Posted on 08/01/2005 8:16:45 PM PDT by buckeyesrule
"Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame." -- 1 Corinthians 15:34
The Arminian, IMO, hears the superficial and stops listening.
A deeper, fuller understanding of God's word is seen in this apparent paradox.
Paul is correct to shame us for not proclaiming the Gospel truth with every breath we take to all men everywhere, as we were instructed to do.
And yet it is likewise and equally true that if God wants a man to hear the Gospel and believe, the word will be preached to him and he will hear it with ears given to him by God, and he will have faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior by the grace of God alone.
The Arminian ignores this paradox. The Calvinist embraces it, knowing that ultimately Christ will gather all whom God has given to the Son from before the foundation of the world and that He will lose none of them.
The Creator creates; the creature lives out.
The only support I find for it is in the many posts of free-will Arminians.
I can't argue there are tons of passages throughout the scriptures that tells people to repent, believe, trust, etc. But the bottom line is "Faith COMES from hearing and hearing by the word of God". Where DOES it COME from??? Faith, the essences of believing or trusting, is a gift from God. You have stated this as well. But if it is a gift and since "not all men have faith" (2 Thess 3:2) then God doesn't give it to all. So therefore not all men CAN repent, believe, trust, etc.
There are no answers for these (and other verses) except that we learn from the Father and come to Christ. And as the exchange in John 6 shows, not all learned.
I believe you’re seeing the universal call to repentance and forgetting about faith coming from God. The two are inseparable. While God gives a universal call, as strange as it may seem faith is not universally applied by God. Belief and trust are not something that we are ingrained with.
It is God who makes us trust.
Transactional analysis is free-will humanism. I hope I was clear on this. The "triune brain" of man borders on blasphemy.
Amen.
"If a person must "accept" God's offer of salvation in order to be saved, then salvation ultimately lies with the creature's agreeable choice and not with the Creator's predestining will".
Perhaps it would be helpful to explain what is NOT meant. We are not talking about someone being forced against their will to be a recipient of Grace, for the will of man is transformed by God's first action upon him, that of regeneration of his spirit. The man is enabled then to hear with spiritual ears the Gospel, and willingly responds to it in the affirmative, He is not forced to respond, he is not made a "robot", as is so often characterized by those who hate the Doctrines of Grace.
But, as you have rightly pointed out, faith is a gift, and salvation flows from God to man. The Reformed view sees the man's positive response to the gospel as the result of God's prior monergistic work on his heart, and that being the outworking of the predestination settled before Creation. From man's perspective, he believes and receives, or "accepts" (I have never liked that term, it carries the idea of two equals in a busines transaction) Christ, so he believes it was his decision to do so, not being aware that God both enables him to do so, and gave him the desire to do so, by the monergistic work He did without the man's conscious awareness that he was being acted upon.
It's a matter of perspective. Arminians and non-Reformed focus on man's view of what happened, and the Reformed focus on God's view and vantage point.
If He came for you, and if you end up in heaven with God and the angels, was there ever a real chance that you could have gone under?
Or was your name written in the Book of Life by God from before the foundation of the world, and so your life was actually a journey to discover its imprint on Christ's heart?
The only support I find for it is in the many posts of free-will Arminians.
No scriptural support for such an accusation, ... eh ?
Does not even one of the Apostles judge their fellow brethren in the way that you do ?If a person must "accept" God's offer of salvation in order to be saved, then salvation ultimately lies with the creature's agreeable choice and not with the Creator's predestining will.BTW ... can not the creature (so gifted by God) make the agreeable choice within the Creator's predestinating will ?
After all, ... having been so gifted by God, ... the creature has the ability to agree with God ... no ?
Transactional analysis is free-will humanism. I hope I was clear on this. The "triune brain" of man borders on blasphemy.
But you're the only one I see speaking with regard to this.
can not the creature (so gifted by God) make the agreeable choice within the Creator's predestinating will ?
It is all the Creator's predestinating will.
Once you figure that out, life is much clearer, steadier, surer.
Whatever God wills, comes to pass.
Or else He is not God, but a giant chessboard in the sky.
No. Please see my post #923. God does not give faith to all men. Man does not have the ability to agree with God.
