Glad you like the duds! I bought them in Hong Kong and save them for kung fu conflict with hoity toity types.skypair said:John of Japan,
Nice threads, man!
I would ask this since you are "in the business" -- have you tried to reconcile some of these issues? The reason I ask is...
my next post.
skypair

Yes, I have tried to reconcile these issues. In keeping with the OP, hoping the Calvinist types do not consider this off topic, I began my studies of the issues 35 years ago in college with a Cal. roommate and two Cal. profs. My Presbyterian roommate could not answer my questions, but was a life saver during an extremely difficult time in my life. If it were not for him chances are I would not be in the ministry.
Also in college I met my best friend to this day (other than my wife), who must be a 5-pointer, given his love for the Puritans, John Gill, etc. I have never discussed the issue with him and will not. It is not worth destroying a precious friendship over. This man supports our ministry monetarily, recently sent evangelistic letters to every home in his home town, and just today we got about 3000 Japanese tracts he paid for and arranged to have sent over.
In the years intervening I have read over and over again and meditated on and consulted commentaries on every passage in question, read through systematic theologies (Strong, Finney, Hodge, Warfield, some of Gill, etc.) on each side, as well as other books on each side and a little bit of Calvin himself. I remain unconvinced that predestination and free will can be reconciled by human thinking.
I have done a grad school paper on the subject (on Rom. 10 and the necessity of the predestination of every action of believers for the possibility of unconditional election to exist), read articles in theological journals on it, occasionally reading the BB threads on the matter (finding little that is relevant to my thinking), and still agree with what Dr. Monroe "Monk" Parker (a brilliant Fundamentalist evangelist and scholar) told me back in the '70's: "I am willing to let God have some secrets." :type: