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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | response | Rom 1:18 | Reformer Joe | 20638 | ||
You wrote: "You throw out passages many of which are taken out of context which means they are a proof text for you belief." As far as Romans 8:28 goes, then am I to understand that you are saying that God does not include the sinful acts of human beings into the "all things" which work together for good? And let's look at the following verses: those God FOREKNEW...who are these people (and they are people, not events)? He predestined people, not "pre-determined something" as you say. Go back and read the verse again. He also CALLED these same people, JUSTIFIED and GLORIFIED. Romans 8:29 talks about God's action toward a specific group of individuals. Foreknowing, calling, justifying, and glorifying are acts of God toward a specific group of individuals (unless you think that all will be glorified), not in regard to a specific set of actions. I took nothing out of context. Isaiah 55 has nothing to do with Israel's impending judgment. Go back and read it again. A lot of the verses in the chapter are some of the most quoted in Christianity. Are you to say that everyone who has said to a group of listeners, "Seek the Lord while He may be found" has been a false teacher, because God was only talking to Israel specifically and didn't mean that to apply to anyone or anything else? Isaiah 55:11 is a statement of how God operates in a universal way, not how He will act in this one itty-bitty situation. How did I take Proverbs 16:9 and 19:21 out of context? What about Ephesians 2:10? You zoomed in on two of the passages and yourself provided faulty exegesis of them. One last thing: you seem to be under the common misunderstanding that Calvinists believe that the sovereignty of God means that man does not make his own decisions. That cannot be farther from the truth. Man will make his own decisions, based on his own nature (which is why an unregenerate human being will never please God -- Romans 8:7-9). He also is limited in his capacity to carry out his decisions by the life-situation in which God has placed him. In other words, we are all constrained in our free will (whether it is based on our desire to sin or to honor God) by power, ability, and opportunity. In addition, there are aspects of our personality which are formed by our immediate surroundings. Therefore, a sinner can be greedy or a homosexual or a murderer or a liar or a gossip, all while they condemn those whose sinfulness expresses itself in another of these ways. Our upbringing does not make us sinners, but it certainly can be influential in determining how our sinfulness manifests itself. And who decrees that we will be born in our specific environments? You wrote: "I believe he moved on pharohs heart enough to fulfill his purposes and that is all." Two questions: 1. What is the Biblical basis for your belief here? 2. If he moves just enough to fulfill His purposes, what ISN'T part of His purposes? God does orchestrate all of his creation. Those who are by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) will use their free-but-constrained will to displease God, and God will use those actions to glorify Himself. Those whom God has regenerated are no longer slaves to sin (Romans 6), so their wills are no longer constrained by their innate sinfulness. Therefore, some acts of the believer. will please God, and others won't. Both will be used to God's glory. God lets everything fall into place so that two terrorists manage take 6500 lives, for His purposes; he keeps another from fulfilling his mission, crashing in PA, also for His purposes. Either God is sovereign or He isn't. To say that He is sovereign but just takes a back seat to the affairs of men in any way is leaning toward partial Deism and makes God just someone who reacts to us rather than acts upon us. --Joe! |
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2 | response | Rom 1:18 | userdoe220 | 20660 | ||
Rom 8: NO. God uses sinful acts for good but does not cause them. To derive that from the passage is completly going beyond what Paul was saying. You miss the whole point of Romans 8. The word predestination is not being used by Paul how you understand it. I could place predestination, in this verse, before foreknowledge and it would not effect my belief at all. All this verse is saying, is that God predestined us to be conformed to the image of Christ--Try a life of holiness to make things simpilar. Let me reword it for you so maybe you can get my point. "Those that God knew would accept Christ he has pre-determined would walk in the likeness of Christ." You, and other people I know, just jump on that word, Predestination, and run wild with it ignorign the broader context. All Paul is saying in this whole passage is that God will use the evil that man causes (Not God) to shape us into the image of his son. It does not refer to a cosmic script people are acting out. It does not refer to a list of who is saved and who is not. The word predestination is the path that each believer will take when they embrace Christ: A path to be confromed to be in His image. Mis-understanding of Calvanism results from the books and college classes I have sat under that were written or lectured to by Calvanist. So maybe your understanding of Calvanist differs