Please explain.
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What do you believe is required for Salvation?
- Thread starter Thinkingstuff
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What is required for salvation?
That one be a chosen of God from before the foundation of the world;
that God loved you before you were born;
that one's name is written in the Book of Life from the eternity "The Word was God and the Word was with God".
....and the rest shall follow as sure as God's mercy and goodness have gone before.
That one be a chosen of God from before the foundation of the world;
that God loved you before you were born;
that one's name is written in the Book of Life from the eternity "The Word was God and the Word was with God".
....and the rest shall follow as sure as God's mercy and goodness have gone before.
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Ive already explained it ...you know where to look for it matt.
Rather could you explain to me your doctrine of election?
Thinkingstuff
Active Member
If you hold to election as you explained it to me. Then you have to believe this as well. You may say you don't but logically there could be no other outcome. So, It's not me proclaiming blasphemy however the logical conclusion of election as you stated it might certianly lead to it.
Thinkingstuff
Active Member
If you hold to election as you have explained it God is a tyrant. He chose those whom would be saved and he chose those who would not be saved based on "his will" which can be determined to be arbitrary by the very verse Dr. Walter refers to. Holy, Just, righteous all fall under God's soveriegnty and since he is sovereign he determines what is Holy, Just, or Righteous. Not that these things are necissarily so but because he said so. Which means he created the standard whether it holds to those actual consepts or not. Since we can see his arbitrary decision process in the matter of salvation Holy, Just, and Righteous become no more than simple heavenly propaganda. If you hold to election as you have explained it in which God did not love the whole world nor did he intend on offering a plan that theoretically if everyone accepted they could be saved.
Thinkingstuff
Active Member
Yes every one of those choices were arbitrarily based. Note DHK said any virgin would do so Mary was definately arbitrary. The jury's out on Solomon because of his sinful choices however which way things go for him burning or heaven God still made the choice.
Not what God tells us in Isaiah 1:18.
Thinkingstuff
Active Member
Thats a pretty good quote it give the impression of two parties speaking about the reasonableness of salvation. I like it.
Not to mention God requires us to use *gasp* human logic since we are human!
See Augustine.
glfredrick
New Member
Well said, and I agree...
It is heresy to attribute evil to God. It is also heresy to suggest that God violate one of His own laws. The reason it is heresy is 1) God is perfectly and all good, always -- otherwise called "holy"; and 2) God cannot lie, in that His word "is."
Both attributing evil to God and asking God to lie are implied by those who suggest that God could do other than what He said, i.e., that the man (generic) who sins will die, that we are born dead in our sin and trespasses, and that the only remedy for sin is death. Same goes for those who suggest that an all-powerful God could merely "forgive." To do so would be to go against His word, and make God a liar. The answer to that seemingly impossible dilemma was for God to act in a way that only He could -- die Himself in order to pay the penalty for the sins of we humans. As one man brought sin into the world, so too one man, Christ Jesus, died to make atonement for that sin.
The atonement was complete, for all the sins of mankind, past, present, and future. The efficacious application of that atonement is for those who are among the elect. Why only for the elect? Salvation is not universal. Who are the elect? I don't know, but we're told to go and preach the Word so that God might use that to draw them unto Himself. To draw an allusion of why that is so, one might think that the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God heard by the sinner to whisper, "This is truth." How many are the elect? I also don't know. Likely a lot more than we might think. I wonder how many of us who know Christ will be judged for not doing what God said... Of course, this is wrapped in an antinomy that is difficult for humans to grasp.
Thinkingstuff
Active Member
What both you and Dr. Walter are missing is that election as it has been presented on this thread is to be believed then logically other things flow from it. Extreme predestinarian issues have this problem it directly questions the character of God.
glfredrick
New Member
This term "arbitrary" keeps cropping up... Arbitrary from who's perspective. God may have perfectly just reasons (and I believe He does, being that He is all-knowing, all-seeing, always present, etc.) that we may never understand from a human perspective. But, that being said, the Bible is clear that we are not saved by any human merit. It is purely God's grace. We know that, and both sides of this debate preach that -- yet at the end of the day, the Arminian side of this debate wants to find some thread of human merit -- the same sin of rebellion against an utterly sovereign God that started in the Garden, "You can be like God..." and that is our greatest hurdle to actually becoming re-born in the image of Christ.
It comes down to this: We humans are either (as the Bible says) dead in our sin or we are "sin-sick" and in need of healing. The traditional Roman Catholic view is that we are sin-sick. So too is the Arminian view, pragmatically, even though they suggest another means for the ability of those dead in their sin to come to God (previnient grace).
