Free Will in the Westminster Confession of Faith

[fhansen]

Completely lose his ability to choose? This we would deny anyway.

 

[Vonsalza]

You are repeating things already shown to be wrong.

I am done talking to you.

Is it fair to say where we’ve ultimately hung-up is your insistence that “free will” as classically defined and the “free will” presented in the Confession are supposedly the same but my position is “no way, Jose!!!”???

Fair assessment?

 

[Thom18]

Statements about God are statements about God. It was not a false charge. It was blasphemy.

Statements about Allah and Vishnu and Zeus are also “statements about God”- if I said that any of these gods are unjust, would you consider that blasphemy? Or should we only consider it blasphemous to make false statements about the one true God?

If I make a correct observation about our God or a false god, that wouldn’t be blasphemous to us or them, would it? Blasphemy has to be a falsehood, doesn’t it? I’m sorry to say that, according to Calvinist theology, God is unjust. This isn’t us saying that God is unjust, it’s us saying that God, as you describe Him, is unjust- and we don’t believe that God is who you say He is.

Now, I don’t get the impression that Vonsalza actually believes that God is unjust (and I certainly don’t). What he’s saying (and what I echo) is that Calvinists portray God as unjust- even though Calvinists don’t use that word to describe Him, and even though God actually isn’t unjust. Calvinist theology is contradictory, claiming that God isn’t unjust, while describing His dealings with our fallen race as extremely unjust.

We have a problem with this portrayal of God, so we call it out for what it is. There’s nothing blasphemous about it- we’re not the ones saying, “No, God isn’t unjust!” while painting Him as wicked (which, I’m sorry to say, is how Calvinists describe our merciful, just Lord).

 

[guanophore]

You are repeating things already shown to be wrong.

You don’t believe that God gives everyone sufficient grace to be saved?

 

[guanophore]

No, he said that the “Calvinist God” is unjust. He obviously doesn’t believe in your idea of who God is. Like I said, we see the Calvinist idea of God as a caricature of the true God.

Statements about God are statements about God. It was not a false charge. It was blasphemy.

Disagreement with Calvin’s idea of God is now blasphemy!? I never knew that Reformed Christians held Calvin in such I regard!

 

[Vonsalza]

No kidding; I have an old seminary buddy that was bitten by the Calvinist bug about the same time I was.
He named his first son after Calvin.