From the comments on post #272:
[I]John Mullally[/I]
Calvinists assert that God changes a select portion of humanities nature. Poof they are born again out of the blue. To the rest, so sorry you have predestined to eternal hell fire - but you deserve it because that is the nature you were born with. Maybe Hitler was not so bad.
John Mullally
“…individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6)
@John Mullally , while I can identify to some degree, and even sympathize with the feeling of the Gospel, and Christ himself, and the Father, being slandered, this door swings both ways. As we have so often butted heads over, and now you insist on hitting it again, the Arminian notion of self-determination is logically a claim that God is not Omnipotent. I have kept my mouth shut of late, but you insist on continuing.
Above, you again and as usual misrepresent Calvinism, by leaving out whole concepts and distorting others. God does not
"changes a select portion of humanities nature." He regenerates the being, the will and mind, of those he intended from the beginning of the world to change, for his own sake. You have also apparently set yourself as doctrinally contrary to the awful fact that ALL of humanity by nature and practice is absolutely deserving of that destruction,
"eternal hell fire" as you call it, in your sarcastic delivery.
You sing the refrain with the rest of the Arminians that Calvinism has no love. But herein is the love of God shown, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He had no obligation to do so, because we, the born again, were no better than those ultimately condemned. Calvinism is replete with God's love and mercy. The fact that of their very nature, will and choice, the damned reject, and in everything they do, oppose, God, no more qualifies them for God's attention nor beneficent will than it does the objects of his mercy.
WHERE is your proof that God's universal love is equal for all people, and that he has equally kindly intentions toward absolutely everyone, and no particular plans for any? Are not his creatures his to do with as he pleases? If he intended a mere return to the garden, would he have put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there? NO! He intended, and will accomplish, the Dwelling Place for HIMSELF, which necessarily includes the fact that the objects of his mercy be impressed with his awe-ful purity, anger and justice against all that opposes him, if for no other reason so that they can appreciate to some degree the evident power, mercy and love in his taking the sin of those objects of mercy upon himself.
So WHERE do you get the notion that Calvin is wrong? To you, a person gets what they deserve and they deserve destruction because of their rejection. Calvinism says the same. You reply that Calvinism also claims that they do so as predestined. I ask you to explain what is the difference: After all if God was not held in mind as first cause, their destiny is still set, they are, even in supposed "free will", whichever of a dozen uses you have sloughed you use now, still logically (and Biblically) caused to choose as they do (and no, you have NOT shown otherwise, except in your own mind); thus, as head of causation, God has caused whatsoever comes to pass, to include the choices of the damned. This DOES NOT in any way deny that the condemned really, freely and actually chooses as he does. He ALWAYS chooses this —according to scripture he does not want to do otherwise nor is he able to do otherwise, unless and until God changes his nature and will.
You have shown none of what I say here false, but only to scream that I make God no better than Hitler. Where did Hitler get the right to do as he pleases with God's creatures? From what truth has Hitler to claim that anyone has transgressed his Purity, Power and Holy Command, and deserves only condemnation? Where is Hitler's absolute sovereignty over all things???
Why not take God at his Word, and put aside notions of little self-determining sovereigns trotting about the planet? They are not self-existent, so how can they be self-determining?
