The Cause of Our Spiritual Declinings
Oct 9th, 2008 by Nathan White
Obadiah Sedwick, in his most excellent work Christ’s Counsel to His Languishing Church, an exposition of Revelation 3:2-3, lists 8 causes why Christians find their love of Christ growing cold. They had such an effect on me that I list them below (edited) for your edification.
“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.” - Rev 3:1-3
Why does our love for Christ sometimes lose its strength and vigor? Why do Christians sometimes decay in spiritual growth and languish in sin?
A few causes of this dying condition:
Some deadly corruption which has seized upon their spirits:
If poison gets into the body, it works upon the spirits and so weakens and endangers life. The people of God sometimes taste poison: they are tampering with unsound doctrines…when judgment is corrupted with any error…and where truth loses its authority, grace will lose its strength and efficacy.Some deadly wound is given unto them:
Sinning not only proves a troublesome wound to the conscience, but likewise a killing and dying wound to our graces. If anything in the world extinguishes or abates our graces, it is out sinning…it is like a disease which will not go away without a manifest breach of health and strength.Some deadly neglect:
If the soul grows negligent, it will quickly grow dying. Inordinate abstinence and neglect of food brings a man quickly into a consumption; so when the people of God, through spiritual pride, grow careless of vital assistance so that they do not keep close to the Word of life, nor to the Sacraments of life, nor to the great principle of life by earnest and constant communion in prayer, no marvel if they become dying persons.Inconsiderate toleration of particular evils, and not a timely expurgation of them:
…Not only [an] inconsiderate admission of sins, but also from an untimely correction of sins. The soul should presently have ‘medicined’ itself with, first, a right apprehension of the greatness of the evil in the beginning; second, speedy humiliation before the Lord; third, fervent supplication for mercy and more strength; and, fourth, resolute reformation and abandoning of it.Defect of frequent examinations:
…after a while, after Christians have got over the pangs of the first birth and have procured more peace and comfort…they are generally apt to keep on the course of obedience, but think it superfluous –at least not so necessary often to search and view and examine themselves. And what now befalls them?…first, that the state and operation and acts of sin are not as strictly eyed; second, that the state of their graces is not as well-known and guarded against special motions and temptations…He allowed and suffered his spiritual state to run on at hazards, and the less searching of heart, the less strength of grace always.Defect of solemn humiliations in extraordinary fasting and prayer:
Those means which beget our graces are likewise ordained to preserve them…Oh, how cheerfully, how tenderly, how much more fully and fruitfully is your soul enabled after those duties rightly performed!Inactivity in our places and relations is another cause of spiritual languishing and decaying:
A lazy Christian will quickly prove a dying Christian…too much rest may cause extreme sickness because therein the superfluous humors are not carried or breathed away. …In respect of their graces: if they let them lie still and dead, they will quickly grow weak and dying. Though their life is implanted by an operation of God’s Spirit, yet it is preserved by an operation of our spirit’s…he who will not use grace will quickly lose it or decay in it.Last, all perturbations or excess in passions cause a languishing:
…immoderate fear, grief, anger, joy, or agony…all these, or any of these by their immoderation, mix the spirit and natural heat. Consequently, they diminish health and strength. And surely it is so in the spiritual condition: all inordinate affections are the impairers of grace, whether it is desires of the world, or delights in it, or fears of men, or grief for losses…
“The Cause of Our Spiritual Declinings” is Calvinism, the doctrine of Fatalistic salvation, and its correlary, once-saved-always-saved which has been picked up by many who are not even Calvinists. If God just arbitrarily decreed that this half of humanity would sin forever unrepentantly with no ability to believe the gospel just so he can have an excuse to damn them, and then decreed that the other half he would send Jesus to die for and give irresistible grace unconditionally and make it impossible for them to be lost no matter how much they subsequently sin, then who cares who we do. Our actions are pointless in such a scenario, so let God do all the world and sort it out to his inglorious robot-saving “glory.”
