Making choices does not equate to having free will, true!
BUT: if God tells you to: CHOOSE LIFE, and you are incapable of doing it, God is just trolling you?
I just don't get it. You guys have a terrible view of God. He is like the biggest troll in the universe? No human would be considered good if they behaved like this, yet some of you claim God does this?
"
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that
they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness, ”made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ."
2 Cor 4:4
Seems to me this actually derails Total Depravity/No Ability/Unwilling.
If "man" is born completely unable to see, hear, understand or respond willingly to the word of God, dead in our own trespasses, slave to sin.....a spiritual corpse, therefore, is unable to see, hear, understand or otherwise repent of their own sins.
Is there not a fundamental contradiction here?
Wouldn’t Satan’s work to blind people and snatch away the word be completely unnecessary and redundant?
So, why does Paul mention that Satan works (and is presumably able!) to prevent folks from seeing the way, the truth and the light?
Is Calvinism doctrine of total depravity false.
Are Paul’s comments the “proof” which derails total depravity?
(Martin Mecurial)
2nd Thessalonians 2:8-12:
“Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.
For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order
that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”
Obviously.... God is holding them accountable for the light that they had received, and rejected.