Was the fall necessary ?

[6days]

...then we must accept that HE knew who would end in hell before HE created them BUT created them anyway

He knew we would reject Him, and that we deserve Hell... but He chose to save us anyway. He could not create people without the choice to reject Him.

How can HE create them knowing they would end in hell if this was HIS desire. It is nonsense.

His desire is a love relationship with us. We all deserve Hell, but God created us anyway and provided a salvation plan. You seem to suggest that God should have only created robots to obey Him?

GOD did not program anyone to sin by any means at all including forcing us to be born into Adam's human bloodline and forcing us to inherit his evil without any choice to be evil at all.

Possibly I'm not understanding you....The Bible clearly tells us we inherited Adam's sin nature. There is none righteous... If we could be sinless on our own, then Last Adam and Calvary would not have been necessary.

But if there was no righteousness in us then for what reason did HE chose us? AND MORE IMPORTANTLY: Why did HE NOT elect some others?

Amazing love... How can it be... that thou my God, would die for ME?? What did I do to deserve His Favor? I do not understand how or why God chose me. Did I play a part in my on salvation? Should I take some credit? Was there enough righteousness in me to realize I was a sinner in need of a Savior?

1 Timothy 5:21 I charge thee before GOD and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the ELECT angels. Since there are elect angels we can assume that the demonic angels were passed over for election or not considered for election. Angels do not presumably have any racial solidarity, ie, they all are holy or sinful by their own choice, not by anyone else's choice. So now we have to answer the question: were some elected before or after the fall of the Satanic rebellion?

Good question... I don't know. There are various opinions from commentators on that verse. For example...is it possible the elect angels are departed saints?

 

[Jerry Shugart]

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you... does not say that HE saw Jeremiah but that HE KNEW him! This must mean that HE knew him personally not just knew about him as He does the demons and the foolish virgins whom He told "I never knew thee...!"

The LORD was right there before Jeremiah was formed in his mother's womb and He was right there when Jeremiah was born again. The LORD knew Jeremiah when he was born again and since the LORD exists in the "eternal now" or "ever present now" then it can be said in all truthfulness that He knew Jeremiah before he was formed in his mother's womb:

"Much of the difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Predestination is due to the finite character of our mind, which can grasp only a few details at a time, and which understands only a part of the relations between these. We are creatures of time, and often fail to take into consideration the fact that God is not limited as we are. That which appears to us as 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' is all 'present' to His mind. It is an eternal 'now'...Just as He sees at one glance a road leading from New York to San Francisco, while we see only a small portion of it as we pass over it, so He sees all events in history, past, present, and future at one glance."​

 

[Clete]

Thanks for your reply, Clete; but... I think you are trying to give me a headache. Ha

:Clete:

I have no idea about pagan Greek philosophy.

If you believe in the classical ideas of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, immutability, impassibility, etc., you do so because of Augustine who learned them from Aristotle and Plato and who, in fact, refused to become a Christian until his mother's bishop, Bishop Ambros of Millan, explained to him how to understand the bible in light of the teachings of Aristotle.

But the Bible does tell us that God knows everything and has perfect knowledge.

No, it doesn't. Not in the way you mean it. God has perfect knowledge of that which is knowable and that He wants to know.

He knows our thoughts....

Our thoughts are quite knowable but there is no indication in the bible that God is continuously reading our minds at all times, never mind the thoughts of every wicked person in the world.

He knows the future.

He predicts the future and works with, through, against and around people and manipulates certain cirmcumstances to bring some of those predictions to pass, but not all of them. There are several prophecies that God makes in the bible that did not come to pass and others that He would have prefered to not come to pass. The entire book of Jonah is devoted to telling the story of how a prophecy did not come to pass, just to give one major example.

So.... I would think that God knew Adam would sin.

I am not suggesting that God was surprised by Adam's sin but He absolutely did not "know" that Adam would definitely sin. He clearly had planned for it and He may well have fully expected it to happen but that is not the same as knowing it in the absolute sense of the word.

The Bible tells us that God chose Christ as our savior before he created the world. (1st Peter 1, Revelation 13)

Yes, it does. This is perhaps the strongest evidence that God fully expected that Adam would sin, or, at the very least, God fully expected that someone would sin eventually. It wouldn't have had to be Adam himself but rather one of his children.

I think this is where my headache starts to intensify. God did not plan / program Adam to fail. But God knew that Adam would sin.


Yes, sin was conceived as you say in eternity past. God created Adam, for relationship and for love. Love isn't possible, if rejection isn't possible. Love always involves choice.

Do you call yourself a Calvinist?

I'm guessing not. Most Calvinist cannot think this clearly.

You have, however, only moved the problem a little to one side rather than done away with it. Let me explain what I mean...

