Definite Atonement

[Arial]

If all things whatsoever comes to pass have been predestined by God, then man cannot be free.

That is determinism, not Calvinism.

I do not say that we are free from outside influences, or inward inclinations but none of these necessitates the will to follow their suggestions or leanings. There are times we do not do what these forces seek to make us do. We we often choose otherwise to the direction we are tempted to take.

If that occurs it is because there is a stronger desire that prevents it. We still always follow our stronger desire. Temptation has nothing to do with what the will is able to do or not do. Temptation is only temptation.

Take procrastination for example. One might be tempted to procrastinate on completing a project. And that is the first desire. But then the to have the project complete becomes stronger than the desire not to, or the desire to simply not be a procrastinator maybe, and it is that stronger desire that moves our will to finish the project. Or the other way around. We desire to finish and that is the best desire but we have a greater desire to sit down and read a book. So that is what we do.

And though that is what you are wrestling with here it is not the real issue you wrestle with. And that is that you believe we are free to choose Christ, and we who must, and not God who chooses us. And you believe that if that is not the case, then God has violated us in some way by taking that freedom away from us. You do not look at the fall as having affected us so thorouthly through and through we always have a stronger desire to stay away from God than one to 100% submit to Him (which is what is required) and never sin again. We actually love this ability to sin. We don't even actually do that after we have been regenerated, but fortuatly our salvation is not contingent upon our righteousness but Christ's alone.

(Just surmising from what I have read of what you write when I say what it is you do and don't believe. Not stating a fact or declaring your beliefs.)

 

[TibiasDad]

It is complete insofar as what God has made available to us to know. We don't know why He decreed what He did. Or why man fell and that according to His will. We don't know why He wills to do anything that He wills. Etc. etc. It seems you expect Calvinism to explain all that also, while not recognizing that free will explains none of that either, or gives it a pass on those things.

We now what God tells us in His word. And we know the things that happened that are in His word. We even know He is triune from His word, but cannot begin to explain how that can be. With that in mind, what does that statement in the Confession not complete?

Your explanation is incomplete.

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3.If you would not insert your opinion of what is in the doctrine when you use the word "allegedly" before the next portion of the sentence, you would not arrive at a tension, mysterious or otherwise, or consider it a contradiction between sovereign determination and unviolated free will. In doing so you create the tension instead of trying to find out what it means. You, yourself, insert the tension that was never there.

Do you not allege “no violence”?
And there is tension between predestination and freedom of will. It is the same tension as alleging that a square is round!

God's sovereignty does no violence to the freedom of the will----which is not to say it is free as it is not----because He never does the willing of anyone for them. They do their own willing.

How does one do their own willing when their willing is predetermined by someone else?

And they never, ever, do something against their own will, from their own will. God does not touch that or violate it in anyway. He remains God. We remain human creatures. As humans we are sinners and therefore we sin, and we sin because we want to. You are also confusing determined with determinism, even though the WCF states in that very verse that is not what is being taught.

God decrees everything that ever happens.

Our willing to do X is something that happens.

Therefore, God decreed our willing to do X!

If God decreed that I choose to do X, and this X must necessarily occur by my choice because of said decree, then I have no freedom not to do X.

The point of certainty is the decree, so whoever issues the decree is the one choosing and the one responsible.

You are inserting your feelings about what you think it says into the doctrine as though it were the doctrine. No recourse was taken away from them by God or anyone else. The same options were before them as are before those God regenerates. And they did what they wanted to do, not what God made them do. The regenerate have been placed by God in a position of changed heart and they also do what they want to do, not what God made them do. It is not unfair. It is unequal but it not unfair, and who is man to talk back to God and tell Him He must treat all people equally?

If God decreed that I choose to do X (sin) and this X (sin) must necessarily occur by my choice because of said decree, then I have no freedom not to do X. And this “before I had done good or bad”. (And this before I was even created.)

The point of certainty is the decree that I sin, so whoever issues the decree that I sin is the one choosing/making the choice and the one responsible.


Doug

 

[TibiasDad]

"Free will" is not a Biblical notion, and enjoys no Biblical status, it is a human notion.

Your understanding of free will is not the Biblical presentation of free will.

And yet you argue that the freedom of man is not violated! How can it have no biblical status, and yet there is a biblical presentation of free will?

Doug

 

[Arial]

How does one do their own willing when their willing is predetermined by someone else?

Who said it was?

