Defense of Limited atonement

I'm gonna make a long post trying to prove particular redemption or better known as limited atonement.

One bit of scripture that first caught my eye during my early days as a reformed christian was Luke 15:4:

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?

It basically a metaphor of how God will never fail to save all of his sheep. But who are his sheep? We see in Matthew 25:33-34 those who are his sheep will inherit the kingdom of God. They are the ones who are blessed and are prepared since the foundation of the world!

Now one thing we must understand about sheeps is that sheeps cannot choose their owners. Sheeps simply exist and follow commands of their shepherds. A sheep does not have the freedom or even the mental capacity to choose or deny his master or even to obey or disobey his shepherd. Now what does this say about the sheep of christs?

We see in John 10:15 christ lays down his life for his sheep. Now if you come with the wrong presupposition then that can badly affect your reading of the text. A lot of people who "assume" that christ died for everyone in the world by misinterpreting key pieces of scripture. But read what the bible says. "he lays down his life for his sheep."

But who are the sheep? If the sheep is everyone in the world then that would mean that everyone is going to heaven because christ wouldn't even let one of his sheeps get away as previously stated from Luke 15:4. Also, realise how it is the shepherd that goes after the sheep, not the sheep seeing and finding the shepherd since sheeps are not made with this ability. This perfectly line with what pauls says in romans:

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; There is no one who understands; no one who seeks God. All have turned away; they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.
Romans 3:10-12

Now, here are a couple verses I really want you guys to think about:
John 10:24-28

Could the Jews truly say Christ died for their sins? Could they really believe that they had hope of salvation of they were not even of a part of Christ's flock? Clearly salvation is not meant for all.

So who are the reprobate? They are the goats of Matthew 25:31-46, they are the pigs mentioned in Luke 15:11-32 and they are the ones who God hates before they were even conceived as stated in Romans 9:11-13

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Calvin should've been burnt at stake.

Unlimited atonement does not state that everyone will be saved (that's universal reconciliation), just that every can be saved but it's dependent on accepting Jesus. So some will get saved, others won't, but it's up to them.
Limited atonement concerns predestination - whether or not you'll get saved is completely out of your hands. To most people this would appear unjust, since punishment awaits people through no fault of their own.

I disagree with the idea of hypothetical universalism because it fails to account for the clear scriptural passages about God effectively atoning for the sins of the people He does for. The gospel do not paint a picture of man coming to God, but God coming to man. Off ever given a choice, man will always choose evil over good and so God must take it upon Himself to actively cause the salvation of man. Christ said that He will not even be content with 99% of His sheep but must have all 100 and it is those sheeps He died for. For Christ to hypothetical die for the whole world yet only few be saved means that He did not fulfil His will and lost those who He was trying to save.

Limited atonement doesn't necessarily imply predestination since there are people who still believe in free will yet also believe in the depravity of man. They say we have a will but it is a flawed will. A will that is incapable of saving itself and so God much change our hearts in order that we can be saved:
Ezekiel 36:26

I know 'to people's it seems unjust, but do you really want to use man's standards of morality to dictate what is morally good or evil? You've heard the argument before "atheists have no objective moral standards" but when a theist hears that His objective moral standard IE God, is sovereign, they then start applying their subjective moral values into God. In fact, this is the most loving thing God can do. You believe that we must first believe so God can save us. He needs is to co-operate with Him in order to be saved. But we say that while we were sinners, enemies of God and hated everything that He is, that is when Christ does for us. It was a unconditional election based no on what man does but based on the one who loved us first.
Romans 5:8

It seems a bit like you got the Excontextus Syndrome, which tends to be very prevalent in many protestants.

The verse you quoted, is a part of a complete chapter.
Now let's look at Luke 15 from the beginning.

Morality from a religious context is objective.
We know what good and evil is since the Fall, and because we have the Word of God in which is written His commandments and what He likes and what not, we can make a very, very good image of what is moral and what not according to Him.
There is never someone who gets punished because of God's need to a display of power not explained why.
Nowhere a case where someone gets punished for sins he did not commit.
Every punishment gets explained, no punishment ending with merely 'thus said the Lord".
Nowhere in the bible God talks about the elect, one can merely misinterpret certain passages as such.
Neither is there any talk about someone getting punished because he was destined to suffer for no good reason except for God's decree.

