𝕽𝖊𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖊𝖉 𝕽𝖊𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖆𝖑 🕊️

As a non-Calvinist, I think this is a poor critique, whether or not we’re talking about the deterministic / Edwardsian brand of Calvinism. Leighton blatantly refuses to acknowledge the distinctions being made, and yes they absolutely do make a difference. God’s eternal decree vs. providence working in time. Means and ends. Cause and effect. One of the very few things where I agree with James White lol

According to Calvinism, God decrees whatsoever comes to pass which would include what everyone wants to do. So, is God restraining them from doing what He decreed them to want to do? Why not just stop decreeing them to want to do those things? 🤔 The idea of God intervening to restrain mankind from doing evil assumes libertarian freedom exists otherwise you just have God restraining Himself.

A look inside our copy of John Davenant’s Animadversions

According to Calvinism, God decrees whatsoever comes to pass which would include what everyone wants to do. So, is God restraining them from doing what He decreed them to want to do? Why not just stop decreeing them to want to do those things? 🤔 The idea of God intervening to restrain mankind from doing evil assumes libertarian freedom exists otherwise you just have God restraining Himself.

A look inside our copy of John Davenant’s Animadversions

A look inside our copy of John Davenant’s Animadversions

John Davenant on efficacious grace, graciously exciting, directing, and strengthening the will unto faith, causing it to act freely rather than by irresistible force.

This grace, which was most completely known in the Catholic Church… they supposed Pelagius made confession of, when they heard him say that “a man, when converted from his sins, is able by his own exertion and the grace of God to be without sin.” …he most expressly admitted that “what he meant by God's grace was that, when our nature was created, it received the capacity of not sinning, because it was created with free will.” —St. Augustine

the Pelagians confessed nothing more than that grace is some sort of teacher of man's free will and that its only function is to instruct the mind from outside by exhortation, law, teaching, contemplation of created things, miracles, threats… —St. Prosper of Aquitaine Letter to Rufinus