Jonathan Mathew

[Timothy Renfro @MrTimothyRenfro]

On Calvinism, you are not an agent. You are an awareness, riding a roller coaster to heaven or hell and you have no real influence or choice in the matter.

Your perception of choice moment to moment is an illusion. Your experience of reality is a lie.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

If we’re tracking unaddressed points then I’ve got quite a list here haha.

John 6 has Jesus answering the crowd’s lack of understanding with obtuse speech, in keeping with His MO of not revealing Himself to all clearly before the cross. He says that (at that time) all who have heard and learned from the Father are drawn by the Father to Jesus. They can come to Jesus because they’ve been drawn because they have heard and learned. And no one (at that time) can come to Him unless the Father draws them. No one without this sequence. So those who have learned from God’s teaching of Israel are drawn by God to Jesus and enabled to come. Those who have refused to learn (as in disbelieving Moses) cannot come; they are hardened. Later in John 12 Jesus explains that He will draw all men to Himself following the cross.

It’s a context sensitive proclamation.

Look there are competing interpretations of lots of difficult passages in the Bible, many falling outside the realm of objective judgement. I’m asking you to consider the consequences of your interpretation for what it says about the character of God.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

Yes that’s how metaphor works. It compares two different things to highlight their shared properties. The cruelty is not a function of how the recipient is unable, it’s a function of the giver knowing the recipient is unable and placing the offering outside of their ability to receive.

Again, your interpretation is not necessary. But it does leave God making fake offers, and mocking the unable, and acting performatively, and loving some people less, and authoring evil.

And the cherry on top is that no one believed your ideas until hundreds of years after Christ came. The Son of God came and it wasn’t enough to reveal the truth until people came along centuries later and solved the puzzle. All of these things should terrify you.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

An offer made to those who can’t accept it is cruelty. Like putting a plate of food outside the reach of a chained, starving prisoner. Again - the opposite of love.

Never too late to realize how your beliefs invent limits on the true love of God. Grace is amazing for all, not just for a few.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

I’m not demanding it. It’s what scripture says. But everywhere it says that you go in and say well all doesn’t mean all, or the world doesn’t mean everyone. You have to because of your precomittment to sovereignty meaning determinism. God loves every person in creation with salvific love. Can some people receive more earthly temporal favor than others, sure. But on an eternal level? Nah, Calvinism looks at God and says oh no you dont. You can’t love like that.

Love is the defining characteristic of the kingdom of God. God is love. And His kingdom invading the kingdom of darkness on earth carries that banner in redemptive restoration. It’s not a kingdom for select people only, it’s for whosoever will.

Woe to you who shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces!

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@tomwatts4au @_jonbowlin Yikes.. you think Jesus is mocking Nicodemus? Mocking someone who is, according to you, disabled when it comes to belief and for whom such mocking can have no effect? Here we strike on the problem with Calvinism, it inevitably degrades God’s love for man.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

Nowhere in this passage does it say that Nicodemus can’t understand in his current spiritual condition. Jesus even implies that he should understand in v10. Why speak with Nicodemus in the first place if it is falling on deaf ears? Jesus is not performative.

Sovereignty does not mean the exercise of total meticulous control. It means total authority.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

These passages are perfectly compatible with my view.

The wind in John 3:8 is describing what happens to someone who has already been born again not how they are born again.

Also my view has the benefit of not making God the necessary author of evil despite all attempts to the contrary.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@photogenicplaty @tomwatts4au @_jonbowlin You load “spiritually dead” with meaning that only your system necessitates, not the text. Faith is not a work.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

Nope. This verse (and 9) does not say that faith is given by God. It says salvation by grace through faith comes from God. Salvation is the gift, grace the descriptor, faith the condition. Contrasted with works. But we know faith is not a work so it can’t be the thing being discounted as self-generated.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@_jonbowlin @tomwatts4au That’s not relationship or love, it’s just force and control. It’s also not what the Bible says.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@tomwatts4au @_jonbowlin Correct. His grace is not the cause of belief, even though it is necessary for belief.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@CenturionOFaith @tomwatts4au @_jonbowlin 🤷🏻‍♂️ I was talking about determinism. You assumed it when saying that if salvation requires our choice then those that don’t choose Christ must be doing so because they are less wise or because of some property they possess.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

The OP made an exclusive claim. No other theological explanation outside of Calvinism can explain why one is saved and another not. Yes I’m a Christ follower. I am saved because when I chose to accept God’s gracious, merciful, offer of salvation. I wanted Him as Lord. Others choose to keep themselves on the throne. The choice maker is the cause of the differentiation. Explains things perfectly well.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@CenturionOFaith @tomwatts4au @_jonbowlin You’re just assuming determinism like the OP. Man’s choice as an effect of causal properties the man possesses.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@tomwatts4au @_jonbowlin Right, that’s what Calvinism claims. But that doesn’t explain why it would be the *only* way to account for why some choose Christ and some don’t.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

@_jonbowlin Oh fascinating! Can you elaborate? Why does Calvinism (which is deterministic) serve as the only way to account for the differentiation assuming indeterminism?

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

The funny thing about verse 15 is it's preceded by verses 1-14. You've ignored the context. This is not a passage about the mechanism of salvation. It's about God having the right to decide how salvation conveys. To decide how the promise will be inherited. That's the decision that Paul says doesn't depend on human will or exertion, not who gets the inheritance.

In 11 God has hardened Israel, except for a remnant, so of course they were chosen in that situation.

Thanks for the exchange, I don't see any profit in carrying on. May you flourish in conforming to the image of Christ.

[Jonathan Mathew @jpmdathew]

It's not hand waving, I'm just taking the whole letter into account instead of proof-texting.

Two errors:

1) 16 is not a descriptor of the mechanism of salvation, it explains who has the right to set criteria for salvation. "So it depends.." What is the "it"? Paul just got done explaining - it's how the promise is inherited. It's offered by mercy on God's terms - this negates a theoretical claim Israel might stake on kingdom participation. Generalizing this verse to a universal principle or a mechanism of salvation is a leap the text doesn't necessitate.

If we're not talking about a mechanism of salvation, your claims of mode switching are no longer applicable.

2) I wasn't clear enough. 16 isn't where the boundary is prescribed. That comes in chapter 11 when Paul explains how God has prevented much of Israel from coming to faith for a specific purpose of Gentile salvation. This is further explanation of the original question - why isn't all of Israel inheriting the kingdom.