Let's stick to the Biblical root
ECT What is Predestination?
- Thread starter nikolai_42
- Start date
Let's stick to the Biblical root
Saved.One.by.Grace
New member
My preference also.
free will is not only self evident
it explains what we are doing here
it is a test to see what you are going to do
can you be trusted?
predestination is also self evident
it means your destination has been predetermined
and
this is completely contrary to the concept of free will
so
your beliefs have been completely corrupted
if
you don't understand this
your beliefs should make sense
they should be reasonable
it explains what we are doing here
it is a test to see what you are going to do
can you be trusted?
predestination is also self evident
it means your destination has been predetermined
and
this is completely contrary to the concept of free will
so
your beliefs have been completely corrupted
if
you don't understand this
your beliefs should make sense
they should be reasonable
Saved.One.by.Grace
New member
Nothing you said here is biblical. Come back with some scriptural references if you want to make a point. You are creating a god in your own image out of your own imagination.
I hereby quote every passage in the bible that uses the word
choose
all 63 of them in the kjv
83 in the niv
Saved.One.by.Grace
New member
Every use of choose or chose is from man's perspective. The Biblical Inerrancy Argument stands. God is Sovereign.
so the bible was written by man?
Saved.One.by.Grace
New member
Your playing a game of semantics now because you don't have a valid argument. Go away and play by yourself. :wave:
can God create free will?
I agree with your conclusion. Exhaustive foreknowledge in the Arminian sense is illogical. I asked a certain Mr Brian Orr on the theology club section about the babies but I don't think he answered.
See it as an issue of whether the universe is open or closed. If the course of history is entirely predetermined by God, then it is already past by a normal definition: past = that which is now and forever fixed, present: that which is now fluid, future: that which is open and not fixed.
People say that for God it is fixed but for us it is not. This is simply a contradiction. Whose perspective, we may ask, is the right one? Obviously Christians will answer that it is God's perspective that is the correct one. And if so then our so-called perspective on the matter is not a valid perspective but just an erroneous one. It seems inescapable that the notion that the future is fixed is incompatible with the very meaning of the word future at all. I would say that the determinists (Calvinists, Catholics, etc.) are really trying to claim that the future doesn't exist at all but they cover this claim up with a mask when they try to tell us that it is not fixed from our perspective. Indeed, the mere fact that they use this argument implies their acceptance of the notion that the future consists of that which is not fixed.
If the future doesn't really exist and is only an illusion and the whole course of history has already been determined, condemnation and justification are meaningless concepts.
Although you say that you are sitting on the fence, you seem here to acknowledge this illogical dual perspective point of view. It is as if you want to excuse God from an obvious calumny by pointing the finger at us, by diverting the blame away from God to man. I didn't see anything in scripture saying that man was puny. Only that he was made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and splendour. There aren't two truths. There is only one truth. I think that if you want to grapple with the truth, rather than trying to blame man for being too puny to understand God, I suggest that you try to answer a simple question properly and openly: how can God be just to punish people whom he himself created knowing that they would never be given any opportunity to do anything other than sin and indeed never be given any opportunity to do anything at all other than what was predestined for them? And a corresponding question: What glory is it for God to create people whom he knows and plans for to be righteous and who can never be given any opportunity to be anything else?
Never mind our puny understanding, just try to answer those questions and I think you will make progress in your understanding.
Last edited:
predestination is the most dangerous belief there is
it means there is nothing you can do to affect your salvation
and
you can easily believe you are going to hell
if
you don't have a good opinion of yourself
you must be a liar
if
you have a good opinion of yourself
that alone will make you miserable
Jerry Shugart
Well-known member
"(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger" (Ro.9:11-12).
It is not about salvation but instead it is about who will serve who.
OCTOBER23
New member
GOD PICKS INDIVIDUALS TO CALL AT THIS TIME JUST BEFORE
THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION STARTING IN SEPTEMBER 2017.
John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me
draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
----------------------------------------------------
Matthew 11:27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
Luke 10:22 All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.
John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
John 6:65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION STARTING IN SEPTEMBER 2017.
John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me
draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
----------------------------------------------------
Matthew 11:27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
Luke 10:22 All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.
John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
John 6:65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
beloved57
Well-known member
Where did it say that it's not about Salvation?
can you tell us what this is all about?
beloved57
Well-known member
See my threads !
can God create free will?
nikolai_42
Well-known member
It is a thought that only recently occurred to me. And there are so many things that bear upon it (does God judge actions or is it deeper than just that, for example) that the idea of libertarian free will seems (to me) to be raising a minor objection and willfully minimizing some of the major objections. If we were really left to ourselves to choose, does that mean God has given all the unseen powers free reign as well - to do what they will to us (generally) faithless and unbelieving people? Or does God restrict them in order to allow us a totally free arena in which to make our choices? Our free will should either come with consequences we can't fathom (and so to try and hold to IT is foolishness) or mean God has created a sort of space and restricted the free wills of other agents that are above us in the hierarchy of all Creation. The question of babies means God has to make some Sovereign choice that directly determines their salvation (at least as far as I can see). So if that's the case, then the only elect people in the strong Calvinistic sense of the word have to be those who die before some "age of accountability".
If God is eternal - the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last who declares things that are not as though they are and knows ALL His works from the beginning, then as hard as it may be to accept, the concept you just outlined making the future not open has to be considered - certainly from God's point of view. Dealing with eternal perspective as temporal creations is inevitably going to lead to some level of limited understanding if not outright false assumptions and conclusions. That's why holding to scripture on matters like this is essential to limit that sort of error.