John 6:44 plus John 12:32 = Calvin was wrong.

So God is like a little kid smashing his toys together, imagining some figures are good and some are evil, but actually it's all make believe.
And this is supposed to make the world meaningful, morality objective, justice served, and man want to find God because God is loving and good?
amazing

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

ya you gotta be high/drunk to understand it

Then how does the sheep have the agency to run away in the first place?


The fact that he lays down his life for his sheep does not mean that he doesn't lay down his life for anyone else. That would be a logical fallacy. Those who disagree with limited atonement would say that Christ paid for all sins by his death, only that the merited reward will only be ultimately efficacious for his elect

And what about this verse?

From my understanding, being elect has nothing to do with a person’s nature. In other words, the essence of an elect person subsists in the will of God. That’s why Calvinists believe in “unconditional election.” God seeking out man sounds like a metaphor for regeneration.

I wouldn’t put too much face value at the rejoicing part. God says many things that can’t be taken at face value, lest a contradiction arises. Case in point: God asked where Adam was, but he has omniscience, right?

Is this really the best you have? Is this what papist/orthodox call exegesis?Astonishing. If you wrote out this long response, I at least expect enough respect to have an actual educated response. You have not only have you shown a utter ignorance of our belief but also what the bible states. I'll ignore your sub par exegesis and deal with some of the 'points', you raised.

Ok, first of all, we believe that no one can come to salvation themselves. You, I or anyone in this world cannot come to God. Reread what I wrote. It's is not the sheep who come to God but God who comes to the sheep. We can't just come to God but God who opens our hearts and brings us back to Him.

It is analogous of the difference between the reprobate and the elect. The prodigal son wasn't literally eating with pigs but rather was a metaphor of the reprobate he was associating himself with. But the son was one of the elect and not an innate pig and so he could return to his father and come back home. The father of the pigs was the devil and their home was the eternal flames. Penance is not even biblical so please don't insert your papist man made traditions into the bible.

No, read john 6:44

Can you defend your morality from a scriptural context?

Nope, I see the fall of man episode in genesis more as a story about how sin came into our real of existence. We do not now fully know right or wrong because that is subjective, but what happened was that sin entered our world and became something we experience. We still need a objective moral standard because there are competing moral standards around the world.

I'll refer you to Romans 9:22-23

John 6 is talking about being drawn to salvation and John 12 is about the resurrection that will happen to all. Like, read the next verse.

This wasn't a real argument from scripture but your own personal grudge against God's sovereign decree. I'd say just take it up with God.

The sheep were lost and Christ found them. We are all born in sin:

ya, no.

Is thread from the same guy who made a calvinist thread a few weeks ago to defend his stance against the highly trained apostolic operatives of Zig Forums?
Also this

...

Yes, like I said God does not give punishment without any reason.
It's all over the bible, Sodom and Gomorrah is an example I can give from my head.

Your emotions and 'exegesis' aren't arguments though.
has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy
God does not punish merely as a vulgar display of power, but also as a display of mercy.
Job had everything taken from him as a test of faith, and later got everything back and then some.
God would never just take everything from Job and give nothing in return.
The whole definition of punishment is "the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority as a response and deterrent to a particular action or behaviour that is deemed undesirable or unacceptable.
if someone did nothing wrong and God would impose His wrath upon him it per definition not a punishment anymore but a tyrannical power display which is intrinsically evil.

He never sends evil spirits to lie to people, He merely allows it because God is not a source of evil.

Once again, we are not talking about predestination but double-predestination which states than people are predestined for either hell or heaven.
I'll give you Ephesians 2:1-6;
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (I Timothy 2:3-4)

A complete non-argument.
Therefore I ask the same question as in the other thread that's still unanswered:

How an omnipotent and omniscient God cannot make it so that whatever needs to be done for His will to be done, no souls go to hell?

Wrong version.

