Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Calvinism’s Conflation? No, A Needed Distinction

Professor Leighton Flowers has posted another video trying to critique Calvinism doctrine. He argues that Calvinists confuse believers being regenerated through faith by choosing to humble one's self with the choice by God to choosing to save people who believe.
I think that every Christian would agree that one becomes saved by humbling ourselves before our Holy God and agree that we are sinners and submit ourselves to God.The argument here is about how believers reach that level of humility. Professor Flowers does play Professor Sproul explaining how we are regenerated by God but Flowers does not explain how we go from rejecting God to loving God. Scripture is clear in explaining how we are unable to do things that please God apart from His grace. The thing that I think that Professor Flowers is ignoring is that Sproul is not arguing as if God snaps his fingers and then we are free to humble ourselves. We can humble ourselves when we have
been regenerated, No Believer is waiting for God to humble them so that they can be saved because we humble ourselves because God has done that miraculous work in us.

I think that it's really problematic to try to nail down which comes first: The faith and the humility to be saved or the empowerment to live and serve. I think it's akin to questioning your own desires. For example: what if you decided to have corn flakes for breakfast this morning. Is that because you autonomously  wanted that or was it because God decreed from the foundation of creation that you would get corn flakes that day? I don't know. You don't either. And think of all the things God put into motion outside of your control leading up to the point that you could make that decision. It's not a simple answer. However given that we all hated God and was at war with him before we were converted, I fail to see how anyone could choose to accept Christ as Lord and head of their lives without God's help.

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