Featured Dual Heresy - Torrance

Responding to your first paragraph.

In todays world, one important reason men do not fear God and why they will not repent is because of the false message of Calvinists and others who are taken seriously when they teach that men are unable to repent because God has a favored prechosen few who alone are the objects of his grace and salvation. These guys do great damage to the work of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ with this message, IMO, and leave most men without hope. I don't think these guys are guiltless for this kind of preaching.

Have you read some of the comments by these fellows who have decided there is no real message of judgement in the Revelation that makes any kind of sense? They have proven they do not believe the words. The preacher of the words must first believe the words and call on the unwashed to believe them or he will be preaching a false message.

Psa 115:16 The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.

He did not just recently give the earth to the children of men, he created man to give it to him and he gave dominion over it to the man he created only to have Satan to immediately usurp his authority and subjugate him by tempting him to sin.

Jesus Christ is the man who will regain the authority over the earth by destroying Satan and those who follow him and this man, Jesus, will reign over this earth for a thousand years in time and then forever in eternity whether any one believes it or not. It is best to just believe it and cast your allegience to God in this war.

2 Cor 10:3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds)
5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

 

Not true. I call people to repent, knowing that unless God first quickens them they will not heed my call for repentance. They will not reconcile with God because their will is entirely against God. God must choose to change their deadness into life. The result will be repentance (which you imagine comes before God).

Your opinion is terribly wrong since Reformed Christians have been on the forefront of missions and great awakenings. History proves you utterly wrong.

God has brought great awakenings from this preaching of your despised "Calvinists." It's sad you despise the great work that God has done in saving millions of people by the preaching of "Calvinists."

Just because you cannot make sense of Amillenialism doesn't mean God is not judging the unregenerate and protecting the saints. It just means you don't understand John's apocalyptic writing. That ignorance is all on you.

We prove that futurism does not understand the words of the Letter and thus is still confused about God's work in this world.

And this points right at you, JD.

Thanks for quoting this verse. It does nothing to prove your argument.

We agree.

Jesus is already seated on the throne. (Ephesians 1)
You are forcing a literalism on Revelation 20 and creating an entire scenario from the first 6 verses. You have a story that isn't told in those 6 verses. Read them and see.

Again, your statement points right at you.

Wonderful verses. They tie in with Ephesians 6 and the fight not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual darkness in high places.

 

I am quoting the same man saying the two statements below.

A great awakening in the context of Calvinistic determinism makes no sense and reveals some really bad reasoning.

 

Was Jonathan Edwards a "Calvinist?" What about Whitefield? The Scottish Awakening?
Just because God's Sovereign will being accomplished through those who trust in His Sovereign will makes no sense to you, it doesn't make it incorrect.
God tells us to go and to preach reconciliation. He will quicken dead people according to His will through the preaching of the saints.

Your incapacity to accept God's biblical teaching of predestination does not make it false. It just means you have no sense.

 

What is proven is that God is just as much a prisoner to a set of his own predetermined choices before creation as all angels and men throughout history. In your world of absolute determinism every thought and action of man was the idea of God and you are always conflicted, like in your previous post where you affirmed this teaching in one comment and then in another implied that Whitefield and Edwards were somehow champions of a great awakening.

God does not have free will in the out working of history in time in hyper Calvinism and when your comments implies he does you are being duplicitous. I do not accept this style of philosophy and these inconsistencies makes me distrust Calvinistic thinkers.

 

Is predestination taught in the Bible?

 

@JonC,
Interesting subject. But too many different presuppositions in the discussion.

I agree that both limited atonement and universalism are not Biblical.

And the Biblical Trinity has not less than three views.

And in the incarnation the Son as God the Uncaused Cause became part of His own creation. So that Colossians 1:15-18 is so.

 

yes, the church is predestined to be glorified individually and collectively at it’s rapture. This is the resurrection of the body of Christ. It is our blessed hope. It is the time we will receive our body like unto Christ’s glorious body.

 

We are the church. We were and are predestined to salvation.
(Romans 8:27-30)
And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.

(Ephesians 1:3-14)
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.

 

Only if it is actually not true. If it is the truth, then unlimited or general atonement is the heresy. The law of noncontradiction and excluded middle. You

 

I would love to see how he proved that point. Your OP never provides it. As far as I can see, it's an empty if/then statement.

 

I believe in the Biblical *Trinity and the other two or three Trinity views as false [extra Biblical on some way].

Not holding limited atonement as true, but IF true I fail to see how any deemed Biblical view of the Trinity would be made false.

I have not yet read Torrance's argument.

* Three distinct Persons who are the one YHWH.

 

How or why?
There seems to be four views of the deemed Biblical Trinity. Any of them?

How?

Why?

1 John 5:1, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: . . ."

 

When I started reading Torrance I was looking for his take on the nature of the atonement, but while doing that I noticed he had a new (to me) view of why the atonement could not be limited.

Torrance believed that the Calvinist limited atonement view has the deity of Christ in repose and Christ suffering on the cross only in his humanity. The worth of this sacrifice was infinite, but efficacious only for those the Father had given him. The Father himself was transcendent in all this except that the Father agreed with Christ in will, because he had sent him to die. So, with that separation between the Father and the Son, it could be true that the sacrifice of Christ may be accepted as satisfaction only for the number of the elect that the Father had previously determined.

But Torrance believed that God himself came among us in Christ and assumed upon himself our whole burden of guilt and judgement. He believed that it was God himself bearing our sins, becoming man, taking our place, standing with humanity under divine judgement, God the judge becoming himself the man judged and bearing his own judgement upon the sin of humanity. And he then said we cannot divorce the action of Christ on the cross from the action of God. This is a quote, "The concept of limited atonement divides Christ's divinity from his humanity and thus rests upon a basic Nestorian heresy."

I can provide references for the above but I don't feel personally involved if this becomes an argument so tear into it if you want. I have 1 book by Torrance, "Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ", and am not an expert on him. I notice his works are expensive and difficult to read and so I provide that as reference. I just thought it was interesting to see a rebuttal of limited atonement from someone of a high stature in theological circles and who is well thought of by most Calvinists. (Just plug his name in at the Puritan Board and see.) Plus. I have no idea of what the Nestorian heresy is.

From the definition of it in Torrance's book, it would seem to me that the Reformers did not hold to it but maybe he thought they did in practice.

 

"He bought the whole field, but He particularly bought the treasure that was hidden in that field. "The Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.""
Babies In Hell 2

It's why some prefer 'Particular Redemption' over 'Limited Atonement'.