You secularists are fond of using coercion to make evangelicals bake you a cake, right? That’s kind of your thing, isn’t it? Well, let me volunteer to make you one. I am calling it the cake of confusion, and it is a pretty large one. We shall have to feather the frosting on with a canoe paddle.
I will take as my starting point the fact that National Geographic has a cover story celebrating the genital mutilation of children. Now bear with me because I do know that the NG cover boy has not undergone surgery yet. Thus far we are just celebrating pink hair dye and our own inability to follow a line of reasoning for more than a couple inches. But given the premises, the conclusion must and will follow. This tightly-wound tangle of rebellion and incoherence is going to unravel all the way. So when his mutilation surgery is scheduled, and a young boy has his penis cut off, the moral cretins at National Geographic, and all their co-groomers, will have absolutely nothing negative to say about it. And so they will say what the kultursmog will continue to demand that they must say, which is that maiming the sex organs of healthy young children is a positive, healthy thing (Is. 5:20). Those who oppose themselves to such things are simply haters. More on that in a bit.
But the secularist wants to protest right at the outset that what they are celebrating has to be distinguished from the genital mutilation that other cultures practice—you know, the backward kinds of culture. For example, in such backwater Muslim societies, girls are often forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). This has been done to upwards of 200 million people. The World Health Organization defines it as “the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”
The emphasis there is mine, for the simple reason that “non-medical reasons” include the West’s fear of masculine sexuality, just as Islam fears feminine sexuality. Non-medical reasons would include our culture’s current lunatic warp spasm.
For those of us who are committed to not being science deniers, the American College of Pediatricians didn’t get the official zeitgeist memo and had this to say:
“Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.”
Exactly so. Which means the January issue of National Geographic is actually devoted to the proposition that we as a people are totally lost.
You don’t know where you are going, but you insist that we let you drive. You don’t know the difference between black and white, left or right, mine and yours, boys and girls, drive and reverse, good and evil, but you must be the driver. You look down on your manifest betters with a patronizing sneer, and you mock them for actually understanding the world. You hector people for being “science deniers” when all they want to do is ask reasonable questions about the climate, but when the first opportunity to join the ranks of what Matt Walsh calls biology deniers comes along, you are totally in.
Out there in the outer darkness you will still believe that you are in control. You will still be turning the steering wheel back and forth, making engine noises with your pale, etiolated lips, and will be jerking back and forth on what you believe used to be a stick shift. But there will be nothing ahead of you but darkness, nothing to the left and right but darkness, nothing above or below you but darkness, and nothing behind you but a long trail of rejected and despised opportunities to repent. You will scarcely be able to see the pinpoints of light back there anymore, and you haven’t even tried to look in a while. But you will still be in what you are pleased to think of as “the driver’s seat.” Whatever works for you. That’s the crucial thing. Autonomy is a precious thing that must be preserved, at all costs, especially out here in the middle of the Abyss where absolutely nobody cares.
Damnation settles when a point of no return is passed. That point is ultimately known only to God (Dt. 29:29), but our marching orders tell us to assume that it is when a person dies (Heb. 9:27; Prov. 11:7). Until that happens, we are permitted to hold out some hope (1 John 5:16). Some may pass such a point of no return prior to death (Matt. 12:31), but that sort of thing is best left to the omniscience of God. I am not speaking here of God’s decrees of election and reprobation, which were settled before the world was created, but rather of an experienced moment in the life of every individual. Experience of what?
Christians are accustomed to distinguish the sin from the sinner. This distinction is good and right, but it is only possible to make this distinction because of what Jesus did on the cross. It is possible for a man to be forgiven, which is to say, it is possible for a distinction to be made between that man and his sins. The man can now be taken in one direction, and his sins in another. He may be established on dry land, and his sins are in the deepest part of the sea (Mic. 7:19).
But when damnation occurs, there is no such distinction. When God casts the wicked into the infinite gulf of their own empty imaginations, He is casting the sinner there, along with the sin. The sins do not go by themselves into the lake of fire; it is the sinner who is plunged there. That distinction between sin and sinner is a distinction made possible only through the cross of Christ, and it is precisely that distinction that is being offered there. And when the cross is rejected, it is that particular distinction that is being rejected. Believers continue to hope, which is why they continue to hold out the gospel.