We are saved by grace THROUGH faith. Faith is a human trait, not a "merit".
Non Sequitur. Nobody from the "non cal" side has even hinted there is something inherently within man to merit salvation.
No, there is a third...the correct understanding of "dead in our sins", not the preconceived reformed presupposition of that meaning a corpse. Do you sin? As believers we are "dead to sin", so if you still sin you must believe you are "sick to sin".
glfredrick
New Member
It does not for it can not.
We hold that God is utterly sovereign and that nothing trumps His will or His word.
Going beyond the biblical perspective (which stipulates human culpability for sin) becomes hyper-Calvinism, and that is not what we are putting forth, but that is where logical human arguments end up. Since when did an utterly sovereign God have to bow to the weight of logical human arguments? "My ways are not your ways, my ways are higher than your ways..."
Human logic is bound by a finite human mind. We can say yes/no, in/out, up/down, but not round/square or positive/negative. That means that our arguments are bound in such a way as to not totally know the answer to difficult questions. That is where we reside in the specific revelation of God -- that is, unless we take the Enlightenment position and rebel against that Revelation based on empirical knowledge and human reason. While our reason is an awesome and powerful tool that was given us by a God who created us imago Dei, it is not the end of the story, for above all human reason is an infinite God who is not bound by a finite mind, or a finite universe, and who can hold and make perfect what is impossible to us.
Do you think that God is less than all good? Or, perhaps in another light, that we humans bring anything at all to the table that merits our salvation?
Indeed....which is why TULIP is heresy.
Thinkingstuff
Active Member
You can come to no other conclusion with this view of election. In it we are told
1) God Elected those who would be saved from before the creation
2) God does not decide on who is elected based on any Merit or Character attribute the chosen person has
3)God has chosen these people according to his will.
4) God's will is determined by his good pleasure.
5) God is also said not to have provided Salvation for the whole world but that Jesus only died for the elect.
Therefore certain things follow from this progression.
1) by electing those to be saved God necissarily chose not to elect those who are not saved. Knowing (omniscient) his wrath would be satiated in condemning the world God knowingly created men to be destroyed knowing he did not elect them. Thus the majority of humanity was created for one purpose - condemnation and destruction in hell.
2)and 3) Since there is no litmus test that God uses to determine the those he choose apart from his good pleasure we note that the selection process is arbitrary. Because if God elected those who would choose him that places a merit on the individual because God Foreknew those who would choose him. So then it the human ability to choose correctly that saves him which places the human in a merited catagory. If God chose people he knew would have a character of righteousness and intuitive sense of justice God is choosing based on how he created the person or the character of that person and election is then based on the persons character. But we have been told this is not the case. thus the dicision is an arbitrary one.
4) His good pleasure does no more to detract from the abritary sence. God felt like saving so and so.
5)The scripture text "for God so love the world" must not be taken literally. Because it means that "God loved certain selected people from all over the world" Thus those not selected God necissarily Hates as is Shown in Genesis by the Jacob and Essau story. "Jacob he loved and Essau He hated".
This it goes to the very question of God's character.
glfredrick
New Member
I agree that no one from the "non-cal" side has said such, but that is indeed the implication, is it not? How is it that THIS human instead of THAT human has the ability to respond to God? Are they smarter, more well informed, in the right time and place to hear the message? What is it? And, how much of that is God-ordained?
You are speaking of one regenerated, when we are no longer dead in our sins. As justified, regenerated persons of faith, we have been forgiven and given a new birth. That is the gospel!
How does that enact with the person who is yet regenerated or justified? Somehow, you need a scheme of some sort to have those people who are not able to respond to God do so as if they are made alive -- yet before they are made alive. It just does not compute... Please help me understand how this can be. If you cite previnient grace, be prepared to back that up with solid Scripture evidence.
Oh, and I'd also suggest doing a study of the Scriptures on the topic "human free will." It is a very interesting topic to delve into.
glfredrick
New Member
If you will take note, I have not mentioned TULIP, nor am I a big fan of Calvin. It is time to march forward with a biblical theology that takes into account all of God's Word. While there are some valid points that we end up with from TULIP, they are not arrived at because John Calvin or his later followers have said so. It is because that is what the Word says.
In the Scriptures, BTW, I find that we humans are slaves; either to sin or to Christ. Which part of that is difficult to understand and why is it that we, as slaves to Christ, rebel against our Lord and King by setting ourselves up as the final arbiters and final choosers of how that Lord and King effect His graceful salvation?
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