Under the Calvinist view, God may as well have commanded the reprobate to flap their arms with enthusiasm and take to the air for all the good it does. In other words, passages like Acts 17:30 are “throw away pericopes” for the Calvinist because for all their appeals to the Bible, Calvinism forces it’s presuppositions upon the Bible without allowing a natural reading of passages that work against Calvinist pre-understandings a fair hearing.
Why do we know this? Because God commands all men everywhere to repent, and instead of allowing that it must somehow be possible for every person to be able to repent, the Calvinist pre-understanding claims in no way can all persons repent, and theologically there is a difference between CANNOT repent and WON’T repent and that difference separates Calvinism from all other Christian theologies.
Under the Calvinist view, God may as well have commanded the reprobate to flap their arms with enthusiasm and take to the air for all the good it does. In other words, passages like Acts 17:30 are “throw away pericopes” for the Calvinist because for all their appeals to the Bible, Calvinism forces it’s presuppositions upon the Bible without allowing a natural reading of passages that work against Calvinist pre-understandings a fair hearing.
Why do we know this? Because God commands all men everywhere to repent, and instead of allowing that it must somehow be possible for every person to be able to repent, the Calvinist pre-understanding claims in no way can all persons repent, and theologically there is a difference between CANNOT repent and WON’T repent and that difference separates Calvinism from all other Christian theologies.
No matter the order one makes of decrees in Calvinism we can be certain of at least one fact: in the Calvinist scheme God withheld the grace necessary for Adam to resist temptation and as a result of God’s withholding of the necessary grace, Adam’s love for Eve became more significant than his desire to obey, serve and be like God. God is the potter and we are the clay and Adam, shaped by God through God’s refusal to give Adam the necessary grace in order to resist temptation, sinned and broke fellowship with God. God decreed the fall and decreed that the grace necessary to resist be withheld from Adam so that the fall would happen. In the Calvinist scheme, no matter how these facts are buttered—whether it be said that Satan was able to tempt Adam using Eve as a conduit to get to Adam or that Adam was a willing participant in the temptation, we cannot escape the blunt fact that with the necessary grace, Adam could have resisted temptation and sin and death would have never entered the world. But that didn’t happen. God withheld grace from Adam and Adam sinned. And now the human race is stillborn to God. In the Calvinist scheme Adam was the means that God used to kill mankind, to cause all of creation to fall, to create endless suffering, to foster bitterness and hatred and vitriol and shame. In the Calvinist scheme God did this.
@CherylSchatz I stand corrected at your first point, Cheryl.
The Adam reference was a nod to Adam Harwood. I don’t travel in Southern Baptist circles and haven’t spoken to Adam since he was on sabbatical writing his systematic theology and Adam offered sections of it for public review.
While all of us inherit a sinful, Adamic nature, unfortunately, quoting Job 14:4 doesn't inform our understanding of Psalm 51:5 which is the context of the overarching discussion at hand.
Chasing down your rabbit hole, theologically speaking, Job 14:4 rhetorically asks, "Who can bring what is pure from the impure?" and answers, "No one!" thereby acknowledging that because every human being is born in an impure or fallen state, it is impossible for anyone to naturally produce true spiritual purity or righteousness on their own. Our inability to become pure or righteous leads to a broader discussion of the meaning of the Law, and while perfect in itself, why it couldn't redeem humanity or any sinful individual person.
Swinging our attention back to Psalm 51:5, I believe both yourself and Cheryl need to focus on the pre-1st Temple understanding of inequity which King David would have held and then contextualize that understanding for modern readers without pouring too much in.
https://t.co/XxfDktvDIR
Did David confess he was tainted with sin from his mothers womb? Or was he connecting the circumstances of his own conception to the way that his son was conceived?
Psalm 51:5, David is clearly referring to his mother for David's wording does not use the normal Hebrew word for human conception. Instead, it uses the wording of an animal in heat. The language that emphasizes the manner in which conception occurred, directing attention to the circumstances rather than claiming a condition of sin for the child himself.
This is significant because David is lamenting his own sin that produced his son. The context of Psalm 51 is his adultery with Bathsheba and the tragic consequences that followed. Just as David’s own son was conceived through sinful circumstances, David speaks of the way his mother conceived him. David's concern is not the guilt on an unborn child but the sinful situation surrounding conception.
Had David intended to say that he was personally guilty from the moment of conception, there would be no reason to mention his mother. He also would not have used a word that pictures sexual heat. He could simply state that he himself was sinful from the womb. Instead, he points to his mother’s role and the manner in which he was conceived.
One should not ignore the inspired words that are used. The inspired word choice is a very unique term for animals mating and very a unusual term for human conception.
Adam Harwood writes:
“Were the words to be taken literally, they would mean that the psalmist’s mother sinned when she became pregnant…”
Harwood, A. (2012). Commentary on Article 2: The Sinfulness of Man. Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry, 9(2), 35.
And why should that possibility be dismissed? David knew details about his own conception a knowledge we could never know apart from divine revelation. Scripture does not even record his mother’s name, yet David explicitly mentions her when describing the circumstances of his conception.
The context of Psalm 51 is David’s grief over his own sin and its consequences. He is not assigning guilt to himself as a fetus any more than he would assign guilt to the child conceived through his adultery with Bathsheba. Rather, he is lamenting that both conceptions were connected to sinful circumstances.
The sin was not the child’s. The sin belonged to those whose actions brought about the conception. God does not impute moral guilt to an unborn child because of the circumstances surrounding his or her conception. David’s focus is on the sinfulness of the situation, not the guilt of the infant.
David, and likely his mother, felt remorse for what they did, but the child was never blamed.
“A byform of the verb chāmam (HED # 2657), this verb has cognates in Jewish Aramaic and Arabic (of which the meaning extends to “to crave.” This word refers to the sexual impulse in animals that leads to “mating” or “conception” (Gen. 30:38f, 41; 31:10). David even used yācham to describe the time his mother “conceived” him (Ps. 51:5; cf. the Arabic verb)”
Gilbrant, T. (1998). יָחַם. In The Old Testament Hebrew-English Dictionary. WORDsearch.
3179. יָחַם yāḥam: A verb meaning to be hot, to conceive. It indicates that an animal is in heat, in rut (Gen. 30:38, 39, 41; 31:10). It describes the act of conception in sexual intimacy (Ps. 51:5[7]). It refers to keeping one’s body warm (1 Kgs. 1:1; Eccl. 4:11) or to heating something (Ezek. 24:11).
Baker, W., & Carpenter, E. E. (2003). In The complete word study dictionary: Old Testament (p. 444). AMG Publishers.
@Cryptofocus_NL@scottmelker Not necessarily as Strategy can slowly acquire cash selling preferred, then spook the markets by selling 32 $BTC followed by throwing the buy, buy, buy switch and hoovering up more Bitcoin. The flywheel needn’t spin fast.
@Cryptofocus_NL@scottmelker Not necessarily as Strategy can slowly acquire cash selling preferred, then spook the markets by selling 32 $BTC followed by throwing the buy, buy, buy switch and hoovering up more Bitcoin. The flywheel needn’t spin fast.
Discipleship means we are to take up our cross DAILY as spiritual warfare is an everyday occurrence and our lives are oriented toward ACTION. In other words, we are to outwardly live the inward faith we claim to possess and then not like the hypocrites who secretly do evil when nobody is looking.
Even if we fail, we rise and rise again and again, daily to fight the good fight waging war against our sinful Adamic nature by the power of the Spirit we keep and the name of the Son we herald to the world.
@RisingDisciples@subq Romans 10:9
• New King James Version (NKJV): “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”