Perhaps, then, if we would preach the true gospel, that men by their own free will have chosen to sin, and that God sent his only-begotten Son to die for all men, and subsequently he calls all men to repent and believe the gospel, that all men have the ability to believe it, and that “whosoever will” place his faith in Christ will also be saved by Christ’s death, and that we must subsequently live the Christian life and not “continue in sin that grace may abound” but rather “judge that in that Christ died for all, all are dead” and in that “I am crucified with Christ” thus “the life that I now live I live by the Son of God who gave himself for me” and that “he that is dead is freed from sin” and that “if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him,” as Paul says (much of which is in Romans 6, but also in other places) and so also Peter “as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:” and again Paul says “and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” and Peter “who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness:” (1 Pet 2:24)
Jesus died, therefore, not to render us “once saved always saved” so that we can live in unrepentant sin and still go to heaven, but to free us from sin so that we can live to righteousness.
Rey–
I don’t know where you have learned about Calvinism, but here are a list of statements you made that I do not agree with, followed by a list of statements that I give an ‘amen’ to:
Calvinists do not believe:
Calvinists would agree with:
So since we would agree with you in many areas, where would we disagree with you? Besides the above noted, where you attributed things to us that we actually do not believe, I fail to find any scriptural support for the following statements:
Did Judas have the ability to believe it? What about Pharaoh? Esau?
Most certainly. As the Greek translation of this word ‘whosoever’ means: all the ones who believe are going to be saved. It is a descriptive statement.
But is it Christ’s death that saves us, or His death mixed with our free will and our good works? You sound very Roman Catholic, but I could be wrong. Are you?
If Christ died for everyone, including those who do not believe, can Judas and the damned in hell attribute this verse to themselves?
No, no, nothing of the sort. Instead, all who have been forgiven, all who have been covered in a perfect righteousness not their own, but rather the imputed righteousness of Christ, will most certainly evidence their regeneration by faith, repentance, and obedience to God’s law until death.
I’m not a smuck, Natha. I know that Calvinists will often say things like “human do have free will” but then they add under their breath “so long as they choose to do exactly what they were pre-programmed to do.” And I know very well that you say that election is based on nothing with any reference to the individual in question, which means arbitrary. But you say “no, not arbitrary, but based on the good pleasure of God’s will.” Unless based on some reference to the individual in question, it amounts to arbitrary no matter what you call it. Plus Ezekiel 33:11 shows that God has no pleasure in condemning sinners but wants them all to repent. He swears by himself this very thing! Calvinism makes him contradict himelf “I have no pleasure in the condemnation of the sinner — that’s why I decreed him arbitrarily to damnation according to the good pleasure of my will.” Don’t think you are dealing with an idiot here, my friend.
Sidestepping the invective here, may I offer the following observation? I punish my son when he does something wrong. I always dislike punishing him because I love him and I hate any fracture in our relationship, but my very love for him is why I choose to punish him, so that he learns to become a better person. I think I can truthfully say it is my will to punish him and at the same time it is not my will to punish him, or in other words, I desire contradictory things without being insane or irrational or schizophrenic.
Do you think that might illustrate how God does not desire the damnation of anyone (Ezekiel 33:11), but at the same time he does willingly predestine* some to be damned (Romans 9:22)?
* in order to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power
“I always dislike punishing him because I love him and I hate any fracture in our relationship, but my very love for him is why I choose to punish him, so that he learns to become a better person.”
Do you with your son sit around thinking “I shall tell my son not to stick his finger in the light socket. But in reality I hope he does stick his finger in the light socket, so I can then have an excuse to beat him for it”? No, or at least I hope you don’t. But this is what Calvinism asserts that God does, and yet it asserts even worse concerning him, namely it asserts that God has decreed us to stick our finger in the light socket and that this secret decree is like an internal command or programming that we must of necessity follow. Which secret decree he has made only to give him an excuse to punish the non-elect, and not for their betterment or improvement as in your analogy, but fore mere punishment’s sake. You can speak as you do of your son because he is not a robot you programming to disobey you, but that is what we are in Calvinism.
