Posted on 12/29/2001 1:02:06 PM PST by AndrewSshi
A planet of playthings, You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. --Rush, “Freewill,” ©1980.
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance.
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
“The stars aren’t aligned-
Or the gods are malign”
Blame is better to give than receive.
…
All preordained-
A prisoner in chains-
A victim of venomous fate.
Kicked in the face,
You can't pray for a place
In Heaven's unearthly estate.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear-
I will choose Free Will.
When Martin Luther defied a Pope and proclaimed salvation only through the ineffable grace of God, he had no idea that he was rending the body of the ancient church that had for so long known only unity. As his revolution spread, though, all Christendom watched as the Church began to fracture like one of the rose windows smashed by a maddened Swiss mob. Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and a large portion of the Swiss cantons turned away from the faith they had known for centuries, causing no small consternation in a civilization that valued timeless truths above novelty, and which viewed the past as the repository of truth and the present and future as decay. When the reformers were accused by men like Cardinal Sadoleto of pulling away from their faith for the sake of unprecedented novelties, both Luther and Calvin responded that it was their medieval forbears who had introduced devilish novelties into the Church, and that they were merely restoring Christianity to its ancient form (“Reply,” 56).
Such claims and counter claims were absolutely vital in the spirit of those times. For if Christ had indeed left His authority with a body of believers upon his ascension, then any faction claiming to possess the true meaning of His scriptures would logically have to be in agreement with that original body that carried on Christ’s truth after His return to His Father. It is outside of the purview of the discipline of history to ask questions about the existence and nature of God or the supernatural claims of any institution. We can, however, examine the claims of historical continuity by the various parties involved: Were Doctors Luther and Calvin reclaiming an ancient theology obscured by centuries of scholastic decadence, or were they, as their opponents claimed, introducing novelties never before seen under the sun? I intend, through an examination of patristic sources in comparison to Luther and Calvin, to demonstrate that the reformers reclaimed certain Augustinian principles, but in carrying them to their logical extremes, went to lengths that were utterly without precedent.
In examining the Reformation and its dogmas, we must first understand the key fulcrum upon which the reformation turned. This point, though, is often obscured when navigating through a list of secondary issues like use of images, liturgical style, church property, etc. We would do well to note that all of these issues pale besides that which drove the reformers to the lengths they went—“Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith.” The reformation stands or falls on the basis of the assertion that man is justified before God only through His ineffable grace, by faith alone.
At the outset, this should not seem like too much of a problem. Even the most adamant pre-Vatican II Catholic will acknowledge the corrupt nature of man and inability to approach the righteousness of Christ without divine grace. Why then, did the reformers’ preaching of grace cause such a stir? If we delve below the surface, the problem with sola fide soon becomes apparent. If salvation comes by grace through faith alone, then no works of man can have anything do to with his salvation. If that is the case, then, as Luther tells us, this discounts any act of the will, for if one were to be able to will oneself to believe, faith would simply be a meritorious work (Luther, 135). Calvin reaches a similar conclusion in his Institutes (XXI, 1), and such thinking leaves us with the uncomfortable notion that, if one is to be saved by faith alone, then man, shorn of his free will, is reduced to the role of a puppet dancing on God’s strings. This of course opens up a host of other difficulties, and the perplexed believer is left asking if God in His love also responsible for evil. In the end, the Roman Catholic Church rejected reformed dogma in order to defend the doctrine of man’s freedom (Tracy, 101).
This rejection then left the reformers in the position of standing against the ancient Catholic Church and demanding that they, rather than the ancient church, possessed apostolic truth. Erasmus of Rotterdam had this to say about Luther’s claim to have re-discovered the truth:
Even though Christ’s spirit might permit His people to be in error in an unimportant question on which man’s salvation does not depend, no one would believe that this Spirit has deliberately overlooked error in His church for 1300 years, and that He did not deem one of all the pious and saintly Church Fathers worthy to be inspired, with what, they contend, is the very essence of all evangelical teaching (Erasmus, 19).Erasmus lays a fairly serious charge at Luther’s feet. The answer, then to the question of whether or not the reformers held views in concord with the ancient church lies in ascertaining Erasmus’s assertion that the denial of free will is completely alien to the historical record of the Church’s teachings.
