Posted on 06/05/2009 9:01:38 PM PDT by ReformationFan
Even Calvin didn’t believe the extreme positions osme of these FR Calvinists take.
So basically what you are saying is that we don't have free will, and even if we did whatever we freely did has no merit before the eyes of God. It is only the Holy Spirit working within us that merits any interest of God.
So basically we are avatars in a virtual reality machine playing a game which is beside the point. As if we are all running around in a Donkey Kong simulation and God is judging us as if we were in a Mario Brothers simulation.
Worthy? You believe fallen man is "worthy" of God??
So I clearly talk about whether or not the universe as envisioned by Calvinists is worthy of an all-knowing, all-powerful God and you somehow read that as meaning that I said something about "fallen man" being worthy of God.
Instead of reading Romans, maybe you need to go back to reading McGuffey's.
In any case free men will make bad choices, but they will make choices. Do I like the fact that free men make bad choices? No. Do I believe that the bad choices that free men make are worthy of God. No. What I do find worthy of God is that he would make us free and allow us to do our thing and somehow still be able to make His will come about.
Do I like the fact that thousands of people are killed in automobile accidents every year? No. Do I like the fact that someone invented the automobile making it easy for people to get around to do their daily business? Yes. Unfortunately we can't seem to have the one without the other, but some day we may get there.
If we were created in God's image, what does that mean? Does that mean that God has two arms and two legs and is relatively free of hair? I hardly think so. Does it mean that God is capable of using tools and is capable of interacting socially with other similar beings? I hardly think that that is what is meant by "image".
After years of intensive studies comparing humans with the rest of creation, pretty much the only thing we seem to have that they don't is free will. Our every definition of God is definitive that He has free will as well. Might this not be the quality that allows us to agree with the Bible and claim that we have some likeness to God, however pale in comparison?
And again it has nothing to do with me trying to pretend that I am hot stuff. If anything I have low self-esteem. God doesn't need me to argue in his favor, but the truth needs to be told. And the truth is that if humanity is allowed to flourish over the next million years or so we may some day be able to create solar systems and even galaxies. Such works of engineering may become child's play at some time. But design and build even one other being from scratch that has free will. Now that's something!
Praise be to God!
After years of intensive studies comparing humans with the rest of creation, pretty much the only thing we seem to have that they don't is free will.
Wow. That's an amazing statement. Aardvarks possess empathy? Gnats are curious? Viruses feel regret?
There are hundreds of "things" that differentiate human from "the rest of creation." A moral "free will" is not one of them since none possess any awareness of God's goodness unless his spirit has been reborn by God to know the things of God. I've provided the Scripture by Paul regarding the natural man and the spiritual man, and I've provided Christ's words that men do not believe because they are not part of His flock.
You, OTOH, have offered "years of intensive study."
But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." -- Acts 5:38-39"And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought:
In most of the Free Will / Predestination threads Calvinists claimed that they did in fact believe in Free Will and how dare anyone say otherwise.
Their typical form of argument was to cut-and-paste reams of stuff from Sponge and the like which was totally unconvincing.
To be curious, to feel empathy, or to feel regret you have to have free will. Otherwise you are not truly being curious, empathetic, or regretful. You are just following the pre-programmed instructions on the punch cards.
Not true at all. To be righteous do we need "free will?"
Yes. Is my laptop "righteous"?
How about my left shoe? My car?
None of them have free will--and none of them are righteous.
Without free will we are nothing more than puppets on a string. No more righteous or unrighteous than the puppeteer makes us to be--which make the puppeteer righteous or unrighteous.
Wow.
I really wish I’d written that.
Perfect.
Oh good Lord....it's worse than I thought.
They would find Calvinism a shabby and rather creepy con.
On the other hand, if they studied and tried to understand the nature of the little pocket diety created by Jean Cauvin in that French lawyer's own dark image.
Diety, deity. Whoops.
Either way, the god of Calvinism is not the Eternal God of Scripture.
Uh, no.
Calvinist theology originated with . . . wait for it . . . Calvin.
LOL He also invented the rose, the electric blender, stone masonry and non-fat yogurt.
ROFLMTO
Hundreds of thousands, eh? Riiiiiight.
I thought Foxe said it was hundreds of millions, no, hundreds of billions!
Spurgeon would agree with this comment; at least he did so in a sermon on that passage in Titus.
This is a sad state of mind that people fall into sometimes, in which they do not know the difference between God and Calvin...
Oh you did it now!
The two little words that bring Calvinists to a full rolling boil: "Free Will."
Uh, he was referring to the Universe:
...place that is more worthy of an almighty God.
This is what has always hung me up about Calvinism. If God preordained some people for eternal damnation, then it was *necessary* for sin to enter the world.
This then raises the question, at least in my mind, of who is responsible for original sin. There are only two options: man or God.
The Calvinist cannot accept that Adam sinned out of his own free will, because that would make man, and not God, "sovereign" over his own eternal destiny.
But neither can the Calvinist accept that it was God's will that Adam sin, because that would go against every single word of scripture.
I was exposed to Calvinism for the first time almost eight years ago. And after all these years of study and meditation, I keep coming back to this dilemma about who was responsible for original sin. To my mind, it is such a fundamental issue; yet nobody ever seems to address it. At least I have never read or heard of anyone address it.
Surely I'm not the first person to notice the dilemma. Does anyone have any (constructive) thoughts on this?
Oh, and please, if anyone is going to cut and paste large swaths of text, could we at least limit them to the Bible, and not thousand-year-old documents written by obscure theologians I've never heard of? Thanks.
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