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Primary & Secondary Causes

There are some extreme Calvinist theologians out there who will use philosophical reasoning to explain away the reasons as to why God can't possibly be the author of sin while, at the same time, creating a world where man would have no choice but to sin. They use examples of what they call "primary" and "secondary" causes.

It goes something like this...

The primary cause, initiated by God, was to slay the Lamb before the foundation of the world. The purpose of this is to glorify Himself by redeeming a particular people, His sheep. By necessity, God also had to create a world where man had no choice but to sin in order for His sheep to be redeemed. The act of sin by man then becomes the secondary cause and this somehow lets God off the hook as the author of evil.

That logic simply doesn't follow and here is why...

Imagine Person A mails a bomb to Person B. It is inevitable that Person B will receive the package and open it, triggering an explosion that results in Person B's death. The primary cause in this case is when Person A dropped off the package at the mail carrier. The secondary cause is when Person B opened the package. In a court of law, could Person A blame Person B for opening the package? No, in every scenario, Person A would be held responsible for Person B's death.

This is the logical conclusion of extreme Calvinism when you break it all down.
 

Blank

Active Member
It seems here we are getting into the area of infralapsarian and supralapsarian

Supralapsarian: God's decree of election and reprobation logically precedes the decree to permit the fall of humanity.

Infralapsarian: God's decree of election and reprobation logically follows the decree to permit the fall of humanity.

Seems to me an infralapsarian straw man is being presented, only problem not all Calvinists hold the infra view.
 

DaveXR650

Well-Known Member
In the example those guys use, when Socrates sits, it is impossible that he stand, but he still retains his potency to stand. If God for whatever reason either permitted or desired Socrates to sit at that moment then at that moment it is utterly impossible that Socrates be doing anything other than sitting. So that in the actual world we live in Socrates had to be sitting at that moment. It could be no other way in the reality of that world. Yet, if Socrates had the potential to instead have been standing at that moment then no violation was done to the free will of Socrates even though it was necessary in the reality of the world we live in that Socrates be sitting at that moment.

Hence, Socrates was necessarily sitting according to God's predetermined plan at that moment, and it could be no other way, yet Socrates' will was not violated. Not only was he not coerced to sit, he was totally free to sit or not, even though it was what they would call "necessary" that he in fact be sitting.

So something like the Fall of man could indeed be ordained by God in such a way as in the actual world we live in it was necessary that it happen. In the reality of existence in the world we are in it was absolutely necessary that Adam and Eve eat the fruit. They had though the potency to choose not to eat the fruit. But it was impossible that they not eat the fruit in this world, as everything would be different because it would be a different world had that occurred.

And don't blame me for the Socrates in the chair illustration. It's from Muller's book "Divine Will and Human Choice". And it's waaaaaay more complicated than that, and way beyond me.
 

Silverhair

Well-Known Member
To cut through all the mud, Adam and Eve either had a free will or they did not. As Dave said if they had not eaten the fruit then we would be in a different world but the reality is that we are in this one so speculation is just that speculation.

God has a plan for the salvation of man, see Gen 3:15, and His plan will work out. Some people will trust in Him and others will not but in the end those that are saved will be saved because they chose to trust in the creator, OT, or in the risen son, NT.

The other option is that God has determined everything that will happen which would logically mean that He caused Adam & Eve to fall, sin, and is also the cause of all the subsequent sin that we see in the world, which is clearly not a biblical view.

We can live in the world of philosophy or we can trust what scripture says to us regarding salvation. The choice is yours because God made it that way.
 

atpollard

Well-Known Member
Let’s make this PERSONAL and cast ourselves in the role of Adam (which in a sense we are).

Given: We are forgiven at this exact moment (washed by the blood of the Lamb) and starting out at least as well as Adam.

Now, let us each resolve to live such a way that, moving forward from this point, we will NEVER AGAIN SIN in thought, word or deed … living in perfect obedience to the “greatest commandments”.

