Why do some people believe and some do not?

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.

Cameron143

Well-known member
Mar 1, 2022
20,302
6,942
113
62
Well Cam? I said yes in the short answer, and then I explained why the Bible says yes in the long answer. I did not characterize your beliefs at all, but merely personalized the answer for you--as I insert my own name in my mind in the same places yours was. Sorry if I confused you.

(However, at my stage of memory I welcome updates on what was said day before yesterday :^)
Thanks for the reply and discussion. Grace and peace.
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
Blogs and internet was not in widespread use when I read Augustine, and I read the The City of God and other excerpts of his work when I took philosophy as a first year student.
What "influenced his thinking" it is not just what he quotes that matters.
If you are fan that is your choice but,
You need to grow up, but for now ignore will do.
seeing that you ignore problems with your theology rather than face them, i think we all know who is the one who needs to grow up.

thanks for making that fact public, lol. some people like to know specifically how to pray for another.
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
Lastly, by your definition of evil, wouldn't everyone qualify as evil at some point? As some are certainly redeemed, and I've shown you the process, can't evil be redeemed?
Jesus sure thinks so.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?
(Matthew 7:11)​
No one is good — except God alone.
(Mark 10:18)​
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
Not much of a debate there man.
agreed,
that so-called-debate is purely a matter of @GWH's imagination, what he accuses others of thinking when they don't say exactly what he wants them to say.

smh

that's the problem with assuming what you think are logical conclusions from someone's statements. (1) those people may not be logical at all and (2) your logic may be wrong and (3) there may be a whole other logic you never even considered that leads to and/or from those statements.

it's better to talk to people then to presume you know their entire heart and mind as soon as they quote one scripture.
 

sawdust

Well-known member
Feb 12, 2024
1,024
212
63
68
Australia
Rom. 3:10-19 “As it is written: There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all gone out of the way; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; The poison of asps is under their lips; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”
Rom. 8:7, 8 “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
I Cor. 2:14 “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
II Cor. 4:3, 4 “But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
Eph. 4:17-19 “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to licentiousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”
Eph. 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”
Eph. 2:1-2 "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:"
1 Timothy 1:13
Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

Paul did not say he was evil, he said he did evil things because he was ignorant and his ignorance led him in unbelief. If he was in fact evil he would not have responded the way he did on the Damascus road nor would have he desired the good when the Law informed him of what constituted goodness. Evil rejects truth it is what makes it evil. Satan is evil. Please learn the difference between being culpable of evil because we are born into darkness and actually becoming evil.
 

cv5

Well-known member
Nov 20, 2018
24,070
8,707
113
Jesus sure thinks so.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?
(Matthew 7:11)​
The idea here is NOT that they were totally evil. Evidenced by the fact that they were perfectly able and capable of giving good gifts to their children. A good thing by any measure.

Furthermore, totally evil people do not ask God for anything.

Jesus is using the "greater to lesser" rhetorical device in this passage........OBVIOUSLY.
 

Kroogz

Well-known member
Dec 5, 2023
972
409
63
But why their hearts become calloused remains a mystery of volition.
Constant rejection. God is constantly and continuously prompting unbelievers and believers to follow His plan.

With constant rejection, God will "leave well enough alone" eventually.

Blackout of the soul....If I remember right Col Theime coined this phrase? If not Pastor Bob did or picked it up from someone else.

Ephesians 4:17-18 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility [vacuum]of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.
 

cv5

Well-known member
Nov 20, 2018
24,070
8,707
113
Constant rejection. God is constantly and continuously prompting unbelievers and believers to follow His plan.

With constant rejection, God will "leave well enough alone" eventually.

Blackout of the soul....If I remember right Col Theime coined this phrase? If not Pastor Bob did or picked it up from someone else.

Ephesians 4:17-18 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility [vacuum]of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.
Words that you never want to hear:

Matt 15:14
"let them alone"
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
If he was in fact evil he would not have responded the way he did on the Damascus road nor would have he desired the good when the Law informed him of what constituted goodness.
unless of course, as Christian orthodoxy states, He was given the grace to respond well, such that, he does not boast of his inherent merit or good decision-making, as your view would suggest he should, but instead of Christ Who transformed him...


i can find the latter sentiment in his writings ((1 Corinthians 15:9-10)) but not the former..
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
The idea here is NOT that they were totally evil. Evidenced by the fact that they were perfectly able and capable of giving good gifts to their children. A good thing by any measure.
hmmm why does God call them evil if He didn't mean evil?
maybe His command of language is lacking, ha!

and the second verse i put?
if no one is good but God alone, we are all... what? kinda good?
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
thanks for saying this sister. it was the standard for most (all?) reformers. not just calvin. but the man who God used to start it all.
martin luther actually wrote a book called 'bondage of the will' where he argues against erasmus on the subject.

quote from wikipedia:

"
On the Bondage of the Will (Latin: De Servo Arbitrio, literally, "On Un-free Will", or "Concerning Bound Choice", or "The Enslaved Will") by Martin Luther argued that people can achieve salvation or redemption only through God, and could not choose between good and evil through their own willpower. It was published in December 1525. It was his reply to Desiderius Erasmus' De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio or On Free Will, which had appeared in September 1524 as Erasmus' first public attack on some of Luther's ideas.

The debate between Erasmus and Luther is one of the earliest of the Reformation over the issue of free will and predestination, between synergism and monergism, as well as on scriptural authority and human assertion."

for those new to the faith or this subject, synergism means two parties working together while monergism means that regeneration is ONE party working and that is God.
gonna go out on a limb here and suggest we read both Erasmus and Luther before we start making statements about which was right or wrong.
 
Jul 31, 2013
38,091
13,667
113
if you actually read st.augustine he goes against a lot of roman catholic doctrines. people may read an old confession of faith and read the word catholic and get spooked by it. but realize catholic means universal and back then 'catholic' was a positive thing. they werent always this bad. thats why the reformation happened, the papists have gone so far in their idolatry that there was no other way but a massive reformation. im not gonna say for sure but i think i remember reading somewhere that luther did not want to leave the catholic church, but he was kind of forced into it, he wanted to reform it from within.

at this point we obviously know, there is no reforming this mess.
it's really not until 9th to 11th century that 'catholic' even begins to have anything to do with what we call the rcc today. Rome was just one of 7 bishoprics, increasingly less and less influential, until the great schism and it became an entirely different church altogether from what is now known as Eastern Ortodox.

note: do not believe modern rcc sources for the actual history of these things. they are notoriously falselified, fake, and otherwise rubbish. plenty of external historical documentation exists.
 
Jul 3, 2015
61,592
30,608
113
hmmm why does God call them evil if He didn't mean evil?
maybe His command of language is lacking, ha!

and the second verse i put?
if no one is good but God alone, we are all... what? kinda good?
No. The natural man does not exist in the theological understanding of some. They do not or cannot differentiate between
that person and the spiritual person in Scripture, ascribing to the former what is possessed and possible only by/to the latter.


They make the natural man "not a bad guy" who is able by his own volition to change his stripes, as it were.

They have a bad tree producing good fruit. That's why they make him a good guy and deny what Jesus said.

And in the process reject a plethora of Scriptures about him...

They make him an extension of who they are.
 
Jul 3, 2015
61,592
30,608
113
Then after all the denials of who the natural man is one told us they are leaning into the new creation!!!

What new creation??? I had to ask, since they deny the old.