A question about Calvinisum

[Allan]

"who WERE BORN, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but OF GOD"

You bet!
First - they believed
Second - They given the right to be sons of God (born into Gods family)
Third or culmination- they WERE born...not of things of man...but of God

Keep it in context. verse 12 is before 13.

It doesn't state that they were born and then believed. The scriptures state in plain context and exegesis - they believed; were given the right or were saved; these WERE born...not of things of men but ... of God.

When is the 'born' aspect refering to?:
Well what aspects are normally associated with birth??
When you (at birth) come INTO your family and recieve all rights and benifs due unto the child IN the family. (The first born who recieved the double portion was the first to breach his mothers womb) Thus the whole meaning behind being 'born' or being 'born again'. This is why it is equated even here as context shows they were "given the right or authority to be called Gods children", THIS IS A REFERENCE TO A BIRTH!! And this plays out as scripture shows AFTER one beleives!

 

[Allan]

The only different that you will see in the Bible is that God loves the elect. Why me indeed? For there are better people then I.

This is one of the main points James I was trying to bring forth. The Calvinist has no idea why God chose them, loves them, or even looks their way. This leads many Non-Cals to come the the assumtion of the 'arbitrary choice' as you have no real answer to explain His purpose, Plan, or why it was His pleasure. We all understand there are better and greater men than ourselves who will die and go to hell.
But are they really greater men??
Not according to scripture as we are ALL the same in the eyes of God and ALL men fall short.
So now the question is still...Why you (or me for that matter) INDEED!??

I knew it... Yes saved means..IN Christ. So we could read we are chosen to be..IN Christ. Or we could read it..We are choosen to be saved. right?

Yes, we are chosen to be IN CHRIST (future tense) because God saw us (past tense) IN CHRIST as His Child through Christ (Present tense). God made the requirement of 'believe and BE saved' so therefore God would know everyone who would believe - would He not those who WILL believe if He declares this is how to be saved?? Yes??

Please read the rest of the chapter.

I have - and actaully just finished a verse by verse study in my sunday school class. Still can not find one place that ascribes your view point in the text according to context.

 

[russell55]

Find a "respecter of persons" in the Bible. John 1:12 is in the Bible. It's message is very clear. But, how doesn't election not make God a "respecter of persons?" Some are chosen for eternal life and some are not (only one other choice).

I thought I had edited the "respector of persons" phrase out of my response, but apparently not. It's used once in the KJV, and in the context, what it means it that God doesn't show favoritism based on nationality. It's a confusing phrase, so I intended to edit it, and thought I had.

Here's the point. God chooses all sorts of people. Jews and gentiles, women and men, kings and those in authority, people from all nations. Not just wise people, not just powerful people, not just rich people--in fact, not many of those sorts of people--but foolish people, weak people. Since God chooses all types of people, he doesn't show favoritism to one type. If he did choose a certain sort of person, then the grounds for God's choice would be in the person themselves. They would be chosen because they are the right sort of person. But that isn't the way it is, because God doesn't show favoritism.

And furthermore, if God chose people based on their meeting some requirement or criteria, then the very same criticism (that he shows favoritism) could be made: that he shows favoritism by choosing one type of person, the sort of person who meets that requirement or fulfills the criteria. If he chooses based on foreseen faith (or, as some here seem to think, on the basis of already expressed faith) then he is choosing the sort of people who are inclined to believe. People who are humble enough, perhaps, or people who are wise enough to recognize their need, or whatever. He is still choosing people based on some quality within them or something about them. That is showing favoritism just as much as choosing mostly wise people, or people all of one nationality, or whatever.

That's why an impartial God has to make the choice not based on anything within or about the persons he chooses. The choice has to be based within God alone or he is showing favoritism. God's choice has to be based in nothing about the person chosen.

Now that doesn't mean people don't have to believe to be saved. They do. It just means that people aren't chosen for salvation because they believe, but rather people believe because they are chosen for salvation, and that choice for salvation is based on nothing within themselves, but only things within God himself--like, for instance, the freedom of God, the self-existence of God, which means that everything that comes to be or comes to pass existed first as a thought in God's mind, and the flow of information goes outward from God to creation and not from his creation to God.

