I recently had an exchange with Leighton Flowers over the issue of a serious mistake Leighton has made for years. This is conflating the inability to believe with the inability to understand. That often leaves Leighton’s arguments confused and misguided. I’ll share the conversation and some extra commentary at the end that is included because Leighton seized responding:
TheSire:
The ability to understand is being equated to the ability to believe. The gospel is simple but the human heart is sinful. I think unbelievers can comprehend the gospel. Change my mind
Leighton Flowers:
3) If a lost man can understand the gospel then what is preventing him from being able to believe it if not the divine decree? (Ie God determined that lost people cannot willingly accept the appeal of a gospel they do understand)
TheSire:
“1) Does it please God when a lost man understands his truth? Especially given that some lost people may not understand it?”
I take it that he can’t choose to believe it. It’s probably reminiscent to that of the cliche where a kid states that their parents can’t “understand them”. It’s not to say these things are so complex that parents are incapable of understanding it but rather something is preventing them from believing it. You probably have meet people that “can’t” believe miracles occurred or biblical sexual ethics. I think these things really just means they morally incapable of believing such things rather than cognitive abilities.
“3) If a lost man can understand the gospel then what is preventing him from being able to believe it if not the divine decree? (Ie God determined that lost people cannot willingly accept the appeal of a gospel they do understand)”
I think everything in creation just is what God decreed. So, in that sense, what else am I really have to choose? So, my answer is that God decreed people to be certain ways.
Leighton Flowers:
3) At least you’re consistent.
TheSire:
Yeah, I don’t think it’s saying unbelievers qua unbelievers can’t read 1 Cor. 15 and understand the content.
Leighton Flowers:
TheSire:
Believe
Leighton Flowers:
What scripture clearly says that a man is born unable to believe the scriptures?
TheSire:
Ironically, we just talked about one of them that Anthony pointed out (1 Cor. 2:14). Secondly, you have spoken a lot about hardening passages and it seems then that hardening does affect what people will do. If it didn’t then I don’t see why God does it. So, if God can control certain people’s beliefs and they remain moral agents then it stands to reason he can control everyone’s beliefs and remain moral agents.
Leighton Flowers:
Why would God need to harden someone he’s already meticulously controlling? Hardening is an act of strengthening one in their resolve, not controlling them from birth.
TheSire:
I think it’s because the hardening is a part of that meticulous control. It may be that for some while he had a Jew just be nominal but for the coming Messiah, he hardens them for the inclusion of the gentiles and to accomplish the cross. I think it’s harder to explain the hardening of hearts from a libertarian perspective. If agents can just choose the contrary, then God’s hardening a person doesn’t guarantee that people will act that way God requires them to act at all. So, hardening is at best pointless if libertarian freedom was true at worse it just implies open theism is true and it was God’s best attempt.
Here are my thoughts that I didn’t include in the conversation:
Firstly, this just seems to have ignored all the prior things that I’ve written on the issue. Especially, in an article that Leighton has already seen:
http://spirited-tech.com/2017/04/25/how-to-flunk-soteriology101/
Secondly, this is not just some fringe view that Calvinists have about the passage. There are non-Calvinist interpreters as well:
In fact however, he writes, “The psychikos does not accept the things of God’s Spirit.” The point is that the natural human mind rejects the preaching of the gospel, because—Paul reminds us—it sounds like foolishness (mōria again, cf. 1:18, 23, 25, 27). The term psychikoi is difficult to translate properly; it refers to human beings living in their natural state apart from the Spirit of God and therefore unenlightened and blind to the truth. They just don’t “get it.” In other words, it refers to those who belong to the old age; it emphatically does not refer to less advanced Christians. When Paul says in verse 15 that “those who are spiritual … are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny” (NRSV) he certainly does not mean that Christians who have the spirit are no longer subject to community discipline. Indeed, everything in this whole letter suggests exactly the opposite (cf. 14:32–33a and the entirety of Paul’s admonitions to the community in 1 Cor. 5–6)! He means, rather, that the person who has received God’s Spirit has a privileged understanding of reality: she “discerns (anakrinei) all things but is herself discerned (anakrinetai) by no one.” In other words, we understand what is going on in the world, but the world cannot understand us. The apparently startling last clause merely restates the point of verse 14, now referring not to the world’s inability to understand the gospel, but to its incomprehension of those who have received the Spirit.
Hays, R. B. (1997). First Corinthians (p. 46). Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.
Lastly, we might be able to understand this as saying that unbelievers can’t have a fuller sense of knowing the things of God. They can’t come and understand how it functions in the entire story that we live in.
The Council 