Gene you present some real lack of awareness concerning libertarian conceptions of free will in your post. You said:
”Really, so God can do evil.
God having "libertarian" freedom does not mean He can do good and evil.
Libertarian freedom in humans, by definition, requires they can do both good and evil.”
God can do whatever He wants to do. He does not do evil however, He may have various choices available to Himself, all of which are good choices, He then chooses the one that He wants.This, of course, is just an ad hoc restriction on libertarian freedom for you, Robert. You're the one that doesn't understand libertarian freedom here, as we shall see.
1. God has "libertarian freedom" insofar as He is not constrained to do whatever He chooses, and He can choose between any number of goods. None of His choices are "determined" by outside forces - but one of your persistent problems is that you define "determinism" with reference to external constraints alone - but libertarian action theory goes beyond that (see further below).
2. I do not deny this, but if libertarianism, as properly defined, is true, then God must be able to do both good and evil. God cannot even desire an unholy act, nor can He lie, for He would no longer be God if He did. In fact His choices are so wrapped up in His nature and essence that He could not do otherwise.
God’s freedom is the real freedom defined by the Bible -- a freedom from sin, not a freedom to do otherwise. God is free in the compatibilist sense in that He always acts according to His nature, never against it. God does not have ‘freedom’ to do what is contrary to His nature, so He is not free in the libertarian sense (in fact no one is).
3. But this isn't what you stated. You actually said:
both God and man have libertarian free will.It was to this that I replied. So, you're analogized from God to man by placing them in parallel, and man having libertarian freedom means that his freedom is, by definition, contracausal, by your own admission. Man can do both good and evil, and his will is free from all constraints. We've been over this ground with you before, and I believe pointed you to several standard works on the subject.
So, you accord to man something you do not accord to God and you give no supporting argument for it.
4. The rest of your argument discusses the way Jesus acted in order to demonstrate your position. But choosing between options (like how to do something) is irrelevant. The question is "What lies behind that choice?"
Libertarian freedom in humans does not require that we must be able to do both good and evil in **every instance** to have free will. In heaven we will have libertarian freedom and will not be capable of sin (but we will be capable of choices). So we will have multiple choices all of which are good.
Another ad hoc restriction for which you give no supporting argument. Your arguments defeat themselves. You give libertarian freedom and then restrict it after they receive Christ. You give men libertarian freedom and then you restrict when they enter the intermediate and final states.
By the way, we're still waiting for your exegetical argument for libertarianism. Oh, you have none.
You will have to answer No to this question. But if you answer No, then you’ve got a real life historical situation in which a human person had multiple choices before him all of which were good and he could do as he pleased without doing evil. And that is all that is required for free will to exist, that he had multiple options he could choose from and the choices were up to him (note especially the word “freely” in Gen. 2:17)
1. Again, you have not made an exegetical case for libertarian freedom, and yet you've smuggled a definition of it into your assertion above.
2. Of course, the grounds on which I'm arguing against libertarianism besides the purely exegetical are causal grounds, not whether or not choices were "sinful" before or after the fall or people have "multiple options," for having "multiple options" is an insufficient warrant to conclude people of libertarian freedom, since libertarianism addresses what lies behind the choices they make.
3. You are conflating the concept of "choice" with "libertarian freedom."
4. There is a vast literature on the Libertas Adami. You'd think you would be familiar with it. All that we need to establish to show that Adam's freedom was not libertarian is to supply a reason sufficient to himself for the Fall - and this is true for any man's sins - but you, since you affirm libertarian freedom cannot do so, for libertarian choices are, by definition, uncaused.
You appeal to Plantinga:
“If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.” (God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 29)
I've emphasized the relevant portion for you, since it apparently went over your head.
Let's compare this with Scripture, shall we?
Scripture is very consistent in attributing the choices of men to antecedent causes. Proverbs 16 attributes several to God. James 2 is very clear that men are led astray "by their own evil desires."