And that's what I think it means when it says in Romans 9 that God's choice doesn't depend on the person "so that God's purpose according to his choice might stand." God's freedom and self-existence require that the choice be based in himself and his plan.

John 1: 12, btw, is not speaking to the issue of election. It does talk about adoption, and of course, only those who believe are adopted. You'll get no argument from me on that point.

 

[Allan]

Here's the point. God chooses all sorts of people. Jews and gentiles, women and men, kings and those in authority, people from all nations. Not just wise people, not just powerful people, not just rich people--in fact, not many of those sorts of people--but foolish people, weak people. Since God chooses all types of people, he doesn't show favoritism to one type.

I agree here. :wavey:

If he did choose a certain sort of person, then the grounds for God's choice would be in the person themselves. They would be chosen because they are the right sort of person. But that isn't the way it is, because God doesn't show favoritism

I agree here as well because God does not choose a person based on position, status, wealth, or intellect. Which is something only a few are born to and therefore favor would be favored due to works or birth right.

And furthermore, if God chose people based on their meeting some requirement or criteria, then the very same criticism (that he shows favoritism) could be made: that he shows favoritism by choosing one type of person, the sort of person who meets that requirement or fulfills the criteria.

Here is where you fall off the wagon. If God sets the criteria that ALL mankind can be apart of then He is showing no favoritism but is allowing those who don't want to be involved the opportunity Not to be and vise versa.
1. Showing favorites (exclusivism) is at the discretion of the person displaying the favor regardless of any outside influence or circumstance.
2. Giving favor however (inclusivism) is for anyone who wants to have it and those who don't of their own choice remove themselves from the extended favor offered.

If he chooses based on foreseen faith (or, as some here seem to think, on the basis of already expressed faith) then he is choosing the sort of people who are inclined to believe. People who are humble enough, perhaps, or people who are wise enough to recognize their need, or whatever.

Again untrue. Refer back to above statement.

He is still choosing people based on some quality within them or something about them. That is showing favoritism just as much as choosing mostly wise people, or people all of one nationality, or whatever.

No, He is choosing based on His decreed desire for ALL men to repent and in giving that offer and actually allows them to be resposible for what the do with Truth (ie. repent or not). Again refer to above statement and the difference between choosing based on what you are born into or works and that of something offered to all men.

That's why an impartial God has to make the choice not based on anything within or about the persons he chooses. The choice has to be based within God alone or he is showing favoritism. God's choice has to be based in nothing about the person chosen.

So why did God choose you then, if you are no different than any other person in the eyes of God?? This places God in the Arbitrary catagory and makes election the luck of the draw. THe moment God chooses one person from another for a plan or purpose my friend displays there is something in or of that person that God desires to use above that of another person. You can't have it both ways: either God Chooses based on something in or of us OR God is arbitrary in His choosing and it didn't matter who He chose just that He had someone to fulfill His need within the Plan.

Now that doesn't mean people don't have to believe to be saved. They do. It just means that people aren't chosen for salvation because they believe, but rather people believe because they are chosen for salvation, and that choice for salvation is based on nothing within themselves, but only things within God himself--like, for instance, the freedom of God, the self-existence of God, which means that everything that comes to be or comes to pass existed first as a thought in God's mind, and the flow of information goes outward from God to creation and not from his creation to God.

SO... as I and it seems yourself is saying that God has and is arbitrary in His choosing because anyone would have sufficed He just needed someone and you were picked. Anything more than this (even in the purpose and plan of God) places some inherent value on or in the person choosen. It is at this point you must distinguish, why?? The only alternitive for your view is that of the Non-Cal position; That God chose those whom He knew would believe because though God loves mankind and offers redemption through repentence to them all, only a some will repent due to His merciful Grace and love Him back.

And that's what I think it means when it says in Romans 9 that God's choice doesn't depend on the person "so that God's purpose according to his choice might stand." God's freedom and self-existence require that the choice be based in himself and his plan.

