Nope. Sorry. If someone screamed your shoes were on fire you would not look down? What happened to intuition?
Understanding........
- Thread starter praise_yeshua
- Start date
My yes goes to the fact that your snake oil salesman technique of supplying enough determinations until one occurs has indeed crashed and burned here and that you do continue to embarrass yourself.
So one occurs then? Thanks. Another Provisionist false premise bites the dust. GOOD TALK
Rockson
Well-known member
Sorry Presby but your whole premise is nonsense.
The heart of the issue here isn't whether God could determine something in the way that you say. The issue is would his creatures retained freedom of will through the process of what you said God did. You want to assert they would.
The following might better serve your argument but we'll show why even it falls apart. eg. A bad guy wants an innocent man, a good natured man to commit a homicide for him. He holds a gun to the head of one of his family members and tells him if you don't do it for me I'll do in your loved one.
So the man and we can RIGHTLY SAY against his will goes out and complies to the bad man's request. Now you would swing back and say well he freely chose to do what he did but upon being arrested a court of law would say NO his actions DID NOT reflect his true free will. They would say regardless of your claims to the contrary that did do damage to his volitional will and don't tell us it didn't.
Now back to a WCF statement, ......."God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, ; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures
So you're wanting to assert that God did things to bring about an absolute guaranteed result something would happen but it was all still done by the man's free will. I'd say you'd have to buy into a real abnormal and irregular concept of what free will would be to accept that. Calvinists would be laughed out of court and scorned with disdain by their continuing to assert the man under pressure had free will. You want to say he would have. You'd so well to consider that nonsense.
Stopped right at " hold a gun to his head."
Free will: "the natural ability to choose without force or coercion."
Analogy still stands
You are the Great Oracle of Calvinism. How low shall you want me to bow to you?
Still conflating influence with determination
And whether I looked down or not might well be dependent on current circumstances.
You apparently failed to understand
What I can do is present many Early church fathers who indicate man by his free will is able to chose both for or against god
In fact, I have a thread with multiple quotes showing that
No one teaches God compels?
Irresistible grace do so to start with but
4. Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy e(b)A second sin arises, that they never consider God at all unless compelled to; and they do not come nigh until they are dragged there despite their resistance. And not even then are…
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Institutes I, iv, 4, p 50 (1 time)
1. The Clarity of God’s Self-Disclosure Strips Us of Every Excuse
workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him. Indeed, his essence is incomprehensible;3 hence, his divineness far escapes all…
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Institutes I, v, 1, p 52 (1 time)
A Source of Security and Courage
men, regardless of whatever tumults they may cause, are not only restrained of God but are compelled to do His pleasure. Elisha, lonely and forgotten, counted those who were with him more than…
The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p 329 (1 time)
Rockson
Well-known member
No your analogy doesn't stand at all for you believe everything, EVERYTHING is ordained from God.....not just the innocent things like take your shoes off but any and all horrendous things that take place on the earth.
You mean like these?
If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed that they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience, while it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign appointment.
(John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6)
…God is the only being who is ultimately self-determining, and is himself ultimately the disposer of all things, including all choices — however many or diverse other intervening causes are. On this definition, no human being has free will, at any time. Neither before or after the fall, or in heaven, are creatures ultimately self-determining. There are great measures of self-determination, as the Bible often shows, but never is man the ultimate or decisive cause of his preferences and choices. When man’s agency and God’s agency are compared, both are real, but God’s is decisive. Yet — and here’s the mystery that causes so many to stumble — God is always decisive in such a way that man’s agency is real, and his responsibility remains. A beginners guide to free will
“God . . . brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child…
All the Good That Is Ours in Christ
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel wrote these words in light of his horrific experience at Auschwitz. He questioned where God was during his unjust suffering. Many of us wonder the same.
www.desiringgod.org
Nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will. Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed. God’s foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events. And so it is not inappropriate to take God to be the creator, the sender, the permitter, and sometimes even the instigator of evil… Nothing — no evil thing or person or event or deed — falls outside God’s ordaining will. Nothing arises, exists, or endures independently of God’s will. So when even the worst of evils befall us, they do not ultimately come from anywhere other than God’s hand.
b Talbot, "All the Good That Is Ours in Christ", in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor,
Quote may be found
All the Good That Is Ours in Christ
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel wrote these words in light of his horrific experience at Auschwitz. He questioned where God was during his unjust suffering. Many of us wonder the same.
www.desiringgod.org
how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission…It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them…Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits. ” (John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 10:11)
Calvinist; Dr. James N. Anderson, of the Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte NC, in his published work; Calvinism and the first sin, states the underlying proposition: “It should be conceded at the outset, and without embarrassment, that Calvinism is indeed committed to divine determinism: the view that everything is ultimately determined by God…..take it for granted as something on which the vast majority of Calvinists uphold, and may be expressed as the following: “For every event [E], God decided that [E] should happen and that decision alone was the ultimate sufficient cause of [E].
