toldailytopic: How does God judge the mentally handicapped when they die?

[Nathon Detroit]

I'll elaborate.

Let's say I were to die right after typing this.

I would die a bisexual, transgendered, atheist, public school substitute teacher, that while claiming to be vegetarian occaisionally enjoys shellfish. I don't consider that to be bad, but the Bible says that it is. I niether accept nor understand the gospel due to God's existence not being proven to me, therefore making me an unrepentant sinner and apparently now mentally handicapped. Am I correct on this?

Of course you are not correct.

While I would love to call you a retard we both know you are fully capable of making adult choices.

If what you say is true, that God would give me a choice between Heaven and Hell when I die, at the least, I would finally have my proof. Am I right so far?

Only if you were full blown clinically retarded, and you are not, therefore all of this is nonsense.

If I have understood that I do have a choice after I have died, would anything I have done at all in my lifetime, good or bad, make any difference at that point?

It seems to me it's like choosing cake or death. That's a pretty easy question.

You will not have a choice after death because you are fully capable of making your choice here in this life as God intended.

You don't want to be with God, therefore He will grant you your desire and let you live without Him eternally.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Sigh. A response within five minutes of a post containing information for further reading does not warrant more more than observation of the same. :squint:

Please do find the time to digest the expositions so linked. Hodge, for those that agree with him, will clearly show how your quick trigger finger response response is unwarranted.

AMR

My response was accurate. You know my response was accurate because that's what you believe. Some are elected to hell and some to heaven, with Calvinism it's a cosmic crap-shoot.

Q.E.D. Sigh.

AMR

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Q.E.D. Sigh.

AMR

You made your point clear.

Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and ...Others, not elected, cannot be saved.

AMR

Anything in that paraphrase you disagree with?

 

[Persephone66]

Of course you are not correct.

While I would love to call you a retard we both know you are fully capable of making adult choices.

Only if you were full blown clinically retarded, and you are not, therefore all of this is nonsense.

You will not have a choice after death because you are fully capable of making your choice here in this life as God intended.

So I misunderstood, thank you for clearing that up.

You don't want to be with God, therefore He will grant you your desire and let you live without Him eternally.

How do you know that?

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Anything in that paraphrase you disagree with?

Knight, you can forge-quote my posts anyway you like, but it is best you stick to what I have actually written. That you did so, knowing full well how I and others abhor the practice, one you have also decried at times, saddens me. Perhaps you are tired, irritated about something else, or whatever, and are looking for someone to take it all out on. I get that.

As I suggested, please find some time to read the expositional content suggested for further understanding. When you do so and want to interact with that content, I'll be around. The Hodge link will be fruitful for you as a starter. Until then you are casting bait this fish is unwilling to bite.

AMR

 

[Pam Baldwin]

I don't believe the mentally handicapped (or babies) are automatically saved.

Neither do I.

Nor do I believe they are automatically condemned. Neither of those options seem to fit within God's M.O.

...actually, we all are condemned "automatically" because we are born as children of Adam......in the sense of deserving Hell. But God does (did) choose His elect from before and since the foundation of the world.

God created us to fellowship with. He wants a relationship with us, it's a TWO-WAY street.

Therefore, I believe that the mentally handicapped (and babies) upon death are spiritually matured (how that happens I have no idea). When we die we will not have our physical bodies and our infirmaries. Only our soul will remain, and it will be that way for the mentally handicapped as well as babies.

Babies and the mentally handicapped have not had the chance or ability to make a conscious choice as to if they want to fellowship with God eternally. Therefore God will grant them that choice in the afterlife.

In other words... I don't think God ever robs anyone the ability to... "choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" - Joshua 24:15

Really? So are you saying that they have a second chance? Where and how do you support that???! :jawdrop:
You say that they are spiritually matured upon death....so, wouldn't they have to be regenerated to be that? I'm not following this....

"I don't think" is meaningless.....you try and use Josh 24:15 as proof of free will/choice, but the directive there is to choose whom you will serve. The outward proof of what is inside the person....not that they choose to BE regnerated. We all are responsible for our "choices". However, out choices are not "free".

