Of course I believe he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, including our free choices - otherwise I wouldn’t be a Calvinist at all of course. But it was important that we clarify that the method by which Calvinists understand he predetermines all things - including our choices - isn’t by pre-programming us through our nature such that our God-given nature was forcing us into making choices such that we had no choice. That kind of programming I would agree would negate any free will in any real sense.
So we agree thus far, and you understand that Calvinists also agree, that we have a God given nature that, along with circumstances/nurture, does indeed significantly influence us, and precludes us making choices against our nature… but that our nature itself does not dictate any specific choices we make?
If so, then we can move on to the question of God foreordaining “whatsoever comes to pass” and its compatibility with free will. Can I request to return to my earlier thought experiment:
So, thoughts? Would you agree that God looking into various possible worlds does not take away the free will of any individual in those worlds, either in a possible world that is “realized” and becomes the actual world, or a possible world that only exists within God’s mind?
which of theses two actions was God wanting? And what happens now in the reality where the action does not match? Does God forsake every reality that goes away from His will?
Goof has to be in all realities! not just the single one that follows His will.
It does not work.
Unless, for instance, in another realities the betrayer is not Judas, or the Fist Disciple not Peter, and so on. That is, the action still happens but the choice is made by someone else. Maybe only the essential choices are subject to the multiverse?
It is getting a bit far fetched and convoluted already.
If you allow ‘reality’ to become plural - ‘realities’ - then nothing survives the ensuing chaos (not science, not rationality, not truth …); and we have the lamentable situation (that we actually are suffering considerably from right now!) of people thinking "well, that may be your reality - I have a different reality - a different set of facts, if you will. But … we won’t! That is we never concede such a thing, and rightly so. We insist that some people are just delusional and have been escorted off into la-la land by the news feeds they’ve chosen to be discipled by. With all due respect (if any is indeed due at all) to ‘alternate universes’ and such, there is only one reality that we all share in common. A multitude of different perceptions of it, to be sure, each one of us being a unique window into that reality - but science (and not just science, but our whole human notion of truth) has the premise that we have always remained in one and only one reality as far as any practical or testable access is concerned.
It seems to me that is no more a limitation on God than believing “God is good” is a limitation because that would mean God can’t / won’t be evil. If that’s to be seen as a “limitation”, then so be it. It would be a glorious one - and while Calvinists might happily sell such a thing away, there are those who believe that if God is not always and eternally righteous (synonomous with loving), then nothing else matters. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Or better yet, go down fighting for “the good” even if evil powers of the universe end up prevailing over everything. I tend to follow Lewis (and MacDonald before him, all the way back to the apostles and finally Christ himself) in thinking that is the conviction to live by. Come hell or high water; to be hanging from a cross and (seemingly) utterly forsaken by any good God, and yet to still to cast my vote for Goodness against evil - that is the highest possible road, and may Christ enable us each to follow Him in taking it.
But the good news for us is - that path is not forsaken of God! Indeed it was trod by him for us to show us the way. And this maybe gets to the heart of my deepest disagreement with my Calvinist brothers and sisters … Even though the world so-powerfully overwhelms us with that utter feeling of forsakenness - so much so that even Christ felt and cried out the bitter lament himself in his final moments, we now know that even in that moment, we (He) is not forsaken by the Father but is/always had been and will be loved all along. Christ may have seemed to concede ‘this is your time, when darkness reigns…’ but we now have the benefit of hindsight of knowing that darkness and evil never really reigned except in appearances, - they could not reign where it really counted even in hell! Such things overwhelm us in the world as it presently is - sure. But never for a moment did they reign in the heart of Christ, and thanks to his salvific work and righteousness, we (He) can and will evict those things from our own hearts too even while evil rages in its vanquished and exposed state against that unmoveable bulwark of Christ’s presence. May it become and be so in my heart too.
I a sorry but I fail to see why you are addressing this to me.
I point out a fallacy and then get pulled across the coals for that fallacy?
I don’t, for a second believe in this sort of multiverse. Multiverses are a scientific model to get past ludicrously large probabilities. or, in this case, how God could have His will without removing free choice. The whole notion is just ridiculous and way beyond proof let alone plausibility.
You are opening a rather nasty can of worms here.
