Thursday, October 3, 2019

Answering the Calvinist's most Popular Argument

Leighton Flowers lately posted the following video attempting to answer the objection to the flavor of soteriology that Leighton Flowers represents that asks what is it that distinguishes those who put their trust in Christ from those reject Christ? Leighton Flower's side postulates that believers choose to humble themselves before God and trust Jesus for salvation due their own free will choices. But Calvinists counter that this would mean that people are no on equal footing if a person on their own can embrace Christ and those who don't out-right reject. Wouldn't that mean that the believer is more moral? Smarter? Better -in some way? More spiritually sensitive?


I cannot find myself really moved by Leighton Flowers's answer. I think he starts in the wrong place.  He assumes that like Adam and Eve, fallen human beings are just as morally free as they were before they first disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.I disagree because scripture describes people born in sin, shaped in iniquity, and unable to obey God - lacking any desire to do so - unless we get a new mind and a new heart from God.

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. - Romans 8:5-8

And

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. - John 8:34

Flower argues that because people have the ability to choose to believe in Jesus therefore God holds us responsible for rejecting Him. I disagree that the question presumes determinism is true. He presumes the our will is free like Adam's. Flowers' argument  that we willingly choose God then is going against the given scriptures posted above.

His point that some people use the doctrine about human inability as an excuse for rejecting God does not work, None of  us are looking for God or trying to serve Him unless God carries us.

We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:19

God holds us accountable not responsible

19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? - Romans 9:19-21