Charlie,

Methinks you are confusing predestination and election to salvation with the issue of man's ability and inability to make choices. If man's nature is not ONE of the determinate causes of man's choices then man is not responsible for anything he does. This is the Arminian/semi-Pelagian argument used all too often against Calvinism, for IF everything that a man thinks, feels and does is totally caused by God's eternal decree, man becomes the proverbial puppet. But as I have stated before and that which all the Reformed Confessions teach, it is not either/or but both/and... ALL things have been decreed by God from eternity according to His immutable counsel AND every choice made by man is a free act of the will and done according to one's nature...aka: compatibalism. The clearest expression of this truth is found, of course, in Scripture in regard to the crucifixion of Christ.

Quote
Acts 2:22-24 (ASV) "Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, even as ye yourselves know; him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay: whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it."

Acts 3:17-18 (ASV) "And now, brethren, I know that in ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But the things which God foreshowed by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled."

Acts 4:26-28 (ASV) "The kings of the earth set themselves in array, And the rulers were gathered together, Against the Lord, and against his Anointed: for of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy council foreordained to come to pass."

[Linked Image]

simul iustus et peccator

[Linked Image]