Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
Objections to Calvinism, Reformed Answers, and Our Responses || Understanding Reformed Theology || Part 5 of 5
This is Part 5 of a 5 Part series on the evaluation of Reformed Theology, also referred to as Calvinism. We hope you will join us for this complete series.
The age-old theological tension between God's sovereignty and human choice takes center stage in this illuminating episode. We dive deep into the most common criticisms of Reformed Theology and examine how its defenders respond to these challenges.
What happens when someone claims that Reformed Theology makes God unrighteous? How do Reformed thinkers answer the charge that their theology renders human responsibility meaningless? We examine these provocative questions through quotes from prominent Reformed theologians like R.C. Sproul and A.A. Hodge, while carefully evaluating both sides of each argument.
At the heart of this theological divide lies a fundamental question: does regeneration precede faith, or does faith precede regeneration? This seemingly technical distinction dramatically shapes how we understand salvation, God's character, and human responsibility. We explore biblical examples like Cornelius, Rahab, and Ruth that challenge simplistic theological formulations on both sides.
The debate isn't merely academic—it touches on our deepest understanding of God's nature. Is God's love conditional or unconditional? Does His sovereignty mean He chooses some for salvation while leaving others without hope? Or does Scripture reveal a God who genuinely desires all people to be saved while respecting their freedom to reject Him?
Whether you're a committed Calvinist, a convinced Arminian, a consistent Biblicist or simply curious about these theological traditions, this episode offers thoughtful, balanced perspectives that will deepen your understanding of these vital spiritual questions. Listen now to sharpen your theological thinking and gain fresh insights into how we can faithfully reason through Scripture.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Hi, welcome back to Reasoning Through the Bible. This is our series on Reformed Theology and an evaluation of that. We had actually completed this series and then we realized that there's one extra area of content that we really needed to touch on, and so that's what we're going to do today, and we're going to talk about some common back and forth that happened between at least has happened over the years between Arminian type people and reform type people, and so I think once we get into it, it'll be really obvious what we're trying to do. But because reform theology has been out in the world for a good while now, there have been, of course, people that agree with it and strongly support it, and there's other people that disagree with it and don't support it, and so what we wanted to do was to kind of have a touch of the flavor amongst some of those disagreements. And again, as we've said before, this whole topic has a lot of arms and legs and a lot of tentacles, and we could be here for many moons going over, and there's ministries that do that. There's ministries that spend full time going back and forth on all these issues.
Speaker 1:We're not going to do that, but what we are going to do today is have some claims that have been made by people that disagree with Reformed theology. What are their claims? What are their accusations about Reformed theology? And then what has been some typical responses from Reformed theology? How do the Reformed people defend themselves? So that's really what we're going to talk about and I think it'll be real clear as we get into this. But the pattern's going to be this we're going to have a claim that people that disagree with Reformed theology what do they claim? What's the accusation against Reformed theology? We'll have several quotes in answer from Reformed people and then at the end of that, steve and I will have a conversation, or just a quick back and forth about what we think, which side we think is fair or if we think you know what. So that's really kind of the idea, right, steve? Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:And I think you have some things written out here that you're going to go through right.
Speaker 1:Right and, like before, we'll have a claim and then we may have some quotes that we have. Some of them may be a little long, but again, hang in there. We just wanted to be fair to the people that teach this. So the first claim against Reformed theology that happens is sort of a gut reaction from a lot of people is that when they hear the idea of God selecting some, that God sovereignly picking some for salvation and not others, one of the accusations is that, well, that just doesn't seem like a righteous thing for God to do. The accusation is well, that just doesn't seem right that God would pick some and not others, especially when we have teaching where everybody said well, god's righteous and God, he's love. So it would seem that God should love everyone and he ought to love everybody equally. And the claim against Reformed theology would be that it's just not a righteous thing for God to pick some and not others. It's not fair, it wouldn't be righteous of God to look across the landscape of people, all of which were lost, none of which could choose him, and he's going to select some and not others. It just seems like an arbitrary thing. That would speak to the character of God, with God being unrighteous in that choosing.
