Fate is a Greek pagan concept. :dizzy: It is not biblical. :hammer:
Blast from the past!
- Thread starter Tambora
- Start date
Fate is a Greek pagan concept. :dizzy: It is not biblical. :hammer:
Nang
TOL Subscriber
If one is discussing philosophy i.e. fatalism, or mythology, the word is not biblical, but when discussing theology, fate speaks of the destinies of all creatures; held according to the election of sovereign God Almighty. Romans 9:6-29
:yawn: Strawman Eph 4:14
You'll notice Nang avoids John "The Pope of Geneva" Calvin's least favorite word: "Free will?" She says God "ordains" things to occur. What's the difference between, ordaining something, and, bringing it about?
If God ordains sin (which He doesn't) that means He wills it to come about. That, in and of itself would make God the author of sin. (Which He isn't.)
There are only two logical reasons why sin came about.
1) God created it.
2) God created humanity with an inbuilt free will to choose.
Can there be any other reasons for the presence of sin in the world?
1) God created it.
2) God created humanity with an inbuilt free will to choose.
Can there be any other reasons for the presence of sin in the world?
If God created sin, as the hyper-Calvinists believe, then, nobody has a choice but to sin. I mean, after all, it would be the will of God, right? On the other hand, if God created humanity and the angels (Lucifer included) with a free will, then, it would leave the choosing up to humanity and the angelic beings.
Nang
TOL Subscriber
#2 would be the correct answer, although I would resist calling Adam's will "free."
Adam was given the Word of God through commands (Law) which meant Adam was accountable to submit his will to the will of God. Adam was responsible to willfully obey God's Word (Law) or he would die. Genesis 2:16-17
That does not describe an autonomous "free" will that could successfully function apart from God's Word (Law).
So why use the word "free" will at all?
For after the fall, the will of man became enslaved to serving sin, death, and the devil. That is not freedom to do anything other than sin, die, and serve Satan.
Even after regeneration, if a sinner is saved by the grace of God and the Son sets him free to serve righteousness . . that Christian is enslaved to serving Christ, submitting his human will to the will of Sovereign God, and he can do no other.
So why ever use the word "free" will?
It isn't my terminology!
“But since he foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take place, they vainly raise a quarrel over foreknowledge, when it is clear that all things take place rather by his determination and bidding.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6)
You are a liar! I've cornered you and so you have to squirm. I get that. But no one here is going to believe you. Every single solitary event in all of history has been predestined before time began according to YOUR doctrine.
“The devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how muchsoever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as he permits, nay unless in so far as he commands, that they are not only bound by his fetters but are even forced to do him service” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 11)
You can pretend like I don't know what I'm talking about if it makes you feel better. My recommendation is to drop the blasphemy and feel better by actually being better.
Did Calvin get his own terminology wrong, too?
“But since he foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take place, they vainly raise a quarrel over foreknowledge, when it is clear that all things take place rather by his determination and bidding.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6)
No one who wishes to be thought religious dares simply deny predestination, by which God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death. But our opponents, especially those who make foreknowledge its cause, envelop it in numerous petty objections. We indeed place both doctrines in God, but we say that subjecting one to the other is absurd. When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain, under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present. And they are present in such a way that he not only conceives them through ideas, as we have before us those things which our minds remember, but he truly looks upon them and discerns them as things placed before him. And this foreknowledge is extended throughout the universe to every creature. We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death. (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. 2, Book III, Ch XXI, sec. 5, p. 926, Ed. John McNeill, Westminster Press, 1960)
No one who wishes to be thought religious dares simply deny predestination, by which God adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death. But our opponents, especially those who make foreknowledge its cause, envelop it in numerous petty objections. We indeed place both doctrines in God, but we say that subjecting one to the other is absurd. When we attribute foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things always were, and perpetually remain, under his eyes, so that to his knowledge there is nothing future or past, but all things are present. And they are present in such a way that he not only conceives them through ideas, as we have before us those things which our minds remember, but he truly looks upon them and discerns them as things placed before him. And this foreknowledge is extended throughout the universe to every creature. We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death. (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. 2, Book III, Ch XXI, sec. 5, p. 926, Ed. John McNeill, Westminster Press, 1960)
I'm not misrepresenting anything at all. I merely take your own beliefs and couch them in terms that you don't like while maintaining their premise. It's a time tested and long accepted manner of testing one's reasoning. You take the logic to places you don't necessarily want to go and see if it holds up. It doesn't work for you because you don't use reason. Anything you want can be tossed into the "it only seems like a contradiction to us mere mortals" catch all basket of Calvinistic conundrums.
“We hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things, –that from the remotest eternity, according to his own wisdom, He decreed what he was to do, and now by his power executes what he decreed. Hence we maintain, that by His providence, not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 16, Paragraph 8)
But, as to those who call by the name of fate . . . . the whole connection and train of causes which makes everything become what it does become, there is no need that I should labor and strive with them in a merely verbal controversy, since they attribute the so-called order and connection of causes to the will and power of God most high, who is rightly and most truly believed to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordained. . . . But an order of causes in which the highest efficiency is attributed to the will of God, we neither deny nor do we designate it by the name of fate . . . there is for God a certain order of all causes. (Augustine, City of God, pp.151,154.)
But, as to those who call by the name of fate . . . . the whole connection and train of causes which makes everything become what it does become, there is no need that I should labor and strive with them in a merely verbal controversy, since they attribute the so-called order and connection of causes to the will and power of God most high, who is rightly and most truly believed to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordained. . . . But an order of causes in which the highest efficiency is attributed to the will of God, we neither deny nor do we designate it by the name of fate . . . there is for God a certain order of all causes. (Augustine, City of God, pp.151,154.)
