What do you think? Is God really all about Himself? Do some people go overboard on this subject? What is the right balance? Which of these approaches is really more like humanity? The one where God, like sinful humanity, seeks His own glory at the expense of others? Or, the approach where God sacrifices Himself for the sake of others and reveals Himself as truly glorious?
This is the most one-sided, straw man ever. God is NOT like humanity. Really? That's who you want to compare God to?
Did Christ not teach us to stop and help our enemies rather than “pass them by on the other side?”
This is literally what Arminianism teaches. God chooses only to save those people who reach out to him in faith, not the other peons who reject him.
By putting the welfare of man above His own self-glorification,
Seriously, chapter and verse please?
I came to understand that God does not sacrifice creation for the sake of His own glory, but instead He sacrifices Himself for sake of His creation, which in turn reveals Him as the most glorious of all.
Chapter and verse please.
Instead, I realized that God’s Glory is best revealed in His self-sacrificial love for all.
Calvinsts do not deny this! This was his plan from the foundations of the world to get glory, by bringing many sons to glory.
The recipient of God’s foreknowledge or forelove is stated in plural and refers to the church.
How do you "recieve" foreknowledge. It is information of the future that God knows.
Life in the Spirit Study Bible note on Romans 8:29 — those God foreknew “Foreknew” in this verse is equivalent to “foreloved”
This is illogical.
All believers must participate in their election by their response of faith and by being eager to make their calling and election sure
Yes. After their election, not before.
The evangelist starts out as you would normally expect but within a minute Jesus takes a back seat to Election. It causes you to want to jump through the TV screen and grab that preacher and say STOP! He keeps jumpimg back and forth between belief in Jesus and election. It literally makes you cringe.
That is unbiblical and NOT calvinist.
Why can’t we give God all the glory for enabling mankind to respond to His gracious truth? Why must he irresistibly cause our acceptance of that truth in order for Him to get full glory for giving it?
If your eyes were opened to see the glories of Heaven or the horrors of Hell, would you choose Hell? No heaven is irresistible when understood. To resist God, is to show that you do not know him, nor understand him. (Jer. 9:24)
God does not merely enable people to believe (as the scriptures say), but He has to actually change their very nature so as to certainly make them believe.
Nope.
Why not appeal to mystery BEFORE drawing conclusions that could in any way impugn the holiness of God
No one starts with the mystery. That'd be incoherent. We begin with the known and move out until we reach the unknown.
God gives grace to the humble not because a humble response deserves salvation, but because He is gracious.
Are you implying that a "Calvinist" would disagree with this statement?
The cause of a determination is the determiner. It is not an undetermined determination, or an unchosen choice, as some attempt to frame it. If someone has an issue with this simply apply the same principle to the question, “Why did God choose to create mankind?” He is obviously all self-sustaining and self-sufficient. He does not need us to exist. Therefore, certainly no one would suggest God was not free to refrain from creating humanity.
Nope. We are not God. We have our being and life IN him. So, he is the one sustaining and giving us the ability to make those decisions.
he is presuming a deterministic response is necessary thus beginning the discussion with a circular and often confounding game of question begging.
Nope.
were being hardened or blinded from hearing the truth. Only a select few Israelites (a remnant) were given by the Father to the Son in order for God’s purpose in the election of Israel to be fulfilled.
Isn't this unfair, and an example of God condemning people to hell?
Piper’s “arcing” approach to biblical exegesis seems to me to assume a presuppositionless, purely inductive interpretation. I doubt that is possible or desirable. And if it leads one to claim that God “designs, ordains, and governs” evil and hell (including who will go there and rendering certain that they do), then it makes God monstrous which means nothing God says can be trusted.
So is it wrong for God to kill a third of mankind? Romans 9:15 So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind.
How about delighting in the offering of the wicked? Rev 14:11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
This is why John Wesley famously said that whatever Romans 9 means it “cannot mean that”—with “that” referring to the typical Calvinist interpretation of double predestination. (Of course I would argue with other Arminian exegetes and theologians that Romans 9 must be interpreted in its context which offers a better interpretation than the typical Calvinist one.)
What if it was "wrong" for God to allow libertine free will? No one would choose him (Rom 3). Would it be wrong for him to send everyone to hell, and damn and burn everyone he created?
Calvinism strives to say that the God they describe is loving and good, but it is impossible to show convincingly how he is loving and good toward all people.
The Bible doesn't says he's loving and good to all people....
1) God only does good for those who love God...
Romans 8:28 ESV And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
2) God hates wicked people... Psalm 11:5 ESV The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Psalm 5:5 ESV The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
and I can demonstrate that by means of an illustration.
always an illustration, never a passage from Scripture. :(
I have argued here and elsewhere, world without end, that if God predestines some people to hell, in the way that is meant by Piper and other consistent (or almost consistent) Calvinists, then God is unworthy of worship because he is not good. As Wesley so cogently said, that God would be worse than the devil because at least the devil is sincere.
Why? Who is determining the definition of good? You or God?
I am neither Arminian nor Calvinist. I believe in salvation by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ. I believe in the eternal security of the believer. I believe that Jesus Christ died for all men, and I believe what the Bible says, "That whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
This is the Arminian position.
The Bible makes it plain that the believer is kept. He does not keep himself. First Peter 1:4,5 states:
Yep! Christ keeps us.
The other morning I opened a jar of peach preserves.
Always with the illustrations, never with the verses.
By irresistible grace, John Calvin meant that God simply forces people to be saved.
This guy does not even know what he's arguing about. John Calvin never named it "irresistible grace" that came way later (The acronym was used by Cleland Boyd McAfee as early as circa 1905).
I do not know a single Bible verse that says anything about the saints' persevering,
2 Timothy 2:11-12 This is a trustworthy saying: If we die with him, we will also live with him. If we endure hardship, we will reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us.
Matthew 10:22 You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.
Hebrews 10:36 ESV For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.
1 Corinthians 16:13 ESV Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Revelation 14:12 ESV Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.
Revelation 2:10 ESV Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.