Speaker 1:So what is the response from Reformed people? I'm going to quote some people here. There was an Archibald Alexander Hodge that if you really want a good summary of Reformed theology, look up a book by AA Hodge called Outlines of Theology. I think it's in the public domain now. It's out there. It was written for laypeople and answers a lot of these kind of questions. But here's a quote from Archibald Alexander Hodge.
Speaker 1:Quote God righteously deals with the sinner according to the measure of his responsibility and not according to the measure of his sinful inability. So what he means there is that God is righteous and holy and he deals with sinful people according to the measure of their responsibility is what he says. So what he's meaning there in that regard. But they had the capacity to respond to God and they decided not to. They had the responsibility to follow God and they didn't. So he deals with them to the measure of their sinfulness measure of their sinfulness. It would have been unrighteous of God to lower his standards and then allow some people to come in without again regenerating them and not others. So let me quote another just to kind of make clear this Reformed theology would say we know we're right in this, against this accusation of God's unrighteousness, because over in Romans, chapter 9, specifically verses 14 and 15, paul presents this idea of election and he responds to the exact same accusation that's made by the Arminians.
Speaker 1:In this accusation that God's not fair. There's unrighteousness in God. So in Romans 9, paul has this hypothetical argument and he says is there unrighteousness in God? And he concludes may it never be. God has the right to do what he wants to do with his creation. He can choose Jacob if he wants and not choose Esau if he doesn't want. But there's no unrighteousness in God, he says may it never be. God is always righteous.
Speaker 1:The Reformed theologian would say the Bible teaches all people have already made a free choice.
Speaker 1:They've freely chosen to walk away from God.
Speaker 1:It says in Romans 3.11, quote there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God, unquote.
Speaker 1:So therefore the Bible teaches the Reformed theologian would say people have already freely chosen. The fair part was God gave them the choice in the first place and every last one of them freely chose to walk away from God and as a result of the fall, they exercised their free will to suppress the truth Romans 118. So they are now of their own, freely suppressing the truth that God predetermined to save some but not others reflects his goodness, because he didn't have to save any. So the reformed person would say God is fully righteous. He doesn't lower his standards to let everybody in, but his goodness backs off and lets some in out of his grace. So that would be a typical response. So, steve, your thoughts? Is that an adequate response or is the accusation fair? When they say there's this idea of a reformed theology of God picking some and not others, is that a righteous God expressing his goodness or is this an expression of God? That's just sort of unrighteous and unfair.
Speaker 2:Well, my first thought is that you've used the term Arminian, and I know that that's used quite often by people of the Calvinists or Reformed. If you're talking to them and they will throw that out very quickly oh, you're an Arminian. And I can tell you that the vast amount of people have no idea what the arguments were between Arminius and Calvin and to then label them as Arminian. They have no idea what you're even accusing them of, and that happened with me as well. I don't even know who Arminius is. I do now, but at the time, in my earlier youth, didn't know who Arminius was or what he did. And so somebody saying you're an Arminian? Well, I don't know if I am or not. All I'm doing is going off of what scripture says.
Speaker 2:The other thought that I have is is that this question of that God is not fair? I think that this is something that is thrown up and put forward by the Reformed people, and we include the Calvinists in that. Obviously, that is an argument from the other side of God's not fair and I don't think it has anything to do with fairness. I think that it has to do with God's character as far as his character that we're shown in the Bible is one of love mercy, going to the point of becoming human in order to provide a satisfactory sacrifice. And so, yes, by all means, god can do whatever he chooses to do.
Speaker 2:But does his scripture really come back and say that he acts that way? And I think that we have plenty of scripture to show that, no, that he is open to people to come to him and that there's not arbitrariness on his side, but that he wants everybody to come to him. And there's going to be some specific things here in the next topic that we're going to talk about that I don't want to deal with here. But this argument of whether God is fair we've talked about this that there is a famous video of RC Sproul in his church and raising this question of saying people against Reformed theology say that God is not. And then he pauses and the whole congregation says fair.