 

[TibiasDad]

Who said it was?

Reformed theology!


Doug

 

[Arial]

Reformed theology!


Doug

Where does Reformed theology say a person's willing is preordained by God? It says God ordains whatsoever comes to pass.

 

[TibiasDad]

Where does Reformed theology say a person's willing is preordained by God? It says God ordains whatsoever comes to pass.

<Sigh> You can’t see the tree for the forest!

Is my willing something that “comes to pass”?

Doug

 

[Arial]

Do you not allege “no violence”?

No it is not an allegation, it is a fact. This statement in the WCF came directly from the doctrines of God in the Bible you know. That is, from the self revelation of God in it. If it were possible for you to correctly understand the doctrines in it----which cannot be done by taking one or two lines and drawing from them an opinion and never looking closely at the whole and comparing it to the scriptures---then you would not simply compare what you think it is saying with your own preconceptions. And of course it is intellectually possible for you to do that, but I suspect you have no interest in doing so. Arguing against it without full knowledge is the typical method of refuting it. And I realize that those who do this are convinced that they have full knowledge, and one would be hard pressed to find a way to convince them otherwise. Something is getting in the way.

And there is tension between predestination and freedom of will. It is the same tension as alleging that a square is round!

The only way that is true is if a person is looking through only one lens---the one they have always used, that of free will. Which is the human side of the argument only, not taking into account God first. You are unable to stop seeing it as determinism, which it is not.

God decrees everything that ever happens.

Our willing to do X is something that happens.

Therefore, God decreed our willing to do X!

If God decreed that I choose to do X, and this X must necessarily occur by my choice because of said decree, then I have no freedom not to do X.

The point of certainty is the decree, so whoever issues the decree is the one choosing and the one responsible.

That would be determinism which Reformed theology is not. There are some who see themselves as Calvinists who do take that view, and certainly there were in history. But that is irrelevant to this discussion. What you are unwittingly promoting is the opposite of determinism when you use the above argument against the teachings of Calvinism. And that is deism or partial deism.

 

[Arial]

If God decreed that I choose to do X (sin) and this X (sin) must necessarily occur by my choice because of said decree, then I have no freedom not to do X. And this “before I had done good or bad”. (And this before I was even created.)

The point of certainty is the decree that I sin, so whoever issues the decree that I sin is the one choosing/making the choice and the one responsible.

God did not decree that you choose to sin. Again you have determinism in a place where it isn't, and its opposite in your own beliefs, partial deism in some places at least, without recognizing it. Your premise for arguing against Reformed theology is wrong.

When you determine that the position of the WCF statement that God decrees all that comes to pass means what you have stated above, your completely remove from the argument, the three most basic and first learned doctrines of God, that are in the statement. That being, His omnipotence, omnipresence, and most glaringly, His omniscience.

God is completely other than man. He is outside of time and space, eternal, and self existent. He created all that is and as such is sovereign over it, Governor and King over all that exists. He knows all things and learns nothing as He has nothing to learn. That would imply one greater than Himself that He must learn from. And unless you are an Open Theist I am guessing you acknowledge this. So why forget it when trying to understand the decree of God in all that comes to pass?

All these things He knows, which is everything, every thought, every action, every result of everything from eternity past to forever, even on our tiny planet He created, all that is in it and moment by moment, every word spoken etc. etc. are all at once for Him. Time and space are only our boundary that He placed us in. And all these things He knows He decreed that they would come to pass just as they come to pass in our time and with us. That He decreed them to come to pass does not mean that He made anyone will to do any specific thing. It means He didn't stop it as He uses all of it to fulfill His purposes and His plan of redemption and for His creation. He governs it. Nothing that is done moves His purposes off track in the slightest. Don't forget that a war is taking place in the spiritual realm that He lets us glimpse into should we see the book of Revelation as a picture book rather than a puzzle book, that is playing out on and for God's creation of the earth and all that is in it including us, and through us to a great degree.

And if you don't believe that, step back a moment and look at the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. A clear picture of God decreeing all that comes to pass while doing no violence to the will of man.

 

[Eleanor]

And yet you argue that the freedom of man is not violated! How can it have no biblical status, and yet there is a biblical presentation of free will?

Doug

There is no Biblical "presentation"of free will.
The operation of fallen man's will as seen in the NT Scriptures is presented in post #217.

