My Theological Stance after Searching with All of My Heart

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Yes, everyone we only have 20-30 posts before this thread gets locked. I ask that we concentrate on the original post and the discussions we've had on it for the remainder of the thread.

Absolutely.....so just what was the subject matter....LOL! Was it all about old white dead guys with there myriad of theological ways that create different doctrines....hmmm, or are we all just looking for that essential common link, cause I'd say if so, that it is quite simple, "Love & Adoration." You really cant move forward pushing all sorts of laws, explanations & dogmas about how to get & stay saved (that just causes people to get into arguments over). No that cannot be it! We have got to plant our lives into the radix of the whole thing......and I sincerely believe its in Love.....just as we have been loved. There is where it is & starts. And it taint always easy!

Blessed are the poor in spirit; Blessed are the merciful; Blessed are the pure in heart.....for they shall see God....etc In short, it is a state of mind ready to allow the 'Will of God" to now take over. Folks, with all due respect these are the issues we should dissect in order to come to a better understanding what God is looking for in all of us.

 

[Van]

The Foreknowledge of God is not passive in that He is the direct cause of what is happening to those who will be getting saved, as God elects them to predestined and have all of that passage applied in and towards therm! he chooses to elect and predestinate them period, based upon His will and not their decision!

The foreknowledge of God is knowledge God acquired or formulated in the past. Your understanding has no support in scripture, it is false theology. God chooses individuals for salvation through faith in the truth. When He chooses individuals for salvation through faith in the truth, which is according to His Redemption Plan, He chooses them according to His foreknowledge.

 

[Yeshua1]

The foreknowledge of God is knowledge God acquired or formulated in the past. Your understanding has no support in scripture, it is false theology. God chooses individuals for salvation through faith in the truth. When He chooses individuals for salvation through faith in the truth, which is according to His Redemption Plan, He chooses them according to His foreknowledge.

God saves ubsby the pleasure of His own good will, NOT based upon him aquiring ever any new knowledge, for he is all knowing!

 

[Van]

God saves ubsby the pleasure of His own good will, NOT based upon him aquiring ever any new knowledge, for he is all knowing!

Yeshua1 wins the prize for posting false theology. Will he offer any scripture? Nope there is none. Does God make plans? How about Christ being killed by the predetermined plan of God.

So bottom line, his view of foreknowledge is unbiblical, and now he tries to defend it by claiming God does not formulate plans.

Finally God's good pleasure is to choose for salvation individuals through faith in the truth.

There is no support for the fake theology presented without scripture. OTOH, see Acts 2:23 "by the predetermined plan" Or 2 Thess. 2:13, chosen for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the Truth. Last reference, Jeremiah 18:11 where God is making plans or devising a plan. Sounds like formulation to me.

 

[TCassidy]

The foreknowledge of God is knowledge God acquired or formulated in the past.

Wow! That is Open Theism. Before God acquired that knowledge, He would not have been Omniscient and thus He would not have been God. You have a god of your own making if you believe that.

 

[Reformed]

Steven,

In seeking to adequately address your OP, I find the task difficult given that your post is somewhat random and fails to make a strong biblical defense for your new position. For instance, you write, "He is reaching out to everyone, yet He is sovereign over all things." Considering the gravity of the topic being discussed it seems somewhat lazy to state God is reaching out to everyone and then fail to define in what way He is reaching out. I admit, that as a Monergist, I start my argument with a presupposition that Monergism is true. I have made a more compelling biblical case for Monergism in other posts in this thread. I will come back to this point.

You also wrote, "That said, the weight of the biblical evidence is too great for me to stay predestinationist. Biblical evidence alone convinced me that God does allow choices, but in a limited way." I have yet to see the body of work that makes up "the weight of biblical evidence" you mention. No Monergist believes that man does not make choices. The question is whether those choices are able to supplant God's will of decree. If the answer is "yes" then the ramification on God's sovereignty is pronounced. God will then be found answering to the creature rather than the other way around.

About Romans 9 you wrote:

I attempted to understand Romans 9 as talking about the privileged status of Israel over the Gentiles. The Lord’s choice of stiff necked Israel as His people and His choice of wrath for the Egyptians and Pharaoh. Simply put, God lost patience with Pharaoh and the Egyptians and decided to make them into an example that would expand His fame, His glory, throughout the earth. That seems unjust emotionally as it seems capricious, give Israel’s rebellion especially with the golden calf. However, Paul is absolutely right in Romans 9 that God has the right to do what He wants to do with rebels. He can have mercy on whom He has mercy and compassion on whom Hw has compassion when working with rebellious lumps of clay. Of course, there are the righteous, like Moses, who are precious to the Lord and are not prepared for wrath but for blessing.

