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This is a standard Calvinist answer. "We can't understand it - It's a paradox!" There is no problem with the freewill position in saying that a perfect being could choose to be less than perfect, if freewill indeed means the choice to obey or disobey.
And I would state that a sovereign God who in the way Calvinists would define "sovereign" would have to be the cause of evil in the world. How can you logically come to a infralapsarian conclusion? Either way, God decided that man should fall.
That would be if I did not believe that God regenerates a man to the point where he can choose.
Considering I've already got a new nature, there's no need to 'repent and believe' again.
Dunno. I made a choice to follow. It's got to be a better deal to give Joe Blow a chance than to create him just for destruction. That would make me much "better" than him, too, don't ya think? (See the post above for an example of a Calvinist who insists that he has been loved especially - where logically the 'non-elect' are not.)
If initiating everything makes God the author of evil, then how do YOU get around God being the author of evil? At the very least, God got the whole ball rolling with His creative act. If He hadn't created, would there be evil?</font>[/QUOTE]God allowed for the possibility of evil when he created freedom for his creative creatures. Humankind, who in the image of God also create, create by our actions both good and evil. Humankind created evil. The fault is ours. We have a very real freedom to act (within the context of human frailties and material conditions), both to love God or reject Him. Doing things contrary to this reciprocal love for God and each other is sin.
I agree that the fault is ours. But Scott seems to say that God simply initiating things makes Him the author of evil.
But it is even more than allowing for the possibility of evil, for couldn't He foresee that giving people "freewill" would result in the fall? And yet, He chose to create man with "freewill" anyway, didn't He? God started the ball rolling, a ball which He knew, sooner rather than later, would result in mankind's sin.
A person is either regenerated(born again) or he is not. There is not such thing as being partially regenerated or partially born again.
God did not decree the Fall - that is a major difference between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism. That does not mean that God didn't know it would happen and had already decided how to deal with it.
The Bible teaches individual election of the saints (Romans 8 & 9).
Not necessarily. Let's say I have a child. I can either force him to do evil, or I can give him a choice. If he disobeys, that's his own doing, not me as a parent.
No, in the Calvinist model (from Calvin himself), God allowed evil so he could only save a few. For the rest, he allowed evil so they could be created to be damned.
Please show me where any Calvinist says God forced Adam to do evil--or, for that matter, that He forces anyone to do evil. Can you find any Calvinist who says Adam--or anyone else--didn't have a choice? Can you find any Calvinist who says that when anyone, including Adam, disobeys, it's not His own doing, but God's?
Please notice that I wrote that part of His purpose for allowing evil is to redeem mankind. (And I don't believe it is only a few! Redeemed mankind will be too great to number.) I can only guess at the other reasons for allowing sin. I don't know the reason He created people who will be damned, but the freewill model has exactly the same problem.