Tony Griffen wrote:

There are just some things that we cant understand about. And frankly I think that is quite egotistical and I’m not saying that you are, to believe that you can understand everything of the mind of God.

Are you saying Jesus lied when He said:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into ALL THE TRUTH, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.(Joh 16:13)

Everything God has revealed to us in his Word is humanly comprehensible, knowable and understandable. He even said that we can understand how He created the cosmos.

By faith WE UNDERSTAND that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Heb 11:3)

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deu 29:29)

To say and to believe that the doctrine of salvation (the doctrine of substitutionary atonement) is a paradox and therefore somewhat incomprehensible is completely reprehensible. Even a child can understand it. In fact, Jesus Himself said,

Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (Mar 10:15)

If you want to know how paradoxes work, please read this article I wrote some time ago.

https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2013/06/05/unanswerable-questions-2/#comments

Do you see that only adults wear paradoxical spectacles and not children? Kids see more clearly than adults.

Tony Griffen wrote:

Well obviously I don’t agree. I think Dr. MacArthur honestly has the credentials to back up what he says but also that does not mean that he’s right about everything.

This is what I call a perfect paradox. MacArthur has the credentials (authorization, qualifications) to back up what his says but his credentials are untrustworthy? Did you know it was primarily false teachers in Paul’s time who bragged about their credentials?

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. (2 Co 3:1-4)

The only credentials you need is the Spirit of Truth (Holy Spirit) to guide you into all the truth and declare to you things to come. (John 16:13).

Your very last question, ” . . . the scriptures teach that God chose us in Him, before the foundations of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. Was my salvation and your salvation secured before the creation of all things or not?” clearly demonstrates why you believe in salvific paradoxes.

The simple answer is: God, having known from eternities past who would respond in faith and repentance to his Gospel in order to be saved, chose THEM to be holy and blameless in his sight.” It does not mean that God sovereignly chose to save some (the elect) and damn the rest (the non-elect). God has never and will never force anyone to respond to his love. That’s not love. That’s pure and simple despotic coercion.

In fact, it is a stone-age kind of love where man is depicted as a despot who clobbers a woman over the head, drags her to his pad and forces her to love him. Moreover, it equals to perfection the kind of abominable sin that led to the Great Flood in Genesis, i.e. “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”(Gen 6:1-2). The women had no choice; they were forced to enter into a marriage with them.

God doesn’t work that way. God’s love is a reciprocal love. Once again, Calvinists do not believe that man is able to love God of his own accord. In other words, he cannot love God because he has no free-will and needs to be regenerated monergistically before he is able to love Him. How did you get married? Did you say to your sweetheart. “OK, listen up, doll. You don’t have a free-will to choose either to hate or love me. But don’t fret. I will supply you with a free-will and a love so that you may love me after our compulsory marriage.” That’s preposterous.

I cannot explain the Trinity but does that make Him a paradox? Faith and paradoxes do not go well together. Can you explain your own make-up, i.e. spirit, soul and body? Of course not. You simply believe it is true because the Bible teaches you that we have a spirit, a soul and a body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). You may argue that there are no specific verses that tell us that God is a Trinity. True! Nonetheless, there are various places in the Bible that point us to this fact. For instance, when the SON was baptized, the SPIRIT (in the form of a dove) came to rest on Him and the FATHER spoke from heaven and said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And here, as you can see, we have the TRINITY fully explained. What more do you need? How you can see this a a paradox, is inexplicable.

Your statement “And you can’t tell me that you know fully the ramifications and the concepts surrounding substitutionary atonement. Because if you said that you could completely understand them and I would have to say that you’re not being truthful” is very troubling. Not knowing what the ramifications (consequences, results, effects) of salvation is, prompts me to quote to you the following:

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test. (2 Co 13:5-6)

And by the way, I have exposed the heresies promulgated by Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar umpteenth times on this blog and elsewhere on the internet, in the same way I exposed the abomination called Calvinism – election and predestination. So, I would suggest that you read some of them before you accuse me of their abominable belief that I am a little god. You are much more than what I am. You are a teacher; I am nothing.

Let me pose a question to you. would you agree that there are people today that have died and gone to hell and are dying and going to hell? And my next question is very simple , if God is not completely sovereign as the Scriptures say that he is sovereign, then as I asked you before is there some outside force outside of God that is forcing his hand in a different direction than what he wants to go? My next question is that if God is not totally sovereign over all things , then wouldn’t that mean that he is not really God ? My last question is this, the scriptures teach that God chose us in Him, before the foundations of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. Was my salvation and your salvation secured before the creation of all things or not?

Tony Griffen wrote:

Man has choice and God is sovereign. They are two principles that are both true and yet diametrically opposed to one another. In the Scriptures where you find one you will find the other. That’s where the confusion lies. However it is not confusing to God to us it’s called a paradox. Quite frankly I can’t explain why it is true but it just is and I can rest in that. It’s just one of those things, the paradox, we have to leave to the Lord.

You sound exactly like John MacArthur when he was asked: “How do you tell them that God loves them but that Jesus did not die for them?” He answered as follows,

“Well, you tell them whatever the Bible tells you to tell them. And the Bible tells you to go into all the world and to preach the Gospel to every creature. And that’s what you do because that’s what the Scripture says. Any tension you have between that and the nature of the atonement; any tension you have between that and the doctrine of divine election and predestination; any tension you feel in those areas, I feel. I feel the same tension. I ask the same question. I don’t know whether there is some kind of quick answer to the question. . . . I am, however, happy to concede that God can resolve things that I can’t. . . . I don’t expect of you and you shouldn’t expect of me to be able to unscrew the inscrutable. You really don’t think that I am going to solve all the vast theological dilemmas that have existed since the Scriptures were penned. . . . The best answer to this question is ‘my brother, I feel your pain.’” (2010 Shepherd’s Conference).

