Featured I hold to these points of Calvinism (by the number of)

Again believing on His Name is a fringe benefit given to them Christ died for Phil 1:29

29 For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;

Rom 8:32

32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

With Christ comes all spiritual blessings !

 

Flesh out your comment, as the way it is written it says nothing.

 

Does God save sinners ? When you answer keep in mind 1 Tim 1:15
15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

 

BF you are still just denying the bible. You still are just proof texting. You still fail to look at the context which does not support what you have been saying.

 

Seems to me You dont understand God gives the gift of believing on Christ Phil 1:29

29 For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;

 

So BF who do you think He came to save? Did you forget what I had posted before? Post # 76

 

You are Sliverhair.

Indeed, if one does not believe, one is not saved. The fact is that without God making a person alive, when they are still dead, that person will never believe.

You seem to make God irrelevant and/or impotent in the believing process.

Sliverhair is a humanist. No one should listen to his doctrine. Thus, since you and Sliverhair are one and the same, one should not listen to you.

 

Well, it's hard to argue that point with the responses being fired off around here. But the fact is most Calvinists did consider faith a condition in the sense that if you have faith you will be saved and if you don't you won't. Edwards and Owen both stated this and I would say they had some Calvinist cred. But some Calvinists don't, as @MrW pointed out to me on another thread and as you see by some of the posts here.

 

Dave if you hold to the TULIP then your faith is irrelevant. Those that are included in the Unconditional Election will partake of the Limited Atonement and will be drawn to God by His Irresistible Grace. Calvinists have the person saved before God even gives them faith so as to believe in Christ Jesus. How many times have you heard or said that calvinists were "elect before the foundation of the world" so were they ever in danger of being lost? Not according to their theology.

 

God's sovereignty takes into account all the chain of events that happen. So the fact that someone is elect does not mean that everything necessary for salvation, faith, repentance, perseverance, and so on do not need to happen. I have admitted that some Calvinists make it seem like that is the case but other serious Calvinists insist that it is not the case and so they call faith and things listed with it "conditions". Now they are not conditions in the way an Arminian believes it in the sense that it depends on whether the person himself chooses to do these things as the primary reason salvation is achieved. You do not have the right to declare that if you believe this you are not allowed to hold to the TULIP.

 

@Silverhair. Let me ask you a question. If someone believes that man really has a free will, in the way an Arminian thinks of it; and God knows that in the future in say 2025, that person is going to get saved. If they really have a free will then what if they don't? You might say that God knows their choice but it is still totally free. I say baloney, if he's really free he could change his mind. The fact is, God of course does know, but he knows because he ordains it and it must be so. It's the Arminian system of free will that is logically flawed. People that really think this through will end up believing that God can't really know the future but is able to always ultimately win (he's a better chess player) - or they move towards Calvinism.

 

He saves sinners when they believe. Acts 16:31. They are then born again and are saints (believers, not unbelievers).

So we see that they could not enter in, because of unbelief. Hebrews 3:19.

Here are the unbelievers, and their like, in Revelation 21:8:

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

 

Dave I am not disparaging your faith, what I am saying is that if one holds to the TULIP then logically faith has become irrelevant. If God gives one an Unconditional Irresistible call can it be resisted, NO and since it is unconditional would that not mean that faith in Christ is not required. I am just pointing out the errors I see in that view. The bible is quite clear as I am sure you know. Eph 1:13, Rom 10:9-10, Joh 3:18 all show us that faith in the Son is a condition of salvation, the person has to believe. Faith is not given to them as the calvinist theology states.

Dave you say that "serious Calvinists" call faith and things listed with it "conditions" but then you qualify it by "not conditions in the way an Arminian believes". So how then are they conditions? The primary reason, in fact the only reason salvation is achieved is because God is gracious.

The reality of TULIP is that if you are not one of the Irresistibly chosen ones then you are part of the Irresistibly condemned ones. If you are not one of the Unconditionally elect then you are one of the Unconditionally reprobate. And this was just an arbitrary choice of God. The fact that most calvinist see no problem in this is what I find most disturbing about that view.

I just do not see the character of God, as found in the bible, presented in the calvinist theology.

 

Dave you are conflating foreknowledge with fore causation. God is omniscient so He knows all that will happen which if we went by your view as presented would mean that God is responsible for all the evil and sin in the world. "God of course does know, but he knows because he ordains it and it must be so." That is the dilemma that calvinists have. They want God to determine all things but not the bad things, but it does not work that way. The way many calvinists come across is that they want as deterministic God but only when it is convenient.

Man is judged by God for the actions that he does. If the man rejects Christ Jesus then he is condemned but if the man trusts the gospel message and repents and trusts in Christ Jesus then God graciously will save him. This is what the bible tells us over and over so how is that logically flawed?

By the way since I am not an Arminian I do not know what their free will view is.

 

No, unconditional in the TULIP means God does not look around for people who have certain qualities of their own that he rewards by saving them. Israel was chosen and the bible talks about how they were NOT special. The elect will be saved, it is not up to chance, but if the bible says faith is a condition then I know that if both of those things are true and scriptural both will be found. If I were looking around in a group of students to start a basketball team I would look for agile, tall kids who could jump and run well. The "U" is just saying God does not do it that way in salvation.

 

I actually agree with you there. Personally I think that is the weakest point in Calvinism. When you go to the logical conclusion of determinism you do get to where God is the author of evil. I was only pointing out in that post that if you go to the logical endpoint of nondeterminism you get to where not even God could really know the future. The only way to really know the future is to determine it. If a person REALLY is truly free in an autonomous sense then you cannot be sure of what he will do. The real conclusion is that we are obviously as humans, at the end of our abilities in these areas and have to humbly trust God. And it's why I don't think the TULIP is a primary issue and I certainly don't think it's a test of orthodoxy.

 

What you ned to understand is that Calvin did not invent Calvinism. Men like Wiliam Tyndale, Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr were 'calvinists' while Calvin was still in short pants.
Before the Reformation, proto-Reformers like John Wycliffe and Robert Grosseteste might also be described as proto-Calvinists, and before them, Gottschalk of Orbais (805-869) forming a golden chain back to Augustine and Paul..

 

*Ephesians 2:4-5*
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

The Bible speaks differently from you.

 

You may have been correct in your post until you added Paul to your list. Paul did not teach what is now called calvinism. How many times have calvinists said that it took Augustine to show the proper understanding of the bible, the proper understanding of salvation. He brought his gnostic philosophy into his understanding of the bible. He actually held to free will until he had to deal with Pelagius at which point he run to the far end of the logic pool rather than stand his ground against Pelagius's false teachings.

The only way you can find calvinism in Paul is through a misreading of the text.

 

Does God determine that which we consider bad? The answer is a very biblical...yes.

Read Job.
Read Habakkuk.
Read Jeremiah.
Read Ezekiel.
Read the Gospels.

I find that the free will philosophy works hard to deny the truth that God chooses to use evil to accomplish His good will.
Instead, they lift up Satan and man above their position.