Posted on 11/18/2011 6:13:09 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Next Thursday, as the rest of us tuck into our turkey feasts, hundreds of needy families in Southern California will open "Boxes of Love." Delivered by several churches led by Pacific Crossroads in Santa Monica, Calif., the boxes contain ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal for six. They allow impoverished families to skip food lines and neighborhood pantries and enjoy the holiday in their own homes.
What's unusual about the Pacific Crossroads congregation—and what underpins efforts such as Boxes of Love—is its theologically conservative raison d'être. A member church of the Presbyterian Church in America, Pacific Crossroads is committed to Reformation doctrines such as total depravity (every person is born sinful) and limited atonement (salvation is available only to the elect). These beliefs are typically regarded as ugly and inhumane by American culturati. Yet the church's pastor, Rankin Wilbourne, is happy to pepper his sermons with references to Bono and "Jersey Shore," and the church has grown to around 1,500 members from 500 in three years.
[SNIP]
And so in a city more often associated with Calvin Klein, John Calvin's teachings provide a basis for hope. In his commentary on II Corinthians 8, the 16th-century Swiss theologian connected Christians' assurance of salvation with their freedom to give to the poor:
"What makes us more close-handed than we ought to be is when we look too carefully, and too far forward, in contemplating the dangers that may occur—when we are excessively cautious and careful—when we calculate too narrowly what we will require during our whole life, or, in fine, how much we lose when the smallest portion is taken away. The man that depends upon the blessing of the Lord has his mind set free from these trammels and has, at the same time, his hands opened for beneficence."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Not on who the Person and Nature of Jesus Christ is, or how His sacrifice on the cross saves us:
This hint of subordinationism in Arminius' understanding of the mediatorial office of the Son is more pronounced in his claim that the Son receives His deity, and not merely His personality as Son, from the Father. For Arminius, the Son is not autotheos, but has both "divine essence" and "divine life" of himself. In part, his argument is that the Reformed view of the "autotheotic" reality of the three persons is inevitably tritheistic: "the Reformed doctrine of the Son's aseity . . . violates the unity of the divine essence by postulating three divine persons each God from himself -- in short, by postulating three separate deities and lapsing into tritheism". From his reading of the fathers, Arminius concluded that "God the Father [is] the principium of the Godhead"........In contrast to the Reformed theologians of his time, Arminius believed that the atonement was accomplished purely by the passive obedience of Christ. By his life, Jesus was qualified and prepared to exercise his priesthood, but He actually exercised that priesthood only in his death....Thus "rather than use the idea of a voluntary self-emptying to explain the way in which the eternal Son is subordinate to his work, Arminius tends to view the subordination in terms of the order of persons in the Trinity and to view Christ's as conferred by the Father, without reference to the will or act of the Son"....
....Because Christ's active obedience plays no role in Arminius' understanding of the atonement, room is opened up for human obedience as the means for accomplishing salvation: "As in the satisfaction-theory of the medieval doctors, the distinction between a salvific passive obedience of Christ and a non-salvific active obedience points in the theology of Arminius toward a doctrine of human involvement or cooperation in the work of salvation. In other words, Arminius' separation of Christ's active and passive obedience in his christological locus correlates with his soteriological synergism".
-- from the thread Arminius's Christology
I too believe in reading Scripture and accepting what it says.
Then you wouldn’t believe in individual predestination.
Even if it’s in the Bible?
Okay so what's Calvin's position on free will? You (editorially speaking) do determine your (editorially speaking) destiny. Not G-d. You (editorially speaking) decide to worship Yashua. He doesn't force you (editorially speaking) to love and worship Him.
It’s not there.
Have you read about predestination in Eph 1?
Predestinating Christians to be with Him in Heaven is pretty obvious.
It's not talking about predestinating people who choose to become Christians.
I must run to the doctor. I will try to re-join this conversation later today.
Then God predestined you to be with Him in Heaven before you were born or had an oppotunity to choose.
God had a plan; having faith and thereby going to Heaven wasn't up to your choice.
You have an odd way of communicating. What exactly is "editorially speaking"?
And, no, according to the Scriptures you do not "...determine your own destiny." May want to read Paul's argument against this concept. See Romans (in particular chap. 9). "So then it does not depend upon the man who wills (chooses) or the man who runs (behaves in a certain way), but upon God who has mercy...So then He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires."
Now then...where again was SkyDancer in this situation?
Editorially speaking means what I wrote is not directed at you.
So, you are answering my questions without directing the answers to me? Interesting.
Still curious where SkyDancer was in Rom. 9. Were you the one who willed or the one who runs?
“And you can’t hear unless God specifically opens your ears to do so. He who has ears let him hear”
Could you give me a scripture for that doctrine please? Where does the Bible teach that a man is incapable of hearing and understanding God’s word unless something magical happens?
Mark 4:23
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”
All men have ears and are capable of hearing.
Mark 4:9
And He said to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
God is inviting all men to hear, not just a few.
New King James Version (NKJV) Luke 8:7-9
7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. 8 But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” When He had said these things He cried, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
The Purpose of Parables
9 Then His disciples asked Him, saying, “What does this parable mean?”
10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that
‘ Seeing they may not see,
And hearing they may not understand.’[b]
The Parable of the Sower Explained
11 “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. 15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience
Jesus is the word and His gospel will save you. His word, His gospel is power, no special operation of the Holy Spirit is taught.
Romans 1:16
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,[a] for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
Oh my, okay, you win. Happy?
Actually, sometimes He does. Paul took some fairly severe convincing. God had to knock him off his horse and strike him blind to get his attention.
Paul never said he chose God. He said God chose Him.
Well, for example, read about believing BECAUSE of something.
Here are just 3 verses:
1Cr 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
1Cr 3:5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.
2Ti 3:15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
None speak of God GIVING belief to a person, but of their believing in response to something - Paul’s preaching, or reading the scriptures. God’s word, being true, should not speak of believing in response to some discernible stimuli if belief is something God gives independent of the person.
Forgive me if I don’t take the word of a Calvinist on what Arminius believed. I find most Calvinists don’t even know what he taught about TULIP, let alone anything else.
Do you know more about what Arminius believed than a Calvinist knows?
We don't live in a vacuum on earth.
However, the same God who urges believers to follow His lead to preach and do other good works in order to lead people to God inspired Paul to write in Rom 9:11 about Jacob and Esau:
"Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls - she was told 'the older will serve the younger.' Just as it is written 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.'"
Paul is clearly saying that God elected Esau in the womb. This is similar to what he says in Eph 1 when he speaks about God predestining believers before the world was created.
Meant Jacob.
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