Since Erasmus felt it meet to bring the Church Fathers into the discussion, I shall begin my examination with patristic sources. I intend first to examine the works of Justin Martyr, a second century convert and one of the first Christian apologists. I intend to examine Justin’s work as a case study for several reasons, chief of which are that his first and second apologies were written both to answer objections to the Christian faith and outline its basic principles, and, if we are looking for a picture of early Christianity as handed down to the apostles, we could do no better than to examine the product of a Church removed from the death of the last apostle by less than a century.
To properly comprehend the early Church’s positions on the freedom of the will, we must first examine the philosophical background of the classical world from which Christianity emerged. We quickly find that, as a general rule, the classical world was hostile to the notion of humanity possessing the free ability to choose. Democritus with his mechanistic view of the cosmos and the Eleatics with their monism both held that all events and choices were under the sway of a deterministic necessity (“Free Will”). Aristotle was a bit more optimistic, allowing for contingency, but then, with his cosmos brought into being by a primum mobile, it is hard to escape the notion that all subsequent causes must be dependent of the first cause (ibid). Nor did the stoics allow for free choice, which was precluded by their pantheistic picture of the universe (ibid). It was against such background that Christianity addressed the issue of man’s freedom.
In Chapters XLIII and XLIV of his Second Apology, Justin examines the question as to whether or not men are free. His conclusion is an unambiguous rejection of the classical world’s determinism. Martyr makes several arguments, one based on a usage of the term “devour” in Isaiah, and another on the dubious notion that Plato learned what he knew from the Hebrew prophets (Martyr, XLIV). We shall pass over these, though, in favor of the much more powerful argument of responsibility. He tells his reader “unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions” (Martyr, XLIII). Justin hammers this point home further in stating that God made man, “not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice” (ibid). For Martyr, the sinner would not be worthy of punishment if his action were not of his own volition, but a result of the condition in which he was made (ibid). He then quotes Deuteronomy 30:15, 19: “Behold before thy face are good and evil: choose the good” (1.2.5).
Augustine in his answer affirmed that man does evil through the use of his free choice (Free Choice, 1.16.35), and that evil comes not from God, but rather from a negation of His goodness, that is, in a man turning from the good that which is God to follow his own desires (ibid, 2.20.54). In agreement with Justin Martyr, he asks rhetorically, “How could a man be punished justly, if he used his will for the very purpose for which it was given” (ibid, 2.1.3)? He goes on to state that to be justly punished, sin must be committed by a free act of the will (ibid).
In this context, when Augustine speaks of the decrees of God, he speaks of God’s predestination as coming through the foreknowledge of His omniscience. Indeed, he goes out of his way to state that foreknowledge is not the same as compulsion (Free Choice, 3.4.10), and states that, simply because God has foreseen an evil does not mean that He is responsible (ibid, 3.4.11). He draws the notion of foreknowledge to its logical conclusion, stating that because God foreknows everything, then events must happen as He has foreseen (ibid, 3.3.8). This appears to satisfactorily wrap up the issue of God’s decrees.
All of the above would seem to create the impression that God’s only action in working out His will is in foreseeing that which will occur and thus working out His will through man’s will. But we must carefully bear in mind that Augustine is speaking of the origins of evil. We have not yet examined what Augustine taught from scripture concerning, not man’s reprobation, but his salvation. When we look to this issue, the picture of Augustine becomes much murkier.
Augustine notes that the first man fell through his own completely free choice. Adam, in Augustine’s thinking, was completely free to choose either good or evil, and opted for evil (Free Choice, 3.24.73). From this point, humanity was enslaved to original sin. The original sin came through free will, but subsequently, though still free, the will was subject to corruption, and thus, unable to rise to salvation. This can be summed up in the statement, “But, though man fell through his own will, he cannot rise through his own will” (ibid, 2.20.54).