 

[TibiasDad]

That would be determinism which Reformed theology is not. There are some who see themselves as Calvinists who do take that view, and certainly there were in history. But that is irrelevant to this discussion. What you are unwittingly promoting is the opposite of determinism when you use the above argument against the teachings of Calvinism. And that is deism or partial deism.

God did not decree that you choose to sin. Again you have determinism in a place where it isn't, and its opposite in your own beliefs, partial deism in some places at least, without recognizing it. Your premise for arguing against Reformed theology is wrong.

Then God did not decree “whatsoever comes to pass”, which means everything without exception.

There is no violation of the “omni” nature of God. There is no association with Deism-which is a laughable suggestion! (The only Deistic principle that correlates with any orthodox Christian belief is that God exists and is the creator of the cosmos.)

To your assertion that Refomed theology is not deterministic, Calvin himself says,

"This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children."[12]

Predestination is predetermining the end result, and the WCF says that this applies to “whatsoever comes to pass”.


Doug

 

[TibiasDad]

There is no Biblical "presentation"of free will.
The operation of fallen man's will as seen in the NT Scriptures is presented in post #217.

But the argument isn’t just about the aftermath of Adam’s sin, it must include the entirety of history. Adam and Eve were created with free will, which became enslaved by sin. That is a biblical expression of free will as an endowment of God in the creation of man in God’s image.


Doug

 

[Eleanor]

But the argument isn’t just about the aftermath of Adam’s sin, it must include the entirety of history. Adam and Eve were created with free will, which became enslaved by sin. That is a biblical expression of free will as an endowment of God in the creation of man in God’s image.


Doug

I man's terminology that is true, but I don't find anything remotely similar to that statement in Ge.

 

[TibiasDad]

I man's terminology that is true, but I don't find anything remotely similar to that statement in Ge.

Pardon me, but I don’t base my conclusions on what you find. Logically, if the result of Adam’s sin was the enslavement of man’s will, then Adam’s will was necessarily free from such enslavement prior to his sin.

Doug

 

[Arial]

Then God did not decree “whatsoever comes to pass”, which means everything without exception.

I will not attempt to explain that to you again.

There is no violation of the “omni” nature of God. There is no association with Deism-which is a laughable suggestion! (The only Deistic principle that correlates with any orthodox Christian belief is that God exists and is the creator of the cosmos.)

Oh but there is. If God is omnipotent He can do whatever He pleases to do.
If He is omniscient He knows precisely what He is going to do down to the last detail and has always known. And His omnipotence does it. You have Him at the mercy of willful, fallen, humans and the choices they make. You have Him needing to learn what they are doing---all of them from Adam forward, and adapting His plan accordingly. You have what would be chaos. That or a God that created the universe and then left it to its fate, not interfering in the lives of these free men! Deism. I did not say it was an orthodox Christian belief. I said people are doing it unwittingly when they say what they do about Reformed theology. What is an orthodox Christian belief however are the things that are in the WCF, the BCF, etc. The protestant confessions that came out of the Reformation.

This theology that the free will argument has was condemned as heresy long ago, because it was not compatible with what the scriptures declare about God. It languished in the background and in pockets for centuries until Charles Finney gave it wings. And now it is practically all there is, and the majority of Christians alive now have heard nothing else. Calvinism rose to life only in the last twenty years or so, and is growing. Christian forums are witness to that as there are many who come on them for the sole purpose of trying to kill it again.

I am not saying that is what you are doing. Most genuinely believe they are in the right about it, as does the other side.

To your assertion that Refomed theology is not deterministic, Calvin himself says,

"This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children."[12]

That people believe they can prove a historical persons view of given subject ( or that it even matters) by quoting one sentence out of a complete piece is so faulty I am surprised any dare to do it. We don't know what the "this" is that Calvin refers to. We don't know what came before or after, we don't know at what stage of Calvin's journey it was penned. Just as all of us should, he too grew in his understanding of the things of God. We don't know what it was he was calling ignorantly and childishly. We don't even know what was in the ... that you omitted. In short we don't really know what he meant or what he was saying from the quote you give. But there is quite naturally the opposite of anything. I am quite certain Calvin was not saying that God made the reprobate to be reprobate---in fact he says that God passes over them---leaves them in their natural condition. IOW man is naturally reprobate which is why he sins, they were not predestined to be reprobate. He predestined that Adam would be the federal head of all humanity that followed. And that Christ would be the federal head of all the redeemed. And He predestined those He would give to Christ by grace and through faith.

