Does God always get what he ultimately wants?

He rules at God's permission and does what God has always intended for him to do.

He cannot afflict Job without permission and when he does GOD gets the credit for it because God was simply using Satan to do His ultimate will.

Sovereignty means that God is bringing to pass his purposes in every event exactly as he always intended to do without fail.

Do you believe this?

 

Yes, this is a very good point.

God blinds the eyes of men. He does it via Satan's wicked hands.

Satan is God's devil and just like all that has ever or will ever exist- he serves the purposes of God to a tee.

Anyone who denies this, denies the Sovereignty of God.

Exactly.

 

Finally an honest adherent to this nameless theology.

You ACTUALLY ADMIT that you do not believe the Bible teaches that God is sovereign.

Whether they want to admit it or not, you represent the beliefs of the others who, like you, have no nameable systematic theology.

Thank you for your honesty.

Wonderful!

That's what I have been trying to get Amy and others to see. If you are going to be consistent in your theology then you cannot believe that God is fulfilling his purposes in every thing.

In fact, you have to admit that he RARELY, if EVER gets his way fully in ANY event that has occurred for the past many thousand years!!!

Thank you for your frankness and clarity.

I wish your peers had your courage.

And now you begin to show that inconsistency that is characteristic of this crowd that has no theology.

And again....

Any theology that says that man thwarts the eternal purposes of God is horrendous but I appreciate your honesty.

So who was IN CHARGE (i.e. sovereign) over that man's eternal destiny?

According to you man is. So man is sovereign over eternity- at least the whole part of eternity that pertains to him.

And forever God does not get his way with that soul. Forever and forever God will not be FULLY sovereign, getting his way over TRILLIONS of souls.

See, if you just think your position through it really is terrible, isn't it?


Does everything that happens happen according to the ultimate purpose and will of God or is man thwarting the purposes and ultimate will of God?

So then God is sovereign over the ends but not the means.

Which means that God is not Sovereign over ANYTHING right now because EVERYTHING that happens now is a MEANS to an end.

So you admit that God is not the Sovereign ruler of the universe right now. In your theology, as I said, you have God FORFEITING his sovereign rule to man for now.

Which is exactly what I said above. God is not getting his way in trillions of events that take place over the earth every day. He never intended for them to happen. He is not bringing them to pass. They are not his ultimate will.

He is just sovereign over what they will PRODUCE in the end.

That means he is NOT sovereign now because MEN are doing things that he NEVER INTENDED for them to do. ZILLIONS of things!

That is horrendous, isn't it?

[/QUOTE]

No. The answer is yes if you are going to be consistent.

If God never ULTIMATELY intended the MEANS then his ultimate will concerning the MEANS is not taking place and thus he is not sovereign but over the ends.

 

So when God permits Satan to blind the eyes of those that do not believe lest they should come to the light of the glorious Gospel, is God getting his way?

If he is not then he is permitting Satan to rule, not under Him, but in his stead.

God may rule the heavens, but he has allowed Satan to be the sovereign ruler of earth. God may intervene from time to time, but the sovereign ruler of earth, for the most part, in your theology, is Satan.

 

Satan ruled under God doing God's will- yet doing it with an evil heart.

 

Your welcome to discuss this of course, but this is really not for you.

You HAVE a theology. It is rooted in history. It is internally consistent. It is, imo, orthodox. No greater fan did Calvin have than Arminius!

I am talking to almost everyone else on this board who is not a Calvinist who have no systematic theology.

You confirm that God wills that men go to hell.

You confirm that God wills everything that ever happens. And rightly you should since your theology has affirmed that.

Your beef is with my Calvinistic interpretation of permissive decrees which I have made clear to you on a number of occasions- which you seem incapable of grasping.

But it is not with the OP.

 

You don't know what you are talking about.

You don't even know what he means when he says directly.

I have affirned no less than two dozen times that God controls all things by two means: proximate cause and/or remote or ultimate cause.

That is what Calvin taught as I have clearly shown before and it is what I ahve said the whole time.

I do not believe that God causes evil DIRECTLY- so you don't know what you are talking about- yet you say it anyway. It seems like we discussed this very thing recently....

 

This is a lie which is becoming a habit of yours.

This is also a lie.

