Scenario: An athiest investigated ex Christians beliefs and asked what they thought they had against the Bible. Here are some arguments:
"So, if we accept God's Gift of salvation that He offers to all, then we are doing a WORK!! ACCEPTING is the work!
Or, is free will gone at some point??"
I'm not sure in what way accepting a gift could be construed as "work"? If I accept, say, the work of my dentist in fixing my teeth, am I working to fix my teeth? No. I just lie in the dentist's chair and receive his teeth-fixing work. In the same way, by faith, I just receive the benefit of Christ's perfect, atoning work on the cross of Calvary to which I can contribute nothing. The saving work has all been done by Christ on my behalf. Accepting this work, then, doesn't save me, it doesn't do the work of salvation any more than having faith in my dentist and sitting in his dentist's chair will fix my teeth. If my dentist doesn't do his work on my teeth, no amount of believing he can and sitting in his chair will repair my molars, right?
"If God is not the Author of confusion, why did He confuse the Babel people's language! And then explain Genesis 1:2! "
What is the context of Paul's words? What difference, if any, does this context make to the conclusion that God has contradicted Himself in Scripture? I think the immediate context of Paul's words makes a very big difference, revealing that the above is merely an
apparent contradiction rather than an
actual one.
"If God desires ALL to be saved, then why did He harden pharoah's heart??"
Concerning Pharaoh, God merely encouraged a stubborn will
in the direction it was already going, using that will to achieve His own ends. Long before he was hardened by God, Pharaoh had enslaved and abused the Hebrews for many years, killing their newborns, even, in a perverse attempt at population control. He wasn't some poor fellow God forced into a state of hardness that he would otherwise have never chosen for himself. Far from it.
God wants a love-relationship with us; coercing folks into becoming His children confounds such a relationship, so He doesn't do so. This means, however, that although God desires all people to be saved, He has given them the liberty not to love Him and be saved. It turns out, that many people love themselves more than God and so spurn His offer of redemption, adoption and fellowship with Himself. This isn't any more God's fault than it is the fault of the wood carver who makes a knife capable of carving wood that another person uses to pierce human flesh. There cannot be a knife capable of carving wood that cannot also cut human flesh but this doesn't make the wood carver who made the knife automatically desirous of the use of his tool as a weapon. In the same way, a man's abuse of his free agency to defy God and live evilly, doesn't reflect something about God, only the man.
"Can God make a better way to be saved than by the Gospel He laid out in the NT? If not He would not be Omnipotent, and if He could but refused to, would He be morally bad? Again, your Book says that HE DESIRES ALL TO BE SAVED. All! Btw, better way means more quantity of people saved!"
Being good, if God could have created a world where more people freely chose to know and love Him than have done in our world, He would have created that world. Instead, God created the one in which we exist, which means we occupy the one world out of all possible worlds God could have made, wherein the greatest number of people will freely choose to be saved. This also means that it isn't possible, in a world where people are able to freely choose to know and love God, to have a majority of people do so. If such a world were possible, God, being good, would have created it.
Is God obliged to cater to our ideas about what would, or would not, be better? Why would we think we understand what "better" is more fully than God does? We are finite, fallible and ignorant; God is all-knowing, perfect and timeless. There is no way, given these differences, that we can properly, reasonably prescribe to God what is "better." God is orchestrating events and working toward ends that are utterly obscure to us but that vitally affect what "better" ought to be. It is preposterous hubris, then, for any fallible, ignorant, finite creature to challenge their Creator as to what is "better," attempting to prescribe to Him His priorities and approach.
In God's economy of things, quality is more important than quantity. He wants us to interact with Him on the basis of love but this necessarily means that not all will choose to do so (see above). God simply cannot pursue both quality (love) and quantity (universal salvation). God's holiness and justice also preclude allowing the unrepentant, rebellious wicked into His holy kingdom and presence. They would not want to be with Him in any case. Certainly not for forever. Anyway, being the Creator and Sustainer of All, God is entirely within His rights to assert His priorities as He wishes, putting quality above quantity.