At this point in his career, Augustine might have been willing to acknowledge that man can freely look for the grace of God in order to assist him in doing good, stating that man, though subject to concupiscence, nonetheless has the knowledge of God, by whose grace he might rise to a higher state (ibid, 3.19.53). If we were to cease our examination of Augustine here, we would find a ready partisan of Rome, affirming man’s free choice, predestination through foreknowledge, and the ability of man to choose God. Alas, the picture is not that simple.
For at the turn of the fifth century, the notorious heretic Pelagius preached that man in and of himself had the ability to be perfect, and that the fall of Adam, rather than plunging the whole of the human race into sin, served merely as a bad example (Nature and Grace, 9.10). To the dismay of the good Doctor, Pelagius and his followers sought to bolster support for their beliefs with Augustine’s very own writings on free will (Retractions, 1.9.3). Augustine’s response to this heretic’s teachings generated his later writings on the will, predestination, and divine grace.
It must be noted that Augustine’s later writings on original sin and predestination seems to show a markedly different posture from his earlier work on free will. While it has been argued that this hardened stance was due either to his reaction to the fall of Rome or the Pelagian heresy, it is more likely that his own views were gradually evolving under the influence of St. Paul, independent of external circumstances. I base my judgment on Augustine’s quotation of his Retractions in On the Predestination of the Saints:
I indeed labored in defense of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered, and only thus was I able to arrive at the point where I understood that the Apostle spoke with the clearest truth, “For who singles you out? Or what do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it” (1 Corinthians 4:7, qtd. in Predestination, 4.8)?The above taken into account, the later Augustine still believes that those who choose faith in Christ do so of their own free will, but with the important caveat that God has prepared the will of the elect to choose Him (Predestination, 6.11). Under these teachings of Augustine, free will alone is insufficient to believe in Christ, and indeed, if free will is enough for the believer to be saved, then “Christ has died in vain” (Nature and Grace, 40.47). The will of man is both corrupt and inadequate to seek salvation. The elect are not called because they believe, but so that they may believe (Predestination, 17.34). We see Augustine at his most Protestant when he further recounts his own changing views in stating “I said most truly: ‘For just as in those “whom God has chosen,” not works initiate merit, but faith…’ [Emphasis added.] But that merit of faith is also a gift of God…” (Predestination, 3.7) Here, then, the Catholic, to his dismay, sees what seems to be protestant doctrine issuing from the pen of the arch-Catholic.
We will be going too far, though, if we make Augustine a five point Calvinist. We must note that, for starters, when he issued a retraction concerning his first writings on the nature of evil, he stated that free will was inadequate for man to rise to God. He never, though, changed his statement that evil comes only from the free exercise of the will, and never denies that in choosing to do evil, Adam was under no compulsion. When he mentions predestination, he is quite clear that only by God’s predestination can man come to an efficacious and saving faith, but what is striking is that predestination is only mentioned regarding salvation. Those that are condemned do so merely because they follow their own corrupt will, and God justly punishes their evil deeds. Augustine takes his stand for grace and salvation through election, while at the same time avoiding the horror of double predestination.
For the next several centuries, the Church would follow this Augustinian path. The Church rejected the teachings of Pelagius, and a hundred years later at the Council of Orange, issued a series of canons affirming the Augustinian position on grace and predestination. Canon 4 states that if anyone contends that God’s cleansing of man from sin is contingent upon the will then he is in error; Canon 5 states that the beginning of faith itself comes from the grace of God rather than the will of man; Canon 6 states that grace does not depend on the cooperation of man (“Canons of Orange”). As the Church moved on through the centuries, she attempted to carry on in the steps of the African Doctor in straddling the fence between grace and free will. By the beginning of the High Middle Ages, though, the Church was pulling back towards a system that acknowledged the primacy of the human will. By the turn of the twelfth century, St. Anselm of Canterbury wrote in his De Concordia that free choice co-exists with divine grace and cooperates with it (Anselm, 453). With such pronouncements, The Church had arrived at a position specifically condemned by St. Augustine (cf. Letter 225). We shall now examine how well Luther and Calvin succeeded in their attempts to return to his teachings.