I have explained it in the VERY WORDS of the leading Calvinists of the last several centuries in no uncertain terms- in fact I have explained it in the words of Augustine whose words have been clear on this matter for 1800 years.

Evil is nothing but the absence of good.

This is so just as darkness is nothing but the absence of light.

In order for evil to exist good must simply be absent.

God's permissive decree entails him making his moral goodness vacate a situation. Evil inevitably ensues just as darkness does when light vacates.

This is the oldest reputable Christian theodicy in history.

I do not know why you cannot get it. BILLIONS have.

MILLIONS get it right now. Why you cannot is beyond me.

You don't have to agree with it- but you ought to be able to GET IT.

EXACTLY. Just as the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession say.

God's decrees do not come to pass by BARE PERMISSION.

This is Calvinism.

Any REAL Calvinist who didn't just MAKE UP his beliefs confirms this.

He brings it to pass via the means that I enunciate above. God does not create moral evil but he brings it to pass passively by simply vacating his moral goodness knowing that evil will ensue.

He then permits what is going to happen in that vacated spot to happen.

He does this by not intervening.

This is Calvinism. It is the only theodicy that makes an OUNCE of logical sense.

This is the first sentence in which you have properly represented me in WEEKS!

Yes, this puts me in good company- with Isaiah and Luke and Calvin and Edwards and the vast majority of Calvinists since John Calvin.

Isaiah 53:10- Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Acts 4:27-28- For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.

Westminster and Baptist Confessions:
WCF:

[Which is exactly what I have been saying- The EVIL proceeds directly from the creature- the performance of it from the providence of God.]

[He permitted it but he did not JUST permit it. It occurred by permission but not by BARE permission.]

Which is exactly what I wish they would do so that they can see that you cannot accurately represent me and even when you QUOTE me you lie by adding brackets with words I did not say and that do not represent the CONTEXT of what I was saying in the quotes.

 

I answered that above.

He saw your brackets and knows that you put words in them that are dishonest.

 

No it's cowardly deflection.

The issue is not about how God FEELS when people go to hell.

The issue is that God WILLS that they do.

You agree as you OUGHT to, since you actually have a theology, that God willed in eternity past for a vast number to perish in hell.

You see it such that it was never God's will to save everyone but ONLY to make a WAY for everyone to be saved.

You still see God intending forever in eternity past for multitudes to perish to serve his holy purposes.

But what you dread is that these who you hope to subvert who have no theology will see that you agree with Calvinists on the issue (all except for that "only making a way" part- that is not Calvinism of course- we believe in Substitutionary Atonement).

But the fact is that this is WHY systematization of theology is necessary. It forces you to be consistent.

That's why these people who have no systematic theology can say God is sovereign over all at all times and at the same time HORRIBLY failing in his eternal purposes.

It is utterly ridiculous.

They do not deny as you do Substitutionary Atonement. No. No. They affirm this view as do Calvinists. But you are smarter than that as were all the classical Arminians. You know that that means that God is failing miserably if most folks are not getting saved. You know that that is inconsistent so you deny Substitutionary Atonement.

And KUDOS for doing so!

Your position is much more consistent than those that you want to pull to your side who have no theology.

It is horribly wrong, but it is relatively consistent.

Frankly, I don't yield the premise.

But even if I did I would consider it meaningless.

I am weak in eschatology (not illiterate mind you- but it is by no means one of my strengths).

Yet I have received great marks in my eschatology classes. Anybody can research some aspects and be very weak on the whole.

You are VERY weak on your understanding of Calvinistic theodicy- very weak as I have proven time and time again with the Westminster Confession, Calvin himself, Edwards, Piper- and the list goes on and on.

 

I have explained it and until you apologize for intentionally misrepresenting what I said with your dishonest brackets by attributing my arguments to say that God DOES EVIL- you are lying- I know of no other way to put it.

I answered this with the following in the previous discussion.

And by explaining that evil is NOT something- it is NOTHING.

Nothing CAN come from nothing.

Darkness is NOTHING. It is only the absence of light.

Explain darkness as something with force and being and then you can expect me to explain evil as something.

I did not say that evil is SOMETHING that comes from nothing. It is NOTHING but the absence of good just as darkness is nothing but the absence of light.