The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Gods Character??

I am stuck trying to find truth in "Reformed vs Non-Reformed" theologies... I have grown up in a church and family that is non reformed and due to that tend to have a hard time finding truth in the reformed theology. However, as each day passes I find myself noticing things that could only be explained by some of the reformed ideas, (predestination and such).. And here is the problem I have.. The argument always seems to be that non reformed people are trying to protect human "rights" or something close to, and reformed people are trying to protect Gods sovereignty. In a court room setting like this argument is so often portrayed for me, I would have to say that the reformers are correct because God has the power and the right to do ANYTHING he wants to do.. But is it in His character to do so? For example: In Numbers God uses Moses to deliver his people from Egypt. He shows them miracle after miracle and yet they still in the end say that God could not give them the promised land... (Moses walks them through the sea on dry land, pillar of fire for warmth at night, cloud for coolness during the day while tracking the desert, food and water were provided while in the desert) here is the kicker for me, they get to the promised land and God tells Moses to send 12 scouts in.. Why would God tell Moses to send scouts in? God surely knew that the land they were at was the land he promised.. Its as if God wants the people to hear from other people what God has been saying all along.. SO the 12 scouts go in, 10 come out saying that the land is all it was said to be but too many obstacles stood between them and it, and 2 of them said it was all it was promised to be and they could take it.. The people voted NOT to go in and take it even though God promised the land to them.. When the people did this God got VERY angry and threatened to kill them all and Moses stood up for the people and God decided that they would wander the desert for 40 years until most of them died (all over the age of 20) so that their kids could inherit the land... My question is this, from a non reformed view, this makes total sense.. God creates a decision to be made and gave in my opinion MORE than sufficient evidence that He is capable of giving them the land and the people rejected... From a reformed view, God would have predestined this people to deny Him at that point in time and then get mad about it.. Is that no different than lining dominos up in a row a specific way and then when they all fall according to plan getting upset that they did not go where they "belong" per se?? However, from either perspective I am also confused on how Moses "talked" God out of killing everyone in His anger... I apologize for the length of this but I am so very confused

Hi C.M.H.

There are answers for your questions; good biblical answers which I believe only historic "Calvinism" can answer. However, as strange as it may seem, I am not going to offer anything to you at this time. Why? Because I noticed that when I saw this new thread, it had "12" views . . . that is 12 people had at least read what you posted. And not ONE SINGLE PERSON offered anything to your sincere and all too familiar questions. This in my estimation is shameful that a dozen people here, most more than likely holding to the Reformed Faith, would not engage you in any way. I would like to apologize for this unfortunate and embarrassing conduct on the part of the members here.

I am confident, however, that there will be one, perhaps more believers here who will understand your consternation and honor your humble request for the truth of God by offering you some explanations. In the interim, I would point you to a couple of relevant sections of The Highway: Predestination, and General Articles on Calvinism, where you will find many articles which deal with the subjects you have mentioned.

As Arnold would say.... I'll be back!

C.M.H

I would like to say that even though Pilgrim is the administrator of “The Highway” he is not tooting his own horn. The Highway has some excellent articles on the reformed faith. Many, many times when I have done a google search for an author or an article I’ve been surprised how often The Highway home page pops up. So bless God that in my few short years of learning what the reformed faith teaches, I would say that by His marvelous grace I have grown in the faith and in the knowledge of our great God and saviour the Lord Jesus Christ.


Welcome,
William


Psalm 95:3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

.

Ok, I'll take pilgrim's challenge. :-)

"God is Soverign" theology holds another major tenet. All is done for God's glory, to reveal who He is, and to glorify Himself. Some events glorify His love and mercy, and others glorify His awesome holiness for example.

All of redemptive history was planned, executed, and recorded to reveal and display God's glory. It was never about "choice" or discovery on His part, but a progressive revelation of who He is to us.

When the bible describes God as "testing" us, the test is not for Him to "learn" anything, but to reveal something to us that He already knows.

The purpose of the scouts was exactly as you say, to inform the people, and to cause exactly the reaction planned from the beginning, so that more of God would be revealed. The real purpose was to reveal their lack of faith of course. A powerful demonstration that witnessing miracles cannot impart faith. Kinda destroys the whole "miracle-evangelism" thing don't you think?

Predestination does not convert people into dominoes or automatons, that is fatalism and is a misunderstanding of predestination.

Even though God planned everything from the beginning, we are still responsible for our actions. Our will, while not so free as we might imagine, is still culpable when we sin.

The second question is about God getting angry, repenting of making man, and Moses "talking" Him out of it.

