Featured Predestination

Is an offer you can't hear or know about a real offer?

If I said to you that I offered you a million dollars, whispering it thousands of miles away, would you consider that a real offer?

 

When the passage says predestined unto justification and glorification? Um, yeah. Being saved is one of the many things we're predestined to. You can't just deny a straightforward passage if it doesn't fit your theology.

 

Yes, but specifically, could He know of a decision made specifically by a free agent—someone acting of libertarian freewill? Or do you consider that an irrational impossibility?

BTW, I agree with the above. All outcomes are approved by God. Everything that happens passes through his will.

And please define "possible outcomes." Do you believe there really is such a thing? Isn't there only one outcome possible?

 

It was not nano-second hair splitting.

I will accept that "Predestined" in that verse means "Predestined to be made like Christ" which does describe Glorification on that list in Romans. An argument could also be made that it includes "sanctification", but that was not part of the list in Romans so we will set that discussion aside. The question is which of these are possible, one, both, neither?

1. Can someone be Predestined for Glorification, but not yet Called and Justified?
2. Can someone be already Called and Justified, but not yet Predestined for Glorification?

It is about the logic of any ordo salutis, not about the length of time involved.

 

It's one view that doesn't violate the specific and explicit order given in the text. You may disagree with the conclusion, but denying the text itself is far worse.

 

Libertarian free will denies innate human corruption. Empirical evidence supports people are born with a sin nature. When did you start to teach your children to lie?

Thus God does know about the decision that a human being could and will make following his nature, and God knows the decisions a human being could but will not make if he acted contrary to his nature, and God knows that without a little help from God (like replacing a dead heart of stone with a living heart of flesh) the human being will always freely choose to follow his nature and never choose to follow the "foolish" things of the spirit. God's word will be snatched up by the WORLD, or wither on the rocky heart, or get choked out by life ... unless God first prepares the soil to receive it.

Sorry for the mixed metaphors and scrambled word pictures, but I hope you get the idea.

 

Okay, so that confirms my initial thought. Calvinists, like open theists, don't believe it is logically possible for God to foresee a libertarian decision. As a result, OTists deny exhaustive foreknowledge, and Calvinists deny libertarian freewill.

My view is, God can foreknow a libertarian decision. It's not a problem for him.

 

I think you're right that it's not all. I do think some do.

But I was speaking more in regard to the agency of Adam and Satan. OTists believe God knew of the possibility of their fall, but not specifically if it would happen. Calvinists (some) believe God not only knew about it because he ordained it actively.

Both of these beliefs seem to be rooted in the idea that God cannot logically know of a libertarian decision.

 

Would it be fair then to say you don't believe in total depravity? Do you believe in original sin? The fall?

 

So when DID you teach your children to lie?

If their will is free to choose Law or Sin with no outside influences, and you were the only outside influence shaping them in early childhood, then you must have taught them to sin. When did you do it?

 

Yikes. No idea what you're talking about. You may want to articulate this argument a little better.

 

It is not equivalent to compare all human beings to Adam (pre-Fall). Pre-Fall Adam did have Libertine Free Will, but his actions tainted all of his offspring with a nature corrupted by sin. That leaves us free to follow our own, tainted, free will ... which being TAINTED is not LIBERTINE.

God can and did know the outcome of Adam's Libertine Free Will choice, thus his plan from eternity past that the Son should redeem the Children of God.

 

OK, step by step.
Do you have children?

 

I agree, but I know not all calvinists do.

Yes, this is what all calvinists and arminians believe.

Again, agree. I believe in total depravity.

Totally agree.

 

Irrelevant. Make an argument.

 

Sorry, empirical arguments are only valid if one has the empirical experience. So it was completely relevant. A non-parent will not have observed their children growing up.

So I will just drop it.

 

Suit yourself. I don't believe you ever had a coherent argument though. If you did you would have made it.