Luther would be in perfect concord with Augustine in his affirmation of salvation by grace through faith. In The Bondage of the Will, though, he arrives at Augustine, but then passes him completely, arriving in territory where none have trodden before. Augustine stated that man’s fall came through his choice, and the resulting corruption of human nature resulted in a will that commits sin of its own volition. Luther does the good doctor one better, though, and asserts that the wicked man sins “under the impulse of divine power” (Luther, 130). Luther even challenges Augustine in his definition of free will, stating that, if in a fallen state the will is unable to seek God, then it is not in fact free (ibid, 113), and that Augustine and others who have called such a will free are degrading the very word (ibid, 120). Luther goes to the extreme end of the spectrum, and then beyond the pale, but recognizes and embraces this: “Therefore, we must go to extremes, deny free will altogether, and ascribe everything to God” (ibid, 133)!
Indeed, his statement that a will unable to do good is in fact under compulsion makes fine logical sense, but the end result is a man with no freedom, and one whose evil must be the responsibility of divine omnipotence. Luther here returns to the Augustinian notion that in His omnipotence God allows but does not cause the workings of evil in order to further His divine plan (ibid, 130). It almost seems here that Luther is pulling back from the brink of a precipice to which he has been running headlong, staring into an abyss to which he dare not attempt to apply his own feeble reason. And indeed, though throughout this debate on free will with Erasmus Luther employs the techniques of reason and dialectic, in the end he felt that any attempt to use reason to fathom the mind of God was a fairly silly exercise (ibid, 129). As the reformation continued, though, another figure would arrive who would see no problem in attempting to apply human reason to the workings of the Eternal God, taking every statement on grace, sin, and God’s decrees to their horrifying ends, leaping joyfully into the abyss from which Luther held back. That man was Jean Calvin.
Even the extreme bombast of Luther’s Bondage of the Will does not take the horrific final step in the picture it paints of God’s omnipotence. Like Augustine, Luther admits that since the fall, man has been a slave to sin, but Calvin finally dares to examine from whence came the fall. His conclusion, unlike Augustine’s, is that God actively caused the fall of Adam and the whole human race into sin and damnation as part of His “wonderful plan” (Institutes, XXIII, 7). The ruthless Frenchman then goes on to state that God is nonetheless just in punishing the reprobate (ibid, XXIII, 4). Though this horribly contradicts both Augustine and Justin Martyr’s writings of responsibility, Calvin barely hesitates when he states that he is leaving behind the bulk of the Church’s traditions in favor of his alleged ruthless adherence to scripture (ibid, XXII, 1). Calvin has no problem in that asserting that, since salvation is not by works, then neither is damnation (ibid, XXII, 11), and that the reason for the eternal torment of the vast majority of the human race lies, not in their guilt, but in the arbitrary choice of God.
This horror, then, is the end result of the reformation: God has arbitrarily predestined some to eternal life, and has likewise predestined others to eternal damnation. Calvin then states that certain people might object to this, stating that it makes God a cruel tyrant, to which he responds that since God is both omnipotent and the creator of everything, then all that He decrees, ipso facto, is righteous, good, and just (Institutes, XXIII, 2). He then has the chutzpah to go on and tell the reader that his dogma is not one of absolute might, since God is “free from fault,” and the quintessence of Law and Right (ibid).
Jean Calvin then, has started from Augustine, who among the Church Fathers was most friendly to predestination, and taken the teachings of predestination to their logical extreme, crafting a dogma that would have caused St. Augustine to blanch in horror. Did St. Augustine believe in divine election and predestination of believers? Most assuredly. It was up to Jean Calvin, though, to add double predestination and eliminate Augustine’s free will theodicy in favor of a God who has decreed evil and suffering for his own amusement.
I submit, though, that such questions concerning free will and predestination would inevitably have come to the fore and been the cause of controversy even without Luther and Calvin. The reason for this is that Augustine loomed large over the western Church down through the centuries, and at times there seem to be two Augustines. Why is this the case? The reason that there seem to be two St. Augustines lies in the Bible itself, since there seem to be two St. Pauls*. We have the Paul who tells the believer in Romans Chapter 9 that God prepares some men for eternal life and some for damnation, answering the obvious objection to this with a “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God” (Romans 9:20)? On the other hand, we are also told that there is a loving God who “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Such contradictions in the Christian faith, then, were present at its inception.