Luke 15:10
Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.


This is where you wander off into nonsense talk. Try finding scripture about "cannot choose their owners." What I find is this:

Matthew 6:24
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

So we can safely discard that entire paragraph from your post. It's meaningless.

2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

1 John 2:2
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

2 Peter 2:1
But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

1 Timothy 4:10
For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.

That is also true and it doesn't contradict the above. No scripture you've said actually contradicts the fact the Lord died for all sins.

The part about God hating Esau is a quote of Malachi 1:3, which happened after the events of Esau's life. It was not "hated before he was conceived."

See also Hosea 9:15
All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.


What?
You say "we need it" as though we don't have it.

Yeah, after they revolted already.

Yeah, after they revolted already, and it's not that God does it but rather allows it to happen or stops protecting from it.

The point is this happens to them after they already became hated, not because they were eternally hated. Malachi 1:3 is after the events of Genesis.

Wrong version.

Luke 15:10
Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

(OP)
This is where you wander off into nonsense talk. Try finding scripture about "cannot choose their owners." What I find is this:
Matthew 6:24
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

So we can safely discard that entire paragraph from your post. It's meaningless.

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I looked into this and I'm amazed you're not entirely wrong on this.
It seems however that both the Vulgate and my native tongue don't differentiate between someone repenting and someone doing penance.
The Greek dictionary also lists penance as the substantive of repentance.
In my language it translates as someone who converts, and one might discuss if conversion needs penance depending of which denomination he's from.
So far as I can conclude your translation is more literal, but trying to separate penance from repenting is wrong on its own.

I'd also like to add that in German the word for repentance (Buße) is also used as a word noting a penance.

Nice literary analysis, you'd have gotten an A in Shakespeare 101.

Let's do some elementary logic:
God is infinitely good, which means He is not capable of evil acts, such as predestining a person to hell and completely denying him any chance to avoid hell.
What's the point of conscience and repentance and sin, why did Christ bother to give us commands if our fates are already determined? Did Christ come to die for people who were already saved? If so, such sacrifice was not needed. And His sacrifice who were predetermined for hell did nothing for those either.

It's absurd from every possible angle.
God didn't create Esau to be evil, He merely, via his omniscience, saw what Esau will turn out like.

Then who did Christ die for, other than a small group of people that followed Him when He was alive? If he didn't die for the Jews, did he die for the anglo-saxons or germans? Or the Inuits?
It seems that this sentence lacks the 'except the ones who can't be saved because it has been so predetermined' part.

I just wanted to say thank you for making me understand better the Limited Atonement of Calvinism. I often had trouble with it because of this verse:

John 1:29
29 The next day he *saw Jesus coming to him and *said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Wait, so Jesus is going to draw all to himself at some future point way after he resurrects so he can send some off to fry? How hard you gotta twist scripture's arm to get that?

Here ya go bud, from the man Augustine himself: ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.XVIII.49.html
I wouldn't even use the word innovate but develop.


You can't be serious can you?

And that's where you erred and showed your ignorance of our belief.

I'm seriously pondering ignoring all of your posts of you keep making such vacuous statements as these. The sheep can NEVER on their own come to the shed. No member of the elect could ever come to God through their own efforts or even by mistake. It is God who loosens their hearts to even be able to accept Christ and it is also God who raises them up to salvation. You cannot find your own way to heaven.

That's exactly what I meant. He was with those lowly creatures but his father was waiting for him. But not all have the same father. Some people's father are the devil while others are God.

You just outed yourself as a papist there. You're clearly using the douay rheims, which is a translation from the faulty Latin vulgate as noticed by Catholics such as erasmus before Martin Luther came into the scene. The actual translation is simply repent, not do penance. Seems like you were predestined to be an idiot :^)

Ok, I'm going to explain this one more time to you. The drawing isn't simply a drawing like a dog owner telling his pet dog to come to him. It is an active drawing where God takes away your heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh so that you can accept Him. If it was simply a passive drawing man will always not accept the offer because of our singular state.

