(šššššš¼ ššøāāšāš¾!) This is not Biblical. BTW.
I have argued against philosophical naturalism for decades because of deterministic values. How could the determinist know he is correct. Example:
āHe thus acknowledged the need for any theory to allow that humans have genuine freedom to recognize the truth. He (again, correctly) saw that if all thought, belief, feeling, and choice are determined (i.e., forced on humans by outside conditions) then so is the determinists’ acceptance of the theory of determinism forced on them by those same conditions. In that case they could never claim to know their theory is true since the theory making that claim would be self-referentially incoherent. In other words, the theory requires that no belief is ever a free judgment made on the basis of experience or reason, but is always a compulsion over which the believer has no control.ā
Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 174.
You could not argue that “evil” is really “evil.” Eastern philosophies run into the same problems as the atheist’s/evolutionist’s issue I just noted above. SEE:
The Calvinist runs into the same issue. And it is a distortion of Christianity (T.U.L.I.P.):
Ephesians 1:11 goes even further by declaring that God in Christ
āworks all things according to the counsel of his will.ā Here the Greek word for āworksā is energeĆø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universeās objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isnāt just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his peopleās good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includesāas incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seemāGodās having even brought about the Nazisā brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: āThe LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evilā (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 āWhen times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the otherā (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).
John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42.
And God’s love is limited greatly.
- When we say that God is Sovereign in the exercise of His love, we mean that He loves whom He chooses. God does not love everybody.Ā — A.W. Pink
Dr. Flowers plays a recent teaching released by Dr. John Piper on Ephesians 1:11-14 in order to demonstrate the error of the Calvinistic interpretation.
Eph. 1:11 is one of the most used proof texts to support the Calvinistic doctrine of theistic determinism, the concept that God has sovereignly and unchangeably decreed whatsoever comes to pass, including every sinful inclination and action.