 

[Pam Baldwin]

I agree with Knight, to a point. I'm not sure I believe they are immediately matured [babies] but are placed in Abraham's Bosom to await maturation according to natural time progression. As for the mentally handicapped, I believe they are relieved of that infirmity immediately.

And a_g, there is more to Matthew 7 than the first verse.

Where do you get this "maturation" stuff??

 

[Pam Baldwin]

I didn't say "immediately". I don't know what that process would be like or how long it would take. But I'm glad you agree in principle.

But where is the "principle"?

 

[Nick M]

public school substitute teacher, that while claiming to be vegetarian .

You are most definitely going to hell. lain:

 

[nicholsmom]

Knight, you can forge-quote my posts anyway you like, but it is best you stick to what I have actually written. That you did so, knowing full well how I and others abhor the practice, one you have also decried at times, saddens me. Perhaps you are tired, irritated about something else, or whatever, and are looking for someone to take it all out on. I get that.

As I suggested, please find some time to read the expositional content suggested for further understanding. When you do so and want to interact with that content, I'll be around. The Hodge link will be fruitful for you as a starter. Until then you are casting bait this fish is unwilling to bite.

AMR

I'm going to read these, but I'm thinking that those who are predisposed to judge based on their distaste of the notion of limited atonement, will not read it dispassionately. They are unwilling to consider it rationally, in my experience.

I am still hoping to find time to begin a thread on the wheat and tares and the noble and ignoble purposes of pots, but I had a nightmare this morning whose root was having too many irons in the fire already :sigh:

 

[ThePresbyteers]

This message is deleted and closed.

 

[nicholsmom]

"and you return with this???"
nicholsmom
So you are saying that if a mentally handicapped person commits a crime because he/she is not capable of understanding death, they are guilty of murder? I'm sorry you have no clue as to what I am saying.

The trouble here is that the term "mentally handicapped" is insufficient to the task. My daughter did not understand death, when at age 3, she snuggled a duckling to death. But that taught her something. She learned to recognize death, even at 3 and with Down syndrome handicapping her mentally. The evidence is this: when she strangled the next duckling to death, she put it back in its nest in its cage and locked the door back up. She knew that she'd repeated a naughtiness when she saw that the duckling was dead and tried to cover it up.
Another person, more profoundly handicapped, would not learn this same lesson. Do you see the difference? My daughter, now having at least the recognition of death and her ability to cause it, is now responsible for that act if she repeats it. The more profoundly mentally handicapped individual would not. The law doesn't simply give a pass based on IQ, but rather on tested ability to understand one's actions and to judge them right or wrong according to the law.

So certainly, one who couldn't even comprehend death would not be held accountable for even murder in the same way as one who could. Still, that person may well be deemed dangerous and be required to have some sort of constant supervision around children, etc. Of course that is shifting responsibility to the supervisor, and the person incapable of discerning right and wrong, life and death, would not be held responsible - at least not in the same way.

Is that more clear?

 

[ThePresbyteers]

This message is deleted and closed.

 

[ThePresbyteers]

This message is deleted and closed.

 

[Lighthouse]

That is what I think. The same scenario we have is what they will have. When they die physicaly, they will no longer be contstrained by a brain that doesn't function correctly. The decision can be made at that point whether or not they want to spend eterinity with him.

Because just as granite and doogietalons do here, some will shake their fist at him and say send me away.

For example...

Agreed.

I do not think it is a matter of the head, but a matter of the heart!

I think that should answer Percy's question.

Where do you get this "maturation" stuff??

You have to be mature enough to make the choice. John Calvin was wrong.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

So I misunderstood, thank you for clearing that up.

:up:

How do you know that?

Because that's what God tells us in His word.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Knight, you can forge-quote my posts anyway you like, but it is best you stick to what I have actually written. That you did so, knowing full well how I and others abhor the practice, one you have also decried at times, saddens me.

Tell me what is inaccurate about the paraphrase. I'm dying to know.

Perhaps you are tired, irritated about something else, or whatever, and are looking for someone to take it all out on. I get that.

Calvinism is horrifying. It is the cancer of Christianity. I have no doubt that Calvinism is to blame for 90% of the lost rejecting God and the gospel message.