Good and evil are subjective at best. One evil act may be seen as tremendous from another persepective. I am drawn to a quote in Harry potter when harry gets his first wand. Concerning Valdemort:
He did great things, terrible, but great.
God is amoral by human standards. We cannot, dare not, judge him by our values or morality.
well, since in this discussion thread we’re on the topic of what Calvinists believe, perhaps you can clarify for me the specific nature of this accusation? I’m simply not following the language and can’t exactly tell what I’m being accused of “selling away”… but it smells like another straw man… like i’m about to be told how we Calvinists believe something that we vehemently, repeatedly, and explicitly deny…?
Well, we need to be clear exactly what we mean by “Will”… would you not even be willing to say that the crucifixion was God’s will? That knowing what Pilate was about to do, it was yet God’s will to allow it to proceed, to refrain from using his (God’s) power to prevent this evil thing from happening, and thus in some way rescue his son?
Isn’t that exactly what Jesus meant when he prayed “They will be done”? that will being the crucifixion and everything that led up to it, including the choices of the individuals involved? Is there really no sense that you could use the terminology that the evil act of crucifying Christ was “God’s will”?
OK, I promised that I would touch on this, but have not had the adequate time, and, I don’t even know how to begin… The problem is that I could literally write books in response to challenge this idea.
If I understand you correctly… You are claiming that the (Calvinist?) concept - that evil choices of free individuals are nonetheless orchestrated by God for his purposes - has no biblical basis beyond “a few prooftexts” which can be only be (mis)understood in the Calvinist way if “taken in isolation”?
There is so much evidence against this, that I do not even know where to begin. But to repudiate this notion that such sentiments can only be found in “a few prooftexts… taken in isolation”…
perhaps it is easiest to begin with an entire book, that thoroughly, pervasively, and unabashedly affirms this idea, namely, the book of Job.
The book begins with the description of Job’s trials. His afflictions came in the form of 1) biological disease (his skin disease), 2) natural disaster (The lightning that destroyed some of his livestock, and the winds that destroyed the house that killed his children), and 3) the free and evil choices of lawless men (the Sabean and Chaldean desert raiders).
Job’s immediate response, even though he recognized that his afflictions were due to disease, weather, and the free and evil choices of lawless men, was to recognize explicitly and unambiguously that God was ultimately the one from whom these afflictions came:
“The Lord gave, and the Lord took away.”
“Shall we except good from God, and not evil?”
And throughout the next 30+ chapters of the book, we have Job arguing with his friends: Eliphaz and company arguing that these afflictions that God brought on Job were justified punishment for some sin(s) of Job’s…
…And Job Contending that these afflictions that God brought on Job were unjust of God given Job’s protestations of his innocence.
But for the next 30+ chapters, not a single one of the people in this book ever remotely disavows the idea that these evil things (to include those free and evil choices of lawless men) were indeed afflictions from God’s own hand. None of the friends ever suggest a Job, “Job, why do you persist on blaming God? God was not behind this! God does not intend evil things like this! God certainly did not intend the free actions of those desert Raiders!”
No, throughout their entire argument, they at least agreed on that one thing: that it was God who brought these trials on Job, and it was God’s purpose and intention to do so. Eliphaz and Company argued that God was just in so intending Job’s suffering, as Job must have sinned significantly to deserve such punishment from God… And Job responded by questioning God’s justice in intending his suffering, as he maintained his innocence… But none of them - Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, or Elihu - ever disagreed or even once questioned that particular point… they all agreed unanimously and unwaveringly that it was God who had intended and sent these trials.
God shows up and gives that perplexing answer to Job, but one thing God does not say is “Job, you misunderstand. I was not the cause of your afflictions, I did not will for those desert raiders to do what they did.”
And in Job’s final statement, he again avows God’s plan and purpose: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
So here we have an entire book: 42 chapters straight, which pervasively, unanimously, unambiguously and unwaveringly affirms that the affliction that Job endured was because of the intent and will of God – even though that will was executed or realized through disease, weather, and the free and evil choices of lawless men.
I humbly submit that this is not just some outlying proof-text that was taken in isolation.
Actually - it was more addressed to @Daniel_Fisher, who has already nicely responded below, which I hope to get to. Your sentence about multiple realities was just what jump started me into what turned into a longer reaction to things that were not just from you. Sorry that I started it out in such a way as to make you feel like it was all a reaction to you!
