Featured Harmony or Hostility?

I placed 'determinism' in inverted commas. It was a late addition to my post because I noticed that @George Antonios mentioned 'Gnostic' determinism in his post #17, and 'Gnostic' fatalism in post #28. I supposed therefore, perhaps wrongly, that he viewed the two as similar or identical.
The Oxford Dictionary definition of Determinism is as follows: Doctrine that human action is not free but determined by motives regarded as external forces acting on the will. If by 'external forces,' the dictionary means the Christian God, then I do not believe that Calvinism is Determinative.. The unconverted person freely rejects Christ (John 3:19; 5:40) not because God forces him to do so but because he has a wicked unbelieving heart. That will continue until such time as the Holy Spirit opens his heart to receive Him (John 6:44; Acts of the Apostles 16:14) but again, this is not forced but done freely.
I think this is the teaching of the 1689 Baptist Confession.
Of Free Will — The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
It is also the teaching of the 17th Century Particular Baptists and almost all of the Puritans.
I don't wish to get into a discussion about non-biblical words. If you think that is determinism, that's fine.

 

I would love to know what books you are reading that cause you to make this assertion.
Do you have primary source documents that show Calvin spent 100% of his study reading Augustine and Gnostic writings?

I question your actual study as it seems you may have followed a rabbit trail down a hole to Wonderland somewhere on internet sites filled with conspiracy.

So, a bibliography of the primary source documents and the quotes from Augustine and Gnostics which Calvin quoted would be helpful.

 

You also stated that Calvinism has been the historic interpretation for 2,000 years.
It is THAT SPECIFIC claim which I'm telling you is false, as you well understand.
You're obfuscating the matter.

 

This is classic obfuscation. You well know that it is God himself who initially "ordained" the fall and further so constituted fallen human nature as to render it incapable of accepting Christ. So the person does not "freely" reject Christ - he has been programmed to reject him.

So drop "sovereignty".

 

I am unsure how anyone reads the letter of Revelation, and Revelation 5, which tells us of the scroll of destiny (also Ezekiel 2), and then states that God has not determined the events of all things.

You are correct, fatalism leaves everything to the laws of nature determining events with no care (that is the view of a true atheist) for any spiritual condition. God, however, speaks to us and determined to act on behalf of his creation when Adam corrupted the human condition and subsequently the earth as a whole.

I praise God that God is Sovereign and Supreme.

 

Ok, once again I’m going to correct you. This is what I said…

Please try to understand the distinction I am making. The “doctrines of grace” were taught by Jesus and the Apostles as recorded in scripture.

There have been Christians throughout history that have embraced those truths, beginning with the Apostles and those they taught in the early church.

That Calvin, and before him Jon Hus and others magnified those truths to contrast the doctrines of the Roman church does not mean that is when these truths were first recognized and articulated.

peace to you

 

Man is alienated from God

we actually meet God in His calling of us to salvation

 

If anyone's obfuscating, George, it's you. Either that, or your understanding of God is too small. We both agree (I suppose) that 'The Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men.....' (Daniel 4:25, NIV). but to be so He does not need to turn men into so many Stepford wives. Adam fell of his own free will, and today, 'men prefer darkness rather than light....' not because God has 'programmed' them that way, but '....because their deeds were evil' (John 3:19). God's rule does not negate man's free will, it simply orders it for His own high purposes. The best examples of this are probably Genesis 50:20 and Acts of the Apostles 4:27-28. There is no suggestion that either Joseph's brothers or Herod, Pilate etc. were forced against their wills to do their wicked deeds. If you think they were, show me chapter and verse. In Exodus, we are told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, but we are also told that his heart 'grew hard' (e.g. Exodus 7:13,22) and that he hardened his own heart (e.g. Exodus 8:15).

Why? Just because it is not in your Bible? 'He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of Lords......' (1 Timothy 6:15, ESV). Just because the KJV has 'potentate'? I don't think so. The NKJV has 'potentate' in the text and 'sovereign' in the margin.

 

We don't get to print our own Bibles with our own preferred words.

Are you denying that God ordained the fall?
Are you denying that God is the one who constituted the make-up of man's fallen nature?

Why are those issues never directly addressed?

 

You are doing the very thing you are railing against. You are changing “foundation of the world” to “foundation of humanity”.

Please reference any peer reviewed journal where that distinction is made.

peace to you

 

Out of curiosity, do you believe that God knew Adam and Eve were going to eat of the tree? The reason I ask that is if you simply read the passages you could easily make a good case that just from scripture it looks like God did not know. Except we have the benefit of tons of other scriptures and even prophetic statements in that very section of scripture that indicate God not only knew but had a plan.

If you just concede that God had foreknowledge of the fall you have to ask yourself this question. Could God have done something about it to prevent it? Of course he could have. But he chose in his own wisdom not to. Did he really want Adam and Eve to fall then? You could honestly say no to that yet also say that God's overall wish and final decision was to allow it to happen and in THAT sense the fall was ordained by God and actually his final will. Now it's starting to look more and more as you go like God is sovereign and it's starting to look more and more like Calvinistic theology is true. (Even some types of Calvinistic theology that go further than I would like to go.)

The only logical answer to God ordaining the Fall is that it took God by surprise. If he knew then he allowed it. If he allowed it then at least in some sense it was indeed his will. Or else he was unable to stop it or it took him by surprise.

 

A) Foreknowledge is not Predestination (which, by the way, is never unto salvation in the Bible)
B) The Permissive Will of God is not the Directive Will of God
C) The assumption in the Calvinist argument is that nothing that can happen which is not the will of God. But the argument plays on a semantic ambivalence of the word "will".
God does allow things to occur which are against his will (in the sense of desire). The fall was against his will (in the sense of desire). Of course, he could have stopped it, but in his overarching will he chose to allow his will (in the sense of desire) to be thwarted on certain matters of his own choosing (such as salvation VS damnation) in order to preserve our free will and therefore meaningfulness and also our responsibility, and in order to preserve the very nature of love.

Mat_23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

Luk_13:34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

There. God himself tells you man's will wins out against God's will when it comes to salvation. Which is why he weeps!

The Calvinist brethren, fearing for God's soooovvvvvreignty, rush to his help by correcting him.

Job_13:8 Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God?

Why, yes they will, Job, yes they will. Behold:

 

I don't know how you can say "B" which I agree with, and then turn around and say "C" which is another way of saying "B". All the Calvinist argument says is that if God allows something to happen that he could have caused not to happen - then you can say he thought that allowing it to happen was a better choice than causing it not to happen. So it was his primary will - and the proof of that is that he let it happen even though he was able to do otherwise.

Now, I admit that some Calvinists, and maybe even Calvin himself I think do believe that everything is the minute directive will of God. That there is no "allowing" at all. And I don't agree with that either.

 

That is not the Calvinist argument. That's the non-Calvinist (Deterministic) argument.

That is indeed the Calvinist argument (aka exhaustive/minute universal divine determinism); for all, not just "some".

 

"Whether God has decreed all things that ever came to pass or not, all that own the being of a God own that he knows all things beforehand. Now, it is self-evident, that if he knows all things beforehand, he either doth approve of them, or he doth not approve of them; that is, he is either willing they should be, or he is not willing they should be. But to will that they should be, is to decree them." Jonathan Edwards

I'd call him a Calvinist.