Van, Just wanted to reiterate that last passage I found, which I think touches pretty directly on your whole thesis:
(Acts 13:48 NASB) When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.
But I'll go ahead and comment on your other recent posts as well:
Mark, I think you overlooked the fact that Paul was chosen from the womb to be a prophet, he was not chosen at that time for salvation.
You were the one that brought up Paul's being chosen from the womb, to bolster your own position regarding God's choice taking place only after a person is alive. So now you're saying he was only chosen to be a prophet from the womb - would that be a prophet that wasn't elect for Salvation. Clearly he would have to be chosen for salvation if chosen to be a prophet. But even despite being chosen from the womb he was still subsequently in his sins until the encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus. This explains how someone could previously be "chosen" and yet still be in their sins.
Romans 8:33 applies to those chosen for salvation, and so no charge can be brought against the saved.
I think one should always weigh very carefully exactly how something is phrased in scripture:
(Rom 8:33) Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies;
First of all its asking a rhetorical question - its not making a statement. You should ask yourself why a question is asked there. It certainly did not make a declarative statement along the lines of,
(Rom 8:33) Even God himself could never at any time in the past have brought a charge against God elect, by virtue of them being elect.
Clearly, the referent of "who" in the actual verse is "who other than God". The verse says God is the one who justifies, clearly he's the one who can condemn too:
(Heb 10:30 NKJV) For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."
So, for example, Paul still being in his sins positionally before God at some point during his life does not rule out (for me anyway) him being "chosen" before birth.
Does this say God planned for David to become a murder?
Was there a plan for Christ to be murdered? The illegitimate offspring of David and Bathsheba - whose husband David murdered - was Solomon, the builder of first temple in Jerusalem and the writer of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
In summary, according to my understanding of scripture, God only chooses individuals for salvation after they have lived without mercy and after He credits their faith in Christ as righteousness.
It was previously suggested by someone that you advocated Open Theology. The central tenant of that is that the future is not set - so therefore God cannot know it completely. For open theologists its like asking can God know about square circles - the future is not within the bounds of something that can be completely known by anyone, including God. God knows it better than anyone in open theology, but there are things about it that even he doesn't know. So, I'm not absolutely clear if you categorically denied believing that. But it seems like Open Theology is the only context in which your thesis has any meaning.
In Orthodox Christian understanding, God knows everything about the future, and has known everything that will ever happen for eternity. Even if God could or does voluntarily suspend his foreknowledge for whatever reason, the fact remains that if God can in fact know everything about the future, then the future is set in stone.
This means that who will sin, who will be murdered, who will accept Christ, and who God will "choose" and when, has all been set in stone for eternity past. This, to the best of my understanding is the Orthodox Christian view and has been for the last two thousand years or so.
So, if you want to say that someone accepting Christ is God "choosing" them (right then), I don't even have a particular problem with that, except that Reality itself chose them from eternity past, because it has always been set in stone that they would accept Christ, (in the orthodox Christian view).
But in Open Theology, someone accepting Christ could be a truly novel event, unanticipated by God or anything else and uncaused by anything preceding it, just a mysterious godlike, unexplained, uniliateral exercise of a person's libertarian free will, altering the future in a way that even God cannot control. So, I would ask you again, do you or do you not largely subscribe to Open Theology.
As far as reconciling evil with God's omnipotence and omniscience, that is done by observing that evil has a limited lifespan. We know that God has allowed it for say, a few million years or so. But the Bible indicates there will be a time when finally evil has died out and gone forever. So a million divided by infinity is 0, so it will be like evil never existed at all.
Have you thought about the implications of James 2:5. God chose folks who were poor to the world, rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom promised to those who love Him. If a person was chosen before creation, they could not be poor in the eyes of the world, they could not be rich in faith, and they would not be heirs to the kingdom promised to those who love Him.
If their life conditions directly led them to God, and it was known by God from time immemorial that they would live in these conditions and that they would turn to him for Salvation, then it was always set in stone they would be saved, so they were chosen from time immemorial. (If God didn't know all this, and in fact it could not be known with certainty by God or anyone, then that is Open Theology, which at the moment I do not know if you subscribe to it or not.) .
(Acts 13:48 NASB) When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.
But I'll go ahead and comment on your other recent posts as well:
Mark, I think you overlooked the fact that Paul was chosen from the womb to be a prophet, he was not chosen at that time for salvation.
