Featured Being Ignorant of God's Righteousness

God has determined I'll follow Jesus. God has determined I'll follow Jesus. God has determined I'll follow Jesus. No turning back, no turning back.

 

Now if you can sing that to the tune of "Take me out to the ball game" you might have something.

 

Ken you have failed to explain how a person hearing the gospel and trusting in Christ Jesus for his salvation takes glory for that salvation away from God?

 

When you refuse to acknowledge that God made them alive and caused their ears to hear, you take away from the glory due to God and you glorify the man.

 

This right here is the root of a lot of animosity. A person hears the gospel and trusts in Christ. That is what has to occur. The reason it happened in my opinion is that it was all wrought by God. But the person has to hear the gospel and trust in Christ. Is it necessary, not for the sake of whatever creed you follow, but is it necessary that you understand and acknowledge that it was God that caused you to hear. Will God reject you if you simply DID what the Holy Spirit wrought in you and responded to the message of the gospel without the correct (according to Calvinists) understand of why it happened?

 

It is a necessary effect of God causing a person to be made alive with Christ.
"But God..."

 

Dave when you say that God caused one to hear are you saying that one can only hear if God causes them to be able to hear? The bible does not restrict those that can hear nor does it restrict those that can respond. While the Holy Spirit will convict one of their sins that person has to respond to that conviction.

 

Not physically hear, but spiritually. 1 Corinthians 2:14 And look, there is a level at which you are correct. When the gospel message is preached, there is absolutely no reason that men cannot respond to such a generous offer. Their inability is a moral issue. They won't respond because it's not in the nature of the natural man. In my understanding of free will it means we are free to do what we are most inclined to do. It just turns out that coming to Christ in a truly penitent way with saving faith is what we are not inclined to do. The inclination is ours. We own it and it's our choice. If the Holy Spirit doesn't intervene we are sunk.

 

Ken your reading your theological view into the text again. "God gives eyes to see and ears to hear - His elect" do you have any verse that proves your theory?

Mat 13:9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear!" Note the words Ken. For your idea to work it should have said "I have given you ears to hear". You really need to trust the bible and not your commentaries.

Even Ezekiel 12:2 does not support your view. They have eyes and ears but they do not, by choice, use them.

 

Dave you are looking at free will from a calvinist perspective. Free will means that the person can choose A or not A. God has give man the ability to evaluate information and choose which way they want to go. To say that man will only choose the negative makes a mockery of the bible. To say man tends to think one way is one thing to say that he always thinks one way is illogical as well as unbiblical. God expects man to evaluate the available information regarding Christ Jesus and to repent. That or what He says in the bible is meaningless. Acts of the Apostles 17:30 To say someone is not inclined to do something is not to say they can not or will not do it.

 

Yes. More specifically from Jonathan Edwards. We operate mostly by the influences of various inclinations and outside circumstances. For instance, at about age 14 I began to realize that girls, who I had previously considered an inferior subspecies, had began to fascinate me, although I was terrified of them. By age 18 they were about all I could think about and I was no longer as terrified so I started attempting to date girls. Now my decision to call a girl up for a date was my own free will. But yet why did I do that? It was because of a hard wired brain and body that under the influence of testosterone at about age 14 completely changed my inclinations. Was my choice to begin dating girls real, free, and truly my own? Absolutely. But it was not autonomous as you define it. Because it was, like all human choices, influenced by my inclinations.

The Bible teaches that there is something wrong with us since man fell and we have an evil inclination which we cannot fix ourselves. I think the Calvinist explanation for this works best.

 

Those are nice verses Ken but they do not support your view. Well they would for you as you read into the text what you want to find.

 

Dave it is just that God give free will that allows us to make choices. Of course we are influenced by by internal and external forces which we evaluate and make our choices upon what we consider the best option for us at that time. That is what free will is. I think you have me confused with Van. Man is not a island so he is indeed influenced by many things but being influenced does not mean controlled as calvinists would have it.

As I always say, it is easier to go downhill than up, so yes man is inclined to the negative but that does not mean he can not choose the good. That is the big block that calvinists do not seem to be able to get past. Man can choose the good just as the bible tells us. If that were not so then why the gospel, why preach at all? Calvinists say God has to give one the ability to believe but if that were true then 1] your faith is not your own 2] all those that God did not give that ability to actually have a valid excuse for not trusting in Christ.

Either man has a actual free will and is held responsible for the choices he makes or man has no free will and God is the one responsible for the choices the man makes.

 

God answers your objections quite clearly.
*Romans 9:14-26*
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”