Featured All things work together for good...

To equate acceptance of the gospel by faith to "human effort" is a strawman.

 

Yes, Van, you did mess with the intended actual meaning of the text. I provided many translations from true Greek scholars and translation teams. None of them translate the text as you have. Thus, yes, you have messed with the intended actual meaning of the text.

 

It's obvious that you imagine it that way, Van.

 

Your determinism requires that God control all things as your WCF states "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass ". That does not leave you any wiggle room does it. Nothing is left to chance God has His thumb on the scale. Every good or bad deed hes been pre-scripted by Him including all your thoughts. Of course you will deny this and say ya but they look what they said but Dave you forget He even controls those pesky second causes. They and you have painted yourselves into a corner and just can not or rather refuse to see it.

Funny how you keep fighting against free will since God is the one that gave it to man. Look at the "if / then" comments we see in the bible like if you trust in my Son then you will be saved. That is a free will choice. Did God in His omniscience know how people would choose, of course. Did He cause them to make those choices, no. If He had caused them to accept or reject Christ Jesus then that is determinism not free will.Now you may say they freely rejected Christ Jesus and I would agree that many men do just that. But and this seems to be a stumbling block for you. If man can freely reject salvation he can also freely accept salvation. God influencing mans choices via creation, the gospel etc. is not determinism which seems to be what you are holding to.

 

Most certainly is not. Are you a conditionalist?

 

Philosophically, you may have a case, in the sense that believing something implies volition on the believer's part which, when defining "work" in the broadest sense of the term, qualifies as a "work", yes.

But the scriptures never treat faith as a work, as philosophically defined above.

That is why we say that Calvinism is philosophy, not theology.

If the scriptures do not equate free will faith with work (in fact, Paul sets the latter two in opposition), then no philosophy may redefine the scriptural terms, though it be done in the name of oh-so-great-humility.

 

Glad you admitted that.

 

Ditto.

 

Any teaching that conditions salvation on anything other Christ ALONE is a false gospel.

Once man adds conditions to the gospel of Christ, he pollutes it.

Exodus 20:25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

Deuteronomy 27:5 And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them.

 

It is Biblically correct that ALL of salvation, including the gifts of faith and repentance that result from regeneration(which God does by His power ALONE), is conditioned on Christ ALONE. Salvation is not conditioned on man at all, not even his lifting even his little finger.

 

Where does the Bible declare "free will faith" as opposed to God's free gift of faith to the person God has graciously saved?

 

I suppose simply repeating one's doctrine more often and with more bold type, after having granted that one's doctrine is philosophy, is the only remaining avenue.

 

Claiming(whether they realize it or are blind to what they are doing) that salvation is not based on Christ ALONE having met the conditions and adding conditions for man to fulfill in order to be saved from one's sins, as conditionalists do, is indeed vain human philosophy.

 

Ok Ken...

 

In your Calvinist philosophy faith is a work but in the bible it is not a work. {Romans 4:5; Romans 3:28; Galatians 2:16 } So it seems you prefer to follow a man-made philosophy rather than the bible.

 

So you just deny what the bible clearly says and hope that these verses support you errant view.

 

"Nothing hewn, nothing polished by man's art, or man's device; "for if," saith Jehovah, "thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." Behold, how fully Jesus was preached here! There can be nothing offered to the Lord for his acceptance, but what is the Lord's. Jesus is the Father's gift to poor sinners; and when a poor sinner presents before the Father, the Lord Jesus as his whole altar, sacrifice, and offering, he presents to the Father what the Father first presented to him. If the sinner were to join any thing of his own with this offering, this were to pollute it. Sweet thought! my soul, cherish it in the warmest of thine affections; carry it about with thee for thy daily exercise of faith upon the person of Jesus, that nothing of thine may mingle with the pure and perfect salvation, which is alone in him. And, depend upon it, thy God and Father is more honoured, more glorified, and will be more beloved, by such a perfect reliance upon Him in whom his soul delighteth, than he would be by the greatest and most costly sacrifices of thine own providing. The infinite and eternal worth and efficacy of Jesus's blood and righteousness, is upon everlasting record. God is well pleased with him, and his people in him; and a voice from heaven hath proclaimed it to the earth. To offer any thing of our own, by way of making it pleadable, is to pollute it; yea, it is to make it questionable, as if we thought it not complete. And by thus doing, we declare that our hearts are not thoroughly pleased with what Jehovah hath declared himself well pleased, but are seeking to rest our souls, not upon the altar, which is wholly the Lord's, but adding to it of our own. Oh! for grace to make Jesus what the Father hath made him, the all in all of man's salvation; and be ever ready to let him have all the glory, who alone hath accomplished it, "in believing the record that God hath given of his dear Son."

- excerpt from Robert Hawker's The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions, July 26, Evening

 

Sliverhair and George are gonna fall on their straw man again and purposely miss the point in an effort to obfuscate and muck up the clarity of God's word. They will then ignore God's word and call it philosophy. Such is the method of persons who hate the Supremacy of God in all things.

 

You still keep throwing out the old canard in the hope that someone will believe it. George nor I are questioning the sovereignty of God but we are questioning your calvinist philosophy that flies in the face of the biblical text. The fact that you deny scripture is clear to all that read your posts.

 

Sure you are. You demand that God not be the one who determines who will or will not be His adopted child. That is the very definition of one who questions the sovereignty of God. You want to be in control. You want a will that is free from God's determinative will. That is the very definition of one who questions God's sovereignty.

So, you come up with a story that what I point to in the Bible as evidence of God's sovereignty, is...in your words... philosophy rather than God's holy word.