Ben Pierce

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

I’ll take the agreement on 7–10 and stop there.

You say the issue is causation and how Paul applies the image to salvation. Fine. My only point was that Jeremiah’s potter is not someone who reshapes with no regard to whether the nation turns. You now say you never claimed 7–10 don’t speak. Good. Then we don’t need Henry as a referee. He was only useful because you quoted him on dominion and left the next paragraphs on relenting unread. I don’t put Henry over the text. The text is the standard. Henry just happened to read verses 7–10 the same way the words sit on the page.

Paul can apply Jeremiah without emptying Jeremiah. That’s the disagreement. I’m not going to keep saying you ignore Scripture, and I’m not going to pretend Romans 9 deletes the potter God already defined. We can leave it there.

You’re my brother in Christ. I mean that. Thanks for the back and forth. Grace and peace.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

“I know what you really want” and “idol of LFW” is still not exegesis. You're assigning a motive so you don’t have to let Jeremiah 18:7–10 speak.

Nobody said God is merely reactive or that the clay runs the shop. God initiates. God sends Jeremiah. God has the clay. God has the right to tear down and plant. The same God then states the policy for how He will use that right: if they turn, He relents of the disaster. If they do evil, He relents of the good. That is in the chapter. Calling it “smoke and mirrors” does not remove the verses.

“Paul broadened it to salvation, therefore the conditions drop out” is the claim you have to prove. Application is not erasure. If the analogy is Jeremiah’s potter, Jeremiah’s potter still reshapes in view of response.

You quoted Henry on the potter’s right. Quote Henry on the potter’s rule. Same commentary, same section:

“In exercising this authority and ability, he always acts according to settled rules of justice and goodness. He never punishes arbitrarily.”

“National repentance will stop the progress of his judgment (v. 7–8).” If they turn, “God will graciously accept them” and “relent him of the evil he said he would do.”

“A sincere conversion from the evil of sin will effectively prevent a disastrous punishment,” and God can raise a penitent people “as the potter can make a fresh jar of clay when it is marred in his hand (v. 4).”

It's pretty clear that this isn't Flowers smuggling LFW. This is Matthew Henry reading the whole potter: absolute right and non-arbitrary dealing when they turn or persist. If Paul is using Jeremiah, he is using that potter, not the half that fits the system.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

You did concede the backdrop. You said Paul has Jeremiah 18 in mind. The question is whether he is allowed to keep the part of Jeremiah 18 you are now skipping.

Yes, God sends Jeremiah to the house. Yes, the clay is already in the potter’s hands. Yes, God has the right and power to do as He pleases. Nobody is reversing verse 6.

Keep reading. Verses 7–10 are God telling you what He pleases to do with that power:

If He speaks to uproot a nation and that nation turns from evil, He relents.
If He speaks to plant a nation and it does evil, He relents of the good.

That's not the clay seizing the wheel. It's the potter announcing the terms on which He will reshape. Sovereignty here is not “the clay’s response is irrelevant.” It's “I am free to judge and to relent according to how they respond.”

Matthew Henry is commenting on the right of the potter, not deleting verses 7–10. Quote the dominion. Don’t treat the conditions God spoke in the same chapter as a “philosophical construct” Flowers smuggled in. Those conditions are the plain reading.

“LFW superimposed” is the accusation you use so you don’t have to let the whole chapter speak. The text already has a potter who acts first and a clay that can turn. You are flattening the second half and calling the first half “the plain reading.” That's the system, not Jeremiah.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

“Weeks of discussion” doesn’t make “dishonest" or "neo-Pelagian" or "you are the company you keep” an argument. It seems to be a verdict you reached first and then play off as history.

On Jeremiah 18 you just conceded the point and then took it back. Yes, Paul has that backdrop. In that backdrop the potter reshapes in response to whether the clay turns. That's God doing as He pleases: He pleases to deal with moral agents according to their response. That's not the clay “controlling” the potter. It is the potter announcing His own terms. Romans 9 is not Paul erasing those terms. It's Paul using the same image against people who thought ethnic privilege made them un-reshapable. If your reading requires the OT potter to mean the opposite of what God said the potter does, the “inspired interpretation” is doing the opposite of interpreting.

The covenant lecture is the same move as before. Nobody has to deny that God is covenantal, or that Isaiah 49 exists, to notice that Jeremiah 18 still says what it says. Calling the Pactum Salutis the “foundation” and then treating anyone who starts with the actual potter text as kicking the table is how you make a system unfalsifiable. Dort’s responses sat on a foundation. So did Arminius. So did a lot of people you just put in the Pelagius pile.

