Monday, September 15

Apparently, Arminianism doesn't create people for Hell

But it still makes salvation dependent upon human works.

In response to a kind reader:
1. My apologies regarding Arminianism Point #1. That's what I get for using Wikipedia!

2. I would note that your statement, "God . . . predestined . . . those of whom . . . would have a faith response to the Gospel," is problematic. Where does He say that?

Peter 1 says that God foreknows believers. Doesn't He foreknow unbelievers too?

God does not say that we are "chosen" because He foresaw our "faith response." He does say that we are saved by God's grace through faith (which is the gift of God).

3. God refers more than once to His Book of Life, yet you don't believe it exists? The point I was making is that He warns us against removing our names from His Book, which indicates that the default position to which He predestined (!) us is Life.

[He] states clearly that His intention is that all should live.

4. With regard to "things we need to do," for salvation, if we must, "have faith, repent of sin, die to self, obey God, follow the Spirit, walk in manner worthy of the Gospel, etc.," then we are doomed.

God does say [in Paul's letter to the Church in Rome]:
"If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing."

"To the one who does not work, but trusts God Who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness."

"we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law."
Salvation is entirely God's work. We play no part in it.

5. Faith in faith is a problem. The answer is Faith in Christ.

Works are important to Calvinists since by their works they prove to themselves and others that they are "chosen." [Since Calvin's god chose in its sovereignty to predestine many people to Hell and only a few to Heaven, how can one know until the end which is their fate?]

6. Your statement that, "Our works do not save us, but if we are saved then we will do good works," is true, but it contradicts your earlier statement that in our salvation there are things that we do alone.

7. As to whether or not a "genuine believer" can lose their salvation, what does God say?

In Hebrews 10, He warns us against Hell:
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
And in Hebrews 3:
"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.