Heh, yeah, we are told man is born with everything he needs in order to decide to believe foolishness. Kinda funny.
Can We Really Exercise Free Will?
- Thread starter LifelongLearner
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How can God reject Himself? If He is causing you to believe and others to not believe, then he is inconsistent with His nature. Has nothing to do with the worth or lack thereof of sinners.
FWers can't be bothered with pesky little details like words or phrases that qualify a passage!
How can one believe or not believe in something one has never heard? You can't respond to nothing. This why God meets us with grace and truth so that no-one has an excuse. The Spirit is in the world convincing people of righteousness, sin and judgment. Jn.16:8
He is not going around making everyone spiritually alive so they can comprehend this. It is the prelude to the Gospel.
People are learning from the Father prior to being given to Christ (saved). Jn.6:45
Again, you need to PROVE your assertion. Where is His promise to save all or give all an "opportunity" to be saved? Or where in scripture does it teach that sinners deserve God's salvation? You need to provide biblical proof to at least one of these to prove your claim of "inconsistency" with God's character. If God broke a promise then He's a liar. If God withheld from someone what they justly deserve, then He would be unjust.
Just repeating a silly claim ad nauseam doesn't make it truthful.
No they are not. Men are born knowing neither good nor evil. Knowledge is of the mind, the sin nature is of the body. We are born sinners oblivious to God until someone teaches us and we respond, for or against.
2 Pet 3:9
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.
1 John 2:2
and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Ps 96:10
Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples fairly.”
Acts 16:31.
Not according to the chronological/logical flow of Jesus' discourse in Jn 6. For example, vv. 37, 44 precedes v. 45. The Father teaches those He has given to Christ. He doesn't teach anyone who doesn't belong to Him.
You are not addressing the argument.
God cannot deny Himself, therefore He cannot be responsible for people rejecting Him. You claim He arbitrarily chose some to believe which, by necessity, means He chose some to not believe. He cannot both accept and deny Himself at the same time.
And wherein in these passage is God's promise to save all or provide opportunity for all to be saved?
And who is the "you" in 2Pet 3:9?
@Rufus said:"This is what Studier does! If he can't perform mental feats of gymnastics to "nuance" a passage "to death", he avoids the passage."
You said it yourself...how can they believe what they haven't heard. They must be in a state of unbelief.
This has nothing to do with believing. How many people are born believing? If not, they are born unbelievers. God doesn't have to cause anyone not to believe. That is their natural estate.
Ignorance comes to mind... and I don't mean that as a slight to present company
in case this is your first reaction. cough cough... why do I feel so welcome to pick on you @Cameron143? methinks it must be your 'all good' demeanor. What came to mind, really though, was (Acts17:30). After we've heard the Gospel, we can no longer claim ignorance, and chance of 'ance' is over and God considers it only at the root at that point, and that's just ignoring the Gospel.
True, true. We have been scolded for giving them so frequently. They tire of being confronted with the truth.
Gets out calculator and abacus just to be sure. Let's see. Zero plus zero equals... zero!
Oy, Cameron, are you trying to convince them by making sense?
I wonder how that works when they believe it is nonsense people choose to believe...
So what does that mean for large swaths of humanity who never heard the gospel?Ignorance comes to mind... and I don't mean that as a slight to present company
What came to mind, really though, was (Acts17:30). After we've heard the Gospel, we can no longer claim ignorance, and chance of 'ance' is over and God considers it only at the root at that point, and that's just ignoring the Gospel.
Although we know that the Holy Spirit speaks through His Word, how can we know if the Holy Spirit only speaks through His Word. We are given that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, but we cannot know that He doesn't call any particular person to seek it out and hear it. I would think that by this time and current age of communication, they'd at least heard some form of it even if by a rudimentary form of the game of telephone.