KenH
Well-Known Member
Nope.
-
Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!
No Bible Doctrine Called Sovereign Grace
- Thread starter JD731
- Start date
- Status
Nope.
"Even for the breath it breaths to sin against God, it is dependent upon the One against whom it sins."
~ Augustine
KenH
Well-Known Member
The problem with folks such as @Silverhair is that, based on what they say, they think that God was blindsided by sin, that He never saw it coming, and was forced to be reactive against it; or else, the other possibility they may be advocating is that God knew that sin was going to happen, could have stopped it from happening but didn't, and decided He would just sit back and see how this was going to play out. What he and his cohorts are advocating to varying degrees, depending on the person, is Deism - that God created the universe, wound it up, and is just letting it wind itself down - other than supernaturally intervening here and there - but pretty much just leaving it alone. They are content to operate under the assumption that life is pretty much just a bunch of random occurrences and that for the most part, if not in toto, they are the captains of their own fate.
DaveXR650
Well-Known Member
The above is Vincent Cheung, one of the advocates of the meticulous determinism of God.
Below is the Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 3 Part 1
"God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established."
Houston we have a problem!
KenH
Well-Known Member
I think there are people who do believe that God is totally absolutely sovereign but are afraid to outright boldly state it, due to fear of touching what might be called the "third rail" of theology.
DaveXR650
Well-Known Member
You might be right. I do not believe that God has to personally cause the motion of each and every molecule in the universe or else he is not God.
I do believe though that direct action of the Holy Spirit is necessary or else none of us would be saved. It is applied individually, and selectively according to the will of God, not as a blanket prevenient grace. It does no one injustice that we are unable to do this unassisted and that everyone is not helped because the inability is due to our being willing to follow a path of sin and rejection of God's authority, not from some organic inability.
I do believe though that direct action of the Holy Spirit is necessary or else none of us would be saved. It is applied individually, and selectively according to the will of God, not as a blanket prevenient grace. It does no one injustice that we are unable to do this unassisted and that everyone is not helped because the inability is due to our being willing to follow a path of sin and rejection of God's authority, not from some organic inability.
KenH
Well-Known Member
The fall in the Garden of Eden did make us totally unable to of doing anything righteous in the eyes of God.
Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Furthermore, I think it if flat out wrong to think that God is sovereign only in the area of salvation; that everything else is, for the most part or even totally, just a bunch of randomnesses.
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
The problem with people such as Ken H is that they write this:
"The total absolute sovereignty of the Creator of the universe is a truth opposed by those who hate that they are not the "captain of their own fate" and are repulsed by God being the Potter and they being merely clay.
"God's will determines all the choices and circumstances of his creatures, so that nothing is up to man's "free will." In fact, because God is completely sovereign, man has no free will:"
And then complain when they are told what that actually means.
37818
Well-Known Member
In your imagination.
Verse 5, ". . . , (by grace ye are saved; ). . ." Verse 8 explicitly explains ". . . through faith . . . ." Meaning faith precedes the ". . . by grace ye are saved; . . ."
DaveXR650
Well-Known Member
We live in a fallen, dangerous world. Say you have a group of children playing on a pond - on 2 inches of ice. They fall through the ice and Billy drowns. I believe that God was sovereign over that happening. There are several ways he could have prevented Billy from drowning but he didn't. Because he could have prevented it but didn't you could even say it was ordained. But I would not say God killed Billy. Some Calvinists do.
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
Ken it is not a matter of us being able to do anything righteous, it is a matter of man having a free will so that they can respond to the drawing of God. This drawing can be creation, the gospel, the conviction of the Holy Spirit etc. God is sovereign, the fact that God has given man a free will does not diminish His sovereignty.
KenH
Well-Known Member
God not only determines when and how sparrows die, but all of His creatures, including man. Read these verses and ask yourself, "Who did the numbering?"
Matthew 10:29-30 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
KenH
Well-Known Member
God never gave man free will. To say that man has free will is the pride of man speaking, not the truth.
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
I would not go so far as to say that God ordained that Billy would drown but God did know that it would happen. His is omniscient so no surprises.
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
Gen 3:22 Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"—
If man knows good from evil and as you say has no free will then God is the one who causes man to do the evil.
KenH
Well-Known Member
You knock my viewpoint. Yours is WAY worse. You accuse God of knowing a young child is going to drown and then not lifting a finger to stop it, even though He could. You don't like the idea of God being what men call a "tyrant". Yet your conception of God is WAY worse.
KenH
Well-Known Member
Read my posts #3, #4, and #5 earlier in this thread.
Ever you blame God.
*Romans 9:16-20*
So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it. For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, “I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.” So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen. Well then, you might say, “Why does God blame people for not responding? Haven’t they simply done what he makes them do?” No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?”
How can someone dead do anything?
they are dead
not mostly dead
but dead for real
they are dead
not mostly dead
but dead for real
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
Really, so you think allowing man to make real choices and being responsible for the outcome of those choice is worse than God ordaining all the evil and pain in this world. You have a strange logic there and that is aside from the fact that your version of God is nothing like the God of the bible.
- Status