As much as the Calvinist tries to slander and caricature a true Biblical understanding of God and salvation, I AM NOT MOVED. The "Reformed" majority position here just evidences the word "Let God be true and every man a liar."

Just because a Gnostic duped by Augustine accuses me of not believing in grace doesn't make it so. We need to tremble at His word, not be willing to smorgasbord our doctrine, trying to explain away things that are clear that contradict our pet system. This is the sad reality for the Calvinist... Think of it: going through life trying to ignore the abundant scriptural evidence of free will, the abundant evidence that God can and does change His mind, that He is willing to save those that are willing to receive His Son. How could Calvinists miss so much obvious Bible?

Most Calvinists just can't help saying to all that are duped by their Gnostic rhetoric that non-Calvinists don't *really* believe in grace. Clearly those non-Calvinists are all about working for their salvation...

You Calvinists do realize (don't you?) that you don't have to be confused by Gnosticism/Calvinism to hold to 100% free-grace salvation? Statements of how you "go out of the way to not take a millimeter of credit" are given as implying that those who have not been duped by your TULIP are actually all about taking credit for their own salvation. How about a little intellectual honesty for a change?

Oh... and John Owen was just confused.

He was obviously thinking that unbelief is some kind of deleterious sinful-act-in-a-vacuum, as he missed completely that unbelief is failing to enter into knowledge of the Son and the Father, and hence failing to enter into eternal life. To remain in unbelief is simply to remain in sin and death. To turn to Christ in faith and remain in his word is to know him and to be set free from sin. So Owen's whole argument is a waste of time and pointless.

My God is the God of the Bible. Is your God the God of "St." Augustine the gnostic?

Your hyper-Calvinism seems to have confused you.

Don't conflate your caricature of anti-Calvinism with my theology please. My desire is to be Biblical in my theology to the best of my knowledge with His help. I don't respect the doctrines of man and I don't do isms.

This is where Calvinism leads -- pride in man's doctrine is allowed to over-rule the simple Bible truth that God gives us in Rev 14:11.

"Well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, ...teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."

You mean it purports to.

Sure it does. I wonder though -- can you see the ASSUMPTION you bring to it when you insist it supports "unconditional election"?

The assumption you just made, like all Calvinists, is that the Father's will to draw is entirely without respect to His knowledge of the response of the one drawn. Calvinists always ASSUME there is no basis in God's actions except His mysterious and unknown will. So you paint yourselves into a corner and then you are forced to throw out huge chunks of plain teaching because of the assumptions that you make. The sad thing is that you don't even realize you're making these assumptions with every passage that seemingly supports reformed doctrine.

My suggestion: Take Him at His word instead. Why keep insisting that "the whole of chapter 6 of John or Romans 8 or 9" support your doctrine when you know full well that you can't give an adequate response if I start to bring Ezekiel 33:11 or Joshua 24:15 or 1 Timothy 2:4 or countless others to the table.

So I say to Calvinists, tread lightly, don't ASSUME that the Father drawing people to Christ is without respect to them obeying the command to repent. Don't assume the repentance commanded is not granted to all who will receive it.

Very easy to make ASSUMPTIONS about the underlying criteria for the Father's drawing when you ignore plain teaching such as "AS MANY AS RECEIVED Him, to them gave He the power to become children of God."

You think because you're a devotee of John Calvin, himself a follower of gnostic Augustine, that this makes you doctrinally superior? Get a grip people. Learn what this means -- if anyone thinks he knows something, he doesn't understand anything yet as he ought. Man teaches man -- that's your doctrine. If you have an unction you need to learn from Him and put down your books...

I used to be Calvinist, but then I learned to tremble at God's word instead... The Calvinist who throws out human freewill, which is clearly taught in Scripture, is no different than the JW who throws out the Trinity because he cannot comprehend it.

To all the Calvinist Gnostics out there: Your God isn't big enough! The God revealed in the Bible is able to retain full sovereignty while granting man freewill.

"...hovering at low altitude just outside the walls of the Vatican."