Thinking of changing your opinion? ... (giggle ... j/k)
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Are you taking the time to pray? Christ is the answer in times of need
https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/
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Wearing the right shoes, and properly clothed spiritually?
Join Elected By Him for a devotional on Ephesians 6:14-15
https://christianforums.net/threads/devotional-selecting-the-proper-shoes.109094/
Does man have free will to choose salvation?
- Thread starter electedbyHim
- Start date
Thats funny.
Let me ask you this .
If Romans 9 is about nations then that makes God not loving of all .Nations are made of people and he let them fall away .
He didn't care to reach the people of Ireland of that time before the cross.
Which is it?
Arminism has that above problem . He let them flounder in sin
Before the foundations of the world, when He elected (chose) us.
Ephesians 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love,
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
1 John 4:10 In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.
Definition: Love (agape) = goodwill, benevolence, favor, and willful delight in the object of love.
Colossians 3:14 Love is a bond of unity (those in Christ)
God is eternal and unchanging. He never "started" loving us (where "us" = the elect), He always loved (favored) the elect
Similarly, those in hell or going there, God always hated (did not favor, is not benevolent to) Habakkuk 1:13b You cannot look on wickedness with favor (love)
We are created beings , we had a start .
Carry_Your_Name
Member
All sins originated from Adam, and ever increasing like entropy. As long as one is born in this sinful world, one is born in sin, doesn’t matter whether it’s their own or inherited from their parents, see Jn. 9:1-3. What matters is the choice of salvation and the repentance of sins, which lead to the second birth.
Irrelevant. The question was:
Note the subject is God in the question. God did not have a start; I could give you a verse but I assume you know that. His knowledge of each of us did not have a start; I could give you a verse but I assume you know that.
So, again, the answer to "when did God start loving us" is:
Tenchi
Member
Where does anyone obtain the capacity to believe, or have faith, in anything? From our Creator, of course. But our exercise of that capacity to believe and trust is ours to determine.
Because it means that all you must do on your end is cut-and-paste - no thinking, no writing, no explaining yourself, just posting the work of others. If this is how you want to have a "discussion," why shouldn't those to whom you're just offering cut-and-paste replies do the same? Seems reasonable to me...
Well, in the realms of more arcane doctrinal questions, neither was I when I first started to engage in online discussions. But I learned. And so can you.
By the way, it isn't an "issue for me" that you're an uneducated man. The issue I have with you just cutting and pasting stuff is what I've described above.
If it was not an issue for you, you would not bring it up.
I have learned much from theologians from past to present. The copy and paste support my beliefs and are written better than I can achieve.
Would you say this to Theologians an Pastors who quote others in sermons and their commentaries to prove a point or explain things better?
If you do not like my threads or posts you do not have to reply to them.
I do not have the grammar skills to articulate my thoughts on paper as most people.
Grace and peace to you.
My question , guilty as charged .
No arguments from me on that .
Are we created beings yes or no ?
Yes sir I would like that verse please sir .
Tenchi
Member
It seems to me it's more an issue for you than me. Originally, I made a single comment about cutting-and-pasting stuff but you've gone on about it rather a lot. Why is that?
If you've learned well from them, this is demonstrated, at least in part, by being able to communicate their teaching clearly in your own words.
When those to whom you're just cutting-and-pasting stuff offer their own thoughts and words, it takes them a good deal longer to do so than it takes you to respond by quotation. Surely, you can see how lopsided in terms of effort this makes the discussion. Where it takes the one who is speaking for themselves perhaps an hour or more to form a post from their own thoughts and with their own words, the cut-and-paster just dumps a series of quotations into a post in two or three minutes (or less). Inevitably, this lopsidedness in effort stifles discussion. Perhaps this is your goal, though...
I actually have. I served for a decade as an Elder/Pastor and so, had this very discussion with the Senior Pastor a couple of times. He would regularly quote extra-biblical sources in making points in his sermons rather than allow Scripture to explain itself. His sermons were often filled with empty slogans and catch-phrases and the ideas of popular "Christian leaders" rather than with his own careful exegesis of God's word. In this sort of preaching, he was setting a very poor example for his congregation in how to handle Scripture well.
??? Yes, I know. Do you think I've made the effort that I have to post in this thread because I didn't like the thread? That's an...odd conclusion to come to...
I've not noticed a particularly poor grasp of grammar or words in your posts. Really, it seems to me, you use the excuse of being "uneducated" in order to justify your cutting-and-pasting, not because you can't express yourself well.
