Predestination

I'm talking about time sensitive wording, i.e., "pre", "fore", etc.

To build on your argument, I have claimed that same thing in the past to calvinists with Scripture about loving even our enemies and was told that this doesn't apply to God, so forgive me if I may be a little confused on what Scripture applies to Him.

 

It wasn't him. All I'll say is it was one of the more vocal proponents on here that I would not consider to be hyper.

 

I don't think webdog nor I am suggesting that Scripture is not God's Word far from it but when something is expressed from a completely 'human' perspective I do believe we can acknowledge the fact that which is expressed is 'not' God's perspective. For example, the 'Sun doesn't set'. Such a description is purely experiential from a creaturely perspective. I would contend that Predestination is similarly experiential from a creaturely perspective. It is God's omniscience and enternity seen from our creaturely perspective.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:8-9

I don't believe you have to be so challenged by our discussion of these matters and if they cause you too much concern then I will cease participation in this thread. Just let me know. I'm not here to shake people up. I know how I feel and have felt when someone challenges me.

 

If you remember that the Greek word for "eternal" (meaning without beginning or ending) only appears twice in the NT (I don't know if it appears in the LXX or not), and that another was of expressing this concept is "existing outside of time", then it's easy to see what you're saying.

 

I understand your point but I would posit that this is not an inherent or a 'fundamental problem' with the hypothesis of time being encountered by the enternity of God as an Eternal Now.

God's knowing differs from human knowing in time. God is simultaneously aware of all events in time, since only God is eternal and omniscient. God is already foreknowing of all who are responding negatively or positively to free grace. to God, all time is eternally present. Hence even our temporal notions of foreknowing and after knowing are strictly speaking not the way God sees time, but only metaphorical expressions. From creation to consummation, God knows what is in the heart of everyone. God has no need of planning. It is precisely god's foreknowing that defines, interprets, clarifies, and explicates the otherwise obscure meaning of God's foreordaining will. Note the sequence: "whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom. 8:29).

One does not sin because God knows it in advance, but God knows it because the person is choosing to sin. God's foreknowing in no way necessitates human action, it simply foreknows human action, their determinants and consequents. God's foreknowing recognizes our sin, but does not cause it. As one may know the sun is shining yet that knowledge does not cause the sun to shine, so God knows that a person sins. Note that I am only discussing God's foreknowing.

One can best discern the meaning of Romans 8:29-30 by rethinking its terms in reverse order from last to first - from glorification backward in time toward foreknowing. Among all those saved, there is not one who has not been purchased by the blood of Christ. No one is finally called without being conformed to the image of the Son. No one is sanctified by grace without this being foreknown by God. The moral image of God is thereby being freely expressed in the elect, by God's eternally foreknown plan, so as to enable them to share in the eternal blessing.

Thus the apostle is not in this text describing an unalterable series of cause-effect relationships with each layer building upon the previous one. for the sequence of the text is equally illuminating if read from back to front... form glorifying to predestining. Paul is not delineating "a chain of causes and effects... but simply showing the method in which God works," the providential arrangement by which the order of salvation steadily unfolds, so the work of God may be considered "either forward or backward... either from beginning to the end, or from the end to the beginning." God witnesses all eternity at once, observing everything in an "eternal now," innocent of the charge that his knowing makes him the direct causative agent of evil. Double predestinarian exegesis binds God too tightly in a linear conception of time so many theologians amended this presumption by appealing to the transtemporal nature of God, for whom there is no before or after.

 

Bound, like I said, I have no problem with the Eternal Now Theory. But it is also apparent from Scripture that God does actively work within time. My take on predestination can be found earlier in this thread and in others, which is essentially this: All good in this world comes from the direct working of God, while all evil is merely allowed by God, even though he is powerful and smart enough to stop it, if he so wills.

And by the way, that is some pretty sophisticated Systematic Theology you have presented there!

 

He He He He.... :laugh: I am an ant standing on the shoulders of Gaints.

When it is all said and done it is my believe that the distinctions between Moderate Calvinists and Moderate Arminians (especially Wesleyans) could be sematics so I try not to be a 'hard-liner'....