Any appeal to an inner motive in man directly undercuts libertarian freedom, for libertarianism, by definition, cuts the causal nerve - and, when Scripture speaks on these matters it speaks of God's overruling, indeed outright directing, the minds and hearts and actions of men, and it attributes our decisions, actions, etc. to our motives as well.
The heart of man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. (Prov. 16:9, cf. 16:1, 19:21)
"the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords." (Jdgs 7:22).
"the filled (Israel) w/joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria" (Ezra 6:22)
The Lord foreordained that the robe of the Lord Jesus was not turn but lots were cast for it (Jn 19:24, quoting Ps. 22:18, cf. Jn 19:31 - 37).
Then we have the passages on divine hardening of Pharaoh and Sihon; God sending an evil spirit to torment Saul, and another instance of Him sending evil spirits to cause the false prophets to lie, in order to lead Ahab to his death (I Kings 22:20 - 23).
Isaiah 10 tells us that God raised of Assyria/Babylon to judge Israel and yet held them accountable for their sins in doing so.
Isa. 6 (and John 12) speak of divine hardening. The latter is an instance parallel to the former. Isa. 63 says that God makes us (Israel) wander from your (His) ways and hardens our hearts so we do not revere him (vs. 17).
Ps. 33:15 says the Lord fashions, eg. directs the heart not only of kings (Proverbs 21:1) but of all people.
Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Luke 6;45; Mt. 7:15 - 20, 12:33- 35).
John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ...8: 47"He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. By nature, they were not of God. There nature determined their desires.
Simply put, there is no passage of Scripture that can be construed to mean that the human will is independent of God's plan and of the rest of the human personality/psyche. Your "adductive argument" is an abject failure.
People do different things for different reasons. It should also be duly noted that if a person does something for a reason, then his/her choice is not “without cause”.
This is true, but you're confused since according to the very definition you cited:
no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.”So, your own statements defeat your own definitions. One is inclined to wonder if you understand the definitions you offer. I am inclined to believe that to be the case.
You repeatedly claim that libertarians believe in actions done “without cause”, another misrepresentation that you repeatedly indulge in.
False. This is unintentionally comical. The definition to which you appealed states:
“If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won’t.”
But, just in case you don't believe me, let's try this:
Walls and Dongell, Why I'm Not A Calvinist:
“The essence of this view is that a free action is one that does not have a sufficient condition or cause prior to its occurrence…the common experience of deliberation assumes that our choices are undetermined.”
Clark Pinnock, a well-known defender of this position, asserted that only the kind of freedom, which has the ability to choose the contrary, is genuine freedom. He says,
“It views a free action as one in which a person is free to perform an action or refrain from performing it and is not completely determined in the matter by prior forces---nature, nurture or even God. Libertarian freedom recognizes the power of contrary choice. One acts freely in a situation if, and only if, one could have done otherwise.” (Most Moved Mover pg. 127)In other words, within libertarianism, we could acceptably choose to receive Christ apart from a desire to receive Him.
From an atheist perspective Oppy writes:
On the libertarian conception of freedom, one acts freely only if, in the very circumstances in which one acted, it was within one's power to do otherwise--which is incompatible with efficient causation of action. But as I see it, the only alternative to efficient causation is absence of causation; and, if one's actions are only 'free' because they have no causes, then this is not a kind of 'freedom' worth wanting.
Steve talked about him here:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/oppy-on-atheism.html
Note that even Oppy realizes where libertarianism cashes out at the level of causality - there are no causes to our behavior.
Libertarianism is an abstract generalization of the principle that "ability limits responsibility," such that, if our decisions (choices) are afflicted by any kind of inability, then they are not truly free and we are not truly responsible (eg. blameworthy) for them. Freedom is contracausal. Put another way, at the level of causality, choices are uncaused, but not unassisted.
And if that doesn't work, Robert, do a Google search for libertarian action theory and uncaused choices or causeless choices and have a good read.