The Calvinist excludes choice by means of predestination. For them it wasn't Adam's choice but God's. There are some who insist upon saying that God predestined Adam's choice but that is an obvious contradiction. A contradiction which they ignore by slapping the label of "antinomy" onto it and just declaring it to be beyond human understanding.

On the other end of the spectrum is the typical Arminian who rejects Calvinist style predestination. They do so for precisely the reason you state above, "Love always involves a choice.".
But they still cling to the doctrine of exhaustive divine forknowledge, which has the exact same problem but for a different reason. The problem foreknowledge presents for free will isn't quite as straight forward as the plain contradiction that predestination presents but it boils down to this...

If something is known in advance then it is a logical necessity.
If it is a logical necessity then there is no logical alternative.
If there is no logical alternative then there is no choice.
Therefore, if my action was known in advance, I did not choose it.

Here is the same argument is a more formal syllogism...

T = You answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am

1. Yesterday God infallibly believed T. [Supposition of infallible foreknowledge]
2. If E occurred in the past, it is now-necessary that E occurred then. [Principle of the Necessity of the Past]
3. It is now-necessary that yesterday God believed T. [1, 2]
4. Necessarily, if yesterday God infallibly believed T, then T. [Definition of “infallibility”]
5. If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p → q), then q is now-necessary. [Transfer of Necessity Principle]
6. So it is now-necessary that T. [3,4,5]
7. If it is now-necessary that T, then you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [Definition of “necessary”]
8. Therefore, you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [6, 7]
9. If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]
10. Therefore, when you answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am, you will not do it freely. [8, 9]

Source​

The author of that syllogism is a Prof. Linda Zagzebski, the Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at Oklahoma University. She calls this the "Basic Argument for Theological Fatalism" because she happens to be a Catholic and presupposes the truth of God's exhaustive infallible foreknowledge and thus intended it as a proof that people do not have free will. (I've often wondered whether it has ever occurred to her that the same argument applies to God's will and that if He knows everything in advance then He is no more free than we are.) At any rate, the point here is that this is not something that was cooked up to argue in favor of Open Theism. In fact, the syllogism does not argue whether God foreknows everything nor whether we have free will. It simply proves that infallible foreknowledge and free will are mutually exclusive ideas. If you accept one, you are forced to reject the other.

A migraine is coming on as I consider that. I'm not so sure..... Do you think that even though I was totally unrighteous, that luck and my smart decision brought me to Christ. Or... Did God choose to put people in my path, and to enlighten me. I don't think we can totally understand why or how God chose us.

"Totally understand"? Perhaps not but it isn't nearly so mystical as the Calvinists would have you believe.

It certainly wasn't mere luck! That's what the Calvinist believe.

Again.... I don't think we can possibly understand why or how God chooses people. Why did God choose Saul? Why did God choose the nation of Israel? Etc. Those decisions to choose Saul, Israel and other examples do seem fairly arbitrary, but there may be more to those 'choices' then what we understand. I think we both might have some understanding of God choosing Israel, but we both might get lost in the weeds a little bit as we consider blessings and judgments on future generations of individuals including children. (Tylenol is not helping me at this point).
Amen!

Why do they seem arbitrary?

Clete

 

[Cntrysner]

God's choice that we would sin is in His creation. We being creatures of flesh and the lust thereof can not refuse sin. God absolutely predestined that we would sin because he knew His creation. We can not avoid our fallen state that we inherited from Adam by birth thus we choose to sin because sin is in the flesh. Man cannot overcome sin save one because He was both man and God.

God's predestination displayed at creation and man's ability to choose coexist. It took both God and man for sin to enter the world and it took a God Man to reconcile it.

If I gave someone a gun and the ability to use it to protect and provide for themselves and they accidentally or intentionally blew their head off with it then by law I did not commit murder and cannot be held responsible. God did predestinate all would be born in sin except one whose Father was not Adam.

 

[Jerry Shugart]

If something is known in advance then it is a logical necessity.
If it is a logical necessity then there is no logical alternative.
If there is no logical alternative then there is no choice.
Therefore, if my action was known in advance, I did not choose it.

Clete, that makes sense if God is constrained by time. However, consider the following written by Loraine Boettner:

"Much of the difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Predestination is due to the finite character of our mind, which can grasp only a few details at a time, and which understands only a part of the relations between these. We are creatures of time, and often fail to take into consideration the fact that God is not limited as we are. That which appears to us as 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' is all 'present' to His mind. It is an eternal 'now'...Just as He sees at one glance a road leading from New York to San Francisco, while we see only a small portion of it as we pass over it, so He sees all events in history, past, present, and future at one glance."​

From this we can understand that in "time" the LORD does not know when a person believes until he believes. But since the LORD lives in the ever present "now" then it can be said that that person was chosen for salvation before the foundation of the world because with the LORD the same moment when He sees someone believe is the same moment before the foundation of the world.

