christundivided said:
REBoyce said:
CU, what specifically are you wanting me to answer? And please, leave the vitriol out of the post. I doubt you would act like this if we were chatting over coffee. And also, please make it a question or two. Conversations get muddled when there are multiple issues to explore.
Thanks!
Do you believe in Irresistible Grace and how does this "fit" with your previous statement of
"No biblical Calvinist would every affirm that God forces anyone into a relationship- be it with Him or Satan. "
Well, really it depends on whether or not my understanding of irresistible grace is the same as yours. Too often online and in person we tend to share vocabularies and yet have radically different dictionaries.
For clarity's sake, I'll paste an excerpt from John Piper:
More specifically irresistible grace refers to the sovereign work of God to overcome the rebellion of our heart and bring us to faith in Christ so that we can be saved. If our doctrine of total depravity is true, there can be no salvation without the reality of irresistible grace. If we are dead in our sins, totally unable to submit to God, then we will never believe in Christ unless God overcomes our rebellion.
So to answer the first part of your question, I do indeed affirm the doctrine of irresistible grace insofar as it is "the sovereign work of God to overcome the rebellion of our heart and bring us to faith in Christ so that we can be saved."
Now the second part of your question would be how this affirmation fits with my claims that "no biblical Calvinist would every affirm that God forces anyone into a relationship- be it with Him or Satan."
The reconciliation between the two comments is simple: God overcomes our depravity, rebellion, and continued resistance by removing from us our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh. This is central to the New Covenant, per Ez. 36.
The nature of a regenerate person is faith, repentance, contrition, etc. We now want a relationship with God. And because we want it, it's not coerced. Likewise, the unregenerate is condemned for the sinfulness because, though they were indeed slaves to sin, they sought it out. There was no forcing. Both the believer and unbeliever act volitionally in accordance to their nature.
I suppose you could say "God forced me to love him by granting me spiritual life," but if those are the semantic games we want to play, than God "forced" anything that's ever happened, simply because He created it all.
I hope this answers your question!