The Narrow Path Ministries

Matthew 18:11
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

Luke 19:10
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

If the Calvinist thinking was correct and what God desire and decress will come to pass, then these scriptures above would indicate that only those that are (or will be) saved were lost. That would mean one of 2 posibilities

1. The rest of the world is not lost?

Or

2. It could mean that God will save everyone. Because were are all lost at one point.

But of course both of these ideas are not true, therefore calvinist Doctrine is flawed.

not necessarily--

those who are (or will be) saved and who are/were lost can be viewed as a "subset" of ALL who are lost. what is true for the subset is not necessarily true for the "superset." i dont remember my "set theory" well enough from middle school math, but hopefully you catch my drift.

BTW, i am not a calvinist but i think they might respond thusly.

TK

2. It could mean that God will save everyone. Because were are all lost at one point.

But of course both of these ideas are not true, therefore calvinist Doctrine is flawed.

I don't think to be lost you had to be saved at some point, it may be you were always lost. Was the Prodical son ever saved? All that is said about him is that he was dead but later became alive, that is spiritually alive.

And secondly God may indeed end up saving everyone , a few now and maybe the rest later. There are plenty of verses that suggest this but they are usually just dismissed with little thought.
Maybe arminisism in this age and calvinism in the next.

I am not a Calvinist either, but the fact is, they believe you have to be saved by faith just like everyone else.

If you don't have faith, whether or not you are ordained for salvation, you are lost until the point that you have faith.

TK wrote:not necessarily--

those who are (or will be) saved and who are/were lost can be viewed as a "subset" of ALL who are lost. what is true for the subset is not necessarily true for the "superset." i dont remember my "set theory" well enough from middle school math, but hopefully you catch my drift.

That was my initial thought too. In fact, in the Luke passage, Jesus could actually have been referring specifically to Zachaeus. In the Matthew passage, He could have been referring to "one of these little ones." A Calvinist would say that He was only referrign to the elect children or else all children (some Calvinists believe that all who die as children are elect).

In any case, I don't thnk these passages are really a problem for Calvinism.

I guess I did not state my ideas clearly. I was not advocating universalism. I do absolutely affirm that Christians are saved by grace through faith.

I think most Christians agree that: We were all lost at one time, Some are still lost, and some will be lost eternally.

Calvinist thinking says that God's will and his desire is the same and if he deires or wills to do something then it will be done, and that human will or belief has no bearing on that.

While I do believe that man cannot thwart God's purposes, I also think that God can desire something, but it may not come to pass. Many Calvinist do not think this. They therefore have to change the meaning of "All men" and "whole world" to only include the "elect". Yet if the verses that they change these meanings are the Holy inspired words of God, then I would think that if God said "All men" then he meant all, especially since he created all.

But these 2 verses above say that he came to save "the lost", of which everyone falls into that category or did at one point.

So if God's desire, His intensions, and His will mean the same thing, then by Calvinist logic this verse would say God is saving everyone, Unless of course, some people are not lost, which would mean they were always saved. None of which makes sense or aligns with scripture.

Of course, as has been also stated, "the lost" in thes verses may not mean all of the lost, it could just be a subset. But is there any reason in the Greek to come to that conclusion? For both verses, the literal translation of the last 3 words are "Save the lost", not some of the lost or that which is lost, or a subset of the lost. I do not see any pronouns with antecedents that refer the lost back to another group of people. Now my knowledge of Greek is not great. If there is something that I have missed in the Greek, please inform me.

It just seems to me that Calvinisitc thinking seems to be redefinng the meanings of words to fit with the rest of their systematic theology.

So, until I have read in scripture something that leads me to believe otherwise, I will continue to believe that God's desire may not always be equal to God's will.

(There are several ideas in Calvinist thinking that I like, but I do not hold to all of those ideas or for that matter to the ideas of men in general unless I can see that the idea aligns with all of scripture. And when I say all, I mean all)

In Christ

my knowledge of greek is not great either, in fact it is zero.

because of what the rest of the bible says, we know the verses cannot mean that all will be saved or some are not lost.

i just dont believe that the verses can be used to prove calvinism is wrong, that's all. there are other verses that seem to do that quite nicely.

TK