Now punishment for mere punishment’s sake would be alright, if the one being punished had made a free will choice to disobey. But when you take away free will and program the being to disobey you only so that you can subsequently have an excuse to punish, that is called sadism and tyranny.
Hi rey.
Isaiah said he was a man of unclean lips. Who creates the fruit of the lips? (Hebrews 13:15 cf. Isaiah 57:19) What merit in Adam did God foresee to cause God to create him? Or, to apply Paul in Romans 9, what does the one who begets see in the one to be begotten whichi causes the begetter to beget? Do tell us the logic in your assertion that God references that which is not in existence to cause him to bring it about? And answer the question that is forbidden by Paul and Isaiah: Who are you to answer back to God? Does God have the right to make out of one mass that with which he is pleased ? Does God create the willingness? (Philippians 2:13) Is it God who has begun the good work in you and will complete it, or was it you and is it you who God sees will do it?
Can a bad tree produce good fruit? Or, does the tree need to be made good so that the fruit it produces is good. Jesus said that it is impossible for a bad tree to produce good fruit and that without Him it is impossible to do anything. Or as John the Baptist demanded, “Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.” Do those who do not know Christ yet, have Christ with them so that they can do righteousness and bring forth fruit in keeping with it? He said not, for it is impossible that before he is the root that the tree will produce the fruit. So the question is for you to demonstrate how is it that God forsees the actions of a bad tree that is able to produce good fruit without first making the tree good? And if it is he who makes the tree good so that it will produce good fruit doesn’t he only make some good? Or, does he make all good, and if that is the case, how do any produce bad fruit?
I would like to know the answer to Nathan’s question. Are you RC? Or, are you another form of semi-Pelagian? Do you believe man merits his salvation and that God elects him to it based upon some foreseen action? As Nathan asks, do you believe that it is at least partially founded in you that you are saved? Or, to reference Ezekial, is it the heart of stone that willingly obeys the commandments and ordiances of God, or is it the heart of flesh which God first places in man so that he will obey? Why does it say that God will cause them to walk in his statutes? Why does Isaiah say that it is God who causes men to not walk in his statutes and to wander away into disobedience? Do you think that a sinful heart can make the righteous plea for mercy? Do you think that it would want to? (Romans 8:6-8) Why does Scripture say “Return to me for I have redeemed you,” if indeed redemption is found only by your first returning?
If God does not take pleasure in condemning the wicked why are any condemned? Is he pleased when righteous judgement is prosecuted? Could Ezekial be saying that he is not pleased when men do not repent? Is the plea of Ezekial coextensive with all who are lost? The reality is that:
does not say that God wants all men everywhere to come to repentance. What it does say is that God is not pleased when they do not. It is directed at Israel and is restricted to them in context just as the “God desires all to come to repentance” in the NT is restricted to the limitations of the contexts within which they are stated. Beyond that, the Gospel is limited in scope in that it is only through faith in Christ Jesus that men are saved, and the fact is that from the beginning many have not heard nor will many in the future hear. Now either God, through the Gospel, is incompetent, or he purposely limited the Gospel to those who would hear. Further, Jesus said that not all who hear the words of the Gospel can hear the meaning of it because if they could they would turn and repent. IOW, he purposely limited the understanding to the disciples, Luke 8:10. God did this, and Jesus is referencing Isaiah 6 where is it stated that God limited the scope of the Gospel to only those to whom understanding is given to prevent some from turning and being saved. Jesus has drawn the circle around his sheep who hear his vioce. By doing so God has limited the ability of men to exercise free-will.
Do you believe this:
So, we have a dilema. God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked, and surely that is true of a righteous judge and executioner. God is not a sadist, and yet has been well pleased to create them for the very purposes of his will. It is true that all who call upon the Lord will be saved, but God alone creates the understanding of the mind and the fruit of the lips, for good or bad. Knowing now, that you are not and idiot, please elucidate and reconcile the these truths for us.
