Featured Sympathy for the Arminian, Part 3

they deny the full effectsof the Fall of Adam towards Humanity, try to keep full free will intact still, and deny that jesus really meant that NONE can even come to Him apart from the will and working of both the Father and the Holy Spirit!

We all are born spiirutal blind and deaf, nothing residing withus to respond freely to him!

 

Where does the Bible say we are unable to respond to the gospel?

 

Even this very manner of speaking is merely a Determinist platitude devoid of any real meaning. Even one who is eating food or breathing oxygen isn't exactly doing so "BY HIS OWN POWER".

Inasmuch as:
Act 17:28
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Then no one really believes that one does anything "BY THEIR OWN POWER". Any "power" a human has to do ANYTHING is fundamentally given or granted by God to begin with: Thus, to say they can do it "by their own power" is really a misnomer. A "power" God can Sovereignly grant maybe...but it's not "theirs" to begin with.

But Calvinist Polemic is loaded with trading on such ambiguities to suggest something about the opposition which no one denies....it fools a lot of people.

Even P4T fell for what is essentially a vapid canard. That statement actually SAYS nothing meaningful.

What I have sympathy for...isn't the Arminian, it's the well-intentioned and easily confused sycophant who thinks statements like this make any legitimate point.

 

In Jonathan Edwards 4:6....sheesh Winman, keep up.

 

It's also Manicheanism because in the mind of the Calvinist matter itself possesses innate evil or virtue. It's Medieval folklore.

 

You are twisting his meaning and you know it. The doctrine of total depravity which in turn demands total inability according to any sane interpretation of Romans 8:7-8 robs the Arminian of his whole doctrine of an enabled fallen nature that acts in PARTNERSHIP with the Spirit of God in obtaining eternal life.

The following post has been reposted now for the seventh time and skandelon nor any other Arminian has dared to address it line by line simply because it proves grammatically and by word definition that the fallen nature of man "IS" incapable of participating with God in its salvation either before or after new birth:

Second, This carnal mindset of total inaiblity to please God is due to its nature of enmity toward God. Note that Paul says "IS enmity" not that it might "become" or has the "potential for" enmity as your doctrine of the fallen nature demands. The linking verb "is" is a STATE OF BEING verb and thus is describing what it "IS" by nature. The carnal mind IS enmity.

The term "enmity" means a STATE OF WAR. Hence, the fallen nature IS what it is - a state of war against God. This is what it is BY NATURE. That is its condition. That is its STATE OF BEING. That is not its POTENTIAL or what it MAY BECOME due to hardening but that is what it IS. What something IS, is its nature.

Your whole view of fallen man denies what it IS by nature as your view sees only that as its POTENTIAL due to hardening or something it becomes by process.

My view states this IS its nature and that is why it IS always at all times resistant to God's will/law - "and IS not subject to the law of God." Again, this "IS" what it "IS" by nature. By nature it is RESISTANT to God's will at all times because at all times it "IS" at war with God by nature.

This 'IS" what it "IS" from birth to death as man comes into the world with this kind of FALLEN NATURE and will leave this life with this kind of fallen nature.

Your view cannot accept this NATURE of fallen man because by nature the human will is totally IMPOTENT under the mastery of the law of indwelling sin and is FREE from righteousness and totally DEPRAVED as it IS by nature in a state of war and IS by nature resistant to the will of God and therefore is by nature TOTAL INABILITY to please God - "Neither indeed CAN be. So, they who are in the flesh CANNOT please God."

They CANNOT because they WILL NOT and they WILL NOT because that IS the nature of fallen man or the nature of ENMITY = state of war = the nature of resistance - "not subject to the law of God" That IS the nature of fallen man.

 

have to ask isaiah and paul, as they seemed to indicate that NONE seek and follow after God by themselves, peter agreed with that also!

 

I am not in the least. I am exposing the fallacious way he is trading on shades of meaning and verbal ambiguities....That was the entire purpose of the post.

And I'm correct in my assessment.

It was a meaningless canard.

 

Humanity has a sin nature, that in its very nature we desire to stay in the dark, and that we desire to assert "ourselves", as we mimic in that the Devil, as we refuse to bend to God on our own "wills"

 

No, I'm asking you. You made this statement;

Now show us where the scriptures say we are all born spiritually blind and deaf, and have nothing residing within us to respond freely to Jesus.

If you are going to make statements like this, you should be prepared to support them with scripture.

You don't want to be a false teacher do you? That is a very serious offense.

 

Where does the Bible say this?

You need to quit making unsupported statements like this.

 

Yep. This is a well known trait of anti-cals.

 

God provides the light (knowledge) that enables every man to believe, but the man must open his eyes and see.

Mat 13:5 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.


Jesus said these persons had "closed their eyes lest they should see".

These men were ABLE to see, but they were UNWILLING to see.

A truly blind person is unable to see, but a person who shuts his eyes is not unable, but unwilling.

It is not unlike the Jews who "stopped" their ears when Stephen preached;

Acts 7:57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,

A person who covers their ears is not unable to hear, but unwilling.

And you are a perfect example, I am showing you from scripture that "total inability' is false doctrine, but you are closing your eyes so that you cannot see, and stopping your ears so that you cannot hear.

Some things never change.