One of your persistent problems is that you're defining "determine/d/ism" in a unidirectional fashion, in reference God and not man. Libertarianism is a theory of agent causation. It means that a person's choices are not determined by both external means (like God's decrees, direct actions, or broad "circumstances") AND internal means (eg. within the agent acting - man), like "sufficient reasons, desires, etc." Therefore, every time you appeal to reasons, you're appealing to sufficient causes, desires, etc. that are internal to the agent performing the action. That, Robert is NOT a libertarian argument, by definition.
And if you say that those reasons are present but insufficient, you've done away with
(a) your own argument for "free will" and
(b) the basis for moral responsibility, for if motives - which are reasons - are not sufficient reasons for blame, then you have no basis to declare a person's motives blameworthy or attribute their evil actions to their evil desires - which is what Scripture does.
Also, this is one reason why, to take one example, Molinism is problematic. In Molinism, God instantiates a particular possible world (this one) and no other from any number of possible worlds and so orders that world to ensure particular results infallibly occur. The problem should be obvious -as soon as external factors - we'll call them generalized "circumstances" - ensure a particular result, then that's an automatic defeater for libertarian freedom, and Molinism is designed from beginning to end to defend libertarian freedom.
Technically speaking the bible never defines “free will” for us. What it comes down to is an abductive argument for one conception over another. What it comes down to is an abductive argument for one conception over another. By abductive I mean that we have competing theories each claiming to be the best explanation of the given data (in this case the data is the bible verses that we have). Libertarians believe that the libertarian conception best explains the data, while Compatibilists believe their conception best explains the data.
1. Once again, compatibilism is not the heart of Calvinism. We do not begin with compatibilism and then work from there.
2. We invoke it only to answer the libertarian on his own grounds.
3. The argument for the Calvinist view of freedom is exegetical first, philosophical second - and the latter is an ancillary argument.
4. Thank you for this frank admission. Note that when the chips are down and Robert has to lay his cards on the table, he has to admit that he has no exegetical argument for libertarian freedom. He castigates John Owen for allegedly laying out philosophical arguments in lieu of exegetical arguments
You prove my point, you can argue for it, but you do not have the verses to show it to be true. Since you do not have the texts, you like Owen, must construct logical arguments to substitute for biblical texts.and then proceeds to do exactly the same thing for his own conception of libertarian freedom.
The calvinist compatibilist view however, presupposes that all events are predetermined, there can never be any libertarian freedom under any circumstance (not even before the fall of Adam so he was not “mutable” he was predetermined to sin; nor did Jesus during the incarnation have free will).
Of course, Robert continues to trade in an equivocation between a decree and a means to the execution of the decree. He's confusing causality (providence) with certainty. Ends and means. He's been corrected numerous times and refuses correct. This is either dishonest or incompetent.
D.A. Carson is a much better exegete than you are, and he sees no “category error” in my interpretation. I say he has got it right, which means that you are wrong
Except, of course, Carson is a Calvinist and denies general atonement, and I specifically stated that you cannot derive general atonement from John 3:16, and, of course, your quotation does not touch my objection. You continue to equate a qualitative distinction with a quantitative one without a supporting argument.
Rather he sees “now” and He sees **everything** now.
I'll just quote this bit, since as usual you use too many words to admit to something simple: You believe in election based on foreseen faith. Go ahead and say it. Henry admitted that no passage of Scripture teaches this and it had to be deduced from Scripture. Will you?
Of course, the obvious problem with your view is that you're conflating ontology and teleology. Calvinism does not deny that God knows/sees everything "now."
