“In his book, Dr. Rogers writes, “…I mean that by grace, God gave man the ability to believe the gospel or not believe the gospel;…(thus the person has real free choice)” (p1) If God were to “equally” enable each person to believe the gospel then all would make the same decision, either all would choose to believe or all would choose not to believe. If God enables people to believe the gospel but in an unequal manner (whatever that might be), then we can get the result that some choose to believe and some choose not to believe. BUT, this is election by God – the Calvinist conclusion that Dr. Rogers wants to reject. Grace-enablement necessarily leads to election in the Calvinist sense.”
My dear brother, I must admit that each time I read your comments regarding my position, I am perplexed indeed. Maybe I am communicatively challenged. If you have seriously read my book and draw the conclusions that you do, I doubt that I can say anything that will help (although I did so yesterday and now). It is one thing to disagree, but your path is quite different than simple disagreement.
- You have clearly misrepresented my position and the options available outside of Calvinism. I assume that you have done so unintentionally. God created man with a libertarian free will not a compatible will as Calvinists believe. When God by grace enables man to have a real choice, unlike Calvinism’s compatibilism, if man chooses to believe, he also could have done otherwise, and if he chooses to reject the gospel, he could have done otherwise. Thus, man is not only grace enabled to believe, but to also disbelieve with full knowledge. To wit, man is enabled and not caused.
- Total depravity is not incompatible with either Adam or fallen man being grace enabled to have a choice to believe or not believe. Please do not superimpose the entailments of Calvinism on me because it is absolutely unwarranted. Of course it would be if I accepted compatibilism, which I do not.
As long as you evaluate other views through the prism of Calvinism, you will always reach false conclusions about others’ positions because it is Calvinism that we reject; hence, of course our position is different. To argue that there is no position but Calvinism that can believe in biblically defined total depravity is symptomatic of the inability of some Calvinists to have serious soteriological discussions, thereby helping them and others.
Full article and comments are on SBC Today at http://sbctoday.com/2013/04/05/one-mans-suggestions-for-calvinists-and-non-calvinists-part-2/
