Belgic Confession Article XVI "We believe that, all the posterity of Adam being thus fallen into perdition and ruin by the sin of our first parents, God then did manifest Himself such as He is; that is merciful and just: MERCIFUL, since He delivers and preserves from this perdition all whom He in His eternal and unchangeable counsel of mere goodness has elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without any respect to their works; JUST, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves."
Hey man, good question. I think you're speaking of grace in terms of like a rock or something like that. Grace is God's Favor for ill deserving sinners, it's giving sinners what they do not deserve. So I'd need you to define "free will". As John Mcarthur defines free will in a great way I think: "yes man has free will, he has the freedom to commit whatever sin he wants to commit". Regeneration is by God's grace, and that is where God changes a heart of stone into a heart flesh, it gives the unwilling sinner to desire and will for Christ. It's not a forceful thing of making a person do something they don't want to do. It's irresistable because no one whose heart is regenerated by the Spirit will choose to walk away from the God that they now desire.
@@carlosojeda7257 If "ability to do what is best" includes the things in Romans 3 that it says we aren't able to do, due to being spiritually dead, then yes, I reject that kind of free will
I was a Calvinist for eight years. I’ve read Calvin, the puritans, Packer, Pink….Trent is right. If a person has no choice to choose not to reject God, God rejected them first, with no intention on saving or loving them. I couldn’t even tell my children that God loved them because I didn’t know if He did. I wouldn’t let them sing Jesus loves me. Ultimately, doubting Gods love for myself is what pushed me out of Calvinism. It’s a self defeating system based on gnostic determinism. The reality of being able to fall away doesn’t have anything to do with Gods love failing. It completely depends on a persons desire to be faithful to God and love Him back. Like a marriage. Love is only real if it’s free. In Calvinism, love is not free. It’s not personal. It’s fatalism.
I'm not sure how you've read all those sources and still come out to say that in Calvinism, God's love is not personal. I suppose that would be the most fundamental thing that is foundational to calvinism, that God's love is very personal. So personal that He loved you far before He even created you. That to me is very, very personal. It's other views that make God's love impersonal. God never intended to die for you specifically but for everybody in general. It makes the cross impersonal, it makes Jesus' love impersonal and most of all, it makes Jesus out to be a pitiful savior. If a child of yours was running out into the street and you saw a freight truck coming in at 100 miles per hour, would you consider it a violation of his free will for you to grab and pull him from the street so as to not get hit by the truck? It seems to me that in this analogy, for catholics and others, that God is a father who stands at the driveway saying "Hey there's a truck coming! come on, get out of the street." Without ever actually doing anything, and then saying "it's not that I was a bad dad, my son just wasn't listening". I'm sure as a caring father such as yourself, you would take the calvinist view of that analogy over and above the latter. Far far far far farrrr more than the latter. But what is Trent right about? His position is like a failed copy of the calvinist view. That's why I played the clips of him. He believes God only saves the ones He gives the gift of Perseverance to. And that those who fall away, fall away because God didn't give them the gift of perseverance. So can he really say "God loves you", when he doesn't actually know if God loves them enough to give them the gift of perseverance? That's meaningless. Who cares what you can tell a person if God is only going to eventually let them fail to make it to heaven because you just don't know if he gave that person the actual gift of perseverance. At best you can say "God loves you enough to save you right now, but He might not love you enough to keep you. So be careful".That's why his view is a failed copy of calvinism. Again, who cares what you can say if you don't really mean it? If he's going to charge the calvinist with that, then he by by his own claims, refutes himself.
@@IfYouWill_SRin Calvinism, Gods love has nothing to do with the person. It’s all about God and his love for Himself and His own glory. People are nothing more than characters in Gods big story and they move as he wills. As Martin Luther put it, a man is a donkey and either God rides him or the Devil does and you have no real choice in the matter. It’s ultimately only about God and people are reduced to being less than that of beasts. Even in the understanding of imputation itself, love is not really about the person. God doesn’t see you, He sees His Son. He doesn’t love you, He loves His Son. He covers you over. “A dung hill covered in snow” A biblical understanding of salvation and the love of God is enveloped in the language of genuine relationship. A relationship where Christ atonement on the cross is genuinely available to any and all who desire it. An atonement that doesn’t just cover you up but truly cleanses a person and in the sacraments of grace confers real change to a person. A cooperation with the love of God as a person is the only true way. Unfortunately, in Calvinism, there’s no real relationship. You just do what God makes you do, whether for your good or your damnation.
@@EmbracingTradition100 All those things are wrong and they are not specific to calvinism. You're making an argument against Christianity itself. Of course God is for His own Glory, every Christian knows that. As Piper puts it "If God is to be For Us, He must be for Himself".
@@EmbracingTradition100 Ah I see, you've converted to catholicism. Well... there's many more issues that make the the atonement of Jesus bad from a catholic perspective. First off, it's an imperfect sacrifice that saves Nobody. It is a representation of the work of Christ, thousands and thousands and thousands of times and it does not perfect you, the next moment you sin you are then again under the temporal punishment of sin that you must work off, though you never know when it's fully worked off, or else you'll be cast into purgatory to suffer atonement there. Calvinism and catholicism are polar opposites, i can see why you went there; calvinism is all based Biblically, catholicism is millenia of horribly developed doctrine, from people ignorant of early christianity, the scriptures, and yet they are to be believed infallibly. I thiink you have a lot more problems there my friend. There's an easier way to understand God's love, and that's biblically. You don't need someone 1500 years later at the council of trent to tell you about Jesus' sacrifice in the eucharist.
Belgic Confession Article XVI "We believe that, all the posterity of Adam being thus fallen into perdition and ruin by the sin of our first parents, God then did manifest Himself such as He is; that is merciful and just: MERCIFUL, since He delivers and preserves from this perdition all whom He in His eternal and unchangeable counsel of mere goodness has elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without any respect to their works; JUST, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves."