Speaker 3:And so Paul now raises a rhetorical question that is unthinkable. What then? Is there unrighteousness in God? Why does he raise it Again? He's anticipating your response, my response, the response of his Roman readership to what he's just been setting forth, beginning in chapter 8 and now into chapter 9, when he's talking about the sovereignty of God in election, where God, according to the good pleasure of His will to establish His own sacred purpose, chooses Jacob and not Esau, not based on anything foreseen in their behavior, not based on anything that they did or would do in the future, but simply that the purposes of God according to election, might stand. He makes this decree Now. As soon as he makes a radical statement like that, he can hear the hisses and the boos coming from the gallery. You can almost hear his audience rise to their feet, spontaneously, screaming in anger, saying that's not what Fair? It certainly seems like it's not fair that if, for no reason found in Jacob, no reason found in Esau, god chooses one over the other. Does that seem fair to you?
Speaker 2:the other. Does that seem fair to you? To me, it's something that the Reformed theologians put forward as an accusation from people that push back against Reformed theology. That again, I think it's not a characterization of God's fairness. It's whether or not God's character that we're giving in Scripture, if that's being represented in a right way with Reformed theology. And so this argument putting forth over and over again that the Armenians or the people that push back, they say that God's not fair when they come back with their arguments such as what you read here to me it's a moot point, because I don't really think that that's what the people that push back against Reformed theology are talking about. It's more about God's character itself and what the Bible teaches about God's character.
Speaker 1:My response to again the back and forth that we presented a minute ago. I would say this question that Paul poses in Romans 9, verses 14 and 15, is there unrighteousness in God? I would say that the strict Reformed people are correct in one sense and incorrect in another. They are correct in that that is indeed what Paul is asking and his response is along the lines of the typical Reformed person's response. His hypothetical question in Romans 9, 14, and 15, is there unrighteousness in God? The Reformed person has understood that correctly. He's proposed something People seem to say well, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:That doesn't seem to me to be fair. And Paul is saying is there unrighteousness in God? May it never be. God can do what he wants to. Thank you very much. He can choose Jacob and not Esau. So in that sense the Reformed people have gotten that correct. Unfortunately, they've missed the whole topic of the chapter. If Romans is anything, it's organized and salvation was settled in Romans, chapter 4 and 5.
Speaker 1:Romans 9, 10, and 11 are not talking about salvation. It is quite clearly talking about the nation Israel, and Jacob and Esau are nations. The nation Israel and Jacob and Esau are nations. And if we yes, if we wrench a text. From its context, we can make it say lots of things, but Romans 9 is just not talking about salvation. Yes, it poses the question in the full sense of the word. Who are we to question God? He can do with Jacob and Esau what he likes. Now the Reformed people would say well, if he can do it with a nation, he can do it with a person. Well, yeah, sure, nobody's arguing capacity of God. God could turn us all into rabbits and robots. He's got the power to do that. But what does he actually do? He doesn't do that and what he actually does is give us the chance to have faith or not, which is quite clear from the passage.
Speaker 1:The Romans three verses that are always brought up again we deal with that when we deal with the dead and trespasses and sins say nothing about whether God's Holy Spirit will give some light to all people or generally draw all people to trust God. Yes, it says none seek after God and none understand. It says nothing about how much God will draw all men to himself. And when we add to that again, faith is not a work which we deal in this series with. Faith is not a work of righteousness. So I that again, faith is not a work which we deal in this series with. Faith is not a work of righteousness. So I think, yes, it's somewhat of a legitimate question to ask this question how could God be fair when he selects some and not others? But the Reformed people, I think, are somewhat correct in the sense that God only does righteous things and whatever he does is going to be good. I just think that it's. The whole unconditional election thing is just a misunderstanding of scripture.
Speaker 2:And I agree totally with what you said. I want to add to my comments in that here in the accusation, it's not fair for God to love some and not others. See, that's not the question that's being pushed back on the Reformed theology. It's not a question of God loving some over others. There are people that don't want to have anything to do with God. That's a known fact. There's really no argument in that.
