Calvinism and Arminianism foreknowledge compared with respect to time

if God was fully and totally/only determining all things that come to pass, would be more akin to Allah then Yahweh!

 

Does He “permit” a decision before the maker of that decision exists?

 

Nor would we have been made in God’s image.

 

Yes, I agree—God created clocks. But time is not a creation, but an acknowledgement of sequential actions! God acts in sequence.

 

He has factored all things from eternity!

 

And God decided which He would rescue before they existed, right? And which He would leave in their sins before they existed. And decided which would then be in hell, before they had sinned. So God must not be making that decision based on what they do of their own will, but His will. Therefore God WILLS that they sin, which is in opposition to His nature.

 

How does He factor something that happens as a result of another agent, one that doesn’t yet exist? He either knows what they will do (Arminianism) or He decrees what they will do (Calvinism).

 

No. I’m merely saying those verses say nothing about God creating time.

 

That's how God works...
Outside of our scope of understanding and outside of anything we do or want as sinful men.

We sinned, we are responsible.
He is just, and if anyone is to be made just ( righteous ) in His eyes, it will be according to what He prescribes.

Who are we to reply against God?
We offended Him, not the other way around.

Yes, because all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God ( Romans 3:23 ).
Have you not read that all are sinners?

Let's start back at the beginning...
" For [there is] not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not." ( Ecclesiastes 7:20 ).

Does God not have the right to judge all men as what they are...
Disobedient and hard-hearted rebellious haters of God ( Romans 1:18-32 ), who, in and of themselves will not seek Him in all our ways ( Romans 3:10-18, Psalms 10:4, Psalms 53:1 )?

No, we do plenty against Him all by ourselves with no outside interference.
Do you know of anywhere in the Bible that men are not responsible for sinning against Him?

I do not.

At this point I'd ask you to do this:

Stop leaning on our less-than-perfect and faulty reasoning as mere men, and place your trust in Him and His word alone, Derf, just as Proverbs 3:5-7 states.
Just because we "logically" see something to be true about God, we should trust what He says about Himself...
Not what we think should be true.

God did not will for men to sin...
But He did provide for that foreseen end, by foreordaining His Son and His death on the cross for His people's sins.

 

There is a third option...

He knows and decrees what they will do ( the Bible ).
He can and does provide for the fact that men have become sinners...
and He can and does move the hearts of sinful and rebellious men as He desires ( Example, Genesis 20:6 ).

But He never causes men to sin ( James 1:13-15 ).
His word is clear on that.

God is just, and the justifier of the ungodly.
when He says we've sinned, who are we to argue?

We did it, and there's no denying it.
For Him to choose one to forgive their sins, and choose to punish another because of their sins, is not our right to question.

God is not a respecter of persons.
We all have sinned, and apart from His grace and mercy, we all go to Hell and suffer an eternity of torment.

Aren't you glad that you have believed on His Son?
Then know that it was because of Him moving upon your heart and mind to open it towards Him and His words, just as He did for Lydia ( Acts of the Apostles 16:14 ) and Paul and many others.

 

Then you would reject any theology that has God causing men to sin?

 

Please don't forget this one:
[1Ti 4:10 KJV] 10 For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.

How can God be the savior of those that don't believe?? I can think of a couple ways.
1. The offer of salvation is genuinely made to those that don't ever believe, but they could believe.
2. All are saved in one way, but not all are saved in another, better way.

I tend to lean toward the second one, though the first is valid as well. What I mean is that, since death is the wages of sin, and since Christ defeated death, and since all will be resurrected (some to life everlasting, and some to eternal damnation), then Christ's sacrifice can legitimately be said to apply to all, and be effectual to all, since all are raised from the dead. After that resurrection comes the second way in which one can be saved, and some don't make it.

 

Jesus death and resurrection bought resurrection to even the lost, but they will still have to face eternity apart from God!

 

What is not created has no God. Only God is uncreated.

 

Christ is Lord of both the saved and the Lost. Romans 14:9, Romans 14:11.

 

Yes, all knees shall bow and all tongues confess that Jesus is Lord!

 

I would reject any doctrine that states that God tempts men to sin, and I will re-state what you've quoted me saying in the above...

To me, there is a difference between God putting sinful men in front of a situation knowing that they will be tempted by it and fall into sin, and God being the direct cause of it.
God does not do the tempting.

Read the story of the Fall of man, and ask yourself if God knew what Adam and Eve would do..
If you're honest with the text, you have your answer.

 

Would you please explain what that has to do with my contention that those verses say nothing about time being created?

Here’s another example. Truth. Is truth created? Or is truth a concept that is applied to statements or events? If “truth” was created, then before truth existed, did God know what was true about Himself? Of course He has always known the truth about Himself, and He wasn’t created. So truth is uncreated, yet God is God of truth, just as Satan is the father of lies.

If time is a concept, I’d suggest of sequence, then God is more powerful than time, in that He controls sequential events, including those events He initiates. And in fact God acts in sequence: He will one day destroy the earth, but He had to create the earth first, because it’s hard to destroy something that doesn’t exist. Even God can’t destroy something He hasn’t yet created.

 

@Derf B :
As for "theology"...

"Theology" , strictly speaking, is a person's understanding of the Bible.
"Systematic theology" is one's understanding of God's word in a systematic, point-by-point manner.

Then there are things like, "popular theologies", where a prominent person teaches something and rather than do the work for themselves studying and understanding the Scriptures, they approach a person they trust as a teacher of God's word, and that person's understanding of the Scriptures is then transferred from the pastor to the ones being taught by the pastor...

In man-made lecture format.

To me, that describes many or most professing Christians.
Like I once was, they don't study their Bibles or even crack it open much except on Sunday mornings, and rely almost 100% on their pastor's "interpretation" of it.
So, rather than dig in and check out what their pastors are teaching, they are content to sit in front of him week after week and never check those teachings against what the Bible actually says.

I'd also like to clarify another point...
To me, you're acting as if I am someone who, instead of reading the Bible for themselves, must choose to come to a pre-set "buffet table" that has prominent systematic theologies all laid out like a smorgasboard...

and then they must pick from those pre-set choices and identify with them.
I don't believe that way and I never have.

That is part of what makes me a "Pre-Mil", "Post-Trib", "God hates sinners-and-loves-His people", "KJV", "3.5-year-Trib", "Anti-Christ-is-coming-first-before Christ-does", "Earth-stands-still-and-doesn't-rotate", "babies-aren't-guaranteed-Heaven", "Christ-will-rule-for-1,000 literal years at Jerusalem", "Calvinistic Baptist" when it comes to what I see the Bible teaching in many areas of doctrine and truth.

I don't agree with theologies because I admire someone, Derf...
I agree or disagree with what a teacher says based on the words of God as they are laid out on the page, and in their proper contexts.

 

@Dave Gilbert
I didn’t doubt your answer, but what I’ve put forward is that you are inconsistent with your answer. Calvinism, despite confessional attempts to the contrary, has God deciding what each and every person will do prior to that person existing, so God must be deciding what they are going to do—not based on the situations since Temptation is inherently about how an individual person reacts to it; not based on the person’s personality or desires, because that person doesn’t exist yet; but purely on what God wants those people to do. And if God wants someone to sin, He contradicts His own nature.