at least one Calvinist, is God does not unharden their hearts.

Anytime a verse or passage clearly teaches Calvinism is false doctrine, Calvinists are willing to say it does not mean what it says and stick with their man-made doctrine.

Hardening is the act of God to prevent taking God's direction:

“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts,
Lest they should see with their eyes,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.”

All fallen men have limited spiritual ability unless they have been hardened.

 

How many seek after the Lord, seek after the Shephard of their souls then?

just a hint, less then 1!

 

Hi Loopie, I am sorry I have not responded to your posts defending Calvinism. But I have been trying to communicate on one point, God hardening people to prevent them from responding to God's message.

But let me quickly go over your post:

Yes, no one can do anything to merit salvation.

God saves us, we do not save ourselves.

Our faith in not a work of merit, it is a filthy rag in God's eyes, He is the one who credits our faith, or not, as righteousness. Therefore we have nothing to boast about.

God gives direction - whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life - and if we accept that direction and believe such that God credits our faith as righteousness, then our faith provides our access to God's saving grace because it is in accordance with God's purpose and plan.

Yes God influences the world as He deems necessary to accomplish His purpose and plan according to His purpose and plan. We differ as to what God's plan of salvation entails.

Save the red herrings, God did not harden Pharaoh's heart for the purpose of making him sin more. Please address the reason I provided which gives the scriptural reason.

And again, scripture provides the reason for hardening, which is to prevent someone from responding to God's message. And it was not to punish Pharaoh.

Finally, yes individual election takes place in time, not is revealed in time. Therefore the election before creation is of our Redeemer and corporately those the Redeemer would redeem.

 

Yet another in a line of shuck and jive, change the subject posts. Total Spiritual Inability is demonstrated false in the passages where God hardens hearts to prevent people from responding to God's message.

 

Except, according to your theology, belief right? Again belief is an act of doing something and therefore your statement goes against logic.

Including saying I believed in God on my own free will!

So your saying we DO do an something that can merit salvation! We believe?