What does predestination refer to?

Clare73 said:

Where does it say he has to?

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Well, you kind of said that God has to, and that was why I posted.

That is simply the Biblical meaning of "foreknowledge."
When you see anything referring to God's foreknowledge, that is what "foreknowledge" means.

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There are different understandings of how the Bible uses foreknowledge, as you know. But I see where you stand.

zoidar said:

Well, you kind of said that God has to, and that was why I posted.

There are different understandings of how the Bible uses foreknowledge, as you know.
But I see where you stand.

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Are they stated in Scripture, as are Acts 15:18; Isaiah 48:3; Acts 2:23, Acts 4:28; Isaiah 37:26?

Clare73 said:

Are they stated in Scripture, as are Acts 15:18; Isaiah 48:3; Acts 2:23, Acts 4:28; Isaiah 37:26?

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Verses don't say much without an explanation what they say. There are many different positions that are coherent with Scripture. You can't assume I or someone else understand these verses the same way you do.

Why not begin with one verse and explain why this vers affirms your position?

zoidar said:

Verses don't say much without an explanation what they say.
There are many different positions that are coherent with Scripture.

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Contrare. . .

There are many different positions that claim to be coherent with Scripture, but there are not many different positions that can be Biblically demonstrated to be coherent with Scripture.

That's why it's not about how anyone understands them, it's about what they can Biblically demonstrate is their meaning in the light of all Scripture.

I've seen no Biblical demonstrations refuting the Scriptures in post #62.

You can't assume I or someone else understand these verses the same way you do.

Why not begin with one verse and explain why this vers affirms your position?

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Present the understanding you want me to address and I will examine it.

. .

Clare73 said:

Contrare. . .

There are many different positions that claim to be coherent with Scripture, but there are not many different positions that can be Biblically demonstrated to be coherent with Scripture.

That's why it's not about how anyone understands them, it's about what they can Biblically demonstrate is their meaning in the light of all Scripture.

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But that is your understaning that Reformed theology is the only theology that can be Biblically demonstrated to be coherent in the light of all Scripture. My understanding is that Reformed theology can't be demonstrated to be Biblically coherent in the light of all Scripture. Could I be wrong, sure. Could you be wrong, sure. We can't say what the Bible is demonstrating to us without us understanding it. I don't understand why that is a problem to accept.

I've seen no Biblical demonstrations refuting the Scriptures in post #62.

Present the understanding you want me to address and I will examine it.

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If you want to show why these verses affirm your position you are free to do so. I'm just saying quoting lots of verses doesn't say very much. One reason I haven't tried to prove you wrong is because you haven't proved anything yet, just quoted verses that can mean lot of things.

zoidar said:

But that is your understaning that Reformed theology is the only theology that can be Biblically demonstrated to be coherent in the light of all Scripture. My understanding is that Reformed theology can't be demonstrated to be Biblically coherent in the light of all Scripture. Could I be wrong, sure. Could you be wrong, sure. We can't say what the Bible is demonstrating to us without us understanding it. I don't understand why that is a problem to accept.

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That translates: Scripture is unknowable. God did not give us an unknowable word.
Is there an understanding you want me to address?

If you want to show why these verses affirm your position you are free to do so. I'm just saying quoting lots of verses doesn't say very much. One reason I haven't tried to prove you wrong is because you haven't proved anything yet, just quoted verses that can mean lot of things.

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Present the verses about which you have questions.

Clare73 said:

That translates: Scripture is unknowable. God did not give us an unknowable word.

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Does anyone get everything right in the Bible? I don't know if you agree, but I would say no, only God does. Does that mean Scripture is unknowable? No! We don't need to have everything correct, we need the basics. I don't even think God meant for us to understand everything or else He would have given us a manual.

We can have very good reasons to believe what we believe Scripture says. Some things all Christians agree on and some things are obvious to every reader. When it comes to what theological position we hold to it depends on what the Scripture is presenting to us. Talking for myself, some things I'm more certain of than others. It's a challenge to study the Word.

Is there an understanding you want me to address?

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I hope I'm not being disappointing, but no, not at this point.

Clare73 said:

That translates: Scripture is unknowable. God did not give us an unknowable word.

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That is the reason we have different churches and denominations, because the Word isn't easy to understand. I listened to the Reformed scholar Douglas Moo. I like him because he gives different renderings of Biblical texts, but he is also stating his own position and why.

zoidar said:

That is the reason we have different churches and denominations, because
the Word isn't easy to understand.

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In some places, Paul is hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16).
But there is much that is plain, clear and easy to understand, which some like to use the fig-leaf of
"hard to understand," trying to cover their unbelief, which is as effective as it was in Eden. (Genesis 3:7)

I listened to the Reformed scholar Douglas Moo. I like him because he gives different renderings of Biblical texts, but he is also stating his own position and why.

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Precisely what exegesis is for, because Scripture is knowable.

Divine Foreknowledge - A Comprehensive Examination :


(1) "Foreknowledge - How Could God Know The Future (Part 1 of 2)"
< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgSriOp2gFc >

(2) "Foreknowledge - How Could God Know The Future (Part 2 of 2)"
< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62LkIxJofcQ >


Arminianism and Molinism on Divine Foreknowledge :

https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1703&context=honors

[The following has been extracted from the above linked article, and was written by Nathan Justice as a Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program at Liberty University in the Spring of 2017].