Will we succeed? Will even ONE PERSON succeed?

[Is that because GOD compelled us, forcibly, to fail … or did God just need to play the odds (100% failure rate given enough time)? ]

Applying the lesson of US to the First Adam … If you were God, would YOU plan for Adam to fall or remain eternally sinless?
“Very good” (Gen 1:31) is not “perfect” (Mat 5:48).
 

DaveXR650

Well-Known Member
To cut through all the mud, Adam and Eve either had a free will or they did not. As Dave said if they had not eaten the fruit then we would be in a different world but the reality is that we are in this one so speculation is just that speculation.
For us as individuals on a personal level, you are correct. And this accounts for why I think I have always been puzzled as to why serious Calvinists like Owen would insist that they had on authority of scripture the right to say to anyone "if you come to Christ he will save you", yet he was all in for the Calvinistic explanation of things. What you have said above is indeed "all we need to know to be saved", but as a viable understanding of the way God works in the universe your explanation is incomplete and even false.

You cannot get around the fact, and it is fact from Scripture, not philosophy, that God claims complete sovereignty of how the events concerning men are unfolding, down even to our salvation. To leave it all to man's free will, by necessity means that God must be in a state of reacting to our choices to the point where the prophesies and purposes of God would be somewhat reliable at best and it would be impossible to promise anything with certainty because the free will future choices of men have not been made as yet.

But the answer to that is not that God meticulously causes everything because as you correctly said, free will is a real thing at some level, even if we base most of our decisions on previous events or conditions. So it turns out that the Calvinistic confessions that state both God's complete determination of all the events during the age of man on earth and the reality of men's true free will is the correct way to think. This is because both are clearly taught in scripture although at the same time, they seem hopelessly incompatible, at least on initially thinking about it.

That book I mentioned is mainly about a history of these various schools of thought and how they developed and the subtle differences in the way they work. It is completely out of my range of background education and if I'm honest, it is beyond my I.Q., and probably that applies to most on this board. So is it worth looking at? Yes. Because for one thing you realize that the simple points being raised against Calvinism nowadays, where there is an attempt to make it into warmed over Manicheanism and put it all on Augustine is not a suitable explanation. Two, if you really think about it you start getting at the root of the difficulty in our understanding of these things which is that we as humans can barely understand that there is another level going on when God is involved in that when he decrees something the actual reality of the world we live in changes according to his decrees.

Of course this is not necessary for us in order to be saved. You get back to Deuteronomy where we are told that some things are for us to do and other things are secret things of God.
 

Silverhair

Well-Known Member
For us as individuals on a personal level, you are correct. And this accounts for why I think I have always been puzzled as to why serious Calvinists like Owen would insist that they had on authority of scripture the right to say to anyone "if you come to Christ he will save you", yet he was all in for the Calvinistic explanation of things. What you have said above is indeed "all we need to know to be saved", but as a viable understanding of the way God works in the universe your explanation is incomplete and even false.

You cannot get around the fact, and it is fact from Scripture, not philosophy, that God claims complete sovereignty of how the events concerning men are unfolding, down even to our salvation. To leave it all to man's free will, by necessity means that God must be in a state of reacting to our choices to the point where the prophesies and purposes of God would be somewhat reliable at best and it would be impossible to promise anything with certainty because the free will future choices of men have not been made as yet.

But the answer to that is not that God meticulously causes everything because as you correctly said, free will is a real thing at some level, even if we base most of our decisions on previous events or conditions. So it turns out that the Calvinistic confessions that state both God's complete determination of all the events during the age of man on earth and the reality of men's true free will is the correct way to think. This is because both are clearly taught in scripture although at the same time, they seem hopelessly incompatible, at least on initially thinking about it.

