The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Troy?

I think a response to some of your claims are in order, so I picked a few that I thought showed your error. I linked all the quotes so as not to be unfair. I included a few questions at the end for you to think on as well. I started a new thread for clarity. My apologies if I offended.<br><br>http://www.the-highway.com/cgi-bin/...psed&sb=5&vc=1#Post22643<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Man's perfect free will is not foolish. Man chooses the gospel, though not all men, because the gospel is God's redemptive design for man's perfect free will to restore man to before the fall, even better than that, to before the fall and then to accept the tree of life tipified from Christ.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Man has [color:red]PERFECT</font color=red> free-will? Are you mormon? Better than before the fall? What would that look like? Could you provide scripture for this, please? However, this does bring about several problems; 1) The world isn’t getting better as sin still rules the human nature. If your claim were true, the world should have become “better” than before the fall. Your claim fails objectively as well as experientially. There is no such claim in the scriptures. Try to understand the Messiah with some jewish understanding of atonement instead of humanistic designs. Matthew tells us exactly the purpose of Jesus incarnation;<br><br>Mat 1:21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. (King James Version)<br><br>Albert barnes sums it up well;<br><br>Mat 1:21 - <br>His name Jesus - The name Jesus is the same as Saviour. It is derived from the verb signifying to save, In Hebrew it is the same as Joshua. In two places in the New Testament it is used where it means Joshua, the leader of the Jews into Canaan, and in our translation the name Joshua should have been retained, Act_7:45; Heb_4:8. It was a very common name among the Jews.<br>He shall save - This expresses the same as the name, and on this account the name was given to him. He saves people by dying to redeem them; by giving the Holy Spirit to renew them Joh_16:7-8; by His power in enabling them to overcome their spiritual enemies, in defending them from danger, in guiding them in the path of duty, in sustaining them in trials and in death; and He will raise them up at the last day, and exalt them to a world of purity and love.<br>His people - Those whom the Father has given to him. The Jews were called the people of God because he had chosen them to himself, and regarded them as His special and beloved people, separate from all the nations of the earth. Christians are called the people of Christ because it was the purpose of the Father to give them to him Isa_53:11; Joh_6:37; and because in due time he came to redeem them to himself, Tit_2:14; 1Pe_1:2.<br>From their sins - This was the great business of Jesus in coming and dying. It was not to save people in their sins, but from their sins. Sinners could not be happy in heaven. It would be a place of wretchedness to the guilty. The design of Jesus was, therefore, to save them from sin; and from this we may learn:<br>1. That Jesus had a design in coming into the world. He came to save his people; and that design will surely be accomplished. It is impossible that in any part of it he should fail.<br>2. We have no evidence that we are his people unless we are saved from the power and dominion of sin. A mere profession of being His people will not answer. Unless we give up our sins; unless we renounce the pride, pomp, and pleasure of the world, we have no evidence that we are the children of God. It is impossible that we should be Christians if we indulge in sin and live in the practice of any known iniquity. See 1Jo_3:7-8.<br>3. That all professing Christians should feel that there is no salvation unless it is from sin, and that they can never be admitted to a holy heaven hereafter unless they are made pure, by the blood of Jesus, here. (Albert Barnes Notes on the Bible)<br><br>The Prophet Isaiah made the same proclomation;<br><br>Isa 53:12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (King James Version)<br><br>Indeed, Jesus bore the sins of many. He could not have bore ALL the sins of ALL mankind, or ALL mankind would be saved. A little study in Vicarious Sacrifice might help you to understand this.<br><br>Under the same link you said this;<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]God will trust with His life what He created a perfect will to receive His life in the Garden and in Christ. Just because centuries have passed under bondage of sin does not mean that free will is not empowerd to choose. It may have a heck of a time but the way of salvation is made available now.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>That’s odd, because Holy Writ disagrees with you. The effects of sin were so bad that a flood was brought about to destroy such. Yet you claim otherwise. If this is true, then why did Jesus have to die in the first place? Man could have simply kept the law, by choice. According to you, man is the same today as before the fall. We are all equal to Adam in having the same free-will. Scripture is also against this as well. Jesus Himself teaches against this;<br><br>Joh 6:44 [color:red]No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.</font color=red> (King James Version)<br><br>Even after Jesus death, Saint Paul holds a view of sin’s repercussions significantly different than yours;<br><br>Rom 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: <br>Rom 3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. <br>Rom 3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. <br>Rom 3:13 Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: <br>Rom 3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: <br>Rom 3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood: <br>Rom 3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: <br>Rom 3:17 And the way of peace have they not known: <br>Rom 3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes. <br>(King James Version)<br><br>None? Interesting since you claim Jesus’ death accomplished the opposite.