The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Choosen and Children

Marie,

I am deeply saddened and quite surprised as you were to read what these two men wrote, who are not novices to biblical doctrine and who claim to hold firmly to the doctrines of free sovereign grace. I see two glaring errors in their responses:

1) The doctrine of "Original Sin" as held by Calvinists for hundreds of years, being that which the Scripture everywhere teaches is that it consists of [color:"red"]"2"[/color] elements: a) The guilt of Adam is imputed to the entire human race. Thus ALL are guilty before God from the judgment rendered upon Adam, who was our Federal Head. This is part and parcel of "corporate solidarity" and clearly taught in Rom 5:12-18 and 1Cor 15:21, 21. To deny this truth is also to deny imputed righteousness and therefore the foundational doctrine of justification by faith. ALL are under judgment (Eph 2:3). The guilt imputed declares our judicial status/standing before God and has no bearing upon our "inability" to respond to the Gospel. b) The corruption of nature is inherited by generation from our parents, also as being part of the punishment rendered to Adam's transgression. It is this depravity of the soul; aka: spiritual death, which is the post-Fall natural inclination to be at enmity with God and to hate all that is good. We are thus prone to all manner of wickedness and evil. (cf. Gen 6:5; 8:21; Job 15:14-16; Ps 51:5; 58:3; Eph 2:1-5;)

The fact that Esau was rejected before he was born, even before he had done either good or evil, and God being perfectly just in all His ways (Gen 18:25b; Deut 32:4), shows that Esau was deemed guilty and worthy of damnation by virtue of his relation to the human race.

2) It is indefensible to take a portion of Scripture as Mohler did, from Numbers, which speaks to God preserving the youth under 20 years of age from physical destruction and force upon it a salvific meaning. Secondly, this portion of Scripture is local and historical, being a specific account and judgment upon a particular people at a particular time in history. There is no warrant to fabricate a universal principle out of it and thus apply it to all men everywhere for all time. If one were to apply this fractured interpretation with equity, then one would be forced to conclude that Moses was damned as well as all those who the Bible says were saints living during that period of time, for he, Moses, was forbidden to enter into the land and died without ever doing so.

Once again, it is my belief, that the truth of this matter is to be found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter X, "On Effectual Calling", in section III, where it states:

Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

In His Grace,