You said:
I agree with the statement, if we can get some definition here. What do you mean by Gospel? Do you mean men, as in collective mankind, or men individually? If Jesus died for the sin of the world, was it enough for all sin, or was it an incomplete sacrifice and another is needed to save, like one’s free-will offering? Could you explain this? Are you saying that men, meaning each one individually, becomes sinful by choice? Or, just that Adam, representing all mankind chose for us without our wills being involved, and by that all men are declared to be sinful and will sin having no other choice? (Romans 5:18) So, is the true Gospel that man is born neutral, or innocent, and chooses to becomes sinful, or is it that men, individually do not choose to be sinful but are sinful because of the choice of Adam whose guilt and sinfulness is imputed to us?
There are two positions, semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism, both are heresy and are not the Gospel, the first denies original sin in that though corruption is transmitted which prejudices mankind to eventually sin, it denies the guilt of Adam imputed; the second, says that man is born without any prejudice toward either good or evil. In both cases it is up to man to save himself or to condemn himself, by his choice. Both deem merited virtue as the only true righteousness. All forms of Arminianism eventually fit within this paradigm because both require of man some merit of virtue to be saved. RC is semi-Pelagian. This is over against what you call the “arbitrary” decision of God to condemn all who are conceived because of the choice of Adam. Do you believe in original sin? Or, do you reject orthodox Christianity? As is demonstrated easily in Scripture, men are conceived both with the corruption of sin and the condemnation (guilt) which attaches and belongs to it before they ever choose. So which true gospel are you advocating? God who chooses to created all things according to the good pleasure of his will, including the wicked who will continue in their sinful state to damnation, and to appoint those to salvation who God wills to be regenerated so that from a clean heart they will confess by the fruit of their lips, which God has also created, out of those who are declared sinful in Adam. You see God condemned all men in Adam without reference to anything in them, that is clear. And, God says in John 1:13, that it is not because a man chooses to believe in Christ, but because he was caused to be born again, he was given the right to become a child of God. So, please explain your position. Because your position is, so far as Scripture is concerned, and I can determine, the opposite of the Gospel.
Nathan-
I think it is amazing that you can post on the necessity of vigilence against sin and that someone would answer that you advocated the opposite. People who are blinded by their predjudice will skip right over all that is said. As the Proverb says, a fool responds without considering the fulness of the matter.
One thing that Calvinism does not teach in any fashion is negligence in the attention to the means of our sanctification. By perseverence we know God remains in us and we in him as Christ said. There are no doubts that there are Solomons among us, there is no doubt that there are Samuels also. Most of us fall somewhere along the spectrum of carnal/spiritual. “Therefore (since the works of the flesh are obvious and the fruit of the Spirit also) work out your own Salvation with fear and trembling (because you do no know whether God has assigned you to the Solomon or Samuel class) for it is God who works in you the willing and the doing of his good pleasure.” Then we should all the more be vigilant so that we are not punished as evil doers, but are rather able to to say with Paul, though I have a clear conscience I am not without fault, or as Christ said, “After having done all that is commanded, consider yourselves unworthy.” Should God make us a Samson or a David, let us also say with the children of Israel:
God does all this and yet the Prophet declares that he is faithful.
There are a lot of reasons why we might lose zeal, why we might fall in to seasons of disrepair of the hedge rows. The first of these is always the good pleasure of God. Does this teach us not to keep watch? Hardly. These truths were given to us by the very men who also called us to diligence. Praise God in his sovereignty, and in his providence and fear him. For we do not stand by the power of our own right arm. When once we begin to think that we do not need his grace in power and mind to please him, we have left our first love, and are above all the most miserable of men.
rey-
Define for us free-will.
