God's Indisputable Sovereignty

Puppets do not love God. Neither do robots. Angels praise God, but I know of no scripture that says they love Him. Love is from redemption, redemption is from transgression, transgression was from the law (command), and the commandment was from God. Love is both from Him and to Him. And it's genuine love. There's no puppetry involved.

Rom 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable [are] his judgments, and his ways past finding out! 34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? 35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? 36 For of him, and through him, and to him, [are] all things: to whom [be] glory for ever. Amen.

 

How can one love without free will?

 

Honestly, we don't just want to discuss "Calvinism" per se. I often put it like this: Not every passage deals with election to salvation. But every passage does deal with the sovereignty of God. And the Sovereignty of God is what I love to discuss.

 

The natural man can not truly love God until his nature has been changed by God.

 

If man CANNOT love God until God changes him and man CANNOT help but love God after he is changed, that is puppetry. God is acting and man is merely reacting.

 

No, that's not the case. A puppet can only react when its strings are pulled. A lost man is not just lying around until his strings are pulled, he is in rebellion against his Creator. Man cannot love God, but it is not because God won't let him, it is because man's love for sin won't let him.

 

When man is in rebellion, is he rebelling of his own free will or is he rebelling because God, in his sovereignty, has ordained that he rebel?

 

Both, IMO. Others may disagree.

Why can't God ordain that a man would freely choose to rebel? Why can't God ordain that Pharoah would freely choose to refuse to let the Israelites go, for example?

 

I agree. God uses the choices of men to fulfill His ordained will.

 

With regard to my question about the dividing line between 5-point Calvinism and Arminanism: Thanks. I did a review of both. My biggest problem is with limited atonement. I can't endorse that (as if my endorsement makes a difference).

 

Why can't God ordain that a man would freely choose to rebel? Why can't God ordain that Pharoah would freely choose to refuse to let the Israelites go, for example?

You are playing with contradictory terms and trying to slide them past as though both could be true at the same time. If something is ordained, it is not a matter of later choice -- it has been ordained. If something is a matter of free choice, then the choice has not been ordained!

If a king has a prisoner and ordains/commands that this prisoner is not to be fed, then the prisoner is most definitely not eating out of his own choice! In fact, if he actually had free choice, he would be doing just the opposite!

If a mother buys her child only blue clothes, then the child has no choice about the color clothes -- he must 'choose' blue to wear.

Choice means the freedom to go one of at least two ways, and the ability to do so.

If I set before a horse a bucket of oats and a bucket of chicken livers and give the horse the 'choice' of what to eat, there is no real choice! It is going against the nature and digestive system of the horse to eat chicken livers. But, I say, I gave the horse the choice!

That is the kind of choice Calvinists say God gives the sinner who is not chosen by Him to be saved. That's not a choice. That is a farce.

If the words in the Bible regarding 'choose', 'seek', 'come, let us reason together,' 'do not harden your hearts' mean anything at all, then man truly has a real choice and a choice which his very nature does not deny him the possibility/ability to make.

Pharaoh, as mentioned, is actually an excellent example. If you read Exodus, you will find he hardened his own heart a number of times before God finished the job for him, just as He told Moses He would. God knew. Pharaoh had a free and available choice, however. A real choice.

 

The Bible affirms that actions can be ordained and freely chosen. See Acts 4:27-28. Clearly the participation of Pilate and Herod and the Jews and the Romans was predestined by God. Either you have to believe that none of those freely chose to participate in the death of Christ, or you have to believe that the Bible is wrong about what happened, or you have to believe that you are wrong. Which is it?

The terms are not contradictory. Please feel free to try to prove that they are if you like. In every instance you show, you have two finite creatures dealing with each other. What you need to show is that an infinite Creator must relate to His finite creatures in the same way that two finite creatures relate to each other. I don't think you can do so. But as I said, please feel free to try.

 

As I just wrote on another thread, to try to say something is ordained and then say you have free choice in the matter is an oxymoron.

A contradiction in terms.

If you have free choice about something, then your choice was not ordained.

Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. That was before the Jews or Romans or Herod or Pilate existed. The historic act was predestined, but who would participate was not. It was their own choice. God knew, but God did not force their choices. "They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen" (v. 28). There is nothing there which says it was determined who would participate beforehand, only that the arrest, mock trials, and crucifixion were determined ahead of time. There are any number of scenarios by which this could have taken place. Those involved did so because they chose to.

Jesus makes reference to the difference between the actions being decided ahead of time and the free will of those who choose to become involved in Matthew 18:7 -- "Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!"

 

Let's talk about oxymorons. Here's the first definition that I found through Google:

Notice the end - "the complex nature of reality" - wouldn't you call infinite God's interaction with His finite creation "complex"? I think that's an understatement. Perhaps an oxymoron is called for here.

As I said before, you really need to prove that God deals with creation the way a king keeps his prisoners or the way a mother buys clothes for her son or the way you feed a horse, if your objection is going to stand. I don't think you can, and I notice that you didn't even try. I think you know better.

When Job wrote "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away", and when the Bible says that Job spoke correctly, do you think Job thought that the Sabeans and the Chaldeans did not want to steal his livestock? Do you think Job was thinking that they were just robots? Surely not. He says that the Sabeans choosing to take his oxen and donkeys was God taking his oxen and donkeys. He says that the Chaldeans choosing to take his camels was God taking his camels. The Bible says he was correct.

The Bible affirms that God does things through the free and determined choices of people. You don't understand how that can be. Neither do I. But I cannot deny what Scripture affirms.

So you think God determined that someone would crucify Christ, but He didn't actually decide who would participate? How did He know that anyone would participate? Boy, wouldn't it have made a mess if God had sent Christ to become one of us but then no one would choose to crucify Him?

When God sent His Son into the world He knew exactly who would participate in His Son's death. Had He not sent Jesus then those people would have not made the choices that they made. By sending His Son He set the plan in motion, and nothing would stop His plan. It came to pass exactly as He determined it would, right down to the last detail, even to the details of each free choice made by those who participated.

 

And, whatever, what about all the prophecies concerning the crucifixion? Isaiah would have looked like a fool for penning chapter 53 if those soldiers hadn't chosen to actually whip Jesus. David would have looked fairly stupid if no one had divided Christ's garments while He was hanging there. If God doesn't determine not only the events to take place, but also the people to do it, then all prophecy is left up to chance and nothing that God says is sure.

 

You two keep playing word games and the only reason I am responding is because of the others reading.

Foreknowledge is not foreordination. God is outside of time. He knew what would happen and when. That did not force the decisions of any of those involved. If it did, Jesus would never have said, "Not my will but thine be done."

 

God knew without a doubt that I would write this reply to you, Helen. I'm sitting here wondering whether to reply, and what to say if I reply, and I'm making all kinds of decisions. I'm writing thoughts and sentences and erasing them, and I'm correcting all kinds of spelling mistakes, and I'm still not sure how this post is going to look. But God is, and He has know it from eternity past, and it will come to pass exactly as He knows it will, and nothing, not even my choices, will prevent what He knows from coming to pass.

Nobody said the foreknowledge is foreordination. There are things that you might foreknow, but you are powerless to foreordain those things. Yes, they are two different things. But again, you are looking at these issues as if God is like one of us, except He's a lot stronger and He's been around a lot longer. For God to foreknow something, that thing must absolutely and without exception come to pass. Whether you want to call those thing 'foreordained' or not does not change the fact that those things the God foreknows will come to pass, every single one of them, even the things that we choose to do when we have any number of other options available at the time.

 

And, to continue whatever's thoughts. If something is absolutely and without exception going to come to pass, the question is "who causes it?" You basically have three options to answer that questions.

1) God, which is what we Calvinists ultimately believe.

2) Blind fate, which neither of us believe

3) You, which is impossible, since, when the action was foreknown, you weren't around yet.

 

You forget that God is outside of time, so He knew me before I was. Thus He also knew what I would choose, and when.

 

First, that didn't answer the question, unless you are saying that because God is outside time you caused your choices before you existed. I'm really not sure whether you're saying that or not.

Second, God still knows what you will choose in the future, and when. Those things will come to pass exactly as God knows they will, and nothing (not even you) will change that. The things that God knows will happen are inevitable. So if your central thesis is corect then you have just proven yourself to be a puppet.

[ April 02, 2006, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: whatever ]