The point is, once a person has been conditioned to think a certain way, it is difficult to think any other way. It is really quite easy to refute all of Calvinism from scripture, but it is difficult to get a Calvinist to view scripture in the same way a non-Cal does, because they have been programmed or conditioned to interpret scripture a certain way. An example is the word "dead", a non-Cal will view it as separation from God, while a Cal will tend to view it more like physical death, therefore a person is unable to believe in the Calvinist mind.
Riddles expose this, riddles trick the mind into thinking a certain way which misleads, even blinds a person away from the answer. In the riddle I showed, most would see it as some sort of mathematical equation or formula. Most would not think of words or letters.
To be fair, all of us do this.
I guessed "Yours!" as the women telling the man they would just leave the bull there, who would then allow the women to talk all they wanted on the phone, then looked up the answer. I would have never thought of the correct answer.
First, thanks for at least attempting to reconcile the rationale behind the thought instead of the more typical, "you are just stupid" or whatever response that we see around here.
Second, you assume that someone who is a Calvinist "must" be programmed, for there is no other way that they could see what they see in Scripture. Yet, I find that many of the avowed Calvinists on this board have a bunch more Bible education than do those who are not (not always, this is a generality). Yet, that means little to you.
Perhaps we "see" things because we process Scripture in formal ways that others cannot because they approach the Scriptures more from an emotional place than a place of scholarship and sound hermaneutics.
Please don't take my statement and run off with it with the old familiar refrain, "Calvinists are all haughty and think they are the only ones who can know anything..." That is not what I am saying. I am, however, saying that many of the arguments against the position do not compute when checked with Scripture, for God is preeminant in virtually every instance where choice is mentioned in the text. He always "arranges the choice" and invites the choice, which means that He has already decided to allow the choice, which is precisely what a Calvinist view stipulates (not the sterotype and strawman "fatalistic determinism" that is so often pressed forward as the Calvinistic view -- only "hyper" hold that, but you have argued before that we are all "hyper" which is mostly mean-spirited, and not scholarly in any sense).
That you think that there may be a "riddle" of perception involved can be said of both sides... And, your answer is incorrect to my own riddle. The answer is "comfortable" -- come-for-the-bull" -- which you could not see because you were looking for the answer to be contained in a single word instead of the fact that there was a deeper meaning within the word to be found -- my contention about Scripture illustrated.
Let's go back to the issue of a "programmed" view of the text.
I've actually read through the text in (now) 7 different tanslations and in the Hebrew and Greek. As I read, I have conditioned myself to examine the text for evidence pro and con for ALL of my theological positions, for the last thing I would want to do as a preacher of God's Word -- a position held by God as both worthy of "double honor" and also worthy of "double condemnation if I teach ascance of what God said" -- and so I WORK at the task of biblical interpretation as well as reading volumes of work by other expert scholars who have gone before so as to inform my reading and study.
What I find, overwhelmingly in the text is that God instigates EVERYTHING. For every verse where there is a choice presented, GOD presents the choice. Where there is a freedom allowed a free moral agent, there is a consequence of God that goes before that choice, and the choice is featured in Scripture to guide us in God's way rather than man's way, even though man's way is the illustration God uses.
Because we are in fact contingent beings, dependent on God for everything pertaining to life, and because there is no "higher" being, cause, rule, law, comandment, love, morality, wisdom, action, deed, thought, being, etc., etc., etc., than God, we also then, rightly, see God as the only possible instigator of a salvific event in the life of a human being separated from Him by the birth. It is not until a "rebirth" that we rejoin our God and remove the separation that exists between us. It is not the multitude of "sins" that separate us from God. It is the fact that we are born of a sinner, Adam, that separates us from God. We ARE Adam's progeny and we carry with us Adam's transgression. Because of our separation, we DO sin (commit sins) which further condem us, but as Christ told Nicodemus, "you are condemed already..." It takes no further action on our part.
I would be happy to go through the entire Bible, verse-by-verse to demonstrate that this is true if you like. Just start pasting in one verse at a time and we'll take the next 10 years and examine every passage. At the end of that time, I am fully convinced that my position will be the correct positon -- enough so that I am willing to take on the project! But, what I expect in return for my sincere effort to illuminate this issue is nothing more than another silly rebuttal and ad homenim attack. We'll see what happens next -- Scripture study or calling me "clueless" as is the case around here all too often of late.
