Featured The Atonement of Christ: What did it REALLY Achieve ? 9

You must be a newbie. Sliverhair has had each verse broken down and shown to him in context exactly what they mean, yet he persists in his humanism, promoting his glory over God in his salvation. Many people have shown him his error, yet his love for himself will not allow him to give God all the glory. It is a fools errand to pay him, and it seems, you, any attention as you are consumed with yourself.

 

@taisto you are hilarious. You do not even make the smallest attempt to support your view. So I have to conclude that it is in fact not defensible.

Come on Taisto you beat your chest and say your view is correct so put up or fold your tent and slink off into the night. I gave you the list of verses and you have shown nothing. This seems to be your typical action, you make the claim then run and hide when asked to support your view.

Why should anyone respect your view if you can not support it and show that it is true from scripture.

 

Now Austin you know that you are just making up stories. Just because you read into scripture what you want to find does not make your view correct. You can see the list of verses that I gave Taisto so show us where what I have said regarding them is wrong.

I have always wondered how having robots, that He made, worship Him gives God any glory. It would seem that when people freely trust in Him and worship Him that would actually be glorifying God.

Austin you have claimed your view is correct well I have to agree with @CJP69 "All you have to do is convince me through sound reason and the plain reading of scripture!"

The balls in your court Austin, what are you going to do with it?

 

Here is God's justice and his mercy.

(John 10:24-30)
The people surrounded him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus replied, “I have already told you, and you don’t believe me. The proof is the work I do in my Father’s name. But you don’t believe me because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

Above, we see that God is the determining cause of belief.

(Romans 9:11-24)
But before they were born, before they had done anything good or bad, she received a message from God. (This message shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes; he calls people, but not according to their good or bad works.) She was told, “Your older son will serve your younger son.” In the words of the Scriptures, “I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau.” Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! For God said to Moses, “I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.” 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?” When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into? In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction. He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory. And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.

This needs no explanation, yet it is assured that those who hate God's right to choose will whine, complain, and try desperately to force this passage to say something other than what it says.

(Ephesians 2:1-10)
Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Again, the person who demands that he be in control, rather than God, will only look at verse 8, while ignoring the rest of the passage.

it is clear that @CJP69, @Silverhair,and @MrW will mock these passages and talk around them, or they will revert to quoting a sentence from here or a sentence from there as their proof text without the slightest concern for the context. For the readers who haven't yet thought through how God saved you, I hope you can see through the bluster of my opponents. Notice that they create a caricature of a man who lived 500 years ago and claim that my faith in Christ is not based on the Bible, but instead upon a man whom few of us have ever read. They cannot accept that my faith is based entirely in God's word. Since they cannot accept it, they argue against a strawman of their own creation and then wonder why no one responds to their foolish comments.

May God bless the reading of His Word.

 

The problem here is this: If nature shares the "Gospel of Repentance", as you claim it does, why then does Jesus tell us to take the gospel to the nations in Mark 16:15? Why must the gospel be proclaimed to all nations before the end comes in Mark 13:10? Why then does Paul write:

[14] How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? [15] And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:14–15 ESV)
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Clearly, there is a general revelation of God and His attributes and His wrath, but the salvation Christ brings, as preached in the Gospel is not part of that. The Gospel is "Special Revelation."

If the gospel were part of general revelation, there would be no need to take the gospel to the nations.

The Archangel

 

What everyone else on this debate forum wishes is that you would do something other than make bald claims with nothing at all to support them other than your own boldly stated personal opinions.

I, for one, do not believe that you have the ability to defend your doctrine with anything that looks like a real argument. All you've got is pure doctrinal assertion with nothing but the fact that you've shown up to state it as evidence that its valid. Your every pretense at biblical evidence, and it is a pretense, is nothing more than your having read your doctrine into the text and chiding anyone who doesn't go along with your theological imagination.

 

Saying it doesn't make it so!

Care to at least try to establish your claim with something that at least looks like an actual argument or is it that we're all just supposed to take your word for it?

 

None of this makes any sense to me. What are you even talking about?

Perhaps you missed the point...

I was attempting to get you to make an actual argument and to engage the debate with substance.

Is that too much to ask of you, or what?

 

(For the sake of brevity (there's 10,000 character limit on this web forum), I've ignored two thirds of the passages that Taisto has cited. The response to one is almost identical in essence to the others. - Also, I will not be responding to anything Taisto says in any detail at all, if he finds it impossible to write posts in one or two colors where I'm not having to spend a bunch of time undoing his formatting in order to write my responses. I've been doing this long enough to know that this is at tactic that people use to be an intentional pain in the backside of anyone who disagrees with them and to discourage detailed responses. - In short, the tactic will work. I don't really care AT ALL about Taisto or anything he has to say and am not writing this post for his benefit. If he wants to participate with some decorum and consideration to the way he effects the people around him, fine. If not, he'll get from me what he deserves, which is nothing at all but ridicule.)

Taisto's use of scripture is a classic Calvinistic example of not only removing the passage from its context but their incessant reading their doctrine into the text. Calvinists have to bring their doctrine to this text and ignore not only the context but whole swaths of scripture not only in the very book these sentences are pulled from but throughout the bible to make these few sentences spoken by Christ to mean anything close to what Taisto is suggesting here. There is a term for this kind of theology. It's called Eisegesis. It's the sort of thing that people like David Koresh did and that others like Benny Hinn do to this day.

Jesus was not teaching predestination here. He was claiming to be God. Practically the entire book of John up to this point shows Jesus saying over and over again that it is those who believe who are His - because they believe!. Here's just one example...

John 5:31 “If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true. 32 There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true. 33 You have sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 Yet I do not receive testimony from man, but I say these things that you may be saved. 35 He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his light. 36 But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me. 37 And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. 38 But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. 39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. 40 But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

41 “I do not receive honor from men. 42 But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. 43 I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. 44 How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”​

Now, isn't that so simple? I don't have to bring any doctrine with me when I read that. I just read it and take it at face value and believe it to be the truth that it is.

One might try to argue that I'm doing the same thing that Taisto is doing only in reverse. I reject that because I don't just have isolated sentences but quote large passages to get the context but let's just entertain the accusation for the sake of argument. Let's say that we are just doing the same thing but from opposite sides of the coin. Let's look at the coin...

On the one side we have Taisto who along with Calvin who believe and base, not only the Soteriology but much of their whole theology on the idea that God is arbitrary....

• “God is moved to mercy for no other reason but that he wills to be merciful.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 22, Paragraph 8)
• “… predestination to glory is the cause of predestination to grace, rather than the converse.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 22, Paragraph 9)
• “Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 1)
• “We cannot assign any reason for his bestowing mercy on his people, but just as it so pleases him, neither can we have any reason for his reprobating others but his will.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 22, Paragraph 11)

​

I and others like me who reject the immutable stone idol of Calvinism, base our understanding of scripture and formulate our doctrine based on the quality of God's character. We base our soteriology, not on God's arbitrary whim that the Calvinists call mercy but on the fact that the loving God of mercy that we worship is also righteous and just and can neither condone nor delete sin by fiat and remain either righteous or just but instead had to endure the searing pain of watching His only Son die a painful death in order to pay the full sticker price for the mercy He desired to show to those whom He created and loves so much.

As it turns out, one is actually FORCED to choose one side or the other of this particular philosophical coin. One will accept the God is arbitrary as the Augustinian doctrine of immutability logically demands or you will accept the God is just. If you choose the former, the best you can do is give lip service to the later because they are mutually exclusive opposites. Arbitrary justice is no more real than round squares or yellow darkness.

That's a laugh! Hypocrite!

Do you actually think that we're all so stupid as to not notice that you are here accusing us of the very thing that you've done ON PURPOSE? You sound like Nancy Pelosi accusing Trump of being a threat to democracy. Literally laughable!

Once again, painting us with the color of paint you're swimming in. There is no bluster, its just us quoting passages of scripture and asking people to take them at face value. That and coming to the scripture with the understanding that God is just and the the terms "arbitrary" and "just" are opposites not synonyms.

You don't have to have read a word Calvin wrote to believe the things he wrote because you learned them from someone who has read them, agreed with them and taught you to agree with them. I bet I can't find five syllables from Calvin's Institutes that you'd admit disagree with.

That's because it isn't. God is just. Your god is arbitrary and capricious in the extreme. Either your god is false or the bible is (or both).