2:09 : so you believe in free will and that we can resist God's grace? Can you be an elect and not be saved aka reject God?
Hey man, good question. I think you're speaking of grace in terms of like a rock or something like that. Grace is God's Favor for ill deserving sinners, it's giving sinners what they do not deserve. So I'd need you to define "free will". As John Mcarthur defines free will in a great way I think: "yes man has free will, he has the freedom to commit whatever sin he wants to commit". Regeneration is by God's grace, and that is where God changes a heart of stone into a heart flesh, it gives the unwilling sinner to desire and will for Christ. It's not a forceful thing of making a person do something they don't want to do. It's irresistable because no one whose heart is regenerated by the Spirit will choose to walk away from the God that they now desire.
@IfYouWill_SR i would define free Will as the ability to do what is best.
@@IfYouWill_SR I would use Aquinas definition "ability to do what is best" instead of that definition of "do whatever they want"
@@carlosojeda7257 If "ability to do what is best" includes the things in Romans 3 that it says we aren't able to do, due to being spiritually dead, then yes, I reject that kind of free will
@@IfYouWill_SR that's what I thought, that you believe in total depravity.
I was a Calvinist for eight years. I’ve read Calvin, the puritans, Packer, Pink….Trent is right. If a person has no choice to choose not to reject God, God rejected them first, with no intention on saving or loving them. I couldn’t even tell my children that God loved them because I didn’t know if He did. I wouldn’t let them sing Jesus loves me. Ultimately, doubting Gods love for myself is what pushed me out of Calvinism. It’s a self defeating system based on gnostic determinism.
The reality of being able to fall away doesn’t have anything to do with Gods love failing. It completely depends on a persons desire to be faithful to God and love Him back. Like a marriage. Love is only real if it’s free.
In Calvinism, love is not free. It’s not personal. It’s fatalism.
I'm not sure how you've read all those sources and still come out to say that in Calvinism, God's love is not personal. I suppose that would be the most fundamental thing that is foundational to calvinism, that God's love is very personal. So personal that He loved you far before He even created you. That to me is very, very personal. It's other views that make God's love impersonal. God never intended to die for you specifically but for everybody in general. It makes the cross impersonal, it makes Jesus' love impersonal and most of all, it makes Jesus out to be a pitiful savior.
If a child of yours was running out into the street and you saw a freight truck coming in at 100 miles per hour, would you consider it a violation of his free will for you to grab and pull him from the street so as to not get hit by the truck? It seems to me that in this analogy, for catholics and others, that God is a father who stands at the driveway saying "Hey there's a truck coming! come on, get out of the street." Without ever actually doing anything, and then saying "it's not that I was a bad dad, my son just wasn't listening". I'm sure as a caring father such as yourself, you would take the calvinist view of that analogy over and above the latter. Far far far far farrrr more than the latter.
But what is Trent right about? His position is like a failed copy of the calvinist view. That's why I played the clips of him. He believes God only saves the ones He gives the gift of Perseverance to. And that those who fall away, fall away because God didn't give them the gift of perseverance. So can he really say "God loves you", when he doesn't actually know if God loves them enough to give them the gift of perseverance? That's meaningless. Who cares what you can tell a person if God is only going to eventually let them fail to make it to heaven because you just don't know if he gave that person the actual gift of perseverance. At best you can say "God loves you enough to save you right now, but He might not love you enough to keep you. So be careful".That's why his view is a failed copy of calvinism. Again, who cares what you can say if you don't really mean it? If he's going to charge the calvinist with that, then he by by his own claims, refutes himself.
@@IfYouWill_SRin Calvinism, Gods love has nothing to do with the person. It’s all about God and his love for Himself and His own glory. People are nothing more than characters in Gods big story and they move as he wills. As Martin Luther put it, a man is a donkey and either God rides him or the Devil does and you have no real choice in the matter. It’s ultimately only about God and people are reduced to being less than that of beasts.
Even in the understanding of imputation itself, love is not really about the person. God doesn’t see you, He sees His Son. He doesn’t love you, He loves His Son. He covers you over. “A dung hill covered in snow”
A biblical understanding of salvation and the love of God is enveloped in the language of genuine relationship. A relationship where Christ atonement on the cross is genuinely available to any and all who desire it. An atonement that doesn’t just cover you up but truly cleanses a person and in the sacraments of grace confers real change to a person. A cooperation with the love of God as a person is the only true way.
Unfortunately, in Calvinism, there’s no real relationship. You just do what God makes you do, whether for your good or your damnation.
@@EmbracingTradition100 All those things are wrong and they are not specific to calvinism. You're making an argument against Christianity itself. Of course God is for His own Glory, every Christian knows that. As Piper puts it "If God is to be For Us, He must be for Himself".
@@EmbracingTradition100 Ah I see, you've converted to catholicism. Well... there's many more issues that make the the atonement of Jesus bad from a catholic perspective. First off, it's an imperfect sacrifice that saves Nobody. It is a representation of the work of Christ, thousands and thousands and thousands of times and it does not perfect you, the next moment you sin you are then again under the temporal punishment of sin that you must work off, though you never know when it's fully worked off, or else you'll be cast into purgatory to suffer atonement there. Calvinism and catholicism are polar opposites, i can see why you went there; calvinism is all based Biblically, catholicism is millenia of horribly developed doctrine, from people ignorant of early christianity, the scriptures, and yet they are to be believed infallibly. I thiink you have a lot more problems there my friend. There's an easier way to understand God's love, and that's biblically. You don't need someone 1500 years later at the council of trent to tell you about Jesus' sacrifice in the eucharist.