<br><br>http://www.the-highway.com/cgi-bin/...psed&sb=5&vc=1#Post22652<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Adam did not choose Satan, Adam choose natural affection for Eve. Adam knew what he was doing but did it anyway for affection. Eve did it under a darkened mind not trusting God. They did it not for Satan but for themselves. They were deceived. Showing they are not God just man and a woman, weak.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Now that is odd. Eve had a darkened mind? Scripture please? Do you mean she chose from within her human nature? That is exactly what reformed theology teaches; that man has a nature and is bound to it, and makes decisions from within that framework. Jesus taught this as well;<br><br>Joh 3:19 [color:red]And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.</font color=red> <br><br>Man, due to his sinful nature, chooses other than God. Unless [color:blue]EFFECTUALLY</font color=blue> drawn, man will not come. That is exactly what Total Depravity says;<br><br>Total Depravity (Total Inability)<br>Total Depravity is probably the most misunderstood tenet of Calvinism. When Calvinists speak of humans as "totally depraved," they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality -- his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11f). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without a knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God's making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5). <br><br>We agree with Jesus when He said;<br><br>Mat 19:25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? <br>Mat 19:26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, [color:red]With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.</font color=red> (King James Version)<br><br>In the same link you said;<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Here is something: If you consider perfect free will a peddling then what does that say of this God who gave the perfect will, and of the god that gives not its participants a choice when it comes right down to it as that child gets smulched in the windmill who did not listen but was saved anyway. I can see how this makes one less meaningful in their relationshp with God since he was not obedient and he was saved anyway, he did not believe but he was saved anyway. This is a cold mechanised man-made system fantasy of Christianity I can't accept. How can you is the question?</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>All strawmen. Reformed theology teaches none of this. So the question is answered easily; We don’t accept it, because it is neither what we or the scriptures teach. One way to tell the depth of somebody is to see how well they represent the other guys beliefs. To refute them, you must understand them. That post clearly shows you simply do not understand reformed theology in the slightest.<br><br>http://www.the-highway.com/cgi-bin/...psed&sb=5&vc=1#Post22617<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]This opens the door to all the other errors of calvanism. The reason why this opening claim is no more complicated than this........man had free will before the fall and man had free will after fall, no matter how depraved. The problem is that man never chose God's life tipified by the tree of life. So how does man choose that life if he is locked out of the garden? simple.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>So what were the effects of the fall? Doesn’t the Bible show God bringing forth His will in salvation and man continuously failing?<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]God's redemptive design to bring in Christ's death on the cross, and resurrection. When that resurrection came men could then receive His life for the first time since the fall. Any time before that men never had the Holy Spirit within.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Could receive? What act of man (salvation by what work?) is necessary to appropriate this [color:green]OFFER</font color=green>, that doesn’t actually save? <br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]So this free will now and before and always is available to all universally, not limited at all. Limited in practice but in toto. Limited because obviously some won't accept but that never supersedes the purity of universality.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Aaah, I see it now. Man, after the fall, is in control of his own destiny. Despite all the sins we have committed, man’s choice is sovereign. Thus God is not. Your theology declines to Open Theim, a heresy.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]So you see I don't limit the atonement. Just because in practice not all will be saved that doesnt mean salvation is not offered to all</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>You did. You limited its’ actual saving effects to mere possibilities of salvation. Both sides limit the atonement, Troy. We believe Jesus actually procured forgiveness for the sins of specific people; you believe Jesus saved nobody specifically. You limit the [color:blue]EFFiCACY</font color=blue>. The real problem for the Armenian understanding is it isn’t a true sacrifice, but an attempt at an unattainable hope, making God illogical.