If you had a rational response, all the wild horses on earth could not pull you away from your computer long or far enough to prevent you from posting it here. The fact that you don't do it, even after been chided and even practically begged to do so just means that you do not because you cannot.

But only if he predestined such a blessing, right?

 

Well, there does need to be some effort made to not take general statements as though they are something other than generalities. I often speak in general terms and I expect those with whom I am talking to pay close enough attention to tell when that is happening. I do, however, appreciate that you respond to the misunderstanding by asking clarifying questions rather than insult or accusation.

To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 1:48). If the full gospel, including all that you are referring to as special revelation has been presented to you then you'll be held responsible for what you do with that information but God is not going to send people to Hell because they lived and died in a place where there was no access to that information. Instead, they'll be held responsible for what they were given, which was the testimony of the created order around them.

Romans 2 and Ezekiel 18 (the whole chapters).

 

I know precisely what the TULIP doctrines are and what there philosophical basis is. None of them are biblical in anyway shape fashion or form, unless and except when one starts with those doctrines a-priori and reads them into scripture. There are no exceptions.

 

No you don't. You are clueless.

And your universal statement shows us that you are clueless.

Nope. You are clueless.

Actually, doubly clueless.

God's Word shows you your error. Yet, it is very doubtful that you care since you show us how much contempt you have for God's word and His counsel.

It is odd that someone who openly hates what God says and despises God's elect can waltz into the Baptist community and blaspheme without concern.

You speak as though the response to the Remonstrants comes from a vacuum and that God's word does not pulsate with the truth of total depravity, unmerited election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. You come in here and laughably tell the brothers and sisters that they are all, universally, false. No doubt you are a loyal servant of Greg Boyd and the minions of open theism.


*Genesis 6:5*

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

*Ephesians 1:3-6*

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

*John 10:11*

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

*John 6:44*

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

*John 8:31-32*

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

 

Don't be stupid. I've known what the TULIP doctrines are since I was in sixth grade and I've known what their philosophical basis is for more than two decades.

Saying it doesn't make it so, Austin.

I dare you to debate me on it. You, like every other Calvinist will lose either by admitting publicly that God is unjust or by contradicting yourself and declaring the contradiction "the mystery of the gospel" or "antinomy" or whatever term you choose to use.

Buffoon!

Saying it doesn't make it so!

Prove it! I dare you to try.

I have contempt for the false god of Calvinism and most of Catholicism that buys into a Augustinian/Pagan Greek theology proper that is both antithetical to the God of scripture and non-existent.

It is precisely blasphemy that I hate! I've already gotten one of your ilk to not only openly state that God is unjust but to base his entire soteriology on that premise! You'll do the same if you prove brave enough to actually debate me with any substance - which you almost certainly will not do because its actually you who are the clueless clown that you're pretending me to be.

If you think that I'm an Arminian, you're wrong. Arminianism is a far less logically consistent version of Calvinism, as far as I'm concerned.

Brothers and sisters?

I have no evidence that such labels apply to you or any other Calvinist I've encountered on this website. Not that it doesn't but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and presume they are lost until given good reason to treat them otherwise.

On what basis would you simultaneously connect me with Greg Boyd and the Remonstrants? Greg Boyd isn't an Arminian nor is any other Open theists that I know of. Are you sure you didn't just want to use the term "Remonstrants" to sound like you knew what you were talking about?

Except for Noah and his family.

More specifically and importantly, its hyperbole.

It is the Body of Christ that is predestined, not you or I in particular. Biblical predestination is always, and I say it again, ALWAYS, in reference to groups not specific individuals.

Sheep there being a reference to Israel in particular but who cares about context when you need a good proof-text!

Again, no need for context when a proof-texting barrage is happening!

Then there's always the random verse that one can quote that doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand whether in context or not. Goes to establish an ere of piety.

 

I do not answer stupid questions that answer themselves.

If you have a point, make it.

 

@AustinC I see your back to you usual way of posting. Do you think that just being insulting lifts up you or your philosophy. All it does is show how childish you are. You have called me a humanist more times than enough. So being insulting seems to be the only thing you know how to do.
I could call you a Gnostic or a pagan but I do not even though your philosophy is based on their teachings which Augustine brought into the church and Calvin carried forward.

You are standing on shaky ground and you are not even will to check the history of your theology.