Indeed, such difficulties are inevitable in any faith that attempts to posit a God who is all-powerful, all knowing, and all good. Paul, who likely never intended to be considered a basis for systematic theology, is all over the map when it comes to how to resolve such questions. As such, there is no pat resolution to these seeming contradictions. Perhaps the error of the church was to seek one; Luther is at his best not when he is glorying in the slavery of man, but when he is proclaiming the mercy of Christ.
---. The Problem of Free Choice. Trans. Dom Mark Pontifex. New York: Newman Press, 1955.
The Problem of Free Choice. Appendix. Excerpt from Retractions.
Calvin, Jean. Excerpts from Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Protestant Reformation. Ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968. 178-221.
---. “Reply to Sadoleto.” A Reformation Debate. Ed. John C. Olin. New York, Fordham University Press, 2000. 43-88.
"The Canons of the Council of Orange.” 529 A.D. Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics.
“Free Will.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Michael Maher. 1909. Transcribed 1999.
Martyr, Justin, Saint. “The Second Apology.” The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Eds. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899. 188-194.
Erasmus of Rotterdam. Excerpts from The Free Will. Winter 3-94.
Luther, Martin. Excerpts from The Bondage of the Will. Winter 98-138.
Do you think anything we do has any merit to a Holy God? What merit was there to you in your natural birth? We all deserve hell..merit is not an issue!
Psalm 14:3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
John 8:34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
There is no merit in our sin, He came while we were yet sinners,servents of sin.
The question still stands . How is it that one sinner is suddenly able to hear and respond to the gospel, and the other remains blind and deaf. Both hear the same message but only one responds to the grace of God. Why does one choose yes and the other joke about hell?
Man has made his choice and declared "I hate God":
Romans 3 As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth; there is none that seeketh after God. They have all gone from the way; they have together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." "Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit." "The poison of asps is under their lips," "whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes."There will be not one person in hell who does not hate God. For His own Glory, God has given grace to some of us who don't deserve it and we will all cry out for His mercy. You assume by your response that Salvation is for the benefit of man. It is not; Salvation is for the display of God's glory.Isaiah 64 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon Thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee; for Thou hast hid Thy face from us, and hast consumed us because of our iniquities.
What if God, choosing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction; and this, that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, whom He had prepared before unto glory, even us whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?Mormonism attempts to rob God of His glory by exhalting man to the status of God. God is infinitely jealous of His glory. You stand on the edge of eternity with the wrong goal and you will most certainly see a display of God's zeal for His own Glory as will all of us.
I cried to Thee, O LORD; and unto the LORD I made supplication:
"What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise Thee? Shall it declare Thy truth?Hear, O LORD, and have mercy upon me; LORD, be Thou my helper!"
Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing; Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, to the end that my glory may sing praise to Thee and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto Thee for ever.
No, I only take one 'hate Calvinism' pill a day (thats all I need). What Calvin got 'right' is far outweighed by what he got wrong i.e. Predestination.
What do you mean 'decisions do not create character-ofcourse they do! The decision to believe in Christ or not, the decision to walk in the Spirit or not etc etc.
No sin is 'good' but a work can be 'good' without God, but not to God. In other words, the 'good' e.g. the good Samaritan (an unbeliever) was an example of love toward ones neighbor. His kindness will not earn him anything from God, but it nevertheless is still 'good'
Even so, come Lord Jesus
I was not discussing the parable per se, but the words do not fit Calvinism at all. A Calvinist maintains all who are called must be saved. How could a Sovereign God 'call' and it not be successful?
Now regarding the passage itself (ofcourse only using the King James) the statement is found in two places Matt.20:16 which is clearly a verse about rewards. The second one is found in Matt.22:14. That verse is dealing with the Jewish nation. Note how the chapter begins. Also, the wedding feast, where the 'Jew' shows up without his wedding garment (Righteousness), why, because he sought it by works, not by faith (Rom.9:31-32) The companion passage is found in Isa 65:2 cf Rom.10:21.