Speaker 2:But Scripture depicts God loving the world so much as I put before that he took on the form of humanity in order to pay that satisfactory sacrifice. So the pushback is that God loves everybody to the point that he will come and sacrifice himself for them. The fact that some want to follow him and others don't, it doesn't have anything to do with God's love for them. It's what they have decided to do.
Speaker 2:And where the reformed theology gets it wrong is, as we've mentioned in our previous sessions is that they believe in regeneration before faith. So when you get to that theology, then you bring God into the equation of saying I'm going to regenerate this person before they will believe in me, but I'm not going to regenerate this other person so that they will believe in me, and then this is how they form. This, I think, would be a straw man of this. Well, god's not fair. It's them coming up with this question of fairness whenever the actual pushback is no, god loves the human race in general. There's consequences to sin, but he loves the human race in general so much that he came himself in order to be a satisfactory sacrifice for them.
Speaker 1:Moving on to the next claim against Reformed theology goes like this you guys over in Reformed I'm speaking as if I was disagreeing so you guys over in reformed theology say that people are sinners and have no capacity to respond to God, that you're dead in trespasses and sins, unable to respond to God, but then God would hold people responsible for that. So how could God hold people responsible for rejecting him if they're incapable of responding in faith? How can God punish someone who has no ability to act otherwise and without giving them a real opportunity to respond Again? That would present a God that is holding people responsible for something that they're incapable of responding to. So in response to that accusation again back to reform theologians have responded to this over the years. Wgt said, quote the inability is voluntary in the sense that it is the consequence of an act of self-determination. Another one let me quote one of the modern teachers, rc Sproul, because he just said it in a way that was clear. Quote God has given us minds and hearts and he's given us wills, and we exercise that will all the time. We make choices every minute of the day, and we choose what we want. We're free from coercion, but we're not free from ourselves. We're not free from our own sinful inclinations and our sinful appetites and our sinful desires. We're slaves to our sinful impulses. Let me give one more. This is Archibald.
Speaker 1:Alexander Hodge, who was quoting the Augsburg Confession, says this quote responsible for their obedience to God's law. But the moral state of these faculties is such, because of the perverted dispositions of their hearts, that they are utterly unable either to will or to do what the law requires. So what they're basically saying there is the same thing. That, like a Jonathan Edwards who was in the Reformed tradition, who would say that we don't have the desire to change, it's again when we went through the quotes.
Speaker 1:What the reform guys are saying is that people have the moral free will. What they don't have is the moral capacity to choose, that they don't have the desire to choose it. Nothing's changed in their physical abilities, things like that. What's changed with sin is that they don't have the desire. So Jonathan Edwards would describe salvation as a desire transplant. You take somebody that has all the ability to choose, they just don't want to choose, and God changes their desire. So now that they want to choose God, and that would be the reform response. So, steve, what do we do with that? Do we say that's a reasonable response, or is it kind of a word game?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's both. I don't think it's reasonable and I do think it's a word game Many times when you're using or talking with Reformed theologians using the same words but with a different dictionary. So you have to understand what dictionary they're using as to what particular words mean meaning their Reformed way of thinking. We gave an example of Cornelius and Lydia in our former sessions on this, and Cornelius says that he was a God-fearer and that he gave alms and he had a desire to worship God, and this was before he became a believer in Jesus Christ. Peter came and visited him, shared the gospel with him and he then became a believer in Jesus Christ. At that point he was saved. So we have those examples in Scripture as to people that have the desire to worship God. We have them also in the Old Testament where they want to worship God.
