question on Calvinism

The sovereignty of God solves this dilema. He made everything, He can destroy everything or save part or whatever He wills. Re: The Flood of Noah, Sodom and Gommorah.

That's not fair. I am glad God is not fair. If we got what we deserve, we would all go to Hell.

Thanks be to God, He chose to save millions--called the elect.

The doctrines of election and predestination are plain teachings in the scripture which pre-date Calvin and others by about 16 centuries.

Whenever a scripture does not seem to agree--we are usually trying to force it through a manmade paradym.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

Calvinism only can exist and deceive Christians if they elevate sovereignty above all the other Divine attributes of the Triune-Being. There is very little Divine love and justice by holding to the elite group called His elect, when He allegedly selects some for Heaven and the vast majority to Hell.

Biblical Christianity portrays quite another view of the living God.

 

You are right. But in Romans 5 we have ALL have fallen under the dominion of death due to sin and that same ALL benefit from the sacrifice of Christ in that SAME chapter.

Hard to keep "redefining ALL" at every turn.

Might as well accept that God really does "so love the World" and that He really is not willing for "ANY" to perish but for "ALL" to come to REPENTANCE.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Some Calvinists (like Pinoy) will admit that God is sovereign AND Adam had free will AND Lucifer had free will AND the pre-fallen angels had free will.

This is the undoing of Calvinism. Once they admit that the sovereignty of God is not impacted in the least by the existence of free will - the main argument for Calvinism fails.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Free-will? Man's will is not about correct choices. In his depraved condition, man has not the ability to make a right choice. Thus God has intervened by His Grace to save some (His sheep).

He could have caused the whole world to perish--which He did--save eight. Noah is a good example of the Election of God.

"No one comes to the Father unless the Spirit draws him." We do not make a decision to seek God, He chooses to make some Holy and He has. He is the Potter, we are the clay. The Potter can do as He chooses. It is not about fairness or justice. Be thankful. If God gave us justice, we would be eternally separated from Him because we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. God loves His sheep. He saved them all. "It is finished."

Selah,
Bro. James

 

As one who holds to the Calvinist/Reformed position, I have to confess that this is perhaps the toughest issue regarding my theological system that I have to deal with from scripture. This is a rather tough nut to crack.

To say that " If the sovereignty of God means he chooses only the elect, then it cannot be true that God desires "all" men to be saved.." is really unneccessary. Here's a link for you that contains several fine articles dealing with this very subject----> Link Here

I especially recommend Dr Pipers article HERE although I've come to some different conclusions that he has here. But it does help you understand the different possibilities.

 

Brother James,

Some expositors say that Noah preached to lost sinners for a few hundred years. If they were 'X' ed or written off as not to be saved, what was Noah doing?

Maybe someone can locate that verse and truth for us; I have not found it yet. If the above idea is true then God opened the possibility of salvation to all sinners in the antediluvian era as well as to the end of the world. [I Timothy 2:6 & I John 2:2]

 

I heard Alistair Begg state that the way he deals with it is God did not will what He desired. Or something to that affect. So He desired that they all be saved, but did not will that it happen.

As to why that happen, Begg said "I don't know"

I'm still processing that, but it seems to make some sense. Afterall, the Arminian thought process would hold that God still did not do what He desired, that He instead let man choose. At that point, elevating man's choice above his desire (at least in this instance). Couldn't it just as easily be that He elevated this choice of His above his own desire?

Just a thought.

 

"God "desired" to put the sons of Eli to death, and that the word for desire is the same one used in Ezekiel 18:23 when God says he does not "delight" in the death of the wicked. Another illustration of this complex desiring is found in Deuteronomy 28:63. Moses is warning of coming judgment on unrepentant Israel. What he says is strikingly different (not contradictory, I will argue) from Ezekiel 18:23. "And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you."

Here an even stronger word for joy is used (yasis) when it says that God will "take delight over you to cause you to perish and to destroy you." We are faced with the inescapable biblical fact that in some sense God does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18), and in some sense he does (Deuteronomy 28:63; 2 Samuel 2:25)."
-John Piper

 

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. -I Timothy 2:4

To understand the will of God that all men be saved, we must understand God's will of disposition. God wills the salvation of all men for salvation's sake. God is willing that all should come to repentance for repentance's sake. These things are good in His sight, therefore He desires them. There is no way we can interpret such verses as I Timothy 2:4 and II Peter 3:9 in an absolute sense and remain faithful to the rest of Scripture. To say that God does not desire repentance and faith, even from the reprobate, is to say that God desires sin and unbelief which could never be.

 

You resolve it by assumung that the vast majority are elect to be saved.

 

You're referring to 2 Peter 2:5, which calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. The inference from the language is that he preached, e.g. warned of the impending Flood. The thing is it does not necessarily follow that he preached because God was opening up the possibility of salvation to all sinners (that heard him) in that era. (False leap of logic, e.g. cause and effect fallacy). It could be equally true that God had him do that simply as a testimony against the people of that era. Preaching of the gospel in any era does not necessarily infer the ability or possibility of salvation for the hearers.

 

Gene M. Bridges,

Thanks for finding that Scripture.

Dr. Kenneth S. Wuest, the Greek scholar said that the word (kerus) is preacher meaning a herald. He future says, 'Noah proclaimed the message of God for 120 years to the antediluvian world, warning the people of the coming judgment of the flood and showing the way of personal salvation.' "In These Last Days" II Peter in the Greek New Testament, p. 50-51. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. This scholar was at one time at Moody Bible Institute.

I wanted you to see that this scholar believed that Noah was preaching repentance unto salvation, lest they be lost forever away from God's Presence. You might want to review what other scholars have said.

Obviously, Noah was not preaching just to his own family; the call was given to the wicked souls of Noah's day.

 

Do we necessarily have to believe that everyone who perished in the flood perished eternally? Did God raise up Noah to reach everyone in the whole wide world? Whew, what a task!

 

Bob Ryan said:

But lest you be deceived, Bob, as one who adheres to the Doctrines of Grace (not Calvinism)
my statement on free will was limited only to Adam and Eve.

They were the ones with the ability to choose freely with their choices not influenced in any way by any fallen nature.

After them, all their posterity had no true free will. Their choices were bound and influenced by a corrupted nature.

The point in the Doctrines of Grace is not that God adds a new nature to fallen man but that God chose to be merciful to some and not leave all to the just condemnation of their sins.

It is not about man and his ability or inability to do what is pleasing to God, it is about God and His mercy upon sinners in sending His only begotten Son to save them.

 

Some of the people who drowned in the flood could have been "elect."

 

Possibly. After all, now, as then, evil permeates this world, and yet God has His elect wherever man is found. If God suddenly decided it was time for Christ to come back and fetch His own, and destroy the rest, it's no loss to God's people.

If some of the people who drowned in the flood were elect, then they went to glory by virtue of the blood shed by the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.