1.Salvation is wholly an act of God. 2. God chooses who is saved. 3.Saving grace is irrisistible

I look forward to learning of his debate skills first hand. To start I would like to make it clear to all the readers (and my opponent), that the resolution we are debating is not my opponents first 3 contentions, as the resolution debate title implies we are. We agreed beforehand to debate a Methodist-Presbyterian difference in belief, Predestination Vs Free Will. So the resolution should be treated as “Predestination (pro) Vs Free Will (con)” So vote based on how well pro argues for predestination and against free will compared to how well con argue for free will and against predestination. I make this clarification because I do not have to necessarily deny the truth of all my opponents’ contentions just to argue against predestination. I could do that, or I could make augments that a contention does not confirm or deny predestination doctrine. But before I can get started on that, my priority is to get my own case that is not offered in the straw man cases my opponent made to give rebuttal too ahead of time. I find the things I want to make sure get character space need to come first. Contention 1: There is no such thing as sin without free will. Sin is very often defined as ‘disobeying Gods will’. . http://www.thefreedictionary.com... Under my Presbyterian friends understanding of Gods involvement in our choices, there is none made that is not out of the pre-ordained decision of God. Let’s take some famous choices in our nation’s history to compare the difference in the Methodist view on how a sin came to be, and the Presbyterian one. President Bill Clinton goes out and cheats on his wife Hillary, or as its known in the bible, adultery. Why did this happen? To me, Bill’s act of adultery was done ultimately because he chose to. This was not something for this individual that was inevitable, and ultimately when the temptation came to commit adultery, he could have overcome it through one means or another (i. e. reliance on God, prayer, discipline). But of course even if he was a disciplined student of God, it would also not be inevitable that he would not sin, the promises we can be free of sin but not temptation, and with temptation comes the possibility to give in. the responsibility for Bills actions ultimately lie on Bills shoulders. To Pro however, Bill’s act of adultery was done ultimately because God planned for him to do so. Even though God quite clearly states in his revealed word to us adultery is a sin and he commands us to not do it, he, though his foreknowledge of everything and total unchallenged control of the world made Bill’s choice to cheat on his wife for him, through very complicated and mysterious processes of cause and effect that led Bill to the temptations to the act and the lack of spiritual defense from the temptation. You see, because God caused Bill to cheat on Hillary that means it was Gods will for that to happen, if it was not he would not have caused any such thing. So Bills act of adultery is not a sin (breaking the will of god) because we know it was in fact Gods will that he do exactly as he ended up doing, because Bill could never have done any other way. Sin cannot exist because everything ever done is by gods will, there are no choices ever made outside of his will that could possible disrupt it. Contention 2: The problem of evil In appoligetic debates one of the common cases athiest like to make is reffered to as the problem of evil. the accusative case is in short "how can there be a loving god that see's all the war, the famine, the cruelty, ect. .. and does nothing to stop it? why does he not stop all the evil being done? " the christian response to this is classically that we live in a fallen creation, and because of free will man often choses to do evil, it is not god who wills any of our human cruelty to each other. It was man that brought death into the world, not God. But Pro does not have ground to make such a defense for our god. to him god does not get excused from the evil actions of man because the final acts of our earthly wills were predetermened by God. So why does he not pro? In fact the entire story of Genises falls appart in the doctrine of predestination. John Calvin himself said that he not only believed the fall of man was predestined, but that god planned out adams choice to disobey himself at his pleasure. Why would God though tell adam to not eat the fruit of a tree that he had planed for him to eat all along? if it was his will that adam should eat of the tree then he is either a sadistic liar, or he is inconsistant (crazy). Unsuprisingly virtually all the athiest I have every argued with on DDO have debated with the same perception of God predestinationist have of god. Rebuttals: C1: Salvation is wholey act of God. I do not contend that salvation is of Gods merits and not my own. the stance that I can accapt or reject a free dounut offered to me is not the same as saying I in some way paid the fee requried to aquire that said dounut. Salvation is a free gift, paid for in full by christ on the cross offered to all as a gift we do not deserve. For some reason that is beyond me, predestinationist consider the choice of that accaptance of the free gift of salvation part of the fee for getting it. as if accaptance was something that made us earn salvation. they like athiest, put so much stock in the process of cause and effect to the point that they deify it to be greater than god himself. C2-C5: I rope the other contenions together because they basically take the same response to oppose. with the exception of the C5 they are all simply scripture quotes, and scripture in a christian debate is not something that can just be argued away as wrong in some way, I accapt I must either explain the scriptures meaning to be different via context of passage or accuracy of its translation. I could get in scripture battle and quote many free will supportive sets of scripture such as . http://www.biblegateway.com... . http://www.biblegateway.com... . http://www.biblegateway.com... . http://www.biblegateway.com... . http://www.biblegateway.com... this one quite possible too depending on your stance apocrapha (as far as I know I dont think presbiterians differ with methodist that they are scripture too, correct me if I'm wrong on that though) . http://www.biblegateway.com... But I think I can sum up the next few rounds if I got in such a battle. I put wooden litteralism on mine and you wooden litteralism on yours. I say yours is not warrented to be taken in a ridged sense and vise versa. Instead I hope to focus on which side makes more logical coherent since as a whole, thus my above contentions. simalar problems with trying to argue over the translation or mistranslations. I am faily certain that niether of us are educated in attic greek or kione greek, or even the full relevance knowing them both have on translating the bible. . http://www.translation-services-usa.com... basically all the links pro gave for his alternate translations listed the regular ones as possible too, so I see no reason to credit to the alternatives that the experts rejected based on the blueletterbible links. interestingly I find that there are zero translators that do translate the 'tis' in the 2 peter passage as "some", they all in there advanced knowledge of greek, historical context, ect. .. chose to translate 'tis' as "any". the differnce between any and some is kind of pronounced, you would think if that was just a mistake one of them would have transated it correctly. . http://www.biblegateway.com...