As I suggested, please find some time to read the expositional content suggested for further understanding. When you do so and want to interact with that content, I'll be around. The Hodge link will be fruitful for you as a starter. Until then you are casting bait this fish is unwilling to bite.

AMR

I don't need to read any of that crap. I've read it all before. I've been battling Calvinists here on TOL since 1997. I know exactly what you think and why you think it. Even you are embarrassed about your views otherwise you would have merely agreed with my paraphrase instead of acting like it was somehow inaccurate.

You directly stated (via your source) that some babies are elect and some babies are condemned. When I said that horrified me, you acted as if that isn't what you really said. You realize how awful that is, and how awful that sounds, so you act like that's not what Calvinism teaches. But you that it does teach that so you obfuscate by telling me to read a bunch of gobbledygook that attempts to sugar coat a horrible message.

Sorry AMR but God does not elect innocent babies to be condemed to hell.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

The Reformation confessions, canons, and catechisms
are accurate representations and summaries of Biblical
dogma until somebody proves otherwise.

Ahhh... the old I'm right because I'm right.

Great argument! :up:

You can stick with your religion... I will stick with God's word.

 

[Ktoyou]

Do they automatically get sent to hell because they have not had their sin forgiven?

or...

Do they get a pass into heaven because they are not accountable for their sin??

It's a good question; I do believe He judges them prudently. If this means opening their eyes, enabling choice, that answer seems prudent.

Inaccountability does not account for anything.lain:

 

[ghost]

http://www.reformed.org/documents/shaw/shaw_10.html
http://www.mbrem123.com/creeds/wcf_10.php

AMR

From your link:

The Confession of Faith: A commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith

by A. A. Hodge

Chapter 10
Of Effectual Calling

Section I. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call,[1] by his Word and Spirit,[2] out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ;

Being "predestined unto life" from the WCF perspective is contrary to Biblical truth.


The word "predestined" proorisas (predetermine, foreordain, decide beforehand) has NOTHING to do with the individual and everything to do with God's intent and purpose for the individual.

God has indeed predestined us to be His adopted children, and unto life, holiness, righteousness, blamelessness, etc.


Ephesians 1:3-5

Verse 3

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:"


Those who are in Christ, are blessed with ALL spiritual blessings, by God. These blessings are not an afterthought by God, but were predetermined and then distributed to ALL who are in Christ, without exception. We are in Christ (who is seated at the right hand of God in heavenly places), and He is in us, having given us and sealing us with the Holy Spirit.


Verse 4

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:"



Before the foundation of the world, it was God's purpose and His intent that ALL those in Christ are chosen by God to be holy and without blame before Him. This is God's love in action, that we, by His grace and mercy would receive that which we could never achieve. God foreordained that ALL those who are in Christ, WILL BE holy and blameless because they are "in Him".


Verse 5

"Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will"



It is God's will that all those who are in Christ will be His children. God therefore predestined us unto adoption to Himself. It is the being adopted, that was predestined. The WCF has this wrong.


Romans 8:29-30

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified."


Who are the ones that God foreknew?

Go back one verse: Rom 8:28

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

It is those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

As Paul just pointed out in Ephesians, God's predetermined purpose for those in Christ is that we are holy and blameless before Him. Nothing can separate us from Him, and all things will work together for good for those of us who are in Him. God did not foreknow who will be in Christ and who will not be in Christ, but God did foreknow that all those who are in Christ will be conformed to His image. God has called ALL those who were predestined to be conformed to His Son, and ALL of these have been justified and glorified. This is God's promise, and it cannot be thwarted by anyone or anything."The called" are those whom God invited to receive all that God had predetermined, predestined, and foreordained, to His purpose.


Ephesians 1:10-13

"That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise".


The inheritance is the promise that was predestined for God's purpose. As Paul points out, this predestined promise is obtained by those who hear the word of truth (the Gospel of our salvation), and believe it. It is promised to anyone who trusts in Christ AFTER hearing the Gospel.


The WCF has it wrong, and sadly, millions of people, like yourself, have wandered off the path of truth, having followed and submitted themselves to this fundamental error.