TULIP the "doctrines of grace " refuted

well if we are being historically accurate it did not exist in the early church until augustine and I can quote many calvinist theologians/scholars who will affirm calvin was a student of augustine.

Yet God expects us to obey Him in the OT many times and declares today , this day choose who you will serve to unregenerate Jews. We have this same expectation with our children from a young age teaching them to obey us as parents and to obey God. Just because man is unregenerate doesn't mean they cannot obey or understand God and his ways. Total inability is a fallacy. I can give many OT and NT passages that prove it is not true. 

Ooooooo.... that's a nice straw man. I don't think I have seen that before. To frame the matter of God commanding what He knows is impossible as mockery is very subtle. 

Every monergist (Calvinist or otherwise) in every Christian forum in the entire world will accept 2 Peter 3:9 as written, and if that is doubted then poll us. We accept the profound irrefutable truth of God's desire none should perish but we also accept the just as real and irrefutable truth many more people will perish than not despite God's desire they not perish. We do not pit the two realities against one another, and we do not predicate the contradiction of loss against that specific desire by subordinating God and His plan to the will of the sinner. We accept the whole of scripture and its truthful declarations God has many desires, all of which co-exist within God's mind, will, and purpose without contradiction while also achieving His purpose(s) and bring Him glory. We understand Psalm 37:34 as an explicit example of this when it states, "Wait for the LORD and keep His way, and He will raise you up to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you will see it," Proverbs 29:16's "When the wicked thrive, rebellion increases; but the righteous will see their downfall," or the dichotomy of Galatians 4:7-8 when it declares a man reaps what he sows and juxtaposes rot against life. There are numerous examples of this found throughout the Bible beginning with the simultaneous existence of two trees in Eden and concluding with the fiery lake and the city of peace. Both are God's desire. 

Monergists don't limit God to one desire and then prooftext that one desire to be the entire measure of God or all that He has revealed in His word.

That's simply not true. Augustine did not single-handedly decide soteriological doctrine for all of Christendom. These matters had been vigorously debated for centuries with outlying positions and those least consistent with the whole of scripture gradually being winnowed away by prayerful collective examination of scripture. Augustine happens to be a fulcrum point in history whereby many of mainstream and orthodox positions were decided by many. On the occasions of his involvement, he was asked by others (in the majority) to be the representative or spokesperson because of his prowess the written and spoken word (due to his training and experience with rhetoric), keen intellect, and standing in the Church. It's a gross misrepresentation to pin it all on Augustine. Pelagian was not the first to believe humans were not precluded from coming to God in their own might by sin and Arminius was not the first to hypothesize a moment of liberty between revelation and conversion. The early church reflected, prayed about, and debated all of them. No one bullied Christians into believing total depravity.

The opening statement is a bit of a straw man because it leaves out the context from which God chose some to be saved and some to be damned. The whole statement that would more accurately reflect Calvinism is something like, "From a population that was universally headed for damnation on its own, God determined and decreed that some are to be saved without any conditions to be met on their part." God did not take good and sinless people and damn them for nothing before they'd done nothing, without providing the opportunity to live righteously. That would be a gross perversion of all the monergistic positions at a base level. 

Calvinism teaches God ordained all things from eternity....

....without being the author of sin,
...without doing violence to the human will,
...and without doing violence to the contingency of secondary causes. 

God, foreknowing all would sin and fall short of His glory (despite his having made humanity good sinless creatures in a good sinless world), already had a plan that would address that "problem" before it even occurred.

However, the opening line of UE segment of the op is incorrect for another reason. The doctrine of Unconditional Election (UE) simply states God made His choice based on His will and His purpose and not anything having to do with the creature being saved. That's it. Nothing more. God didn't look down the timeline of history and decide who He'd saved based on their looks, their choices, their actions, or their cologne. The Creator made His choice based solely, exclusively, entirely based on His looks, choice, act, and cologne...... and the creature is not privy to any of that. 