Thomas Twitchell says “Isaiah said he was a man of unclean lips. Who creates the fruit of the lips? (Hebrews 13:15 cf. Isaiah 57:19)”
Let’s look at Isaiah 57:19 which says “I create the fruit of the lips: ‘Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near,’” Says the LORD, “And I will heal him.”
The fruit of the lips that God is taking credit for creating is specifically the phrase “Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near” which is the message he is giving to the prophet to preach.
Now then, how dare you take the phrase “I create the fruit of the lips” and twist it to claim that God creates all evil speeches, that when Isaiah had said something unclean in his past it was because God was the author of that uncleanness. “God forbid! How then could God judge the world?” as Paul asks in Romans 3:6? Jesus would be shown to be a Devil if he creates all our idle word and then says “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” (Mat 12:36) If he deterministically created those idle words, then he cannot judge the world, but must be condemned himself! To suggest that Jesus is the author of the “filthiness, foolish talking, and coarse jesting,” (Eph 5:4) that you engage in is an attack on God, and “who are you, O man, who accuses God?”
But this is the spirit of Calvinism, which is “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” not denying him outright by saying something like “screw Jesus” but by accusing him of being the author of their sins and of putting unclean speech in their mouths! They blame Jesus Himself for their sins. They blame Him “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” as though he authored all their sins and unclean speech and put the dagger of violence in their hands and the putrid lies in their mouths! (1 Pet 2:22)
Now, is it Christian or antichristian (judge ye oh reader) to blame your sins on Jesus. To say that you spoke uncleaness because “God creates the fruit of the lips”–is that worship and praise to Jesus or horrible blasphemy? Judge for yourselves and see who is what.
First of all I was not connecting the fruit of the lips to Isaiah’s unclean speech, but to the fact that God sent forth coal’s from the throne of God and touched his lips so that he might offer the praises of God, that he might answer God in righteousness. That righteous confession was God’s words, not Isaiah’s. Now you would have us believe that God does not know what evil men will speak? They why not answer Isaiah’s other statement that it is God who cause men to not walk according to his statutes? Tell me, it is true that Satan tempted David to nubmer the people, but it is true also that God insighted him to do it? Reconcile it for us please. It wasn’t Satan’s plan, was it? And just when did God know that David would do it? Perhaps you can answer just who it was who condemned and killed the Christ. Was it the pleasure of God the Father? Or, was it just happenstance that men bore false-witness concerning him?
So no, you have twisted what I have said just as you twist Scripture and the things that Calvinists believe. Now answer the questions, or tell us what is this:
And you may not like this either:
All you have to do is tell us, if you have free-will, why is it that you cannot do as you will? The word for please, is thelo, to will. This is such a clear Scripture. As Paul has instructed elsewhere we are either slaves of Sin or slaves of Christ. You would have freedom from both according to your assertions. But that is not available, according to Scripture.
You have caricatured Calvinism again, for we do not say that God is the author, that is the doer of sin, but you have yet to answer any question.
Are you an open theist? Do you believe that God does not know the future until he sees it happen? Or, do all things proceed according to his purpose and plan according to Isaiah 46, or do you propose that you are in control what will happen and thus make yourself like God? Can you reconcile that Scripture says that God does all things and yet is righteous? If you can, then tell us, how does God do that? Could it be through secondary causation? You know what that is, right? He says he takes no counsel from anyone, that no one has been his advisor. So please, does he see what man will do before he does it? And if so does he foreordain that it will happen that way? If so then is God a mere reactionary, playing catch-up to countering man’s will? And why doesn’t he stop it before it happens? Would you let your child put his finger in an electrical socket? Why not? Why doesn’t God stop it, then. Does God put before man both good and evil and say choose either, that is, does he give him free-will to choose, or does he forbid the choosing of evil? Again, please answer the questions.
You have yet to answer, is it God who has prepared the wicked for the day of trouble, is it God who creates all things, or is there another creator? What is the nature of evil? Is it because you cannot answer? Or will not answer, because if you do you will be forced to admit that God alone is sovereign and the fact is you want to share what alone is his?