But that hope is not facile or presumptuous. We know that the unrepenting sinner is insisting on a close and final identification with his sin, which is actually the wish for a damnation which may one day soon be granted. This why we make our gospel appeal with love and loathing together. “And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh” (Jude 22–23, ESV).
“The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Prov. 8:13, ESV) “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?” (Ps. 139:21).
Shall the Lord Jesus promise to take a millstone and tie it around the necks of the photographers and graphic designers for National Geographic, and throw the lot of them into the sea (Matt. 18:6), and shall His people withhold an amen? The secular state hates childhood. How many children have you dismembered so far? When you are willing to cut off their heads in the womb, and to sell off their parts, then it would seem that cutting off their genitals for the sake of your ideological kinks would be child’s play. Do we hate you? How could we not? Do we love you? We are offering you the death of Jesus Christ, which makes it possible for you and your vile condition to be separated. Do we love you? Of course we love you? Here is Jesus Christ—come to Him. Come now, before the night falls. It won’t be the kind of night that you can dance away.
This only seems harsh to you because the way you behave does not seem harsh at all. But the choice is simple. You will either be harsh with sin, or you will be harsh with those who bear the image of God—or, as you prefer to think of them, the protoplasmic end-products of blind evolution. That is what helped you become so bloodthirsty. You needed that help, especially at first.
But though this seems harsh, and seems like a straight whiskey kind of gospel, I want to assure you that if you were to repent (as Jesus made possible), and turn away from your bloodlusts, and come to us to be baptized, you would be embraced. There would be tears. You would be received, taught the gospel, washed with water, and welcomed to the bread and wine. The cross of Jesus Christ makes it possible to love you, and for you to love us, despite everything. Our sins? That which made love impossible? They have been removed from us, as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12).
One of the reasons you secularists are not coming to Christ is that the gospel is not being preached to you. The preaching of the gospel is described in Scripture as coming under the form repent and believe. Repent, you say? You people are detestable. The good news really does begin there, and nowhere else.
Wow pastor Doug what a mind God has given you and how blessed He has been to you to develop it in such a refined manner. Thank you for your post they’re so intellectually honest and stimulating and so helpful to me in seeing the Kingdom and reality as it is.
Oh my word.
“We’re on the road to nowhere…” Gotta give you props, Doug, that was well phrased.
The West also fears women’s sexuality, because women’s sexuality in its fullness results in babies, and women’s sexuality properly understood is an invitation to babies. The lame substitute of deliberately sterile promiscuous bed-hopping is a attempt to castrate women every bit as much as men.
Jane, amen.
LOL
https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/feather-frosting-canoe-paddle.html#comment-3073206763
Wow! You just summed up the last 50+ years of Feminist Activism in one fell swoop.
Her comment is radical feminism. Doug said that “the West fears male sexuality.” Which I’m not defending, as I don’t agree with it, and regard it as essentially psychobabble. But that’s not the point. The point is that Doug said something about men that wasn’t negative, and Dunsworth can’t let that go unremarked upon. She has to jump in and steer the conversation back to women; women as victims. By claiming that the reason all these millions of sluts are hopping from bed to bed and aborting their babies isn’t because they like having sex, and lots of it, with… Read more »
“And this feminist garbage gets 15 thumbs up, and Doug gives it an “Amen.”‘
40 Oz.
Frosting, meet canoe paddle!
Anyway 40, I suspect Lady Dunsworth got 15 thumbs up because some of us like Godly sexuality, babies and the godly Ladies that mother those kids! Like? Love is more like it, at least for a dad, anyway! ; – )
White knight to the rescue!
Sir Beta-lot!
Silly 40, Lady Dunsworth is never in need of rescue!
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Say, isn’t that Caitlyn Jenner’s life verse?
Caitlyn’s a Christian, you know.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3587561/The-real-reason-Caitlyn-Jenner-considering-returning-man-Kardashian-biographer-reveals-Christian-belief-sinful-date-women-gender-struggle.html
Prov. 31:30 is God’s Word first and foremost.
Mocking it is a bad idea.
Yeah, that’s it.
It’s the Bible I’m ridiculing.
LMAO
I told you someday that part of you would fall off, Mene-Mene.
