WAB said:
"If we are to believe that God has predestined certain ones to go to hell, then we must also believe that He predestined Adam and Eve should sin, and thus predestined all of the evil that followed. That is preposterous.
Predestined is not the right word in this context. The word is used biblically only of redemption.
The word here is foreordained, and when we use it we must remember that we are speaking anthropotropically.
We have a beginning so we are bound by time, things have a "when" for us. There is a time before and a time after.
For God there is no time before and no time after, so in the case of Adam, simultaneous with God's knowledge that he would sin came the sin itself.
To suggest that God knows something but that He does not at the same time ordain it is to say that something can happen in His universe other than what He knows.
There can be no disconnect and to suggest one is to salve the flesh with dreams of autonomy.
This is the very sense in which Scripture speaks of Christ being the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
God is neither surprised nor does anything happen that is beyond His will.
WAB said:
"The strict Calvinist says we are so utterly depraved that we cannot choose to receive Christ. But that argument cannot apply to Adam and Eve because they were created in innocence. If they, like us today, could choose only evil, then God's warnings to them not to eat of the forbidden fruit (and His appeals to us to come to Christ) are a farce."
You jump to the conclusion that Calvinists believe that Adam and Eve could have chosen only to disobey God.
No Calvinist (or, really, very few) really maintains this.
Adam and Eve did not have a fallen nature and could have chosen differently, but they didn't and God not only knew they wouldn't but ordained it for His own glory.
WAB said:
Not only that, but the Almighty is outside of time, and sees from eternity to eternity.
I am glad you agree with me. More accurately though, it is better to say that God sees everything from an eternal, omnipresent perspective; i.e He sees everything
now and from
every possible angle.
And this is the crux of the biscuit: For this to be true, there can be no real disconnect between God's knowledge or sight and His ordination or will.
There can be only the artificial forcing of God into human mold by Arminians and others.
WAB said:
Here is Joshua 24:15a... "And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve..."
And who does he say this to? He says it to people who are already in covenant with God, not to unbelievers.
Joshua is encouraging believers to a recommitment of faith and action in the name of that God who had brought them out of slavery to the land He had promised them.
WAB said:
Was Joshua and those to whom he was giving the word of the LORD the only people in history who have had a choice?
They didn't have a choice, the covenant is irrevocable and ultimately inescapable. Joshua was using a rhetorical device to call the Israelites to purity of intention and faith.