An Arminian would read the passage all are called, but few choose
Even so, come Lord Jesus
Merit certainly is an issue. In the book of Matthew, Jesus speaks on several occasions about the rewards that shall be given unto men by God, and it is clear from the context that he is talking about eternal life.
Does God "reward" His children for acts over which they supposedly have no control or choice in the matter? As the dictionary puts it:
"Rewards and punishments presuppose moral agency, and something voluntarily done, well or ill; without which respect, though we may receive good, it is only a benefit and not a reward."
And, for what it's worth, Paul uses the word "reward" in the same manner in several places.
Or do the scriptures say "reward" and just not mean it?
If your question still stands, my answer still stands.
Can a man rob God? I think not. Can a man underestimate God? I think it happens every day.
Mainstream Christianity underestimates God, and attempts to dictate to God as to how He may, or may not, reward the faithful.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
If you want to rule out certain things as being outside the realm of the possible, you just go on ahead and do so. I, however will stick with the following, from Isaiah 64, verse 4:
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
If you think that rules anything out, then I suggest you read it again and ponder it some more.
The can receive the things of God if God (The same God that the Calvinist is always screaming is Omnipotent,) wants it to be so. The issue does make the choice for the individual, or does He make the choice understandable I find it amazing that Calvinists limit the Omnipotence of God by stating He cannot make the Gospel understandable to someone who is spiritually dead! The real issue is that the Calvinist system demands that man be passive while Love demands a active response. Being a woman, I am sure you understand that important difference. God (intiates-grace) man responds (faith-receive the free gift)-very simple.
At the moment of your conversion did you hesitate and say "wait a minute here ,let me think about this"? Or was the presence of God enough to make you desire Him above all else
Since each conversion is different one can not make an issue of it. Some do struggle-Wesley comes to mind.Augustine (if he was saved) seemed to had some problems. Luther also. Some see it very clearly and it is immediate. I was saved as a child so I do not remember the experience, but I always knew Jesus Christ was the eternal Son of God, the Saviour of the World. I believe children, not having alot of mental baggage find that reality easier to accept.
Finally, why some receive the illumnation and some do not? All receive some Illumination. (Psa 19:1-3, Rom 1:19). At that point of general Illumination an individual is either positive (desiring more) or negative (rejecting God-Rom.1:21). God will provide more Illumination to those who will believe. The Gospel goes out and will fall on hard ground and soft. The 'soft' ground will respond freely.The 'hard' ground react and reject. There are areas of the world where the negative volition is so great that those areas have been closed to the Gospel. One Missionary spent I believe 40 years in Mongola and had one convert! Depravity does not mean a dead will. It means a weakened, corrupted will but one that can still cry out save me
That they should seek the Lord,if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us(Acts 17:27)
Even so, come Lord Jesus
If 'dead' means 'dead' how these 'dead' people still manage to talk, walk, eat, make decisions etc. Man is still a person which has intellectSensiblity and will. Now the Fall made man unable to reach God but God can still reach man and give him a choice
"no not one" is really just God using hypoberlie. Why do you rage so against your Creator?
I do not rage against my Creator, why do you blaspheme Him with your attacks on His essence with your vile, God-dishonoring TULIP
You need to learn what the Bible really teaches; that unless a man is born of God he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Man is born dead; he needs to be reborn. Man responds to the Holy Spirit alright:
Granted, he needs to be 'born again' but that is a decision he must make, to receive the free gift of eternal life (Jn.1:12).
Also, you guys never deal with 'all' and 'whosoever'
You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.
Woody! Don't you know that no Calvinist believes you can resist God! Thats (gasp!)Free Will
Even so, come Lord Jesus!
Hey, look at that something I can Amen you for!
That coming from a Catholic? Are you kidding?
Luthers alone was a 'dynamic translation which conveyed the sense of the passage. Luthers Bible is head and shoulders over any Bible put out by Rome
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
The issue you were attacking Hank on was not listening to teachers (as you do) and thus being close minded. Luthers view was Sola Scriptura. Hank contention with you was that you were always appealing to scholars. That was the issue I addressed.