Wow Rev. didn’t know one could change their name/handle/nom-de-plume in discus…
Would you go so far as to say that unrestrained male sexuality (in any culture) is something to be feared?
LMAO
Typical feminist cant from Dunsworth.
The block function is a wonderful, beautiful thing.
Jane, I have been thinking about this. Do you think that a woman’s sexuality, properly understood in religious terms, always requires an openness to procreation? I remember, back in the day, Catholic women who came to fear and loathe sexual love within marriage because their bodies and psyches simply could not handle any more pregnancies. Given that the primary purpose of the sexual act within marriage is the birth of children, do you also recognize the legitimacy of marital love making that deliberately avoids pregnancy when there are strong reasons a woman should not have more children?
Wow, that was well said. Amen!
Amen. Thank God for straight-shootin’ Gospel preaching. It’s refreshing to read a hard-hitting, unapologetic appeal for the lost to repent. The what-can-Jesus-do-for-you “gospel” has clearly failed us and a return to this “straight whiskey” Gospel is the only cure for what ails us. May God be pleased to water the seeds sown.
Okay, I’m sure this will result in a lot of things it shouldn’t, but that cover shot of that young boy has a certain pornographic quality –and I do not believe for one moment that it is accidental.
It seems very exploitative to me. A lot of the research shows that most kids who believe they ought to be the other sex will, if left alone, outgrow those feelings. Plastering a child on the cover of NG is locking him into an identity he might otherwise outgrow quite naturally.
Agreed, Jilly. “Exploitive” is exactly the right word.
If that is really true, then it shouldn’t be reprinted here.
I think we have turned something reasonably normal into a monster, first by pathologizing it and then later by catering to it. Didn’t we all, as children, know one or two kids who went around demanding that people call them George rather than Betsy and refusing to put on a dress for birthday parties? I also knew a kid in middle school who spoke only in meows. She wore cat ears and a tail. She outgrew it, got married, and gave birth to a litter of kittens. Well, not really. Am I alone in noticing that we are far more… Read more »
“Didn’t we all, as children, know one or two kids who went around demanding that people call them George rather than Betsy and refusing to put on a dress for birthday parties?” Well, no, not really. Maybe if I had been in a bigger school system? I did know some pretty rough girls, from rough families. But they didn’t want to be men. You’re probably right about tomboys. Most of the time I think they do grow out of it, at least that’s my observation. Maybe it’s the different expectations we have for men and women, even now. Maybe we… Read more »
Wow, these last 3 blog posts, this, Devilish arts, and Jesus Is Not Our Ethanol, are precicely the reasons I read this blog. Just 1 or 2 decades ago this would have been at the level of Saturday Sci-Fi after Godzilla, but now we find it bumping elbows with us all the time.
Truly there is nothing new under the sun where man’s heart is involved. But it is stunning the forms it takes…
God have mercy on us.
Doug, I can’t help but wonder if your understanding of the decree of reprobation is the one where damnation settles in and the *real* point of no return is passed… at or before birth? Is it the kind of irresistible decree that leaves some folks with no other actual option other than believing that ultimate human autonomy is a precious thing that must be preserved? Is it the kind of decree whereby some sinners will never be able to do anything but insist on a close and final identification with their sin and can only wish for damnation because they… Read more »
My understanding of Pastor Wilson’s perspective on this is: Yes, Scripture speaks of people who are headed for perdition and can’t be turned back – but that doesn’t mean we know who’s in that state. We are also told of people who should be kicked out of the church but be readmitted when they repent. At any rate there’s absolutely no one who truly seeks grace and repentance who will be refused it. Hebrews 6 says it is impossible for those who have shared in the Holy Spirit and fallen away to be restored to repentance — but then goes… Read more »
I hear you ashv. It is as you say:
“At any rate there’s absolutely no one who truly seeks grace and repentance who will be refused it.”
But in historical Calvinism those born reprobate will be refused the grace that would enable them to even seek repentance. They would be hopelessly up that excrement creek with no paddle from birth. They would perish for sins they *could* not prevent or even confess properly. All the passionate calls for them to repent are utterly futile because God would not want them to repent… in historical Calvinism, that is.
“Refused”? No. They don’t want it.
They don’t want it because they would be born to refuse it. How could you refuse something before birth?
> They would be born to refuse it.