Again this was a planned scene to reveal both God's holiness, or hatred of sin (lack of faith in this case), and His mercy and lovingkindness. It is one of the greatest examples of intercessory prayer in the Bible, and as such was done for our edification. Paul writes millenia later in the New Testament that all scripture is for the purpose of edifying us, the elect.

God regularly manipulates people and events to achieve His purposes, nothing escapes, all is according to plan, including your presence here in this forum.

Welcome, btw. :-)

Allow me to be the first to recommend the great Calvinists themselves as the best sources on Calvinism, such as Spurgeon, Edwards, Arthur Pink, and of course Calvin himself.

All of them can be had freely on the internet:
www.spurgeon.org
www.jonathanedwards.com
www.pbministries.org/books/pink/pinks_archive.htm
www.ccel.org/c/calvin

- Kurt

Well, even from the non-Reformed perspective, God knew ahead of time what the outcome was going to be, didn't He? In fact, He knew when He created the world what the outcome of everything would be. That being the case, from the non-Reformed perspective you still have to ask, Why did God choose to create this world, knowing what would happen? You don't escape the dilemma by going that route. All you do is unsuccessfully attempt to avoid God's absolute sovereignty.

If you want to avoid the dilemma "successfully," you end up having to deny God's sovereignty as well as His omniscience, and what you end up with is a God who doesn't know what's going to happen and who doesn't have the power to control any of it. Such a being would not be worthy of being called "God," I think we can agree.

If we acknowledge that God is sovereign over even this, is it really just a case of Him setting up some dominoes, knocking them over, and then getting mad at the dominoes? Hardly.

First, humans aren't mindless blocks. God foreordains everything that happens, but men also choose to do what they choose to do. What they will choose is limited by their capacities, desires, and options. No man ever makes a choice that is against his will, since choosing is always an act of the will. He may make a choice against some of his desires, but he still chooses according to his desires. For example, say a man is held at gunpoint and told to deny God or be killed. That man must choose between his desire to live and his desire to honor God. If he denies God, he has proven that his desire to live is greater than his desire to honor God. Many (probably most) would say such a man was "forced against his will," but though he was certainly threatened, the choice to deny God was his own: he could have chosen to die instead. All this to say that men do actually make choices and are not puppets on strings; they are thus responsible for their actions.

Second, as a result of Adam's fall, all human beings are fundamentally sinful. They are born hating God and loving evil, and so it is only quite "natural" for them to disbelieve God in spite of all the good provisions he gives them; they have no desire to honor God. The attitude of the Israelites only demonstrates their sinfulness.

Third, because God is holy and just, He cannot abide with sin. He must abhor, judge, and destroy sin. Therefore He is rightly angered by sinners. God's anger is not some irrational outburst because things aren't going His way (especially since all things do go His way), but it is the response of a perfectly holy nature to its opposite. If He were not angered by sin, then he wouldn't be holy or just, and He wouldn't be God.

With this foundation, we can perhaps begin to explain why Moses turned away God's wrath. You see, if God ordained that the Israelites would grumble against Him, He certainly also ordained the Moses would intercede with Him on their behalf. God is not simply playing games with dominoes, reacting irrationally when they fall the "wrong" way even though He set them up that way; He is actually doing something much more profound: He is glorifying Himself. He is showing that men are sinners who do not deserve the kindness He bestows on them, that He is holy and must punish sin, and that He is full of mercy because He provides a mediator to turn away His wrath from those who rebel against him. Moses is actually a type—a foreshadowing—of the great mediator that we have in Jesus Christ. He points the way to the great salvation God provides through Jesus to miserable sinners like us, Jesus who always chose to obey God and who freely laid down His life on behalf of His sheep.

To get back to the main question:


God does everything He wants to do, and everything He does is in His character, which is to be holy, just, good, and merciful. That is, His character is to glorify and exalt Himself as God above all.

I thank you all for your responses here.. They have given me much to think and ponder on and hopefully one day here soon I will be able to better wrap my mind around these things. I do however have more questions to add to my already lengthy list..
From a reformed view, God "bends" our will into matching His own so that even though we make a choice ourself, it is really a choice based on our will that has been made to match Gods plan?? If I understand correctly? Assuming that to be true, how are we to react to Satan attacking at our lives? If God bends my will to go kill someone or to be the man holding some one hostage, did Satan do anything? It would almost seem as if Satan is still forced to take a back seat to God and yet reap the rewards of lost souls because God planned it that way.. Seems to destroy my ideals of how good and evil work against one another. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else.. I pray that it does.

I am just trying to quiet the war in my head of hearing myself at every decision I make questioning whether it be my choice, Gods choice through predestination and why I am making that choice in either case.. Thank you all though for taking the time to help a somewhat lost one reach around for the truth.

CMH:

In nutshell, I will direct you to Romans 9. I know some "calvies" hammer this scripture portion as a jackhammer against 'free willies'wrongly, but read it to your edification. The crux of your question lies in that chapter. And the inspired Paul responded then as he will today; "Who are you oh man to reply against God" Also I will point you to the book of Job. What were God's answers? "Were you there....etc etc etc"

This is not meant to sidestep your questions. Countless volumns have been written explaining and answering your inquiery. The irony is the inspired word does not spend as much time answering as men over the centuries have attempted too.

Blessings

Joe

Oops! Methinks you need to backup and start over. First of all, God doesn't "bend" anyone's will, if by "bend" you mean "force", i.e., to that which a person would not do on their own and most willingly. God doesn't nor could He FORCE the human will. Why? Because He would be violating the very nature of the creature He Himself created in His own image. From conception, an individual does whatever he/she desires. CovenantInBlood pointed this fact out to you in his reply. ALL human beings are totally free to choose what the deem most important in any given circumstance, according to their nature.

Secondly, now let's deal with this question with God as the subject. Everything that exists; its beginning, end and all that occurs in between has been foreordained by God from eternity. There isn't even one rogue atom or molecule out there anywhere. Again, EVERYTHING has its origin from God, including it's every moment, purpose and end. There is nothing that is not under God's direct sovereign providence (control) and which has been designed and determined to accomplish God's perfect will.

Isaiah 46:9-11 (ASV) "Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; [I am] God, and there is none like me; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not [yet] done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure; calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country; yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it."

Isaiah 55:10-11 (ASV) "For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

Psalms 135:6 (ASV) "Whatsoever Jehovah pleased, that hath he done, In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps;"

Proverbs 19:21 (ASV) "There are many devices in a man's heart; But the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand."

Daniel 4:35 (ASV) "And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?"

There can be no doubt that these two truths, 1) God is absolutely sovereign in both power and authority, and 2) Man is free to choose whatsoever he desires according to his nature and is thus wholly responsible for what he does, when considered as being equally true have a strong tendency to boggle the human mind. So, rather than accepting them as being true, since Scripture indisputably teaches both, men "bend" those truths one way or another. Some even go so far as to deny one or the other or even both. The problem is, when you start twisting the inspired, infallible written Word of God, you consequently bring judgment upon yourself because to do so is to make God a liar and to create for yourself an idol; fashioning something out of your own imagination to replace the one true God.

Let me ask you a question at this point. Do you think that those men who drove the nails into Christ's hands and feet did so against their will? Or, did they crucify Him because they freely wanted to? In other words, do you think that even one of the individuals responsible for the physical crucifixion of Christ or who participated in His crucifixion in any way, from Herod down to those who stood by and mocked Him as He walked by them on the way to Golgotha, did what they did under compulsion; totally against their will?

After we have the above settled.... then I think your second question about Satan, etc,. can be dealt with. But since you begin by making the same unfortunate error, "If God bends my will to go kill someone or to be the man holding some one hostage. . .", it would be fruitless to answer that question until you understand those two basic truths and answer my question.

In His grace,

CMH, you might also consider reading the following article:

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/freewill_chantry.html

Or you can read the following as well:

http://www.the-highway.com/Myth.html

Johan

Edited: combined posts

C.M.H.,

You might do well to read this: Objections: Answered. There is also a whole battery of articles about predestination here: Predestination Index.

To give a short answer, your will is never contrary to God's ultimate plan; you may have sinful desires and motives, and your choices may be evil, but every choice you make fits perfectly into God's plan. If it didn't, and God had to have some kind of plan B just in case you didn't do as He originally planned, then you'd have a God once again who is neither all-knowing nor all-powerful. Nevertheless, you do make your choices! God doesn't make your choices for you. You make them, according to your own will, desires, motives, etc.

"The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps" (Prov. 16:9).

As far as Satan is concerned, I will wait until you have answer Pilgrim's question to provide a fuller answer. But for now I encourage you to read the first couple chapters of Job and see how Satan works there.


When you make a choice, it is always your choice. The fact that God has ordained everything doesn't negate that.

Here are some hard but glorious statements from the book Calvin's Calvinism BY JOHN CALVIN. Part 1 Section VII on The Highways home page.



William

Pilgrim touches on an important point, namely what is free-will anyway? Bad definitions of "free-will" cause confusion.

Jonathan Edwards wrote extensively on it, and defined free-will exactly the way Pilgrim did.

