Proveing Universal Salvation the easy way!

[WhiteWings]

I talked to a Calvinist one time and asked her, "If God can save all people [and she believed he could], and he desires to [I believe I used 1 Timothy 2:4], then why doesn't he?"

Her reply was: "Well, that's just desire [that is, it's JUST God's desire]. That's something different."

Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

2656 #p,xe chephets {khay'-fets}
Meaning:  1) delight, pleasure 1a) delight 1b) desire, longing 1c) the good pleasure 1d) that in which one takes delight

No further comment needed I guess.

[legoman]

With that, they must face two possibilities: 1) either they believe God can do all his pleasure by saving everyone only he does not want to, which contradicts the first scripture saying he DOES want to  or 2) they must say that God does want to save everyone, but cannot which contradicts the second scripture.

Even if they find ways to twist either the first or second scripture, they still have to deal with that dilemma and those scriptures underline the dilemma which is completely solved by saying "God does want all to be saved and he both can and will do all his pleasure."

Most of the time, when an ETer sees this reasoning, they will obfuscate, try to change the subject, or bring other scriptures in to stall you out (by trying to make scriptures compete against themselves.) But the dilemma will never change as long as they teach that either God wants to but cannot, or can but does not want to.

Again, this will not be taken as proof by them, but it will at least get them thinking and will establish that it is not the URer who is confused.

I talked to a Calvinist one time and asked her, "If God can save all people [and she believed he could], and he desires to [I believe I used 1 Timothy 2:4], then why doesn't he?"

Her reply was: "Well, that's just desire [that is, it's JUST God's desire]. That's something different."

Either God has two natures waring against each other, a will to eternally lose certain men, and a will to eternally save all men, what she said was a blatant absurdity. Unless she accepts the option I just suggested (that God must have two warring natures), she would have to accept that God is not all powerful.

Have you guys read Arthur Pink's "Sovereignty of God" before?  It is quite a good read; long, sometimes wordy, but still good to read.  Gives you some perspective on things.  IMHO It gets a lot of things right about God's sovereigty.  The flaw of course is they believe God predestines billions into hell -> which leads to Calvinism.

If a Calvinist is honest, they will flat out tell you God doesn't love everyone.  They will say God does get all He desires, but they change the meaning of 1 Tim 2:4 to be "all sorts of men" will be saved.  The whole Calvinist system is very internally consistent.  They don't believe God is all-loving, but only loves the elect.  Why would He love those in hell?

Where it becomes inconsistent is when they try to reconcile it with all the UR type scriptures.  Word twisting is always needed.  They also have problems if you point out God could have predestined all the Calvinists to hell, and there's not one thing they could do about it.  They could just be all under a strong delusion.  Try pointing that out the next time you talk to a Calvanist, Tim!  :happygrin:

The problem is there is a lot of "half-Calvinists" out there.  They want to be part of the "cool Calvinist club", but can't fully stomach the logical conclusions of the full doctrine - namely that God doesn't want to save everyone and purposely predestines people to hell.  Sounds like you talked to one of these "half-Calvinists" Tim.

[Seth]

Well, like I said, with a Calvinist, as I am sure you will agree, their internal consistency runs afoul of the pain spoken word when it comes to who Christ died for.

That is why the concept of "limited atonement" Will come up in a conversation like this. Yet, you can, and I have, show them the Scriptures that show that Christ died for everyone who ever lived. They deny that Christ died for every single person, because if if they confirmed it then they would have to say that God does indeed WANT everyone to be saved. That puts them in a precarious position. That is why "limited atonement" was invented, which by the way is considered a severe heresy to non-Calvinists.

[Seth]

One of the Calvenist proof texts for limited atonement is this:

Matthew 26:28
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins

A Calvanist tried to use that to say that Christ did not die for all but only for many. Nice try. If someone tries to say that to you, you can demonstrate that "all" and "many" are not mutually exclusive. As I told him, all the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the beach constitute many stars and many grains.

