You Must Be a Calvinist or an Arminian!

I would identify with the Calvinist camp, because God is sovereign. However, I also allow that the Bible seems to indicate that each person has to respond to God’s call, and being an Amyraldist, I believe that Christ died for all men. So…

When people ask me, “Did God choose us or do we choose Him?” I say, “Yes.” So I would disagree with the apparent contradiction in the statement “Either God is the ultimate decider: He gets all glory. Or the sinner is the ultimate decider: he deserves to share in that glory”

God DOES get all the glory, because He is God. I think the word they were looking for is possibly “credit”? As in, who gets the credit for our salvation: do we claim credit by virtue of choosing God, or does He get sole credit for choosing us? I would say that we both have a part in it.

Also, I take exception to the word “deserve.” The sinner deserves nothing more than an eternity of punishment in hell. Period.

Steve,

Arminians believe God is sovereign also!

Read Olson’s book on Arminian Theology, Myth 5, or read Arminius himself.

They too believe He is Sovereign!

KML

I was not stating that Arminians don’t believe in the sovereignty of God. My emphasis was on the sovereignty of God as compared with the free will of man.

Commenting on Combs’ article, Dan Phillips of Team Pyro had this to say:

either God’s choice of me is the result of my choice of Him, or my choice of Him is the result of His choice of me. There’s no middle-ground that isn’t exclusively populated by weasels.

While the comment was made in jest, the ideology supporting it is serious. I wouldn’t actually classify those who have tried to create a middle way on this thread as weasels, but I would reiterate that their arguments are fatally flawed. The divide is really as simple as these men (Combs, Phillipts, et al.) have articulated, and it’s absolutely binary.

[Chip Van Emmerik]

Commenting on Combs’ article, Dan Phillips of Team Pyro had this to say:

either God’s choice of me is the result of my choice of Him, or my choice of Him is the result of His choice of me. There’s no middle-ground that isn’t exclusively populated by weasels.

While the comment was made in jest, the ideology supporting it is serious. I wouldn’t actually classify those who have tried to create a middle way on this thread as weasels, but I would reiterate that their arguments are fatally flawed. The divide is really as simple as these men (Combs, Phillipts, et al.) have articulated, and it’s absolutely binary.

Chip,

Dan Phillips and I agree to disagree on some things and this would be one (He agrees that I’m wrong and I agree he’s wrong!). As I have said above, the issue is not as clear-cut as some would have it. This is because the issue (for me at least) is in the basic formulations of the ideas. Anyway, nuff said.

Paul H