Look, Mr. Rogers, maybe you've been hanging out with the Romanists too long because you're starting to sound like them in more ways than one.
Your posts are becoming increasingly dogmatic , sarcastic, redundant, looong, contradictory and non-responsive.
I give you five paragraphs about the sovereignty of God, a half dozen examples from Scripture, and link you to A.A. Pink's masterwork, "The Sovereignty of God." Your response is not to read it; apparently not even to glance at it. Instead you tell me to summarize it for you.
Hmmm... ok...
God is in control; not you. He always has been and He always will be. You have never been nor will you ever be.
And that is a very good thing for you just like it is for all who have been given true faith in Christ, for we are "His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph. 2:10.)
Esquirette pointed out that even our faith is a work made possible by God, as are all good things in us and by us. But you wrote...
"I have never said or suggested we are saved by works, UNLESS you call believing work"
Here Paul sets you straight by agreeing with esquirette...
"Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father" -- 1 Thess. 1:3
PD teaches that man - specifically the PDers - get to tell God what His purpose is, and He dare not do otherwise. The entire sovereignty crock assumes first that you get to define the will of God, and you get to do so apart from scripture
PD? As in FW?
"Sovereignty crock???"
Calvinists don't define the will of God; God does, regardless whether men know that or not.
Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" -- 2 Thess. 2:13-14
"And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand." -- Luke 8:10 "But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
Did you get that in 2 Thess. 2? "Chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and (through) belief of the truth."
Men don't sanctify themselves, nor do they give themselves faith nor the ability to believe. Men must first be born again by God.
And that's His call. Faith is the instrument God uses to bring His own to Him. "Saved by grace through faith." Grace saves.
We have not chosen Him; He has chosen us. If you think it was your idea, tell it to Him.
There were only three Arminians I've known on this forum who spoke as negatively as you about Calvinism. Two are now Calvinists and one got kicked off the forum.
May God utilize His "sovereignty crock" to lead you to the better fate.
Amazing who few people read Scripture.
Dr E “Look, Mr. Rogers, maybe you’ve been hanging out with the Romanists too long because you’re starting to sound like them in more ways than one.”
That isn’t all bad. I’ll be blunt - if I had to chose between asking Mad Dawg to pray about a problem I had, or asking you, I would do the former. Doctrinally, I’m closer to you - but God doesn’t save us by reading doctrine. I wasn’t saved by defining grace, or by knowing a list of doctrine, but by meeting Jesus in the lives of some Christian kids. Like the thief on the cross, I didn’t know much doctrine, but I knew I wanted to be with Jesus.
I have very strong disagreements with the Catholic Church. I am as appalled by Purgatory as I am by the idea that God SAYS “whoever”, but MEANS “my elect”. I don’t need to ‘do penance’ to be saved, nor do I need to wait until Judgment Day to find out if I’ve ‘qualified’ - “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”
Anyone who wants to know how strongly I disagree can click on my name at the bottom of this post, then clink ‘in forum’ and read a few thousand posts on the subject over the last year.
They could do the same with you. And I believe many of your posts are insulting (Romanist? How often have you been told that terminology is offensive?), intellectually dishonest (pictures taken from websites that are not accurate, and a reluctance on your part to admit the error after it is pointed out), arrogant (’special grace’ to ‘special’ people, I guess), and with a perspective that seems to me to define itself as ‘Not Catholic’ rather than ‘Protestant’. I have honestly told Catholics that most Protestants don’t even think much about the Catholic Church, let alone define ourselves that way...MOST Protestants.
Now, I sometimes get mad at Mad Dawg, and have felt like reaching thru the computer screen to choke him (or annalex, or MarkBsnr...), but they have been honest in their arguments with me. They don’t post pictures of someone handling snakes and ask me why Baptists are like that (although I took a graduate class in Herpetology once). They may well feel, like you, that my posts “are becoming increasingly dogmatic , sarcastic, redundant, looong, contradictory and non-responsive”, but they deal with the issues I raise, or change the subjects.
Dr E “I give you five paragraphs about the sovereignty of God, a half dozen examples from Scripture, and link you to A.A. Pink’s masterwork, “The Sovereignty of God.” Your response is not to read it; apparently not even to glance at it. Instead you tell me to summarize it for you.”
You gave me 5 paragraphs that are missing the point, since I agree God is sovereign...what I disagree on is what His sovereign will for man is!
A half dozen examples from scripture...which I may or may not have dealt with. I’ve posted so much this last week I don’t remember
I glanced at Pink’s “masterwork”, and found it wanting. However, I may next week post the pertinent chapter for discussion, since I found it to have so little sound basis in scripture.