That book I mentioned is mainly about a history of these various schools of thought and how they developed and the subtle differences in the way they work. It is completely out of my range of background education and if I'm honest, it is beyond my I.Q., and probably that applies to most on this board. So is it worth looking at? Yes. Because for one thing you realize that the simple points being raised against Calvinism nowadays, where there is an attempt to make it into warmed over Manicheanism and put it all on Augustine is not a suitable explanation. Two, if you really think about it you start getting at the root of the difficulty in our understanding of these things which is that we as humans can barely understand that there is another level going on when God is involved in that when he decrees something the actual reality of the world we live in changes according to his decrees.

Of course this is not necessary for us in order to be saved. You get back to Deuteronomy where we are told that some things are for us to do and other things are secret things of God.

@DaveXR650 how do you arrive at the idea that God determines ALL THINGS and then say mas has a free will. The two views are not compatible.

God is sovereign and He has given man a free will. Does the preclude God from bringing certain things to pass as He requires, NO. But to say He has to control all things or He is in some way less than God is foolish.

As for calvinism being nothing more than, as you say, warmed over Manicheanism and put it all on Augustine does have merit as he was the one that brought that view into the church and Calvin just carried it forward. Sorry Dave but that is the foundation of modern calvinism and calvinist will just have to live with it.
 

DaveXR650

Well-Known Member
@DaveXR650 how do you arrive at the idea that God determines ALL THINGS and then say mas has a free will. The two views are not compatible.
That's what the book is about. They get into the concept of synchronic contingency, which I don't pretend to really have a handle on. Basically it is saying that it is indeed possible that God determine that something must occur as he chooses for it to occur. Yet, even though God, who is sovereign, chooses that something will occur in such a way, thus deciding that out of all possible worlds things will indeed play out in the way he has determined this world to be, if it is at the same time true that an individual person had a true potency to do otherwise then his free will was not violated but yet the event (even the actions of the person) was determined by God.

Your objection is exactly the objection they talk about in the book, voiced by post Reformation thinkers, that the two views are not compatible. What he does in this book is to try to look at the various voices of theologians from the period before the Reformation, from Aristotle, the early church age and then the scholastic thinkers, up to Jonathan Edwards, who started defining free will in the modern way we are used to seeing. I don't see the author as pushing a particular soteriology as much as helping us understand who was saying what.

What I find useful is that it helps you understand or at least get a glimpse of how God, being God, when deciding something will occur, is not just deciding some thing will occur but actually determines a specific world of reality out of the possibilities for different worlds which could have been.
God is sovereign and He has given man a free will. Does the preclude God from bringing certain things to pass as He requires, NO. But to say He has to control all things or He is in some way less than God is foolish.
The problem you are left with is that the answer is in fact YES. If our libertarian free will is the supreme defining thing then no, God himself cannot bring about what he sovereignly wants without our consent. And this book is making the case that the answer to this is more complicated than the idea that the only alternative is that God take over so to speak, our wills. And they even refute the idea that my man Edwards had that you get around this by saying that free will just amounts to just doing what you most want to do.
As for calvinism being nothing more than, as you say, warmed over Manicheanism and put it all on Augustine does have merit as he was the one that brought that view into the church and Calvin just carried it forward. Sorry Dave but that is the foundation of modern calvinism and calvinist will just have to live with it.
I have Wilson's short layman's version of his "The Foundation of Augustinian - Calvinism" and I think it is a good book. I know a lot of Calvinists snipe at his work but it came out in I think 2019 and so far I have not seen a serious, scholarly rebuttle of it. I think his premise that Augustine was influenced by Manicheanism is probably true. But this book gives a lot of background on other influences on early Reformation theologians other than Augustine. So no, Wilson's work is worth reading but for someone to go around saying Calvinism is just repackaged Manicheanism is incomplete at best.
 

Silverhair

Well-Known Member
That's what the book is about. They get into the concept of synchronic contingency, which I don't pretend to really have a handle on. Basically it is saying that it is indeed possible that God determine that something must occur as he chooses for it to occur. Yet, even though God, who is sovereign, chooses that something will occur in such a way, thus deciding that out of all possible worlds things will indeed play out in the way he has determined this world to be, if it is at the same time true that an individual person had a true potency to do otherwise then his free will was not violated but yet the event (even the actions of the person) was determined by God.

