Robots of Calvinism
I have an old Blog of the same topic Reformed Theology. Well, to be honest it was an attempt to witness to Pentecostals. I used to be pentecostal and have studied the history of the religion in great detail. I changed over to this Blog because I can access it from my job which has a heavily filtered internet connection.
I just got an email alert from some one responding to my posts on the other blog. It really got me thinking… The way that people ridicule others beliefs in an attempt to defend their own doesn’t seem the Cristian way. I believe that the God of the Holy Bible is all powerful and is in control of his creation, the only reason I believe this, is the scripture proofs. The response was to Calvin’s Definition of salvation:
Salvation is accomplished by the almighty power of the triune God. The Father chose a people, the Son died for them, the Holy Spirit makes Christ’s death effective by bringing the elect to faith and repentance, thereby causing them to willingly obey the Gospel. The entire process (election, redemption, regeneration) is the work of God and is by grace alone. Thus God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation.
Their response:
“Causing them to willingly Obey”??? LOL! Robots of Calvinism anyone??? God used irresistibly once to fullfill his purpose throughout time it is the exception not the rule. This is the mistake that the reformed make with their false doctrine. God does not want any of that from his people.
Now .. I wonder if they are even worshiping the same God I am sometimes.. I know that sounds harsh, but… the point of that quote is sumed up at the end: “God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation”.
============I emailed a response to him============
This response was to one of Calvin’s soteriological quotes. I am sorry I have not responded on that blog. I can’ not access it at work. I had to start a different blog on wordpress. This ‘Heirs With Christ’ blog, I never even go to anymore. 
I know it seems robotic, like we are just machines. But that is a fatalist point of view, and that is not what I believe. Historically we are taught “Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, He orders them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently” Westminster Confession of Faith V:II
Scripture
ACT 2:23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.
9] GEN 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
JER 31:35 Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name:
EXO 21:13 And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.
DEU 19:5 As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live:
1KI 22:28 And Micaiah said, If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath not spoken by me. And he said, Hearken, O people, every one of you. 34 And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness: wherefore he said unto the driver of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am wounded.
ISA 10:6 I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. 7 Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few
“The will is well known by all to be directed by the understanding, to be moved by motives, to be guided by other parts of the soul, and to be a secondary thing. Philosophy and religion both discard at once the very thought of free-will; and I will go as far as Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his, where he says, “If any man doth ascribe aught of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.” It may seem a harsh sentiment; but he who in his soul believes that man does of his own free-will turn to God, cannot have been taught of God, for that is one of the first principles taught us when God begins with us, that we have neither will nor power, but that he gives both; that he is “Alpha and Omega” in the salvation of men.
“…”In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” was not only fulfilled by the sentence recorded, but by something which took place in Adam. Just as, in a certain moment, when this body shall die, the blood stops, the pulse ceases, the breath no longer comes from the lungs, so in the day that Adam did eat that fruit his soul died; his imagination lost its mighty power to climb into celestial things and see heaven, his will lost its power always to choose that which is good, his judgment lost all ability to judge between right and wrong decidedly and infallibly, though something was retained in conscience; his memory became tainted, liable to hold evil things, and let righteous things glide away; every power of him ceased as to its moral vitality. Goodness was the vitality of his powers—that departed. Virtue, holiness, integrity, these were the life of man; but when these departed man became dead. And now, every man, so far as spiritual things are concerned, is “dead in trespasses and sins” spiritually. Nor is the soul less dead in a carnal man, than the body is when committed to the grave; it is actually and positively dead—not by a metaphor, for Paul speaketh not in metaphor, when he affirms, “You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.”
“You remember the parable where a certain king had a feast for his son, and bade a great number to come; the oxen and fatlings were killed, and he sent his messengers bidding many to the supper. Did they go to the feast? Ah, no; but they all, with one accord, began to make excuse. One said he had married a wife, and therefore he could not come, whereas he might have brought her with him. Another had bought a yoke of oxen, and went to prove them; but the feast was in the night-time, and he could not prove his oxen in the dark. Another had bought a piece of land, and wanted to see it; but I should not think he went to see it with a lantern. So they all made excuses and would not come. Well the king was determined to have the feast; so he said, “Go out into the highways and hedges, and” invite them—stop! not invite—”compel them to come in;” for even the ragged fellows in the hedges would never have come unless they were compelled. Take another parable:—A certain man had a vineyard; at the appointed season he sent one of his servants for his rent. What did they do to him? They beat that servant. He sent another; and they stoned him. He sent another and they killed him. And, at last, he said, “I will send them my son, they will reverence him.” But what did they do? They said, “This is the heir, let us kill him, and cast him out of the vineyard.” So they did. It is the same with all men by nature. The Son of God came, yet men rejected him. “Ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” It would take too much time to mention any more Scripture proofs. We will, however, refer to the great doctrine of the fall. Any one who believes that man’s will is entirely free, and that he can be saved by it, does not believe the fall. As I sometimes tell you, few preachers of religion do believe thoroughly the doctrine of the fall, or else they think that when Adam fell down he broke his little finger, and did not break his neck and ruin his race. Why, beloved, the fall broke man up entirely. It did not leave one power unimpaired; they were all shattered, and debased, and tarnished; like some mighty temple, the pillars might be there, the shaft, and the column, and the pilaster might be there; but they were all broken, though some of them retain their form and position. The conscience of man sometimes retains much of its tenderness—still it has fallen. The will, too, is not exempt.
