HP: Yes God is sovereign and yes He is a Merciful God, and without and apart from His mercy, sinful man has absolutely no hope. Apart from the powers and abilities God grants to man, man can indeed do nothing.
Although all the above statements are indeed true, there are other issues at stake as well, God’s justice for one. If man is born is a state that disallows any other outcome than to be sinners and that continually, man is a sinner by necessity. If that is true, and it is also true that God punishes sin, God could not avoid being seen as completely unjust for punishing man for an inescapable necessitated state.
To this BR adds a notion completely unsubstanciated in Scripture, i.e., somehow God is indeed just due to the notion ( that he claims exists,) that all men are granted the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel. Does not Srcipture clearly state this is not only ‘not the case,’ but is simply not in the plans of God, as clearly stated by the following passage? “Ro 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Moral accountability demands certain conditions, without which any thought of punishment for ‘failure to do the impossible’ is outside the purview of justice. If man is a responsible moral agent, and God is Just and punishes man for moral failure as Scripture clearly states He is and does, the following must as well be true. Man is indeed in possession of a free will at some point in time in his life. Man is endowed by his Creator with not only this ability of contrary choice, but is granted enough knowledge and light as to comprehend not only the command but the obligation to obey. Man must also be granted by his Creator the necessary abilities to choose in accordance to, or in opposition to, such light and abilities, again, if his Creator is Just in demanding obedience and punishing all infractions of His demands as Scripture informs us He is and He does.
You are right in that man's will is indeed rebellious, but rocks are not rebellious, are they? Man must have the ability to do something other than what he does under the very same set of circumstances, but REFUSES to choose the right, in order to be seen as rebellious. If man has no ability to do anything other than what he does, i.e., sin and that continually from birth, rebellion is impossible to conceive of. Sin becomes a mere unaviodable contagion that is nothing more than a necessitated fatalistic notion resulting in God being seen as unjust for punishing man for failure to avoid the 'impossible to avoid,' a feat God Himself could not do.
raying:
