Cheryl Schatz

Gazza,
You said:

Thanks for your response to my last post #146. Unfortunatly I was not clear enough – ever a danger with analogies. The roast dinner/ carcus was not meant to represent any individual sin but rather choosing between everlasting life (the roast) or death (the carcus). It was meant simply to highlight the fact that even our choice to follow Christ in faith is one that we are unable to make until He opens our eyes through changing our nature. Once He has done this there is no other choice for us to make, we still have free will to reject Christ and choose the carcus but we no longer desire to do so…

While I do understand that Calvinism teaches that one cannot answer the call of God to choose unless God first resurrects them to life and gives them a new nature, the question is whether this is Biblical or not. Yes, analogies can fail to represent what we believe, and this is why I try hard to stick to Scripture as much as possible. I believe that if we do not have clear Scripture but only analogies, then it makes me wonder why Scripture is not clear.

The Bible is clear that there are people that God chooses for leadership and for certain tasks and/or privileges.

Numbers 17:5 (NASB)
5 “It will come about that the rod of the man whom I choose will sprout. Thus I will lessen from upon Myself the grumblings of the sons of Israel, who are grumbling against you.”

In Numbers 17:5 God clearly states that the leader of the people is one that He Himself has chosen. So is it clear in the OT that God must resurrect a man to life before he can choose life?

Deuteronomy 30:19 (NASB)
19 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,

In Deut 30:19 God clearly “sets before” Israel life and death, the blessing and the curse and He tells them to “choose” life. If they couldn’t choose life without being resurrected to life first, then God made a serious error in actually setting before them both life and death. It would seem rather that God is mocking them because they did not have a choice.

Also in Jeremiah 8:3-5 God shows that there is a choice, but that the “evil family” has chosen death, not that God has chosen for them that they have no power to fail to chose or fail to chose the other option.

Jeremiah 8:3–5 (NASB)
3 “And death will be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family, that remains in all the places to which I have driven them,” declares the LORD of hosts.
4 “You shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD,
“Do men fall and not get up again?
Does one turn away and not repent?
5 “Why then has this people, Jerusalem,
Turned away in continual apostasy?
They hold fast to deceit,
They refuse to return.

When I test the teaching that one must be resurrected to life before one can choose to seek God, this teaching just isn’t found in the Scriptures. It is well articulated by Calvinists, but a good story that is not substantiated by the Word is just a good story.

You said:

In Post 185 you say
No they are not. They are condemned because God chose them for destruction without any conditions. ‘Apparently He made them to go to hell so it isn’t their rejection of the gospel that sends them there.

This is exactly the thinking I was trying to anticipate with my analogy. The choice of life is there right beside the choice of death but they reject it because of their sin nature.

But that is not what I was saying. I wasn’t saying that they chose destruction because of their sin nature. I said that the choice was made for them by God. If they were chosen unconditionally to go to hell, then their rejection of the gospel isn’t want sends them to hell. They go there because God pre-determined that they were one of the ones who would be created to go there. If they were created to go to hell unconditionally then it cannot also be said that they go to hell because of ….. (whatever reason) for God alone decides their fate without their own actions.

When someone tells them the baked dinner is better they regect them because of their sin nature(in our sin nature we do believe the carcus to be better).

Gazza, here you are dealing with a symptom instead of the direct reason why someone rejects good food. The rejection is because they were ordained to go to hell, if Calvinism is correct. The problem is that this teaching makes the multitude of passages about our own choice to fear God or not to fear God is nothing more than a sham and an intentional fraud for the cover of God’s pleading with the wicked to repent and turn to him, covers over the reality that He desires that they do not turn and repent for He has preplanned their journey to hell.

Some Calvinists will take these inconsistencies and say that they are a “mystery” and God alone knows why His call for repentance can both be a true call and yet a determined-in-advance and unconditional rejection of the reprobate. How God can long for the lost to come to Him and at the same time not long for them to come to Him because they have been unconditionally determined to be rejected is a huge problem for Calvinism and why so many reject this theory for the solid truth of Scripture that God actually longs for all of the unregenerate to turn from their wicked ways and that He does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked.

Ezekiel 18:23 (NASB)
23 “Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked,” declares the Lord GOD, “rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?

You said:

Certainly God did not open their eyes to show them the folly of their choice but this is at Gods discretion(indeed it is the corrupt nature of sin that they would not want God to do any such thing) – it is still a choice they have made and are accountable for it.

The problem is that there are many who did turn and repent and nowhere in the OT does it say that God resurrected them to life first before they could turn to Him.

Like I said, Calvinism has a great deal of holes in that theory and I choose to follow the consistent revelation of Scripture rather than a theory. At the same time I appreciate my brothers and sisters in Christ who are Calvinists for their love for God and their desire to live for His glory. I too have this great desire.