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Predestined to Damnation?
- Thread starter Heavenly Pilgrim
- Start date
:thumbs:Heavenly Pilgrim
New Member
HP: Your reasoning starts and stops with the false notion that if it happens it must have a cause, and that cause must be the product of force or coercion. You exhibit no conception whatsoever of the nature of morality, love and benevolence or sin and selfishness. If there is a ‘driving cause,’ in the sense of force or coercion, no moral blame or praise can be predicated of any action. To think you can place moral praise or blame where the action is the result of force or coercion is sheer folly.
The whole idea of personal moral responsibility must be non-existent in your mind, for you live in a necessitated world. Placing personal moral blame for ones actions would be the height of ignorance to you, would it not?
With all the charges of the other side putting themselves on pedestals and being "self-appreciating" doesn't this parallel what the Pharisee said about the Publican.
The context of that passage was Pharaoh, used to represent carnal Israel who as a whole was hardened to the Gospel while salvation was opened up to all who believed. The good news of the Gospel is not that someone else was preordained to Hell and it's not you.
Heavenly Pilgrim
New Member
Eric, Webdog, and the list, can a man hold to predestination of the elect without holding to the predestination of the damned?
BD17 said:
GE:
The devil designed and endeavoured to PREVENT Jesus' dying for sin - it was Jesus' greatest test in His final hours: the TEMPTATION to avoid the fulfilling of the will OF GOD! But Jesus "learnt obedience through suffering" - spiritual suffering, not so much the RC physical suffering - and "went in into", and "through", and "out of" His suffering for our atonement ... that was Godly love! Man's will all the way served God's eternal purpose in Jesus Christ. Man would not have done otherwise than he did, and could not have ... or he needed not Christ or His salvation. Man's will was inevitable - he was unable to withstand his own will - total depravity is his own deserved lot until God decides to free him so that he may be free for God and righteousness.
Heavenly Pilgrim said:
GE: Not if he truly and correctly holds to any!
Eric B said:
Yea and amen! All the promises of God are yea and amen in Jesus Christ --- blessed assurance, goes the song, Jesus is mine!
BD17:
"Man's "decision" necessitates God's action."
Wrong! God's "decision" necessitates man's action. That's why the carnal man feels so injured and his pride shamed. nothing is impossible through Jesus Christ -- and so is nothing possible without Jesus Christ -- that is, nothing in the line of doing or deciding FOR him.
"Man's "decision" necessitates God's action."
Wrong! God's "decision" necessitates man's action. That's why the carnal man feels so injured and his pride shamed. nothing is impossible through Jesus Christ -- and so is nothing possible without Jesus Christ -- that is, nothing in the line of doing or deciding FOR him.
Heavenly Pilgrim
New Member
Originally Posted by Heavenly Pilgrim
Eric, Webdog, and the list, can a man hold to predestination of the elect without holding to the predestination of the damned?
HP: Would I be correct in stating that you believe in the predestination of the damned? I have thought that is your belief although I have never asked you directly that I remember.
If your remarks in this post are to be seen as stating that one cannot hold to predestination of the elect without holding to the predestination of the damned, I would agree with your conclusion as posted.
Eric, Webdog, and the list, can a man hold to predestination of the elect without holding to the predestination of the damned?
HP: Would I be correct in stating that you believe in the predestination of the damned? I have thought that is your belief although I have never asked you directly that I remember.
If your remarks in this post are to be seen as stating that one cannot hold to predestination of the elect without holding to the predestination of the damned, I would agree with your conclusion as posted.
Heavenly Pilgrim
New Member
HP: This is hard for me to imagine you saying due to your views of predestination. How could anything be a test that was preordained to happen, in that it must of necessity come to pass? Test of what? If no other possibility existed but for that which indeed did come to pass, what you call a test was about as much of a test as it would be to test gravity by dropping a steel ball off of a building. Since when was a test needed or useful in establishing a necessitated an act one knows is absolutely necessitated?? If Christ had to do as he did due to necessitated fate, any thought of Him going through a test would have been meaningless rhetoric. You pass every notion you come to through the biased lens of the false notion that if God foreknows something will happen it must of necessity come to pass.
The same goes for the notion that you mention concerning Satan. How could he had anything to do with his actions if in fact they as well were necessitated to happen?? Satan could not be the author of necessitated fate, so once again we have God as designing and necessitating the actions of Satan himself. The picture you paint is a puppet show of evil with God pulling the strings necessitating evil to take place.
HP: Again, the whole idea of learning obedience is a complete farce in your scheme of things, for what you call learning is nothing more than predestinated fate. Your idea of learning involves as much efffort as a rock would exhibit in learning its way to the ground as it is kicked off a cliff.
HP: The following is what you mean to imply. Man’s will is the necessitated fate of the eternal purpose of God that was necessitated to be as it is from eternity past. ‘Man’s will,’ according to GE, is nothing other than simply a code word for necessitated fate used to confuse the listener as to the real idea he holds, which is the total and complete predestination of all acts, i.e. fatalistic determination.
