Says who? This is what you say when you do not have an answer to my post.
Free will, God-given, properly defined, and as commonly understood, is not that hard a concept to grasp, Woody. It is interwoven all through the Bible. But the theological debates you conduct are divorced so much from common sense and your everyday experience that apparently you must be led by the hand to re-experience the world you live in.
When was the last time you purchased something at a store? Was it cash, credit card, or debit card? You had a choice, Woody. You could choose the right and pay for it, or choose evil and attempt to shoplift it. All shoplifters will be held accountable before the bar of God, if not before an earthly judge.
But think, Woody, how many of those you unjustly consider unregenerate and going to hell make the right choice every day and pay for the things they shop for! They can choose to do the right thing, and you can stand in the checkout area and watch them! You see them blessing the lives of others, praying for others, making Christ the center of their lives, seeking to do His will, accepting Him as their Savior!
Yet you figure out some way to consider them unsaved and going to hell, substituting your own reqirements for salvation for the Biblical ones. That reflects more on you than on them.
Think of all the righteous choices all around you that you must ignore to consider them Totally Depraved and incapable of righteous Wants, choosing only evil continually. You have to blind yourself to your daily experience.
There are people who are steeped in evil. The Bible talks about them. Yet even these can turn and repent and begin to look to God and live. See Jeremiah 18. See the book of Jonah.
To agree to a doctrine like Total Depravity one must believe that all people before they are born again are so evil that they cannot choose the right, cannot seek or ask of God, or exercise faith in Christ. That is contradicted by your everyday experience, and causes me to wonder if you have been born again, since you apparently cannot see the obvious. The mistake of Calvinism as presented here is in making your own private Biblical interpretation, not having authority, and then driving it to extremes.
Unconditional Election is similarly a denial of all free-will efforts to repent and improve by those who are not yet born again. The god you propose ignores all such efforts, or is in denial that there are any such efforts.
Limited Atonement also denies free will. If you have not been "chosen" you cannot repent and must unavoidably go to hell. This is false. Our Savior has redeemed all from the Fall of Adam, including little children, and has redeemed us from individual sins on condition of repentance.
Irresistible Grace also denies free will, the freedom to refuse God's grace. The grace to repent, or ability to repent, is extended by God to all, but many refuse because they love their sins more than God.
Perserverance of the Saints also denies free will, claiming that once born again you cannot return like the sow to her wallowing in the mire. The apostles were speaking out against apostasy throughout the New Testament.
Calvinist predestination denies free will the most blatantly, claiming that the god you propose predetermined all choices, both good and bad, denying free will to everyone, and becoming the author of both good and evil. This is false. God is not the author of evil. God has given us all the freedom to choose between good and evil, and holds us accountable for our choices in our stewardship here on earth.
Free will, properly understood, and a proper understanding of the nature of God, is the antidote for all these false doctrines.
Let us discuss the four aspects of atonement.
In case you forgot, they are:
Substitution
Redemption
Reconciliation
Propitiation
I'm sure as soon as I begin to present the various theories of atonement, most of you will become bored. No way anybody is interested in discusing medieval (or commercial) of atonement (according to Anselm), nor ideas promulgated by Abelard. Certainly there is no interest in anything Socinus during the Reformation period might say, and exceedingly dubious is any interest in Schleirmacher, Bushnell, Ritscl in the modern period.
Without doubt Grotius, Luther, Calvin modifications to Anselm's theories are most prevailing and are only tempered with views according to Arminius.
Let us not forget that the issue is a lack of sufficiency of attonement to secure salvation (i.e. after Augustine, the Reformers of RCC and all advocates of limited atonement have agreed that Christ's death is sufficient for all, but efficient for the elect only). This would mean that it is possible to apply the benefits of atonement to any man God chooses it to be applied to. Whether atonement is automatically applied to all men apart from personal appropriation could now be considered universalism. Whether atonement is automatically applied to all men apart from personal appropriation - that being universalism - fundamentally becomes the issue (particularists aren't concerned whether attonement is offered for all men indiscriminately or objectively offered to all).
I'd not worry about it, after all my incisor marks on your left teat have been pre-ordained and otherwise foreknown before the beginning of all universes.
Of course I'm going to bite you its foreknown, foreordainded and an integral part of creation.
Are you a dualist? You certainly are not a "monotheist". If God created everything, He created evil (therefore he is the author of evil). Did God create Satan?
You are a very deceptive and errant psedo-teacher, White Mountain.
You bash the doctrines of predestination, and grind up the ideas of Calvinism into disfigured shreds.
I was listening to a "free will" evangelist on the radio yesterday. He was trying to explain how God created everyting including man's free will. He said: "Well, you know, it's a paradox".
Nobody can rationally explain "free will". You, and all the other "free will" advocates pretend you have explained it, but you never do. You only "assert it" and call it proof.
Are you a polytheist? For if you say that "God is not the author of evil", you are saying that something else is the author of evil. And what created this something else?
Your reasoning is trite, your criticisms shallow, and your piety insincere. You will have to account to your Judge for the frantic and terrible distortions you promote against Calvinists.
Don't you know your Scripture, White Mountain?