Many is simply a "great number of...." and "all" or "the whole world" constitutes many people. Needless to say, he obfuscated and ignored me.

[legoman]

Well, like I said, with a Calvinist, as I am sure you will agree, their internal consistency runs afoul of the pain spoken word when it comes to who Christ died for.

That is why the concept of "limited atonement" Will come up in a conversation like this. Yet, you can, and I have, show them the Scriptures that show that Christ died for everyone who ever lived. They deny that Christ died for every single person, because if if they confirmed it then they would have to say that God does indeed WANT everyone to be saved. That puts them in a precarious position. That is why "limited atonement" was invented, which by the way is considered a severe heresy to non-Calvinists.

Yes I agree.

You can show them 1 John 2:2 "Christ is the sacrifice for our sins, and non only for ours, but for the sins of the whole world", and they will boldly say "obviously whole world cannot mean every single individual".

And their reason?  Because that would mean all are saved!  They fully acknowledge that Christ's sacrifice fully covers what it was intended to cover, but they argue it was only intended to cover the elect.

Its amazing to see someone walk that close to the truth and completely miss it.  :happy3:

[legoman]

One of the Calvenist proof texts for limited atonement is this:

Matthew 26:28
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins

A Calvanist tried to use that to say that Christ did not die for all but only for many. Nice try. If someone tries to say that to you, you can demonstrate that "all" and "many" are not mutually exclusive. As I told him, all the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the beach constitute many stars and many grains.

Many is simply a "great number of...." and "all" or "the whole world" constitutes many people. Needless to say, he obfuscated and ignored me.

A lot of the scriptures about the elect are used as proof-texts for limited atonement.  For example Romans 8:29 talking about those He forknew being predestined to be conformed to His image.  They assume this means the rest will never be saved. 

They assume:
elect = predestined to be saved
non-elect = predestined to be not saved

When really it is this:
elect = predestined to be saved first (and understand God's plan of salvation)
non-elect = predestined to be saved later (and not understand God's plan of salvation - until later)

[Seth]

Yeah particularly the scriptures which say that Jesus died for the Church. They use the same faulty reasoning as they do with "blood shed for many." That a scripture says that Jesus died for the Church, simply references a group of people within the larger "WHOLE world" that Christ died for.

One Calvinist I saw on YouTube rationalized the "whole world" statement to mean basically a figure of speech. He related it to when someone says "I have been sitting here forever" where forever is not literal. So saying that Christ died for the whole world amounted to an exaggeration. Can you believe that?! You probably can. ;-)

The first thing I thought of is: if we are free to interpret the "whole world" as nothing more than an exaggeration, then why wouldn't we also interpret "eternal torment" to be equally an exaggeration? Hmmmmm?

[legoman]

Yeah particularly the scriptures which say that Jesus died for the Church. They use the same faulty reasoning as they do with "blood shed for many." That a scripture says that Jesus died for the Church, simply references a group of people within the larger "WHOLE world" that Christ died for.

One Calvinist I saw on YouTube rationalized the "whole world" statement to mean basically a figure of speech. He related it to when someone says "I have been sitting here forever" where forever is not literal. So saying that Christ died for the whole world amounted to an exaggeration. Can you believe that?! You probably can. ;-)

The first thing I thought of is: if we are free to interpret the "whole world" as nothing more than an exaggeration, then why wouldn't we also interpret "eternal torment" to be equally an exaggeration? Hmmmmm?

There is something of a point that can be made about the "whole world".  For example, if I say "I'm going to see the whole world" - I don't literally mean I'm going to see every individual or every place in the world.  That would be impossible as I have a finite amount of time.  In that case it really is a form of exaggeration.

But the error the Calvinists make (perhaps like the person in the youtube video you mentioned) is then applying that same meaning of "the whole world" to a statement about God.  For God, it is not an exaggeration to say He atoned for the sins of the whole world.  That can be a true literal statement, so we should treat it as such.

