No. God created a man with a "free-will."
John Calvin said this....
- Thread starter Clete
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No. God created a man with a "free-will."
Ask Mr. Religion
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Indeed.
Free will: choosing according to one's inclinations at the moment one so chooses.
AMR
Jamie Gigliotti
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God has the final word.
What is that supposed to mean?
You are on your way to hell if you do not repent.
Anyone who tells you that you're saved is selling you something.
moparguy
New member
Ah, it's door number three: call your opponent a blasphemer and give ZERO justification for your claim.
Especially don't be berean and exegete a response out of God's word.
A great exhibition that what God says matters to you; especially that you think that God's word is capable of refuting so-called blasphemers. :think:
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
Do you care about this person you're accusing of being a blasphemer? Do you think God is capable of saving someone who isn't saved?
"For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life."
Or were you honestly only starting this thread to call people names and mock those who you call heretics and blasphemers? Internet auto-da-fe?
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God didn't create man as a sinner. God created man with a free-will.
Man "choose" to sin. That's the name of the game Pal.
yeah, God's plan was not for us to sin and disobey. i guess He knew we would but that wasn't His plan to create sin and sinners -
Shasta
Well-known member
Or it shows that when you refuse to listen to the truth, as Ahab had done for a long time, God finally gives you over to you over to the one you have listened to.
Shasta
Well-known member
Now you do not even believe in the Fall.
Shasta
Well-known member
I agree with the first statement. You have to have knowledge in order to sin. As for the rest I am not sure but what you are getting physical and metaphysical light and darkness confused.
While it is true that God created all things out of nothing He did not and cannot create good and evil out of nothing. For one thing, evil is not a created thing. It is not a "thing" like an object is a thing. It is merely the perversion of MORAL good. Evil does not have any existence apart from good. On the other hand Good has always existed because it is a characteristic of God who always has been.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you.
Shasta
Well-known member
I can say that I do not think the scripture teaches that. I also know that Early Christianity directly taught against that view until Augustine came and smuggled Gnostic views into the Church. Even then those in the East who could still read the scriptures in the original languages continued to deny it.
I do not believe in judging God. I do not judge God. I judge Calvin's concept of God because I do not think it accurately represents Him.
You are mixing up evil with sin, evil is a power just as electricity consist of negative and positive power.
If you think about it good can only exist in relation to evil.
Light can only exist in relation to darkness, order in relation to chaos. But before there was light there was darkness, before order chaos, before there was matter there was void.
Sin is the use of evil for wrong purpose...Man is part of the good which God created out of evil, he is good as God created him, and inasmuch as God took him and placed him of the garden of beauty and abundance God separated man from evil.
See the way God works
First He creates man, there is no consultation He just does it. Man having been created by God's sovereign will and according to God's sovereign will and pleasure must now be given the choice.
First God does it, then He gives the choice...for the saying is true, God has not made us to be robots.
Shasta
Well-known member
This is your straw man definition of "freewill." In the theology of the ECFs who originally coined the term it meant simply real "volition." It meant that his choices were not predetermined by Fate or God but that they were truly his own.
Your definition that a choice is just the sum total of a person's desires at a given moment is identical to the philosophy of deterministic behaviorism espoused by John Broadus Watson whose reductionist views were degrading and dehumanizing to all mankind. It makes all of us into automatons which, in Calvin's system can be completely controlled by manipulating the number and strengths of the countless desires. This is not even true scientifically. Freewill is still a mystery even for Atheists.
If man is a deterministic system manipulated by a superhuman Controller into "loving" Him then I wonder how genuine such love is. I love Him because I was made to love Him because I was outwitted by Divine knowledge and overpowered by the Divine will. Augustine thought it was okay for him to coerce people into the Faith on the basis that the Father in Jesus parable ordered his servants to "go out and COMPEL them to come in." I think Augustine's (and Calvin's) God is something of a bully.
Shasta
Well-known member
I completely agree that we are not robots and that man was given the trees so he could exercise the will he had been given; however some of what you are saying is dualism which is not a Christian concept. Dualism - like Taoism or Manichaeism holds that Good and Evil are co-eternal, that though they war they cannot exist without the other. Dualism also treats metaphysical light and darkness as forces.
In Christianity Evil cannot exist apart from good because it is a ultimately a perversion of something good. Good, on the other hand, can exist apart from evil. After all, God Himself existed in Eternity prior to the creation of man and God is good.
Your statement "sin is the use of evil for wrong purpose...Man is part of the good which God created out of evil" makes no sense to me. For one thing, in what sense was man "created out of evil?" God was His creator and God is good and God said man was good. God made him out of matter which is a little messy but it is not evil. I do not think sin is the use of evil for the wrong purpose. I think sin is the use of something that is good for the wrong purpose.
I stand 100% behind what I said and will say it again. Your post is and your doctrine is blasphemous!
More than that, you are a fool! You worship a god that is not merely arbitrary but is blatantly unjust.
You directly accuse God of creating evil!
BY WHAT DEFINITION OF THE TERM IS THAT NOT BLASPHEMY???
Oh! Let me guess, your god's definition, right?!!! If so then your god is a fool along with you.
And besides, where do you get off being upset with me for calling you the blasphemer that you are? Your god surely must have predestined me to do it before time began, right? Sounds like your issue is with your changeless stone idol, not me.
Resting in Him,
Clete
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
I know that's not what you think.
However, who are you, shasta to reply against God?
Where were you shasta when God decreed?
I've seen the writings you quote.
You have just as hard a time understanding them as you do the scriptures.
Yes you unwittingly do.
By being afraid to contemplate that God does as he pleases,and not always what seems fair to man, you judge what it is that pleases him.
1Mind1Spirit
Literal lunatic
Only one fell in scripture.
That was Lucifer.
I find it interesting that you folks fight tooth and nail to cleave to him.
