Posted on 12/14/2017 1:43:55 PM PST by HarleyD
Of course.
Well if he has them able to choose which fork to take he has left the ‘Dead men can’t choose’ doctrine behind.
Dead men are doomed like Buridan’s Ass, which at least was alive for awhile.
I love listening to Sproul on Youtube. He will be missed. Prayers for his family.
“Why share the Gospel when neither the elect nor the non-elect can choose to accept or reject it is the mystery that goes unexplained.”
Have you read “Bondage of the Will?”
RC was a disciple of Martin Luther, as well as Augustine.
If you are unfamiliar with Luther and Augustine’s views on Election yet passion for missionary work, maybe a reading through of Paul’s letter to the Romans would be helpful. Look at Romans 9 and then ask yourself, why was Paul a martyr for preaching the gospel?
He was a wonderful Bible teacher! He will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Bondage of the Will
Read it. Luther regarded it as his greatest work.
Luther had been an Augustinian friar. Calvin acknowledged that his view of predestination came from Augustine.
Augustine was a Manichean before he was a Christian. I suspect that Augustine filtered Christian theology through his Manichean past. The Manichees had a rigid view of predestination, they believed in total depravity, and election.
“why was Paul a martyr for preaching the gospel?”
The Jews of Jerusalem who didn’t accept Christ considered him a heretic and charged him with defiling the Temple. By rioting they managed to get him arrested by the Roman authorities. The Romans wouldn’t have cared about the defiling of the Temple, just keeping the peace. He was taken to Rome and after long delays and a couple of trials he was executed. We don’t know what crime the Romans charged him with.
The question remains, why did these men (RC, Luther, Augustine) preach the gospel as their life work, when they all believed God already predestined some to be Elect according to His Will?
Because they all understood that preaching/teaching was the METHOD, the MEANS, that God ordained to call the Elect.
That’s certainly Augustine. Special calling of the elect, Anti-Pelagian Writings.
If the “Reformed” view of election leaves you unconvinced, then simply ask yourself who saved you-you or God? Was it you who came to the knowledge of Christ or did God enlighten your heart? In that response is the understanding of the doctrine of election. I have yet to hear a personal testimony that didn’t have in it, “But God....”
>>Well if he has them able to choose which fork to take he has left the ‘Dead men can’t choose’ doctrine behind.
I have never heard in Reformed Theology that dead men can’t choose anything. This is just another take on the anti-Calvinist position that we are all robots.
When I was Methodist, we received regular training on the evils of Calvinism so I’ve heard most of the arguments against it.
“I have never heard in Reformed Theology that dead men can’t choose anything. This is just another take on the anti-Calvinist position that we are all robots.”
https://redeeminggod.com/dead-in-sin-calvinistic-analogy/
Here are some quotes from Calvinists showing how they understand and explain the “dead in sin” imagery in Scripture.
A dead man cannot exercise faith in Jesus Christ (Gordon H. Clark, The Biblical Doctrine of Man, 102)
A dead man is utterly incapable of willing anything (Pink, Sovereignty of God, 141).
A dead man cannot cooperate with an offer of healing (John H. Gerstner, A Predestination Primer, 18).
The corpse does not restore life to itself, after life is restored it becomes a living agent (Robert Dabney, The Five Points of Calvinism, 35).
The Calvinist holds to the plain teaching of Scripture and says: “No; he is dead. He cannot even open his mouth. Nor does he have any desire to call a doctor to help him. He is dead” … The Calvinist … would compare man to one who jumps off the top of the Empire State Building and is spattered over the sidewalk. Even if there were anything left of him when he landed, he could not know that he needed help, let alone cry out for it. That man is dead—lifeless—and cannot even desire to be made whole … And that is the picture of the sinner. He is dead in his sins and trespasses (Eph. 2:1, 5). He does not want to be made whole, let alone even know that he should be made whole. He is dead. When Christ called to Lazarus to come out of the grave, Lazarus had no life in him so that he could hear, sit up, and emerge. There was not a flicker of life in him. If he was to be able to hear Jesus calling him and to go to Him, then Jesus would have to make him alive. Jesus did resurrect him and then Lazarus could respond (Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism, 17-18).
