Calvinism : Questions

Predestination in directly determining and causing?

 

I hold that God directly determined the destiny of His elect in Christ, but He chose to bypass the remainder of the lost and let them have their own ways and desires...

 

This is true I believe...and him choosing to bypass the remainder of the lost is in essence his act of reprobating them.

 

He is permitting the lost to have their desire to be apart from God, as they do not want Him over their lives as Lord!

 

yes, end up with a God not found in the Bible!

 

Joseph Smith, meet kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn!

 

Do you think John Calvin would endorse TULIP?

 

Only if one places limitations on Divine Foreknowledge by placing it into a theological finite box. #2 "everything" God is ONLY Good and can not predestine evil and then create it because it has no part of His aseity being and thus evil can not come from Him.

 

Of course not. You know how argumentative those Reformers were.

For one thing, there should be a Letter stating that the Pope is the Antichrist!

 

It always amuses me that people (including me) are always so worried about God appearing "to miss the mark". It is like we have our favorite plastic tape measure, with the end that once held a metal edge now frayed, and some numbers and marks worn away and unreadable from years of use, and parts of the tape that are all crinkled up so that we have to pull it tight to flatten it out, and some other parts being sort of stretched funny so it distorts the markings like a fun house mirror. So we are going to use our Tape Measure to verify that the "Official Metric Bar" is still exactly 1 meter long.

 

Sorry, but you will never convince me that God created/ordained/predestined evil in any way. Your logic that knowing = predestining does not compute and does not stand in regard to evil...

 

IF One holds to "free will", would not God have to create Evil to allow for you to freely choose between Him and satan?

 

History will come to pass As God sees it happening, as he determines it directly, and guides it thru others at times also!

 

Many things that we think exist, in reality, do not. Here are two examples:

“Darkness” does not exist. There is no way to measure the amount of darkness in a room. Light exists, but darkness does not. Light is simply the relative lack of light compared to another place. You will never shine a “Flash-dark” at a room to create a patch of darkness in the otherwise lighted space.

“Cold” does not exist. Heat is the measure of molecular movement with no movement being a theoretical 0 degrees kelvin. So cold is just “less heat”.

God defines and is the source of GOOD. Evil can exist as a measurement of the absence of good. (Which makes Light and Darkness very good analogies). So God does create “Evil” simply by existing. The act of God having a nature, creates the very possibility of something being contrary to that nature. God defines LOVE and in doing so, allows the absence of love (HATE) to have meaning. Just as Light and Heat allow “dark” and “cold” to have meaning.

 

I cannot deny scripture that no evil comes from God.

If you believe that there is an example of God exhibiting evil you should probably reinterpret that scripture in line with holding on to God's attributes and refigure.

Scripture is sufficient. I never claimed otherwise.

However, we humans reason the meaning of scripture with logic.

As for your omniscience must = predestination your logic fails to account for that evil happens.

1) Necessarily God has fore determined everything that will happen
2) God has determined X
3) Therefore it is necessary that X will happen

X = Evil

Again, I cannot deny scripture that no evil comes from God, therefore God did not determine it even though He is Omniscient. Thus, His knowledge must be greater than the finite theological box you attempt to put it in.