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Featured Acts 17 and Total Inability

Discussion in 'Calvinism & Arminianism Debate' started by atpollard, Mar 9, 2021.

  1. Dball65

    Dball65 Member

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    @atpollard
    Like being unwilling to address a reasonable inquiry relating to Piper And Gill and the multiple wills of the Trinity.
    Regarding Matthew 23:37
    Do you agree to this theory?
    IMHO its not based on discovery but on proving a theory.

    Please prove me mistaken in this matter like I have attempted to do with your earlier assessment of me. ;)
     
  2. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    typical reformed strawman argument! You guys pick and choose those verse that suit your pet theology, and disgrgard those verses that disagree with you. Again I ask this, have you read Psalm 106:40? what God says about His OWN People?

    Therefore the LORD's anger burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance

    lets get a honest response to this
     
  3. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    that has got to be one of the biggest JOKES! :Roflmao:Laugh
     
  4. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    "Inability" to what?
    "Unwilling" to what?
     
  5. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    Total Moral Inability

    “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (vv. 4-5).
    - Ephesians 2:1-10

    Enslavement to sin characterizes all those who have not yet been transformed by God’s saving grace, and only the Son of God, by the Holy Spirit, can set people free to do what is pleasing to the Lord (see John 8:36). This complete enslavement to sin is what we are really talking about when we speak of total depravity. The consequence of Adam’s fall is not merely that it has become more difficult to do what is truly good or that we have been weakened while still retaining some ability to choose to please God. No, the fall has rendered us unable to respond to our Creator in trust, love, and obedience.

    It is important for us to be clear on what we mean when we speak of sinful humanity’s inability to choose the good. We do not mean that sinners cannot make choices. Plainly, we choose from many different options every day. We select one course of action over another. Also, we do not mean that sinners are incapable intellectually of discerning good and evil. Our moral sense has been impaired by the fall, but even the most hardened sinner still has God’s law on his conscience and can recognize the difference between good and evil on at least some level (Rom. 2).

    When it comes to total depravity, the inability of which we speak is first and foremost moral inability. In our fallenness, though we have a will and can discern the good, we lack the ability to choose rightly, to exercise our wills in the proper direction of absolute dependence on God and submission to His will. To put it another way, we are dead with respect to the things of God, to that which He finds pleasing. That is what Paul says in today’s passage. Before our Creator makes us alive spiritually, we are dead in our trespasses and sin, and we cannot help but serve the world, the flesh, and the devil. Dead bodies are incapable of doing anything but remaining in the state of death. If they are to come alive again, they must be acted upon by an outside being, even God Himself at the resurrection. Spiritually dead people cannot do anything but remain in the state of spiritual death. They require an outside being—the sovereign Lord—to restore them to spiritual life. This is what God does for His people in making them spiritually alive. We see the greatness of God’s grace and power in that He intervenes and changes us before we are even able to ask Him to do so, granting us the faith by which we are saved (Eph. 2:1–10).

    Coram Deo
    The doctrine of total depravity and what it entails—total moral inability—magnify the grace and power of God. God is so gracious that He saves people who in their natural state are unwilling to come to Him, and He is so powerful that He never fails to redeem those whom He wants to redeem. Knowing the depth of our sin should move us to worship our Lord fervently for His goodness and grace.

    Passages for Further Study

    from LIGONIER MINISTRIES
     
  6. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    I am indifferent to the opinions of Piper and Gill.
    This topic is about "Acts 17 and Total Inability" and was created to address your comments on that topic.
    My OPINION, is that Matthew 23:37 has nothing to do with Acts 17 refuting Total Inability.

    If you want a new topic addressed, like "Matthew 23:37 and the will of the Trinity", then I suggest creating a topic to discuss that which will attract people interested in that discussion. I am not interested in speculating on the Trinity. I prefer to focus on what Scripture says.
     
  7. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    1. The comment was not addressed to you.
    2. If you are going to jump into the conversation, you should at least have the courtesy to respond to the point being raised: "Does Malachi 1 say that God is able to hate and that God does hate some? Yes or No?"
    3. Rather than refuting my point (God is capable of hate), your verse only further proves it.
    Your requested response: God is capable of hating those people that rebel against Him. What did God do with all of rebellious humanity in the time of Noah ... they were destroyed in a flood. What did God do with the people that refused to trust Him and enter the Promised Land directly from Egypt ... they all died in the desert. When Moses recited the covenant, did it include only "blessings", or did it contain "blessings and curses"?

    You do know that in the story of the OT, God chooses a NATION (people) for His own, and they repeatedly cycle through rejections of God until Christ comes and explains that "For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel" [Romans 9:6-8].

    God hates the tares sown by the enemy growing alongside His wheat.
     
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  8. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    If you have nothing to say ... "trolling" is not the answer.
     