Could the Word of God show more plainly than it does that the depravity is total? And that our inability to desire or procure salvation is also total? The picture is one of death—spiritual death. We are like Lazarus in his tomb; we are bound hand and foot; corruption has taken hold upon us. Just as there was no glimmer of life in the dead body of Lazarus, so there is no “inner receptive spark” in our hearts. But the Lord performs the miracle—both with the physically dead, and the spiritually dead; for “you hath he quickened—made alive—who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Salvation, by its very nature, must be “of the Lord” (WJ Seaton, Five Points of Calvinism).
[A sinner] has all the passive properties belonging to a corpse… (Boice & Ryken, Doctrines of Grace, 74).
The natural man is enslaved to sin; he is a child of Satan, rebellious toward God, blind to truth, corrupt, unable to save himself or to prepare himself for salvation. In short, the unregenerate man is dead in sin, and his will is enslaved to his evil nature (Steele & Thomas, Five Points of Calvinism, 19).
That’s what I said
Aw, gee whiz, I haven’t come to the Religion page for so many years, that I fell into the net of your insincere posts. +1 for Pelham
“I fell into the net of your insincere posts. “
I dunno why you conclude that. Augustine really did expound on ‘The Special Calling of the Elect’ in his Anti-Pelagian writings. It looks to me like the same position Calvin held; I don’t think you would disagree with it:
http://biblehub.com/library/augustine/anti-pelagian_writings/chapter_34_xvii_the_special_calling.htm
“who saved you-you or God? “
I don’t think that’s a point of disagreement between Calvin and the free will crowd. All but pelagians would agree that Christ does the saving.
The question seems to be whether membership in the elect is preordained or contingent on the hearer’s acceptance or rejection of Christ. If I understand Augustine/Calvin’s theology only the elect can and will accept, the non-elect can’t accept and won’t.
It’s a question of whether the elect is a preordained group of unspecified members, or does a group of preordained members constitute what is called the elect.
Not quite. No one will accept Christ for every single one of us our deeds are dark. There is none who seek God-not one. Our eyes and ears must be opened so that we turn to Him for salvation. True believers-the elect-are only saved because God desire to show His grace to a wicked world through the saving of a remnant by opening their eyes and ears. Like Paul the scales fell from our eyes. Otherwise no one would be saved.
Our own personal salvation only validate what the scriptures teaches. Every true believer will tell us they were saved because of God intervening in their life. Beside the many scriptures that tells us this, all you have to do is simply look at your own testimony to know what I'm saying is true. It's just like Christ walking up to the disciples and telling them, "Come, follow me." They jumped up and followed. God choose to use one nation (Israel) to display His glory. God choose Abraham, Noah, Moses, Samuel, Samson, Paul, etc to carry out wondrous deeds and many other believers to play other roles in furthering His kingdom. It is He who changes our hearts to hear His message and shepherds us to come to Him. Like Moses being drawn to a burning bush, so we believers are drawn to God simply because our eyes have been opened to see the burning bush. Others cannot see the bush and think we are crazy.
The real question is why doesn't God opens every ear and heart to come to Him? Why isn't everyone saved? Even a Calvinist couldn't say. Some would like to think that we have a choice and simply don't wish to come. But this is not what the scripture nor our personal experience teaches. If a person has ever talked to someone about Christ who heart was hardened they'll know what I mean.
Understanding how the Spirit moves to and fro is like trying to understand the Trinity. We cannot understand the mysteries of God except to say that He is wise, gracious and loving and everything will be just as He has so ordained. And it will be perfect. We are to trust in His wisdom and accept what He has revealed about Himself in His word. No more and no less.
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