Quester Post 915: ”I know that I am not responsible for my salvation, for salvation is a good thing, ... and, therefore, ... it is a gift from God. Likewise, I know that I am not responsible for my faith, for faith is a good thing, ... and, therefore, ... it is a gift from God. Any further wrangling has only to do with when I received that gift (faith). I choose to not quibble over such an issue.”
You stated in post 915 that you were not interested in “wrangling” about WHEN we receive the gift of faith. Now you seem to be suggesting that God gives the gift of faith to everyone. Is this correct?
You made the statement, "All so much human philosophy ... and without any Biblical basis."
It seemed as if you did not realize that was my position on TA.
The parallel between TA and Arminianism was the point of my post. Within Arminianism is the great god, "Me," who makes the final decision regarding the future of his eternal rest.
Quester: “BTW ... can not the creature (so gifted by God) make the agreeable choice within the Creator's predestinating will? After all, ... having been so gifted by God, ... the creature has the ability to agree with God ... no ?”
No. Please see my post #923. God does not give faith to all men. Man does not have the ability to agree with God.
Quester Post 915: ”I know that I am not responsible for my salvation, for salvation is a good thing, ... and, therefore, ... it is a gift from God. Likewise, I know that I am not responsible for my faith, for faith is a good thing, ... and, therefore, ... it is a gift from God. Any further wrangling has only to do with when I received that gift (faith). I choose to not quibble over such an issue.”
You stated in post 915 that you were not interested in “wrangling” about WHEN we receive the gift of faith. Now you seem to be suggesting that God gives the gift of faith to everyone. Is this correct?
Where ... did I suggest that God gives to every man the gift of faith ?
You seem quite anxious to prove me in the wrong.
Why is that ?
You made the statement, "All so much human philosophy ... and without any Biblical basis."
It seemed as if you did not realize that was my position on TA.
The parallel between TA and Arminianism was the point of my post. Within Arminianism is the great god, "Me," who makes the final decision regarding the future of his eternal rest.
What I am saying is that it is you ... who has come to this all-too-human conclusion.
You have looked at the belief of your brethren, ... and have judged that, per their belief, ... they desire to make themselves God.
What I say further is that I that I find no evidence of such judgement in the pages of the New Testament, ... though, undoubtably, there were believers in that day who were not as learned in the mystery of predestination/election as are you.
What I am saying is that there is no Biblical justification for such a judgement to be made upon your fellow believers as you make.
There is not a smidgen of Biblical judgement upon any believers who believed that they had come to Jesus, ... believed upon Jesus, ... repented of their sin ...
There are no accusations by any of the Apostles of any attempts by believers to steal God's sovereignty.
Noone makes such a point of it as do you.
Perhaps it is not so all-emcompassing as you believe.
***Within Arminianism is the great god, "Me," who makes the final decision regarding the future of his eternal rest.***
IOW, Christ did 99% of the work, but I hold the trump card that can frustrate the plans of the Creator of the universe ...
And here it is ... yet again.
Because any brother believes that he came to Christ (as he was commanded) ... and believed on Christ (as he was commanded) ... and repented of his sin (as he was commanded), ...
... you conclude ...
... that he is reserving some bit of God's sovereignty for himself.
And within that "tiny" little bit of inaccuracy, is all sorts of mischief, and false evangelistic methods, and "seeker-sensitive" programs, etc. etc. It doesn't take much error for it to have a large snowball effect.
***If He came for you, and if you end up in heaven with God and the angels, was there ever a real chance that you could have gone under?***
I undersand your point - and can agree with it to some degree. Help me think this though...
Is that statement not an (unintentional) denial of the reality of our pre-conversion lost condition?
If it is impossible for the elect to go to hell, then can it ever be said of them that they were truly lost?
"...among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." Eph 2
"remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." - Eph 2
... that he is reserving some bit of God's sovereignty for himself.
And within that "tiny" little bit of inaccuracy, is all sorts of mischief, and false evangelistic methods, and "seeker-sensitive" programs, etc. etc. It doesn't take much error for it to have a large snowball effect.
But ... don't you believe that all is as God would have it to be ... in any case ?
After all ... who can thwart the will of God ?
It that's the case ... is it not all His will ?
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.