I never denied that. But you cannot ignore God's active role in all of this. Yes God cannot punish people for no reason and we must first sin, but there are instances where God hardens the hearts of people, sends a lying spirit and decreed that people to sinful acts that can help in His plan for the redemption of His people.

I like the way you micro analyse my "I see" statement. But my point was that you cannot say they had perfect knowledge of good and evil. Humans on their own are subjective creatures and we will always fall into our own personal opinions of what is and isn't moral. And I read genesis 3:21-22 in like of proverbs 14:12:

It's a message about only fully accepting Christ. Think about the scene with the rich young ruler. He followed the commandments since he was a child but was too attached to his money and so couldn't truly follow Christ. That is the message of the parable, it is to show us that we must be fully devoted to one and not two conflicting authorities. But it's not saying we can't have two masters at all since you have 2 parents, but it's saying you can't have two conflicting authorities since they will always be at odds with one another.

Yes, His will is that all come to Him but He has sovereignly decreed that only His elect will be saved.

Yes, John was a Jew and Jews thought that due to their relation to Abraham they were heirs to the promise, but as Paul states in Romans 9, it is not the people of the flesh but of the promise. And so the world being spoken of here is all without distinction as in Jews and gentiles alike.

I agree.

The word used here for specially is "malistas." Malista can mean “especially” but can also mean “namely”. thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp/file/45603

Answered this in my OP. There are people who God outright says are not a part of His sheep and God is practically telling them that they are not of the ones He died for.

First of all, Malachi is referencing back to genesis and when Paul uses this verse in Romans 9, he applies this hating to before the children's birth.

Yes, God hates. I'm no one of those people who believes God loves everyone.

We do not fully know right and wrong because we are subjective creatures and so need a objective moral standard.


No.

It says prepared. It was predestined and actively by God.

Read what I said above.

I know you like using this "that's just your private interpretation" argument, but I have you a good and consistent way of reading scripture. Think about the first council of nicea, did they not use a consistent method of interpretation to understand it? One of the things arius was know for was that no matter what verse you gave him, he would be able to twist it to not mean that. Thats because he lacked consistency and could make the bible say what he wanted. I'm here trying to use a consistent methodology to understand scripture.

God is good but Him predestining someone to hell isn't evil. We are all going to hell by default. He leaves some in their sins while others He predestines to eternal glory.

It's quite interesting you said this because for me, it kinda means that all good I do is because I wanna get closer to God. I'm not trying to earn God's favour of increase my righteousness but rather I just want to get closer to God. The reason why I still follow God's commandments is because I love Him. The reason why I have a conscious and try to repent is because God has convicted me of my sins. Our fate have already been declared but that does not mean we should sin.

No, He came to save His elect.

Read Romans 9:11

Thanks, I'll also try to deal with this verse directly. Most people who quote this verse don't take it literally, they believe that He only took away the sins of those who believe. Also, the word world has a range of meanings in the bible. I understand it as all without distinction. Meaning from the Jews and gentiles alike.

Nani? John 12 isn't talking about salvation but simply the resurrection of all people in judgement day. In John 6 they will be drawn to the Father.

God is not the source of evil nor sin and Him sending a lying spirit would be exactly that.

You have no way of telling that your personal opinions aren't based on the same subjective principle as mine then.

There is absolutely no glory in making something suffer for the mere purpose of it.
That's simple vulgarity and satanic.

So he allows lying spirits to to influence people?
Seems like that spirit had the free will to stand up for his idea and God allowed it.

That's not Calvinism, that's reverse-predestination in a weird way.
I don't even think you understand what you believe.

Very nice, you almost sounded intelligent.

I will start by saying their is no such thing as limited atonement. In a way you are right the Lord already knows all who will be saved when the time comes as he is perfect. However the Lord will allow any and all to atone for their sins because he allows free will for even on the cross the man who livid his life as a thief breaking the commandments was saved because he atoned for his sins. Therefore anyone who willingly goes to the lord with true sorrow in their hearts for the sins they committed can be atoned.

The issue with teaching limited atonement is that we as humans who are prone to failing and sin will try to guess who the atoned are and who aren't. Creating more sin and damning all to hell.

