No open theism on my end. God knows all things and he has set them in place by His providence.
Saying it doesn't make it so.
I can see by this that you're already out of substance and are quitting. Nice.
I shared the context around the two passages you shared so that you would stop attempting a prooftext by using only a couple sentences.
You can read the entire chapter! Read the entire book! Read the whole bible!
You shared no such context. You stated your doctrine. Of course, Calvinists do think that it's the same thing but it isn't.
Jeremiah 18 begins with the Potter and the Clay allegory. The passage I quoted provides the context in which that allegory is to be understood (i.e. it explains what the allegory means). That's why it comes after the allegory.
As for the rest of the Jeremiah passages, they mean what they say. They mean precisely what they say. You can quote the whole chapter if you want but it doesn't change the fact that God Himself said that it never enter His mind that they should do such things. Sort of hard to ordain something that it never accrued to you, don't you think?
The passage I quoted from Jonah is the story of the entire book in one sentence. It is the context!
What you call a proof-text is not only that but it is, in fact, an argument. A biblical argument. If you wanted to engage the debate at that point and challenge the veracity of the argument on the basis of a misunderstanding of the text then you should have done so. Instead, you claim that it's not literal and think that this claim is supposed to be sufficient to convince me and anyone else reading this.
Well, saying it doesn't make it so and I'm not one bit afraid of the text of scripture. If you want to engage me on that basis, bring it. I dare you.
He will NOT do so! This post was him quitting (or trying too). Anyone else who is interested is invited by me to read read read! Read Jonah - the whole book! And as you're reading it, ask yourself whether it sounds like these events are predestined or does it read like God is having to fight Jonah to get things done? Is there a prophecy in the book of Jonah? Did that prophecy come to pass as stated? Why or why not? Is Jonah a false prophet? Why or why not?
Read Jeremiah 18! It is perhaps the single most important chapter in the entire bible. Read it over and over again - all of it. It happens to answer several of the questions I just posed.
Then read Jeremiah chapters 19 and 36. What you'll find is that you have to choose between reading these chapters of the Bible and understanding them to mean what they say or believing in Calvinist doctrine and therefore forcing them to say something other than what the text itself actually says. In fact, you'll have to believe that it means the opposite of what it says. You'll find that it says that events were occurring that never entered God's mind. You'll have to choose to either believe that or that these events not only entered God mind but that He planned them and infallibly and immutably predestined that they would happen. You will have to choose! No matter how much the Calvinist inside you or beside you is telling you that you have no choice, you will, nevertheless, be making a choice by answering the following question: Do I read the Bible and believe it or do I come to the Bible with my beliefs and make the text say what I need it to say?
Resting in Him,
Clete
