No doubt about that, you are still in your sins.
Reconciliation Cancels Out the Doctrine of Predestination
- Thread starter Robert Pate
- Start date
No doubt about that, you are still in your sins.
Shasta
Well-known member
It is not about what we deserve. It is about God's abundant mercy which impels Him to spare us from what we do deserve and give us blessings we do not. God's love and goodwill also extends to the whole even though the majority of the world are His abject enemies.
NickCharles
New member
To say that His mercy impels Him to do anything is to make Him subject to His mercy. And it would lay waste to His claim that He has mercy on whom He has mercy.
“What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”
**Romans *9:14-16 *ESV
http://bible.com/59/rom.9.14-16.esv
Nanja
Well-known member
God's Mercy is only upon His Vessels of Mercy,
which He had afore prepared unto glory Rom. 9:23!
~~~~~
Romans 1:16-17 New King James Version (NKJV)
The Just Live by Faith
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
Shasta
Well-known member
Open Theism is a simple belief. It holds that God is a temporal rather than a non-temporal Being. Since we are temporal it is easy to project our experience onto Him. While it sounds straightforward and appears to avoid some problems but you follow the logic far enough and honestly enough you will end up with irresolvable problems.
For one, it means that God does not know what the decisions of free agents will be with certainty. What we call prophecy and divine foreknowledge become merely sophisticated weather forecasts. Given the countless variables that comprise the world of free agents the only way God can be certain of anything is by unilaterally acting. All contingent actions of free agents are uncertain and are likely to interfere with God's plan which makes much of His "plan" a gamble. God becomes a risk taker who can lose. The scriptures, by contrast, present God's foreknowledge as being certain.
Calvinists, following Augustine and Plato believe God is non-temporal and therefore outside space and time. Everything past present and future were, so to speak, frozen in a single eternal NOW. I cannot see that the Early Church Fathers before Augustine had any concept like this. They believed God had no beginning but that He was present (rather than separate) throughout all time. Of course, ontology was not much of a focus with them. The two beliefs they held to firmly and unanimously was that God knew the future with certainty and that men truly have freewill.
Shasta
Well-known member
This is the typical misunderstanding of the meaning of Romans 9 which people fall into when they do not use scripture to interpret scripture. Paul's remarks about the potter and the clay in Romans 9 is an allusion to Jeremiah 18:1-4.
When the prophet visited the potter's house he saw the potter take a lump of clay and slap it on the wheel. As he turns it the craftsman plans to make it into something nice. Then his fingers encounter a hard material embedded in the clay. Since it would not yield he pulls the hard mass out, tosses it away and begins again. Not having as much of it to work with the potter changes his mind about what it is to become. Instead of making into a noble and elegant vessel he decides to make it into something common and dishonorable.
Now it is not necessary to interpret this parable for the Lord Himself explains what it means.
7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it (Jeremiah 18:7-8)
Here the Lord has prophetically promised judgment to a nation in rebellion but when the nation repents God CHANGES what He has promised and averts the disaster.
9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. (Jeremiah 18:9-10)
This time the obedient nation was promised good. When, however, they turn away from God their DESTINY is CHANGED and the good that was promised is never realized.
What the Potter planned to make of the clay depended upon whether the clay yielded to his fingers or resisted. The response of the clay to his will was the basis upon which their destiny was decided. Once the clay resisted or yielded it no longer had power over what it was to become. That is the power the potter had over the clay.
In Paul's use of the metaphor, though Israel had been chosen and given promises, their rebellion caused them to lose their inheritance. At the same time the Gentiles which had been rebellious yielded and their destiny was altered so that they received blessing instead of cursing.
So, far from being an object lesson in helpless predestinationism the analogy of the potter's house tells us that our responses to God's dealings determines our destiny
NickCharles
New member
The problem with this is that you don't need to use scripture to interpret Romans 9. There's nothing ambiguous about the text. The only ones that run to to OT are the ones that don't like what it plainly says. If Paul had wanted us to read large sections of Jeremiah, he would have either writer it out, or referenced it. He did neither. He wrote it as it was to be taken. Those that read/heard it when it was first brought to Rome would not have said "I don't think Paul really meant that. Let's go to some other area in scripture to figure out what he's really saying."
No, they would have taken it at face value, and so should you.
beloved57
Well-known member
Exactly!