"At their core, Arminianism and Molinism agree about the proper definition of
divine foreknowledge. Both camps hold that the biblical evidence supports God’s
completely and infallibly knowing the future; the difference arises when one addresses the implications of this definition.

Arminians hold that divine foreknowledge alone is sufficient to explain God’s providential control over creation and the coherent conjunction of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. However, it was shown that divineforeknowledge alone is incapable of supporting a strong theory of providential control, since it eliminates God’s ability to deliberate between options.

By contrast, Molinism establishes a basis for strong providential control through its affirmation of divine middle knowledge, and it coherently maintains God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Additionally, Reformed Molinism conjoins Robert Kane’s event-causal libertarianism with Molinism and Reformed soteriology to produce the most biblically consistent and philosophically/theologically coherent view available."


A Molinist View of Election Or How to Be a Consistent Infralapsarian - Ken Keathley :

https://philarchive.org/archive/FREITL

[The following is the concluding statement of the above linked article made by Ken Keathley - Senior Professor of Theology and the Jesse Hendley Chair of Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina].

"Sometimes Molinism is described as inconsistent Calvinism, but one could argue that it is the other way around. Perhaps infralapsarian Calvinism is inconsistent Molinism. So I say to my infralapsarian brethren, that in regard to the concept of permission, Molinists have simply taken the steps you want to take, or at least you want to appear to have taken. If you wish to be consistent, you have a choice: either supralapsarianism or Molinism. '

I am thankful for the contributions that Calvinists are making to Southern Baptist
life. They are right to call Southern Baptists away from pragmatic methodologies and
reaffirm that salvation is a sovereign work of God. However, the decretal approach to
election taken by Calvinism seems to create more problems than it solves.

Molinism does not provide an explanation as to why God created a world in which it was possible for sin to enter, but it is not necessary to do so. Molinism is a defense, not a theodicy. A theodicy is an attempt to explain why God ordained the world he did. A defense is much more modest. A defense simply attempts to demonstrate that it is logically consistent to believe that a good and sovereign God can purpose to create a world like ours. Molinism accomplishes this. If one is going to do justice to the doctrine of God, he must affirm both God’s sovereignty and his permission. Molinism presents a forceful affirmation of both."


William Lane Craig explains how the Arminian perspective of God's "Simple Foreknowledge" does not account or allow for Divine Providential control :

Watch @30:32 - 34:00 mins. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWly0PlaTMI >

"Proponents of Simple Foreknowledge of the future, without Middle Knowledge, can make no good sense of God's Providential planning of a world of free creatures. For logically prior to the Divine Decree, God has only Natural Knowledge of the possible scenarios and no knowledge whatsover of what would happen under any circumctances.

Thus logically posterior to the Divine Decree, God must consider Himself extraordinarily "lucky" to find that this world happened to exist. "What a break", we can imagine God saying to Himself ... Herod, and Pilate, and all those people, all reacted just perfectly. Actually, the situation is much worse than that, for God had no idea whether Herod, or Pilate, or the Israelite nation, or the Roman Empire would even exist posterior to the Divine Decree.

Indeed God must be astonished to find Himself existing in a world out of all the possible worlds that He could have created, in which mankind falls into sin and God Himself enters human history as a substitutional sacrificial offering to rescue them. Now of course I'm speaking anthropomorphically here, but the point remains, without Middle knowledge God cannot know prior to the Creative Decree what the world would be like.

If the defender of Simple Foreknowledge goes on to say that God's foreordination of future events is based upon His Simple Foreknowledge, then this trivializes the doctrine of foreordination, making it a "fifth wheel" which carries no weight ... since the future, by definition, cannot be changed once God knows that an event really is future ... there's nothing more left for foreordination to do ... foreordination becomes a redundancy. And surely there's more substance to the Biblical doctrine of foreordination then the triviality that God decrees that "what [ever] will happen will happen ..."

dms1972 said:

I am coming across different views on this in my reading.

Lutherans seems to say God's predestination refers to getting a preacher.

Another writer says that predestination only refers to believers, and that predestination and election are not the same thing.

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yeah, those who are saved are predestinated to fulfill a certain purpose.

Those who are elect are predestinated to fulfill a big purpose like the named people in the bible.

It has nothing to do with being saved, it just has to do with what God has set in place for us in advance to do and become, in Him.

dms1972 said:

I think predestination is understood in scripture as predestined to be conformed to the Image of His Son. It also is about a new horizon. Election is something slightly different, they
are not just alternative words for the same thing, and should not be used as if interchangable terms.

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In a sense they are, because all mankind are both predestined and elected.
The difference lies in to what is the election--some to be conformed to the likeness of his Son,
others to glorify his justice as a foil for his mercy (Romans 9:22-23).

dms1972 said:

I think predestination is understood in scripture as predestined to be conformed to the Image of His Son. It also is about a new horizon. Election is something slightly different, they are not just alternative words for the same thing, and should not be used as if interchangable terms.

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ImCo:

Election is the promise of salvation and becoming HIS bride made to anyone who chose to accept HIS marriage proposal by their free will, not a sinful will.

Predestination is the prediction that an individual who is under the promise of election will actually have that promise fulfilled within himself.