Speaker 2:When the spies went into Rahab for Jericho, she said the people in this town are scared to death of your God because they know what your God has done for them. All the way back to you coming out of Egypt, they knew about the parting of the Red Sea, they knew about the conquest that they had made across the east side of the Jordan River. So the knowledge of God and who he was and what he was to the nation of Israel, the people was scaring the people in Jericho to death. They had the knowledge of who God was. Now their desire to follow Yahweh was not there, but there was with Rahab. Rahab recognized who God was and she made this deal with the spies to save her and her family because she had the desire to follow their God. Ruth is another one. She had the desire to follow Naomi's God. I'm going to go where you're going to go. Your God's going to be my God. Where you live, I'm going to live. Where you die, I'm going to die.
Speaker 2:So scripture tells us that people have this desire, and I believe that there's cherry picking that is done by the reformformed side to take out certain verses and try and put forth this idea that nobody at all ever desires to want God. And it comes back once again to their theology of regeneration before faith. See, as long as they have that in their mind, then they have to justify it, and I think they justify it by coming up with things like this that say no man wants to ever come to the knowledge of God and become a believer in God. I, at the age of eight years old. I, at the age of eight years old, wanted to follow God and I became a believer. And my story is not unique. It goes across the gamut of all people that at some point a person decides I want to follow Jesus Christ, I want to become a believer. How they get to that point are different ways and different methods. So I reject this blanket statement that they make that nobody can come or desires to follow God.
Speaker 2:I think Scripture tells us over and over again there are certain people that do desire to follow God and they follow with it. Now I'll agree that the vast majority of people don't desire to follow God and they follow with it. Now I'll agree that the vast majority of people don't want to follow God, just like the people at Jericho. All of them perished, with exception of Rahab and her family. So, even though they had the knowledge of God, they didn't want to follow God. And we have that example. But Rahab sticks out, along with Cornelius and Lydia.
Speaker 1:My response to that back and forth would be this there's some of the things that I would agree with the Reformed theologians with and some things I would disagree.
Speaker 1:The Reformed people I would agree with when they say that the Bible teaches that God is good in all his ways, and a Reformed person would support that God is good in all his ways. Therefore what he does is good, and I would agree. I would also agree with the Reformed theologian in the sense that all people, all people, have already made a choice. They already made a choice to reject God and therefore God is just. If we look at God's justice, he's just if he condemned all people if he wanted to, and I would say the reformed person's right with that. The question and here's where the rub comes in is not so much whether God is just in condemning the lost that have again already made a free choice to sin. The question the theological rub comes here Is God's goodness, is the good part of God's nature? Does that require God to offer salvation to everyone, or can God still be good and only offer salvation to some? And I think that's a dilemma for the strict Reformed person and it may be a dilemma for a Universalist. But it's not a dilemma for those of us that hold that accepting salvation and the exercising of faith is not a work of righteousness. For those of us that hold that belief is not a work of righteousness, then it's not a dilemma to say that God is, on one hand, perfectly just if he condemns all men but he also offers salvation to everyone. That's only a dilemma for a strict Reed person. And they try to split the horns of the dilemma by saying that, well, god's good in all he does, but it really doesn't get them out of the dilemma. The only way God's goodness could really be exercised is if he offered the salvation to all men. God punishes people for voluntarily sinning and refusing to repent. That's what he punishes people for. He doesn't punish people because they didn't have a chance to respond. He punishes them because they already responded and chose to not repent. That's what he punishes people for. So just leave, leave that. But lastly, I would just say the reformed theologian's response may show all people sinful, but doesn't really prove limited atonement. Those passages out of romans 3 yes, people are sinful, but that doesn't prove limited atonement, at least there anyways.
Speaker 1:Moving on to the next one, the claim number three. What is this? That God predetermines who will be saved and who will be damned and there's nothing we can do about it. That's what the accusation is against Reformed theology. Let me just repeat the accusation is that Reformed theology has a God that just predetermines from all eternity who's going to be saved and who's going to be damned, and the people that are involved, the human lives that are involved, have nothing they can do about it. It's just God with pieces on a chessboard and they're just instruments of his folly and the people have no ability to do otherwise.
Speaker 1:So how do the Reformed people respond to this? A Reformed theologian would say that the Bible teaches all people have already freely chosen to walk away from God. Romans 3.11, quote there's none who seeks for God. So they already made a choice. So says the Reformed person.
