Featured Pauline Doctrine not Calvanism nor Arminianism

. . .though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— Romans 9:11

God's foreknowledge is an indication of His relationship with the elect, not His knowledge of their future actions. It is a term of intimacy.

 

Yep, right out of the Calvinist's Dictionary....

To Foreknow: To decree or to love, absolutely nothing to do with knowing before.

 

What does this verse have to do with salvation?

 

God's purpose in election is due to His will and grace towards us, so that includes salvation!

 

It is a term used to being in a Covenant relationship with God, and was something that he initiated towards us first!

 

So, the fact that Paul is explaining that, in His wisdom, God chose Jacob over Esau to inherit the promise that He made to the patriarch Abraham somehow means that God today chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell? I don't see a reference to salvation in this verse.

 

God chooses who will be His covenant people, and who will not be.

 

Everything. It's Paul's topic of discussion.

Election precedes salvation.

 

Elected by God unto salvation in Christ....

 

This; from ligonier;
First, God foreknows His people (v. 29). This does not mean that the Lord looks down “the corridors of time” and foreknows something about us such as the decision we will make when we hear the gospel. He does, of course, know these things, but these things are in a sense incidental. When Paul says God foreknew us, he is speaking of God’s knowledge of us as persons. He is speaking of His decision to enter into a relationship with us, to set His love on us (9:13). It is because He chose to love us that we will believe. Only those whom God chooses to love in this special way can be saved, and all those whom He has chosen to love in this way will be saved. Dr. R.C. Sproul comments in his book Romans, “We could reasonably translate this text [Rom. 8:29], ‘Those whom he foreloved [those whom he knew in a personal, intimate, redemptive sense from all eternity] he predestined.’”

The Lord’s predestination of us ensures His call and justification of us, and that in turn ensures our final glorification (v. 30). We are entirely in God’s hands from eternity past. He chose to love us, to declare us righteous in Christ, and to adopt us. All those whom God justifies will be glorified. If we are in Christ now, we are in Him forever.˜
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/goldenchain-boice.html
or this;
Divine Foreknowledge
The most important of these five terms is the first, but surprisingly (or not surprisingly, since our ways are not God's ways nor his thoughts our thoughts), it is the most misunderstood. It is composed of two separate words: "fore," which means beforehand, and "knowledge." So it has been taken to mean that, since God knows all things, God knows beforehand who will believe on him and who will not, as a result of which he has predestined to salvation those whom he foresees will believe on him. In other words, what he foreknows or foresees is their faith.

Foreknowledge is such an important idea that we are going to come back to it again in the next study and carefully examine the way it is actually used in the Bible. But even here we can see that such an explanation can never do justice to this passage.

For one thing, the verse does not say that God foreknew what certain of his creatures would do. It is not talking about human actions at all. On the contrary, it is speaking entirely of God and of what God does. Each of these five terms is like that: God foreknew, God predestined, God called, God justified, God glorified. Besides, the object of the divine foreknowledge is not the actions of certain people but the people themselves. In this sense it can only mean that God has fixed a special attention upon them or loved them savingly.

This is the way the word is frequently used in the Old Testament, Amos 3:2, for example. The King James Version translates God's words here literally, using the verb "know" (Hebrew, yada): "You only have I known of all the families of the earth...." But so obvious is the idea of election in this context that the New International Version sharpens the meaning by translating: "You only have I chosen...."

And there is another problem. If all the word means is that God knows beforehand what people will do in response to him or to the preaching of the gospel and then determines their destiny on that basis, what, pray tell, could God possibly see or foreknow except a fixed opposition to him on the part of all people? If the hearts of men and women are as depraved as Paul has been teaching they are擁f indeed "'There is no one righteous, not even one ... no one who understands, no one who seeks God"' (Rom. 3:10-11)-what could God possibly foresee in any human heart but unbelief?

John Murray puts it in a complementary but slightly different way: "Even if it were granted that 'foreknew' means the foresight of faith, the biblical doctrine of sovereign election is not thereby eliminated or disproven. For it is certainly true that God foresees faith; he foresees all that comes to pass. The question would then simply be: whence proceeds this faith, which God foresees? And the only biblical answer is that the faith which God foresees is the faith he himself creates (cf. John 3:3-8; 6:44, 45, 65; Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29; 2 Peter 1:2). Hence his eternal foresight of faith is preconditioned by his decree to generate this faith in those whom he foresees as believing."2

Foreknowledge means that salvation has its origin in the mind or eternal counsels of God, not in man. It focuses our attention on the distinguishing love of God, according to which some persons are elected to be conformed to the character of Jesus Christ, which is what Paul has already been saying.

 

revmwc,

No....
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/goldenchain-boice.html

 

The challenge with the word foreknown is not necessarily the textbook definition, but the context here in Romans. It cannot be forgotten that in this context, it is not events which are foreknown, but persons who are foreknown.

That fact alone argues for the Calvinist's understanding of election.

The Archangel

 

I never cease to be amazed at how Synergists will butcher Romans 8:29 and come up with conclusions that scripture does not teach. The passage is not that difficult to interpret.

"For those whom He foreknew" = this phrase is used in the salvific sense to refer to the Elect. This is the same group that Paul refers to in Ephesians 1:4, "just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him." The modifying phrase "before the foundation of the world" reveals that those chosen were chosen from eternity past. They were chosen from eternity past because God foreknew them. Neither passage teaches that God foreknew them because of some future action they would take; He foreknew them because He is omniscient.

"He also predestined" = God predestined the Elect (whom He foreknew), "to be come conformed to the image of His Son". One cannot be confirmed to the image of Christ unless they are born again. Paul continues this theme in Ephesians 1:5, "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself". Predestined means to determine or decree beforehand. God did not decree that those whom He foreknew would be adopted as sons because of their future belief. That actually is a ridiculous assertion. God is not dependent on human action. How can I say this? Because Ephesians 1:11 states, "also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will". God works out all things after the counsel of His will. God does what God wants to do for the reason God wants to do them. Synergists will take the square peg of free will and try and bash into the round hole of God's sovereignty. Try as they might they come up lacking.

Synergists proudly proclaim they are literalists when interpreting scripture. You cannot tell that when they play hermeneutical gymnastics with Romans 8.

 

Christ came to save sinners, so I certainly am not saying anything about one's own "righteousness", for there are none who would qualify.

Genesis 4:1 isn't speaking about Adam intellectually knowing Eve. It's speaking of intimacy, and this demonstrates that God's electing choice was not just a mechanical action. It was rooted in His deep love for the those He chose for His Son.

 

That's a great point, which I failed to mention in a previous post. It is people, not their actions, that God foreknew, according to the text.

 

Consider the following passage that clearly describes the foreknowledge of God and what He sees when He looks at all men:
Psalm 33:13 The LORD looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men.
14 From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth.
15 He fashioneth their hearts alike; he considereth all their works.

I don't see where God divides men into "elect" and "non-elect" groups.

 

Once again Calvinists offer paragraph after paragraph after paragraph trying to redefine the plain meaning of a word to get their theology to stick, this time the word is "foreknow".

 

The word just means to know beforehand. It is not a secret word. The issue is what does it mean in context of Romans 8. Some Synergists think it means God knew those who would choose Him, so He chose them. The problem with that view is that it is fiction. It is a construct made out of Synergist presuppositions.

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