Your objection is exactly the objection they talk about in the book, voiced by post Reformation thinkers, that the two views are not compatible. What he does in this book is to try to look at the various voices of theologians from the period before the Reformation, from Aristotle, the early church age and then the scholastic thinkers, up to Jonathan Edwards, who started defining free will in the modern way we are used to seeing. I don't see the author as pushing a particular soteriology as much as helping us understand who was saying what.

What I find useful is that it helps you understand or at least get a glimpse of how God, being God, when deciding something will occur, is not just deciding some thing will occur but actually determines a specific world of reality out of the possibilities for different worlds which could have been.

The problem you are left with is that the answer is in fact YES. If our libertarian free will is the supreme defining thing then no, God himself cannot bring about what he sovereignly wants without our consent. And this book is making the case that the answer to this is more complicated than the idea that the only alternative is that God take over so to speak, our wills. And they even refute the idea that my man Edwards had that you get around this by saying that free will just amounts to just doing what you most want to do.

I have Wilson's short layman's version of his "The Foundation of Augustinian - Calvinism" and I think it is a good book. I know a lot of Calvinists snipe at his work but it came out in I think 2019 and so far I have not seen a serious, scholarly rebuttle of it. I think his premise that Augustine was influenced by Manicheanism is probably true. But this book gives a lot of background on other influences on early Reformation theologians other than Augustine. So no, Wilson's work is worth reading but for someone to go around saying Calvinism is just repackaged Manicheanism is incomplete at best.

From what you have said about that book it seems to be a lot of philosophy and little scripture. God is sovereign, we both agree on that. Where we differ is in what His being sovereign entails. It seems you lean more to the deterministic view and I lean to the limited free will side.

Calvinist determinism and free will are not compatible and no amount of twisting of meanings will make them so. Actually God does not have to take over our wills as He knows what man is like. Whether it was Pharaoh or those that crucified Christ they were acting by their free will or do you think God had to control them?

If Jesus, as man, knew who would turn away Joh 6:64 do you think God who is omniscient is any less able to know what man will freely do? To say that God has to act as the puppet master is to make God much less than He is?

As Wilson's book points out the foundation of calvinism can be clearly seem in the pagan philosophies from which Augustine drew. As Wilson's book to pains to show, Augustine drew from various pagan views. So I agree that to call calvinism repackaged Manicheanism is wrong but to say it is repackaged pagan philosophy is closer to the mark.
 

37818

Well-Known Member
Revelation 21:1, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. . . .
 

DaveXR650

Well-Known Member
From what you have said about that book it seems to be a lot of philosophy and little scripture. God is sovereign, we both agree on that. Where we differ is in what His being sovereign entails. It seems you lean more to the deterministic view and I lean to the limited free will side.
Scripture clearly states God is sovereign. And it clearly states man has a free will. There is nothing wrong with leaving it at that. The Calvinist confessions say that both are true also, and reference scripture. What philosophers do is try to reconcile these two concepts. Scripture doesn't do that. Most of us agree that these concepts are irreconcilable to our human minds. You have to determine yourself if the effort to do so is worth it.
Calvinist determinism and free will are not compatible and no amount of twisting of meanings will make them so.
So since both are taught in scripture then they have to be compatible in some way.
If Jesus, as man, knew who would turn away Joh 6:64 do you think God who is omniscient is any less able to know what man will freely do? To say that God has to act as the puppet master is to make God much less than He is?
It is true that if God knows everything then knowing what a man will do is easy. What you have to decide for yourself is if it is truly possible to know for sure what a man will do if by your own definition of free will the man must always be able to change his mind. And then ask yourself - if God knows absolutely, what the man's final choice really is right before the moment he does the action, and God himself predicts it as such, then was it truly "necessary" that that be the man's final choice? Now you are back to synchronic contingency, where it is now necessary and predetermined by God that the man really do what his final choice was - and yet the man's free will was not violated.