And in the matter which Luther considered the pivotal controversy of the Reformation, Luther stands with me against you. And Luther makes his case from the Scriptures. You just ignore Luther's Scriptural arguments.
I never claimed otherwise in regards to Predestination. All the Reformers were wrong on that one.
By the same token, you twist things in the larger discussion to fit your unscriptural presuppositions. For example, you abused RnMomof7's words to Romulus concerning the idea of how a man falls in love with his wife-to-be. You said God did not make a man fall in love. You are misrepresenting RnMomof7's point in this. This is obvious when you go back to her statement to Romulus.
I abused it how? The statement was made on falling in love with your wife and who would reject that. The issue in love is both making a choice. So if love is going to be a subject, choice always comes in. Thats why you Calvinist avoid that word like the plague. You use 'grace' and take the love out of it by adding 'Sovereign' tying it to power and not compassion.
We Calvinists--and RnMomof7 is now one of us (having finally figured out, by the grace of God, what we have been saying on these threads all along!)--maintain that God causes the man to fall in love with his wife-to-be.
Well, that is an interesting notion. God makes us fall in love. So if we stop loving someone, is God responsible for that also?
The idea of compulsion is not the issue so much as is the idea of causality. The reason why RnMomof7 and I both say that is because the mechanism of the effect of the cause does involve choice. It does involve what can properly be called "free will."
That is nonsense! The 'cause' must either go back totally to God, in which it is compulsion since man does not have a choice, or to man, in which he has to make decision he is responsible for. Your sophistry is just another word for Philosophical Determinism.
We have said this over and over and over. You are continuing to construct straw men for your own purposes. You need to chill out, just as RnMomof7 eventually did.
I cannot 'chill out' I have the 'free will'but just cannot seem to effect the cause.
Even so, come Lord Jesus
P.S. Doc, you sound positively goulish-Rnmomof7 is one of us now,ha, ha, ha!
Election aside-oh no, Election is exactly the point. The Calvinist maintain (espically those who support limited atonement) that every one God calls will be chosen. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called'(Rom.8:30)
we can say that something is inarguably wrong with the free will of the non-responders.
I love how you guys twist language. Something is wrong with the 'free will' of the responders when they were not chosen and did not have the ability to choose for God!
And that is the inarguable point which the Calvinist makes
Sad to say, that is the very God dishonoring point of Calvinism. God chooses who He will and then condemns men who cannot make any other choice. Well, they deserve to go to hell, they are sinners, is the Calvinist retort. Well, the fact is we all deserve to go to hell and only the twisting and dodging word games that a Calvinist plays hides the fact that the god of TULIP is not the God of the Bible
Even so, come Lord Jesus
Adam did. Satan did. I know they were predestinated to do so! But, God is not the author of sin-yea right!
There is nothing 'irresistable' about grace.
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your father did, so do ye'(Acts.7:51)
Man can and does resist grace (Rom.1:21-22) and how you feel about it (Oh, 'how could anyone resist God'-please, you do it everytime you sin, as do I), means nothing.
Even so, come Lord Jesus
By the way, if God uses 'irresistable' grace on us, why do we still sin? Lets here the cause and effect/free will song and dance again-always good for a laugh!
Man is required to do something is he? You guys are always trying to have it both ways. Now, does God have to regenerate first? Why are you talking about 'grasping' salvation when everything, faith, repentance come after God 'turns on the switch'.
Now, come back and deny that regeneration doesn't preceed faith/repentance.
Even so, come Lord Jesus
And Jesus said,For judgement I am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind,ye should have no sin, but now ye say, We see therefore your sin remaineth(Jn.9:39-41)
Those who could see wouldn't, the one who was blind would. Neither was 'Predestinated' in their choice, since the unbelivers chose to remain in darkness. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into th eworld, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
That is why men choose to stay in darkness, they like it!
Even so, come Lord Jesus
It is a decision to believe or not to believe. Why do some people choose a life of crime?
Even so, come Lord Jesus
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.