A revelation of predestination

[Sam81]

After wrestling with the subject of predestination for a while, I came to reject both the calvinistic and armenianist position based on a personal revelation that was very profound:

God doesn't "choose" the same way we do in the temporal world. By our standards, God cannot choose anything. Why? Because to say that God "chose" something would imply that there was a time in the eternal world in which God had not yet chose. Think about that. If God "always was", and knows all, then at what point does He choose? If He already knows who He will choose at a certain point, then He ALREADY chose. And if He always existed, then He never chose!

Rather, God just IS. And the elect just are, too. We did not always exist...but we always existed in His knowledge. He always knew us. We are predestined due to eternal knowledge. Therefore, our election just "is" the same way God is. Everything God does has in effect already happened and is an expression of Himself. And the elect are the image of His person. The elect are the elect necessarily because Jesus (who IS) is the firstborn among many brethren. Our names ALWAYS existed. There is no more need to explain election then there is to explain God. It just is. And the temporal world is a reflection of how things ARE.

Concluded: calvinists and armenians are both wrong and my position is correct.

 

[Mark Quayle]

After wrestling with the subject of predestination for a while, I came to reject both the calvinistic and armenianist position based on a personal revelation that was very profound:

God doesn't "choose" the same way we do in the temporal world. By our standards, God cannot choose anything. Why? Because to say that God "chose" something would imply that there was a time in the eternal world in which God had not yet chose. Think about that. If God "always was", and knows all, then at what point does He choose? If He already knows who He will choose at a certain point, then He ALREADY chose. And if He always existed, then He never chose!

Rather, God just IS. And the elect just are, too. We did not always exist...but we always existed in His knowledge. He always knew us. We are predestined due to eternal knowledge. Therefore, our election just "is" the same way God is. Everything God does has in effect already happened and is an expression of Himself. And the elect are the image of His person. The elect are the elect necessarily because Jesus (who IS) is the firstborn among many brethren. Our names ALWAYS existed. There is no more need to explain election then there is to explain God. It just is. And the temporal world is a reflection of how things ARE.

Concluded: calvinists and armenians are both wrong and my position is correct.

I wouldn't build doctrine on sudden "revelation", ignoring scripture. But as to your point. You make some huge logical leaps, for example, "the elect [just are] too"? God is indeed self-existent --I suppose that is what you are referring to with "God just IS.".

True he doesn't "choose" the same way we do. Who thinks he does? No he doesn't choose out of a pool of possibles.

To say the Reformed (you say Calvinists --close enough) are incorrect, you have yet to disprove anything they believe. NOTHING "just IS" except God himself. Everything else is created, and you deny scriptures if you say he doesn't choose, since scriptures say he does.

I'm thinking you missed this: That he does not choose out of a pool of possibles, nor does he choose by foresight. He made many humans, one for this purpose and another for that. Not that any were better than another, but simply he chose to use one to fit its place as a member of the body of Christ. Others are simply part of what it took to fit that one into its place. God has a purpose for what he does; this is not an experiment.

You have a point in that this temporal world is a tool to accomplish our life in the eternal.

 

[Dave L]

People are eternally saved or lost. We recognize the saved as being eternally chosen in God (apart from time). Jesus says whoever believes has eternal life (before God created time).

 

[A_Thinker]

After wrestling with the subject of predestination for a while, I came to reject both the calvinistic and armenianist position based on a personal revelation that was very profound:

God doesn't "choose" the same way we do in the temporal world. By our standards, God cannot choose anything. Why? Because to say that God "chose" something would imply that there was a time in the eternal world in which God had not yet chose. Think about that. If God "always was", and knows all, then at what point does He choose? If He already knows who He will choose at a certain point, then He ALREADY chose. And if He always existed, then He never chose!

Rather, God just IS. And the elect just are, too. We did not always exist...but we always existed in His knowledge. He always knew us. We are predestined due to eternal knowledge. Therefore, our election just "is" the same way God is. Everything God does has in effect already happened and is an expression of Himself. And the elect are the image of His person. The elect are the elect necessarily because Jesus (who IS) is the firstborn among many brethren. Our names ALWAYS existed. There is no more need to explain election then there is to explain God. It just is. And the temporal world is a reflection of how things ARE.

Concluded: calvinists and armenians are both wrong and my position is correct.

I agree with you that much of the difficulty of understanding predestination has to do with the reconciling of God's eternal nature ... with our temporal experience.

Once we conclude that God exists outside of our experience of time, ... it becomes almost impossible to understand God's working in our temporal frame.

If we simply believe the Bible, we can believe that God gives us the offer of salvation in our temporal lives, ... while simultaneously knowing whether we will accept or not.

From our perspective, we all have a choice, ... but from God's perspective, ... the differentiation between those who accept and those who do not ... is an expression of the character of God, and is, in effect, a done deal.

The scriptures speak of God's condescension to mankind ... which, in effect, means that He operates (to an extent) in our temporal frame, insisting that He responds to us ... in the way that persons respond to one another ... in a relationship.

A way to see it ... is when a "royal" marries a commoner. In a very real way, the life of the royal is already laid out ... based upon his/her position and responsibility to his/her realm. When a royal opts to have relationship with someone who does not live in the same "royal" framework, he/she must find ways to have actual relationship ... while maintaining the expectations of his/her station.

Scriptures say that God came to visit Adam and Eve in the garden ... and in Revelation, He announces that He will ultimately come to make His home with humankind. The mystery of the message of the scriptures ... is that the God Who created and maintains the universe ... simultaneously pursues and maintains relationship ... with us, His creations, within His universe.

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God."

 

[com7fy8]

the calvinistic and armenianist position

These, I think, are positions which have appeared in connection with men who came a while after the Bible was written.

And, by the way, I do not personally know either John or Jacobus. I would want to see how each man lived his belief, how it reflected his actual character and effected his way of living.

Because any correct belief has God's love meaning. As I read in Romans chapter nine, I can get various love applications of what our Apostle Paul shares in Romans chapter nine.

But as I evaluate ideas which are supposed to be by John or Jacobus, I mainly see arguments of positions, and of course I do not know how either man really was as a person.

 

[Sam81]

Well we know that Calvin was a man-burning bastard. Servitus was indeed a heretic, but Calvin slow cooked him and laughed at the man's pleas. That ought to tell you something about Calvin at least.

 

[Dave L]

Well we know that Calvin was a man-burning bastard. Servitus was indeed a heretic, but Calvin slow cooked him and laughed at the man's pleas. That ought to tell you something about Calvin at least.

Calvin says;

"For what particular act of mine you accuse me of cruelty I am anxious to know. I myself know? not that act, unless it be with reference to the death of your great master, Servetus. But that I myself earnestly entreated that he might not be put to death his judges themselves are witnesses, in the number of whom at that time two were his staunch favourers and defenders. But I have said quite enough about myself." Calvin's Calvinism Translated Henry Cole P-346