 

[Arial]

Then God did not decree “whatsoever comes to pass”, which means everything without exception.

There is no violation of the “omni” nature of God. There is no association with Deism-which is a laughable suggestion! (The only Deistic principle that correlates with any orthodox Christian belief is that God exists and is the creator of the cosmos.)

To your assertion that Refomed theology is not deterministic, Calvin himself says,

"This they do ignorantly and childishly since there could be no election without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children."[12]

Predestination is predetermining the end result, and the WCF says that this applies to “whatsoever comes to pass”.


Doug

I addressed all this in my previous post. Now, if you would, please address this:

All these things He knows, which is everything, every thought, every action, every result of everything from eternity past to forever, even on our tiny planet He created, all that is in it and moment by moment, every word spoken etc. etc. are all at once for Him. Time and space are only our boundary that He placed us in. And all these things He knows He decreed that they would come to pass just as they come to pass in our time and with us. That He decreed them to come to pass does not mean that He made anyone will to do any specific thing. It means He didn't stop it as He uses all of it to fulfill His purposes and His plan of redemption and for His creation. He governs it. Nothing that is done moves His purposes off track in the slightest. Don't forget that a war is taking place in the spiritual realm that He lets us glimpse into should we see the book of Revelation as a picture book rather than a puzzle book, that is playing out on and for God's creation of the earth and all that is in it including us, and through us to a great degree.

And if you don't believe that, step back a moment and look at the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. A clear picture of God decreeing all that comes to pass while doing no violence to the will of man.

You can find it to quote from in post #229

 

[Arial]

But the argument isn’t just about the aftermath of Adam’s sin, it must include the entirety of history. Adam and Eve were created with free will, which became enslaved by sin. That is a biblical expression of free will as an endowment of God in the creation of man in God’s image.


Doug

That is a presentation of man created with free will who became enslaved by sin, his will also, as you stated. How is what is enslaved to something also free? He still has a will, and that will still freely chooses what it most desires, but it is enslaved by sin as you say. How then will it desire Christ? It is much too sinful to do so. How will what is unholy come near the God who is holy and will not allow a sinful man to even touch the holy relics in the OT? Or the mountain where His presence is?

 

[TibiasDad]

Oh but there is. If God is omnipotent He can do whatever He pleases to do.

No it means that there in no power more powerful than his.

His sovereignty is what allows him to do what ever he pleases.

You have Him at the mercy of willful, fallen, humans and the choices they make.

An is this not a possibility for a Sovereign God to do?

That is a presentation of man created with free will who became enslaved by sin, his will also, as you stated.

Thank you for the acknowledgment!

How is what is enslaved to something also free?

There are varying definitions of what constitutes being free. I am only arguing that freedom is with regard to my choices are not necessitated by anything outside of myself. I am not saying there are not bindings that influence me in one direction or another, but that these influences, tendencies, and inclinations do not necessitate that I do what they say at every turn. We don’t always lie when tempted, even as unregenerate beings. (That is an effect of prevenient grace.)

My choice is my choice, not the choice that God said would be my choice. It is my choice alone.

He still has a will, and that will still freely chooses what it most desires, but it is enslaved by sin as you say. How then will it desire Christ? It is much too sinful to do so.

If left in a vacuum, you would be right, but we are not in a vacuum! God providentially and graciously mitigates the effects of sin so that it does not have total control of us, else we would be far worse than we are, and would probably have destroyed ourselves by now.

How will what is unholy come near the God who is holy and will not allow a sinful man to even touch the holy relics in the OT? Or the mountain where His presence is?

We do it by Grace! We can do it because only God allows it.

Doug

 

[TibiasDad]

This theology that the free will argument has was condemned as heresy long ago, because it was not compatible with what the scriptures declare about God.

Historically speaking, there was not a sniff of Calvinism until Augustine, except for the Gnostics and their ilk, of which Augustine had previously been a member.

The Epistles, especially John’s writings, were opposed to the Gnostic teachings, which included predestination of some to life and others to death.

Doug

 

[Eleanor]

Pardon me, but I don’t base my conclusions on what you find. Logically, if the result of Adam’s sin was the enslavement of man’s will, then Adam’s will was necessarily free from such enslavement prior to his sin.

Doug

Previously addressed.

The free will of the Bible is not enslavement.

Free will is never violated when one chooses what one prefers.