Featured Predestination unto salvation

I disagree. Scripture often speaks of corporate election (choosing a people group).

 

I guess the issue is whether or not you believe that God has chosen a people corporately.

It seems to me that Scripture most often speaks of the Elect (plural) as a people. So I was surprised that there was such disagreement over the issue of "corporate election". I thought that Christianity as a whole believed that the Church (or the "Bride") was a people chosen by God. Many would also point to Israel as a people chosen by God.

I anticipated the disagreement to be whether or not election was individual as well.

But that's why we discuss things - to better understand one another.

For my part, I believe that God has chosen a people (corporately). At the same time I believe that God chooses individuals. To be fair to Scripture, I suppose I have to admit that most of the time Scripture speaks of God choosing a people (Paul goes to great lengths in showing Jews being excluded and Gentiles being included into such a people group). But I do believe that those in this group can look back to an individual election as well. Christ died for his sheep, and these sheep make up a flock.

I think when we get to the point we can only deal with individual election (ignoring corporate election) we have gone a bit too far and are ignoring Scripture. We are saved, but we are saved for a purpose (we are saved as members of a body).

 

I think only @Iconoclast has rejected the idea that God has elected the Church. If I understand @Reformed correctly he holds that God elects corporately and individually (not one at the expense of the other).

I may disagree a little in that I believe God does make a group called the Elect (we are to see that we are numbered among the elect) but God does this by saving individuals (the group is made up of individual people who are chosen in Christ).

You cannot gather a flock without getting sheep.

 

Because you are a scoffer?

 

I do not know what you are talking about with "no name election". Corporately the Elect have a name (the Church, or the Bride). Individually election has a name (those whose names are written in the Book of Life, those chosen from the foundation of the earth).

I am saying that the Church is God's chosen people. And I am saying those members (those who are in the Church,the "Bride") can look back and see that they are chosen individually from the foundation of the earth.

Most of the time Scripture speaks of the elect in context of corporate election (in context of a people group God has chosen) and it is up to people to make sure that they truly belong to this group (that they are individually elected).

It is wrong to accept one truth while denying another.

 

I was not keeping up with the conversation. I just saw your comment and thought I'd poke you in the eye (we used to have an emoji for that).

 

Yep. I know many Presbyterians that believe this today. I've heard some Reformed Baptist arguments very close to that idea when discussing infant deaths.

 

@davidtaylorjr ,

To be fair, "foreknowledge" can mean precognition. To "know" is also a way to indicate sexual relations (which could refer to intimate knowledge).

Personally I like John Calvin's justification for foreknowledge as it relates to predestination. I think that he gets to the same place without making the meaning of the word an issue of debate. In Institutes Calvin argues that "foreknowledge" means precognition (God's pre-knowledge). BUT Calvin bases this pre-knowledge on God's decree (God's foreknowledge is centered on God's sovereignty).