Define free-will? Answer any question I have asked, if you can without hurling invective or accusation or mischaracterization of what was said. Just answer the question. Who saved you? Was it God alone, or did you play a part in it? Nathan and I are waiting.
I am not so sure about the claims you made about yourself. My guess is this, you don’t really have any answers. You would like to think that you can answer back to us because you think you can answer back to God and demand he respect your choices. Unlike Peter of whom Jesus said another would take him where he would not want to go, or like Jonah who went, not willingly, but by the God’s will, or like men of old carried along by the Spirit who spoke, not their own words but as Jesus, only what they heard, you would rather walk and talk on your own. You would like to believe that you are autonomous. But I would ask you this, did God create you in such a way that you could oppose him? Who is the opposer of God? Is that the image of God, can God oppose himself? Surely you do not believe that God created Adam in God’s image such that he could choose sin do you? Can God choose to sin? Then how did God create Adam, surely not with both tendencies? Is that the image of God?
I propose this, free-will as that which you believe you have is the very essence of evil. It is not native to God, nor is it the image into which Adam was created. For the Calvinist, true free-will is that which is in the image of Jesus the Son. It cannot choose to do evil, for evil has no part in Him. You on the other hand have a problem. If God created man with libertarian free-will, in the image of God, then God himself is free to choose evil and His Son was able to also. The problem is that in Christ we have been granted eternal life. And eternal life would not be so, if it were possible for it not to be eternal. Eternal life is eternal life, and if man could choose to loose it, it would not be eternal. Now eternal life is in the Son alone, but if we have libertarian free-will as you believe, then there would always be the possibility of loosing our salvation even in the eternal estate. The problem there is that if Jesus has libertarian free-will, for that is the image into which we are being conformed, and if libertarian free-will is the righteous image of God, and if it is the perfect way, there could be no assurance of eternal life for Christ himself could reject the grace of God the Father. And we, would always be able to sin, even in sinless heaven. How does that figure? Now there is an alternative. I leave it to you to tell us what that is.
You were too, until I embarrassed you.
The context plainly shows that you were teaching this moronic “God created us as devils and made us horrible sinners on purpose deterministically by programming us to sin because he is the author of sin and needs to punish people who had no choice in the matter in order to make himself feel cool” view. You can’t deny that you meant that Jesus literally put the dirty words in your mouth. You are condemned by your own blasphemy which you know you teach every day.
I would hate to be a Calvinist in the day of Judgment. You guys accuse God day and night of being the author of your sins. You do it so much, in fact, that you must think you merit something by it! Do you really think that by doing this you are meriting some special place in his kingdom? Do you think the more you blame HIM for your sins the higher a station you get in heaven? Or is it a place in the other kingdom that you are seeking?
More invectives, eh rey? No, we believe that we merit nothing at all as opposed to you.
Just answer the questions. We blame nothing on God. But you have yet to answer who makes you what you are? You? You create, you bring into being that which did not exist? Only you have the right to make out of the same lump vessels for honor and vessels for dishonor? Who can resist his will, you? Jesus said that those who resist his will are children of the devil. Can you resist his will? Do you dethrone God by asserting your freewill? Do you will what comes to be? Can you cause anything to exist? Do you agree with Scripture that all things are by him, through him and to him? Who creates the souls of fallen creatures? How do they come to be what they are? Does the will of man have to power to create ex nihilo? Does God uphold all things by the power of his might? Or tell us, if you can, what is yet to be?
Answer the questions. Just one.
Who are you rey? Are you even a real person? By not answering the questions you make a very convincing case that you are an idiot and a smuck.
