bound said:
If Creation is ultimately all determined by God then who ultimately is He judging, Himself? If we make a dump-truck can we blame it for being a dump-truck? This is where I have trouble understanding Calvinist Theology.
From my perspective Calvinist's want salvation to be the sole act of God and yet demand that damnation be the fault of man who they argue is ultimately without self-determination of the fact. If as Calvinist's argue that God saves and damns without any participation by man He is arbitary and not the source of good at all unless you define good by God's whim and not by God's nature which is immutable and thus consistant.
Doesn't a exhortation assume the ability to make a choice? What is the purpose if all is determined?
Great post and I look forward to your participation.
Peace and God Bless.
Let me give this quote:
""you [Arminians] ... say that the Augustinian tradition subordinates the love of God to the will of God ... But this is not what distinguishes the Augustinian tradition from the Arminian tradition. The distinction is between intensive and extensive love, between an intensive love that saves its loved ones, and an extensive love that loves everyone in general and saves no one in particular.
Or if you really wish to cast this in terms of willpower, it's the distinction between divine willpower and human willpower. Or, to put the two together, does God will the salvation of everyone with a weak-willed, ineffectual love, or does God love his loved ones with a resolute will that gets the job done?
The God of Calvin is the good shepherd, who names and numbers his sheep, who saves the lost sheep and fends off the wolf. The God of Wesley is the hireling, who knows not the flock by name and number, who lets the sheep go astray and be eaten by the wolf. Which is more loving, I ask?"
- Steve Hays
Charles Spurgeon said:
"What the Arminian wants to do is to arouse man's activity: what we want to do is to kill it once for all---to show him that he is lost and ruined, and that his activities are not now at all equal to the work of conversion; that he must look upward. They seek to make the man stand up: we seek to bring him down, and make him feel that there he lies in the hand of God, and that his business is to submit himself to God, and cry aloud, 'Lord, save, or we perish.' We hold that man is never so near grace as when he begins to feel he can do nothing at all. When he says, 'I can pray, I can believe, I can do this, and I can do the other,' marks of self-sufficiency and arrogance are on his brow."
Calvinism depends wholey on the working of God. While Arminianism preaches man working in co-operation with God. That is why I reject Arminianism.
Questions that must be answered biblically by all Arminians:
What makes you to differ from others? Grace or faith? If your neighbor was given the same grace as you prior to faith, why do you believe in Christ, while your unbelieving neighbor does not? How did your hostility to Christ turn to love for Him? Is this something you were innately gifted with (but not your neighbor?) Is it grace that makes you to differ from other men or your free will? If by grace then why don't all men have the same response? As a natural man were you more spiritually sensitive, wise or did you naturually generate affection for Christ? Did you disarm your own hostility to Christ? Was the humility itself needed to submit to the humbling terms of the gospel, from grace or from your autonomous free will? Does God love you because of your obedience to His command to believe? Does not that make the love of God conditional, in the Arminian scheme? Can you thank God for your faith? Or is this the one thing you can thank yourself for?
Everybody I talk to rejects the God of Calvin because they think all actions, even the sinfull ones are "predetermined" or "predestinated" by God. No man can act outside of what God has predestinated for them. They reject Calvinism because we preach "predestination" as stated in Eph. 1:5. Yes God did predestinate me to be one of His before the founding of the world. They reject Calvinism because they say it limits "free-will" which Arminianism stands for. I say, they are wrong. Predestination does not limit "free-will." What if one who is "predestinated" to be one of the "elect," lives a lifetime of sin. And upon his death bed he/she comes to the realization that they are going to die without Jesus and spend an eternity in hell. So they accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior just before they die. Does that work against predestination and free-will? No it does not. Predestination simply says that we were chosen to be His before the world was founded, it never says
when we are to come to Him. Predestination does not counter "free-will."
"Oh!" saith the Arminian, "men may be saved if they will." We reply, "My dear sir, we all believe that; but it is just the "if they will" that is the difficulty. We assert that no man will come to Christ unless he be drawn; nay, we do not assert it, but Christ himself declares it--"Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life;' and as long as that "ye will not come' stands on record in Holy Scripture, we shall not be brought to believe in any doctrine of the freedom of the human will." It is strange how people, when talking about free-will, talk of things which they do not at all understand. "Now," says one, "I believe men can be saved if they will." My dear sir, that is not the question at all. The question is, are men ever found naturally willing to submit to the humbling terms of the gospel of Christ? We declare, upon Scriptural authority, that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, and so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful. supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ. You reply, that men sometimes are willing, without the help of the Holy Spirit. I answer--Did you ever meet with any person who was?... "
- C.H. Spurgeon (Human Inability)
I question whether we have preached the whole counsel of God, unless predestination with all its solemnity and sureness be continually declared.
- C.H. Spurgeon (Sermons, Vol. 6, p. 26)
That and so much more is why I reject Arminianism.
Till all are one.