Paul cared deeply for his brethren, Israel. He grieved that they rejected their Messiah. But you are wrong when you say that God lost patience with Israel. God did not have some arbitrary time frame in which Israel needed to repent. Jesus was born in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). His birth was predestined in all aspects. Instead of being born out of God's loss of patience, Jesus was born out of God's great love and mercy towards His elect. Paul writes in Galatians 4:9, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God". It is not a matter of man seeking God. God is the One who seeks those He means to save.

Romans 9 is not just about God having the right to do what He wants with "rebels". God has the right to do what He wills with any member of His creation. Not only does God have the right, He deals justly, not capriciously. Paul is not just communicating with Isreal is this chapter. He writes, Romans 9:14-18, "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 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 does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires." Who is the one who has mercy? Who is the one who has compassion? To what do these two things depend and for what reason? The answers are so clear in the text they almost leap off the page! God is the only answer to these questions.

You write that "the righteous, like Moses, who are precious to the Lord and are not prepared for wrath but for blessing." Of course Old Testament saints like Moses were prepared for blessing. Actually they were predestined for blessing. From eternity God always knew the name of Moses. Moses was chosen since before the foundations fo the earth for the role he played, just as all those who come to faith in Christ have similarly been predestined (Ephesians 1:5).

I will continue this later. I only have so much time to spend on your rather lenghty OP.

 

[Steven Yeadon]

Quoting deleted post.

[Admin: Steve, I have deleted your post because it was in response to the other post I deleted, which did not deserve an answer. ]

 

[Steven Yeadon]

Steven,

In seeking to adequately address your OP, I find the task difficult given that your post is somewhat random and fails to make a strong biblical defense for your new position. For instance, you write, "He is reaching out to everyone, yet He is sovereign over all things." Considering the gravity of the topic being discussed it seems somewhat lazy to state God is reaching out to everyone and then fail to define in what way He is reaching out. I admit, that as a Monergist, I start my argument with a presupposition that Monergism is true. I have made a more compelling biblical case for Monergism in other posts in this thread. I will come back to this point.

You also wrote, "That said, the weight of the biblical evidence is too great for me to stay predestinationist. Biblical evidence alone convinced me that God does allow choices, but in a limited way." I have yet to see the body of work that makes up "the weight of biblical evidence" you mention. No Monergist believes that man does not make choices. The question is whether those choices are able to supplant God's will of decree. If the answer is "yes" then the ramification on God's sovereignty is pronounced. God will then be found answering to the creature rather than the other way around.

About Romans 9 you wrote:

Paul cared deeply for his brethren, Israel. He grieved that they rejected their Messiah. But you are wrong when you say that God lost patience with Israel. God did not have some arbitrary time frame in which Israel needed to repent. Jesus was born in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). His birth was predestined in all aspects. Instead of being born out of God's loss of patience, Jesus was born out of God's great love and mercy towards His elect. Paul writes in Galatians 4:9, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God". It is not a matter of man seeking God. God is the One who seeks those He means to save.

Romans 9 is not just about God having the right to do what He wants with "rebels". God has the right to do what He wills with any member of His creation. Not only does God have the right, He deals justly, not capriciously. Paul is not just communicating with Isreal is this chapter. He writes, Romans 9:14-18, "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 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 does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires." Who is the one who has mercy? Who is the one who has compassion? To what do these two things depend and for what reason? The answers are so clear in the text they almost leap off the page! God is the only answer to these questions.

You write that "the righteous, like Moses, who are precious to the Lord and are not prepared for wrath but for blessing." Of course Old Testament saints like Moses were prepared for blessing. Actually they were predestined for blessing. From eternity God always knew the name of Moses. Moses was chosen since before the foundations fo the earth for the role he played, just as all those who come to faith in Christ have similarly been predestined (Ephesians 1:5).

I will continue this later. I only have so much time to spend on your rather lenghty OP.

Reformed, thank you for picking my original post apart, I will respond in time, maybe as late as late tomorrow.