Indeed, I didn’t think I was doing any “raking over the coals!” Sorry that it came across that way! No it was just my heart-felt response on issues I care deeply about.
Job is the ultimate expression of Judaism that is then criticised by God.
Naturally Job would attribute everything to God. That is pure Jewish thought. Likewise the speaches made all echo Judaism and ae ultimately rejected. Taking job as a model instead of a lesson would seem to be getting the wrong end of the stick.
And this is the problem, as i see it with Calvinism. it is taking the Jewish view of a controlling and orchestrating God into Christianity where such views do not belong.
What is the point of forgiveness if it is not the fault of the recipient in the first place! (It was ordained!)
The Gospel relies on free will both in terms of needing it and responding to it. Any sort of predestination or control from God basically negates the lot.
Mervin, not to insult your intelligence, but you are following that “possible worlds”, is simply a philosophical thought experiment… It has no relation to actual, real alternate universes or alternate realities that actually exist In any real way, apart from existing in the imagination of someone’s mind?
(That said, I do think there are those, including some quantum physicists, that actually believe that any possible World has branched off and actually does exist in some alternate reality. If I need to clarify, I am not one of them.)
Ah! I at least have someone acknowledging that the entire Old Testament perspective and its writers are, indeed, Calvinists!… Not just a few proof- texts taken in isolation after all, but Calvinism is indeed “pure Jewish thought.”
Well, I’ll accept that much. That seems like progress to me.
If any acknowledgement is confirmation then I guess you can wallow in it, but i hardly supported the view.
Calvinism is no better than YEC, IMHO, in terms of understanding God and Scripture.
The problem seems to be people unwilling to see Scripture as anything more than a manual. The knack is to understand the message, not the details, or even the beliefs of the writers. Be it Paul or Moses, they each frame their work within their own understanding and culture.
Faith is still personal, not indoctrinated or learned.
Well, if I understood you rightly, Calvinism is the essentially the view espoused by the entire Old Testament! It is after all “the Jewish view“ so apparently it seems to be good at understanding the Old Testament scripture at least!
What I see you (or Calvinists generally) ‘selling away’ is the conviction that God is (and always and unwaveringly is) a good and just and loving God (and with no conflict whatsoever between any of those three things.) I.e. One does not remain “Just” if they become unloving, and one does not remain loving if they promote injustice. There are no “separate offices” or split personalities with God. We’ve probably all heard it preached “Thank God that He does not give me give me justice, for if He did so - I would burn in Hell forever!” (I’ll wager that in fact you might sign off on those very words? – would that not be a very Calvinist thing to say? And not just them, I"m pretty sure that passes for standard Christian orthodoxy across wide swaths of Protestantism and Catholicism). But it gets something only partially right. Yes - I’m a sinner and I deserve punishment. Empirically true. But it gets something dreadfully wrong beyond that. It thinks that God has set justice aside in order to show grace and love. I (and not just me but many giants immersed in scripture before me - I count Lewis as one of those) … I think that if God gives grace to a sinner, then it was just (and justice perfectly executed) for God to do so and if God executes justice on me, then it was the most loving thing God could do to me and for me, even if it doesn’t feel that way to me at the time.
I think you seriously misunderstand the entire book of Job if you want to see in it the polemic to defend what you want it to defend. Yes - Job’s friends “get it wrong”, but what you don’t seem to appreciate is that God is no ‘respecter’ of Job’s thoughts either (at least not to his face). We are told that God does take Job’s side to his friends, in that they are told essentially to repent, and we hear that Job has spoken rightly (at least compared to his friends). But that’s not what we hear from God as God addresses Job himself! God’s entire monologue is essentially one big “who do you think you are?” back to Job. So - far from saying “Job understands me, but all the rest of you - his friends - you all got it wrong”, God is essentially saying “I’m beyond all of you!” But even so, I will choose to commend some, like my good servant, Job, and to reprimand others - like his friends because they have not spoken rightly about me! Now here’s a little experiment you should try. Read excerpts of things Job’s friends are saying and compare them to some of the Psalms. Would you say that Job’s friends were wrong about everything? If so, you are disagreeing with a major portion of what pours out about God in a lot of the Psalms. So to me, I don’t see it as being about “getting a list of facts right about God”, but more the spirit in the person talking. What sort of spirit is it? A spirit of truth? Or something else?
