What's the point?

[Guest]

I'm curious about the logic behind the Calvinist viewpoint. I know we need to stick with exegesis of the Scriptures, but I can't help wondering why God would have bothered allowing the Fall, years of rebellion and deplorable acts of sin, and His precious Son being crucified if human beings didn't really have a choice to follow Him anyway. If He is going to choose for us to believe, why not choose that Adam not sin to begin with and avoid all the trouble.

Blessings!
Nicole

[Guest]

It's a mystery.

Truthfully, I can't see any logic in it. It just seems like a way of making God understandable. But to me it just makes Him less understandable. I think we all are at fault when/if we claim to know why God does what he does if we go beyond the most basic biblical revelation of Him.

[Guest]

The historic Reformed faith doesn't have a point to make as if a point can be made that is not a point already established in Scripture. So may be it is better put that the Calvinistic view of Scripture is that God has worked all in all for His own glory. Paul answers the rhetorical question in Romans 9 having to do with man's sense of a better way that God should have or could have acted. He says, "Who are you O man?"

We have our own sense of justice and fairness and what should be and what really gives God the glory. But we need to be sure that our sense is what God's sense is.

Jude

[Guest]

He says, "Who are you O man?"

We have our own sense of justice and fairness and what should be and what really gives God the glory. But we need to be sure that our sense is what God's sense is.

Jude

I don't know what you mean by "We have our own sense of justice and fairness and what should be and what really gives God the glory."

We do need to know as you say, that our sense is what God's sense is. I just don't see the calvisitic doctrine as being that. That God would choose some and damn others "for his own good pleasure" is not valid to me, but it is what Calvin believed.

If this were the case God would be holding us to a higher standard than Himself.

If God only saves the elect, He's making a comprimise, because then He sent His Son to die for only the elect. He would be in violation of His own commandment.

Luke 6:32
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them.

And read the Parable of the Good Samaritan. You are to Love your neighbor, not pass them by. If God chooses some to salvation and passes by others without the people making a free, conscious choice to accept the gift of Grace by belief in Christ's atonement on their behalf then God is in violation of passing by those who are in need because they are fallen.

We are commanded to be immitators of Christ and God. Are we allowed to pass by those in need? NO! Neither can God, not because I think so but because His word says so. He cannot sin. He sent His Son as a sacrifice of atonement for all. That is God's love. He has shown us His love in that He first loved us. If we reject His free offer of Grace, then no sacrifice remains for our sins. But if He elects some because of His good pleasure and reprobates others also for His good pleasure then there is a problem because God has said that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. This would be a contradiction unless man has the ability to accept/reject the offer of Grace.


Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?"

The answer speaks to the point in the question "who has resisted His will"

The answer is:
"But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God?" Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?"

If you make a reply against God, you are resisting His will!

Why else would we pray:
"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

To speak against God is not what God wants, therefore Paul is not afirming that God's will can't be resisted, but that it can. That's why some pots are for noble and some are for common use.

So in the end, God's purpose is done. The unfaithful perish, and the faithful are given eternal life. That is always the case. But this does not mean God made some saved and some damned apart from faith.

[Guest]

I always found this debate interesting just as I found the debate about eternal security. truthfully, if your will is the same as Gods and if you are living in the light of Christ as he prescribed then what difference does it make? I find that it only really matters if some one is looking for an excuse or justification of an act that is contrary to the word of God. Of course this is just my opinion

[Guest]

It seems that man has a bent to be right. I think God makes some of us Calvinist and some Arminians just to see if we will love one another as Christians in spite of our man made conclusions. Is it more important to nail this or that doctrine or to love in spite of our weaknesses?

[MoGrace2u]

To reply to Nicole's initial post, I think the Calvinist would say the point is that we need to try to get the whole of God's character right as it is revealed in Scripture, which is difficult when our human nature is constantly resisting certain aspects of his nature. Even beneath our awareness I think we do this. And I think that is what creates our individual and group biases. They feel if you get God's character right, everything else can work itself out from that. But if you drag him down and make him like man, all is lost.

I've listened to R.C. Sproul a lot and you get the sense he thinks a little of God's holiness or otherness is lost when you have decrepit fallen humans deciding on their own power to seek God and submit to him and on the basis of that response by the human God is obliged to bestow forgiveness and salvation. It makes God look too weak to the Calvinist and conflicts too much with God as Creator of all. I think R.C. had me going there for a while. And my own pastor taught a Baptist form of this, so it sort of came factory installed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Gregg.

