Enda, As you will see, I do not agree with your post of April 26, 2003 05:26 PM.
The bible teaches with absolute clarity that man, by nature is dead : Romans 5:12.
Romans 5:12 is not a good scripture upon which to make the claim that the Calvinists make, which is, that man is spiritually dead. for surely this scripture does not address spirituality but natural death that is the consequence of sin.
The bible teaches with absolute clarity that man, by nature is dead :
Rom 5:12. Well then; it was through one man that sin came into the world, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned. 13. Sin already existed in the world before there was any law, even though sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14. Nonetheless death reigned over all from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sin was not the breaking of a commandment, as Adam's was. He prefigured the One who was to come . . .
This scripture does not say that man is dead. It says that man dies because of sin, which is the way that God established it. If you sin You die! And because you do sin, death awaits you. Then Paul goes on to tell us about Jesus, atonement, and so on.
Dead people don't get the opportunity to hear, so Paul was talking to living people. Paul wanted them to know that they can hear the truth and believe in Jesus and have eternal life. If they don't believe then they will surely die. If they do believe, they will just as surely live...and forever.
It tells us that men are bound : 2Tim 2:25
2 Tim 2:22. Turn away from the passions of youth, concentrate on uprightness, faith, love and peace, in union with all those who call on the Lord with a pure heart. 23. Avoid these foolish and undisciplined speculations, understanding that they only give rise to quarrels; 24. and a servant of the Lord must not engage in quarrels, but must be kind to everyone, a good teacher, and patient. 25. He must be gentle when he corrects people who oppose him, in the hope that God may give them a change of mind so that they recognise the truth 26. and come to their senses, escaping the trap of the devil who made them his captives and subjected them to his will.
Nothing here speaks of "being bound"
It shows us that men are blind and deaf : Mark 4:11
Why Jesus spoke in parables
Mark 4:10. When he was alone, the Twelve, together with the others who formed his company, asked what the parables meant. 11. He told them, "To you is granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables, 12. so that they may look and look, but never perceive; listen and listen, but never understand; to avoid changing their ways and being healed."
Jesus was speaking to believing Jews who were "the elect". His own elect, who already believed in Him enough to follow Him away from their jobs and homes. He was speaking of the Jews who had already been hardened perhaps because of the 400 years of silence of God. He was speaking to those hardened Jews in parables because he did not want them to hear the truth and believe, because it was now the threshold of the time of the gentiles.
This scripture does not support your point that mankind is deaf and blind, but rather As Bro. Bill and Ray Berrian have exausted themselves trying to tell you, it addresses the hardening of the Jews in favor of the time of the Gentiles. Thank God for such hardening, for without it, we gentiles would not know Jesus.
It shows us that we are uninstructible : 1 Cor 2:14 I tried to find a place in 1 Cor 2 to break the flow of thought down to be able to isolate on verse 14, but I cannot. So the context of verse 14 does not lend itself to such isolation, so I start with vers 13 for what is said in 13 thru 16.
1 Cor 2:13. And these are what we speak of, not in the terms learnt from human philosophy, but in terms learnt from the Spirit, fitting spiritual language to spiritual things. 14. The natural person has no room for the gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognise them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit. 15. The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the value of everything, and that person's value cannot be assessed by anybody else. 16. For: who has ever known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his adviser? But we are those who have the mind of Christ.
You say verse 14 shows us to be "un-instructable". I say that Paul is declaring to believers that believers receive from the Holy Spirit the discernment of spiritual things, but unbelievers who do not have the Holy Spirit are not able to discern spiritual things. I believe that the "Spiritual things" that Paul speaks of are not the basics of hearing the Word and believing, but rather things like baptism and communion and atonement, etc. Once one becomes a believer, the Holy Spirit is able to provide the discernment of spiritual truthes.
So this scripture does not support your contention that man is not instructable. It is clear that man must pass through the milk-of-the-word stage before man can digest the meat-of-the-word. Man is instructable!
Naturally sinful , by birth (Psalm 51:5) and by practice (Gen 6:5)
The corruption of humanity
Gen 6:5. Yahweh saw that human wickedness was great on earth and that human hearts contrived nothing but wicked schemes all day long. 6. Yahweh regretted having made human beings on earth and was grieved at heart. 7. And Yahweh said, "I shall rid the surface of the earth of the human beings whom I created, human and animal, the creeping things and the birds of heaven, for I regret having made them." 8. But Noah won Yahweh's favour.
Well this is a stretch, but yes there have been times among mankind when sin abounded greatly. This time of Noah is one of those times, and it caused God to think, "Water, Water everywhere..." and alas, there was water, water, everywhere! But God spared mankind 8 individuals with which to continue His Created man, and I might add, the story of man for without it, we would not be discussing this topic. Does this scripture support you point of man being sinners? Sure, but that's not the best part. The best part is God's Grace for Noah and his family and the animals. The bad part is that Noah too was a sinner, and sin continued upon the earth.
So what is to be said of David's expression of recognized guilt after Nathan pointed out the sin to this "man after God's own heart". Again to isolate on only verse 5 of David's lament is to take yet another verse out of context and miss the whole story. To say that man is "naturally sinful, by birth" is to imply that man is totally sinful having no value in the eyes of God. This lamenting King of the Jews also had much to say about the value that God assigns to man. For Example:
Psalms 8
The power of God's name
For the choirmaster On the . . . of Gath Psalm Of David
1. Yahweh our Lord,
how majestic is your name throughout the world!
Whoever keeps singing of your majesty higher than the heavens,
2. even through the mouths of children, or of babes in arms,
you make him a fortress, firm against your foes,
to subdue the enemy and the rebel.
3. I look up at your heavens, shaped by your fingers,
at the moon and the stars you set firm,
4. what are human beings that you spare a thought for them,
or the child of Adam that you care for him?
5. Yet you have made him little less than a god,
you have crowned him with glory and beauty,
6. made him lord of the works of your hands,
put all things under his feet,
7. sheep and cattle, all of them,
and even the wild beasts,
8. birds in the sky, fish in the sea,
when he makes his way across the ocean.
9. Yahweh our Lord,
how majestic your name throughout the world!
You say,
"This then is mans natural state."
man, by nature is dead
man is bound
men are blind and deaf
we are uninstructible
Naturally sinful , by birth and by practice
I say, Hogwash. That may fit your theology, but it does not fit God's scheme of things. Man sins! Man is addicted to sinning, and like addicts, cannot find their own way to freedom from sin. We still have the ability to hear and believe. We are in the lineage of Adam, and have inherited an appetite for sin. So I guess one could say that we are born that way. Those conditions you named do afflict man,
but Man's "natural" position in relation to God is as David stated in Psalm 8. As I have been saying for months, man did not lose any of what God created man to have with the exception that sin separates us from God.
Because of the conditions that afflict man, God made a way for man, He became man for our sake, taught us the way, then paid the penalty for all sins of the world, so that when we believe in Him, we can once again be free of the afflictions of sin and take the rightful place God made for us through out eternity.
