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May be I "get" Calvinist double-predestination; I don't agree with it, because it has come to denote an alternative gospel of God's arbitrary choosing; but in which men actually "elect" themselves to salvation by deluding themselves that they possess a superior gnosis, just as the pharisees did...

Several fallacies here and in your previous post. It is a given that the "teachers of the law" had departed from the faith, in that they had rejected Moses, in order to pursue a substitute religion never taught by Moses, which is that justification came by law observance, independently of faith...

This is hardly to the point of what I was talking about.

1 Tim 6:20 ".....the profane empty babblings and opposing arguments (antitheses of Christianity) of what is FALSELY CALLED knowledge" Science doesn't oppose the bible, but it is my experience that the creationist cult does in that it inculcates toxic contempt for anyone with a differing opinion...

And yet, the commonality is that God made himself known to everyone, such that men are without excuse for law breaking: Rom 1:20. In that the election of grace is an election at all, I concur that some have received more grace than others. And yet, Rom 2 makes clear that the standards of...

True: it is always of "God that showeth mercy," but are we only to understand mercy as an arbitrary series of "unilateral acts", or is there a better principle? And anyway, is not the principal "unilateral work of grace," the gospel itself through which God's mercy is channeled? The OP's...

It is true that taxonomic (taxon = group of organisms) rank originated in, and was confined to, phenomenological considerations - groups posited on the basis of similarities in appearance, organic structure and behavior. But, the subsequent science of Cladistics provided an alternative method...

"Apart from a Unilateral Work of Grace, we cannot please God." Given that man exists in the grace of God from the day of his birth, which kind of grace constitutes a "unilateral work?"

To use classification as a means of origin is what evolutionary science is all about. It is to rely on evolutionary science. Tables classifying animals according to Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species rely on the science of Cladistics, which "identifies and takes account of...

Jer 13:23 "Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil." The answer is: "it all depends on which viewpoint you take." From the "here and now" viewpoint, which is your viewpoint, and that of Jeremiah, the answer is clearly...

There is nothing to indicate Adam "died spiritually", excepting the Manichaean legacy, which posits all flesh as evil. Didn't Abel offer a pleasing sacrifice to God? Was Abel "spiritually dead?" So, such confounds forfeiture of immortality, part of Adam's punishment from God, with apostasy...

"Creation" whatever you mean by that term, is not incompatible with evolution, for even as Christ pointed out "flesh gives birth to flesh" and "spirit gives birth to spirit." If evolution is limited to the biological, the "flesh", it doesn't trespass on God creating the spirits of all men...

Why should I credit Abraham, Noah, Moses, Elijah etc. as "spiritually dead?" That is for you to prove. I see TULIP as trying to go beyond scripture, which invalidates it. Jesus never said "ALL were lost," particularly in relation to the lineage of Adam in the bible: e.g. Noah, Abraham etc. He...

The statement is causal, and relates to the death of the person, via the death of the body. All sinned, so all die. Just because you sin, and die, doesn't mean you're not credited with righteousness through faith. Abraham sinned and died, but he still went to heaven.

TULIP seems to emphasize human wisdom rather than God's wisdom.

True, but beware of extrapolating the universal case from the general case, which isn't permissible. And ψυχικός (which is translated "natural") is not associated directly with babies or infants in the bible, but only with sinners ruled by their flesh. Even in Israel there were "righteous men"...

Evolution doesn't posit that "life comes from death" as the theory of evolution doesn't posit where life originates, in the very fact of it being limited to being a science. It is related to observable and investigatable biological phenomena. Even if there are some atheist scientists who seek to...

Jesus is the propitiation for the whole world; and babies & infants are not what the bible means by "sinners" for to them "belongs the kingdom of God" cf. Mark 10:14. There is no "default" position of a man being taken to have rejected Christ, before he has rejected him. Moreover, the mere...

The church is Jewish. You become an honorary Jew when you become a Christian. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism," Eph 4:5. The church is the body of the Lord, a Jew, Col 1:18, headed by a Jew and obeying the doctrine of Jews. Calvin wasn't appointed an apostle by Jesus. Don't know how anyone...

The New Testament was indeed a covenant with the Jewish church, the vine remains Jewish, with the Gentiles only grafted in Romans 11:11-24.