Really think this out. Free will of a man will eventually dovetail into the sovereign plan of God, which in God's mind was a predetermined plan, and yet all the while the man was doing his free will, not just free will as Edwards said, where he was following his greatest desire, but libertarian free will where he still retained complete potency to do the other thing. The problem is not that there is something wrong with the idea that God could simply use his foreknowledge of the future to know what a man will freely choose. The problem is how do you keep man completely free to choose the other course of action, which your free will understanding demands - and still retain the concept of a knowable and foreseeable future, without God having to be ready to intervene in man's free will.

Bottom line is that this philosophical approach does seem to be able to give an explanation of God's sovereignty operating along side of man's free will without making God have to manipulate man's will. So God can be sovereign even in difficult things like the Fall without in any way being at fault for the actions of men.
 

Silverhair

Well-Known Member
if God knows absolutely, what the man's final choice really is right before the moment he does the action, and God himself predicts it as such, then was it truly "necessary" that that be the man's final choice? Now you are back to synchronic contingency, where it is now necessary and predetermined by God that the man really do what his final choice was - and yet the man's free will was not violated.

Since God is omniscient He does know what man's free will choice will be but it is not a prediction on God's part nor can it be a caused action. It is Him knowing what man will freely do, it's called foreknowledge. That is the part you do not seem able to grasp.

If as you say "it is now necessary and predetermined by God that the man really do what his final choice was" then you have disallowed free will as God has, by your words, predetermined what the man would do.

Free will and determinism are mutually exclusive. As much as you would like them to be compatible they are not.
 

DaveXR650

Well-Known Member
Since God is omniscient He does know what man's free will choice will be but it is not a prediction on God's part nor can it be a caused action. It is Him knowing what man will freely do, it's called foreknowledge. That is the part you do not seem able to grasp.
If that works for you then that is a sufficient explanation for you. I don't think it works. If you go that route it is you who has to show how man is totally free to change his mind right up to the point where he does the action - and yet God can declare what he will do ahead of time. Under your system, God had no way to say that Paul is a chosen vessel because it just as well could have been that Paul could have said "that vision and voice could was a bit of undigested beef or a piece of underdone potato", and gone on his way.

You free will guys always bring up the fact that Calvinism is hard to reconcile. Yet you never own up to the fact that if free will is supreme and stands alone there is simply no way God can honestly predict something will happen because mem must have the final say. That is the definition of free will by your own desire.
 

Silverhair

Well-Known Member
If that works for you then that is a sufficient explanation for you. I don't think it works. If you go that route it is you who has to show how man is totally free to change his mind right up to the point where he does the action - and yet God can declare what he will do ahead of time. Under your system, God had no way to say that Paul is a chosen vessel because it just as well could have been that Paul could have said "that vision and voice could was a bit of undigested beef or a piece of underdone potato", and gone on his way.

You free will guys always bring up the fact that Calvinism is hard to reconcile. Yet you never own up to the fact that if free will is supreme and stands alone there is simply no way God can honestly predict something will happen because mem must have the final say. That is the definition of free will by your own desire.

Keep in mind 1] God's Omniscience & 2] God's foreknowledge?

I do not limit the sovereign creator God that we see in the bible.

Calvinism is hard to reconcile as you want God to determine all things yet then limit what He determines when you see what that actually leads to.
You have said you do not agree with determinism and have indicated that man does actually have a free will which leads me to ask why do you still call yourself a calvinist?

Speaking for me as a free will guy my free will is not supreme, God is. Remember I mentioned foreknowledge as one of God attributes. God knows what out free will choice will be but He does not cause the choice as we see in calvinism. So God does not have to predict as He already knows. If I had chosen differently then that would have been what His foreknowledge would have been.

