Double Predestination

JM said:

Hey folks,

Luther quotes:

"All things whatever arise from, and depend on, the divine appointment; whereby it was foreordained who should receive the word of life, and who should disbelieve it; who should be delivered from their sins, and who should be hardened in them; and who should be justified and who should be condemned."

"I reply, Nobody! Nobody can! But the elect shall believe it; and the rest shall perish without believing it, raging and blaspheming, as you describe them. So there will be some who believe it."

"Thus God conceals His eternal mercy and loving kindness beneath eternal wrath, His righteousness beneath unrighteousness. Now, the highest degree of faith is to believe that He is merciful, though he saves so few and damns so many; to believe that He is just, though of His own will He makes us perforce proper subjects for damnation, and seems (in Erasmus' words) 'to delight in the torments of poor wretches and to be a fitter object for hate than for love.' If I could by any means understand how this same God, who makes such a show of wrath and unrighteousness, can yet be merciful and just, there would be no need for faith. But as it is, the impossibility of understanding makes room for the exercise of faith when these things are preached and published; just as, when God kills, faith in life is exercised in death."

I hold to double predestination and believe this is the position of Luther in Bondage of the Will. How is 'not' electing someone to salvation 'not' a form of predestination. Help me understand? Either way you slice it God still created a mass of people He knew would not be apart of His electing grace.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

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Jacque_Pierre22 said:

yea it's interesting, there was a podcast on this on issuesetc. It has to do with hypercalvinism and the free offer of the gospel. The cph systematics says there is a dialectic between the sin of presumption and despair where if you assume you're elect you'll fall into being a nominal Christian and if you assume your reprobate you'll fall into despair. I don't really see there's much of a difference but for Lutherans--- by not making the LIP an official position it basically guards against both of those problems. However, the real issue for LIP comes down to the exegesis of the text with Lutherans tending to claim that one can lose their salvation and repeat steps in the ordo salutis. Lutherans see things differently than Reformed on a lot of the NT. There probably should be more comparison and deep study of these but cph's commentaries are not systematized so whether there are contradictions between them or not or areas of agreement is hard to say. I personally see TULIP as making sense from God's perspective, as long as one remains sacramental. The real issue for me is that the Reformed don't believe even in the communication of attributes or the omnipresence of Christ or the genus magestaticum, or the efficacy of baptismal regeneration so they are in effect simply relying on basic rationalism and it's very easy for them to fall into either issue. They get it right when they see it as a method to induce encouragement but then there are no real sacraments for their sanctification/assurance so I have no idea how they won't still become mentally haunted by fruit checking; in addition without a sharp law/gospel distinction they have the added issue of trying to mix works righteousness in, in order to prove they're saved , by being hyper sanctified to prove they were justified; I would rather attend a church with 2 or 3 out of the 5 of TULIP + actual sacraments than a church that holds to TULIP but then deny's a Lutheran communicatio idiomatum and decides the exact age a person can rationalize their baptism. Yes Lutheran ubiquity is verrrrry important for me because Jesus saw Nathanael not because he was far away but because he's omnipresent, union sacramentalis in the Lord's supper etc... But this is something that annoyed me before because we see the decrees more in an Amraldian way and they are 4 pointers but to the Reformed I guess they are heretical, I don't know of any church holding to that view, more are infra- or supra lapsarian. The reality for me is that there is no other denomination that has the right view of the sacraments other than the LCMS. At this rate it will take maybe 6-10 yrs until all the cph commentaries for the whole Bible are complete and then one may try to extensively study it and try to see if each exegetes the same way or is one using more of a Reformed hermeneutic here or there and then find out that they should accept maybe I or P in actuality........ in the future; IF we look at this from the perspective of molinism--- they think there are some things God doesn't actually know, they call the opposing position "exhaustive divine determinism" and say that it requires truthmaker maximalism. this gets into stuff one would need a phD in philosophy to argue about theories of truth such as correspondence etc. However, there is no such book called "A Lutheran apporach to molinism" etc; Even though Amyraut was a 3 or 4 pointer, the fact that he thought God desired all to be saved, the Calvinists still sought to condemn him for denying double predestination because his orders of decrees were wrong and he espoused universal instead of particular grace.

2. The Biblical View of Predestination – Mathew Block, 10/25/13 - Issues, Etc.

Mathew Block of the Lutheran Church-Canada "Why Lutheran Predestination Isn't Calvinist Predestination" by Mathew Block

issuesetc.org

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JM said:

Concordia Publishing House I believe but I'm not sure which Systematics are being referred to.

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JM said:

Honestly, it's less of a big deal because both the Lutheran Pastor and the Reformed Pastor are both monergistic, just differing on the details. IMO it is better to be under the preaching and teaching of an orthodox Lutheran Pastor with an emphasis on the monergistic nature of Word & Sacrament than in an Arminian Baptist church that I use to attend.

As the rapper Flame put it:

"He rock a priest collar
He cop a crewneck
Both monergistic in the pulpit, facts..."


Yours in the Lord,

jm

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