I think they do go too far, the Calvinists. You don't exalt God by removing our response from the equation. It's true if God didn't seek to establish a covenant with humans we'd have nothing. But if he chooses to honor our choices and give them meaning, then on that basis the choices are a factor. He sets up a relationship and endows it with significance, rather than a unilateral choice by Him that stands aloof. So Steve's teaching and the teaching of this forum has been a big blessing to me in bringing to light a lot of the Scripture that teaches interaction and responsibility on our part which the Calvinists pass over in favor of verses that seem to teach a sort of fatalism and non-relationship and passivity on the part of the believer.

For instance, it recently dawned on me that the reason we have so many parables about a master going away for a while and entrusting his estate to servants is to teach us that we as believers will have to make decisions on our own without God micromanaging everything for us. Evidently, he wants us to get involved and test out this sensitivity to this invisible God on our own. But if Calvinism is true and applied consistently to regeneration as well as conduct as a believer, our choices don't really matter so much and God has made all the choices already.

However, I guess I am not entirely on the same page with Steve and the other "Arminians" on this forum yet. I think the reason why is in considering it as I read Scripture I get that creepy feeling that by holding their view I have to cut loose some passages of Scripture that seem to teach God has his wiggle room in choosing us that's not fully dependent on our choices of him. You know, normally people don't invite themselves to the king's banquet. The king sends the invite when he wants to.

I certainly may be wrong. Steve and others have been able to show me some alternate interpretations of passages that assuaged my conscience toward certain verses that used to bother me, especially in Rom. 9-11. (I started the "What About Considering Perspective" thread in this forum under the same topic.) I recommend Steve's verse by verse lectures on Rom. 9-11.

So here's a verse as an example that still bugs me from Rom 11.

1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, 3 “LORD, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life”?[ae] 4 But what does the divine response say to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”[af] 5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. 6

So here God is reserving a remnant for himself. I don't think he's supposed to be doing that if human choice is to be left alone. I think it goes beyond even God influencing that remnant's choosing him. It says he actively reserves them.

In my entries on the "Perspectives" i was seeking to propose a "middle" view where God can be unilaterally doing some choosing on his side of the veil while on this side we have a true experience of our choosing him and the idea was that somehow the two could coincide and God's invisible hand and veiled nature can be attributed for the mysterious interaction going on. After all, at some point His Spirit comes in us and we can act together, which is great, but complicates things for this current discussion. That view of mine probably had some problems. I've back-burnered it in my thinking. Edifying dialogue for me, though. I'm a pretty new Christian and playing a little catch-up. But I had another idea. Let me give this one a shot.

I like what Steve said in another thread on this topic about how affirming God's choice or election doesn't imply he chooses without taking into account some of the attributes of the people he was selecting. I think Steve used the analogy of choosing a wife and passing over other candidates based on certain qualities that attracted the suitor.

Could it be that when God "reserved for himself" 7,000 that what was going on was that his Spirit was going out looking for humble hearts among the stubborn, fallen, idolatrous Israel, and of the more contrite ones he caused his Spirit to draw 7,000 to himself? You have a sort of total depravity in this view, which I know Arminians don't like. You also have unilateral election, though not unconditional election in this scenario. Limited atonement goes away. I guess the grace wouldn't necessarily be irresistible and neither would perseverance be guaranteed, because God could give over one of the 7,000 who resists or apostasizes and go looking for another to fill the quota. (And quota sounds bad for a God who wants all to come to repentance. Probably it was a last ditch measure for Israel's lowest ebb. You don't have to say he always imposes a quota. It just seems like from the passage he did then. If he did always set a quota you'd have limited atonement.)

Could it be like what happened with Cornelius where though he was a Gentile God saw his prayers and gifts to the poor and decided to send Peter to him with His Spirit?

Thanks for reading and considering.

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[Guest]

Certainly God does some choosing as Jesus said to the disciples "you did not choose me ,i chose you" and in Mark 4.11 Jesus said that the Pharisees will not see otherwise they would turn and have their sins forgiven. So it seems that God intervined because Jesus had to die to pay for the sins of humanity. But the Calvinists apply verses like this to everyone which is reading more into it then is called for IMO. The difference between us and animals or other things in God's creation is that everything always does God's will but we clearly don't because we were given the ability of critical thinking , for better or worse.