Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:
Calvinism is being exposed for the determinist nonsense it is. Thank the Lord. The fact that 'real calvinism' requires constant clarification that try to avoid determinism is itself evidence that the framework is incoherent.
Ya'll need to stay far away from calvinism and the vile slop it pushes.
You can't escape determinism in any calvinist framework, including compatibilism.
Ex. This quote from R. C. Sproul is profoundly stupid. He thinks he can escape determinism by essentially claiming that God predetermined their desires so now they're freely choosing. He genuinely thought he solved the problem here. He didn't. He just swapped external physical force for internal brainwashing and called it "grace."
A human being cannot meaningfully "own" a choice if the desires driving that choice are entirely downstream of an external, irresistible cause.
Salvation concerns the orientation and condition of the human heart, which is inseparable from how one lives. Faith is not the passive outcome of divine programming: it is the active, lived posture of a heart turned toward God.
"The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." - John 6:63-65.
What Jesus is saying here is that those who didn't believe in him were incapable of doing so because God did not allow them. In other words, God is sovereign over who comes to faith in Jesus and who doesn't. So how is this ultimately different from the words of RC Sproul? If God didn't grant the unbelievers with belief, then isn't God being deterministic with their eternal fate? If they weren't allowed to believe, then did they really have a choice?
And on the flip side - if those who did believe only did so because God allowed it, then how is that any different from God irresistably creating desires within their hearts so that they believe?
How do you square your view with what Jesus said?
Context. Keep reading the passage.
Jesus isn't talking about some abstract predetermined category. He's talking about the faithful Jews in his time, people who've actually heard and learned from the Father. Those people will come to him. It's conditional: hear, learn, come. Not predetermined elect and reprobate.
"It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me." (John 6:45)
The mechanism is universal: teaching reaches all, drawing reaches all.
"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." (John 12:32)
Not the elect. Not the predestined. All men.
Here's the actual problem with Calvinism: you're arguing that God determines who can believe and who can't. If God withholds the ability to believe from person X, then God is actively damning them. You can use prettier language (supralapsarianism, passive reprobation, whatever), but the logic doesn't change. There's no escaping it.
And I know it sounds harsh because it is harsh. Which is exactly why medieval Catholic theology on predestination looked the same way. That's not an accident. Your system didn't spring from Scripture. It springs from medieval categories about God's absolute power over human fate. Calvinism just Protestantized it.
So: how do you square "God draws all men" with "God predetermines who can or can't believe"?
You're not engaging with what I said about what Jesus said. You: "you're arguing that God determines who can believe and who can't" - that is precisely what Jesus himself is saying that God does in John 6:63-65, is he not? We're not talking about "election" or "predestination" here. We're talking here about whether God is sovereign over who comes to belief and who does not, whether God "allows" a person to believe or not - not whether God "predestines" a person to believe or not. If God did not grant those unbelievers the ability to believe, then how is that not deterministic (or predestined?) If God didn't allow them to come to belief, then did they really have a choice?
"'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me." (John 6:45) - then obviously, those Jews that did NOT believe, which were many, did NOT hear the Father and learn from him. Obviously, not "all men" were drawn, right? And according to what Jesus said later in verses 63-65, not all men were "granted" the ability to believe, right? So you're still stuck in the determinism problem you're trying to defeat.
"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." (John 12:32) - but as we're seeing, "drawing" or being drawn does not necessarily lead to believing. Obviously, not all men believe now that Jesus was lifted from the earth, right? And Jesus still did say that in order to come to him (believe in him), one must be granted this by the Father. You have to square what Jesus said here with what he said in John 6:63-65. Look just a few verses further than what you just cited here:
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"When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
"Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
"HE (GOD) has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.""
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This seems to be clearly saying that they didn't believe, because GOD didn't allow them to, just as Jesus had said. And your claim that this view "didn't spring from Scripture" isn't really holding water, is it?
You're confusing three things and treating them as one.
John 6:45 doesn't say God withholds the ability to believe. It says those who come to Jesus are those who have heard the Father, aka those who respond to grace. That's a description of what happens in those who believe, it's not proof that God prevents others from believing.
John 12:32 and the Isaiah quote aren't in tension. Jesus draws all men: grace is universal. But drawing is not coercion. Some people resist the draw. God doesn't then force them. He responds to their resistance by withdrawing the offer. That's the "hardening."
Your mistake: you think "God hardened their hearts" means God made them unable to believe. No. Read it again: "lest they see with their eyes and...turn, and I would heal them." God hardened them because they wouldn't turn. It's judicial. God honors human choice by letting it stand.
This is synergy, not determinism. God provides grace and humans cooperate or refuse. When they refuse and refuse and refuse, God says: "Fine. I stop offering." That's not predestination at all, it's God respecting the choice someone already made.