I would contest that by saying just because God sent a lying spirit to the people in 2 chronicles does not make Him evil. Same way God ending someone's life does not mean He is a murderer. He is the giver of life and the taker of it.

You actually touched on something important here. The thing that really settles it is authority. The authority of my moral standards are the scriptures. It defines what is right and wrong and whatever it says is good, I say is good, and whatever it says is bad, I say is bad. I feel like you take the opposite approach and enforce your own moral standards onto the scriptures.

Please do not blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is to display the full spectrum of God's power and this is how God is glorified. By making people come to the knowledge of His power. Here again is where I think you impose your subjective moral standard onto the scriptures.

The spirit could not have gone unless God allowed it. And by God allowing it it was as though God was the one who sent the lying spirit.

Nope, this is exactly what we believe. God leaves some in their sins while others He sovereignly chooses to come to eternal life. When God hardens people's hearts or sends a lying spirit, it is all to those God has already prepared for the fire. I hear people say they feel sorry for the pharoah, but if you really think about it, the pharoah was predestined to go to hell anyway, would it matter if God then used Him as a puppet for His glory?

Absolutely, remember what I said in my OP. We must have he right presuppositions when reading scripture otherwise it really does become a mess any you can make out of it everything you want. And I have taken the time in my OP to write out the biblical evidence for my presupposition. And so, when I read 1 Timothy 2:3-4 I see it as God's desire to save all people, but He has only sovereignly decreed that His elect be saved.

I get the message of your post but I think you don't understand one basic thing about man, and that's the utter depravity of humans. We read in Isaiah 64:6:

That's exactly what He is then, but in the context of killing someone for a good reason.

Oh yeah I forgot, 1500 years long nobody could rightly interpret the scriptures (except for some fringe parts of a few Church Fathers because they support your exegesis) and you are definitely not a fallible human being who does not project an unique interpretation of the scriptures once he reads them.

If I kill you or anybody on the street, does that glorify me if I can just show my power through it?

How many times do I have to repeat it?
We got both the knowledge of good and evil AND the scriptures literally telling us what God thinks is good and what not.
If through the scriptures we cannot discern good from evil, we cannot even sin.

That's like saying that America allowing open-carry is like sending the school shooter to kill his classmates.

Oh, well I should not be so surprised that a protestant creates his own denomination.

So you admit to not being able to explain how an omnipotent, omniscient God can make it so that His power is projected through sinners who at the last moment still convert so that they can get saved?
Because well, God wants all men to be saved so either He's lying in scripture (which I doubt) or He's not omnipotent nor omniscient enough to make people sin then repent and show His glory.

That's a contradiction.

John 5:40
And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

No it doesn't.
No. All simply means all.
They deny the Lord that bought them. That is what it says. Can't get around it.

You haven't mentioned anything out of scripture to back up this statement. Just a bunch of distractions to draw attention away from this lack of scripture here.

No. He is quoting Malachi 1:2-3. There is nothing about hatred before birth, only Malachi 1:3.

Not only a heretic but Calvin's interpretation of God is unbiblical and evil.

What? If a baby dies at birth or a man dies of a brain aneurysm, God has every right to do so. He is the giver of life and damn well has every right to take that life away too!

I love this accusation against the reformed sect that we ignore 1500 years of church history. In fact we do take in the early church fathers in to account and learn about the development of certain doctrine. But we are also aware of their down falls. There are many things to take into account before just believing in something because "muh church fathers" said so such as the fact that only two early church fathers actually knew how to speak both Greek and Hebrew ( Origen and jerome). Also, if you look at Origen and his allegorical interpretation of the OT and how this style of interpretation infected the church until… The reformation. It was only until then did people drop this allegorical interpretation of the OT. All these things need to be taken into consideration when consulting the ECF but at the same time I do not deny them but rather take their thoughts and ideas into consideration when reading scripture.

And if you look here you'll see that Augustine had a lot of the same ideas as John Calvin had: ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.XVIII.49.html

You have no right to take a life and there is no purpose for you to display your ability to kill. God is the supreme and sovereign one and has every right to make His power known to the world whereas you are a clay vessel created for His purpose.