It’s also interesting to me that the narrator treats us to a “behind the curtain” view at the beginning, revealing that it isn’t God that wished all this mayhem on Job but Satan. At best we can conclude that God allowed Satan to do it. But unless you want to be taking all that literaly and think that God and Satan do a lot of consorting, consulting, and wagering together in the heavenly courts, I don’t imagine you would be too eager to press into that. Suffice it to say, I don’t see from that book at all that it was God’s will to afflict Job. What I see instead is some profound wrestling about our human understandings of evil, and where does it come from? What I don’t see it doing is providing the easy answers you want it to. Many a prophet of that time freely attributed evil to God, so that was certainly a live option for them. Jesus only continues in that tradition with some of his parables being sprinkled with a king that tortures his enemies or a harsh master that throws people into outer darkness. But in the main his parables, not to mention his own life and practices and the teachings of his nearest and dearest apostles (John anyone?) we no longer are left with the option of thinking of God as harboring, much less willing for evil to happen. Christ’s prayer that “thy will be done” was that Christ would allow Satan’s evil to have it’s way without responding in kind. I.e. Christ could have “called down his twelve legions of angels” - but then he would have only been yet another tired tyrant of power like all the others of humanity both before and after, and not the Messiah of God who is above returning evil for evil, and calls us to be above it too. It was not God’s will for Christ to be murdered; it was God’s will that he continue to be the meek lamb who overcomes the world, even when that means he will get murdered! You can call that “God’s permissive will” if you want - I’ll even agree, but there is (to me) an absolute and hard distinction between that and God actively willing it.
Oh - and regarding the “alternate realities” - no I wasn’t taking that seriously, and never have - even the philosophical dabbling in such things. It was just a springboard for me to get on to more pertinent matters.
I can’t speak for Jewish thought. But the weightier question for me is … “Is it Christian thought?”. For some, it obviously qualifies as such - even exclusively so, apparently! I remain to be shown convinced - since I don’t see that from scriptures, much less from Christ! But if you can read Job and actually come away from that thinking that your case has been made, then I guess finding or forcing conformity to that approach in the rest of scriptures would be relative child’s play.
OK, it is a bit crass, but no, I don’t disagree with said sentiment… but if you’re claiming it is empirically, true, then you agree with it too?
“standard Christian orthodoxy across wide swaths of Protestantism and Catholicism” would not say that God “set aside” his justice in order to give grace and love… but would affirm that by the death of Christ he both executed his justice, and then was indeed just to show such grace and kindness to sinners who literally no longer deserved the punishment demanded by justice - since it was already paid. Even across the various divergent thoughts about the atonement, Christians across these wide swaths agree that the death of Christ accomplished our freedom from what justice otherwise would have demanded… the whole “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” but this is a bit off the topic, I’d be happy to discuss atonement, and God’s justice, but that would be better on yet another thread… we should probably stick to the question of God’s will for now…
I absolutely don’t view Job as a polemic to defend the idea that God’s intent and will are behind all things that happen. But one can’t miss that this perspective is assumed, and is the necessary assumption behind the entire book. If either Job, or his friends didn’t believe this, then they wouldn’t have had the discussion they did.
Of course they were both wrong - Job’s friends were wrong for thinking that the suffering God brought to Job was (just) punishment, and Job was also wrong for thinking that the suffering God brought him was (unjust) punishment. But neither were corrected on the underlying, pervasive, unambiguous understanding that these evils were from God.
Um, no.
At best? Not sure, honestly, what else we could conclude from that section. And if God it is God’s will to allow Satan to so do something to Job…
Then too bad you weren’t there to correct Job and his friends in their understanding by your superior theology! They could have had a far more productive conversation, and would never have erred in the first place in thinking that the sufferings were a punishment, if they hadn’t been assuming the whole time that Job’s sufferings came from God!
Am I claiming it contains easy answers? All I’m saying is that the book is unanimous and unambiguous in its underlying recognition that Job’s sufferings came from God. That understanding is understood by all characters, pervasive, assumed, explicitly asserted, and never challenged, even if it wasn’t the point of the book - nor is it some kind of “easy answer.” But it is assumed, explicitly affirmed, and pervasive nonetheless.
