...Calvinistic system takes this foundational truth one step further by teaching that after the Fall God removed men’s capacity to respond to the call of the gospel,... .
Feel free to comment or question these matters, but I will only engage with civil discussion. Blessings.
Earlier in the thread, annsi addressed the issue of the quote above. She was dead on target, and every other issue cropping up in this thread are side issues.
It appears that Skandelon was either a type of hyper-calvinist that believed in active reprobation, or he didn't understand his teachers, or he got bad information. In any case, it continues to be the case that arminians, pelagians, and the other variations of non-calvinists, even those that "used to be calvinists", cannot seem to accurately represent the tenants of Calvinism.
Indeed, Calvin, nor the Council of Dort, nor any other substantial body of Calvinism that I know of ever said or implied that God REMOVED anyone's capacity to respond to the Gospel. The correct doctrine is that Adam FORFEITED that capacity and we inherited his forfeiture. In contrast, God mercifully quickens some of the lost world of man, enabling him to respond to the call of the Shepherd.
It is also important to understand HOW God hardens a heart. He simply leaves it to its own desires. This is consistent with the Moses/Pharaoh scenario. God told Moses well ahead of time that He, God, would harden Pharaoh’s heart. But then we read in certain places that "Pharaoh hardened his heart", leaving us with the impression that God had nothing to do with that particular instance of hardening. However, when we recognize the fact that when Pharaoh hardens his heart, God is allowing him to harden his heart in accordance with its desires, and so God is said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart. It's not Pharaoh and God taking turns hardening Pharaoh's heart, but it is God and Pharaoh working in concert, in harmony, simultaneously, in hardening Pharaoh's heart, so that it can be consistently said that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and yet Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
From the Westminster and 1689 Confession (no, it's not scripture, but scripture proofs are availabe, and it represents the true Calvinistic teaching):
I. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptations of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit.[1] This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.[2]
II. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion, with God,[3] and so became dead in sin,[4] and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.[5]
III. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed;[6] and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.[7]
IV. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good,[8] and wholly inclined to all evil,[9] do proceed all actual transgressions.[10]
VI. As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God, as a righteous Judge, for former sins,
does blind and harden,
[21] from them He not only withholds His grace whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings, and wrought upon in their hearts;
[22] but sometimes also withdraws the gifts which they had,
[23] and exposes them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin;
[24] and, withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan,
[25] whereby it comes to pass that
they harden themselves, even under those means which God uses for the softening of others.
[26]
. God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil.
[1]
II. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God;
[2] but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.
[3]
III. Man, by
his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation:
[4] so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good,
[5] and dead in sin,
[6] is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
[7]
IV. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin;
[8] and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good;
[9] yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly, or only, will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.
[10]
V. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.
[11]
