Hello Haas,
Homer was not suggesting that a person can be saved by his good works. He was responding to Mark's statement about compatiblism: "Free will is affected by human nature but cannot choose contrary to our nature and desires."
In fact, this statement is entirely too simplistic. To say that a man "cannot choose contrary to [his] nature and desires," may mean that man cannot choose what it is his nature not to desire.
Eh? Same thing, right!
But what are the limits of a man's desires?
I think Genesis says a little about that.
Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make wise, she took of its fruit, and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
And that was before the fall!
When we speak of man's depravity we mean man's natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform man.
Religion is one of the chief ways that man conceals his unwillingness to forsake self-reliance and bank all his hopes on the unmerited mercy of God (Luke 18:9-14; Colossians 2:20-23).
then we read about man,
Romans 3:9-10 and 18. ( Despite what Steve Gregg says) "I have already charged that
all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: None is righteous, no not one; no one seeks for God....There is no fear of God before their eyes."
And verse 19 says, "But we know that whatever things the Law says, it says to those who are under the Law; so that
every mouth may be stopped and
all the world may be under judgment before God,"
I cannot believe Steve wants us to read Romans 3 as if it is not relevant to us and all men in every age, it is simply amazing.
Yes there are those who come to the light -- namely those whose deeds are the work of God. "Wrought in God" means worked by God. Apart from this gracious work of God all men hate the light of God and will not come to him lest their evil be exposed -- this is total rebellion. "No one seeks for God...There is no fear of God before their eyes!" John 3:20-21 (Piper)
In Romans 14:23 Paul says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin." Think about that statement and its ramifications.
In Romans 7:18 Paul says, "I know that no good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh." This is a radical confession of the truth that in our rebellion nothing we think or feel is good.
It is all part of our rebellion. The fact that Paul qualifies his depravity with the words, "that is, in my flesh," shows that he is willing to affirm the good of anything that the Spirit of God produces in him (Romans 15:18). "Flesh" refers to man in his natural state apart from the work of God's Spirit.
So what Paul is saying in Romans 7:18 is that apart from the work of God's Spirit all we think and feel and do is not good.
Can't a man desire to be more than he is capable of becoming on his own? If he is told that the power of God unto salvation is available to him through the Gospel, so that he can become what God intends for him to become, why could a man not desire this?
Of course I am answering this objection using scripture, and using it as if it is actually relevant to us today and not just for some Jews a few thousand years ago, but I digress,
For example, 1Co 2:14 But a natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
See Romans 8:7, 1 Corinthians 1:18,
"
he is not able"
How clear a scripture do you need Steve that explicitly says that the natural man does not have the ability to receive the things of the Spirit of God?
Surely, your traditions are not that powerful my friend?
Calvinism says he has no capacity for such desire, but the Bible does not define this limitation.
It most certainly does Steve, why are you not seeing it?
The "mind of the flesh" is the mind of man apart from the indwelling Spirit of God ("You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you," Romans 8:9).
So natural man has a mindset that does not and cannot submit to God. Man cannot reform himself.
If Pelagianism is said to overrate man's freedom of choice, it can be said with equal justice that Calvinism underrates the image of God in humanity. That man is fallen is clear enough, but to suggest that nothing of the image of God remains in him in his fallen state is to go beyond (and, indeed, against) scripture (James 3:9).
Hopefully you have already accepted correction on that matter. Therefore the so called imbalance has vanished.
To underrate the powers inherent in the divine image (for example, to say there is no spark of the divine remaining in man that may induce him to seek union with his Creator), is, arguably, to diminish the glory of that image, and with it, the glory of the one imaged.
Augustine was the first to teach your doctrines of grace. He was the first to exalt sin to the great honor of being more potent than the image of God in mankind. The devil, through sin, was able to effect the total annihilation of the divine spark in God's chiefest creation! If one wishes to say such outlandish things, he had better be ready to face God with a lot of clear scriptures in his defense. Has Calvinism got these? To make sin and the devil more powerful than God seems to me to be a specie of idolatry--or at the very least, a dishonorable diminishing of God.
Steve, please do the right thing.
This rant has nothing whatsoever to do with Calvinism, and if you cannot know what Calvinism teaches, from the mountains of literature freely available, why should I go so many steps back to your interpretation of Augustine, who in fact did teach the image of God in man, so I have no idea what you are trying to prove!
The very firstbook and first verse of His confessions affirms the image of God in man! (Confessions I, 1,1)
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110101.htm
