Predestination and Foreknowledge

Mark, we need to be precise when framing one another's argument. I said that modern Arminianism relegates God's holiness as moot. Modern Arminianism starts with the premise that God loves everyone and wants everyone to be saved, ergo, everyone has an autonomous free will by which they can accept or reject the gospel offer of eternal life. Finnneyism is alive and well in 21st-century evangelicalism. Raise that hand and say that prayer and go home a child of God! Modern evangelicalism is vastly different than Christianity during the time of the magisterial Reformers and the Puritans. I highly recommend that you read John Owen's work "Of the Mortification of Sin". There is a theological and scholarly weight to Owen's tome on this very important theological topic, one of which the Apostle Paul commanded that we understand in Romans 6. The Apostle Paul's command (which inspired Owen's work) is so under-preached in our churches, that it is relegated as moot. Your church may be an exception. If so, praise God! My comment is meant to address the condition of the church in general.

As far as Reformed Christians who hold to annihilationism, please provide a few names. Something tells me these "theologians" do not express orthodox Reformed thought.

 

Mark, I can state confidentially that the majority of Reformed theologians believe as I do, or vice versa. We all believe that God was not the first cause in Adam's disobedience.

 

Either God wills and brings to pass all those whom He intended the cross of Christ to save, Reformed election, or else He provided salvation possible for all, and just hopes and waits to see who will take Him at His offer, your way!

 

John Stott did express that near end of His life...

 

ALL of us are sinners, who are at war with God, and naturally will choose our ways and reject Jesus, so how can He will all to get saved, unless He chooses who will get saved?

 

No, rooted in misunderstanding of biblical doctrines....

 

Reformed and Baptist theology both on the whole uphold the notion of an eternal Hell.

 

Stott was an Anglican. Although some Anglicans share an affinity for some aspects of Reformed theology, the Anglican conference is not Reformed.

 

@Mark Corbett

I truly appreciate the way you debate us in a civil manner. Kudos Brother.

 

You are right, as should have remembered that JI Packer called him out for holding to that belief at the end.

 

Practically speaking, I agree. One is either elect or not. It is more of an intramural squabble between Calvinists than anything between Calvinists and Arminians.

You have to wrestle with Romans 9 on that one.

Romans 9:6-24 6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “THROUGH ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE NAMED.” 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. 9 For this is the word of promise: “AT THIS TIME I WILL COME, AND SARAH SHALL HAVE A SON.” 10 And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; 11 for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, 12 it was said to her, “THE OLDER WILL SERVE THE YOUNGER.” 13 Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED.”
14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND IWILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THEWHOLE EARTH.” 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

Mark, let me ask you some questions. Is God beholding to His creation for anything? Does God owe salvation to anyone? Would God be justified in condemning all to hell? Is God unjust in choosing (eklektos - same Greek word in the NT, Eph. 1:4) to save some? If you believe God is unjust in saving some, how is that view not a refutation of Romans 9:14, 15, 20?

I believe a brief exposition of Ephesians will help reveal Reformed thought in this discussion. Ephesians 1 lays the groundwork in stating:

Ephesians 1:3-5 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,

Before the physical universe was created, God chose (eklektos = elected) His elect. He chose them for a purpose, "that we would be holy and blameless before Him". This was due to "the kind intention of His will".

In chapter two we read:

Ephesians 2:1-2 1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Paul presents a condition. Sinners are spiritually dead. The word for dead in Ephesians 2:1 is the Greek work nekros. It means dead as in a corpse. Spiritually speaking, sinners, while alive phyiscally, are dead spiritually. They are incapable of any positive response towards God. Paul augments the Ephesians passage by what he wrote in Romans 8:

Romans 8:6-8 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Not only is the sinner spiritually dead, he is hostile toward God, and cannot subject himself to the law of God because he is incapable of doing so. 1 Corinthians 2:14 offers additional support for the inability of the sinner:

1 Corinthians 2:14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

This inability on the part of the sinner creates a real problem for the Synergist (someone who believes man cooperates with God in salvation, aka Arminianism and semi-Pelagianism). If the sinner has free will, that will is under the bondage of sin. He cannot believe. It does not even want to. The soul of the sinner is dead as a corpse in a casket. Something from outside of the sinner must change this condition. Thankfully, the Apostle Paul provides the remedy:

Ephesians 2:4-9 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The key words in the above passage are "But God". We do not read anything about "But man". God first makes the sinner alive through regeneration. He illumines the heart of the sinner to his sin, and the hope of the gospel. In Reformed theology, this is called the effectual call. Once God calls a sinner that sinner always responds by repentance and faith; each and every time and without fail. It is not about God condemning all by not giving them a chance. It is about God saving some even though none deserve it.

 

Hello, brother,
I am neither of the major divisions and when I teach or witness and this subject comes up I present it thusly:


As does my first Pastor, I have labeled myself a a Biblicist because my view is "If the Bible says it, I believe it! God inspired/wrote the entire book and in Deuteronomy 4:2 and at the end of chapter 22 of The Revelation we find God promising that not a single word will ever be added to nor subtracted from His Written Word. Oh, and there are no conflicting passages in the Bible to any man filled with the Holy Spirit for the Spirit teaches us how to reconcile them to one another.



So, in verses Jer. 23:24, Prov 15:3, 1Kings 8:27 we learn that God is Omnipresent. He is literally everywhere but wait a second, I really mean everywhere. The LORD is right this moment everywhere there is on the planet and He is still seated in the Throne Room. Where am I going? God created, out of nothing but His will, this Time/Space Continuum and every person, bird, animal, lake, just everything you see or touch is a product from the hand of God.




We find that a day in Heaven is like unto a thousand years of our time. So there is nothing here like God or Heaven. Our minds put our Omnipotent. Omniscient, and Omnipresent God all over the Earth and on the in Heaven at this moment but we must learn to cease putting God in some sort of container, there is not one He fits into anyway. No, God is, right now, in the past, in the present, and He is in the future right now!



In Rev. 17:8 and in thirteen we learn that the Book of Life is not being written but is finished and closed. How could men made like unto the image of God do that because they, like God, have a free will? God was there before it happened, He is Omnipotent and with no limits, He is Omnipresent!