HP: Here we have the fatalism GE holds to unveiled for all to see. No man, including Christ Himself, has or will do anything other than they were programmed by necessitated fate by God to do, and that from eternity past. Any notion concerning man having a ‘will’ stated by GE, in any way expressing a choice or ability to control their intents and subsequent actions, is nothing short of a chimera. What he denotes as a will is no will at all, but rather the mere forced actions of necessitated fate.
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BobRyan
Well-Known Member
More specifically what the extremist Calvinist position "means" when it says "Satan designed and endeavoured to PREVENT Jesus' dying for sin " is "God sovereingly designed and chose to cause Satan to endeavoured to PREVENT Jesus' dying for sin "
Afterall - in their view - Satan has no free will - only God is sovereignly "choosing" in the Universe everyone else simply robotically follows the plan. ("That way" God CAN be Sovereign in the same a Calvinist COULD BE if a Calvinist COULD be God and then had to imagine how to be sovereign)
In Christ,
Bob
Heavenly Pilgrim
New Member
HP: When we view God’s foreknowledge as ours is bound, to those things of necessity and necessity alone, (which is what the Calvinists or the Baptists I know do) if God foreknows it it must of necessity come to pass.
This again overlooks the truth IMO that God’s infinite foreknowledge is not like unto our finite foreknowledge, i.e. bound to things only of necessity, but rather is higher than our, in that He knows matters of perfect choice as well as those things necessitated o come to pass.
Let me illustrate for those having difficult time understanding all this jargon. If I held in my hand a coin in an environment in which when releasing my hand the coin had the distinct possibility of going up as well as down, there is no way we could foreknow with absolute precision which way it would go, due to the fact our foreknowledge can only foreknow matters that of necessity would come to pass. If, in the environment we now live in with gravity present, we can know with absolute certainty that if we dropped the coin in our hand, that it would go straight down. Why? Because gravity demands that it of necessity falls downward. Our foreknowledge can be absolute when focusing on things of necessity. It can be rightfuly said that our foreknowledge as finite beings is limited to te foreknowledge of things of necessity alone.
God’s foreknowledge is far greater than ours, in that He can foreknow matters of perfect choice as well as those things of necessity. If the coin, in the environment of perfect choice, could go up as well as down, God could know with the same absolute perfection as he knows matters of necessity, in what direction such an object would travel even before it did.
When we say that if something comes to pass, that God foreknows and that due to that foreknowledge it of necessity must happen, we are limiting God’s abilities to that of ours by filtering our thoughts through the lens of our finite human abilities and understanding. God is not, nor can be, limited by such human inability to foreknow matters of perfect choice. Every notion of morality, love, selfishness, evil or good, relies on the fact that choice to form our intents are not only possible but absolutely necessary.
If one necessitates the intents of men, by believing that because God foreknows the outcome it must of necessity come to pass, no morality on the part of man can be predicated of any actions. No notion of an intent or subsequent action could be denoted as blameworthy or praiseworthy on the part of man, for God would of necessity be the only cause of it. This clearly destroys all personal accountability for any and all such intents or subsequent actions. God alone could be blamed or all the wickness perpetrated upon this universe.
HP:
"...if God foreknows it it must of necessity come to pass..."
GE:
And if God foreknows it must of necessity come to pass but it does not come to pass?
"...if God foreknows it it must of necessity come to pass..."
GE:
And if God foreknows it must of necessity come to pass but it does not come to pass?
HP:
"...This clearly destroys all personal accountability for any and all such intents or subsequent actions. God alone could be blamed or all the wickness perpetrated upon this universe..."
You must be talking of Islam, not of Calvinists. Man is accountable in Calvinism : All are sinners and all come short -completely short - of the righteousness of God. They are all accountable and must pay - all should go to hell - it's perfectly understandable.
Now comes the incomprehensible, the inexplainable, the DIVINE WONDER of grace - in Calvinism. I constantly FAIL to explain it, I know. But I also shall not stop trying, I know for I'm foreknown by Him, and therein finds total peace and security. You won't find this in either Islam or Arminianism ... in the last analysis which lie closest? You may have your free will, just like the Islam has
"...This clearly destroys all personal accountability for any and all such intents or subsequent actions. God alone could be blamed or all the wickness perpetrated upon this universe..."
You must be talking of Islam, not of Calvinists. Man is accountable in Calvinism : All are sinners and all come short -completely short - of the righteousness of God. They are all accountable and must pay - all should go to hell - it's perfectly understandable.
Now comes the incomprehensible, the inexplainable, the DIVINE WONDER of grace - in Calvinism. I constantly FAIL to explain it, I know. But I also shall not stop trying, I know for I'm foreknown by Him, and therein finds total peace and security. You won't find this in either Islam or Arminianism ... in the last analysis which lie closest? You may have your free will, just like the Islam has