[Seth]

Yeah particularly the scriptures which say that Jesus died for the Church. They use the same faulty reasoning as they do with "blood shed for many." That a scripture says that Jesus died for the Church, simply references a group of people within the larger "WHOLE world" that Christ died for.

One Calvinist I saw on YouTube rationalized the "whole world" statement to mean basically a figure of speech. He related it to when someone says "I have been sitting here forever" where forever is not literal. So saying that Christ died for the whole world amounted to an exaggeration. Can you believe that?! You probably can. ;-)

The first thing I thought of is: if we are free to interpret the "whole world" as nothing more than an exaggeration, then why wouldn't we also interpret "eternal torment" to be equally an exaggeration? Hmmmmm?

There is something of a point that can be made about the "whole world".  For example, if I say "I'm going to see the whole world" - I don't literally mean I'm going to see every individual or every place in the world.  That would be impossible as I have a finite amount of time.  In that case it really is a form of exaggeration.

But the error the Calvinists make (perhaps like the person in the youtube video you mentioned) is then applying that same meaning of "the whole world" to a statement about God.  For God, it is not an exaggeration to say He atoned for the sins of the whole world.  That can be a true literal statement, so we should treat it as such.

Exactly. That is what they will say "the whole world" is an exaggeration. If they make that claim, they cannot call themselves "Biblical literalists" which many would claim to be. So if "the whole world" is nothing more than an exaggeration, then why is "going to hell forever" not an exaggeration? Kind of a slippery slope...

[legoman]

Yeah particularly the scriptures which say that Jesus died for the Church. They use the same faulty reasoning as they do with "blood shed for many." That a scripture says that Jesus died for the Church, simply references a group of people within the larger "WHOLE world" that Christ died for.

One Calvinist I saw on YouTube rationalized the "whole world" statement to mean basically a figure of speech. He related it to when someone says "I have been sitting here forever" where forever is not literal. So saying that Christ died for the whole world amounted to an exaggeration. Can you believe that?! You probably can. ;-)

The first thing I thought of is: if we are free to interpret the "whole world" as nothing more than an exaggeration, then why wouldn't we also interpret "eternal torment" to be equally an exaggeration? Hmmmmm?

There is something of a point that can be made about the "whole world".  For example, if I say "I'm going to see the whole world" - I don't literally mean I'm going to see every individual or every place in the world.  That would be impossible as I have a finite amount of time.  In that case it really is a form of exaggeration.

But the error the Calvinists make (perhaps like the person in the youtube video you mentioned) is then applying that same meaning of "the whole world" to a statement about God.  For God, it is not an exaggeration to say He atoned for the sins of the whole world.  That can be a true literal statement, so we should treat it as such.

Exactly. That is what they will say "the whole world" is an exaggeration. If they make that claim, they cannot call themselves "Biblical literalists" which many would claim to be. So if "the whole world" is nothing more than an exaggeration, then why is "going to hell forever" not an exaggeration? Kind of a slippery slope...

The other way I've seen this (mis)represented is to say it means this:

God atoned for sins throughout the whole world.

Of course that doesn't work so well with this phrase:  Jesus takes away the sin of the world.

If Jesus didn't really take away all sin, and there is still some sin left in the world, then we can't very well say Jesus takes away the sin of the world can we?

The phrase "sin of the world" (sin singular) really specifies all sin.

[Seth]

Romans 5
18Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

It's that phrase "even so" that's interesting. That phrase means "in the same way." As by the action of Adam judgment came upon all to condemnation...how many people would they say judgment came upon? Each and every individual right? I doubt they would argue against the notion that one judgment came upon each and every person due to Adam....after all that doctrine is part of the 5 point pillars: Total Depravaty

from Wiki:

"The doctrine of total depravity (also called "total inability") asserts that, as a consequence of the fall of humanity into sin, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin."

Romans 5
18Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

I am sure even a scripture as clear as that can be twisted, but the outside observer can usually see the folly in it.