So, we see that the second line of the UE section gets it correct where the opening statement did not. God did leave others in their lost condition, but He did not make them lost. They did the latter on their own. God is not culpable for causing them to sin (and die). Nor is He culpable for leaving them in a state they brought upon themselves and one in which they willfully persist. He is not under any obligation to save anyone. He could have immediately eradicated everyone but in His grace he didn't. He let every single person continue to draw breath for one lifetime before facing the just recompense of their own choices and their own conduct AND He made that decision based solely on His will, not anything of the creature.  He appointed man to live once and after that face judgment. He didn't have to appoint a judgment at the end, but He did. He didn't have to let that life persist past the first sin, but He did. He didn't have to provide a means of escaping that judgment, but He did. He could have predicated any and all of His choices based upon the creature's choices or actions, but He didn't He made ALL His choices on His own based on His will and purpose alone. He made His choice to save a person based on His will and His purpose. That is Unconditional Election. He did not predicate His choices on the choices of the sinner, the sinfully dead and enslaved creature. Salvation is not predicated upon sin. Damnation is predicated upon sin; salvation is not. Salvation is predicated upon grace. 


As to the matter of God loving all men, the statement in this op is a third misrepresentation. Calvinism holds God loves all people, but He does not love them in all the same manner. He could have made creation function in a manner where a person immediately disintegrated the moment they sinned in thought, word, or deed, but He created creation out of love and out of that same eternal love (knowing every single creature would despise Him) He loved every creature by allowing, appointing, every single creature a life past their moment of sin. He loves some of the damned in an additional manner by selecting some for His mercy, His grace, His salvation. All loved. Not all loved in the same way. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that all who would believe would have eternal life BUT they all stood in an already-condemned state when He did so because none believed in Jesus at that time despite the fact all creation testifies to God's existence, His power, and His divine attributes such that all are without excuse. He gave His Son out of His love when He had already judged that very same world. The verdict is: Every single human individually and collectively loves darkness and will not come into the light for fear their deeds will be seen for what they are. In other words, God loved the world when the world did not love Him. They feared him and denied Him. 

I will say this: Calvin was wrong to say we should not love those outside of the body of Christ. Calvin taught that, but soteriological Calvinists do not agree. Calvin lived in a time when bigotry was much more acceptable, especially religious. That's not to say religious bigotry doesn't exist today but no one here is seeking out those who disagree to murder them. That was a reality in Calvin's day. Calvin's comment is more political than theological.

Calvin wrote a commentary on the gospel of John and when it came to John 3:16 this is what he said (excerpted for the sake of space), 

"For God so loved the world. Christ opens up the first cause, and, as it were, the source of our salvation, and he does so, that no doubt may remain; for our minds cannot find calm repose, until we arrive at the unmerited love of God. As the whole matter of our salvation must not be sought any where else than in Christ, so we must see whence Christ came to us, and why he was offered to be our Savior. Both points are distinctly stated to us: namely, that faith in Christ brings life to all, and that Christ brought life, because the Heavenly Father loves the human race, and wishes that they should not perish....."

According to Calvin, God loves the human race (not just the select few He elected to salvation). So we see, as is often the case, the synergist selects passages from Calvin that suit their (biased) purpose and not the whole of Calvin. It is incumbent upon anyone reading Calvin, especially the critic and the skeptic, to read and render him in his entirety because when used selectively statements like the one quoted in this op and the one I just quoted contradict one another and both the synergist and the monergist is left misunderstanding and misrepresenting Calvin and undermining their own argument. 


I'll address the scriptures cited in this section of the op in separate posts when I have time. Blessings

Except that is NOT what the scripture says at all! 

If that statement is a reference to Revelation 22:17, then something critically important is necessary to note, something fatal the synergistic use of this verse. Revelation 22:17 occurs AFTER the fiery lake at a time when there are no more sinners and satan and death have been destroyed! So let's not use or abuse Rev. 22:17 to make it say something it cannot possibly scripturally or logically be made to say. And let us ALL make sure anytime any of us hear/read anyone using that verse that way we immediately dismiss the teaching because it has abused God's word.  

Revelation 22:14-21 
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. 15Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral persons, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. 16“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you of these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” 17The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires, take the water of life without cost. 18I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. 20He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. 21The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

The invitation is explicitly given to those who wash their robes so they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city of peace. Outside are those scripture tells us have no part in the kingdom of God (Gal. 5). 

More fundamentally, every single verse any synergist will ever quote about desire must be understood in the plain, simple, uniform, undeniable and irrefutable fact scripture does not contain a single example of any God-denying unregenerate non-believer ever desiring or coming. The Bible does not contain many atheists. The Bible is overwhelmingly written about people who already believed in the existence of god and some expectation of a redeemer and some understanding of sin. None of them qualify as atheists. When synergists assert any such comparison the are committing the fallacy of false equivalence. 

1 Corinthians 6:9-11
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, 10nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Galatians 5:19-21
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 

1 John 3:15
Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.


These are the ones Revelation 22:15 was written about.