Prooftexting is not very helpful, Johannes.
Shucks Dion, ya forgot to exhort gbcdoj to refrain from prooftexting.
Nevertheless, I sure would like to know how the redundancy of "necessitarian predestinarian" is different from the oxymoronic "nonnecessitarian predestinarian"?
Frankly, I was trying to figure a way to respond to gbcdoj since the essence of his two quotes are noncontradictory. Sure there are nuances between Calvin and Aquinas in regards to the God-human relation. Perhaps what is most notable is that Calvin is not very politically correct in his coherent understanding of original sin. Yet, first cause is first cause irrespective of the spin. But hey, you guys have been propogandized for so long ya probably don't realize that Biblical Christians understand secondary causes. Here's a little sampler from HG Hart on secondary causes.
According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, for instance, providence is "God's most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions." What lies behind this understanding is the belief that God works his purposes through secondary means, not simply through his direct and miraculous deeds. Whatever appears to be the cause of natural effects, as believers we know also that God is using those secondary causes for the effects he desires. To say that the sun burned off the morning fog does not deny God's hand in nature; we are merely describing the means he used to clear the sky. Likewise, in Reformation studies, to claim that the buffer role Prince Frederick III played in the life of Martin Luther doesn't negate God's role. Frederick was the secondary cause God used to protect Luther from the higher powers of the papacy and the emperor (something that the martyrs John Wycliffe and John Huss lacked).The same point can be made about conversion or salvation. Ordinarily God does not dramatically claim us as he did the Apostle Paul. God does not appear in person and blind the new believer. Rather, he uses a variety of means in the course of a believer's life to carry out his saving purpose. One example of this kind of providence is the influence of family and friends. Statistics reveal overwhelmingly that those who come to make a profession of faith do so in part because of the influence of a believing family member or friend. Another example is preaching. God does not wallop sinners over the head but uses the proclamation of the Word as a means toward faith and repentance. The same is true of sanctification. Paul exhorts us to work out our faith in fear and trembling. This means that we must, in the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, make "diligent use" of the means of grace: the Word and the Sacraments. But we know that ultimately it is God who is at work in us (Phil. 2:10-11).
These secondary means alone do not guarantee God's saving grace. His Spirit has to be at work for any of these means to be effective; thus, the need for supernatural and miraculous activity as the fundamentalists insisted. But Scripture clearly teaches that God uses secondary means to carry out his purposes both in restraining evil and in redeeming his people. In other words, God saves both though providence and miracles. What is more, the secondary causes are as much the work of God as are miracles. If we fail to see this we run the risk of espousing a deistic view of salvation, one where God winds up the clock of the soul in the act of conversion and then lets it run its own course by its own powers. Contrary to deism, the Bible teaches that God is always involved and ever active in sustaining and upholding his creation. The same is no less true of redemption. Whether it occurs providentially or supernaturally, nothing happens without God's purpose.