Posted on 07/28/2002 12:34:13 AM PDT by A.J.Armitage
I went down to Boystown earlier today.
We were planning to go somewhere else, but we spent so much time getting sushi it was too late, so we went to The Alley instead. The Alley is, as the first line indicates, in Boystown, which is the Chicago gay district. There was parking in The Alley's alley, so we entered via the back door past stacks of free publications (gay and alternative newspapers and old copies of the Onion). The Alley is... different. It's basically a kind of all purpose store for punks, goths, and other people who're unique, just like everyone else they hang out with. It's got odd decorations, clothes, and so on.
One of the T-shirts had a picture of Anton LeVay, with the motto: GOD FAILED.
The shirt wasn't very unusual there; a large proportion of them were blasphemous. But that shirt, I think, is interesting. (Hence this post.)
I'd bet the person who made it never has never encountered anything other than Arminianism. And viewing things from the perspective of the Arminian construct, what other conclusion could there be?
In Arminianism, God had everything great until, whoops, the top angel started getting uppity and started a civil war in Heaven, which, presumably, God didn't want.
So then God creates two perfect people, but can't stop them from being corrupted by the former top angel. So, in spite of the fact that God doesn't want this to be the case, all their decendents turn out bad.
So in a last ditch effort, God personally becomes one and dies to save them all. But He doesn't save them all. He can't even manage to save most of them. His death was mostly just wasted. At the end, He'll be FORCED to throw them in the lake of fire. Assuming, of course, that Someone with His track record can manage to pull off something like making it all happen like it says in the book.
If you believe all that, how could God not be called a failure? If Arminianism is true, God's existence is one of constant frustration. Failure after failure after failure.
That's not my God, and it isn't the God of the Bible.
How is it a travesty of cruelty that they can't avoid what they deserve?
How is making a creature you know is faulty and then allowing it to propogate so that you can make them all suffer eternally "just?"
But Adam wasn't faulty. "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Adam chose on his own to follow Eve into sin, not because God forced him to. As with human sin today, it was God's will to allow it, but He did not cause it. Adam caused it.
The fact that a person is predisposed to evil doesn't make him less culpable. He is predisposed to it because he loves it, and the fact that he loves evil is exactly why he is damned.
Not save everyone; offer everyone the chance to be saved.
Because they can be offered the opportunity to avoid it, and are not.
Amen, brother! If God is not completely sovereign, how can he be God?
Two points:
1. If the opportunity to avoid just punishment can be offered, it's not cruelty but justice to withold the opportunity, since justice requires the punishment to be carried out. God owes us nothing.
2. As it happens, however, the opportunity is offered to everyone. It's just that no one would take it without the intervention of grace.
just punishment
How can one be justly punished for something one didn't do?
If He'll help some, why not others? If they need help, how are they better than the ones damned, and thus why do they deserve salvation more than the damned?
I don't understand what you're asking.
If they need help, how are they better than the ones damned, and thus why do they deserve salvation more than the damned?
They aren't and they don't. Salvation is entirely unmerited.
And thus arbitrary?
And I was cheating on the first one--challenging the Original Sin is going too far.
Yes.
To be clear: salvation is arbitrary, damnation is not.
No, please leave me on your bump list. I do lurk. Thanks!!
All Arminians have a god in their own image. This is nothing new. :D
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