You were the one that brought up Paul's being chosen from the womb, to bolster your own position regarding God's choice taking place only after a person is alive. So now you're saying he was only chosen to be a prophet from the womb - would that be a prophet that wasn't elect for Salvation. Clearly he would have to be chosen for salvation if chosen to be a prophet. But even despite being chosen from the womb he was still subsequently in his sins until the encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus. This explains how someone could previously be "chosen" and yet still be in their sins.
Romans 8:33 applies to those chosen for salvation, and so no charge can be brought against the saved.
I think one should always weigh very carefully exactly how something is phrased in scripture:
(Rom 8:33) Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies;
First of all its asking a rhetorical question - its not making a statement. You should ask yourself why a question is asked there. It certainly did not make a declarative statement along the lines of,
(Rom 8:33) Even God himself could never at any time in the past have brought a charge against God elect, by virtue of them being elect.
Clearly, the referent of "who" in the actual verse is "who other than God". The verse says God is the one who justifies, clearly he's the one who can condemn too:
(Heb 10:30 NKJV) For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."
So, for example, Paul still being in his sins positionally before God at some point during his life does not rule out (for me anyway) him being "chosen" before birth.
Does this say God planned for David to become a murder?
Was there a plan for Christ to be murdered? The illegitimate offspring of David and Bathsheba - whose husband David murdered - was Solomon, the builder of first temple in Jerusalem and the writer of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
In summary, according to my understanding of scripture, God only chooses individuals for salvation after they have lived without mercy and after He credits their faith in Christ as righteousness.
It was previously suggested by someone that you advocated Open Theology. The central tenant of that is that the future is not set - so therefore God cannot know it completely. For open theologists its like asking can God know about square circles - the future is not within the bounds of something that can be completely known by anyone, including God. God knows it better than anyone in open theology, but there are things about it that even he doesn't know. So, I'm not absolutely clear if you categorically denied believing that. But it seems like Open Theology is the only context in which your thesis has any meaning.
In Orthodox Christian understanding, God knows everything about the future, and has known everything that will ever happen for eternity. Even if God could or does voluntarily suspend his foreknowledge for whatever reason, the fact remains that if God can in fact know everything about the future, then the future is set in stone.
This means that who will sin, who will be murdered, who will accept Christ, and who God will "choose" and when, has all been set in stone for eternity past. This, to the best of my understanding is the Orthodox Christian view and has been for the last two thousand years or so.
So, if you want to say that someone accepting Christ is God "choosing" them (right then), I don't even have a particular problem with that, except that Reality itself chose them from eternity past, because it has always been set in stone that they would accept Christ, (in the orthodox Christian view).
But in Open Theology, someone accepting Christ could be a truly novel event, unanticipated by God or anything else and uncaused by anything preceding it, just a mysterious godlike, unexplained, uniliateral exercise of a person's libertarian free will, altering the future in a way that even God cannot control. So, I would ask you again, do you or do you not largely subscribe to Open Theology.
As far as reconciling evil with God's omnipotence and omniscience, that is done by observing that evil has a limited lifespan. We know that God has allowed it for say, a few million years or so. But the Bible indicates there will be a time when finally evil has died out and gone forever. So a million divided by infinity is 0, so it will be like evil never existed at all.
Have you thought about the implications of James 2:5. God chose folks who were poor to the world, rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom promised to those who love Him. If a person was chosen before creation, they could not be poor in the eyes of the world, they could not be rich in faith, and they would not be heirs to the kingdom promised to those who love Him.
If their life conditions directly led them to God, and it was known by God from time immemorial that they would live in these conditions and that they would turn to him for Salvation, then it was always set in stone they would be saved, so they were chosen from time immemorial. (If God didn't know all this, and in fact it could not be known with certainty by God or anyone, then that is Open Theology, which at the moment I do not know if you subscribe to it or not.) .
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PTIONS LEFT in his own mind but to return. The whole point in the parable of the famine occurring is that is something that only God controls. So, circumstances of life force someone in a certain direction (towards God or away from God). Such circumstances are not controlled by the effected individual, they are controlled ultimately by God. If people are not responding to their external environment then their behavior is random. People seem to think you're an automaton if your actions are dictated by your external environment, but on the contrary your behavior is random if they aren't. People talk about "Foxhole christians" "Deathbed conversions" or what have you - that's most likely the norm.