<br><br>"It also follows necessarily, since Christ by His death actually procured nothing that guarantees the salvation of any man, and yet some men are saved, that the most one can claim for His work is that He in some way made all men salvable. But the highest view of the atonement one can reach by this path is the governmental view. This view holds that Christ by His death actually paid the penalty for no man's sin. What His death did was to demonstrate what their sins deserved at the hand of the just Governer and Judge of the universe, and permits God justly to forgive men if on other grounds, such as their faith, their repentance, their works, and their perseverance, they meet His demand....But this is just to eviscerate the Savior's work of all its intrinsic saving worth and to replace the Christosoteric vision of Scripture with the autosoteric vision of Pelagianism." Robert Reymond, "A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith" (Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 80<br><br>http://www.the-highway.com/cgi-bin/...psed&sb=5&vc=1#Post22640<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]Your God is playing a board game with himself wth pieces he controls. My God does not control His pieces. He leaves them free. </font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Then by definition;<br><br>God<br>GOD, n. <br><br>1. The Supreme Being; Jehovah; the eternal and infinite spirit, the creator,and the sovereign of the universe.<br><br>Your god is no god, but limited by mans choices. That is simply the difference; My God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-controlling; your god is at the whim of mans sovereign will. Humanistic theology.<br><br>I have three questions for you to answer, please?<br><br>1) What were the effects of the fall?<br>2) What did Jesus’ death accomplish?<br>3) Who controls the efficacy of salvation?<br><br>I close with this in hopes it will help to enlighten you;<br>In the second place, a possible salvation would be to a sinner an impossible salvation. Mere salvability would be to him inevitable destruction. It will be admitted, without argument, that a possible salvation is not, in itself, an actual salvation. That which may be is not that which is. Before a possible can become an actual salvation something needs to be done — a condition must be performed upon which is suspended its passage from possibility to actuality. The question is, What is the thing which needs to be done — what is this condition which needs to be fulfilled before salvation can become a fact to the sinner? The Arminian answer is: Repentance and faith on the sinner’s part. He must consent to turn from his iniquities and accept Christ as his Savior. The further question presses, By what agency does the sinner perform this condition — by what power does he repent, believe, and so accept salvation? The answer to this question, whatever it may be, must indicate the agency, the power, which determines the sinner’s repenting, believing and so accepting salvation. It is not enough to point out an agency, a power, which is, however potent, merely an auxiliary to the determining cause. It is the determining cause itself that must be given as the answer to the question. It must be a factor which renders, by virtue of its own energy, the final decision — an efficient cause which, by its own inherent causality, makes a possible salvation an actual and experimental fact. What is this causal agent which is the sovereign arbiter of human destiny? The Arminian answer to this last question of the series is, The sinner’s will. It is the sinner’s will which, in the last resort, determines the question whether a possible, shall become an actual, salvation. This has already been sufficiently shown in the foregoing remarks. But what need is there of argument to prove what any one, even slightly acquainted with Arminian theology knows that it maintains? Indeed, it is one of the distinctive and vital features of that theology, contra-distinguishing it to the Calvinistic. The Calvinist holds that the efficacious and irresistible grace of God applies salvation to the sinner; the Arminian, that the grace of God although communicated to every man is inefficacious and resistible, and that the sinner’s will uses it as merely an assisting influence in determining the final result of accepting a possible salvation and so making it actual. Grace does not determine the will; the will “improves” the grace and determines itself. Grace is the handmaid, the sinner’s will the mistress. Let us suppose that in regard to the question whether salvation shall be accepted, there is a perfect equipoise between the motions of grace and the contrary inclinations of the sinner’s will. A very slight added influence will destroy the equilibrium. Shall it be from grace or from the sinner’s will? If from the former, grace determines the question, and the Calvinistic doctrine is admitted. But that the Arminian denies. It must then be from the sinner’s will; and however slight and inconsiderable this added influence of the will may be, it determines the issue. It is like the feather that alights upon one of two evenly balanced scales and turns the beam.