Regardless, if you want to cut-and-paste in reply to folks, well, its a free internet (mostly) so you can do as you like - just don't object when others do the same in response to your cutting-and-pasting.
I do not poit our if people copy and paste or their grammar.
Of course you make many assumptions about me.
So you are an authority, great.
Other members have not complained about my posts, except those that do not read any extra Biblical materials.
I will let you have the last word becuae you seem to do that in every thread that rubs you the wrong way.
So after this post have at it.
Grace and peace to you.
re: His knowledge of each of us did not have a start; I could give you a verse but I assume you know that.
Premise 2: God is all knowing (John 16:30 Now we know that You know all things, Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end and the result from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure and purpose, etc. etc.)
Conclusion: Since God is immutable and omniscient He cannot "start" to love a person because He has always known the person and to start to "love" a person would constitute change in God which contradicts premise 1. Furthermore, there is no need for God to change as He knows the person from the person's creation and throughout that person's time line completely.
Are you and Open Theist?
I think I am wasting time. When you concluded that Enoch never sinned because the bible does not say he sinned it was evident to me that discussion is futile. You can have the last word. I'm done.
Premise 1: God does not change (James 1:17; Malachi 3:6a For I the Lord do not change; Psalm 102:27 But you remain the same; Job 23:13 But He is unchangeable, and who can turn Him?, etc. )
Premise 2: God is all knowing (John 16:30 Now we know that You know all things, Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end and the result from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure and purpose, etc. etc.)
Conclusion: Since God is immutable and omniscient He cannot "start" to love a person because He has always known the person and to start to "love" a person would constitute change in God which contradicts premise 1. Furthermore, there is no need for God to change as He knows the person from the person's creation and throughout that person's time line completely.
Are you and Open Theist?
I think I am wasting time. When you concluded that Enoch never sinned because the bible does not say he sinned it was evident to me that discussion is futile. You can have the last word. I'm done.
You are a created being and your desires and everything about you was created. You cannot pick your desires. But, assuming you could pick your desires, when did you do so and what was the cause for you to desire "X" and not "Y".
God is the first cause of all things ... you can't create your self-determined desires out of nothing for from nothing nothing comes and you were nothing at one time.
Tenchi
Member
You've pointed out that I've objected to a lot of cutting-and-pasting.
I draw conclusions from what you write; I don't just form baseless assumptions about you.
??? How does this follow from what I wrote? And what do you mean by "authority"?
This remark is a what's known as a Strawman, which is a form of fallacious reasoning (and argumentation). It's a purposeful distortion of what someone has said that is more easily knocked down than what the person has actually said.
Why is it bothering you so much that I've protested your frequent cutting-and-pasting? Where is it written that I have to like that you cut-and-paste as much as you do? As I said, it's a relatively free internet, so you can post as you like, regardless of what I prefer.
This is what is called "projection."
In reality, I'm not "rubbed the wrong way" at all. This is just a single thread online with total strangers; it's not anything to get wound up about.
???
Tenchi
Member
Yes. This is a quite uncontroversial statement among Christians.
"Pick my desires"? Where have I used this phrase in my posts in this thread? Instead, when I spoke of "creaturely freedom" I defined it as "the categorical capacity to refrain or not to refrain from a given moral action." In any case, as Dr. Leighton Flowers has explained, my being in a prison cell all my life and thus thinking there is nothing but the prison cell does not prevent me from hearing and understanding that there is a world beyond my cell, when someone enters my cell and tells me so. In this, I differ from the Calvinist who wants to say that "dead in trespasses and sins" means "utterly unable to comprehend the Gospel" and "utterly unable to desire any moral good" - to be in the cell and unable to understand what the person who enters my cell and tells me of the outside world is saying.
I don't know what you mean by "pick your desires." And what does this have to do with hearing and understanding the Gospel? As a human being, I am constrained by all manner of things but this doesn't mean, having heard the Gospel, that I am utterly incapable of comprehending it and choosing to respond to it positively (or not). And the Bible nowhere indicates that I am. Instead, only when a Calvinist lens is used in interpretation of Scripture does such a strange and clearly false inability appear.
Yes, obviously.
Who has said, "I can create self-determined desires out of nothing"? I haven't.
There has been no time when God did not have me as an idea in His mind, at least. And so, there has been no time when I was truly nothing. Being omniscient, God has always known that I would exist and of what my existence would be constituted, which is why I now exist both materially (body) and immaterially (soul). I wax pedantic here, however...
