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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Resisting God


A better translation of Neh 9:30 would be, “Many years you drew them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not give ear.” The text speaks of a resistible divine drawing that seeks to bring people to the Lord in repentance. Stephen also furnished a good example of the resistibility of grace when he said to his fellow Jews, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it” (Acts 7:51-53). Luke 7:30 tells us that “the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves.” And Jesus, who spoke to people for the purpose of saving them (John 5:34), yet found that they refused to come to him to have life (John 5:40). 
http://evangelicalarminians.org/the-facts-of-salvation-a-summary-of-arminian-theologythe-biblical-doctrines-of-grace/
I've already discussed Abasciano's misinterpretation of Lk 7:30 and Acts 7:51 here:
Now I'd like to make a broader point. Abasciano overlooks a basic tenet of Calvinism. It might seem discordant with Calvinism to admit that men can ever resist God, but that's ambiguous. For there's a sense in which God can (and does) cause a person to resist him. That's one function of divine hardening:
21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go (Exod 4:41). 
12 But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses (Exod 9:12). 
20 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go…27 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go (Exod 10:20,27). 
10 Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land (Exod 11:10). 
37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,40 “He has blinded their eyes    and hardened their heart,lest they see with their eyes,    and understand with their heart, and turn,    and I would heal them.”(Jn 12:37-40).

Resisting God isn't antithetical to divine determinism, for God can determine or predestine a man to resist him. His very resistance to God is, itself, the effect of God's prior action.  
"Resisting God" is ambiguous. It's shorthand. Resist God in what respect? Can a human resist God's will? God's plan? Calvinism says no. 
Can a human resist God's word? God's command or prohibition? Calvinism says yes. 
Not only is it possible for humans to resist God's word, but when they do so, their very resistance is part of God's plan. Their predestined resistance facilitates God's plan. Their resistance is instrumental in the realization of God's design. 
Predestination is irresistible, but resistance (of a certain kind) can be, and sometimes is, the end-result of predestination.
In the TULIP acronym, "irresistible" has specific reference to monergistic regeneration. The unregenerate are passive in regeneration. Unable to cooperate in their regeneration. 

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