zaitzeff

the New Testament presents two contradictory and mutually exclusive conceptions of God. In the genuine letters of Paul and most of the pseudo-Pauline letters, in the gospel and letters of John, and in I Peter we have the following doctrines taught:
1) God's predestination of man;
2) God's salvation of all at some point;
3) post-mortem preaching, repentance and salvation;
4) God's anger comes to an end and all is peace and harmony; God has no person against whom to be angry and no reason for anger, I Cor 15:28.
5) justification by faith.

In the synoptics, II Thess, Hebrews, James and Revelation we have the opposite set:
1) without directly saying so, strong implications of human sole responsibility for sin by means of statements expressing anger and disappointment with man;
2) that many people--in fact the majority--will be lost forever and put into hell, a place or state of eternal conscious torment;
3) that one's state with God is fixed at death and can't be changed;
4) God's anger with the sinners never ends and their rebellion against Him never ends;
5) justification by works/obedience.

the separation of these two pictures is not complete. For example, Paul in Romans 1 and 2 speaks of God's wrath against sin and Paul speaks as if man is responsible for his sins for which God justly is angry with him. However, this is logically inconsistent with the statements Paul later makes in Romans 9-11, which attribute to God ultimate responsibility for man's sin and rebellion.
And, in the synoptics, we have a sentence which implies predestination:
"Many are called but few are chosen." See also the Johannine drop into the synoptics: "No man knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son has revealed him."

Note what happens when we adopt the predestination of set 1 and put it with the eternal lost condition of most men found in set 2. We have the doctrine taught by Augustine and John Calvin. God is a terrible monster who willingly and knowingly creates men for the purpose of expressing and showing His wrath against those men and "their" sins, sins that in fact they were predestinated to commit. On the one hand, God has infinite love for a few; on the other hand, God has a sadistic and homocidal mania against the rest. Of these rest, it may be said, as of Judas, "It would have been better for them not to be born." Even John Calvin, when speaking of this predestination, says it is God's dreadful decree.

Clivedurdle

I thought the free will and predetermination arguments were to do with how people interpreted things and were puritan inventions from people reading the Bible.

Has anyone argued they are the result of two traditions?

zaitzeff

Augustine taught that God predestines man, some to heave and some to eternal torment in hell and Augustine is reteaching the teaching of Paul re
predestination, except that Paul does not say that torment in hell is the final state for anyone. Luther and Calvin repeat the teaching of predestination. The teaching of predestination and the denial of free come from both
Romans 9
and
the fact that, if God knows the future, we cannot do otherwise. It is not just a matter of one's interpretation of Romans 9.