Skandelon
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When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty
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Calvinism/origin of sin 2
- Thread starter Luke2427
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When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty
psalms109:31
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This is some thing to try to get an emotional response from those of us supposedly hate hell.
There has to be a place for those who don't want to come to God, It is God who places what is the result of their unbelief. We know that God wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth that we are to make peace with everyone because of this. This is no lie, no matter how men want to try to make it that way or change the meaning to fall under their theology, instead of changing their theology to match the word of God.
I been to many sites that you are just kicked off the site if you speak against Calvinism. It is if they are back tying to save men under what they think is the gospel again.
We believe that God is including with the elect those who heard the Gospel of their salvation having believed. We do not disagree with the elect, nor the one's who are coming. God is including with them and God has made a messenger of the Gospel Jesus sent us out with, an example Mark 16:15-16
Those who are being sent to hell has a way out through Jesus and we are the messenger of this.
Trying to turn the tables, but we will continue to believe all men have hope through Jesus Christ.
God want all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, so choose life (Jesus )and you shall live.
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You are mistaken. I do not mind the questions. God's plan and predestination are the same thing. God has never planned for anything to take place that he did not predestine to take place. God's plans are never thwarted- neither on the broad scale nor down to the tiniest of events. Scripture is clear about this.
So why do you think predestination of an event and permission for the predestined event are not possible?
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
By your response I presume that you believe everything is actively decreed and thus nothing is "permissively decreed." Or put another way, that everything is predetermined, and nothing is only allowed/permitted? Would that be a correct assessment of your view?
In response to your question, I suppose God can permit himself to actively do something, but it just doesn't make much sense to speak of God permitting that which His as actively determined to be. Why even talk about God foreknowing something when in actuality he predetermined that something? Why even talk about God permitting something when in actuality He predetermined it? You make language meaningless because terms such as foreknowledge, permission, decrees, choices all crumble into hard determinism when pressed, yet for some reason you continue to employee all these other terms to subtly soften the obvious divine culpability problems of your view.
Just come out and say "PREDETERMINED" every time and stop clouding the matter by invoking all the ambiguous terms which to you all mean the exact same thing.
No. I believe in God's permissive decree. I have told you this before. But I believe like Calvin and Edwards and the Westminster Confession and the Baptist Confession of 1689 that nothing happens by BARE permission or, iow, by ONLY permission as you put it in this very post.
God is actively bringing about all good that ever takes place and is permitting all evil. HOWEVER, his permission is not BARE permission. He is planning, predestining, decreeing, arranging and ULTIMATELY or REMOTELY CAUSING it at the same time. How? By removing his upholding power. By draining his holy influence which he KNOWS will result in the creature doing evil. No creature can stand unless God holds him up. If God stops holding him up, then he intends for him to fall. Furthermore, the ability to act, the ability to perform the evil deed, and by ability I mean literally the energy or physical capacity requires God's power. All power is God's. The murderer cannot lift his arm to plunge the knife apart from the energy that God fills his arm with in order that he might do so.
God is not permitting himself. He is permitting the creature to do exactly what he predestined that the creature would do.
They are the same thing.
I think I have made this clear.
No, because it is not that simple. The issue is VERY cloudy to the human mind.
The Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man make up an issue too complicated for either system to reconcile.
Yours does no better. But, to us, what it does is, rather than let them BOTH stand and abandon reconciliation of the two to mystery saying- these things are too great for us- you undermine the exhaustive Sovereignty of God.
Man is a creature that makes REAL choices. Man does fall of his own weight.
How it all works is a great mystery.
But we KNOW this much: God is on his throne and his kingdom rules over all and not even the role of the dice takes place apart from his predestined cause.
Luke wrote:
Is your mind included in this statement?
Yes, because he chose evil through his freewill, not because God predestined him to be evil.
If you could predestine all the events that your child will experience throughout his/her life ... how much evil would you predestine in their life?
You undermine the goodness of God by making him responsible for all evil by predestining that evil.
If you hire a person to murder another, predestine the murder, you are also guilty of murder just as the person who performed the act. This is the position you are placing God in with your belief.
Luke wrote:
Your belief is that God intended man to fall as he predestined that man fall. Because God gave man freewill he knew it was a possibility there would be a fall. He never intended, as you believe, that man be a puppet on his string. There is no meaningful relationship with a a puppet on a string, but there can be a meaningful relationship with a being with freewill.
As God knew it was a possibility I do not know if it was a surprise or not. We can ask him when we are in heaven.