Romans 1:16-17New King James Version (NKJV)
The Just Live by Faith
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
The Just Live by Faith
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
Shasta
Well-known member
I was not saying there was something outside God called "mercy" that impels Him any more than I would say that the phrase "when Jesus saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion" means that a FORCE called "compassion" came over him and like a demon temporarily took control of His will, impelling Him to act in love. Did you really think that is what I meant or are you just playing word games?
If you read my post about Romans 9 you will see that the judgement of the Jews and the blessing of the Gentiles, while part of the divine plan, was not purely arbitrary any more than the choice of the nation of Israel (exemplified by the name Jacob) over Edom (exemplified by the name Esau). Though Jacob was chosen by God to play a role in God's plan, God had to put up with his lying, cheating and deceit until he was broken. God's forbearance was an exercise of His mercy.
God did not have to put up with him. God could have just as well let Isaac see through his flimsy disguise which would likely have caused the old man to curse him...but that was not what God wanted and, besides, underneath it all God saw that Jacob was a desperately needy person trying in his own way to get what Esau "that profane person" disdained. Also, in the final analysis, Jacob had to keep walking with God to fulfill his calling. That is a lesson intrinsic to the Parable of the Potter's House.
Do you doubt that God loves mankind and that He generally extends a measure of mercy to us all even when we are still his enemies? If He does not then we can never tell anyone with certainty that God loves them. We can only say He "might." I doubt that when Jesus saw the crowd like sheep without a Shepherd that his compassion was directed only at a few of His elect gathered here and there.
Shasta
Well-known member
In the Calvinist Amplified version this verse must read:
"16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone (i.e., the elect few) who believes (according to the operation of irresistible grace), for the Jew first and also for the Greek (Romans 1:16-17)
Without these clarifications a reader could get the misconception that "everyone" means "everyone" and that the gospel is an offer open for everyone to believe in.
And my question to the Calvinist is; How do they know that they are part of the elect?
iouae
Well-known member
Shasta, do you believe everything past, present and future are, so to speak, frozen in a single eternal NOW?
I am not sure I understand that concept perfectly, but it sounds FRIGHTENING.
I have read the Bible and Plato extensively. I see God as listening to us, responding to us, interacting with us, acting emotionally at times, just like us. This life is like one big video game, where we are playing online with some other player we cannot see (God), but we know he is there and interacting with us in real time. I do believe time exists in the spirit realm just as in the physical. That is the only way there can be cause and effect. If past -present - future are all mushed together, there cannot be cause and effect.
Plato had the idea that nobody could know what the gods wanted since the gods were always fighting with each other.
NickCharles
New member
All I can do is read what you wrote. If you had intended something else, I have no way of knowing that. God is not impelled to do anything. Which is why He says He will have mercy on who He has mercy. It's strictly an act of His will.
Shasta
Well-known member
You could not know what Paul wanted Besides the idea that we cannot refer to the OT unless we are referred to the OT is ludicrous and not provable. They were steeped in the OT and it is natural that they would draw many metaphors from there. Besides it answers the issues raised in Romans 9 which had to do with the reasons for God's changing economy. The rationale that God could alter the destinies of nations according to their response to Him is the principle illustrated in Romans and Jeremiah. You just do not like it because you are committed a priori to the doctrine pre-determinism, a belief that was never held by the Early Church.
The notion of inability and pre-determinism came from Calvin who got it from Augustine who. in turn, smuggled it into mainstream Christian thought from Manichaeism, a cult Augustine had belonged to before his conversion. In the preceding 300 years before Augustine the Early Church all the way back to the First Century had taught that the doctrines of inability and determinism were pagan and foreign to Christianity
NickCharles
New member
I'm not the one that has to change what Paul says in Romans 9. There's no way to come to your conclusion based a straight reading of the text. I used to believe as you, so I am quite familiar with the gymnastics required to change what Paul says.
The idea of predestination and God's providence over all thing comes from scripture. I understand your need to marginalize it. But it's there. You just need to believe what is said, even if it goes against your presuppositions.
NickCharles
New member
Brother Ducky
New member
Doesn't this statement, at least regarding B57 violate your theology regarding being in Christ, or being reconciled to God etc.?
Some did search the scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was so.
Acts 17:11 KJV -