Fully agree, yet we come to very different conclusions.
I don't what you mean by saying "all fact" comes from God.
The existence of anything, principle, ethereal, principle, material, spirit, physical and metaphysical, abstract notions, art, maths, beauty, falsifiable and non-falsifiable claims and concepts--whatever is, besides God, is a result of God creating. It all logically descends causally from God.
Well yes, I believe God created the universe out of love, specifically for all mankind.
Do you have scripture for that? Or is it an aggregate of many scriptural concepts? Does anything come right out and say that? (By the way, I'm not saying you are wrong, but seeing as how our notion of love doesn't match God's love, the statement is suspect in the implications we draw from it, and lopsided. He made us for himself, and that, for his praise. "
For from him and through him and for him are all things.")
But you can't find anywhere in Scripture where it says God ordained our choices.
Would you agree that God's choosing to do something is not governed by time? That we see it played out in time doesn't qualify God's ways. But, if you don't want that reasoning, look at 2 Timothy 1:9 (the last one on the list below).
I can find places in Scripture where it says God ordained our choices. I have mentioned some many times in the past, but here are some:
- Proverbs 21:1 "The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will." (God's actions are not governed by time.)
- John 6:29 “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (God's actions are not governed by time; is there any difference to him when this happened, or were we predestined to believe? For God to predestine something is to cause it to happen.)
- John 1:3 "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." (Our choices are things.)
- Romans 8:28 "All things work together for good, for them who love him." (And, God's actions are not governed by time.)
- Philippians 2:13 "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do according to his purposes." (And he is not governed by time.)
- Ephesians 1:11 "In him we were also chosen,[a] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will."
- Romans 8:29 "For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son... And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified." Are our choices not involved here?
- 2 Timothy 1:9 "He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time." (My underline). (Does this not involve our choices?)
Now, I will grant you that these don't mention ALL choices, but if they mention any choices, is not free will encroached upon?
Is it silly to throw a lifebuoy to a drowning man, since he needs to cling on to it to be saved?
Yes, if that man is born dead, and unable to cling to anything. Read Ephesians 2 again, Dead. Romans 8, unable to do anything spiritually valid. 1 Corinthians 2:14, unable to even understand what's going on here, to know to reach.
No, as I have said I don't believe God looked ahead in time to see if we would choose Him. I believe God knew, but He chooses the person in the present moment when the person repents, not because of His foreknowledge.
Do you understand the notion of God being the root and reason for all fact? I won't go again into the idea of his 'timelessness', though that is a very human way to put the fact that he is not subject to time. The idea of God only reacting, and not causing, simply doesn't add up, if he is the omniscient, and, therefore, intentional beginning of all fact. Our very existence continues to depend on him. Is there some reason to think he did not plan our very choices? Is something left up to mere chance? If to you, him planning (and/or causing) our choices renders them invalid, I would like to know why. After all, if God is the root and reason for all fact, our choices cannot be valid, unless he established them. We don't operate on his level.
Mark Quayle said:
Ephesians 2: "You were dead;" "God made us alive;" "it is by grace" Nothing there about him looking forward, nor in the moment seeing what we would do.
The verse descibes the condition of being under the condemnation/death sentence. It has nothing to with whether we can respond or not.
Does not "Dead" imply inability? But, as to Romans 8, do you consider the person described by, "mind of flesh", (as opposed to mind of the Spirit"), or the other renderings, ("realm" of the flesh, "mind governed by" the flesh, "sinful nature", mind "set on" the flesh, "corrupt nature", etc) to not apply to all the unsaved? This person in Romans 8 --whatever else he is-- is unable to please God. Unable. Verse 8
This view has a few problems as I see it. First it's impossible to be morally responsible if we only do what God has decreed for us to do. Further, the reason there is sin is because of libertarian free will. I can't see how sin could exist if God has purposed all our choices or else God is the creator of sin.
All those are axioms made by human reasoning. You asked, below, about my term, "self-determinism" or "self-deterministic". Maybe it would help if I said, "those insisting on self-determinism". I'll explain more below. Those insisting on self-determinism see humans and human nature as basic to fact, and God as unknown subject to conjecture. They do not see, even though they will confess to it, that God is the root and reason for very reality. They consider God subject to things (willed moral agents) from outside of himself. They do not understand omnipotence, aseity. They don't say so, but they see God as subject to realities outside of himself. They are abhorred by such theological notions as the Simplicity of God.