So, next time, when you present someone with the Gospel and you are confronted with this ugly dilemma called “PARADOX,” say to the person: “My brother, I feel your pain.” Should the person ask you what you mean, you can tell him that you can already feel the pangs of hell in his behalf; it is an excruciating pain he will have to endure the moment he dies and is cast into hell because Jesus loves him but did not die for him.

I can only say that your and MacArthur’s paradoxical gospel is a gospel directly from hell where it was inaugurated by Satan himself.

Would you have written a letter to your sweetheart ridden with paradoxes so that she should guess whether you loved her or not? I can tell you upfront that paradoxes are the worst enemy of true love because it confuses one, as you so rightly said. OK, let’s simplify it a little. Do you really think God would weave one paradox after the other into his love story so that those who come to Him for salvation should be totally confused? Or, do you think his absolute sovereignty (which I too happen to believe He is), will hinder anyone who seeks salvation, from finding it just because He sovereignly chose not to save that person? Did you know a simple prayer can sway God’s sovereign decrees and persuade Him to change his sovereign decisions?

Now as to homosexuals in the church, well I am totally against homosexuality because God hates it and Scripture teaches against it. Enough said I will say this there is no such thing as a homosexual Christian or homosexual marriage, they are both an oxymoron.

As to Hebrews 6 verse one , that is a very fair question. And I thought it a very good question. And I would like to explain that if you will allow me. Actually to understand this question that you’re asking one has to understand a little bit of the Old Testament. Remember the writer of Hebrews is addressing Jews specifically.

The same Greek root found in verse 14 in chapter 5 is translated perfection in chapter 6 verse one and is elsewhere translated perfect 7:1, 19,28; 9:9; 10:1,14. It is used in Hebrews, including this text, as a synonym for salvation. In that sense, it refers to the completion which comes when a person becomes a believer in Christ, rather than referring to a Christian who has become mature. As you know, Jesus invited unbelieving Jews to the salvation perfection which came only through following him in faith in Matthew 19:21. Paul wrote that those who had come to Christ by faith were thereby mature and able to receive the wisdom of God in first Corinthians 2:6. He described believers as mature when he referred to those whose righteousness was in Christ Philippians 3:2-20, as opposed to those who had confidence in the flesh. Paul also declared that the apostles warned and taught everyone that we may present everyman perfect in Christ Jesus in Colossians 1:28. Now I think you would agree that the deeper, more solid truths about the priesthood of the Lord Jesus could only be given to those who knew him as Savior. Athletic training and competition form the metaphor implied by this particular word “exercise” in the text. The person who is come to Christ for spiritual completion is then trained by the Word to discern truth from error and holy behavior from unholy behavior found in second Timothy 3:16 and 17. As you can see, and I’m sure that you know this, what I’m doing is applying a principal and hermeneutics called synthesis. Let me go further. The word leaving in chapter 6 verse 1 of the text, does not convey the idea or mean to despise or abandon the basic doctrines . They are in place to start, not stop. They are the gate entrance on the road to salvation in Christ. Let’s look at that phrase elementary principles of Christ. As the oracles of God found in chapter 5 verse 12 it refers to the Old Testament and so does this phrase. The writer is referring to basic Old Testament teaching that prepared the way for Messiah, the beginning teaching about Christ. The Old Testament principles includes six features listed in verses one and two. In verses one chapter 6 the verb phrase “go on to perfection” is passive so as to indicate “let us be carried to salvation.” This is not a matter of learners being carried by teachers, but both being carried forward by God. The writer warns his Jewish readers that there is no value in stopping with the Old Testament basics and repeating (“laying again”) what was only intended to be foundational. That statement repentance from good works, is tricky. This Old Testament form of repentance is the turning away from evil deeds that bring death, (Ezekiel. 18:4; Romans 6:23) and turning to God. Too often that you only turn to God in a superficial fashion fulfilling the letter of the law as evidence of his repentance. The inner man was still dead (Matt. 23: 25-28; Rom. 2:28-29). Such repentance was not the kind that brought salvation , see verse 6 , 12:17, Acts 11:18, and second Corinthians 7:10. Under the new covenant, however, “repentance toward God” is coupled with “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” Acts 20:21. Christ Jesus atoning sacrifice Saves from dead works, verse 14 of chapter 9, and faith directed only toward the father is unacceptable without faith in his son Jesus Christ . So as you can see obviously he is not addressing just believers. He is addressing Hebrew people who professed Christ but had not gone all the way onto salvation. It was a warning. A good example of this would be most churches in the world. For example when a preacher gets up and preaches, it would be a foolish thing for people to believe that everyone within that congregation is born again. This is the same gist of the passage. I hope that explains it well and answers your question.

How do you interpret God’s sovereignty in salvation? Does man have any say whatsoever in his salvation? The article deals primarily with the acceptance of gays’ as pastors in the church. What connection do you see God’s sovereignty having with this?

You wrote:

The problem that arises here is when one inaccurately identifies the spiritual condition of the ones being addressed. So the big question is who is being actually addressed. I think it’s very clear here that it’s not a believer.

You correctly underscore the importance of context but fail to adhere to it yourself? Do you really think Paul (the author of Hebrews) would have written the following to unbelievers?

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, (Heb 6:1)