“Your fallen nature was put out of order; your will, amongst other things, has clean gone astray from God. But I tell you what will be the best proof of that; it is the great fact that you never did meet a Christian in your life who ever said he came to Christ without Christ coming to him. You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer—for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free-will: there is no room for it. Fancy him praying, “Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists. Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not—that is the difference between me and them.” That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that. Ah! when they are preaching and talking very slowly, there may be wrong doctrine; but when they come to pray, the true thing slips out; they cannot help it.
“I ask you again, did you ever meet a Christian man who said, “I came to Christ without the power of the Spirit?” If you ever did meet such a man, you need have no hesitation in saying, “My dear sir, I quite believe it—and I believe you went away again without the power of the Spirit, and that you know nothing about the matter, and are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Do I hear one Christian man saying, “I sought Jesus before he sought me; I went to the Spirit, and the Spirit did not come to me”? No, beloved; we are obliged, each one of us, to put our hands to our hearts and say—
“Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes to o’erflow;
‘Twas grace that kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.”
Is there one here—a solitary one—man or woman, young or old, who can say, “I sought God before he sought me?” No; even you who are a little Arminian, will sing—
“O yes! I do love Jesus—
Because he first loved me.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon, sermon #52 “Free Will — A Slave” 12/2/1855
“I know it seems robotic, like we are just machines. But that is a fatalist point of view, and that is not what I believe.”
I believe all living things including humans are pre-programmed biological machines, and I do not classify this as fatalism at least in the most conventional form.
First, I’m convinced the omnipotent, omniscient God, having designed and expressed the first act, is ultimately the full orchestrator of *all* events, including the angle at which the screw fell from a carpenter’s ladder last Tuesday. While this may sound humourous and taste unplatable to some, it makes sense logically upon consideration of the combination of omnipotence and omniscience, coupled with scripture and recent analysis of the human brain in relation to ‘conscious will’.
Second, fatalism is along the lines of “one’s actions are inconsequential in relation to predetermined outcome”. However, absolute foreordination is more specific form of that idea along the lines of “one’s outcome is purely the product of foreordained actions”. In other words, actions are relevant to the outcome. The outcome is a composite of all actions, but the catch is, those actions are foreordained. The elect are foreordained to agonize over their sin, and strive to enter in at the straight and narrow (‘pro-horizo’), while the vessel of wrath is foreordained to commit sinful acts ultimately toward God’s children being beaten into submission to God by the hands of wicked men. However, if one labels absolute foreordination with ‘fatalism’, that is fine with me. I kind of like the ring of ‘fatalist’ since I believe man’s illusory ‘self-will’ (not ‘free’) is dead to begin with.
At this time I can’t seem to perceive the scriptures you provided as indicative of any I freedom being given to humans.
In Acts 2:23 I see the follow-through of God’s original plan: it pleased God to bruise him (Isaiah 53:10) and he used the pharisees to do that.
Exodus 21:13. The delivering of laws, guidelines and judgements, and use of operators ‘if’ and ‘then’, do not indicate to me that God didn’t ordain all acts, including whether any particular Israelite would obey the law or not. These are instructions given to limited mortals as to how they are to conduct their affairs one with another, which resulted in Israel consciously breaking the laws and judgements as an expose’ of the necessity of the manifestation of Christ the redeemer, the only proper atonement, who was before the foundation of the world. To consider laws and guidelines as indicative of man’s freedom (ie “If God ordained all actions, why do we need laws? Laws indicate the freedom of will.” or “If God foreordained all acts, then why did he give laws to humans?”) is very similar to failing to distinguish between Election and Regeneration as mentioned in your latest video.
1 Kings 22:28. This is a *perfect* example of foreordination! God prophesied the death of Ahab in battle. God fulfilled this through the act of a man who perceived he had ‘done something random’, which was drawing his bow ‘at a venture’. This man’s perception of ‘randomness’ and/or ‘freedom’ was an illusion caused by his ignorance. In actuality, God had foreordained all factors of the trigonometry involved, including the speed of the chariot, the placement of the men on the battle field, the wind, the trajectory, and what that soldier had eaten for breakfast, to result in Ahab’s death.
Isaiah 10:6. Another example of how God controls our actions despite our ignorance thereof… “Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few”. This is saying that the man whom God will send against ‘a hypocritical nation’ will not realize that he is doing God’s will, nor intend to do so, but he will anyway, “but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few” because God placed this in his heart to cause him to serve as a tool of God’s intention. This is exactly like Pharoah, who’s heart God hardened.
I perceive any sense of ‘free-will’ at any level as being an illusion caused by ignorance of the infinite complexity of God’s implicate order and math.
Some would snicker at this without giving forethought, as they likewise do in response to the idea of election.
Oh… and… when I said “Some would snicker at this without giving forethought, as they likewise do in response to the idea of election.” I wasn’t indicating that I think you snicker at the true meaning of election… simply that those who *do* snicker at election also snicker at absolute foreordination.
Check out my most recent blog post titled “Free Will”: Our Most Sacred Illusion. There I focus more on the philosophical and academic elements of my present conclusion.