We are told that God knows the end from the beginning, that His plan will be accomplished. I do not doubt this as I am sure you do not either.

Isa 46:9 "Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me,
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';
 

DaveXR650

Well-Known Member
Calvinism is hard to reconcile as you want God to determine all things yet then limit what He determines when you see what that actually leads to.
You have said you do not agree with determinism and have indicated that man does actually have a free will which leads me to ask why do you still call yourself a calvinist?
Well it seems to be that there is dispute among Calvinists about whether God determines every detail of everything as many of the modern Calvinists like to assert. Much of the Calvinist writings are practical in nature and it has always been difficult for me to reconcile the extreme determinism of many modern Calvinists with the warnings and admonishment that the Calvinists of old seemed to put great importance on.
Speaking for me as a free will guy my free will is not supreme, God is. Remember I mentioned foreknowledge as one of God attributes. God knows what out free will choice will be but He does not cause the choice as we see in calvinism.
The way you define free will demands that it be supreme as part of your definition of it. That's the trouble with demanding that you always be able to make an alternative choice or choose the other. Calvinism acknowledges free will and also acknowledges a logical tension between that and God accomplishing his sovereign purposes.

Because the Bible is clear that the plan of salvation was determined by God before the world even began we must say that the Fall was ordained. With your definition of free will it had to be possible that Adam and Eve not sin. If it was ordained that they sin does that mean that God made them sin? Some Calvinists say yes. Others say no and they claim that what God does do and what he has a right to do is to have the world we live in be the actual world we really do live in. There could have been other possibilities, had people like Adam and Eve acted differently. But God in his sovereignty ordained that they would sin thus creating a series of events that resulted in the world we are living in being as it is. What the book I referenced is saying is that the argument that God has to operate in response to our free will choices is obviously wrong, and the argument that God must control and manipulate our wills to get things to go his way is also incomplete as an explanation.

Their premise is that the thought process of the early thinkers was that in the case of Adam and Eve, if they had a true "potency" to have acted differently than they did, the fact that they did what they did at the moment of the Fall can indeed be something that was "necessary" to happen because it was part of God's plan, yet God did not make them sin. Their liberty in that was truly of a free will nature and by free will I mean beyond Edward's idea of "doing what they most wanted to do" but a libertarian free will and a true potency to have chosen the alternative.

What they are trying to do is reconcile a true free will, more like your concept of it, with the idea that God still ordains and determines the world of events as human history unfolds according to God's plan. In a sense, Silverhair, they are saying that the modern Calvinist determinists do go too far in discounting man's free will, but that the proper explanation need not undermine God's ability to rule the events of the universe as he sees fit.
 

Alan Dale Gross

Active Member
They had though the potency to choose not to eat the fruit.
Adam did have the potency, as a sinless human being Engulfed as the entire Creation was, with the Enablement of the Spirit to remain sinless, in a State of Innocense, however, in order for God to Create a being with which He could Enjoy the Endless Eternity with The Triune Godhead in Heaven, who could also begin to understand and appreciate the Attributes of God's Love and Mercy, while remaining Holy and Just, more than the Chosen Angels, who God Decided to "keep" in their first sinless State, by "Confirming" them, because they are then essentially acting from a robotic-quality, then, the alternatives to confirming the first human beings to remain sinless, was not that God could Create a being who had God's Attribute of Immutibility, because that Attribute would have already had to have Existed as long as God Himself has been Immutible, and God couldn't Create another "God" in that way, because that being would have a starting point.

