let me ask you a question here. "provider of salvation"?
Do you mean He makes salvation possible...but does not save?
or He provides salvation because He ACTUALLY saves?
I'll try to answer your question by avoiding the framework you present. You only give two options, both of which you can potentially turn as opposition. I'm not saying you would, but this was the point I made earlier about semantics. One side of the discussion cannot act as sole decider of the terminology. Your questions are framed similarly to asking a man if he beats his wife with a hammer or a baseball bat. It's a rhetorical game, whether you intended it or not (and I really want to think you did not, as I hope better from you Icon).
When I say the Lord is the sole provider of salvation I mean that the Lord alone provided the atonement necessary for us to be saved, and that He alone can present/offer salvation to a person.
Now, in my belief, the person is a free moral agent, completely capable of denying God and rejecting salvation. Conversely, the person can accept the terms of the gospel, believe on the Lord, and enter into life saved; born again. The preacher does not save anyone. Signing a card does not save. The Lord saves.
Who are his children?
Scripture speaks of the children given to the Son...by the Father. Is that the children you are speaking about.
"Children of God" is, admittedly, a bit of a catch-all term. One can argue that the Children of God are those saved by God, or Israel, or the Elect, or some other group. Personally, I can only speak from experience. I believe myself to be a child of God because He saved me.
it depends on how you answer these questions in large part.
It's pretty clear to me from our discussions that we see things differently. That shouldn't necessarily hinder us from civil conversation and even from acting as friends.
How do you believe that some of us think God "restricts" certain people?
I do not believe he does. The gospel is to go to all men everywhere.
God has never intended to save all men.
As I've stated before, I see in scripture a theology that is contrary to the hardline Calvinistic theology. I believe I offer some backing up of my point in later answers in this post. Please read on. :smilewinkgrin:
it should because that is what Jesus taught;
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?
That's certainly one interpretation. Here's a little background on me, Icon. I'm very much an eclectic when it comes to scriptural interpretation. I don't necessarily believe that each instance of scripture has only a single literal meaning, and no other meaning is useful. No, I see scripture as something the Lord can bless and reveal unto us to be applied to our everyday lives. I mentioned in Sunday School yesterday that after reading certain chapters of Ecclesiastes, I began to wonder if they were actually written 3000 years ago or if they were written 30 years ago in my little Baptist church. That was how God was showing me the scripture's relation to our modern age.
You can certainly apply those words to salvation. You can also recognize another meaning, in which Nicodemus is troubled by trying to understand the meaning, and Jesus basically says to him that you'll never understand where the Spirit is moving to. You can't figure out where wind begins, or where it ends, or to what purpose it moves about. Similarly, in this mortal, corruptible form, we cannot understand the moving of the Spirit. We can only be born about by it, and follow it.
paul is speaking of sanctification as SM already said.:thumbs:
God is absolutely sovereign in salvation...and yet as he enables sinners through means that He has ordained...they; repent, believe, trust, receive Him and his word ,preached and taught....God works in them, they work it out.
I'm not a huge fan of quoting other mortal men who I'm not sure if they were/are divinely inspired. You'll note that I rarely quote someone to prove a point. I'll quote someone in response, but I'd rather quote scripture to establish my point.
That said, here are two quotes that I find interesting:
Jerry Walls (Calvinism/Arminianism debate) said:
Is the God who is revealed most clearly in Jesus a God who would pass over some of His fallen children and leave them in their sins, even though He could save them with their freedom intact?
I don't personally condone or condemn Jerry Walls. I've never met him. I don't agree with everything he has to say. Then again, my grandfather was my greatest influence in my spiritual life, and I didn't agree 100% with him, either. I do like this quote, though, as it makes a good point.
Jesus reveals unto us God. He said if we know Him, then we know the Father. Yet Jesus seemed always willing to help others. He, to my knowledge, never flatly refused someone or turned them away. However, He did offer people the chance to be healed (the impotent man at Bethesda). Sometimes He healed people based on the faith of others (the man let down through the roof). Nothing about God, revealed in Jesus, leads me to believe God would simply pass over someone without giving them the opportunity to come to know Him.
John Calvin said:
Yet sometimes he also causes those whom he illumines only for a time to partake of it; then he justly forsakes them on account of their ungratefulness and strikes them with even greater blindness.”
In John 3, Jesus relates to Nicodemus that men loved darkness rather than light, a symbol of man's preference for sin over the things that are holy, an expected state of the fact that our flesh is at war with the spirit. Calvin states here that God grants to people some form of
illumination for a time, then takes it away from them and strikes them with greater blindness than they had before, all because of their
ungratefulness. Calvin's own quote makes one think that those people could have chosen to be grateful, but did not, a point of view that stands in line with Jesus's own statement in
Matthew 23:37.
The other Calvinists are giving you good answers.....
If you hold to a position that Calvinism is the true theology, then of course they're giving good answers. If you don't hold to Calvinism, then you stand at a point of two opposing ideologies, both of which can point to scripture to make their case.
Do not mix us in with Pinoy, or ewf.....they are badly confused as many are showing on several threads now....The confusion is being unfolded post by post. To read them will confuse you...keep the two groups separate.
When you address them you should understand that they stand opposed to the historic church on these things..yet they think that they alone are the only ones who have truth. They are mistaken:thumbs:
I have to agree with you there, Icon. The PB doctrine has offered some points that have left me simply dumbfounded. I was not attempting to draw a parallel between your beliefs and pinoy's. It was a statement that I have a hard time seeing your respective doctrines within the scripture.
I have a tendency to write (especially on forums like this) in much the same way I would actually talk.