True.
> How could you refuse something before birth?
I don’t don’t understand what you mean.
The point is you mischaracterized Calvinism in saying it has God refusing grace to anyone.
I wish I was Rob. (So would Esau, if Calvinists are right about him being born to perish, with no hope in Christ!)
As is often the case, Doug’s main point, today, is important and well said but it is undermined by his Christian form of fatalism, aka his Calvinism.
Is it possible your model of Calvinism could be off?
Possible, I suppose, but I was a convinced Calvinist for years, even a deacon of a Reformed Baptist church in Orlando. The reason you question my characterization of the Reformed views on salvation is probably that you have not heard anyone present their views in clear and succinct terms. It’s not hard to do but very few Calvinists ever present their bottom line conclusions, clearly and succinctly. Here are two, that come close, from GI Williamson’s popular study guide on the WCF: “What is of cardinal importance is to recognize that God’ s determination of the destinies of the souls… Read more »
All this takes the teeth out of Doug’s reproof of the reckless, anti-Christian knuckleheads at National Geographic because, if Calvinistic teaching is true, it would be impossible for them to even hear him, let alone do otherwise, unless God forces them to repent by irresistible grace. But people don’t repent and believe for no reason. God (usually) doesn’t work that way – “and how will they hear without a preacher?” (Rom 10:14). Maybe that preacher that God uses to turn some secularist’s heart is Doug Wilson. Or maybe it’s you or me. It might be that every last NatGeo writer… Read more »
If a person is elect, and no one ever shares the gospel with him,will God arrange for his salvation through some other way? If so, why do Calvinists do missionary work? Is it in obedience to Christ’s command rather than because it will actually make a difference to an individual human soul?
If a person is elect, and no one ever shares the gospel with him,will God arrange for his salvation through some other way? This is kind of a loaded question. Off the top of my head I can’t think of an example of anyone being converted without someone sharing the gospel with him. (This might be indirect though – I have heard of people who converted just by reading the Bible, although I sometimes wonder about the specifics of the timeline in those stories). Even with Paul, God had Ananias involved right after Damascus road encounter. Not saying it can’t… Read more »
I have had Calvinists tell me exactly that – that it doesn’t make a difference but they do it out of obedience.
That being said, it’s my general experience that Calvinists don’t do a great amount of missionary work, probably in part because they teachings don’t give the impression it will be effective.
And, yet, if Calvinists want to reclaim the world for Christ, surely missionary activity is essential. Nobody is going to vote for theocratic measures unless they have first been brought to conversion and a belief that human law should mirror God’s.
You’re thinking too hard about it. It really is simple. God ordains the salvation and the means of salvation. Missionaries go because we are commanded to make disciples of all nations. We’re not to stop and think about God’s hidden decree before we go.
Where I get puzzled here is wondering why a person who suspects he is not among the elect has any reason to want to conform to Christian standards of behavior. If I am absolutely incapable of belief (after trying to make myself believe and after praying for grace),I am looking forward to an eternity of misery and pain. Why would I want to lead a godly life here, and why would I support the enacting of legislation for the purpose of forcing me to avoid sin?
There’s no biblical reason for anyone to “suspect he is not among the elect.”
…at least not beyond the reasons that everyone should suspect he is not among the elect prior to repentance and turning to Jesus.
JB, Calvinism puts the “puzzles” in the wrong places. I will try to explain Calvinistic reprobation. In historical Calvinism, the reprobate would be those poor individual souls who God sovereignly “passed over” for salvation (by immutable eternal decree) before the foundation of the world. God decided not to save them from Adam’s mess. Thus, there exists no viable plan of salvation for them. Jesus did not make a definite atonement for their particular sins. They were born so radically corrupt that they would never be able to experience true godly sorrow for their sin. They will never have a genuine… Read more »
Doug, why was Christ born of a virgin?