<br>Moreover, this will of the sinner which discharges the momentous office of determining the question of salvation is his natural will. It cannot be a gracious will, that is, a will renewed by grace; for if it were, the sinner would be already in a saved condition. But the very question is, Will he consent to be saved? Now if it be not the will of a man already in a saved condition, it is the will of a man yet in an unsaved condition. It is the will of an unbelieving and unconverted man, that is, a natural man, and consequently must be a natural will. It is this natural will, then, which finally determines the question whether a possible salvation shall become an actual. It is its high office to settle the matter of practical salvation. In this solemn business, as in all others, it has an irrefragable autonomy. Not even in the critical transition from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, can it be refused the exercise of its sacred and inalienable prerogative of contrary choice. At the supreme moment of the final determination of soul “for Christ to live and die,” the determination might be otherwise. The will may be illuminated, moved, assisted by grace, but not controlled and determined by it. To the last it has the power of resisting grace and of successfully resisting it. To it — I use the language reluctantly — the blessed Spirit of God is represented as sustaining the attitude of the persuasive orator of grace. He argues, he pleads, he expostulates, he warns, he beseeches the sinner’s will in the melting accents of Calvary and alarms it with the thunders of judgment — but that is all. He cannot without trespassing upon its sovereignty renew and re-create and determine his will. This is no misrepresentation, no exaggeration, of the Arminian’s position. It is what he contends for. It is what he must contend for. It is one of the hinges on which his system turns. Take it away, and the system swings loosely and gravitates to an inevitable fall.<br>Now this is so palpably opposed to Scripture and the facts of experience, that Evangelical Arminians endeavor to modify it, so as to relieve it of the charge of being downright Pelagianism. That the attempt is hopeless, has already been shown. It is utterly vain to say, that grace gives ability to the sinner sufficient for the formation of that final volition which decides the question of personal salvation. Look at it. Do they mean, by this ability, regenerating grace? If they do, as regenerating grace unquestionably determines the sinner’s will, they give up their position and adopt the Calvinistic. No; they affirm that they do not, because the Calvinistic position is liable to two insuperable objections: first, that it limits efficacious grace to the elect, denying it to others; secondly, that efficacious and determining grace would contradict the laws by which the human will is governed. It comes back to this, then: that notwithstanding this imparted ability, the natural will is the factor which determines the actual relation of the soul to salvation. The admission of a gracious ability, therefore, does not relieve the difficulty. It is not an efficacious and determining influence; it is simply suasion. The natural will may yield to it or resist it. It is a vincible influence.<br>Now this being the real state of the case, according to the Arminian scheme, it is perfectly manifest that no sinner could be saved. There is no need of argument. It is simply out of the question, that the sinner in the exercise of his natural will can repent, believe in Christ, and so make a possible salvation actual. Let it be clearly seen, that, in the final settlement of the question of personal religion, the Arminian doctrine is, that the will does not decide as determined by the grace of God, but by its own inherent self- determining power, and the inference, if any credit is attached to the statements of Scripture, is forced upon us, that it makes the salvation of the sinner impossible. A salvation, the appropriation of which is dependent upon the sinners natural will, is no salvation; and the Arminian position is that the appropriation of salvation is dependent upon the natural will of the sinner. The stupendous paradox is thus shown to be true — that a merely possible salvation is an impossible salvation.<br>If in reply to this argument the Arminian should say, that he does not hold that the merely natural will which is corrupt is the final determining agent, but that the will makes the final decision by reason of some virtue characterizing it, the rejoinder is obvious: first, this virtue must either be inherent in the natural will of the sinner, or be communicated by grace. If it be inherent in the natural will, it is admitted that it is the natural will itself, through a power resident in it, which determines to improve communicated grace and appropriate salvation; and that would confirm the charge that the Arminian makes the final decision to accept salvation depend upon the natural will, which would be to render salvation impossible. If this virtue in the will which determines it to make the final decision be communicated by grace, it is a part of the gracious ability imparted to the sinner; and then we would have part of this communicated gracious ability improving another part — that is, gracious ability improving gracious ability. Now this would be absurd on any other supposition than that grace is the determining agent, and that supposition the Arminian rejects. To state the case briefly: either this virtue in the will which is the controlling element is grace or it is not. If it be grace, then grace is the determining element, and the Calvinistic doctrine is admitted. If it be not grace, then the will by its natural power is the determining element, and that is impossible, — it is impossible for the natural will, which is itself sinful and needs to be renewed, to determine the question of practical salvation.<br>Let us put the matter in a different light. There must be some virtue in the natural man to lead him to improve grace — to use gracious ability. Now whence is this virtue? It must be either from God, or from himself. If it be from God, then the cause which determines the question of accepting salvation is from God, and the Calvinistic doctrine is admitted. If it be from himself, then it is the natural will which uses the gracious ability, and determines the appropriation of salvation; and that is impossible. (Excerpt: John L. Girardeau; Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism, [Sprinkle Publications, 1890])<br><br><br>God bless,<br><br>william