Think about logic. Can anyone determine the logical outcome of a single thought? Not unless he knows ALL the variables involved. God certainly does and we certainly don't. However where we ARE able to so reason (with limited foresight), we can see that when someone holds to a certain view or does a certain thing, we can sometimes use logic to be certain of the outcome of that view or action. Does that mean there is no future in those situations but there is a future where we simply can't determine the outcome? Either God intends and creates and directs Sovereignly or else He has to react to His Creation.
Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? he gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow.
He pursued them, and passed safely; even by the way that he had not gone with his feet.
Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he.
Isaiah 41:2-4
Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.
Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.
Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.
I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.
Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none that heareth your words.
Isaiah 41:21-26
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.
Isaiah 46:9-11
I understand this and agree that it is hard to fathom. But when I read scripture, there is clear indication of God's Sovereignty and man's relative impotence. The closest I can come at the moment is to think naturally. Two magnets, for example, are made a certain way and if you try to push them together at the same poles, they will repel one another every time. Man may have free will in some sense, but when the natural man approaches the things of God, there is an inevitable repulsion. As Paul says, does the clay say to the potter "Why did you make me thus?". We are made a certain way and as fallen creatures, there is a certain alignment to our nature - just like there is a certain alignment to magnets. Does that mean we do not have freedom to will what we ... will?
And with a broader perspective, one will argue that if God is determining all things, then it leaves room for no freedom. The best I've gotten (on my own understanding) is to compare this to the electronic structure of atoms. The space occupied by electrons is a cloud - not so much a fixed orbital as was once proposed. That means that an electron could be anywhere in that electron cloud (and there are multiple levels of electrons in multiple "orbitals" and configurations) and it doesn't affect the nature of that atom. So on the macroscopic level, a given element (or molecule of multiple elements) is stable and acts consistently as long as the electrons stay in the specific portion of this cloud that they are supposed to. In other words, there is some freedom for them to be anywhere in a certain area and there is no difference in the outcome (i.e. that element still is behaves the same). So I can see how our choices - while inevitably determined by our nature - have some flexibility in some sense but ultimately are determined by who we are.
I say that by way of explanation, not so much as a principle upon which to base one's understanding of the freedom of the will in light of God's Sovereignty.
Jude does say this :
For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jude 1:4
Reading this and seeing what Jesus says about some men being of "your father the devil" and that "If God were your Father you would love Me..." (John 8:41-45) all the more entrenches the idea that there is a nature which men do not freely choose but with which they are born - and which they don't freely (i.e. of themselves) choose to cast away. They simply cannot. They are children of the devil. And unless God does something to change them, this is irremediable. Now...are some of old children of the devil and of old children of God? That is something Calvinism seems to indicate - even if only by implication.
Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him?
With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.
And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?
Isaiah 40:13-18
You may not like this answer...partly because it only hints at what I think (I have great trouble in expressing it). But the answer is that the purposes of God go beyond what we can fathom. The judgments of God are so precise and accurate and detailed that no one will be able to claim they were unfairly judged. The idea that man has to be a free, independent agent that makes his own free decisions apart from any outside interference is, I think, superficial. We are born into families and given circumstances we didn't ask for. We are made certain ways and given certain circumstances that we had no input into and are forced to reckon with them. But these circumstances are external to that which is our response. That which is judged is not just the action, but that from which it came. If we (as individuals) are the start of something that has to be judged, then we bear all the responsibility. But if we come along in the middle of a chain of events (say...Creation being the start...and maybe the devil's temptation and Adam's fall) then to think our judgment has only to do with our (supposedly) free choices is to ignore all the rest of history and minimize all the future. We are one piece of sand on a massive beach and God's judgments have to do with the minute all the way to the universal. And they are inevitably connected. And the purposes of these judgments are not just personal, or national, or global, or even universal. They are cosmical (if such a word is acceptable). Think about the purpose of the church. Most people think it exists to get individuals into the Kingdom. But Paul tells us this :
For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles,
If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward:
How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,
Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)
Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:
Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,
According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.
Ephesians 3:1-12
The purpose of the church includes salvation, but the purposes of God in the church go WAY beyond that. And so it is far more accurate to say that the glory of God is at stake - far more than just the salvation of the individual.
You ask what glory is it that God should create someone that He knows won't be saved and someone He knows will be saved (both irrespective of their wills - which one would note that no one says anyone is saved or damned in contravention and violation of their wills)? I say that God is judging powers and principalities - and to do so through us means we have to be (somehow) related to them. And if some evil agencies are manifested, it must be that they directly affect individuals. Remember again what Jude 4 (above) read..."of old ordained". There is far more at work here than we imagine. And when we see what all is going on in the heavens and God's work in the earth, I don't believe anyone will be saying "But you violated my free will!" or "You didn't save me and I wanted to be saved!" to God.
That's the best approximation to my understanding now. It may sound very deterministic, but I don't think it removes any necessary freedom from God's creation. And I certainly don't believe it makes man a mere puppet. If someone, by study, determines that they have no free will at all, they are simply looking for an excuse. We are responsible before God.
Saved.One.by.Grace
New member
Can God create evil? Does that mean God is evil or that God's creation is evil? Show me in the Bible specifically where God created free will. Otherwise, it is a meaningless question and a diversion from the subject matter of this thread. You don't believe in God's sovereignty, that much is clear.