Yes, we have some knowledge of good and evil since we have a conscience. But it is not perfect. Still God predestining some people for damnation and others for salvation is completely within His prerogative as a Just and Holy God.

I literally quoted where God says "I" sent a lying spirit. It's simple exegesis, which I know papists are not very fond of. By God letting the spirit go out it was akin to Him sending the lying spirit. Also, it is a false equivocation to compare it to America allowing guns since they did not intend people to use the guns for a school shooting, but God intended the lying spirit to deceive them.

Again, another displayal of your ignorance.

God made it so. Simple.

He wants all to be saved but has only decreed some to be saved. This does not mean He is not omnipotent since He could save all, but He has not decreed so. And I don't know where omniscience fits into all of this.

It's not

Because God has not drawn them and they do not desire to come to Christ.

Did you even bother to read the link?

Same word for all here also appears in Matthew 2:3. Would make the verse sound funny If it literally means all.

Yes, all have gone astray like sheep. No one is good.

Read my OP.

OMG, yes He's quoting Malachi but Paul applies it to before they were born. Now you're using your own interpretation and not Paul's interpretation.

Actually, it is using a rhetorical device known as meiosis that is a euphemistic tool used to understate the significance of something. The verse is saying "I will cease to express any more love to them in the form of blessings."

Wonderful verse but now you have to define world and the word for world here (kosmos) is used in a variety of ways. Just check out these verses: John 1:29 talks about taking away the sins of the world. But if world means everyone then all will go heaven IE universalism. Also, look at John 12:19 and John 14:17 and John 16:8

First of all, John 12 isn't discussing the drawing to salvation. This is clear by the context, John 6 on the other hand is talking about being drawn to salvation because there is an intimate connection between the two clauses. The first clause is discussing our inability to come to Christ unless the Father acts in the person and this person will be raised up to salvation.

Amen!

I've given you the biblical evidence, now, why do you think it's heretical or even worse "evil?"

I never judged Him for deaths, but taking a life is still killing.
It's the context that makes it right or wrong.

I'm pretty sure that the OT was taken even more literal as it is today before the reformation.
Sure Origen discussed about Genesis but that's about it.

That's what I meant.
First of all, you find one Church Father, maybe with some more effort 3 or something.
Then you take their work, skim through everything you call us 'papists' for and then decide to interpret one part in a calvinistic way.

That's not what I asked, so I'll ask it again:
If I kill you or anybody on the street, does that glorify me if I can just show my power through it?

You didn't.
He does not send lying spirits in a literal sense, He let's them do as they please when He wants to as with job.

One half of my family are protestants, whatever denomination they might me.
In the same time I live very close to the cradle of the reformation and the country which embraced Calvin's teachings with open arms.
I know enough of Calvinism to know that you are not a pure reformed in a Calvinistic sense, maybe Zwinglian but I don't know as much about him.

Not an argument either, seems like you can't explain why God would contradict Himself.

Omniscience means all-knowing, and together with omnipotence, all-powerful, God can do anything.
He therefore has the knowledge and the power to make His will be done.
However, if God decrees something entirely different than what scripture says, it isn't really His will if He has the capability to do it yet decrees something else.
What God decrees is His will on the end, and with Calvinism it seems to contradict scripture.

If I see someone who needs some money in the grocery store, and I will that he had that extra money, yet I do not give it to him.
Did I then really want to give it to him, or did I just not have the money myself?

biblehub.com/greek/3956.htm
The word for all encompasses a whole, so yeah it just means all.

There is no context needed for God to take a life.God can take the life of a baby in the womb or make awfully grown healthy man die of a brain aneurysm. In fact there was a Muslim by the name of nabeel qureshi who converted to Christianity and wrote many books about coming to Christ and leaving Islam, yet he died of cancer recently.

No, they mostly had an allegorical interpretation of the OT that also effected how they read the bible. It wasn't until the reformation that the OT was taken more seriously. And I'm not talking about it they interpreted genesis literally or no but rather their form of exegesis. I liked Jerome because he didn't use this form of biblical interpretation.