“Neo” does not rescue the inaccurate insult. Pelagius denied that grace is necessary to come. Flowers does not. Erasmus, Molina, and Reid are not the same man. “You are the company you keep” is guilt by proximity. You can keep doing that, or you can stay on whether Paul is allowed to mean the potter the way God already defined the potter. Only one of those is the text.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

You opened with “new religion,” then upgraded to “dishonest broker,” “neo-Pelagian,” and “ignorant comments,” and then offered a seminar on the Pactum Salutis. Sure seems like a status play: 'I am the serious reader and you are not'

Nobody denied there is nothing new under the sun. The point is simpler: Jeremiah 18 already defines the potter. God reshapes the clay if they turn. Paul uses the same image. Reading Romans 9 as if that background is optional is the system move. Calling the person who points that out a founder of a new religion, then Pelagius-adjacent, is not answering hyperbole in like manner. You are changing the subject from the text to the man’s character.

“Finite creatures can’t have libertarian freedom because God is infinite” is a metaphysical slogan, not an exegesis of Jeremiah 18, Romans 9, or 2 Timothy. It assumes the conclusion: if God is sovereign in your sense, then any contrary choice is a contradiction.

TULIP not being Dort’s original acronym is trivia. Provisionists critique the doctrines those letters later packaged, not the branding. Same with “engage covenant theology or we can’t talk.” You can hold a robust covenant framework and still let the potter mean what God said the potter means. Requiring the Pactum Salutis as the cover charge before Jeremiah 18 counts is how a system protects itself.

You want history? Fine. Pelagius denied the necessity of grace. Flowers does not. Collapsing “man can respond to God’s initiated, enabling grace” into “absolute ability” is the same smear Calvinists have used for 400 years when they don’t want to distinguish Arminius, Wesley, and Provisionism from Pelagius. That’s simply an inaccurate label.

If the goal is an intelligent conversation, I'd probably get rid of “new religion,” “dishonest,” and “neo-Pelagian,” and stay on whether Paul is using the potter the way God already used the potter. Everything else in that comment was throat-clearing.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

Interesting. When it's been asked on non-calvinist threads, you have answered: "Calvinists do it more, especially the highly online and recently converted ones.
The evidence isn’t a scientific count of insults, but the pattern is consistent enough that even Reformed leaders named it: “cage-stage Calvinism.” RC Sproul, Michael Horton, Tim Challies and others have written about it for years—the phase where someone newly convinced of TULIP becomes aggressive, talks down to other Christians, treats every conversation as a referendum on God’s sovereignty, and acts as if disagreement equals ignorance or rebellion. That term exists because the behavior was common enough to need a label. There is no equally famous, internally accepted equivalent for new Arminians or Provisionists.

On X that shows up as:
Frequent “you just don’t understand,” “you haven’t read Romans 9,” “man-centered,” “semi-Pelagian” as conversation-enders.
Higher volume of condescension toward anyone who hasn’t adopted the system.
The stereotype of the new Calvinist who treats soteriology like a loyalty test."

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

@grok @MethodMinistry In Calvinist vs non-Calvinist threads on X, which side more often shifts from the text to calling the other person arrogant, unloving, gaslighting, a robot-theology cultist, or morally defective? Not 50/50, which side does the personal-character attack more?

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

@OzMarquezz @BoringFLMan P3: That difference is faith

P4: Faith functioning as the distinguishing factor is a condition

P5: Therefore election unto salvation is conditional, and unconditional election (U) falls

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

@OzMarquezz @BoringFLMan P2: If nothing God does in the cross distinguishes them, the difference between those who are saved and those who are not must lie in the persons themselves.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

@realJennaEllis @darknytPB You know you're doing a great job when the opposition's best argument is to police the word “destroys.” They don't have substantive rebuttals which shows that the actual exegesis is too inconvenient to answer.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

@ActualEJMJensen Nobody here is denying that God is sovereign. The question is whether sovereignty means He intended the refusal He commands against. That is not an obsession with free will. That is reading Matt 23:37 and Ezek 33:11 as if they mean what they say.

[Ben Pierce @BenPierced]

@ActualEJMJensen Romans 9–11 does not teach that. It ends with righteousness by faith, a partial hardening, and the chance to be grafted in again if they do not persist in unbelief.