Speaker 1:Therefore, the Bible teaches people have freely chosen themselves to be damned and that all people have done this.
Speaker 1:Rather than let all people voluntarily be damned, god, out of his goodness and his all-wise purpose, determined that he would save some in salvation. And they would also say a Reformed person would respond and say there's no basic difference between God choosing Paul for a special ministry, or Abraham for a special ministry, or Jacob who's Israel, and not choosing Esau. They would say there's no difference in God choosing all of them for a special purpose and God choosing some for salvation for a special purpose and not choosing others. And so a Reformed person would also respond and say there's no logical or biblical difference between choosing some for a purpose and choosing some for salvation. That the accusation against Reformed theology assumes either some people are morally neutral or that some people want to be saved and cannot. And instead the Reformed theologian would say the Bible teaches nobody wants to be saved, and that the only way those accusations are valid is if somebody out there is either morally neutral or some people have a desire to be saved. And so, steve, what would be your response to that?
Speaker 2:There's a little bit of a theme that's developing in my responses here, because RC Sproul himself said that the crux of Reformed theology is this regeneration before faith, and the regeneration that's done is done completely by God, for that person to have faith in God.
Speaker 3:And the whole dispute is over the question of the order of salvation which comes first faith or being born again.
Speaker 3:Because if there's anything that is unique to Reformed theology, it is the idea that regeneration, or rebirth, precedes faith.
Speaker 3:That is, it's a logical precession, not necessarily a temporal one, but the chicken and the egg here Regeneration comes first and then faith, and that flies in the face of the whole history of modern evangelicalism and the appeal in mass evangelism make a decision, come forward, exercise faith, and then you will be born again. And I think a lot of the confusion here has to do with a misunderstanding of the word rebirth or regeneration. We tend to think of rebirth as the whole new Christian life rather than the very first step, and in Reformed theology we tighten that down and we say no, the first step is the initiative of God, the work that the Holy Spirit performs in our hearts to change our minds, to bring us to Christ, to bring us to faith. And so we say that has to happen first. Just like Paul says one can water, one can plant, another can water, but only God can bring the increase. And so that's where the real collision point is whether man can believe out of the flesh or whether God has to change that heart before we believe.
Speaker 2:Their whole theology surrounds this.
Speaker 2:So while they might take these verses from Scripture that say no one seeks God I just gave examples in my previous answer of three or four people who were seeking God and for them to stay consistent they would have to say well, god regenerated them first for them to be able to seek God.
Speaker 2:And if that's the faith, then logically, following that argument through or that position through means they do not have the ability to come to salvation because it's dependent on God regenerating them before they will come to faith.
Speaker 2:So them coming back and saying well, that's just because no one seeks All right, well then, no one means no one and the people that do become faithful to God and become believers are because God has decided to regenerate them so that they would then believe in him. That destroys their argument of the person not having the ability to do to choose God or not. The logical following of their own theology brings you to this position that there are people that will never come to God because God is not going to regenerate them first, so that don't want to pursue God. But if you go with their theology, then there's a decision being made on who will and who won't, and that decision is solely being made by God, and the other people that continue to not believe in him will never believe in him because he will never regenerate them first so that they could have faith. So to me it's a valid pushback against Reformed theology.
Speaker 1:In order to pose the question this way Steve, you said you had a theme to your answers. I think I've got one to mine as well, because I'm going to agree with part of their answer and disagree with other parts. Again, the accusation was that God is choosing some to be saved and some to be damned, and there's nothing they can do about it. That was how the accusation was phrased and I would agree with the Reformed person in some sense. Is that the recurrent theme of the Bible is that God is not going to be questioned? I mean, that happens. That is a theme in many places of the Bible. In the last part of Job, job spends three dozen chapters or so saying if I could just get God down here across the conference room table, we could reason this thing out. And God shows up and says who do you think you are questioning me? And so there's many places in the Bible where God just says I'm going to do what I'm going to do and I'm not going to ask your opinion. Thank you very much. I would also agree that the phrase nothing they can do about it is a little misleading, because they already have chosen All people have chosen to sin and in that sense they already did do something about it, which was walk away from God.