As a quick example, he writes:
“”As many as were ordained to eternal life, believed.” Here we learn four things: First, that believing is the consequence and not the cause of God’s decree. Second, that a limited number only are “ordained to eternal life,” for if all men without exception were thus ordained by God, then the words “as many as” are a meaningless qualification. Third, that this “ordination” of God is not to mere external privileges but to “eternal life,” not to service but to salvation itself. Fourth, that all-”as many as,” not one less-who are thus ordained by God to eternal life will most certainly believe.”
Except that is NOT required by the text.
From Robertson, who agrees with predestination,
“As many as were ordained to eternal life (osoi hsan tetagmenoi eiv zwhn aiwnion).
Periphrastic past perfect passive indicative of tassw, a military term to place in orderly arrangement. The word “ordain” is not the best translation here. “Appointed,” as Hackett shows, is better. The Jews here had voluntarily rejected the word of God. On the other side were those Gentiles who gladly accepted what the Jews had rejected, not all the Gentiles. Why these Gentiles here ranged themselves on God’s side as opposed to the Jews Luke does not tell us. This verse does not solve the vexed problem of divine sovereignty and human free agency. There is no evidence that Luke had in mind an absolutum decretum of personal salvation. Paul had shown that God’s plan extended to and included Gentiles. Certainly the Spirit of God does move upon the human heart to which some respond, as here, while others push him away.”
Young’s Literal Translation has it “ 48And the nations hearing were glad, and were glorifying the word of the Lord, and did believe — as many as were appointed to life age-during”
A person CAN interpret it as Pink does.
But look at the CONTEXT - and the Catholics I’ve pinged to this have heard me say that ad nauseum - and we find:
“44The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him. 46And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. 47 For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
“’I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
48And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”
The emphasis is that Gentiles believed, and were appointed for eternal life - remember, this is Acts 13, and Acts 10 & 11 dealt with the opening of the kingdom to the Gospel.
You can find more here, if so inclined:
http://classicalarminianism.blogspot.com/2009/11/favorite-calvinistic-proof-texts-acts.html
Either interpretation is possible, but mine does no violence to the words of Jesus when He said “whosoever”. So if Pink is a masterpiece, then I’d hate to see the bad arguments!
Dr E “God is in control; not you. He always has been and He always will be. You have never been nor will you ever be.”
Thank you for putting words into my mouth. However, if God GIVES us a decision, He is still sovereign, isn’t he? When I allow my horse to pick her path, I’m still the rider. And some days, when her heart isn’t in it, I respect her desires and call it quits.
(You see, annalex, that sometimes God uses my horse instead of an ass to teach me, if I have ears to hear...and if I can love her enough to care about her desires, how much more so God with us! Better that I repent when my horse speaks, than to wait for a stronger messenger from God.)
You cite this as evidence that faith is work: “Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father” — 1 Thess. 1:3”
OK - and Jesus said that if believing is considered work, then that is the work God requires of us. However, you passage, IN CONTEXT, has nothing to do with believing faith being a ‘work’. As Barnes puts it, “Your work of faith.That is, your work showing or evincing faith. The reference is probably to acts of duty, holiness, and benevolence, which proved that they exercised faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Works of faith are those to which faith prompts, and which show that there is faith in the heart. This does not mean, therefore, a work of their own producing faith, but a work which showed that they had faith.
And labour of love. Labour produced by love, or showing that you are actuated by love. Such would be all their kindness toward the poor, the oppressed, and the afflicted; and all their acts which showed that they loved the souls of men.”
You cite 2 Thess 2 as proof. It reads, in the NASB, “But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.”
A Calvinist says this means God chose you (of your name) from the beginning, and thus YOU are saved after God gives you faith in the truth.
The Armenian says this means God has chosen you (of your faith) from the beginning to be saved by sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. And note, the verse says we are saved “through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth”, not saved through election. And if God gives faith to the elected, and denies it to the non-elect, then we are saved by election, not faith.
And I would remind you that salvation has more than one meaning. It can mean justification, it can mean sanctification, or it can mean both. It has other meanings, but those suffice for now. God HAS chosen us TO something - we who believe are predestined to become like Jesus. And since this verse says we are chosen “for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit”, the salvation we are chosen for seems to be the definition that includes sanctification - includes our goal, what we were predestined to become if we believe.
Dr E “We have not chosen Him; He has chosen us. If you think it was your idea, tell it to Him.”
Thanks again for offering to shove another straw man into my mouth, but I’ll decline. I have repeatedly said that no man seeks God, and that we can only respond to his offer. HE initiates. HE crosses the divide. HE gave us Himself in sacrifice. WE believe, or not. “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” - Romans 10
Well, there is another “dogmatic , sarcastic, redundant, looong, contradictory and non-responsive” post filled with...responses.