 

[Van]

Wow! That is Open Theism. Before God acquired that knowledge, He would not have been Omniscient and thus He would not have been God. You have a god of your own making if you believe that.

Yet another false charge, after I have posted numerous times that I am not an open theist.

Did TC address the three verses I used to show my view was biblical, and they also show TC claim to be unbiblical.

Here is the part of the post ignored to misrepresent my view. See Acts 2:23 "by the predetermined plan" Or 2 Thess. 2:13, chosen for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the Truth. Last reference, Jeremiah 18:11 where God is making plans or devising a plan. Sounds like formulation to me. Notice the effort not to address the biblical truth that God formulates plans, but instead to use name calling to smear my biblical view.

To repeat, when God implements His plans the actions are according to the foreknowledge of God. No need to take a simple truth and hide it in false claims. Romans 8:29-30 attests to this truth, when God redeems any person, according to His redemption plan, He is redeeming those He foreknew as the target group of His redemption plan..

 

[Mr. Davis]

I have committed grievious sins. I judged Steven's motives, which no one should do to another. Also, I engaged in character assasination. I have repented and confessed these sins to God. I believe He has forgiven me. Perhaps others may too.

I used to participate in the Calvinism / Arminianism debate with facts, not invective This I will do again in the future.

May God bless everyone in their efforts to help Steven understand his faith.

Brother Davis

.

 

[SovereignGrace]

So, foreknowledge has be reduced to knowledge God has acquired. Romans 1:22,23 and Romans 9:20 in full display for all to see.

 

[Mr. Davis]

So, foreknowledge has be reduced to knowledge God has acquired. Romans 1:22,23 and Romans 9:20 in full display for all to see.

Without God's foreknowledge, the elect could not be predestined unto salvation! (Rom 8).

Here, I am trying to critically analyze what Steven has said; not to judge him.

You say everyone has free choice. But all are DEAD in their Trespasses and Sins. A DEAD man can choose nothing. Only God ALONE can bring a spiritually dead man to LIFE. (Ephesians 2)

So the Baptists “pass the smell test”? Here is something they believe:

All saved persons are indwelt by the Spirit.

What you say at the end of your Summary below, is something the Baptists also believe!

“Of course, the many verses on the security of the Believer show that once a person is brought to salvation and is indwelt by the Spirit they are eternally marked for glory.” (Emphasis mine.)

This does not agree with your statements about "free choice." Even limited choice. A believer, according to you, has the power of contrary choice. He can always choose to disobey God’s Will. Then you say he faces the Judgment. No eternal security. Calvinist Baptists believe that all of their sins, past, present, and future were covered by by Christ's sacrifice on the Cross once for all time (Heb 10:14,

While Arminians can be forgiven for their sins, they must yet prove faithful to the end. They can lose their salvation at any time. And, particularly for dying without having stopped their sinful behaviors (continuous sin) and for dying unrepentant. But God’s free choice of the elect makes them eternally secure.

In addition, Calvinists and Calvinist Baptists, believe that all of their sins, past, present, and future, were borne by Christ on the Cross. Because His sacrifice was once for all time.(Heb. 9:12,25-28,10:10,12-14). For Heb 6:4-6 and 10:30
Compare Rom 8:1,John 3:18,36,5:24,6:40,44,47,65,10:27-30,1Cor3:1,10,12-15,5:1,5,11:27,29-32

Steven, please read all of these Scriptures!

So, Steven, I think you were right when you were a "predestinarian"! But don't change your mind because of what I say. Listen to other people's comments and resume your Biblical research. After all, you are asking all us to to critique your OP!

I said in my previous post for God to bless all those who can aid you in your understanding of your faith. I'm sure that Paul had many questions for Ananias after he got saved. But God revealed most of what he needed to know in the desert. Remember, he was a devoted "Arminian" beforehand. He believed in works for salvation and that only those who were faithful to the end would be saved. (He believed this as a Pharisee.) He taught the opposite in Romans and in other letters he wrote.

Those who are Arminians or "free willers" can make comments that will help you too. You will be able to see the stark contrasts between their views and those who believe strictly in God's Sovereignty for salvation.

 

[Steven Yeadon]

I made your scriptures linked for better perusal.

Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:25-28; Hebrews 10:10; Hebrews 10:12-14; Hebrews 6:4-6; Hebrews 10:30

Compare Romans 8:1; John 3:18; John 3:36; John 5:24; John 6:40; John 6:44; John 6:47; John 6:65; John 10:27-30; 1 Corinthians 3:1;1 Corinthians 3:10; 1 Corinthians 3:12-15; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Corinthians 11:27; 1 Corinthians 11:29-32

 

[Steven Yeadon]

Since we have run short on future posts before the thread is locked, and because we have wandered into all kinds of new theological territory with these bible verses. Also, I am now doing very serious bible study using commentaries and the interlinear bible. I have decided to make a new thread on "once saved, always saved" because that seems to be the heart of the matter to me.

Although to end this thread I have one question:

How do those who believe in absolute sovereignty interpret false Christians who will be cast into hell at the Judgment? (Matthew 7:21-23)

 

[Reformed]

Since we have run short on future posts before the thread is locked, and because we have wandered into all kinds of new theological territory with these bible verses. Also, I am now doing very serious bible study using commentaries and the interlinear bible. I have decided to make a new thread on "once saved, always saved" because that seems to be the heart of the matter to me.

Although to end this thread I have one question:

How do those who believe in absolute sovereignty interpret false Christians who will be cast into hell at the Judgment? (Matthew 7:21-23)

1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.

 

[Reformed]

Since we have run short on future posts before the thread is locked, and because we have wandered into all kinds of new theological territory with these bible verses. Also, I am now doing very serious bible study using commentaries and the interlinear bible. I have decided to make a new thread on "once saved, always saved" because that seems to be the heart of the matter to me.

Although to end this thread I have one question:

How do those who believe in absolute sovereignty interpret false Christians who will be cast into hell at the Judgment? (Matthew 7:21-23)

Wow. Are you changing the direction of the OP just like that?

 

[Squire Robertsson]

Six Hour Warning
This thread will be closed some time after 8:30 PM Pacific.

 

[Steven Yeadon]

Wow. Are you changing the direction of the OP just like that?

Yeah, and I'll explain myself. I am finding that these major points that are argued in the Arminius vs Calvin debate are all in fact interconnected. I had not figured that and because of it I must now, with choosing the perspective in the original post, create a theological stance on much more than what I started to do. Not only that, but I do not think that I will be dislodged from my perspective in the original post without a lot more bible study, which a new post would prompt me to do.

As for whether I believe God exercises absolute sovereignty on the issue of the salvation of His creatures, I feel as if the crux of why I accepted that God gives a limited amount of choice, especially in regard to salvation, is because of these bible verses in the original post:

God wants all people to repent and accept His salvation.
-
(Isaiah 45:22)
(Ezekiel 18:23)
(Ezekiel 18:32)
(Ezekiel 33:31)
(1 Timothy 2:1-6)
(2 Peter 3:7-9)
(Matthew 23:37)
(Jeremiah 18:3-12)

People can make choices opposed to God’s will.
-
(Genesis 15:12-15)
(Exodus 34:9)
(Exodus 33:3 and Exodus 33:5);
(Deuteronomy 9:6 and Deuteronomy 9:13);
(Deuteronomy 10:16); (Deuteronomy 31:27);
(Judges 2:19);
(2 Kings 17:14);
(2 Chronicles 30:8);
(2 Chronicles 36:13);
(Nehemiah 9:16);
(Isaiah 46:12);
(Isaiah 48:4);
(Jeremiah 7:26);
(Hosea 4:16)
And I know there are more than this in the bible.

At the very least, to go back to accepting predestination would drive me to confusion as I sifted through the morass of God wanting all saved, God allowing His will to be foiled, and God electing believers from before the universe was made. Now that I have seen the arguments against the predestination bible verses in a new light that drops the idea of unlimited free will, I feel done on the issue for now. I could be wrong though, and I will test this idea against all the bible has to offer on the major points of Arminius and Calvin.

I also do not trust any work on "the multiple wills of God" that goes beyond what is revealed on the subject in the bible. The bible lays out that God wants a certain future and God allows or permits a certain worse future. That is all I see from the bible verses. I also believe systematic theology makes a gross and divisive error when it examines the "Mind of God" as His ways are are so much higher than ours.

 

[Reformed]

Six Hour Warning
This thread will be closed some time after 8:30 PM Pacific.

Uh, oh. A deadline has been issued. The only thing we can do now is a pre-emptive strike.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

This thread is closed.

Six Hour Warning
This thread will be closed sometime after 8:30 PM Pacific.