True and full agreement. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Then I’m guessing we’re agreeing that it is more than a few isolated prooftexts, then? But that said, I would quicken to add that the OT prophets are not attributing evil intent, motive, or morality to God when they affirm that evil things (either meaning tragedies, or even the evil things that people do that bring suffering) come from him in an ultimate sense. The term “evil” in the OT is nearly synonymous with “pain” or “tragedy”. "Is
But then that just sounds like modern-day Calvinists, no?
So, Jesus did affirm this? OK, then we agree again. Not sure how relevant it is that Jesus only affirmed any doctrine in some of his teachings. By definition any doctrine he taught would only be in some of his teachings, no? He would have only taught about forgiveness of neighbors in only some of his parables… I don’t disbelieve it, discount it, or minimize it on that basis… so not sure why that is relevant?
Well, on the topic of the post, I’d agree that it was against God’s decreed will (i.e., the ten commandments) for Christ to be murdered…
And I would go further, to acknowledge that there is nothing in the entire universe that God did not want to see happen than the murder of his beloved son. But it happened, so God must have willed not to interfere or keep it from happening in the end…
…And not just in that moment, but given God’s omniscience and omnipotence, there are all manner of ways that God could have prevented Christ from dying, subtle ways that would not in the least have interfered with someone’s free will…
… so it sounds like you agree with me insofar as God, knowing what would happen, chose not to interfere (at any point across all of history) and thus chosen to allow it to happen, what we call God’s permissive will…
… and I think you’d agree that he had foreseen this course of events - that Christ would be murdered - even before the creation of the world…
…and thus when God did decide to create the world as he did, knowing that if/as he did, Christ’s murder would eventually happen… then it was indeed God’s (permissive) will and plan for this murder to happen, a plan that he actually put in motion when he created the world… sounds like we might even agree that far?
…so when he actually decided to create the world and allow it to progress exactly as he had foreseen, then in that decision to so create the world (knowing he would not interfere at any point to prevent Christ’s death) - at that moment, he decided that Christ would indeed be murdered (against his revealed/decretive will, no less)… no?
He didn’t have to create the world, he could have created it in myriad different ways that would not have resulted in Christ’s murder, or he could have subtly intervened in myriad different ways across history that never interfered with anyone’s free will, but which would have prevented Christ’s murder… But he chose to so create the world, knowing how it would progress, and hence from the creation of the world he decided that Christ was going to be murdered.
(Hence why the Bible can describe Christ as “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.”?)
Hence I’m not seeing a huge leap between all that above that I suspect you wouldn’t disagree with, and simply acknowledging that it was indeed the direct plan of God… especially since that is the very explicit language the NT repeatedly uses…
“This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan”
“They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”
Yep! total agreement there - I’m a sinner in need of God’s salvation. I might differ a bit in how I would characterize my identity as a sinner - how deeply that goes into my core identity. My impression of Calvinists is that while they acknowledge Genesis 1 and 2, they really only seem to start getting excited and start building their theology from Genesis 3 on. (Ok - yeah - I know that’s a caricature too, of course you accept Genesis 1 and 2. It just seems like Calvinists would start with Depravity before they would start with good creation of God. I prefer to see God’s good creation (and our identities as children of God) as being more primal for us than our sin nature (which I do agree is still there too - but only after - and not as an utter repeal and revocation of all that is good. But I may be adding unecessary or even inaccurate quibbles here. Back to the will (and I’m glad we do have agreement that God is good, and always so!) Thanks for calling me back to the topic at hand.
And on Job - yeah - if you’re willing to see that God’s permissive will extends even to Satan, then yeah, I see that there too. But I think we’re both in agreement that nobody should be trying to build great theological systems using either Job or his friends as substantial load bearing walls. It’s a haunting tale of people of that time (yes - loaded with all their assumptions) wrestling over the same questions that persist in haunting us still today.
It isn’t my theology. It’s Christ’s! And yes, I want my theology to be corrected by Him. Whatever I get from anywhere in the O.T. - if I come away from it with a God that doesn’t look like Christ, then I’m doing it wrong.