Speaker 1:Now, where I would disagree with Reformed theology is that I would say that it's not a logical problem to say that God can choose for special service somebody like an Abraham or an Apostle Paul, or choose a Jacob as a nation. It's not incompatible for him to choose those individuals for a special purpose but then turn around and say, well, I'm going to give all people a choice of whether they want to follow or not. There's nothing incompatible with that. There's no logical problem with that. There's no problem with God's nature that that would challenge. I would say that, yes, all people are sinful and left to themselves. We're all going to run away from God. That doesn't tell us that God's not going to draw all men to himself and even draw some more than others. So just because, yes, all people left to themselves are going to sin doesn't mean that limited atonement is true and you only choose part of them, not others. That just doesn't logically follow. And so there's not a theological, neurological incompatibility with saying that God can offer salvation to all and draw all with the Holy Spirit and then leave us to make a choice. That's not a righteous work again, which is what it kind of boils down to Again what we said very early on in this is that there's a very few concepts, just like a large door swings on a small hinge. There's a very small number of concepts that all this theology swings upon, and that's one of them.
Speaker 1:Lastly, one last one accusations that would be by people that disagree with Reformed theology says in Reformed theology you've got a God that arbitrarily chooses some to be saved. You have a God that is in full control of changing some people's hearts but choosing not to. That God wants eternal punishment for lost people for his own glory. That God is out there getting glory by damning people and that Reformed theology presents God as an unloving towards the non-elect and not wanting a relationship with some and the people that would disagree with Reformed theology says that that's just against God's nature, because God is all good and he's not going to get glory out of damning anyone and he's going to be loving towards all and not just loving towards the elect. So how did the again not the first time Reformed theologians have heard this? So let me quote a few responses to this from reformed people.
Speaker 1:Westminster Confession says God only does things out of his quote. Most wise and holy providence unquote. And a couple of quotes from again, modern teacher RC Sproul was a strong, reformed person. Here we must take a distinction between God's doing something for no reason and his doing something for no reason found in us. We say clearly that his grace is given not for any reason in us. But the fact that there is no reason in me for my salvation does not mean there is no reason behind God's action. Scripture actually tells us over and over again that God has a reason behind his choice of some for salvation and his not choosing others for redemption unquote. And here's another quote from the same person, rc Sproul Quote in Ephesians 1.5, we are chosen according to on the basis of the good pleasure of God's will.
Speaker 1:God chooses and elects us according to what kind of pleasure? According to the good pleasure of his will. That word good makes all the difference in the world, because there's no such thing as the bad pleasure of God's will. Unquote. So the idea here is that, yes, the accusation against Reformed theology is that God's arbitrary. He chooses some and not others. He gets some sort of perverse the Reformed definition of God gets some sort of a perverse joy out of getting glory of damning people. And so the Reformed response says oh, didn't you read? We already said from the beginning he does things out of his most wise and holy providence. And just because there's nothing in me doesn't mean that God didn't use some wise choice in choosing some to be elect and not choosing others. So Steve might be a response to that, I imagine not choosing others.
Speaker 2:So Steve might be a response to that, I imagine. Yeah, it's right here in Sproul's word himself. In the first one that you read there, towards the latter part, he says salvation does not mean there is no reason behind God's action. And then in the last sentence he says Scripture tells us over and over again that God has a reason behind his choice of some for salvation and his not choosing others for redemption. So in that particular quote from Sproul he is admitting in his answer that it is God taking action and making those choices. So the pushback above was that God is arbitrarily making these decisions. His response is no, god has a good reason for making the decisions. But the bottom line is it still comes back to God making the decision for some people and not for other people. And Sproul says that there. In that last part Again he says behind his choice of some for salvation and his not choosing others for redemption. So Sproul in that answer there is admitting that from their theology it is totally dependent on God. Then in his second response there that you read, he says there we are chosen according to, on the basis of the good pleasure of God's will from Ephesians 1.5. So I think that the Reformed theology has taken predestination and totally take it out of its original meaning. It means destined. It's predestined for what? And that's the question that we should ask, and we went through some of this whenever we went through our previous sessions. So the bottom line is is that in Reformed theology, line is is that in Reformed theology, god is choosing on his own to save some and to not choose others to save them?