This is muddled in several respects. For starters, God does have a concept of cause and effect in that logic is an attribute of God's mind. He does understand that in order for x to occur as a concrete instance of what is in his mind, y must come to pass. It's an ends-means relation. We understand cause and effect and the antecedence of x to y; ergo God does too, or else we have no ground for the logical process. God also grounds the passage of time in His creation. His own Word recognizes that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. The very terms "in the beginning" and "before the foundaton of the world," are about a cause-effect relation and a temporal relation. God does exist outside of time, but that also means He orders and grounds time. Likewise, you're conflating ontology and teleology. The timeless of God does not mean there is no teleological order to His attributes or the working of His mind. Ontologically, God is unaffected by relational sequence as to His person, but He is conscious of sequential duration, because sequential duration is a part of the ordering of his decree. We know this because we have a sense of past, present, and future that, because it exists and will exist, is grounded by His mind. For God, all of these are internally intuited and not arrived at chronologically through a process, but the concept or idea of durational sequence or succession is a distinct epistemological, not ontological category. God knows all our thoughts and actions in the past, present, and future,and at the same time knows His own thoughts and actions in relation to each other and to our own and in what order. Thus, He can inspire Paul to say, "He chose before He created." He knows that He created the sea and dry land before He created birds and fish and animals and man.
The problem here is libertarian freedom, not the conception of God. In libertarian freedom, the future free acts of men are not knowable, even by God, because if they are known by God they are part of His mind, but that would not be libertarianism, that would be compatibilism, which is not a libertarian argument. The problem for the libertarian is not what causes event x from the standpoint of God and man, but what causes x from the standpoint of man. Why does one person choose x and not y? A consistent libertarian has to cut the causal nerve in his own mind. If he appeals to any motives whatsoever, he is abandoning his libertarianism for compatibilism. Thus, by eschewing causality, libertarianism lacks explanatory power. And in the absence of explanatory power, it is irrational to the core. It cannot explain why agents act or refrain from acting.
So, as always Robert, we're back to asking you this:
If election is based on some sort of "foreseen faith" (however derived in God's mind) then you must still answer: why does one man believe and not another? You keep making a vague appeal to "reasons" but that's a defeater for libertarianism. So, if you believe in "reasons," what sort of reasons might those be?
You could say that ‘one understood and one did not’ … but where did such understanding come from to begin with? Was this understanding itself derived from nature or from grace?
In the libertarian scheme did God grant this understanding so that one believed? We are forced to conclude that He did not, for if He did this for everyone, then both persons would have the same understanding. So we must conclude that, to the libertarian, such spiritual understanding is entirely self-generated, apart from any work of God’s grace in us. Whatever differences there were between the two men, these differences were not derived from grace. Ultimately, it is a reliance on some innate ability in one man, which the other did not have. So we must ask, then, according to libertarianism, was it chance that generated this difference in natural wisdom between the two? Was it random? Or was one man naturally just smarter or wiser than the other? The only two alternatives left to us here are either that one person just happened to understand (‘just because’) by chance, or that one was already better equipped than the other (in his natural self) to respond positively to the gospel command. Neither of these possibilities is aligned with the teaching or intent of the gospel, which is by grace through and through. As soon as you answer, you'll have to admit that God elects people who are smarter, more afraid, more spiritual - something - and that, Robert, is election by merit.
Built into your entire line of argumentation is the assumption that grace is quantitative, not qualitative - a lot of grace and a little libertarian freedom. The big problem is the latter part.
Gene you seem to be incapable of seeing my point. Calvinist inability perhaps? :-) Yes, these things that God does will be done in connection with someone who has saving faith. But that faith is not what causes these things to occur; only God alone does these things and they are all sovereign acts of God. Didn’t you ever learn in logic that just because something follows something else in time, does not mean that the first thing caused the second thing to occur? You just cannot seem to get past that: if these things listed follow after someone has faith, then the faith that the person has **must** be causing these other things to occur (according to you). In your mind there are only two possibilities: either regeneration precedes faith, or faith produces/causes regeneration. That is a false dilemma. The truth which is a third possibility has been left out of your thinking completely.
You like to present yourself as something of a logician with your frequent references to fallacies, “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, after this, therefore because of this (or post hoc fallacy) is the one which you are committing here. You also seem to believe that if I believe that faith does not follow regeneration in time,that that must mean that faith is the cause of, or produces regeneration (which I do not believe). Regeneration is a miraculous action by God that human persons cannot do. So it is impossible for our faith to cause or produce regeneration.