Yes - I acknowledge that Christ made use of hyperbole in his parables to sometimes drive home points with a sledge hammer. It would be dangerous to use those in isolation too. Is God really to be thought of as a dishonest manager? Or a would-be king who enjoys watching his political enemies being tortured? I think not! But those parables were being used to make other points, and to do so with laser focus, if you will. There are some parables, though, that I think we are safer in seeing them as a portrayal of his Father in Heaven - the parable of the prodigal, the Shepherd tenderly searching for the lost sheep. The manager who generously paid all the workers the same. So I wouldn’t say that Jesus was affirming that God was sometimes a wrathful tyrant even in those parables you mention. I would just say those parables are teaching something else about the Kingdom of God and our relation to that.
I don’t have anything to add to the whole determinism, free-will debate; so I’ll probably stay silent about all that other than to steadfastly cling to my conviction that we do have free will and agency and responsibility and that those things are no illusion (at least as far as any of us could ever know.) That’s one curtain I don’t think God is letting us peek behind. We just have to trust that if we’re exhorted (not forced) to do something, then we’d better get used to taking responsibility for this thing we call ‘choice’, and had better practice as best we can, and with the Spirit’s essential help always, to choose to start loving both neighbor and God.
Yeah - probably a good idea to either do another thread for atonement, or refrain from the rabbit hole here. But …
I’ll just respond with this. Even in our evil times, it’s still God in charge. And it sounds like you and I already agree that this doesn’t mean I’m dangling from puppet strings and forced to do evil by God. But I do agree with you that God is omniscient and as such, knows my choices even before I do, and can therefore incorporate those into the reality of God’s presence and growing Kingdom here among us now. My answer to those specific verses is that God knows what happens when His incarnate self visits a very wicked earth, he knows where our wickedness leads and that we can’t abide to have his perfect and illuminating company in our presence without our sin coming to the surface. So even knowing that we are murderers, his power is such that he comes to us and loves us anyway, which was his deliberate plan that he decided beforehand should happen. And it did. And his power was revealed already and especially at the cross itself.
It sounds like we agree on a whole lot after all! Tomorrow I’ll be on the road with family and probably not responding much around here for a few days. Just a forewarning so that nobody mistakenly thinks I’m ignoring them.
Well, then! Maybe I’m not so far removed as I had thought! But I’m sure any rigorous Calvinist would have quite a few more things they would need me to affirm before I could get my card and learn the secret handshake!
I’m content to leave that here for now - though will follow any more exchanges here with continued interest.
I am going to throw a wrench in this theology. Because it is one thing speaking of yourself, but when you make it a theology you are no longer doing that but speaking of everyone. Thus the theology is basically saying a child deserves to be tortured, and thus when some wacko does this to a child, he is only doing what the child deserves.
No.
Total depravity is no good. Not only that but it is demonstrably wrong. The Bible is filled with people whom God speaks of with approval. People do good and God appreciates it.
And then there is the rest of it…
Unconditional salvation, limited atonement, and irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints is all of piece really – and it all spells entitlement. The entitlement is disguised a bit – changing it from entitled because deserving to entitled because God said so. And that is just as bad if not even worse.
I certainly assert the exact opposite of all four: conditional salvation, Christ died for all, grace is a gift, and salvation is never yours to lose.
There are things you have to do for salvation. Jesus makes this very clear in Matthew 19. First you need to repent. Wanting to change is a must. Nothing you do is enough. That is certainly true. But this unconditional, don’t have to do anything idea is just crap.
Christ died because of everyone’s sin not just because of the sin of a select few. No you don’t absolve yourself of that simply by rejecting salvation. Doesn’t sound so sensible anymore when you turn it around like this does it? But the right way around is just as important: salvation is offered to all.
Grace is a gift not a rape. A gift has to be accepted or it is not gift at all.
And finally there is OSAS “perseverance of the saints” which asks the utterly faithless question of whether you can lose your salvation. It is the very essence of entitlement to say that salvation in yours to begin with. It is never ever yours.
Now with all that said… it would not surprise me in the slightest to hear a Calvinists back down from these to say it does really mean any of this, because it is rather hard to see how a Christian can affirm any of this really. But of course I will be watching for the entitlement getting snuck back into it somehow, like I sometimes see done in Arminianism.
They could have had a far more productive conversation, and would never have erred in the first place in thinking that the sufferings were a punishment, if they hadn’t been assuming the whole time that Job’s sufferings came from God!