"The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so" (Romans 8:7). This means that man is morally responsible even if he lacks moral ability – man must obey God even if he cannot obey God. We are responsible if a higher power (God in this case) to us to do something. God tells us to sin no more and we are responsible to obey even though none of us can do it.
??? It is not merely that a man cannot obey God but that he cannot obey God because
God - according to Calvinism -
has decreed that he cannot. He bears no responsibility for his inability and its consequences, then, as far as I can see. The fundamental reason the man is not obeying God is
God, not because of anything over which the man has any real control.
You are wrongly conflated God's will. It may be God's will that Joe goes to hell and it can also be God's will that Susan related the gospel to Joe.
How, exactly, am I "wrongly conflating God's will"? Can one
rightly conflate things?
What do Joe and Susan have to do with my point about the absurdity that forms under Calvinism concerning alternative perspectives? If Joe is an Arminian, it is because God has decreed that he should be. And yes, if Susan shares Reformed doctrine with Joe, on Calvinism, it is because she was ordained by God to do so. But, then, if Joe spits on Susan in disgust at her Calvinism and kicks her in the shins, he is only doing what God has decreed that he should do and Susan, then, ought not to protest his actions. And so it goes, the actions of every person - however contrary to God's stated will they are - exempt from censure, since it is ultimately God's will that is being done. That "God ordains the means as well as the ends" does nothing that I can see to remedy this bizarre and absurd circumstance arising from theologically deterministic thinking.
We don't know who he has chosen.
We know, at least, according to Calvinism, that God does not want the majority of lost people. "There are few who find the Narrow Way that leads to life," Jesus said (
Matthew 7:14). And we know that, so long as a person is unsaved, they are so because
God wants them to be so and cannot be saved until God decrees that they should be saved, however much the Gospel is preached to them. What need for urgency in preaching the Gospel, then? And what terrible deception is worked on a room filled with lost souls when the Calvinist preaching the Gospel to them knows both that they are all unsaved by God's decree and cannot be otherwise until God's decree changes, and that most of the lost in the room will die and go to hell because God has ordained that they should. Were the full Calvinist version of the Truth preached to the lost, God would be universally reviled for the cruel and monstrous Being that Calvinism makes of Him.
When you assert we have 'free will' you are saying God must respond to us; the superior serves the inferior.
No, I'm saying that God is so powerful that He considers it of no consequence to the achievement of His purposes that we are granted by Him the capacity for free agency. He is not so fragile, so weak, that He must order every thought, word and action of His creatures in order that His will might be done. It is not, then, that we just assert ourselves over God but that He has
allowed us the liberty to choose our way even when we choose contrary to His will because He doesn't need us to be puppets in order to see that His will is accomplished. As far as I can see, this view of God's sovereignty is far superior to the one Calvinism proposes. And more biblical, too.
God ordains his method of salvation. He says "faith cometh by hearing" and they Christians are to spread the word. This is what's happening here. Simple.
This misses my point entirely. On purpose, perhaps? It seems so, to me.
Thus, the God is the cause of the human will, thus man’s will is not free; rather, it is designed by God.
But no one is disputing that Man's will originates with God. What is disputed is that, having given Man a will, God has ordained that it operate in perfect conformity to His own at all times (and so, not be a will at all, really, but mere
programming). Instead, I believe the Bible, as well as simple reason, indicates that God has made Man's will with the categorical capacity to refrain or not refrain from a given moral action.
"No one seeks God", yet you submit otherwise.
??? Where did I do so, exactly?
If we were free to choose God then why is a large majorities belief system the same as their parents. Empirical hard evidence show "free will" (the ability to self-determine salvation) to be a lie.
Is any of this meant to be persuasive? It certainly doesn't do anything to establish your view or defeat mine. Who has argued that there aren't various influences at work upon a person as they make choices? I haven't. It is an enormous leap of logic, however, to go from this obvious and uncontroversial observation to saying "therefore, no one ever makes any genuinely free choice." And just asserting this as a given fact by no means certifies that it is true.