What?

Oh, Augustine was the main inspiration for John Calvin's view on grace and free will. It's not even skimming, Augustine was kinda like the father of this and John Calvin developed on some of his teachings. And I don't think it's fair to say I'm cherry picking early church fathers since Augustine was a very influential church father especially for catholics.

How would it glorify you? It's a false equivocation because you're saying that God doing something is equal to you doing it. Also, what do you mean by glorify? Only God can attain glory and us once we have gained out inheritance in heaven. They're different situations completely.

I am a Presbyterian and am much closer to the Puritants in my theology. Yes, God damns some soul to hell by predestining them while glorifies others by predestining them to heaven. But with the case of the damned souls, we believe that all people are on the path to hell and it's only when God does His acts of regeneration do we finally change. He leaves the sinners in their state of sin. But this does not mean that God doesn't cause some to sin by giving them over to a sinful spirit such as the case with the pharoah but these are people God has already predestined for hell and since they are going to hell anyway God then uses as an example by making them fall further into sin.

It's not a contradiction. God desires all to be saved but has only decreed some. I could ask you if God wants all to be saved then why doesn't He? When it you say because of man's free will then Did God limited in His power by the will of man. Does God wait in anticipation for someone to come to Him and was there a possibility that no one could have been saved making Christ's death be in vain?

Yes, there is a distinction between God's will and His decree but just because He decrees something doesn't mean it is also His will to do so.

It is not. That is a important distinction to make.

We are not God and His ways are not our ways so any way you try to equivocate humans with God, it will always be a false equivocation. Furthermore, there was no reason for you to not give that person money. God withholds His grace from some for the greater good.

Yes, but it can also mean an all encompassing group such as simply the believers or a certain area etc.

b-bump

I'm not gonna read everything in this thread (for now), so please forgive me if someone already posted this.


The reason Jesus uses words like "flock" and "sheep", is because "following Him" is central in this. If someone isn't following Jesus', then they're not part of His flock. If a person is raised in (e.g.) an atheist home, then he's not following Jesus, and therefore not part of His flock. However, he can become a follower later in his life. One can go from a state of "not following" to a state of "following", thereby becoming part of His flock.

If Jesus Christ died for the elect only, then how can the ones who aren't elected even be accountable for their deeds? They can just say to God "You ordained me to live in sin… I had no choice in this matter, so punishing me is immoral". This just doesn't make any sense to me.

My grandmother is Reformed and believes in this kind of hyper-calvinism, and it will probably lead her to hell. She's 84 now, still waiting for God to save her, while God is in fact waiting for her to repent..

Augustine is only a Calvinist insofar as Limited Atonement goes. That's it. He denies God predestinating people to damnation and contrary to many Calvinistic justification for double predestination, says God cannot will evil as an end in itself.

Reprobation in Calvinism does this

In my opinion Calvinist theology leads to more problems than it solves, it really just seems like bending over backwards to avoid becoming Catholic

Calvinist theology is a mutation from Catholic views of predestination. Whereas most Catholic predestinarians like Aquinas are cautious to clarify and make clear those who arent elect are deservably so and not forced, Calvinism says that if one is a reprobate, that is indeed God's decree and predestination.

The traditional viewpoint is that God knew everything that would possibly happen before he created it, and he made a plan according to that for those that would listen to him and follow the narrow path. It doesn't mean we don't have freewill or that evil people are responsible for their evil actions, I don't know why people have trouble with this because it always seemed like the most obvious Christian viewpoint

1)The use of sheep is just for the purposes of illustration and analogy. It isnt meant to tell you about free will but about God's love for his covenantal people. Saying "sheeps cannot choose their masters" go beyond what the NT authors want to illustrate.

2)Being drawn by the Father does not prove limited atonement or determinism. Why? Because Lutherans and Catholics can say one cannot turn to God without Grace yet they mostly today deny limited atonement. In fact even Judaism can acknowledge God's sovereignity in repentance as Craig Keener points out in his commentary on John(see pic). Only Qumran Jews are determinist in this period, the rest believe in free will.