-
Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!
On the other hand, how should a Calvinist respond . . .
- Thread starter billwald
- Start date
glfredrick
New Member
Thanks for the loaded statement, but the answer is no...
We are not mindless robots, nor is the Calvinistic system of theology one that stipulates such. God is much more complicated than that, which you already knew when you posted the drivel you just posted.
How about you spend some of your brain power actually reading up on the subject instead of just starting the next fight? Might be better and more biblical at the same time.
As I am currently reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I found this most interesting: #600 says:
To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of 'predestination', he includes in it each person's free response to his grace: 'In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.' [Acts 4:27-28; cf. Ps 2:1-2] For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.[cf. Mt 26:54; Jn 18:36; 19:11; Acts 3:17-18]
To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of 'predestination', he includes in it each person's free response to his grace: 'In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.' [Acts 4:27-28; cf. Ps 2:1-2] For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.[cf. Mt 26:54; Jn 18:36; 19:11; Acts 3:17-18]
When we invent a philosophical position that contradicts or neutralizes the Holy Spirit's choice of tenses in scripture to explain God's relationship to creation then we have rebuked and thus usurped His choice of terms.
Time is merely a measuring stick for created things and that is why time cannot measure God because he has no beginning point to start such a measurement of His existence. However, God is the author of time and just because His own existence cannot be measured by time does not mean He does not work both before and during time.
If you look at time as simply a measurement of existence then God works before the measuring point began and parallel with time.
The scriptures says we were chosen in Christ BEFORE the foundation of the world and then it speaks of things FROM the foundation of the World. There is no need of an eternal present except as philsophical ploy to reinterpret the scriptures to fit ones own false ideas.
glfredrick
New Member
Um, most Christians hold to an omni-present God...
But, like you said, that does not mean that God does not work in and through time. Evidence is there in Scripture to support that He does, up to and including all the "and after that's" in Revelation.
But, like you said, that does not mean that God does not work in and through time. Evidence is there in Scripture to support that He does, up to and including all the "and after that's" in Revelation.
This is actually a better post than I think the other side will give credit. Within the Godhead there are mysteries that can and should be accepted. God being Sovereign, man being responsible and God being infinite are not contradictory. These are merely difficult for man to fully grasp with our finite mind.
Does man freely choose the choices he is given? Yes! I am completely responsible. However, is God completely and totally Sovereign? Yes! There is not even a sparrow that will fall to the ground apart from my God.
Trying to pit these against one another does not help in the debate and is not an argument against reformed theology. Rather, it is an argument in favor of our finite mind in comparison to a vast and glorious God who is not like us. This should drive us to worship in awe our infinite God
Omni-present speaks to SPACE not time! When we speak of God's relationship to time the word is "eternal"!
glfredrick
New Member
In that space and time are but different dimensions of the same thing, I respectfully disagree, but I understand what you are saying to me in a purely time-oriented aspect.
Does God God get the thanks for my conversion or did I convert because of my making the proper choice/analysis?
The person who rejects, does God or the person get the blame for his rejection?
After all, the correct response yields blessings and the wrong response yields curses. It it equitable if God gets credit for all the proper decisions and humans get the blame for all the improper decisions?
The person who rejects, does God or the person get the blame for his rejection?
After all, the correct response yields blessings and the wrong response yields curses. It it equitable if God gets credit for all the proper decisions and humans get the blame for all the improper decisions?
glfredrick
New Member
The more human you want to be the more culpable you are...
That being said, God holds all humans as fully culpable for their sin. We DARE not blame God, and even using God as a foil for sake of argument is blasphemous in nature. After all, even if God is utterly sovereign (as I and many others believe based on Scripture) He did not sin, and He is also utterly perfect in all His attributes. He can be none other!
That being said, God holds all humans as fully culpable for their sin. We DARE not blame God, and even using God as a foil for sake of argument is blasphemous in nature. After all, even if God is utterly sovereign (as I and many others believe based on Scripture) He did not sin, and He is also utterly perfect in all His attributes. He can be none other!
glfredrick
New Member
Precisely... Thanks for making my point.
I don't believe that ANYONE who wants to make it to heaven will be turned away. I have a mental image of people walking through a pearly gate that has a sign at the entrance that says Enter All That Will. And on the other side of the gate a sign that says The Elect... BUT maybe I'm an idiot.
glfredrick
New Member
That's the point (well sort of...). Those who WANT to are the elect. A lot of those who want to now once did not want to. I was one of them. God can and does change the heart in the process of drawing all people toward Himself for salvation, the drawing phase being part of the components that make up salvation.
We are too sinful to be able to accept Christ on our own. We can not see him through the darkness. And both sides would agree that it is the Holy Spirit that convicts someone... correct? Without that conviction err "regeneration" we can't choose Christ on our own because we live in darkness. To say that we can turn on that light in the darkness gives US all the power and not God. = Elect. We do not control the light in Darkness and without the light you are lost.
John 12:35
35 So Jesus said to them, “For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. 36 While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.”
John 12:35
35 So Jesus said to them, “For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. 36 While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.”