Featured Lewis on Atonement theories

It would seem that your calvinist theology has blinded you to the truth of scripture. It is not a matter of interpretation it is just a matter of reading the text. You seem to have a real problem with that. You need to add your special interpretation to the text so that it fits with your man-made theology. I, on the other hand just trust what the bible says no special interpretation needed.

 

There in lays your problem, you think faith is a work which it is not.
Joh 3:18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Joh 6:29 "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."
Rom 3:22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;
1Co 1:21 God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
Eph 1:13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,

It is your theology that makes faith a work. not the bible. Faith is the condition that God has made for our salvation, but it seems you do not believe this or you just refuse to accept it.
Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Eph 2:9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Man can not earn his salvation he just has to trust in Christ Jesus.

 

"Atonement theory" is a faithless phrase. The Atonement is described in detail in the laws of the offerings. One either believes them, or they don't.

And Jon doesn't. And neither does anyone who denies the eminently substitionary nature thereof. The faithless neither have eyes to see nor ears to hear.

He denies that sins are purged. They're merely 'passed over,' or ignored.

But faith will beg of the Lord, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

 

Everything that is said must be interpreted. That's why when Jesus said "beware the leaven of the pharisees" they thought he was talking about food. Earlier you said faith is a condition. It is, but if by that you mean that the Bible teaches that the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit must after the death of Christ wait, and hopefully a few people might just decide to believe then you are completely wrong. We have in our culture developed a bizarre idea of the sovereignty of the will that was completely unknown to men in the old days. Faith is a condition in that it is something without which you cannot be right with God. The Bible clearly teaches that. What the Bible does not clearly teach is that you must conjure it up by yourself or that the development of faith depends on your ability. That goes against a lot of other scripture. The verses that require faith do not claim the origin of faith or put it all on you. You are doing a lot of interpreting too. Calvinists are sometimes over mechanical and deterministic in my opinion. When I read them, and I read them a lot because I like them, I find that they do not reduce our human interactions with God to mere mechanics but fully embrace lively, intelligent real time, personal interaction with Christ. But they also fully acknowledge our dependence on God and correctly realize that salvation really is all of grace.

 

No, you don't. And neither does either the BB owner or adminsitration. Or you would not be a member thereof.

 

I repeat: "Is this still a Baptist Board?"

 

Where do you get that false accusation? Confession with mouth is a work.

 

I understand that we must evaluate what we hear and see and that is interpretation. When I answered AustinC it would have been better to say that he, and most calvinists, read into the text what they are looking for rather than just reading the text for what it says.

Do you not think that faith is a condition of our salvation? Why? Do you think that God just saves someone and then makes them believe? If you hold to that idea then you have just made salvation a lottery. I find it strange that you would call saving faith something that we just conjure up in ourselves. Are you not the one that just said “Everything that is said must be interpreted.” Do you not think that man has a conscience? Do you not think that man knows right from wrong? Why do you think the Holy Spirit convicts us? Actually why do you think the gospel message is to be preached if man can not think and evaluate the truths? You are dismissing the reason for the NT. John said it but it can be applied to the whole bible
Joh 20:31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. Notice it does not say that God will make you believe as the calvinist theology requires. You question where faith comes from, so let me ask you where do you think it comes from?

God is the one that saves and He saves those that believe. You have to decide does God believe for you or are you the one that believes.

 

Your comment is a bit confusing, are you claiming that faith is a work or are you saying that I am claiming that?

FYI faith is not a work, it is the condition of our salvation.

 

You need to give the actual quote to what I argued. In Ephesians 2:8 salvation is the gift, not the the faith.

Agreed. Romans 4:5. Ephesians 2:8.

 

I do think faith is a condition of our salvation. So did Edwards and Owen and a lot of other Calvinists. But you go too far if you have in your mind a view of salvation where after the death of Christ, the Godhead must then sit passively by and hope that at least some of us, with our sovereign will, choose to believe. And yes, any Calvinist who thinks that the Holy Spirit believes for you is also wrong - and some, who won't go quite that far, show they are close to that by their offense at the idea of someone saying that they believed. You hear the gospel message, through the Word, or by preaching. You engage your mind and at the same time the Holy Spirit is working directly on you with conviction, circumstances and events in your life, and I believe actual regenerating power. That is scriptural. If there are Calvinists who believe that man can not think and evaluate truths then I disagree with them and can give quite a few examples of Calvinist theologians who disagree with them too. But if you are saying that there is some type of sovereignty and an independent free will (independent of a crippling depravity) in man that he has every ability to make the proper choice when given the information - well then, I just think there is too much scripture against that, and too much clear scripture talking about the elect, the called and so on. I have noticed in my reading, Calvinists preachers like Edwards who practically beg people to come to Christ and appeal to their reason as well as scripture. And I have read and personally heard non-Calvinist and fundamentalist preachers who stress how much we need to pray for the Spirit to touch people and who warn people that if you trifle with the Holy Spirit you may never feel the call of God again. I just don't think it's a 100% either or type of thing. When you see a verse like John 20:31 above and it is talking about the importance of the things that have been written, that in no way is refuting other things involved in salvation. There is probably a name for that kind of logic. I don't no what it would be, but it is faulty.

 

The bible is clear that the Godhead does not sit around fretting over whether someone will actually believe. God uses creation, the gospel, the Spirits conviction etc. to draw people to Himself. But, and this is where we seem to differ, man has to make the choice to accept or reject Christ Jesus. When and only when a man has trusted in Christ Jesus will God by His grace regenerate/save them. To be clear, a man is saved {born again, regenerated, in Christ} because he believes not so that he will believe.

 

Yes, I guess this is where we do differ. I agree that we make the choice and it is real. But I just think that when you really look at how human will functions you realize that much of what we do and decide is much more determined than we realize. A lot of it is hard wired, or hormonal and almost all of even our more cerebral choices are in response to various stimuli. We spend almost all our efforts in interaction with other people in trying to change and manipulate their will. Everything from advertising to teaching is based on this. If we truly had autonomous wills none of this would matter but it does. Yet, when it comes to dealing with the Almighty we insist on an autonomous free will. I understand that my non-Cal brothers (and I do mean brothers) feel that you bring on regeneration and being born again by believing but I just don't agree. I differ from many Calvinists in that because you have to do the believing it does seem harsh to be offended when someone says they have to do the believing. I just have a low opinion of our will especially when it comes to spiritual discernment - and especially in light of scriptures that say we are not only impaired but even dead. This thread started out about C.S. Lewis. Read about how he actually became a believer himself. He is vague on it and seemed confused. He was wrestling with issues and if I remember right was at the zoo and sometime during the trip became a believer. Most of us come to a point where we realize at some point we do believe - we did not weigh all the evidence and decide after careful evaluation that Christ was worthy of our trust.

 

Lewis believed in purgatory.

 

Jon, Aaron is not a Baptist/Roman Catholic anymore than you are a Baptist/Jehovah's Witness.
That you refuse to accept the substitutionary sacrifices of the Old Covenant as foreshadowing of Jesus substitutionary sacrifice is all about your horrific theology, not about Aaron holding some imaginary Roman Catholic theology. Whatever humanist theology books you have read that now influence your awful theology should be burned as they have twisted scripture and are by no means a classical theology. Instead they are an outlier theology that no classical Christian holds or ever held.

 

As I said, one does not read Lewis to understand theology.