Calvinism needs God to prevent belief to protect sovereignty. Orthodoxy says God's sovereignty is expressed through human freedom, not opposed to it.
John 6:45 does not say God witholds the ability to believe - but John 6:63-65, which you are conspicuously avoiding, does.
John 12 and Isaiah not being in tension is exactly my point. Because while John 12 is speaking of "drawing", Isaiah is speaking of actually coming to belief, which is not the same thing. It's apparent that the drawing of all men has NOT led to belief in all men, right?
"God hardened their hearts" is what John is saying is the reason they could not believe, and he is saying it is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. He isn't saying God hardened them because they didn't turn. Rather, they didn't turn because God hardened them and blinded their eyes. Your reading here just isn't dealing with what the text is saying. It doesn't make sense that God hardened them and blinded their eyes.... if they were already hardened and blinded. And remember, this is pretty much what Jesus was reiterating in John 6:63-65 (which you're avoiding) when he said that God has to "grant" people to believe. In other words, Scripture does in fact support the view that believing is under God's sovereign control.
"Orthodoxy says God's sovereignty is expressed through human freedom, not opposed to it." - Does fallen man really have freedom? We are slaves to our sin nature, and without an initiating act from God, we could NEVER come to belief in Jesus. That's straight from Scripture.
"No one can come to me unless it has been granted him by the Father." That word, dedomenon, doesn't mean "God makes you able whether you want to or not." It means "it is God's gift." The gift must be extended for anyone to come. But a gift can be refused.
The question isn't whether grace is necessary. It is. The question is whether it's irresistible. The fact that many reject Jesus proves it. If grace were irresistible, rejection would be impossible.
John 12 says Jesus was lifted up to draw all men. Then: "Though he had done so many signs...they still did not believe." They rejected. Then, after they rejected, "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts." God gives them over to the choice they already made. That's the meaning of Romans 1: they suppress the truth, so God gives them over to suppression.
Yes, we're enslaved to sin. But enslavement to sin isn't the same as metaphysical inability to respond to grace. A slave can still say yes or no. What the fall took from us is the ability to save ourselves, not the ability to respond when God offers. That's why grace is necessary. But necessary doesn't mean coercive.
"Dedomenon" means to give, or to enable. The point wasn't that this means that God forces you to believe against your will. The point was that according to Jesus own words, believing in him is something that God has to give us or allow/enable in us. It's not something we can effect for ourselves through our own "freedom" apart from God's intervention. It is under God's purview. And thus by implication, Jesus was telling those who were unbelieving that they weren't capable of believing, because God wasn't allowing them to. So in effect, he was telling them that God was causing them to not want to believe. So the point was this - how is that much different from RC Sproul's view that for those who are believing, that God causes them to want to believe? One is in the negative, and the other is in the positive. If Sproul's view involves God "predetermining their desires" and "internally brainwashing" people as you said, then wouldn't that also be the case for those who were unbelieving in John 6:63-65 but in the negative sense?
And ironically, you're making the case for "irresistible grace" - if EVERYONE who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Jesus as you cited from Scripture (John 6:45), it means none who heard and learned, and thus received God's grace of being "drawn" to Jesus... none rejected him, i.e. it was irresistible.
John 12 doesn't say Jesus was lifted up at that time and thus drawing all men at that time. Jesus was telling what was to happen in the future (when he would be "lifted up" to be crucified, OR when he would ascend into heaven, I don't know which). The rest of what you're saying about John 12 I agree with. This is my understanding of the order in John 12:
1. Jesus was performing signs but the people still did not or would not believe in him (notice "did/would not" - presently, they were rejecting him);
2. then verse 39: "Therefore they could not believe" ==> now it's "could not", because God shut the door on them being able to believe, as a judgement against them for their rejection of Jesus. (Calvinists agree with this view, btw).
3. why could they not believe? Because God hardened their heart and blinded them as is their judgement, as Isaiah prophesied. Thus, they would not be "dedomenon", i.e. "granted" the ability to believe, as Jesus was saying in John 6. Rather, they would be kept from it.
^^^ See, here God is witholding their ability to believe. This isn't just God "giving over" unbelievers to their unbelief as in Romans 1. It is God actively keeping them from believing. That is what the language in Scripture is conveying, and Calvinists are merely trying to accept what Scripture for what it says.
"A slave can still say yes or no" - by their inherent nature, only "no" - because a "yes" would require an initiating act from God first, the Calvinist would argue, which is supported by Scripture. Fallen man's freedom of choice is only compatibilist, not libertarian. The Calvinist would argue that the fall took more than just the ability to save ourselves, it took the ability to respond to God at all (which also has Scriptural support). In this case, the grace needed to overcome this by necessity would have to be a one-way street rather than a "cooperation" of wills. Otherwise man would be hopelessly lost.
