All Scripture Cited Taken from 2011 NIV
All people are worthy of eternal condemnation. All people are not equally evil though.
God doesn't follow the dictates of Winman. Certainly the Lord does whatever He wants to do and none can stay His hand.
Let me introduce you to Romans 9:15,18 :"For he says to Moses,'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.'Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy,and he hardens whom he wants to harden.' "
The saved ones (elect) have received His mercy,not His justice. You can't tell the Lord what to do or say that something isn't fair in your eyes. Romans 9:2021 tells us :"But who are you,a human being,to talk back to God? Shall what is formed sat to the one who formed it,'Why did you make me like this? 'Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?' "
The Lord is not an equal opportunity God. That's why multiplied millions down through through the centuries have never even heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God is not democratic. I know that must be a jolt to your system of philosophy.
No such promise was ever given. He owes no one anything. The Lord is not obligated to anyone. He does not have to be fair according to the dictates of the worms of the dust. As Luther said to Erasmus : Your god is too human." (Or words to that effect.)
is the "Whosover Wills" Promise To the Elect of God, or to ALL?
Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by JesusFan, Jun 15, 2011.
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You can always tell when you've touched a nerve!
To answer JBH, the non-Cal/Arm view has never supported universalism, I believe Titus 2:11
Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.
I believe God has shown his grace to all men and men are able to respond. If they choose not to believe, that is their own fault, not God's.
It is the Cal/Ref view that led to universalism, men believed a person must be regenerated to believe, but also believed God is no respecter of persons. This led them to conclude God would regenerate all men so they would believe and be saved.
The issue of those who have not heard the gospel is irrelevant, neither side can answer how God deals with these persons. But I do believe God offers all men the opportunity to be saved. Perhaps men and their faith are judged according to the light shown them, I can't say for certain, no one has ever sufficiently answered this question including Calvinists.
When Peter said God was no respecter of persons, it was in the context of the gospel being sent to the Gentiles, it had nothing to do with judgment. Peter was saying God does not favor one person over another and grace is offered to all.
If men must be regenerated to be willing and believe, and God only regenerates some, then he has violated his own declaration that he is no respecter of persons.
If all men have the ability to believe and God has offered salvation to all, he is true to his own declaration of himself. It is man's fault if he rejects this grace. -
So, now are you affirming that God does indeed reject some???
I'm not saying that you believe there a people trying to come who can't, so stop making that argument. I'm saying that in your system the reason people can't come is due to God rejection of them.
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He knows. -
Lets also not forget in their system before the foundation of the world God did not elect, atone for, or regenerate most to receive His offer which is only good for those He elected, atoned for and regenerated... yet knowing this He throws out there a false offer to this un-elect group where none of the means are supplied (to make it a true offer by definition)?! It defies any kind of reason.
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"Don't you believe John 6:65 to mean that God must enable men to come to Christ before they may come? May those who haven't been "enabled" to come, come? If so, how?"
word should be "can", not "may". Big difference. to say "may" would mean that God won't allow a person to come. to say "can" means there is something keeping them from coming...ie their sin. In other words, it's not God keeping one from coming, but man's sin. -
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so, as I have said, a genuine offer to all. All those that don't come don't because they don't want to. God doesn't keep them from coming.
remember, the reason for election was because God know through his foreknowledge that no one would come to him. Most arguments for election assume that man will come to him on their own. -
Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
John 6:
45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’[Isaiah 54:13] Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.
John 14:24
Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
John 6:63
The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.
Here is a clue how we are drawn by the Father. Those who are following a crowd does not mean they are drawn by the Father. We know from scripture only those who listen and learn will come. These are the one's He was speaking about. The sheep know His voice. Israel is His sheep they should of heard His voice, but those who did not was cut out for unbelief and not able to enter.
So ultimately He came into His own, but His own received Him not. So what will Jesus do? If they disown Him He will disown them. -
This is an important circularity in the claim by Calvinists that humans can be considered genuinely free so long as their actions are in accordance with their desires. Given your belief that all events and actions are decreed by God, then human desire (the very thing that compatibilists claim allows human choices to be considered free) must itself also be decreed. But if so, then there is nothing outside of or beyond God's decree on which human freedom might be based. Put differently, there is no such thing as what the human really wants to do in a given situation, considered somehow apart from God's desire in the matter (i.e., God's desire as to what the human agent will desire). In the compatibilist scheme, human desire is wholly derived from and wholly bound to the divine desire. God's decree encompasses everything, even the desires that underlie human choices.
This is a critical point, because it undercuts the plausibility of the compatibilist's argument that desire can be considered the basis for human freedom. When the compatibilist defines freedom in terms of desire (i.e., doing what one wants to do), this formulation initially appears plausible only because it tends to (subtly) evoke a sense of independence or ownership on the part of the human agent for his choices. That is, even though the compatibilist insists that God decisively conditions an agent's environment so as to guarantee the outcome of the agent's choices, we can nonetheless envision God's action in doing so as being compatible with human freedom so long as the human agent in question has the opportunity to interact with his conditioned environment as an independent agent, possessing his own desires and thus owning his choices in relation to that environment. But once we recognize (as we must within the larger deterministic framework encompassing compatibilism) that those very desires of the agent are equally part of the environment that God causally determines, then the line between environment and agent becomes blurred if not completely lost. The human agent no longer can be seen as owning his own choices, for the desires determining those choices are in no significant sense independent of God's decree. For this reason, human desire within the compatibilist framework forms an insufficient basis on which to establish the integrity of human freedom (and from this the legitimacy of human culpability for sin). -
Imagine ten men locked in ten jail cells, the jail cells representing a man's willingness to come to God. They cannot come because they are held and captured by their own will. God takes a key and unlocks two of the cells, and then says, "You may all come to me."
Would this statement be true? God knows eight men are still held and enslaved by their wills, so can he honestly say they all may come?
Doesn't "may" mean allowed or permitted? How are those still locked in their cells allowed or permitted to come?
Your view has God mocking men for their inability to come, which inability he decreed.
And again, you would have God showing favoritism to the two men whose cell he unlocked. -
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Do you believe that Calvinist believe that there will be some that believe, or want to believe, but can't because God won't let them? I sure hope not, but cause that isn't my position. Your story seems to indicate that is what is happening. Your story has God keeping men from coming to him, which isn't the case.
Unfortunately, most arguments argue against a view such as this, which is why the term "straw man" usually gets used. -
That's called making your own God.
Now I understand why you have so much trouble with theology. -
All human analogies fail when it comes to the absolute sovereignty of God, and humanities fall.....they are dead!!!!!!
Cheers,
Jim -
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