I think our disagreement comes to this: Does God reveal Jesus to some people that subsequently refuse to believe?
My understanding of scripture says no, especially because of Romans 8:30 and Phil 1:6.
Also, reading John 6:29 indicates that our belief is God's work.
Romans 8:30 leaves out belief in the sequence:
predestined-called-justified-glorified.
We may insert belief in here in 2 ways:
1. predestined-called-the sinner has faith and believes-justified-glorified
2. predestined-called-God gives the sinner faith and causes him/her to believe-justified-glorified.
In light of Eph 2:8-10, I opt for #2. It is ALL God's doing, to him be the praise forever!
Ephesians 2:8-10 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Calvin’s god was a Sadistic monster. It wasn’t incumbent upon him to create souls for no other purpose than to torment them eternally in hell. To create a living soul with the ability to feel pain, agony & despair, & to do so solely for the purpose of placing that soul in a place of eternal torture, is vile. Kind of like Calvin wishing to see a person die for a fundamental theological fallacy. Nowhere in the New Testament is it even remotely suggested that we should kill those who don’t believe. You trust Calvin to be right on the idea of souls created for no other purpose than eternal torture, yet you see no problem with him desiring the death of a person mired in theological error. There was no Golden Rule involved in wishing for Servetus’ death. It was a violation of New Testament teaching & a vicious thing to do.
The God revealed in the Bible is not Sadistic. Here is a description of the true God:
9 “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” 2 Pet. 3
The true God doesn’t wish for anyone to spend eternity in torment. In this sense, as in so many others, He is fundamentally different from Calvin’s god.
Ephesians 2:8 does not allow for faith to be the gift referred to. It could in English, but the Greek does not permit it.
“And that (kai touto). Neuter, not feminine taute, and so refers not to pistis (feminine) or to charis (feminine also), but to the act of being saved by grace conditioned on faith on our part. Paul shows that salvation does not have its source (ex humon, out of you) in men, but from God. Besides, it is God’s gift (doron) and not the result of our work.” - Robertson’s Word Pictures
John 6:29 must be read in combination with John 6:28:
“Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Notice that when read in context, Jesus says belief is something WE do, not what God does to us. Notice he does also not follow Calvin, who would have to reply, if honest, “There is nothing for you to do, since you cannot do the work of God. You must wait to see if God gives you belief or not.”
Philippians 1.6 reads, “6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” And as I have pointed out earlier, God initiates all revelation of Himself to us. The question is if that revelation is resistible...and scripture seems to teach that it is, since Jesus rebukes people for their lack of faith, and there are verses about how wee should not resist the Holy Spirit.
Romans 8 says:
“29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
Predestination is not to justification, but to being conformed to the image of Jesus. And those he “foreknew” are the subject of that predestination, but it does not say if those he foreknew means a list of names God picked to save, or those whom God knew would repent and believe.
You also have verses such as Ephesians 1:
“13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
Please notice the first 2 words: “In Him”. All things come from being “in him”. You cannot leave those words out without changing the meaning. And how do we come to be “in him”? “...when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit...”
Again, this is not the picture of something done TO us, but our response to God.
In John 3 we read, “14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Whoever believes”, not “Whoever is given belief”.
Jhn 5:24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
Again, ‘who hears and believes’ - verbs done by man, not done to man by God.
The last verse of John 20: “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
By believing you may have life. Belief is the condition for life, and it is something man does in response to God’s revelation.