from the Calvanist I have interacted with but don't tell me I have mis-understood calvanism. Let me illustrate with one doctrine: perseverance of the siants. If a person cannot walk away from his salvation is he/she really free? No. If God has determined who will be saved before eternity and who will not be saved are people really free to determine to accept Christ are not? No. That Goes for the saved and the un-saved. At best, man has apparant freedom not true freedom which is no freedom at all. You wrote: "I believe he moved on pharohs heart enough to fulfill his purposes and that is all." Two questions: 1. What is the Biblical basis for your belief here? 2. If he moves just enough to fulfill His purposes, what ISN'T part of His purposes? My question is likewise. What is the Biblical ref. you have to prove your view. You will find that you do not have one. You have none. Just the westminister confession--a creed created by man. Last but not least. The terrorist comment. I believe God will use the crash to fulfill his will, but that does not mean he orchestrated the crash. That crash was designed and carried out under the free will of man not God. God is sovereign Joe. If God is all powerful, can't he create a world in which his creation is really free to make choices? Yes. And he did. That world is the one in which we live in. The reaon I did not comment on Prv/eph is because I am limited by time. You jotted down a number of verses with a little one sentence summary. I took the time to thoroughly answer two of your passages and did not have enough time to respond to the other ones. Work calls...I must depart. |
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3 | response | Rom 1:18 | Reformer Joe | 20681 | ||
Why do you feel you have the liberty to rearrange the order Paul set for his "golden chain of redemption"? Those he FOREKNEW, he PREDESTINED, he CALLED, JUSTIFIED, GLORIFIED. All of these are describing the same group of people. Who is the subject of all of these verbs? Who is the object? Again, the verse clearly indicates that God did not foreknow events, but rather PEOPLE. You write: "1. What is the Biblical basis for your belief here?" Aside from the other verses I quoted? Romans 9:18-24; Ephesians 1:4,11; Ephesians 2:3; John 6:37-40,44,65; 1 Peter 1:3-5 (for starters)...let me know if you need more. I am not "running wild" with one word in one verse. It is a clear doctrine that screams its truth from both the Old and New Testaments. There is scarcely a chapter in Scripture which does not declare that the whole ball game is God's and that He will do what He will do, regardless of man's own agenda. "God is sovereign Joe. If God is all powerful, can't he create a world in which his creation is really free to make choices? Yes. And he did." 1. God can do what He wants according to his own unchangeable nature. The question isn't "what can God do?," but rather "what HAS he done?" 2. Please go back and re-read my previous post beginning with: "One last thing: you seem to be under the common misunderstanding that Calvinists believe that the sovereignty of God means that man does not make his own decisions." I have never stated than man is not free at all to make choices. I have said that man is not ultimately free, because he is bound by his nature and by circumstance. Within those two bounds we have complete freedom. Let me give you a concrete example. Let's say in my free will I purpose in my heart to invade Libya and rename it Joeland. I have the will to do that, but I think we would agree that I am not in a situation to carry out my will, because God has not allowed me to be in a position of enough means and power to do so. The unregenerate likewise are limited by something else: the depravity of their nature. They have a range of choices that they can make in life, but they will not ever will to do anything that honors God. Paul declares that the unsaved are unable to please God at all because they are completely enslaved to their sinful nature. This does not mean that they want to do what is right but can't, but rather that they don't WANT to do what is right in the first place, or at least not from the right motives. I am sorry if your misunderstanding comes from poor explanation of Reformed theology. Pick up James White's book that I recommended and read it without any preconceptions. It really does a very good job of defending historic Reformed thinking. --Joe! |
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4 | response | Rom 1:18 | userdoe220 | 20732 | ||
Joe, I am swamped this week at work and will not be able to get around to answering your post. I plan on buying White's book this weekend and reading it. I am interested in seeing what he has to say. I think there is a number of things we can very much agree on when it comes to the nature and attributes of God. I just feel that God knows what we are going to choose based on His forknowledge (He knows our free choice in each matter) and not becuase he has scripted out all the events of history. I think there is a better way to understand the myriad of verses in the Bible where God gives His creation choices to make in life--the are truly free, not apparantly free, to make choice a or choice b. I have got to get back to work. I will try and summarize and wrap things up when I log back in. |
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