Many think free-will means the ability to choose between good and evil. God Himself is not "free" by that definition, thus we can conclude it is a bogus definition according to Edwards, since any reasonable definition of free-will must acknowledge God as the most free being in existence. The Bible also flatly denies that sinners have any ability to choose good.

Free-will is simply the ability to choose what you desire. Your nature determines what you desire. Sinners will choose sin every time, their only true freedom is to choose among which sins they will gratify, and even then their freedom is limited, since they cannot gratify all their evil desires, despite great efforts in many instances.

They are nonetheless fully accountable for their choices. When Pilgrim writes that God does not violate our free-will it might be better said that God does not violate our accountability. Put another way, He never causes someone to sin, but He is certainly capable of using evil for His purposes, without ever being stained by sin Himself. A lot has been written on this subject.

God does not bend wills, He changes natures. Regeneration changes the nature from one that chooses sin constantly to one that chooses righteousness instead. God's nature is perfect, He chooses good always, because it is His nature to do so. God is also the only being who always gets what He wants, thus again this definition of free-will assigns God His rightful place.

The ability to choose between good and evil is a weakness, Adam and Eve both had it, so did the Angels, God has no such weakness. Once evil is chosen chosen however, there is no going back. All ability to choose good is forever lost, the will is crippled to only choose evil thereafter. The Bible calls this bondage to sin.

Only regeneration restores true free-will according to Edwards and Luther. We now have the ability to choose good again. And we have lost the ability to choose evil. Passages refer to believers as unable to sin (it means in the heart however). And our glorified state is referred to as incorruptible, where the outward manifestation will fully reveal the inner transformation that God has wrought in our hearts.

Calvin rejected the term free-will (as applied to sinners) since he was convinced that the common man would naturally assign the wrong meaning to it despite lengthy discourses. Luther called it the bondage of the will (to sin). Whatever you want to call it, they meant what Edwards meant.

Hope this helps,

- Kurt

Kurt, have you changed your mind during the course of this discussion. In your first response you said:


but now you say


Or what did you mean with "manipulates people"? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/scratch1.gif" alt="" />

Johan

I disagree that the regenerate always choose what is right for a lack of better term. I know of no scripture that says the elect do not sin or are unable to sin. Sinners also do choose good according to mans understanding all the time. I know of unbelievers who 'live' a better life than myself according to our standards. Adn there are numerous examples of His children falling terribly.

Is there any possible way to use the Holy Writ instead of Edwards and Luther as a rule of thumb? We may point people to works written by man, but please let us not exclude what is plain in the scriptures.

The questions asked in the OT are common and should not take long or many words to show where the answer lies. Let us refrain from debating what man thinks and concentrate on what God says. And only utilyze works written on the subject as a resource to perhaps better explain what the Inspired word says.

Until CMH rightly divides Romans 9, it cannot go further.

Joe,

You are certainly correct that regenerate individuals do not always choose what is right and they do sin, unless of course one holds to some form of Perfectionism. However, I must disagree just as surely with your statement that "Sinners also do choose good according to man's understanding". Yes, according to the eyes of the unregenerate, others do appear to do "good", but more so, they preen themselves that they do even more "good". Now, there is no argument that the unregenerate's acts toward other men do result in some benefit, relatively speaking. Helping an elderly person across the street, donating to the poor, etc., etc.. are indeed acts of beneficence. But whether they are "good" is another question and even more so WHY the unregenerate do such acts is more salient to this issue. Let me provide a relevant passage which I believe answers such questions:

Genesis 20:1-6 (ASV) "And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the land of the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur. And he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister. And Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, because of the woman whom thou hast taken. For she is a man's wife. Now Abimelech had not come near her. And he said, Lord, wilt thou slay even a righteous nation? Said he not himself unto me, She is my sister? And she, even she herself said, He is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and the innocency of my hands have I done this. And God said unto him in the dream, Yea, I know that in the integrity of thy heart thou has done this, and I also withheld thee from sinning against me. Therefore suffered I thee not to touch her."

What should be most apparent here is that Abimelek's appearance of "righteousness" was not attributable to himself but to God, Who in His divine providence withheld his hand from doing what he really and naturally would have otherwise done. So, yes.. in the eyes of men what appears to be "good" are actually the result of the hand of God restraining acts of evil. (cf. 2Thess 2:6, 7) Since an unregenerate individual is totally incapable of doing any actual/real good, since the heart of a sinner is predisposed only to evil (cf. Gen 6:5; 8:21; Jer 17:7, etc.), the least thing the unregenerate desire is to do good.

We must guard ourselves from swinging the pendulum too far the other way when we find an error.

In His grace,