But that faith is not what causes these things to occur; only God alone does these things and they are all sovereign acts of God. Didn’t you ever learn in logic that just because something follows something else in time, does not mean that the first thing caused the second thing to occur?
Of course, Scripture says precisely the opposite in 1 John, where the causal relation is spelled out clearly several times - and one of those things the new birth is said to cause is faith in Christ. One can't help but notice you've substituted a logical argument for an exegetical argument.
I never said you affirm that faith is the (efficient) cause of regeneration. I merely stated that, in your view, none of the things that you stated can occur apart from the agent's exercise of saving faith.
The argument that regeneration precedes faith is not that it precedes it temporally, but logically. Causal relationships depend on their logical / temporal order. Exegesis determines this order for all of these and whether there is a causal relationship.
8:47 He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.
1 John 2:29, 4:7, and 5:1 also are this same construction:
He who is of God hears the words of God.
They hear because they are "of God."
You do not hear them because you are not of God
They do not hear because they are not of God
Everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.
They practice righteousness because they are born again.
Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
They love because they are born again and know God.
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.
They believe because they are born again.
No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him, and he cannot since, because he is born of God.
The point, which you have utterly missed, is that, by your own admission, in your view is that saving faith itself is not a product of the atonement. It is not a product of regeneration. It arises from the person's libertarian free will, which, according to your own appeal means it has no antecedent conditions or causally determinative factors - but Scripture directly and explicitly contradicts you.
And since you want to believe that God predetermines EVERYTHING Gene. Then who predetermines “what their hearts’desires” will be”?
Robert, as usual, ignores a number of things here:
1. The Arminian has an order of decrees too, including the permission of the fall.
2. And the Calvinist and Arminian are agreed that the fall was "decreed" and that it was "permitted." The difference is over whether that permission was "bare" or "efficient."
3. And the Calvinist does not say that God predetermines everything and then places evil in men's hearts. Rather, Calvinism has a doctrine of secondary causality.
4. But let's play with Robert's own objection. Does God determine when a person will be born in history? Does He determine their parents? Environment? Etc.
5. Are a person's desires sufficient for moral blame?
6. And since, according to Robert, a person's saving faith is infallible foreknown, then it is certain.
7. If Robert was consistent, he'd be an Open Theist. No wonder he defends them.
Really? You said:
My concern is not that “ability limits their responsibility”. My concern is that a good person would not predetermine for most people to go to hell after predetermining their every thought and action so that they must sin and live a life of disobedience to God.
If yes, then how are they held responsible for something that was not something that they had to/or could do?That, Robert, means you are ultimately concerned about ability limiting responsibility.
A good and loving and merciful person would not do that.Ah, I see, an ethical argument in lieu of an exegetical one! Goody!
A universalist can make the same argument against your own position. So, if you want to frame the debate ethically, you'll impeach your own position.
God presents himself in scripture as having a love for the “world” (Jn. 3:16),
And the rest of the text says,
"so that all the believing ones may have eternal life."So, God "loves the world" with a purpose - for the believing ones to have eternal life. That could be a nifty prooftext for supralapsarianism, Robert, and, since you think so highly of Plantinga, we'll have to wonder if you agree to his supralapsarian theodicy.
not taking pleasure in the eternal death of the wicked (Eze. 18),
Calvinism affirms this too. I personally have affirmed this many times when writing about the doctrines of grace.
of desiring for all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4-6),
Calvinism affirms this too - see the work of John Piper.
of desiring to have mercy on all people (Rom. 11:32),
This particular passage, in context, is referring to all kinds of people, that is without respect to ethnicity (Jew or Gentile). But since you brought up the passage, it includes a nifty reference:
"God has bound all over to disobedience."Robert quotes the last part without reference to the first.
False, "theological determinism" draws a distinction between ends and means to an end and has for centuries.To claim that something arises from man and not God, or to claim that God permits or allows something is to “borrow” from noncalvinism and depart from theological determinism.
