“Nowhere does it “say,” using your word, that God “reaches down to all” and “not all will believe.” It only says what it says, that “all” that the Father gives to the Son do come to Him, and none of these are cast out. Where do we find your “some”? Where do we find your “if”?”
If you actually READ what I wrote, it was in immediate response to your statement ““The Arminian view is impossible...”. While I was using John 6, I was also responding with what ““The Arminian view” says in light of John 6. I do not know if Monty Python would approve, but it is reasonable to read one sentence in light of the sentence immediately before it.
Once one understand the Arminian view, then how that view applies to John 6 becomes apparent. The interpretation of those verses in John 6 depend largely on what one’s assumptions are about election and calling. The Calvinist assumes the truth of his position is shown by those verses in John 6, but someone of an Arminian viewpoint will read them differently.
The verse simply says “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
Of course, Jesus says, a couple of sentences later, ““And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Thus we know what is the will of the Father: “that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life”. Calvin says that set of people consists of those whose name are on God’s List To Save, and that is the entrance requirement. I say that List is the List of Those Who Believe.
The verses in John 6 can support either interpretation. But since we are saved by grace through faith, rather than grace thru predestination, it seems reasonable that the list is the list of those who respond to God with faith rather than a list of names that God picked without reference to their faith. Indeed, my interpretation is in complete accord with the 500 verses on faith and believing in the New Testament, and require no belief in a “secret will of God”, not discussed in the Bible, that Calvin postulates and then uses to interpret the Bible.
“IOW, they believe, and therefore God gives them to the Son. Where is your evidence for this assertion? It is presupposed, but it is not sourced in the text.”
Neither does it say anywhere in John 6 that those are people who won God’s Life Lottery, when God pulled names out of a celestial hat and decided to save those individuals. The verses in John 6 can be interpreted either way. The difference is that Calvin relies on the “secret will of God”, not found in scripture, while my interpretation is in line with all the rest of the New Testament.
“Now if he “works all things,” there is nothing which He does not work, and if He works all things ‘according to the counsel of His own will,’ it is not according to our will, but His will born from His own plan,”
Part of the fallacy of Calvinism is the belief that God cannot, in His will, give humans ANY freedom. However, there is nothing to support that view. I can give my kids freedom of choice, or not. When riding a horse, I can say “Go left”, or I can let the horse choose. Either way, I am choosing - either a specific path, or to let the other being make a choice. If it is God’s will to present us with a choice, and treat us according to the choice we make, then it IS His will at work, not ours.
Calvin does not get to dictate to God how God must behave. Calvin does not get to tell God He MUST obey Calvin’s will! Calvin does not get to choose the plan of salvation. God already did that:
““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Jesus does not say, “...that whoever is on God’s List of Names shall not perish...and whoever is not on the List of Names is condemned already, because he is not on the List of Names”. JESUS told us what the Father’s will is: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Calvin cannot change it. God is sovereign. Calvin is not.
Your problem is not with Calvin, or those of us that believe in Sovereign Grace, but with God.
Every objection you have is answered in this passage of Scripture:
Romans 9:13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”[h] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”
This is the Papist method of biblical interpretation. I don't care about the Arminian view and how they'd read it, or the Papist view, or the Mormon view of these verses. I just want a plain reading of the text. I say that List is the List of Those Who Believe.
We also say this, as previously explained, as all those given by the Father to the Son, do believe as a consequence. What we are debating, however, is the cause of belief. Please re-read my previous post and properly respond to me. I honestly hate repeating myself all the time.
The verses in John 6 can support either interpretation.
This is, essentially, an admission that you consider John 6 useless for interpretation. It, of itself, has no meaning, and can be twisted either way. But can you prove this? You have not done so.
Neither does it say anywhere in John 6 that those are people who won God’s Life Lottery,
Ignoring your mockery, you know as well as I do that it most certainly does, and I have repeatedly asked you to address my points. I have made direct analysis of the text and have used them against you. Will you respond? Just pretending I've said nothing and shown nothing cannot help you escape this. You must be able to demonstrate an alternative view, or else we must conclude that you have none.
The verses in John 6 can be interpreted either way.
The second time you've said this. But I can't help but to notice the contradiction inherent in this admission. You stated earlier that my view is not in these verses, but then you confess my view is in these verses, because, logically, they can be "interpreted" in that way. That means the nouns and verbs the subjects and the predicates can lead to my reading. But can you actually demonstrate how your view can be interpreted out of these verses in any way?
Part of the fallacy of Calvinism is the belief that God cannot, in His will, give humans ANY freedom. However, there is nothing to support that view. I can give my kids freedom of choice, or not. When riding a horse, I can say “Go left”, or I can let the horse choose.
This doesn't actually respond to the text, again, regarding the God who "works all things according to the counsel of His will." But, to address these totally unrelated arguments, my first response is that you are not an omnipotent, omniscient God.
There is a filthy atheist on facebook who has this posted on his profile page. I copied it down since, from the Augustinian/Paulian/Christian view, it is easy to answer, though harder if you do it from the Arminian view. It has something to do with your response though:
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus
The scripture clearly teaches that God does indeed "work all things according to the counsel of His will." This includes the acts of evil spirits, evil men, kings, rulers, the cast of the lot, etc., a few examples:
Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; (Job 14:4-5)
1Sa 16:14-16 Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre, and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well.”
1Ki 22:19-23 And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the LORD said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you.”
1Ch 21:1 Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel./2Sa 24:1 Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel
Joh_3:27 John answered, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.
Psa 115:3 Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.
Psa 135:6 Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.
Pro_16:4 The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
Pro 21:1 The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.
God has left nothing to chance, not the cast of the lot, nor the day of our death, but works all things according to His will. The answer to the atheist, therefore, is this one:
“… God foreknows nothing contingently, but that He foresees, purposes and does all things according to His own immutable, eternal and infallible will. This bombshell knocks free-will flat, and utterly shatters it; so that those who want to assert it… must deny my bombshell.” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, Eds. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston. Pg. 80)
To explain Luther a little better, what this means is that God, who is omniscient, sees all things before they happened. And, consequently, if He does nothing to change them, He must, therefore, approve of them, and their happening is according to His will. He is not the Arminian who does not know his horse will leap over a fence and cast him off. He is the God who knows all things, and nothing occurs, therefore, without His say so. So the answer to the atheist is: Not only is their evil in the world, but God has purposely ordained it, that every terrible thing, and every good thing, should happen as they do, so that He may bring a greater good out of that evil. So that He may "shew forth His mercy" on the vessels of mercy, and "shew forth His wrath" on the vessels of wrath, ordained to destruction. So all things work according to God's will, and there is not one stray atom in the universe.