jlay wrote:No-one, including Calvinists, deny that one has to believe in order to be saved.
I would beg to differ. Because the word believe is being equivocated to suit the argument. Without question the position that PL presents is that belief is a result of salvation. The believer is programed for belief. It is the unavoidable response to regeneration which has already occurred. In this case, everything follows. God regenerates the person. Then they believe, which is a determined response. I would say that for many here, that definition of belief is far different.
jlay, I agree and disagree.
Belief is defined the same way no matter how we come to belief. It is warranted intellectual, spiritual and emotional consent to a stated fact. We have to be convinced that something is true before we believe it. So is belief faith? One cannot have faith in something which one does not believe.
I think you are mixing up some terms here too. PL, nor any Calvinist, is arguing that belief is a result of salvation. Salvation is not an event, it is a process, and belief, or faith, if you want, is but one part of that process.
You are correct that we believe that regeneration precedes faith. That gets back to the the whole natural state of man discussion. I don't think our beliefs on that are that much different either, as both Wesley and Arminius seemed to affirm depravity, and the necessity of grace and the work of the Spirit so that man is able to believe. The big point of contention is whether that grace was prevenient, or common, grace, as the two gents whom I mentioned argued, or special grace, as Calvinism argues. While Calvinism does not dispute that God is good to all people, and that even fallen man experiences some of the goodness of God, we do argue that that is not the grace that causes one to be reborn. That grace is specific to the elect, those which God "rips out the the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh", where the blinders are removed, and in which the Spirit moves so that they may perceive the things of the Spirit.
And yes, once one is moved by the Spirit, then one cannot deny that which the Spirit reveals, the grace of God, and one is able to emotionally, spiritually and intellectually understand the choices before him, and by virtue of having felt the Spirit move in oneself, cannot deny the power of God. I know that my individual experience is not representative or normative, but I have both seen and experienced the emotional movement of the Spirit in people when hearing the gospel. I cannot reconcile that sudden outburst of emotion and surrender with the same persons that walked in the room just minutes before. The change is just too profound to be natural.
I would argue that all responses are programmed, unless anyone can show that indeterminism is true. We have three options: Determinism, where the actualization of choices are pre-determined and can be no different (which you are arguing is the position of Calvinism), indeterminism, where choices are made independent of any influence or determinants whatsoever, or self-determinism, where the person, subject to his background, character, circumstances and external influences, make a decision by himself.
Calvinism, and I think most of Christianity (except Pelagianism), holds to self-determinism or compatibility. Our response to specific choices are always subject to who we are (unless indeterminism is true), what we have heard, what our belief system is, what our character is like, where we grew up, what we do and our spiritual state. In that sense, your argument of being pre-programmed holds true for both cases. You just argue that we are wrong because we say that there is a special intervention by the Spirit upon the hearing of the gospel that compels us to accept the gift of the atonement. However, that we already have some kind of influence that compels us to actualize a choice is inarguable (except in the case of indeterminsim). What proof is there that 1. there is no special intervention by the Spirit upon hearing the gospel, and 2. that without that intervention, one is able to understand and accept the full weighty importance of the atonement? I would argue that the Scriptural proof shows the opposite, that the gospel as Gods decree for how He chooses to save His people carries with it a special spiritual power, and that without that, no-one is able to understand.
In fact, we argue from Scripture that man cannot understand that which is spiritually discerned without the power of the Spirit (1 Cor 2:14). Acts 7:51, for example, say that we always resist the Spirit, Rom 8:7 says the carnal mind is the mortal enemy of God. How then are we to believe that such a person can come to an intellectual, spiritual and emotional conviction of the gravity, importance and love that is the gospel? Unbroken sin is the result of a character that stands in complete opposition to God, as a result of the condition is which we are born. It is in our makeup, and we cannot change that by ourselves.
In one sense, we see grace resisted all the time, and it is only against that backdrop that we can speak of the irresistible grace that makes effective the hearing of the gospel. Just recently, with the death of Hitchens, we saw that resistance. He must have heard the gospel hundreds or thousands of times, yet he resisted forcefully and expressively. Why did he not come to believe? (Disclaimer: If in fact he did not). He was no different than any other man, he grew up in church, his brother is a Christian and he understood the gospel, yet he did not consent, whereas many others do, when they first hear the gospel. I saw this personally as a missionary in Africa. There was no advantage for Hitchens to be gained from his person, from who he was and his attributes, even if he was highly intelligent, had heard the gospel many times, and knew the dire consequences of not believing.
One may here say that in the Calvinist scheme it was predetermined by God that he should not believe. This would not be inconsistent with Scripture, where we read of the hardening of hearts and vessels of destruction prepared for the glory of God. That would only be part of the story though. Hitchens did not believe because he was never moved to do so. In his natural state, despite having heard the gospel, knew the consequences and intellectually and emotionally understood them, he was not spiritually moved. In fact, one may even say it appears that he was programmed not to believe, so unbelievable it seems. In reality though, it was that he remained in his natural state. He was spiritually blind. He could not actualize a belief in God, because he did not desire it. There was no movement from his natural state towards God, yet logic dictates that having heard the best arguments of Christianity, having heard the gospel, even being friends with Christians, it should have been a no-brainer, he should have accepted the atonement. He had more opportunities to do so than most.
Was he unable, or unwilling, or unwilling because he was unable? Was his will the cause or effect of his unbelief? It cannot be both, as many here want to argue. Something cannot be its own cause. Logically ability precedes will. I can will to jump to the moon (the choice is there), but logically I know that I don't have the ability (cannot actualize the choice, so the choice is useless). Only a change in my ability allows me to make a valid choice, I can jump to the moon if I so choose. (If this does happen, does anyone know a good basketball agent?). In the same way, if we are spiritually unable to accept the atonement (actualize the decision by entering into a relationship with Christ), then the choice is irrelevant. Once our ability changes, then we can make the choice. John 1:13, Eze 37:14 and many others.
A quick word about indeterminism...as it seems from how some here define free will that that is what they believe the will of man is. When talking about choice, one should distinguish between the possibility of choices, and the actualization of choices. The term means no
causally sufficient circumstances to actualize a choice. Under normal circumstances, one would presume that everything that happens, is determined because of something that happened before. Indeterminism states that the universe at any specific moment is totally independent of its state in any prior moment. Successive events are never causally related in any way.
We can immediately see that this is not acceptable in any way, shape or form to the Christian. It just doesn't work on so many levels. Creation was then not the cause of the universe. The atonement as a historical fact is then of no consequence. God's love for us does not matter, as it cannot cause us to experience His love for us, or love Him or one another. As far as the argument at hand, it would be preposterous to argue then that God is causally responsible for our ontology, yet indeterministic when it comes to our spiritual, emotional and intellectual response to the gospel call. We know that there is preceding causes for us to be able to respond. We have a spirit, given by God breathing it into us and we have heard the gospel. In fact, we are told that faith comes by hearing (a cause).
We know God says that His word does not return empty (Is 55:11). That means the word is the cause of something, and it is to achieve the purpose for which God sent it out. Leaving the choice to an indeterministic spirit means that it may well return empty (no-one knows since there is no cause and effect), and it will not accomplish Gods purpose.
Sorry for the long answer, but I think we need to see a few things:
1. We are not as far apart as many think we are.
2. We need to be careful how we define things, as BW and others have said, and make sure we understand the implications of our definitions from a Biblical perspective.
3. That soundbytes and prooftexts are essentially used as debate mechanisms, and we should always attempt to understand as completely as we can.
I know that not everyone will agree with what I wrote here, but the purpose is for me to be clear about what Calvinism is and isn't.