He would that none be in hell. But as they have freewill they are free to reject him. Their choice.
In your view I will ask, why would God predestine billions upon billions upon billions upon billions pour into hell from this earth like grain from a great hopper where they will roast in unimaginable agony forever and ever and ever and ever without so much as one SECOND of relief?????
Simple, because he had noting to do with creating the evil as he does in predestination.
Not if they did not sin and bring sin into the world through their own freewill.
Only if there had been no fall. If he predestined everything it is not logical to believe that he would deliberately predestine evil.
Your God predestined people to hell. That is a horrible belief.
In freewill it is the people themselves who through their own freewill have rejected God and have separated themselves from God. God would that all be with him. But he does allow us, through our own freewill to reject him.
I would rather be a moron for Christ than a brilliant believer in error about God being responsible for evil. You keep dancing on the edge, but refuse to follow your beliefs to their logical conclusion. Thanks for the compliment.
Oh, and when you pose a question, especially in the later afternoon or evening, have a bit of patience. I am 6 hours ahead of you and probably am asleep when you reply.
Is your mind included in this statement?
Yes, because he chose evil through his freewill, not because God predestined him to be evil.
If you could predestine all the events that your child will experience throughout his/her life ... how much evil would you predestine in their life?
You undermine the goodness of God by making him responsible for all evil by predestining that evil.
If you hire a person to murder another, predestine the murder, you are also guilty of murder just as the person who performed the act. This is the position you are placing God in with your belief.
Luke wrote:
Your belief is that God intended man to fall as he predestined that man fall. Because God gave man freewill he knew it was a possibility there would be a fall. He never intended, as you believe, that man be a puppet on his string. There is no meaningful relationship with a a puppet on a string, but there can be a meaningful relationship with a being with freewill.
As God knew it was a possibility I do not know if it was a surprise or not. We can ask him when we are in heaven.
He would that none be in hell. But as they have freewill they are free to reject him. Their choice.
In your view I will ask, why would God predestine billions upon billions upon billions upon billions pour into hell from this earth like grain from a great hopper where they will roast in unimaginable agony forever and ever and ever and ever without so much as one SECOND of relief?????
Simple, because he had noting to do with creating the evil as he does in predestination.
Not if they did not sin and bring sin into the world through their own freewill.
Only if there had been no fall. If he predestined everything it is not logical to believe that he would deliberately predestine evil.
Your God predestined people to hell. That is a horrible belief.
In freewill it is the people themselves who through their own freewill have rejected God and have separated themselves from God. God would that all be with him. But he does allow us, through our own freewill to reject him.
I would rather be a moron for Christ than a brilliant believer in error about God being responsible for evil. You keep dancing on the edge, but refuse to follow your beliefs to their logical conclusion. Thanks for the compliment.
Oh, and when you pose a question, especially in the later afternoon or evening, have a bit of patience. I am 6 hours ahead of you and probably am asleep when you reply.
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You STILL didn't answer the question.
You can't can you?
What is so precious about free will that God wanted men to have it so that by it the VAST majority of the human race could fry in unspeakable torment forever and ever?
How does that make your God LOVING???
And, what FATHER would walk his ten children to the edge of a burning tar pit and say, "I love you enough to give you a CHOICE. You can come with me or you can play here on the edge," all the while that father FOREKNOWS that 9 of the 10 children will CHOOSE to play there and fall in and burn to a slow agonizing, screaming-for-mercy without-a-reply-from-their-father, DEATH????????
STILL WAITING.
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The other side of that question, of course, is: what FATHER would have ten children, but choose only one of them to live with him?
Lukie, off the subject....When is the Orlando event?
Technically itn ended yesterday. It went from Thursday to Saturaday. But today is Ligonier Sunday at R. C. Sproul's church and John Piper is preaching this morning.
We will go to the service then head home.
Then Im both happy for you & jealous. completely enjoy yourself, drink it all in & come back refreshed & in the Word of God. Safe trip home.
And when you are faced with a glaring contradiction, such as saying God determines every event that happens, yet is not the author of sin, and saying this is a great mystery is not an answer either. It is simply an evasion to avoid the inevitable and logical conclusion of your belief. The only one you are fooling is yourself.
You go on and on, mocking and insulting those who do not agree with you, and what do you really have? NOTHING. You can't even explain your own beliefs, they are a cloudy, nebulous mystery.
Yes, you can't even explain what you believe, and yet are dogmatic, insisting you must be correct, and anyone who disagrees must be either a heretic or an uneducated idiot. Correct about what? You don't even understand your own belief, it is a mystery to you!!