Doug, the first Williamson quote is nothing more than the doctrine of unconditional election, is it? Surely you’re not saying “very few Calvinists ever” talk about TULIP? Those are “clear and succinct” “bottom line” doctrines, right? In any case, there wouldn’t be any reformed church if reformed believers thought “they clearly are conditional.” As to the second quote, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make about it, but as a reformed believer I certainly agree with the quote (as well as everything you said in the parentheses.) As to the “knuckleheads,” I would second what jigawatt said in… Read more »
Our.. The first quote emasculates justification by faith as a meaningful condition of salvation and exposes the fatalism of unconditional election. I would believe that your pastors / elders are serious about clarity when they explain that some of the babies in the nursery may (like Esau) be born guilty, deserving of eternal wrath in their cribs, and possibly be helplessly reprobate. The second quote contradicts the first as Esau’s eternal destiny (damnation) would be deserved / conditional and exposes the injustice of sentencing someone to hell for a sin they did not commit, sins they could not prevent, or… Read more »
Doug, plenty of people, yourself included, reject reformed doctrine and hold to opposing interpretations of the Bible. Both sides have their arguments, and I’m not inclined to think it would be worthwhile to get into all of that. But you seemed to imply that there was something about the reformed position that reformed believers don’t want to own up to. Even if you completely disagree with it and reject it, I don’t think that’s fair, though (although it may be true of particular reformed baptist congregations or even reformed baptists generally, for what very little I know of reformed baptists.)… Read more »
Our… Perhaps you could get the leadership of your church to agree to a survey of the adults on those 3 assertions. (But I doubt it). I also spent years in PCA and Bible Presbyterian churches, where many members would be stunned to know that is what they are supposed to believe about the babies in the nursery. Yours may not be like those. Note it is fitting that it is Peter who said we are kept by the power of God thru faith. A true and meaningful synergism. I also doubt that most Reformed church members really believe that… Read more »
Doug, I asked above why Christ was born of a virgin? Was it to escape the temporal effects of sin?
The answer to that would involve a list.
Ok, so you’re not willing to share? It seems the answer is a crucial element of the point you wish to make.
Don’t see why. Help me out.
Perhaps, you are trying to show that we must totally equate the justice of Adam’s negative temporal / eternal influence on the entire race and Jesus’ temporal / eternal influence on the entire race (or the elect only)?
Again, the biblical point that I often struggle to get folks to see is that guilt is not imputed by natural generation (as per WCF). According to Paul sin is not imputed where there is no law. Scripture does not put the same stipulation on the imputation of righteousness. Rom 5:13; 4….
That is part of it. Our identity in the first Adam establishes our understanding of our identity in the second Adam.
But more directly, I am speaking of your claim of innocence for infants. If all are born guiltless and only suffer the temporal effects of Adam’s sin, why the virgin birth? What is the significance of the virgin birth, if all men are born innocent. I would like you to clarify for me your understanding of what our identity in Adam actually means, what connects us to Adam. Where do these temporal effects of sin reside?
PB, I suspect the virgin birth was needed in order for God Himself (as the Son) to voluntarily be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Jesus is the Lamb of God. Indeed He is the spotless Lamb. Jesus got right what Adam botched up. As children every one benefits. As culpable sinners only believers are accounted as righteous in Christ.
The notion that anyone could be born guilty is bizarre. We should not take that as biblical without crystal clear textual proof. Inferences just won’t do.
It seems bizarre, yes. But it can be understood when you look at the whole teaching of scripture. Do you believe in the Trinity?
doug sayers, pardon me for jumping in… I would challenge your notion that being born guilty is bizarre. Paul said it this way… For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners… It may seem unfair to us that a person can be born guilty, but that is simply what the text says. But this goes in the opposite direction, too. If we do not like it that God imputes guilt to us through Adam, then we cannot expect that God would impute to us the righteousness of Christ. Paul goes on… so also… Read more »
No problem, KTD, but previous comments have addressed that mis-interpretation of Rom 5. For starters, you will note that the word “impute” is not used in Rom 5 but is all over Rom 4.
I think it is worthy of note that Paul does abandon the imputation language when he transitions and speaks of our connection to Adam in chapter 5 . But the concept of Adams sin bringing death to all cannot be ignored. That is why we have to expand our knowledge of what our relationship to Adam is, in order to properly understand Romans 5. In some sense, we were present with Adam when he sinned and we bear the burden of that guilt.
Think what you will about the language used. Paul is clear. We are sinners, and thereby die, because of Adam.
To deny that leads inevitably to works based salvation.
Agreed. But Paul is talking about physical / biological death. Everyone is now mortal. Even babies, who could not have broken the law, die physically. But there is nothing in Rom 5 that teaches anyone will perish forever because of Adam’s sin.
