Re: Baptism for the forgiveness of sins

"Matthew Johnson" <matthew_member@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:3289E6D9-F8AC-1AA8-20D0-01D9CE4B78EA@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In article <630A0142-36E3-0ED6-C6DD-01FDE90D1C5B@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, gary 
> says...
>
>
> [snip]
>
>>> Your statement "we are self-determined" is the very heart and
>>> soul of salvation by works.
>
>>That is false. It is only in a mind warped by Calvinism that such
thinking
>>is possible.
>
> First of all, please notice that I am snipping all the invective, which 
> promises
> to achieve nothing good.
>
> But now on to the point: Gary is exactly right about this. It is NOT
true 
> that
> "'we are self-determined' is the very heart and soul of salvation by 
> works". But
> because Bob so heartily endorse the same 'postulates' as Calvin and
later 
> Luther
> (as expressed in "The Bondage of the Will") concerning the will of Man
and 
> the
> will of God, he really _does_ see it as following.
>
> But it does not follow, as has been shown to Bob many times by now. And 
> his
> _best_ response was really poor, namely, a dismissal without even an 
> honest
> attempt to understand the grounds of the objection to his tragic 
> acceptance of
> Calvin's 'postulates'.
>
> There were other responses, but they were even less fruitful.

Matthew, what you say here is 100% correct.

If Bart and Bob were correct, then why are they here arguing these points?

They both teach determinism. They both teach that you were determined by
God 
to be a member of the Orthodox Catholic Church, and to believe their 
doctrines. They also believe that they were determined by God to believe
as 
they do. And that I have been determined by God to believe as I do. There
is 
NOTHING that we can do, to change our beliefs to the "truth" that either
of 
them hold to. Further, there is nothing that either of them can do to
change 
what they believe, for God has determined what they believe. Since there
is 
no free-will in either of their systems, and they both deny 
self-determination, the only way that anyone comes to a saving faith is 
because God causes them to do so. And further, God causes us to believe
the 
"lies" that we believe, so that we will be condemned. Since God determines

all things, and all evil comes from the fallen humans following their
fallen 
human natures, He must give the impulses which result in every sin of
every 
kind, so that what God ordains comes to pass. Thus God caused Judas to 
betray Christ. And He causes every rape of every child who is raped. This 
all follows from their fundamental presuppositions, of determinism, and no

free-will, and their theory that man is not "self-determined." The
preaching 
of the Gospel is reduced to "preaching to the choir." That is, the only
ones 
who can understand the Gospel are those that God has already saved. This
is 
all very good of God to do, because in the second place they both believe
in 
voluntarism: that is, God can do anything, and what every He does is good
by 
definition. He needn't will according to His nature. Thus it is perfectly 
good for Him to create the vast majority of humanity to be damned, without

any recourse, since they have no self-determination, and it is quite 
impossible for any of them to respond positively to the gospel in faith. 
Thirdly, to "explain" how it is possible for any man to respond positively

to the gospel, they play their "occasion" card. They teach that on the 
occasion that the gospel is preached and a person does respond to it, that

God has (on that occasion), regenerated the person, and caused the person
to 
believe the gospel preached. This is also the case for all other things.
To 
ensure that everything happens precisely as God has ordained, all reality
is 
really just a fiction. God is causing the responses that each of us make, 
both here on this group, and in every other case. Were this not true, then

someone COULD do something which does not fit into God's overall plan, and

this could reek havoc.

Their underlying presuppositions are easily remembered by the acronym DOV.

Determinism; Occasionalism; and Voluntarism.

These presuppositions are in violent contradiction to both your and my 
fundamental presuppositions, I think. I know that they contradict mine.

Gary http://www.faithalone.org/





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