Not a problem, as I THINK (as well my opinion) it means something different.
To your last sentence, only in the Calvinistic pardigm

 

[Hanna]

About being a respector of persons. I have 5 children. I am not partial to any of them in any matter. However, I will say ok, if you do so and such, this thing will happen for you, if you don't...it won't. I am not being partial. They all have an equal opportunity to do the right thing. They also have an equal opportunity to do the wrong thing. That does not make me partial in the least. God is a just God.

 

[Rippon]

Allan , you are stuck in your philosphy . God has a right to do whatever He wants with whomever He wants . He is a God of order . Shake off your idea of fairness or human analogies . It is according to His good pleasure to chose who He desires . His election of the few is due to His good pleasure and not with regard to any merit in the creature .

 

[Brother Bob]

but rather people believe because they are chosen for salvation,

Give a kid an ice cream amongst a bunch of kids and He will think you are a good man but all the other kids will think you are partial to that one kid, which would be true. Looks like anyone could see that. It don't take a rocket scientist.

 

[psalms109:31]

Faith

If we follow as God has told us we would end up having a harvast that cannot be counted. When you offer election to the world for salvation you have opened another way in and have made many thiefs and robbers. Jesus is the front door

If you have been elected to salvation does not mean that you are saved, because only believers shall be saved, and you will know the true branches by it's fruit.

We are saved by grace through faith

 

[webdog]

Allan , you are stuck in your philosphy . God has a right to do whatever He wants with whomever He wants . He is a God of order . Shake off your idea of fairness or human analogies . It is according to His good pleasure to chose who He desires . His election of the few is due to His good pleasure and not with regard to any merit in the creature .

You are correct, and what God wants is for all men to repent, and for those who do to give eternal life. It's in the Bible, not a "human analogy" of "philosophy".

 

[webdog]

Weddog..

You ask this every other month, you are shown, then you must forget.

Paul who was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles.

Sorry James, I didn't ask for "chosen" but "elect". Chosen is mentioned in may places but not always in reference to the "elect".

The reason I must "forget" is there is nothing to remember I ask again... show where "eklegomai, eklektos, and ekloge" refer to gentiles.

 

[Jarthur001]

Sorry James, I didn't ask for "chosen" but "elect". Chosen is mentioned in may places but not always in reference to the "elect".

The reason I must "forget" is there is nothing to remember I ask again... show where "eklegomai, eklektos, and ekloge" refer to gentiles.

Oh...I'm sorry. I thought the word "election" means "choosen". In fact it does mean the same. But if you want...we can do that too

So nonetheless...

1Pe 1:1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,


1Pe 1:2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

1 Peter 5: 13 The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son.

 

[webdog]

Oh...I'm sorry. I thought the word "election" means "choosen". In fact it does mean the same. But if you want...we can do that too

So nonetheless...

...and who is 1 Peter written to? Dispersed jews.

While elect and chosen mean the same thing, people were "chosen" for numerous things throughout the Bible. Judas was "chosen" as a disciple...but he clearly was not one of the "elect".

 

[russell55]

About being a respector of persons. I have 5 children. I am not partial to any of them in any matter. However, I will say ok, if you do so and such, this thing will happen for you, if you don't...it won't. I am not being partial. They all have an equal opportunity to do the right thing. They also have an equal opportunity to do the wrong thing. That does not make me partial in the least. God is a just God.

And all human beings have the opportunity to do the right thing. It's just that given only the opportunity, no one does the right thing, they all do the wrong thing. Justice from God, in regards to human beings, is condemnation.

God is a just God, but we really don't want to go demanding that God give us justice. What we want for ourselves is God's mercy, not his justice.

And God dispenses his mercy as he chooses:

“I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”

God's choice of those to whom he is merciful is not based upon the human being choosing to ask for it or meeting a requirement to obtain it, because the very next verse says:

So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it.

And a sentence or two after that:

So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.

Notice that whether or not someone chooses to listen to (or obey) God really doesn't play into God's choice to have mercy or not. (All above verses from Romans 9.)

God dispenses his mercy before we ask for it, and not because we ask for it:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

This happens--God showing his mercy in this way--when we were dead in our trespasses. The previous verses give us the low down on what that means:

. . . following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience--among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

In other words, the timing of God's choice to be merciful to us, and his merciful act of "making us alive together with Christ", comes when we are not obeying, but we are disobedient; when we are not desiring God's mercy, but we are desiring fleshly things; when we are not believing, but we are following Satan.

