John 4:48
John 4:48 (see also John 20:29)
So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”
Question: So if they did see signs and wonders, doesn’t this mean that they would, or at least could, believe?
Answer: That appears to be the logic of John 4:48.
Nevertheless, that’s not what God was after, because that would ruin the relational coming, if you will, that God had desired, and which was accomplished in the lives of people like Simeon (Luke 2:25-32), Anna (Luke 2:36-38) and Nathanael. (John 1:45-51) In testifying of the power of witnessing Jesus’ miracles, Jesus Himself had stated: “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” (John 10: 37-38) But if Calvinistic, Irresistible Grace was true, then notice how dysfunctional it would be. Here you have people that do not believe, though through the miracles, they could believe. Moreover, regarding John 4:48, if Calvinism was true, then it should instead state: “Unless you people receive an Irresistible Grace, you simply will not believe.” Once again, the Bible says the opposite of what Calvinists need for it to say.
Consider similar verses:
Matthew 11:21: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”
This is a testiment to the influence of miracles.
Isaiah 6:10: “Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.”
God was aware that on account of the miracles, the rebellious Israelites could turn to God and be healed, but that such wouldn’t be on His terms and in His way, so He ordered that they be hardened, which manifested itself in the form of parables (Matthew 13:13), rather than in signs and wonders.
John 20:29: “Jesus said to him, ‘Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.’”
It’s almost like a sense of disappointment, insomuch that it had to take miracles, signs and wonders, in order to get him to believe, instead of listening to the witness of the Holy Spirit.
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “That implies that some people choose not to believe unless they have seen, and others do not see and yet believe. Those who do not believe unless they have seen wonders cannot complain that they ‘can not’ but rather are held responsible because they ‘will not.’”
Another member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “For some people, at least, they believed because they saw miracles, while others believed without seeing miracles. This is relevant to the common Calvinist canard which I call the, ‘Who makes you differ?’ argument. Calvinists bring this up, and are then upset when we say, for example, in response: that different people believe for different reasons. We know from Scripture that some believe from seeing miracles, while others believe without seeing miracles, so even in Scripture itself, we see that different people believe for different reasons. And that Scriptural fact ought to nullify the, ‘Who makes you differ?’ argument.”
Calvinists must explain why people with an alleged, Irresistible Grace, believe in different patterns, that is, for some to believe in response to miracles, while others to believe without it. Wouldn’t you normally expect an Irresistible Grace to work in exactly the same way from person to person? Why would it have any variance at all? For instance, why would a person not believe in Jesus, but believe in the miracles, and by believing in the miracles, leads him back to believing in Jesus, if Irresistible Grace should have had him believing in Jesus from the start?, and for some people to follow this pattern, while others come to faith in a different pattern? It would seem that only free will could reasonably explain this, or else God is purposely designing people to believe in different patterns, all while scolding some for believing the easy way, that is, by the evidence of miracles.
Question: Assuming Calvinism, if God determines that Irresistible Grace will have people believing in different patterns, then exactly why would Jesus frown on people believing the “easy way” through the evidence of miracles, such as experienced by formerly, Doubting Thomas?
