Does God love everyone the same?

Actually, the Calvistic view that folks bring up isn't really John Calvin's doctrine. It is the doctrine in the printed word.

 

As you so well put it, When you choose the girl that you wed, you did no harm to anyone else in the family. They were left as they already was. This is paralleled to how GOD made choice of his people. Some may say, well there was someone who wants to be saved but GOD won't let them. If that someone wants to be saved, then he/she already is.

 

Yes about the English language maybe it can.
For instance, let us say that you live on a farm and you have a visitor sitting on the pourch with you discussing whatever. It is 5:00pm, the wife comes to the porch and announces that the chickens are ready to eat????? Can if be misleading, yes indeed, without something else being needed to say.

 

There's a book about proper punctuation whose title was dervived from a mispunctuated dictionary entry about what the koala bear does when he's hungry:

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

The mental picture that its author Lynne Truss conjured up was that of a koala bear wandering into a restaurant, and then when he's finished eating his meal, pulls out his gun and shoots the server as the bear walks out the exit door--all because of a printer's error wherein an extra comma was inserted between the words "Eats" and "Shoots."

Then there's this supposedly true story (at least "Ripley's Believe It or Not" claims it's true) of a man's life that was saved by the mere juxtaposition of a comma.

It seems that very late one evening back in the old days of Czarist Russia, the Czar's wife (the "Czarina") happened to wander into the empty office of the Czar and sat down on the Czar's office seat by his desk.

She happened to glance at the stack of papers before her on the Czar's desk--a pile of papers from the Imperial Prison Warden's office that were forwarded to the Czar for him to sign, and thus approve of the Warden's recommendations concerning the disposition of various "Enemies of the State."

On the top paper was scribbled in the Czar's handwriting:

"pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia."

The Czarina, feeling sorry for this man with whom she hadn't even the slightest acquaintence, takes the Czar's pen to this document, scratches out the original comma, and replaces it with a comma after the word "impossible." Thus now this official document now reads:

"pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia"

So, you see, even a small punctuation mark can make quite a difference in how a sentence can be interpreted.

Why might this be important to our discussion? It'd be extremely important if we were talking about the OT Hebrew language's vowel points (the "jot" or "tittle" to which Christ was referring in Matthew 5:18).

The very earliest NT manuscripts presented another type of problem that is somewhat related to the problem of minute variations in punctuation.

In these manucripts there were no spaces between words. Whole paragraphs appeared as if they were just one word. IOW, that previous sentence would have read:

"wholeparagraphsappearedasiftheywerejustoneword"

The trick then becomes, just how does one separate each of those Greek words?

The classic illustration of this dilemma (using an English expression) is this:

godisnowhere

The atheist or agnostic might separate that expression so that it would read:

god is nowhere

OTOH, a believer in the omnipresent God of the Bible would render it:

god is now here

This is just one example.

Another classic example that irritates some KJVO proponents was a 1631 printing of the KJV (popularly referred to as "The Wicked Bible") in which the word "not" was inadvertently omitted by its printers in Exodus 20:14. Thus this KJV read: "Thou shalt commit adultery." [emphasis mine].... (Q: Do you think that maybe that was the version of the Bible that President Clinton used! :thumbs: )

So you see, a lot of times it is an individual's point of view that will affect how that person will interpret certain Bible verses.

I have yet to read a really good Arminian's explanation of the last part of Acts 13:48 (".... and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed."). And I confess that I have some problems understanding in what way did the Lord purchase the doomed false prophets that Peter talks about in II Peter 2:1.

 

This is an interesting subject that hits a huge sore note with most people. They like to think that God is just a big teddy bear but never a richeous judge that executes the wicked. Anyway I mostly wanted to put a little snippet of something A.W. Pink wrote.

I would HIGHLY suggest reading the chapter in it's entirety which can be found----->>http://the-highway.com/objsovereignty_Pink.html





Reformer

 

I’ll cut her some slack because she evidently doesn’t understand the context or is any better at addressing it without ad hominem than you.

You're kidding yourself by appealing that I should give evidence for your “Negative Proof” fallacy. I have no reason to believe “any” Calvinist systematic theology should not try to attempt somewhere along the line to reconcile their doctrines of predestination with free will in order to desperately avoid fatalism.

It is not a strawman to assert that all Calvinist’ systematic theologies rest on their doctrines on predestination. Nor is it a strawman to assert determinism (cause and effect) and free will (influence and response) are logically mutually exclusive. So I have not misrepresented the opponent’s position, which is needed to make a strawman.

Now, if you want evidence to the relation between Calvinism and predestination you can start with John Calvin on predestination, he believed that before creation that God determined the fate of the universe throughout time. Do you want to disclaim John Calvin’s absolute commitment to his interpretations of the sovereignty of God to imply predestination and election?

Additionally, I could incorporate every Calvinistic doctrine you know of to have to logically stand on determinism. (This appeals to your logic.) In conclusion, all five points of the TULIP must stand on the assumption that God made a sovereign, deterministic decree as to who would or would not be saved.

So yes, I charge that all Calvinist who are holding to predestination (your position) can only logically annul man’s volitional will, and therefore, concludes man can do nothing, including freely responding to God’s Omnibenevolent love. Frankly, I not only dispute your message of God’s selective love, but abhor the “doctrines of deterministic selective grace” which would arrogantly use this forum to assemble proclamations that God loves their specially selected self more than their neighbors.

You should either understand your position better or change it.

 

The motif being used here in ascribing other’s belief of God as a “Teddy Bear” because they hold to His attributes of Omnibenevolent Love reveals nothing less than the opposition’s arrogance in having been specially selected. God knows the proud, and the hearts of the humble that recognize and freely respond to His love along with those who will not.

(Deu 32:4) He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

 

It is not because they hold to His attributes of Omnibenevolent Love that I said what I did it is because they, in truth but not necessarily in word, reject/ignore all of His charastics that don't fit there "Teddy Bear" image.