- May 28, 2018
- 14,282
- 6,365
- 69
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Reformed
- Marital Status
- Widowed
Well, I struggled through your post. And thanks for the constructive criticism concerning mine.While God certainly chose Israel, His choice of Israel was not a salvific choice but a choice of them for the purpose of Christ being born to them, chosen to a task. The notion that God chose a particular group for salvation is essentially exactly what is being disputed here, so simply declaring that to be the case does nothing for the discussion. The notion that God chose an elect requires denying the passages that speak to God's desire to save all, because of the law of non-contradiction if God is the sole deciding factor in salvation then God cannot desire all to be saved unless all are saved. So Calvinists tie themselves in pretzels to preserve a philosophical view of God's sovereignty that denies what the Bible plainly says about God's desire to save all despite some being condemned. After all, what would prevent God from saving all if it is entirely within His prerogative and He desires all be saved?
I said nothing about God choosing Israel salvifically. The point is irrelevant. The point is, that he chose them instead of others, and dealt with them with particular love and attention, and for his particular purposes concerning them, for his own sake.
The notion that God desires equally and effectually to save absolutely all who ever will have lived denies Scriptural references to the Elect. I don't know if you accept the authority of scripture.
You have a worse problem than me, in exegesis; it is no pretzel to see that God does not desire equally and effectually that all be saved, since he is omnipotent. But you must maintain a fiction about uncaused freewill, in order to save your personal notion of the meaning of God's love. And then you are left with how to pretzel your way around the many passages that contradict your notion.
Upvote
0