Do Anti-Calvinists Believe God is a Robot?

[npetreley]

shilo, you seem to think God is limited to the passage of time as we perceive it. Given that assumption, nothing anyone says to you about predestination is going to make any sense.

 

[Eric B]

If it's a direct parallel, then we have these "weed" people sown by the enemy, and the "wheat" people sown by God. God foreknew long before He planted the "wheat" that the enemy would sow "weeds." So he chose before the foundation of the earth that only the wheat would be saved, and the weeds burned. From our perspective, however, we have no idea who's a wheat and who's a weed. So we can't fathom the possibility that what God is doing is not only fair, but it's the only reasonable way to handle the situation.

Like I said, I don't claim that it's a perfect parallel...

It's a bad analogy period when assessing the "fairness" issue. No, we can't fathom how God interacts in time and with foreknowledge. If we take "wheat" and "tares" to be solid unchangeable groups of specific individuals, than you have Satan as the creator of the non-elect (God didn't "sow" them at all). And as shilo is getting at, the elect were never lost. The reason we can't know who the tares are is because we can't see into people's hearts to tell which professing "Christians" are really fake, and who now in rebellion will eventually repent, or will never repent. (That's why I wonder why sometimes I see speculation of up to 80% of SBC's being lost and the Calvinists take this and say "why are we making these tares feel good?" as someone recently posted or posted a link elsewhere on the BB. How do we know they're tares?)

Allow me to introduce you to my good friend, Mr. Paragraph. He will be your friend if you let him.

Sorry if you had trouble reading it. It was copied from my page, and I didn't add spaces between the paragraphs to try and not make it any longer than it is.