This is nothing but philosophical garbage, as is typical of your posts. You begin with the assumption that God is some kind of puppet master, but as I said earlier such a view is simply not worthy of consideration because if it is true there is nothing in our power to change. It's an untenable position because arguing for it refutes it by implying the effectiveness of the will of the one you're arguing with.
Thank you again for your kind words. While you misrepresent what I believe, I can see how you might think it is philosophical refuse. After all, you assume a primacy to human thought, to go along with the independence of his will. I do not assume God is some kind of puppet master. In fact, I insist that man does have real will, and that his choices are real, having real, even eternal, consequences.
If I was to call your notions illogical emotional humanist garbage, and to claim that you assume that God watches from afar, and must wait to see what chance —er, freewill— causes, like the designs resulting from the burrowing of ants behind the glass in an ant farm, before deciding what to do next with his universe, you would accuse me of misrepresentation too. "We are not ants, to God. We are his CHILDREN!"
Our conversation would be broken down completely. But maybe you can try to prove your points, proving mine wrong without deprecating them to such a degree.
I would say it is not obvious, either Biblically or practically. After all, God is not a respecter of persons and does not show favortism.
So, as has been shown before, you reject the many examples in Scripture of him giving to one but not another, dealing with one but not with another, loving one particularly above another, and even the outright statements that he does these.
My discarding of the Calvinist construct of the elect is not simply because the phrase is contextually dependent, but because the Calvinist notion of "the elect" is a product of Reformation philosophy(which itself is a product of Augustinian original sin). Catholic theology only minorly struggled with Calvinist election with Jansenism, and there is no predecessor before Luther and Calvin as the debate between Thomism and Mollinism is distinctly different since Thomist predestination necessarily involves the cooperation of the human will. Where Augustine's influence is minimal there has been no such theological struggle, nothing resembling Calvinism ever took root in the East and certainly makes no appearance in the pre-Augustinian church fathers.
Spoken almost as if you were quoting a Catholic. Sorry, but the early church was not Roman Catholic.
But, as I have said before, the Bible has many references to what Calvin taught concerning election. Calvin himself is nothing.
Those are escape hypotheses, nothing in the context of the text or in ordinary usage suggests such a thing. It's simply a desperate attempt by Calvinists to invent a subversion of explicit Biblical texts that contradict their doctrine which is built on philosophical presuppositions being read into verses that have been removed from their literary and historic context. The fact that such a view did not arise until the 16th century demonstrates that it is not naturally in the text, but is instead a product of 16th century philosophy.
Interesting how the same has been said of Arminianism:
"Those are escape hypotheses, nothing in the context of the text or in ordinary usage suggests such a thing. It's simply a desperate attempt by Calvinists to invent a subversion of explicit Biblical texts that contradict their doctrine which is built on philosophical presuppositions being read into verses that have been removed from their literary and historic context." And, as I have shown in prior engagements with you and others, the Bible itself demonstrates what you claim did not arise until the 16th century.
Dyothelitism does not demonstrate a division within God, it is only if Jesus is understood monothelitically that your reference presents a problem. Certainly, I would say that Calvinist theology reduces Jesus to being monothelitic, but that's an entirely different discussion.
It would also be a mistake to claim it. I see no division within God, in anything I said there.
The division Calvinism introduces is not between Christ's humanity and His divinity, but in the Godhead itself. It turns God into a schizophrenic willing two opposing things at once. It's bad theology, even if it weren't morally odious and contradictory to the full witness of Scrripture.
Wishing, (as said from a human pov), and planning (willing, decreeing), are two different things. Just as an example: If you think sin doesn't hurt God, so that he feels pain, disgust and anger, yet you also reject the notion that he planned for it, you are depending on your philosophical (and emotional) presuppositions.
The notion that omnipotent God, who saw before creating what would happen, yet created anyway, and even facilitated his own impotence by "endowing humans with uncaused freewill, so that their choices could not be caused by God" presents not only a schizophrenic god, but an incohesive doctrine.