Of course you believe it! You believe that good is good because God says its good and for no other reason. You believe that God could do anything at all and by the mere nature of that fact that it was God who did it, it would be declared good. Thus, if God simply declares all things good, it would be so. If He decreed that no one would harm anyone else or themselves from this point forward, then they wouldn't and that would be it. It makes no difference whether Jesus died. He could do it right now. He could have done it 3000 years ago, He could have done it two seconds after having created Adam and He might yet do it tomorrow.
Still no answer to any question.
Resting in Him,
Clete
Last edited:
It's not "supposed", it's per scripture.
Or are you now saying that God did not ordain and control what Satan did?
And if you want to get real technical about it, Satan didn't actually do these things himself.
the Sabeans (Job 1:15)
fire from heaven (Job 1:16)
the Chaldeans (Job 1:17)
a great wind (Job 1:19)
Were they the cause, and not Satan, because Satan didn't do those things himself?
Or were they instruments that Satan uses to do his bidding, therefore making him culpable in what happened?
Is Satan to blame, or was he an instrument GOD used to do His bidding?
When you start talking about what caused something to happen, culpability does not start and end with the one that actually did the dirty deed.
If you let your rabid dog loose on a school kid, knowing that it will attack the kid, then you are also culpable for the attack even though you did not do the attacking yourself.
You just used the dog as an instrument to carry out what you wanted to happen all along, and you set in motion to happen.
It was the very act of GOD Himself that placed all Job had into the hands of Satan.
That is the cause of all that followed.
Job 1:12 KJV
(12) And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
(12) And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
Without that cause, none of it could happen.
It was GOD that set Satan loose on Job.
Was Satan doing those things of his own will, or was it the will of God?
No matter how much blame you want to lay on Satan for what happened, it was GOD's action (that first cause) that set it all in motion.
In fact it was GOD that specifically drew the attention of Satan directly to Job in the first place.
Nang
TOL Subscriber
Please Tambora, give this notion more thought . . .
The culpability and guilt for sin committed, certainly starts and ends with the one that actually did the deed.
There is no way to shift blame away from Adam for the fall of man.
You have recently exposed yourself as being an enemy of God, by wrongly defining His attributes and mongergistic sovereignty, and now, apart from any repentance from your earlier error made public, now you add coals of condemnation and judgment upon your head,
by insisting God has authored all sin of man and that God is responsible for all the wiles of the Devil.
Horrible . . . HORRIBLE. . . is all I can say.
May God protect others from your anti-christian spirit.
God forbid that the secondary causal agencies of angels and men, may ever be blamed on God, as you suggest.
No regenerated Christian heart or mind, would ever desire to blame God for what you lay at His feet.
:nono:
Here's the thing with this debate:
On one side- God created a free willing humanity knowing sin and death would come
On the other side- God created sin alongside humanity for deterministic reasons
I want to ask a very simple question..
HOW IS GOD BETTER OR WORSE EITHER WAY :doh:
On one side- God created a free willing humanity knowing sin and death would come
On the other side- God created sin alongside humanity for deterministic reasons
I want to ask a very simple question..
HOW IS GOD BETTER OR WORSE EITHER WAY :doh:
Naturally, if I had to choose a side, I'd go with the hyper-Calvinists and the reason being is because I believe God is in control. That is a sentiment that Calvinists actually uphold whereas you uber free will folk have made into mere poetry. Therefore, I actually wouldn't mind if God had created sin- it's trivial in the grand fate of things.
Interestingly enough, both are true.
The ancient Jews saw Satan as an agent of God meant to test men. As revelations continued, particularly with Ezekiel's prophecies, it was learned that Satan had gone rogue.
I agree.
No answer.
So if you contract a killer to bump off your husband, you are in no way culpable because you didn't pull the trigger?
We were talking about what happened to Job.
Job was righteous and remained so through the ordeal.
He did not disobey GOD.
No answer.
No answer.
Both are unbiblical.
You know what's awesome about John Calvin? The fact that you can let him argue for you 
He no doubt faced down a lot of theologically inconsistent people in his time.
"Man falls according as God's providence ordains, but he falls by his own fault"
"They babble and talk absurdly who, in the place of God's providence, substitute bare permission- as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events, and His judgements thus depended upon human will."
"Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is the faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent."
"Since no man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering except our own unbelief"
He no doubt faced down a lot of theologically inconsistent people in his time.
"Man falls according as God's providence ordains, but he falls by his own fault"
"They babble and talk absurdly who, in the place of God's providence, substitute bare permission- as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events, and His judgements thus depended upon human will."
"Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is the faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent."
"Since no man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering except our own unbelief"
Nang
TOL Subscriber
You know what's awesome about John Calvin? The fact that you can let him argue for you
He no doubt faced down a lot of theologically inconsistent people in his time.
People can quote God and/or dead men, and make their words take on any meaning they want. It is not a good practice, and is usually self-promoting, deceitful, and an attempt to hide the poster's inability to articulate one's own beliefs.
I tolerate being called a "Calvinist" for it is easier most of the time to just let the label pass, but I am a Reformer and would prefer being referred to as such.
That is because, although I find Calvin brilliant and esteem him for the call he received to take on the corrupted magistrates of his own religion (the RCC); his terminology was not always great and he overused some words wrongly.
Since his time, the fathers of the Reformed Faith have refined Protestant terminology greatly, as evidenced in the major creeds and confessions.