And your line that: “man's sin itself arises from his love of evil and not God”, is false according to your determinism. If I predetermine every event including the thought, intentions, actions, sins of people, then their sin directly arises out of my will, what I wanted to happen.
False. You've confused the determination of an END with the MEANS to the end. You've done this multiple times in this thread and in others.
Steve at least twice pointed out and I have pointed out myself three or four times myself as well, decrees are not the same thing as "causality," for decrees don't do anything by themselves. They act as a blueprint for certainty. Blueprints don't build buildings. That requires means - materials, machines, people. In Scripture, the decrees (God's counsels) are worked out by providence. Decrees are not interchangeable with "causality." In Scripture, providence, which is usually by second causes, works out the plan. Steve put it his way:
Robert is confusing *causality* with *certainty*.
I'd add that this seems to be regular feature of libertarians' objections to Calvinism's view of providence.
LBCF2 5. Paragraph 2. Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; so that there is not anything befalls any by chance, or without His providence; yet by the same providence He ordered them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.
Are you so intellectually or ethically challenged that you keep ignoring the opposing position? Incompetence on stilts, I say.
You wrote:
But then when it is pointed out to you that this would make God the author of sin, the cause of sin, then you want to back off and appeal to “secondary causes” or “it’s not like that”, “it’s different than that”.
And since the standard confessions, which are several centuries old now hold the position I have outlined and quoted for you a number of times, as do our standard theology texts, I have not "backed off" of anything. It is you, Robert, the chronic liar, who cannot and willfully refuses to accurately represent the opposing position and has done so for weeks.
There are acts in which God directly intervenes: miracles, creation, regeneration, and conversion and acts in which He allows natural processes to work out His will.
The Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession are clear. God’s determination of men’s acts in this regard comes through decreeing they come about through “the efficacy of second causes.” Individuals still have the freedom to act out any number of possible goods or evils as dictated by their natures and circumstances.
God can choose goods. . Each and every act need not be “predestined” by God’s direct intervening action or from any number of possible direct actions of God, for much of what happens is predestined by virtue of God controlling the boundings and directings of our choices while giving us freedom to act within the constraints of our natures, intervening directly as He pleases, constraining us and permitting us as He so chooses. Nothing happens apart from the grounding, sovereign decree of God, but certain acts and choices and circumstances come about by God ‘s direct effort (what Charles Hodge calls His “potentia absoluta’) This are: miracles, creation, regeneration, conversion, the events of the eschaton, and specific acts of judgment.
What God decrees for His glory, men do with their own motives. For example, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to judge Egypt’s gods. Pharaoh’s will was not violated, in that God allowed Pharaoh’s love of evil, which was his natural state, to increase, keeping Israel from leaving. Pharaoh did not keep them from leaving in order to glorify God and worship Him. He did it because he hated God, Moses, Aaron, and the slaves. What God did for a righteous motive, Pharaoh did out of hatred for God. The motive behind an act, therefore, determines whether or not it is truly sinful. In theory, if Pharaoh had done what he did to glorify and worship God, he would not have been condemned, however, a man that does such a thing is, in reality acting in faith and love for God and would have to be regenerate. Such a man would not hold Israel back; he would have released Israel and taken down Egypt’s gods. That was not God’s purpose for Pharaoh. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
God is the author of evil, in the sense that He is first cause of all things. This simply goes with pay grade. His decrees, through either action or inaction render events necessary, but, evil is the result of permission, not His direct causation, or a result of His judicial hardening of sinners, an act of justice Scripture supports repeatedly, as in the above text and in Romans 1. Nothing happens that compels a man or demon to act in a way it does not wish to act or against its nature. He may withhold constraining grace, as in the fall, in order to render a thing certain, but the agent of the evil, in this case Adam simply acts in accordance with his nature as a second cause, for reasons and motives sufficient for himself and arising from his own nature. Men thus do what God decrees, but for motives all their own. In so doing, they may incur judgment. In this way men act as infallibly as if they had no liberty, yet as freely as if there was no decree rendering their acts certain. See, for example, the predestination of Judas betrayal and Jesus crucifixion. These men did, with evil desires, what God desired and planned to happen since before creation, for Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world itself.