“But I would ask you this, did God create you in such a way that you could oppose him? Who is the opposer of God? Is that the image of God, can God oppose himself? Surely you do not believe that God created Adam in God’s image such that he could choose sin do you? Can God choose to sin? Then how did God create Adam, surely not with both tendencies? Is that the image of God?” (Thomas Twitchell)
Look at your own Satanic logic here. You say that God creating Adam in His image would mean that Adam could not choose to sin. Yet Adam did sin, obviously, so how then did he do it? God made him do it, you will say. So, God created Adam unable to sin because God doesn’t want to create someone to oppose him, but then after creating him unable to sin, God forced him to sin? So, God created Adam unable to choose to sin, then forced him to sin against his will? You are merely proving even moreso that you teach that God is the author of sin, both generally and particularly, for you are claiming that not only we now but Adam also never had any choice in the matter but were forced to sin. Perhaps you dabbled in magic and got possesed by a Devil? I don’t see how any human being could believe the sort of demented thing you are suggesting.
LOL. You’re on here pretending to not claim God is the author of sin, but I’ve showed in #12 sufficiently that you do. But I might as well add this, where you said on Green Baggins’ site, comment 6 on Does God create evil? “I like Johnathan Edwards view. He was not ashamed to say that God was indeed the author of evil…So, I stand with Edwards, if it is blasphemy to say that He is sin’s author because He has decreed it, as He has all things that have or will ever be, and is therefore its Creator, then so be it.” So why are you spewing “invective” as you call it, and claiming not to teach that God is the author of sin, when you have proudly taught exactly that on Green Baggins’ blog? Calvinism can masquerade as Christian all it wants, but all true Christians know that it is the most antichristian system of all time.
No I will not say that God made him do it. And it is easy to discover why he sinned:
Eve saw that the fruit was good, rey. She thought that she was doing what was right and good exactly as she had been created to do. It was by deception that she fell and she being in trangression decieved Adam for he listened to her voice, which was at that time the language of her father the devil, a liar and a deceiver, (Genesis 3.17). Deception by definition deprives one of freedom of choice. God does not force, he uses secondary agency to bring about his decreedal will, as he did with the temptation of Eve and her subsequent deception of Adam. That they freely chose is not in question, the question is what were the choices presented. You cannot say that God put opposing choice before man, for God does not tempt. He in fact commanded them to do what was good and not eat the fruit of the tree. It was Satan who put the choices before Eve as choices free to choose. God allowed them no such freedom. For they were created in his image without the freedom to sin and they were further given commandment not to. Will has a natural freedom, it is not bound either to good or evil inherently. Will is simply the mind choosing according to its nature. Will does not act autonomously. It is what the minds sees itself doing, as Jesus intimated. God created Adam good and upright, not both good and evil as you would have us believe.
You still have not answered the question, who created you to be able to oppose God? Does God create those who can oppose him? In the original creation, was Adam created with both tendencies in the image of God? Are you saying that God has both tendencies, good and evil, that God has the type of freewill you are claiming for youself? It seems you are the one who makes God the devil and not me. After the fall, God creates man not in his image as he did in the beginning, but has concluded all men sinful in conception according to the image that Adam chose. The agency of the transmittal of the fallen image is laid to the charge of Adam according to Roman’s and not God. It is however, God who creates the souls of all men. And you have yet to tell us, what is the state of the soul of men in conception according to your theology?
Absolutely, if God did not decree sin it would not happen. Go and read Edwards, if you can understand it, and then come back and tell us what the meaning of secondary agency is. When you have read Edwards then you will understand why it is that we do not believe that God is the actor in sin and at the same time will confess that all things proceed from God’s decree which is what Edwards, and I will gladly proclaim before God the only Sovereign Will. Your problem is that you cannot define author in context. When I wrote at GB I was still considering somethings and have come to understand more fully. It still does no equate to contingency being outside of God. Your postiion, I suppose, is open theism, which makes God over into the image of man. Pehaps you can explain why nothing is contingent to God? Or even what contingency is.
So I have answered you question, reasonably and true to Scripture. Now, you give us your take. Was Adam created with freewill in the image of God’s freewill, able to sin?
Or will you just keep blathering idiocies?