Saying something is a mystery is the biggest EVASION and non-answer ever. You've got NOTHING.
I have but you seem incapable of understanding the answer.
I have already answered that also. Go back and read and try to understand.
For the same reason that you, if you are a good father will not be a tyrannical dictator to your children when the are grown. Wouldn't you rather have loving children who make their own decisions than ones who knuckle under to your commands? There is no healthy relationship in that.
Only God can foreknow.but foreknowing does not mean to predestine. For example, if you place a bowl of ice cream in a room where the temperature is 90 degrees f I foreknow that it will melt. I do not predestine it to melt, but I know it will melt.
Another analogy. I am in a helicopter looking down on a road at the crest of a hill. I see three cars. One is passing another just over the crest of the hill. I see that a car on the other side and the car making the illegal pass are going to have a crash. Thus I foreknow that the crash is going to happen, but, again, I did not predestine that it happen.
These are, I believe, pretty good analogies of how God foreknows but does not predetermine or predestine.
Thus, it does not follow that because God foreknows that he predestines the event to happen.
Now, of course, we are getting into time and there are a number of ways to look at time:
One view is that time is always at the end. The next second does not exist, has never existed until it happens and passes. Thus God can see from the beginning of time to the now of time, but not beyond. But even being able to see beyond the now does not mean the future is predestined or preordained.
Another view of time is that it is like a reel of film with a beginning and an end. We are somewhere in the middle of that film, but God can see from the beginning all the way to the end, past our now.
There are other views of time, and other types of time and they might make a good thread to discuss.
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Sure it is. It just doesn't fit what you had in mind.
No he didn't. He did not decree it. He allowed it. Adam had a free choice; a choice to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, or to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. He chose the latter. God did not force him to make that choice. He did so of his own free will, which BTW, was given to him as a part of being made in the image and likeness of God.
Nothing is a surprise to God; He is omniscient.
He knew it would happen; but he did not decree it to happen.
Do you ever feel pain and suffering? Why does God allow it?
Notice I said "allow" and not "decree."
Your sarcasm is noted when you say "so important to God," inferring that things that are important to God are not important to you.
Man, made in the image and likeness of God, has a choice--to do good or to do evil. Adam choose evil. That Adamic nature has been passed down throughout generations to every man, that by nature we all do evil. We choose it, and at the same time are held responsible for it. The reason a man goes to Hell is because he rejects Christ, or the light that God has given Him that would lead Him to Christ.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Romans 1:20)
--They are without excuse. This isn't the only place where God states this truth. Thus you have created an emotional straw man that doesn't get you any brownie points with me or with God.
You think that God decreeing that majority of the human race go straight to hell, rather than God giving man a free will to choose whether or not to trust Christ is more loving?? Where is the intellect in that? God doesn't decree men to go to Hell; he gives them the choice. They go there because of their unbelief.
I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. (John 8:24)
See above. They did not believe therefore they would die in their sins (spiritually). It is unbelief that sends a person to hell--the choice that they make. God is not the author of sin or the author of the unbelief of mankind. He doesn't force it upon them.
Omniscience is not the same as "decree." God did not decree that man would reject Christ and his atoning sacrifice. God did not decree rape, suicide bombers, abortions, etc.
He could have, and some day will.
It is not my mind, but the mind of God. To know the mind of God you must know the Scriptures. What do they say? To believe what you believe you must go through the Bible and erase all the "whosoevers," all the "If thou shalt believe," and all other similar expressions. The totality of Scripture stands against you.
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Of couse Adam chose it and God didn't force it, but are you actually saying that this was not God's plan. What about Jesus Christ? Was he plan B? Did God originally want to have a perfect world and since Adam messed all that up, God used plan B?
Why? Does Luke believe people will believe and yet not be saved?
Luke, do you believe that?
There was no A or B.
Adam had a choice to make.
Presumably if Adam had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Life, he would have lived forever. Life as we know of it today would be very different. But that is not what happened. The question is: Do we blame God for it? Luke does, because he states, God decreed it. I don't, because I look at Adam, and say that Adam had the choice, and made the wrong choice. It is God's omniscience; He knew about, but did not decree it.
What God states He did decree is that Christ is the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world. I don't go farther than Scripture goes. This one fact we know for sure. Who am I to pretend that I can read the mind of God and know the decrees of God?? Paul certainly couldn't. Am I better than Paul?
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)
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