Another Scholastic distinction I alluded to above even though we admit is has been discussed to death and fraught with difficulties since the Middle Ages, is the distinction between God's absolute power (Potentia Absoluta) and ordinary power (Potentia Ordinata). Whatever the difficulties of those distinctions in the older theologies (See Richard Muller's discussions in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics - it's too long to enter for my purposes here), I think they are useful, at their root, insofar as they help accurately describe the way God uses means. With respect to things like creation ex nihilio, miracles, the Incarnation, regeneration, etc. God's absolute and direct control is very involved. In all other things, the decrees fall out according to the nature of second causes "either necessarily, freely, or contingently."
Notice that even in the creation narrative, we have an implication of second causes. There are commands that say, "Let there be..." and others that say ,"Let the earth bring forth..." In the Incarnation, we have a direct miracle @ conception, but it isn't as if Jesus just appears full formed as a 30 year old man like some sort of animus springing from Mary's womb. Rather, there is a normal pregnancy; He grows through childhood into adulthood, etc. We speak of regeneration in two senses: the wider and the narrower. In the narrower, we mean the direct act of God raising the soul dead in sin to life, but we are comfortable pointing out that "means" are the ordinary mode of that occurrence. As Dr. Sproul has said, the Spirit and the Word of God (preaching, studying, reading, etc) are working together.
What I would like to particularly point out for the purposes of this posting is that what Robert has provided us with is his own use of one of his Libertarian objections to Calvinism where it suits him:
Scripture is clear that He does predetermine some events, most notably the crucifixion of Jesus Acts 2:23, 4:25-28), but not all events.
Notice how quickly the libertarian's "all means all" argumentation quickly turns into, "all means some." "God works all things after the counsel of His will" (in Greek, literally "all, all things)" is reduced, without benefit of argument, to "some things."
Here's Robert's schizophrenic logic: he'll take the "pantos" passages of Scripture regarding the atonement or God's desires (1 Tim 2:4 for example) to mean "everyone without exception" and then reduce "all things" to "some." All the while, he finds the doctrine of particular atonement odious, because we're turning "all" and "world" into "some."
Robert believes that God only predetermines *some things* but when we look at Scripture, we find that the list is quite exhaustive (indeed the above list can be multiplied greatly) and Robert, while accusing us of emphasizing the particular over the general and claiming, I suppose, that "all means all," quickly reduces "all," as in Ephesians 1 to "some."
And, by the way, Robert, you're just repeating yourself and moving me to do so (since I devoted an entire thread awhile back to this and you didn't respond) - that, and some personal health reasons that prohibit me coming back to reply to you again this week, is the reason comments here are cut off. I'm simply not willing to engage in protracted discussion with you given your behavior. The only reason I'm posting this here, aside from its usefulness for the readers, is because the parent topic is 81 posts long now.
Blogger is a free service. This is not a discussion board. If you're going to repeat yourself with that level of frequency over multiple topics, you need to get your own blogger account and use it. You're approaching the level of "Orthodox" who we banned awhile back in this regard.
All sins are covered in the atonement which is applied only to believers. For believers their every sin is covered. For unbelievers who reject the provision of Christ for their salvation, none of their sins is covered.
1. If that is so, then the atonement has no intrinsic efficacy, which proves my earlier statement to that effect.
2. Robert affirms general, not Amyraldian atonement, yet he is employing an Amyraldian concept while saying elsewhere that Amyraldians are incorrect.
2. And if that is so, then God is playing a game of double jeopardy, holding men to account for sins for which Christ has already atoned. It isn't without reason the majority of Arminians these days prefer the moral government theory of atonement, Robert, and this is it.