Adam opened the door that leads to hell but he didn’t push anyone in!
You are making a complete mishmash of the text.
Adam’s sin resulted in condemnation, and Christ’s act resulted in justification. If we are only talking physical/biological with Adam, then we would be talking physical/biological with Christ.
Well, we might agree that its not an easy text.
Are you saying this teaches that Jesus’ righteous act results in physical life or eternal life for all people. (That is all the people who were affected by Adam’s disobedience?) This would make you a Calvinist universalist, a la K Barth? All are elect?
Not at all.
All who are in Adam die, because of Adam’s sin.
All who are in Christ live, because of Christ’s righteousness.
It does say life for all people. Remember, Esau had not done any evil before he was born (Rom 9). This would be incorrect if he was somehow guilty of Adam’s transgression. Consider this as a reasonable combination of Scripture: We are made mortal sinners thanks to Adam. (Rom 5; Ps 51) We enjoy a state of grace (thanks to Jesus) and are “alive” until God imputes our own sin to our own account, via the law, and we become dead in sin. (Rom 5:13; 7:9). Then we need to be justified by contrite faith, that works by love. (J… Read more »
I am grateful for the time you have taken here this afternoon, but I still insist you are making a mishmash out of the text. Let me see if I have this right. We are born to die (“mortal sinners”), but not go to Hell. Then we get grace from Jesus, which I assume means that we still aren’t going to Hell. Then, we go from being alive in Christ to being dead in our own sins, because God imputes it to us. Then we summon up our own faith even though we are dead in our sins, and then… Read more »
I notice that you omitted justification by faith, which is consistent with true Calvinism and exposes the fatalism within the system.
You also are marginalizing the common grace of God.
If you were to read Hodge on the imputation of Adam’s guilt you would see that Calvinists have struggled to come to a consistent view of it among themselves.
All for me today. I appreciate your time as well
Very well said.
How is it that infants die if they have not sinned? Some level of sin is transferred from Adam, you are just in disagreement about how much? Enough sin to condemn physically, but not spiritually?
why would it have to be a punishment and not simply the way God intended to use their short lives? He is the Potter…
Done for today,PB, try reading Hodge on all this and we can pick it up again sometime.
I too have wondered about that, even though I believe it completely. The best answer I have been told is that it sets Jesus apart from every other person, and that it is necessary for Him to be the second person of the Trinity co-existing eternally with the father. Catholics used to be taught that the main reason was to avoid the transmission of a sinful nature. But wouldn’t this presuppose that the transmission of a sinful nature lies either in the copulative act or as something that only the human father passes along? To get around that, the Catholics… Read more »
There are others here who are better equipped to deal with this so I hope they chime in. But, I think the answer is to be found in the understanding of federal headship. We are all represented in Adam. Christ cannot be from Adam in that sense as He comes a new representative for a new people. It isn’t that there is something in the act of copulation that taints us, it’s that through the normal processes we are still connected to our federal head in Adam.
I think we’d agree that your experience seems like it should be to the shame of those PCA and Bible Presbyterian churches and probably their denominations as well. I’m sorry you didn’t receive better, more honest reformed teaching.
Doug Sayers–you wrote: “… those born reprobate will be refused the grace that would enable them to even seek repentance.” “They would perish for sins they *could* not prevent or even confess properly.” Your misunderstanding is predicated on 2 errors: 1. There’s the assumption that they WANT to repent, confess, and be forgiven. The non-elect do precisely what they want to do. In fact, they LOVE doing what they want to do, even to the point of futile thinking and rationalizing it. Sin is fun. 2. There’s the assumption that God is obligated to extend saving grace to everyone. If… Read more »
Hi Tim,
Much of this rests upon the Calvinistic mis-interpretation of Rom 5 and Ps 51.
Q: What did Esau, and/or those born non elect do to deserve being born with no capacity for contrition and sentenced to eternal damnation?
I’m sorry, Doug, but the assumptions are still baked-in to the question. In fact, given the universality of sinfulness as found in Rom. 5 and Ps. 51, we can safely say that ALL of us are “born with no capacity for contrition,” and that the only difference between myself being “sentenced to eternal damnation,” and the God-hater is found in one little (sometimes overly-misused) word…
I think there are a lot of people for whom sin stops being fun and becomes depressing and degrading–even if they are not religious. I think we were designed for virtue and love, and when we fail at these, we cannot be happy.