So, without simply Creating more robotic-type, automatically confirmed beings to Fellowship with Him and since another Eternally Immutable "God" was impossible to Create, that left God with the Decision of Creating a Mutable being, who, although they did have the potency to remain Obedient to God in all things He Required, they also had the possibility of Offending God, by turning from their Obedience to Him, and breaking God's Law, which would be an Eternally Punishable Crime, for which God would be Just and in Honor to Require they suffer the Penalty of an Eternity in Hell, banished from God, in Torment, and for that Mutable being to then, also of course, not be available for Communing with God in Heaven, Forever, which, you already know, but we certainly can't begin to fathom the Gravity of the Eternal Reality wherein God so Loved the World that He Gave His Only Begotten Son, to Accomplish a Provision to Satisfy God's Justice, by Living a Perfect, Sinless Life, AND OBTAINING RIGHTEOUSNESS BY LIVING PERFECTLY WHILE UNDER GOD'S LAW, WHICH GOD WOULDN'T HAVE HAD, FOR JESUS TO BE ABLE TO GRANT HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS TO SINNERS WHO JESUS WAS ABLE TO PARDON, BY PAYING AND REDEEMING THEM AND BUYING THEM OUT OF THEIR SINS IN A WAY THAT GOD COULD ACCEPT, WHEN JESUS DIED AND OUR SINS WERE PLACED UPON HIM, LIKE A LAMB SLAIN BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD, WHO WAS MADE TO BE SIN, BY MY SINS BEING IMPUTED TO HIM, AND HE DIED THE JUST FOR THE UNJUST, AS HE WAS MADE SIN, HE WHO KNEW NO SIN THAT WE MAY BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD, IN HIM, WHERE THAT IS OUR BEING GIVEN JESUS' RIGHTEOUSNESS TO NOW BE OUR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS THAT HAS BEEN IMPUTED TO US, IN THE PARDON OF OUR SINS, GOD THEN SEES WE ARE IN POSSESION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, AT WHICH TIME GOD SAYS, "THAT SOUL HAS A CLEAN RECORD THAT IS PERFECT", SO HE JUSTIFIES US FREELY AS PART OF OUR EXPERIENCE IN THE NEW BIRTH WHEN JESUS GIVES US ETERNAL LIFE, WHICH IS ULTIMATELY AND ABSOLUTELY ASSURED, BECAUSE GOD RAISED JESUS FROM THE DEAD, TO HAVE ETERNALLY QUICKENING POWER OF LIFE OVER DEATH, WHO HAS SAVED TO THE UTTERMOST THEM THAT COME UNTO GOD, BY HIM, WHO HAVE ZERO FREE WILL TO CHOOSE LOSE THEIR SALVATION, BECAUSE NO MAN CAN PLUCK THEM OUT HIS HAND.

And, why, why, why, was all this necessary and for God to Determine to Save some of these Mutable being He had Created, after they Adam had deliberatey chosen to act in opposition to God and we did, in Adam did too, as our Federal Head of the Human Race, because if we had been sinless in the Garden, as a Mutable being, the inevitablity of our having chosen to sin would eventually have taken place, without any Intervention or Action by God?

Jesus Gave the reason for God to have Created man and allowed him to sin against Him, knowing what Breathtaking Cost that would be Required to then Reconcile them back to God, in Forgiveness of their sins.

What reason did Jesus tell us for God to have The Triune Godhead to Perfectly Accomplish Their Eternal Plan of Salvation for those Elect souls that God Gave the Son to die for?

In John 10, Jesus was telling us who He died for when He told us, I Lay Down My Life for the sheep; WHY?

Jesus was Praying to His Father when He said, "I would that they be with Me where I Am", there in John 17.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit Created Human Beings who were all sinners now by Nature
and Jesus Prepared a Place for the Eternally Saved children of God. If it were not so Jesus would have told us...

[1] Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
[2] In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
[4] And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
[5] Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
[6] Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

One of these days, dear friends.

Let not your heart be troubled.

That's the only way God could Create beings to truly Fellowship and Commune with Him, together, AS ONE LIKE THEY ARE AND WORSHIP GOD WITHOUT SIN, FOREVER!

Romans 3:21 "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 "Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 "To declare, I say, at this time His Righteousness:
that He might be Just, and the Justifier
of him which believeth in Jesus."
 
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