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Original Sin
The Analogy
Having seen the vision of corporate salvation in Christ, Paul also sees the vision of corporate sin. All men have sinned in Adam. Through the “offense of one many be dead.” Judgment was “by one to condemnation.” By “one man’s offence death reigned by one.” “For as by one man’s disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be constituted righteous” (Rom 5:19).
1. Original Sin
So deep, says Paul, is the nature of our sin that, as death comes to Adam for his sin, death comes also to all men “for that all have sinned.” Thus, Paul speaks of “the one sin and the sin of all.” “We must not tone down either the singularity or the universality.
We cannot ask: When does the individual become a sinner? “For the truth is that each person never exists as other than sinful. He is eternally contemplated by God as sinful by reason of the solidarity with Adam, and, whenever the person comes to be actually he comes to be as sinful. 2
Paul’s sense of guilt is deepened, not reduced, because of this, his view of original sin.
2. Imputed Sin
Paul says that all men were in Adam “constituted sinners,” as believers are in Christ “constituted righteous. 3 There is “as truly an imputation of the disobedience of Adam as there is of the obedience of Christ. 4 God contemplates all men as actually one with Adam in his sin. There is “as truly an imputation of the disobedience of Adam as there is of the obedience of Christ. As the latter imputation is not that of the benefit accruing follows upon the imputation, so the former must not be conceived as the liability entailed but the liability as flowing from the imputation. 5 Thus “the kind of relationship which Adam sustains to men is after the pattern of the relationship which Christ sustains to men. 6 cf. 1 Cor 15.22, -1 Cor 15.45–49
3. Inability
Only when the Church, with Paul, confesses its sin as being corporate and imputed does it sense its spiritual inability. Due to the fall in Adam “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil. 7 The natural man is able to perform moral acts, good as well as evil” which are “as to the matter of them” prescribed by the moral law. 8 But the natural man, due to his false motivation and aim, cannot “perform any act in such a way as to merit the approbation of God. 9 Man cannot regenerate himself, and as unregenerate, he is under the wrath of God.
[1]Van Til, C., & Sigward, E. H. (1997). The works of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1987
The Analogy
Having seen the vision of corporate salvation in Christ, Paul also sees the vision of corporate sin. All men have sinned in Adam. Through the “offense of one many be dead.” Judgment was “by one to condemnation.” By “one man’s offence death reigned by one.” “For as by one man’s disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be constituted righteous” (Rom 5:19).
1. Original Sin
So deep, says Paul, is the nature of our sin that, as death comes to Adam for his sin, death comes also to all men “for that all have sinned.” Thus, Paul speaks of “the one sin and the sin of all.” “We must not tone down either the singularity or the universality.
We cannot ask: When does the individual become a sinner? “For the truth is that each person never exists as other than sinful. He is eternally contemplated by God as sinful by reason of the solidarity with Adam, and, whenever the person comes to be actually he comes to be as sinful. 2
Paul’s sense of guilt is deepened, not reduced, because of this, his view of original sin.
2. Imputed Sin
Paul says that all men were in Adam “constituted sinners,” as believers are in Christ “constituted righteous. 3 There is “as truly an imputation of the disobedience of Adam as there is of the obedience of Christ. 4 God contemplates all men as actually one with Adam in his sin. There is “as truly an imputation of the disobedience of Adam as there is of the obedience of Christ. As the latter imputation is not that of the benefit accruing follows upon the imputation, so the former must not be conceived as the liability entailed but the liability as flowing from the imputation. 5 Thus “the kind of relationship which Adam sustains to men is after the pattern of the relationship which Christ sustains to men. 6 cf. 1 Cor 15.22, -1 Cor 15.45–49
3. Inability
Only when the Church, with Paul, confesses its sin as being corporate and imputed does it sense its spiritual inability. Due to the fall in Adam “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil. 7 The natural man is able to perform moral acts, good as well as evil” which are “as to the matter of them” prescribed by the moral law. 8 But the natural man, due to his false motivation and aim, cannot “perform any act in such a way as to merit the approbation of God. 9 Man cannot regenerate himself, and as unregenerate, he is under the wrath of God.
[1]Van Til, C., & Sigward, E. H. (1997). The works of Cornelius Van Til, 1895-1987
Tenchi
Member
Born Haters of God? The Calvinist’s View of Humanity is Too High!
Calvinists teach that all of humanity are born God haters due to their fallen condition and can do nothing except reject the good news brought by the Spirit because of their innate animosity toward…
soteriology101.com