Speaker 2:I think the Bible teaches that God chooses to save those who want to believe in him and does not save those who do not want to believe in them. And it's those people. Their response to God is whether God chooses them or not. My personal view is that when a person becomes a believer and says God, I want to become a believer in you, jesus, I want to become a believer in you and trust on you, god chooses at that time. Is this person sincere? Are they not sincere? And yes, it's a choice for God to accept that desire of the person or not, but it's based off of God's knowledge of whether that person truly wants to become a believer in Jesus Christ. And God chooses. There's no question that God chooses to save and others he doesn't choose, but it's because the others don't come to him and say I want to become a believer in him. So it's set up by the reformers, as noted here. It's an action that God takes prior to anybody ever wanting to show any desire to come to him.
Speaker 2:I believe that the scripture is clear that whenever you come to become a believer or want to become a believer, god will reckon it to righteousness. That's how it's put with Abraham. Abraham believed and God reckoned it as righteousness. Did he reckon it as righteousness before Abraham believed? No, he reckoned it when Abraham believed. So I think that's just one example. I think scripture is clear that when people express a desire, god chooses them to become part of his family and then we get all the benefits of what we're predestined predestined to become in Christ's image and predestined to become adopted and those things. The question should always be predestined for what? Last comment, glenn, you and I are going to do a topical study on justification, sanctification and glorification and I think it's going to be a great study. A topical study because I believe, along with others, that the Reformed theology gets many things related to sanctification mixed up with justification. So be looking for that topical study that we're going to be doing on those three items.
Speaker 1:My response to this. Again, the accusations were that God is unloving towards the non-elect and he doesn't want a relationship with some and that he's arbitrary in choosing some and not others. The Reform guy's basic answer was God always does things that are wise, and just because there's nothing in me that shows doesn't mean he didn't have a reason. I would agree that God does wise things. The problem is is that just has a ring to it and a smell about it. That's an incomplete answer. It's a definition of God doing wise things, but it's not able to carry it out in practice. For example, if there really is nothing in me on why I was chosen to be a Christian or not, then how could God make a wise choice to choose me? In other words, think of it this way you have, for example, a general in a war, and maybe this general has 20,000 troops under him and he says I want you to take 100 of those troops and go attack the enemy, and the captain says, well, which 100? He says, oh, I don't care any hundred. Well, that's an arbitrary choice. If, on the other hand, he says, no, I want you to take any names off the hundred names, well then he selected them, and it just doesn't seem to me that you can say it's wise and not arbitrary. It's wise and not arbitrary Either he's selecting specific people or he's choosing any hundred to go attack the enemy, in which case it could have been any different hundred. So it's just really hard to see how both of those are true. You're defining a choice as wise without giving any criteria for it to be wise. In other words, it's wise by definition, but not by ability to carry this out.
Speaker 1:And I would just say, yes, god is in full control of changing some people's hearts, but what does he actually do? And so, steve, we said early on that this had a lot of arms and tentacles and we're not going to be able to satisfy this. We've probably already lost some people, and there's several sections in this. So if you're interested and you're still here by now listen to all of them. We're going to do the best we can to even go through the Bible passages. We're going to do the best we can to even go through the Bible passages. And I would just wrap this up by saying that we've probably already lost a good number of the people that their eyes glazed over a long time ago. Steve, I would say, if we're going to do a session on justification, sanctification and glorification, we ought to do one on multiplication, because I'm getting lost in all of this and we ought to get back to Bible study that I can understand. So I trust that this was beneficial to you and keep with us as we continue to reason through it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening, as always. May God bless you.