  9. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    same old strawman arguments! :Laugh
     
  10. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    When Jesus says "“If anyone comes to me and does not HATE his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.", does He mean this in the literal sense? Or, does He mean to love Him MORE than everyone and everything else? How could Jesus mean this literally, when the Bible clearly says, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15) The fact that it shows in Romans, that God PREFERRED Jacob to Easu, is clear that this is the meaning of "hate" here, that is, "to love less"
     
  11. Scott Downey

    Scott Downey Well-Known Member

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    John Gill and the Charge of Hyper-Calvinism « Biographia Evangelica

    In The Cause of God Gill clearly stresses the Christian duty, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to call and command sinners to repent. All men are naturally bound to repent, argues Gill, because they have naturally broken the law. Commanding them to repent is putting them under the curse of the law which they have broken in their natural state. To Gill, this is a law-ordained need for repentance in the legal sense. What man has broken, he has a duty to mend.

    This does not mean, however, that man can mend what he has broken and obtain legal righteousness, but he is still a debtor to the law for having broken it. The law forces its demands on every one because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

    What Gill calls evangelical repentance, is for him another matter. He sees this as a turning form sin to receive pardon in Christ. This kind of turning from sin to Christ can only come about by a sovereign act of God`s goodness which leads to true repentance and Gospel righteousness.

    Yes, only God can grant repentance to know the truth and be saved, but all men God commands to repent and believe as they have broken the LAW, not God.
    It is a sin to not repent and believe the gospel. And sin can only be forgiven by a sovereign decision of God to forgive a sinner, in HIS name is preached the forgiveness of sin.
    But you can not come to Christ unless He grants you to know the truth and not impute your sins to you according His mercy for you individually, for you are under the just and right judgement of death for your sins. AND MEN WILL NOT COME OF THEIR OWN FALLEN WILL, just like Christ lamenting the fate of Jerusalem

    John 5
    39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.
    40 But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

    John 6
    63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing (note John 5 above). The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”

    2 Timothy 2:24-26
    New King James Version

    24 And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient,
    25 in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth,
    26 and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

    Matthew 11:27
    All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.


    Luke 10:21-23
    New King James Version

    21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. 22 All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

    23 Then He turned to His disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see;
     
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  12. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    [Malachi 1:1-5 KJV]
    1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. 2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? [Was] not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, 3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. 4 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever. 5 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.​

    You have a strange definition of "to love less".

    One more chance:
    According to "the word of the LORD" recorded in Malachi 1, DOES GOD HATE ESAU?
     
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  13. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    Typically you ignore what Jesus says
     
  14. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    Where does Jesus say "God loved Esau less"?

    You are confusing:
    • my ignoring your attempt to avoid Malachi 1 by playing "scripture pong" with proof texts and making up things that Jesus did not say,
    • with me ignoring what scripture actually says in Malachi 1 (the verses that you wanted to correct me about the meaning of).

    ... typically, you avoid responding yet again to what I said by making false accusations.
     
  15. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    I am talking about Jesus saying that we must hate our family. did He mean this literally? Why can't this same meaning be applied to Jacob and Easu?
     
  16. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    Already answered the first time it was raised in the thread. The answer has not changed. (go back and read post #15 if you really care).

    Read Malachi 1 ... that's why!
     
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  17. SavedByGrace

    SavedByGrace Well-Known Member

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    So you believe that God hates the non elect
     
  18. atpollard

    atpollard Well-Known Member

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    Not all of them, just Esau and his decedents.
    Scripture does not say "I hated all the unchosen, said the Lord", but scripture does say "I hated Esau".
    So I believe that God CAN hate. That still leaves it God's business to declare who He does hate (and certainly not MY MINISTRY to tell anyone "God hates you".)

    It serves only to disprove the popular theory that God loves everyone and cannot hate anyone. God says otherwise.
     
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  19. Dball65

    Dball65 Member

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    Dead spiritually. However we can think and hear physically. We hear God's word, His Holy Spirit convicts us of its truth and we respond willfully to accept or reject.

    We are making progress here I think.

    However we are at Both And instead of Either Or. So, I ask about the 2 wills. God's Desire Will which wants all mankind to come to repentance and the Glory Will which cannot allow this.
    Have you read read Piper's theory on this?
    It seems a wonderful way to argue TULIP if you can get past a lot of God's word which includes terms like all, us, we and world.

    And please do not inform me that I am off topic again surely this is merely deflection.
    I am new to this Forum and will try to do better in the future but for now lets have a conversation.
     
  20. Dave G

    Dave G Well-Known Member

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    I respect your right to disagree, but I don't share in your perspective.
    Again, I think I addressed it as fully as can be addressed.
    I agree.
    Romans 1:18-32 tells us that God purposefully gave us over to them.
    If I didn't make this plain before, I'll do it now, George.
    I agree.

    That said,
    If you don't like it, then take it up with your Maker.
    I doubt you'll get very far.

    That's not me being snotty...
    that's me realizing what a precarious position that we as men put ourselves in when we question His right to do as He wishes with His own creations...

    Sinful or otherwise.

    The truth is, He didn't cause us to disobey Him.
    We did that just fine all by ourselves.
    All He did was set things up knowing that we would indeed fall;
    But does that make Him unrighteous?

    Not by any stretch of the imagination.
     
    #60 Dave G, Mar 12, 2021
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2021
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