 

[russell55]

Give a kid an ice cream amongst a bunch of kids and He will think you are a good man but all the other kids will think you are partial to that one kid, which would be true. Looks like anyone could see that. It don't take a rocket scientist.

Cute little philosophical argument, but you didn't really deal with the text, which says the God chose people to be saved, and that the means by which that salvation comes to them is

1. The setting apart of the Spirit.
2. Believe in the truth.

God chooses who will be saved, and then, based on that choice, sends the Spirit to set them apart, and they believe.

 

[Jarthur001]

...and who is 1 Peter written to? Dispersed jews.

Are you saying you think that peter was writing only to the jews? Did you not see the word strangers????

1Pe 1:1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,

1Pe 1:2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

parepidemos
1) one who comes from a foreign country into a city or land to reside there by the side of the natives
2) a stranger
3) sojourning in a strange place, a foreigner
4) in the NT metaph. in reference to heaven as the native country, one who sojourns on earth

The context is clear...these are foreigners.


As to this...

While elect and chosen mean the same thing, people were "chosen" for numerous things throughout the Bible. Judas was "chosen" as a disciple...but he clearly was not one of the "elect".

Again..context will tell us what is meant. What I posted before clearly means slavtion.

Not sure why your trying so hard on this one.

BUT...if you are right....then I need to tell my wife this does not apply to her.

1Pe 3:1 Likewise, ye wives, [be] in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;

1Pe 3:2 While they behold your chaste conversation [coupled] with fear.

1Pe 3:3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward [adorning] of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

WHO KNEW?

 

[Brother Bob]

God chooses who will be saved, and then, based on that choice, sends the Spirit to set them apart, and they believe.

Hmmmmmmmm, so God is partial. That is not cute.

When Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, ever since that time man has known good and evil. By knowing good, he has to know God for only God is good, by knowing evil, he has to know the devil, for satan is evil. So, you see alway, without God doing anything else for man, he knows good (God) and he know evil (Satan). All man has to do is choose which one he will follow and believe. You fellows post after post and no way to get around the scriptures.

 

[Blammo]

Are you saying you think that peter was writing only to the jews? Did you not see the word strangers????

parepidemos
1) one who comes from a foreign country into a city or land to reside there by the side of the natives
2) a stranger
3) sojourning in a strange place, a foreigner
4) in the NT metaph. in reference to heaven as the native country, one who sojourns on earth

The context is clear...these are foreigners.

As were the Jews of the Dispersion. (strangers scattered...)

 

[russell55]

Hmmmmmmmm, so God is partial. That is not cute.

Still not dealing with the text, are we? What matters is what the text says, not how offended you are.

When Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, ever since that time man has known good and evil. By knowing good, he has to know God for only God is good, by knowing evil, he has to know the devil, for satan is evil. So, you see alway, without God doing anything else for man, he knows good (God) and he know evil (Satan). All man has to do is choose which one he will follow and believe. You fellows post after post and no way to get around the scriptures.

And no one disagrees with what you just wrote. The problem is that everyone chooses to follow Satan, and no one chooses to follow God.

 

[Brother Bob]

Quote:
When Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, ever since that time man has known good and evil. By knowing good, he has to know God for only God is good, by knowing evil, he has to know the devil, for satan is evil. So, you see alway, without God doing anything else for man, he knows good (God) and he know evil (Satan). All man has to do is choose which one he will follow and believe. You fellows post after post and no way to get around the scriptures.
And no one disagrees with what you just wrote.

The problem is that everyone chooses to follow Satan, and no one chooses to follow God.

I honestly believe this is the biggest false told to mankind.

Mary in the scriptures and I choose the good part, which is to follow Jesus Christ, along with countless others.

 

[Dale-c]

Mary in the scriptures and I choose the good part, which is to follow Jesus Christ, along with countless others.

Isn't that nice. I am glad you were so much better than all of those that weren't smart enough to choose the way you did.