Featured Harmony or Hostility?

There is no such thing as prevenient grace. The Arminians are as wrong about this as the Calvinist brethren are about effectual grace.

Susbstitute "nature" for "constitution" and see how much sense this makes.

These little tweaks - flipping to a dynamic definition for antiordain or flipping to "constitution" instead of "nature" - reflect the bankruptcy of the philosophy.

But the question remains unanswered:
Is it not God that determined the nature of man's fallen nature?

Why can we not get a straight answer to a fair question?

I'm sorry about that. May the Lord heal you fully and keep you in good health.

 

Also, read, AWP, CHS, JIP, BBW, Boice, Boyce, Reymond and Cunningham.

 

Fuller goes into that and you are right in that more is going on than just you sin because you want to. If that was true then the Pelagians would be right in that all you need to do is stop doing that. It truly is a case of inability but it still is at the level of the will. The Bible talks about those whose eyes are full of adultery so that they can't stop sinning. They really can't. "Won't" would not be a correct explanation. But are they not still accountable for their sin? The point is that it is different than "can't" in the way I would say you can't jump over the church building. That is truly a natural inability.

The answer is God has indeed permitted it. My opinion is that he decided that given the amount of original freedom and ability he created men with, and taking in all other things that God figured in that are completely above us, he decided that that would be the best thing to happen and so it was indeed his will.

I know that is a bonified Calvinistic position but not the only one. Many Calvinists believe that God meticulously determined every specific act involved in the fall. Let me be clear: they believe God made Adam and Eve fall, purely and directly. This is not the type of determinism I believe but I have seen it in the literature and admit it is there. And it may be the predominate view.

Amen

 

Jon, if you want to get a real nerd fight going just say he was a Puritan. A lot of people would disagree. And I heard Sinclair Ferguson claim Edwards as British the other day and not American because technically he was a British subject living in America! Now them's fightin' words.

 

In any part of the Calvinistic spectrum, it is God that constituted the make-up of man's fallen nature.

The parameters of fallen human nature did not devolve randomly on their own.
God programmed them.

Therefore, to say that "man sins because it is his nature" is to, as the Lebanese proverb says, "hide behind the shadow of one's finger".
Since it is God that formed the make-up of fallen human nature, it is God that made fallen man incapable of believing the gospel. God then judges that man for an inability that God himself set up.

The truth of the matter is that fallen man can believe the gospel, and often does, without any internal work of grace, prevenient or otherwise.

 

Only by the intervention of the Lord can someone be saved.

"The Lord opened her [Lydia's] heart to respond to Paul's message." Acts 16:14.

 

Well brother, the majority of your threads are a "correction" of the KJB wording, so it gets tedious for everyone, even those who aren't impressed with the KJB, to always deal with that, especially when an anti-KJB bias on your part is perceived by both sides of the issue.

 

You don't say... No one denied that.

A) it's: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.

B) This is a classic case of resonance whereby we read something into the text because its tenor resonates with our mental framing:



C) This can only be resolved by cold, clinical observation:

• The verse does not say she worshipped God in vain.
• The verse does not say she prayed in vain.
  The verse does not say that God regenerated her.
• The verse does not say that that's how God deals with every man.
• The verse does not say what Paul was saying – it is an assumption that here it was the gospel to which her heart was opened (even if the gospel may have been mentioned). Changing the wording to "message" is biased because it implies "gospel". Lydia may already have been saved, since Luke tells us that she already worshipped God and prayed before meeting Paul.
  Remember, this meeting occured where prayer was wont to be made and there also Luke only says that they spake (not "preached the gospel" - which, again I say, does not automatically imply that they did not preach the gospel) unto the women which resorted thither. It is likely that this was a situation like Apollos' unto whom Aquila and Priscilla expounded...the way of God more perfectly (Acts 18:26). This understanding is strengthened by noting that only her ensuing baptism is mentioned, not her ensuing faith; and by noting that the apostles had had time enough to judge her as faithful to the Lord (the verse does not say "a believer in God"). How could she have been considered faithful to the Lord if she had just gotten saved on the spot? But if she had already been saved and the entourage testified to that, then the noted faithfulness makes more sense.
• That there was a conditionality to God opening her heart is implied in Luke’s noting that she was already a worshipper of God and a pray-er. So if anything, the opening is conditional, just as in Psalm 50:23 and Romans 2:6-11 and Acts 10.

Let me say again, that these are simply observations and considerations which must be taken into account.

Only with assumptions and with confirmation bias can God's opening of Lydia's heart translate into Calvinism.

 

So you're asking me to stop replying to the posts on Calvinism in this thread?
If that is so, fine, I will cease. I do not wish to highjack your thread.

 

In this area, George is not wrong. You have many threads where you attempt to "retranslate" the Bible to fit your theology.

 

I have only eight of John Calvin's New Testament commentaries. In those volumes he cites Augustine 82 times and Chrysostom 84 times.

I have a book edited by Herman J. Selderhuis. Its title is The Calvin Handbook. There is a chapter by Ian Hazlett. It's called Theological Relations --Calvin and the Church Fathers.

"...Chrysostom was his lifelong favorite in matters of biblical exegesis..." (p.127)

"...he will find no other Greek or Latin author in the canon to equal Chrysostom." (p.129)

Types--commentaries and Prefaces by Raymond A. Blacketer

In Chrysostom he finds a model of sound exegesis, that is, a decidedly historical and literal method of interpreting Scripture, despite the fact that, doctrinally, Calvin prefers Augustine's monergistic tendencies..." (p. 191)

 

“Ignorant blowhard”?

Perhaps one should wonder why such offensive epithets are allowed.