Oh wait. I just figured out that you don’t wish you were me but wish you were mischaracterizing Calvinism. Sorry for thinking you’re weirder than you are.
Not a problem. I will strive to be clearer and less weird! :)
Would it be more accurate and fair to say that God does not refuse grace to anyone who asks,but that only God’s elect have the ability to ask?
Vastly more.
I don’t really understand this, ashv. I understand that the Holy Spirit will not strive with us forever, and that there is a point beyond which we can’t be turned back. Is this what we mean by reprobation? Or is the person headed for perdition without any hope of rescue in that state from birth?
I think the crux is just that there are people who receive grace that produces a new heart, and people who don’t. There are people who receive some measure of grace, some measure of participation in the Holy Spirit, but don’t persevere to eternal life. We see this in Hebrews 6, in the parable of the sower, and in the life of King Saul.
The best “Calvinistic” explanation I’ve ever heard for aborted, stillborn, and infant deaths is that we humans simply cannot know what is in the mind of God, for He grants one to live and another to die according to His GOOD purpose. Whether some are born (or not) to spend eternity in Hell or Heaven is surely not something we are going to know, because it is not FOR us to know. It is best, then, if we quit pondering it and simply respond with, “Praise be to the Lord our God, who does all things well!” There is no… Read more »
Malachi, if that is the best explanation then we can see why Calvinists have always been in the minority among Bible believing people.
Emotions aside, what could an infant possibly go to hell for?
John Calvin believed that those who die in infancy are somehow saved by the Holy Spirit. He acknowledged the logic of infant damnation, but did not personally believe it. I read somewhere that John McArthur thinks that the high infant death rate in Africa and Asia is God’s special providence so that all the poor little heathen children don’t go to hell. I find this a trifle cold-blooded, as well as being a really good excuse for us not to try to ameliorate their poverty. Catholic teaching says that God’s mercy saves the unbaptized who die before the age of… Read more »
Ok is Rev Ichabod the latest iteration of 40 ACRES?
Yes. Has anyone bothered to find out what he means by it?
Has anyone bothered to find out what he means by it?
It am be my name.
Hard to believe that National Geographic has sunk this low.
I expect this kind of thing on the cover of the catalog for a Reformed seminary.
But not National Geographic.
The Editor in Chief of National Geographic is Susan Goldberg. Odd that Doug didn’t mention that. I guess it’s all part of that “straight whiskey kind of gospel.” Cry aloud, and spare not. FIFY: Boo hoo softly, and spare lots. Whine and moan constantly about those wicked “secularists” and “liberals” and “progressives”, while always being careful not to actually point any fingers at certain people. And whatever you do, don’t mention any names, for crying out loud. (Pun intended.) Doug preaches a respectable gospel. It may be a “straight whiskey” gospel, but it’s a very expensive brand of whiskey. And… Read more »
Yes, “vague” is the right word to describe Doug’s call for repentance in the above article. And “courageous” is the right word to describe a man who hides behind sham names while attacking an officer of Christ’s church.
How about you tell us your real name, Badonicus?
Life is sexually transmitted.
“I will take as my starting point the fact that National Geographic has a cover story celebrating the genital mutilation of children.”
But what about Genesis 17:12-13? “For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised.”
I’m not one who thinks encouraging gender confusion in children is a good idea, but there’s a saying about “people in glass houses” ….
Apples and oranges there, Mr. Bradshaw.
Apples and rotten oranges.
I know Pastor Wilson is a fan of Anthony Esolen. His recent article on this subject is a nice supplement:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/10/17811/
Okay, Douglas, let me make this simple for you. You simply don’t know what you are talking about. You obviously didn’t read any of the articles in National Geographic and you don’t know anything about circumcision or genital mutilation and I doubt if you even know if your own penis was circumcised. So, a bit of advice is in order. Know your topic before you address it. Otherwise you look rather ignorant. We wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we?
There’s only one gender. The American gender.
Right. So right, Douglas.
~Gina Miller
Waaaaaah, don’t like people commenting, waaaah!