Is Homosexual Desire Determined by God?
Soteriology 101 w/ Dr. Leighton Flowers
Leighton Flowers
4.8 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2015
⏱️ 39 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Calvinists (compatibilists)Â deny that the Bible teaches that man has a free will. They believe, rather, that God ordains all things that come to pass, including man's choices, yet man is still culpable for his choices.
Compatibilism, held to by most Calvinistic scholars, is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism (according to John Hendryx of monergism.com, Phil Johnson, and James White, to name a few).
This simply means that God's predetermination and meticulous providence is "compatible" with voluntary choice. They do not believe man's choices are coerced ...i.e. man does not choose against what they want or desire, yet no man ever makes choices contrary to God's sovereign decree. What God determines will always come to pass according to this system, which would include the homosexual's same sex desire and choice to act upon that desire.
In light of Scripture, (according to compatibilism), a gay man's choices are exercised voluntarily but the homosexaul desires, temptations and circumstances that bring about these sexual choices about occur through divine determinism.
So, according to Calvinism (compatibilism) God determined and ordained that every homosexual activity will take place. Yet, homosexuals act voluntarily making the evil choice that brings it to pass, which means the sin is imputed to homosexuals for their wicked activites, and God remains blameless. In both of these cases, it could be said that God ordains sin, sinlessly. No homosexual activity occurs apart from His sovereign good pleasure, according to the claims of this system.
Please understand that NEITHER compatibilism nor hard determinism affirms that any homosexual has a free will. Those who believe gay men have a free will are not compatibilists, but should, rather, be called "inconsistent". The gay man's choices are their choices because they are voluntary, not coerced. Homosexuals do not choose sodomy contrary to their desires or natures, nor seperately from God's meticulous providence.
Furthermore, compatibilism is directly contrary to contra-causal free will. Therefore, a voluntary choice does not mean the homosexaul had the ability to choose otherwise. Voluntary does mean, however, the ability of the gay man to choose what he most wants or desires according to his inborn disposition or inclination.
According to compatibilism, the homosexual's will is never free, in any sense, from God's eternal decree.  When compatibilists use such phrases as "compatibilistic freedom", they are, more often than not, using it to mean 'voluntary' choice, but are not referring to freedom FROM God's decree or absolute sovereignty.
(Attention Calvinists: before making accusations of misrepresentation please read the article that this report is directly modeled after: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/qna/sovereignfree.html)
James White claims to be compatibilistic, yet in this exchange he affirms contra-causal (libertarian) choice. Â Thus, he fails to reply to Dr. Steven Gaines argument in consistent manner. Â
To join the discussion with Professor Leighton Flowers please visit www.soteriology101.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, then is the homosexual correct in saying that God made me like this? |
| 0:10.0 | Let's dive in. |
| 0:11.0 | You answer all my questions, you can never tell no lies. |
| 0:18.0 | You're always telling me what it's all about, but some don't listen to your |
| 0:22.1 | replies. You say to us we can't do enough, and when I try, I'm a fool. This time I'm spent |
| 0:29.1 | and I've realized that I can't make it through. I need you. The words you say, your gracious |
| 0:35.5 | love just gives you away the words you say |
| 0:39.1 | You're so believable |
| 0:42.0 | Oh, God, God, God |
| 0:44.3 | Welcome to the Soteryology 101 podcast with Professor Leighton Flowers |
| 0:50.5 | Join our online university classroom as we discussed the doctrines of grace and God's |
| 0:56.7 | amazing plan for salvation. You're so believable. Dr. Stephen Gaines preached a sermon |
| 1:04.3 | where he critiques the Calvinistic worldview, especially with regard to meticulous determinism, that God ordains |
| 1:12.4 | all things that come to pass. And of course, there are various perspectives and ways of |
| 1:18.2 | explaining how God ordains through secondary means or whatever. And there's nuances to that. |
| 1:25.7 | There's all kinds of accusations of misrepresentation because no matter what nuanced approach you take in speaking of God's meticulous determinism, there's always one group of Calvinists that don't like your terms or don't like the way you nuanced it. So you're always going to be misrepresenting one group or another. But that's inevitable. I just think that that's not possible to |
| 1:46.1 | properly represent every form of Calvinism out there. So you're always going to anger one crowd |
| 1:51.6 | or another. Either way, I think this is a hot button topic right now with regard to homosexuality. |
| 1:58.1 | And it's a, I think, something that needs to be addressed because, |
| 2:02.0 | you know, ultimately the question is, do homosexuals have a point when they say, I was born like |
| 2:08.4 | this? I was born with these desires. I was born with same-sex attraction. God made me like this. |
| 2:14.8 | If what the Calvinist teaches is true with regard to total inability |
... |
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