Let's look at a corollary, or a definition from the negative, of God's decree, that includes his very omnipotence: If God did not decree it, it cannot happen. If you can show me somehow that God can cause uncaused things to come about--that is what you are undertaking here with these axioms. (Either that, or you are invoking a notion that mere chance governs [some] outcomes, which is self-contradictory--no thing can happen by chance). There is sin because of God's decree, and Adam's sin, and human sin ever since (yes, the will is involved; libertarian will, not so much). You, I expect, will say that if a person doesn't knowingly choose to sin, he has not sinned. That is a mistake too. (The very nature of a human God has not reborn from above by the Spirit is corrupt). You probably will say that the command implies the ability to obey. It does not. (The command demonstrates our inability to obey apart from Christ in us.) God can cause that there be sin, without being the author of it. He is at least that much above us. But, if you like, we can get into that too. Consider the fact that sin is rebellion against God. If he didn't plan redemption (remember Acts 2:23), then this was all Plan B, and Plan C etc.
God is not a resident with us within a larger reality. God MADE reality. The only "just is" is God. If there really is libertarian free will, then God caused it, which contradicts "libertarian free". If there is sin, God caused that there be sin. It did not spring out of nothing, nor did sinners.
This is not about salvation of individuals, but from which bloodline the Messiah would come.
I did not intend it concerning salvation of individuals, but about God doing things not in reaction to somebody doing good or evil, but according to God's purposes.
This is clearly showing God being in control of everything, not a description of meticulous control of every atom in the universe.
You allow that he is "in control of everything", but then attempt to say he is not in control of everything. If he is in control of everything, he is in control of the smallest particle. But, again, if he made everything, as John 1:3 says, then he made the atoms too. You can say, that like our "free wills" there are principles by which the atoms operate. Ok, who made the principles? He uses our wills to make what he decreed would come to pass, as means to make them come to pass. You separate 'natural' from 'God-caused'. Not so. Do you think what is natural caused itself?
I don't know what a self-deterministic lens is. It doesn't sound like anything I believe in.
Self-determination is a simple fact of life. We do decide, we do order our lives, what we do has real results concerning us. There's nothing wrong with that. We are self-interested by nature; even Adam and Eve were, before they sinned. We live our lives. But what I'm referring to by "those who insist on self-determinism", and see through that "self-deterministic lens" consider themselves to be the only cause of their decisions. It is a step beyond mere will. They are declaring independence from the First Cause --from God Himself-- granted, possibly without realizing that they are doing so.
Generally, this is what I see in their worldview: That they are the masters of their own fate--that captain of their soul. They operate separately from God, (not that he isn't a help), in order to perform some duty for God, that he will appreciate and approve of. This, they call obedience. They consider it theoretically possible that a person can be worthy of Grace. They say that God cannot do what he set out to do without their cooperation/obedience. They think God is affected by their will, that he gains knowledge by their deeds, that he is not in control of all fact, but must wait to see what will happen, before deciding to create mankind for the purpose of redeeming the Bride. They think God has set in motion governing principles that do not depend on him for their very essence and continuing operation. They don't see God as the very source and power of continued existence. They think their minds capable of understanding God's love, and deriving doctrine from that understanding.
I could go on.
Read John 3:16-17 along with John 12:46-47 and you see that Jesus came and died so everyone might be saved through Him.
John 3:16-18 and John 12:46-47 don't say he died so that EVERYONE might be saved through him. The Greek subjunctive does not denote unknown possibility, but purpose. All those believing will have life everlasting.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
— John 3:16-17
I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness. If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.
— John 12:46-47
Nothing there about who is believing. It is true that anyone that believes on him will have life everlasting. If I was to take the subjunctive to mean that anybody at all, independent of God making them alive, could become saved by deciding to believe, then I'd have to also take the subjunctive to mean that some who believe will not be saved. But he says ALL those believing... There is no question of chance going on.
Of course God's plan was always to let Jesus die for our sins. But it's huge leap from this to say it means God has decreed every single event, thought or deed.
How did those come to be? You will say, "libertarian free will", I expect. But, as I noted above, nothing can come to be that God has not caused, whether directly or through means --means which he also caused. Omniscient omnipotent God created, knowing what would happen, and went ahead and created anyway. He intended it to happen, is the only conclusion I can come up with.
To sum this up, none of the verses you provided said God chose people from the beginning to salvation. And why didn't you. For the simple reason there are none.
Christ love! ❤️✝️
Read the list of verses above. Oh, and remember what I said about us thinking we know what God's love is, in some way worthy of drawing from that concept, worthy axioms.