Calvinism and the problem of evil pg 204.205
koberstein
Active member
Yeshua dying on the stakeholder is proof enough for Calvinism.
Oh we can often tell when folk don't read the whole thing from other people but jump in with their own carefully crafted definitions...so I use such posts as springboards to share, not to try to teach.
If by free will all we mean is the ability to chose then free will is meaningless and has no value.
Sophisticated language skills do not prove the ability to choose indicates a free will. ImCo, an uncoerced will allows a person to decide for himself from his own thoughts and desires which option is the best for himself...a determined will choses and does what the Determiner has decided he will choose, not himself. If someone needs a different definition to make their theology work then...shrug.
Satan, who is totally leavened in evil, fully and completely enslaved to the power of evil, still makes choices but so what - he is not free to choose righteousness but is constrained by his previous decisions. His ability to choose between two evil actions is no indication that his will is free to choose any option.
The ability to choose, though a common factor in all choices, is not the determining feature of a free will. Being free means in ordinary terms to able to choose by his own will, that is, by his own determination of what he wants, not someone else's will or what He wants.
koberstein
Active member
If world humanity is really true freewill on decision making , then there is a mathematical possibility that no one in the world
will respond to the Gospel/Yeshua. If that were to happen would Adonai let Yeshua die for nothing?
I don't think so.
ImCo,
a free will makes self determined decisions of which option is best from his own pov.
A coercion forces the person to choose an option that someone else has predetermined him to choose or which he would not necessarily choose without that force being applied. A coercion cannot be resisted.
An influence is a force applied to someone's decision making process to get them to choose in a certain way but it does not have the power of a coercion so an influence can be resisted.
Rockson
Well-known member
In that regard you have no basis to make such an assessment. Even if one person and one person only responded you can know it was all worthwhile from God's standpoint.
Rockson
Well-known member
Calvinists seldom talk about the depth of insidiousness that their doctrine takes them to but that is where it does take them whether they like it or not. Oh they'll talk about how God ordains everything like maybe taking your shoes off but they run from considering their doctrine is true when considering your examples up above. And yet they say God ordains everything.
Yes few are willing to come out and affirm all this, but there are some who try to be consistent with their theology
That is why it seems Calvinism when it becomes more consistent within itself begin to decline after a wave of popularity
civic
Well-known member
Exactly that’s Calvinism 101 straight from the horses mouthYou mean like these?
If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed that they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience, while it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign appointment.
(John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6)
…God is the only being who is ultimately self-determining, and is himself ultimately the disposer of all things, including all choices — however many or diverse other intervening causes are. On this definition, no human being has free will, at any time. Neither before or after the fall, or in heaven, are creatures ultimately self-determining. There are great measures of self-determination, as the Bible often shows, but never is man the ultimate or decisive cause of his preferences and choices. When man’s agency and God’s agency are compared, both are real, but God’s is decisive. Yet — and here’s the mystery that causes so many to stumble — God is always decisive in such a way that man’s agency is real, and his responsibility remains. A beginners guide to free will
“God . . . brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child…
All the Good That Is Ours in Christ
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel wrote these words in light of his horrific experience at Auschwitz. He questioned where God was during his unjust suffering. Many of us wonder the same.
Nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will. Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed. God’s foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events. And so it is not inappropriate to take God to be the creator, the sender, the permitter, and sometimes even the instigator of evil… Nothing — no evil thing or person or event or deed — falls outside God’s ordaining will. Nothing arises, exists, or endures independently of God’s will. So when even the worst of evils befall us, they do not ultimately come from anywhere other than God’s hand.
b Talbot, "All the Good That Is Ours in Christ", in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor,
Quote may be found
All the Good That Is Ours in Christ
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel wrote these words in light of his horrific experience at Auschwitz. He questioned where God was during his unjust suffering. Many of us wonder the same.
how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission…It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them…Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits. ” (John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 10:11)
Calvinist; Dr. James N. Anderson, of the Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte NC, in his published work; Calvinism and the first sin, states the underlying proposition: “It should be conceded at the outset, and without embarrassment, that Calvinism is indeed committed to divine determinism: the view that everything is ultimately determined by God…..take it for granted as something on which the vast majority of Calvinists uphold, and may be expressed as the following: “For every event [E], God decided that [E] should happen and that decision alone was the ultimate sufficient cause of [E].
Calvinism and the problem of evil pg 204.205
Yep. it is funny when some say that is not Calvinism
koberstein
Active member
I do have a basis to make that assessment. I work with mathematical possibilities all the time. It demonstrates the fallacy of arminianism which is a bankrupt idea.