The following verse demonstrates that this is true:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

Since the Body of Christ (in Him) did not even exist before the foundation of the world then how is it possible for anyone to be chosen "in Him" before the world came into existence? It is not possible!

The believer is not baptized by one Spirit into the Body of Christ until he believes. So no one was baptized into the Body of Christ before the foundation of the world. But since the LORD exists outside of time in the ever present "now" then the moment when the LORD sees anyone believe is the same moment which can be said to be before the foundation of the world with the LORD because He exists outside of time.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Clete, that makes sense if God is constrained by time.

God is not outside of time, because time is not something you can be "outside of."

It's only a concept, not an actual thing.

However, consider the following written by Loraine Boettner:

"Much of the difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Predestination is due to the finite character of our mind, which can grasp only a few details at a time, and which understands only a part of the relations between these. We are creatures of time, and often fail to take into consideration the fact that God is not limited as we are. That which appears to us as 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' is all 'present' to His mind. It is an eternal 'now'...Just as He sees at one glance a road leading from New York to San Francisco, while we see only a small portion of it as we pass over it, so He sees all events in history, past, present, and future at one glance."​

:blabla:

From this we can understand that in "time" the LORD does not know when a person believes until he believes. But since the LORD lives in the ever present "now" then it can be said that that person was chosen for salvation before the foundation of the world because with the LORD the same moment when He sees someone believe is the same moment before the foundation of the world.

Sorry, but that doesn't work.

Is Jesus "now" on the cross, still being crucified before God?

No, that's heresy.

Is Jesus "now" still only God, and also God/Man?

No, that's self-contradictory, and heresy.

Was Jesus on the Cross "now" before the foundation of the earth?

NO! That's also heresy.

Jesus died ONCE for all mankind.

Jesus is RAISED from the dead, past tense.

Scripture NEVER uses phrases such as the following:

• is timeless
• in an eternal now
• without sequence or succession
• without moment or duration
• atemporal and outside of time
• not was, nor will be, but only is
• has no past
• has no future.

Rather, Scripture describes God with the following verbatim phrases:

• is
• and was
• is to come
• Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting
• Forever and ever
• The Ancient of Days
• From before the ages of the ages
• From ancient times
• the everlasting God
• He continues forever
• From of old
• Remains forever
• Eternal
• Immortal
• The Lord shall endure forever
• Who lives forever
• yesterday, today, and forever
• God’s years
• manifest in His own time
• Everlasting Father
• Alive forevermore
• Always lives
• Forever
• Continually
• the eternal God
• God’s years never end
• From everlasting to everlasting
• From that time forward, even forever
• And of His kingdom there will be no end.

NOT ONE of those phrases describes "timelessness"

The following verse demonstrates that this is true:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

So when do you think time was created?

At the foundation of the world?
Before the foundation of the world?
After the foundation of the world?

Since the Body of Christ (in Him) did not even exist before the foundation of the world then how is it possible for anyone

This is moving the goalposts.

You said "Body of Christ," a GROUP of people.

Then you tried to change it to "anyONE," which is a specific individual, not a group.

The GROUP is what was chosen to be "in Him," not specific individuals.

See below.

to be chosen "in Him" before the world came into existence? It is not possible!

Sure it is.

You're just assuming the truth of your own position, which gets in the way of you understanding how such a thing is possible.

Think of it this way.

Dispatcher G planned that Plane A would go from Origin O to Destination X, and that Plane B would go from O to Destination Y.

Dispatcher G is God.

Origin O is this life on earth.

Plane A is the group that is saved, and that will be with God forever in the New Heaven and New Earth.
Plane B is the group that is not saved, and is cast into the Lake of Fire.

Destination X is the NHNE.
Destination Y is the LoF.

God planned group A to go to X, and group B to go to Y.

He DID NOT PLAN who would be IN those two groups, just that the groups themselves would go to their respective destinations.

The believer is not baptized by one Spirit into the Body of Christ until he believes.

In other words, the believer has simply purchased a plane ticket to Heaven. The plane was going there whether he was on it or not, but now he's going to be on it, and is part of the group called "Body of Christ."

So no one was baptized into the Body of Christ before the foundation of the world.

Correct, yet the GROUP called "Body of Christ" was still predetermined to go to Heaven.

But since the LORD exists outside of time in the ever present "now"

This is called question begging.

The Bible DOES NOT DESCRIBE GOD as being outside of time.

See above.

then the moment when the LORD sees anyone believe is the same moment which can be said to be before the foundation of the world with the LORD because He exists outside of time.

False, based on what I said in this post.

 

[Jerry Shugart]

Scripture NEVER uses phrases such as the following:

is timeless
in an eternal now
without sequence or succession
without moment or duration
atemporal and outside of time
not was, nor will be, but only is
has no past
has no future.

"He has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time" (2 Tim.1:9).​

"in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time" (Titus1:2).​

This is moving the goalposts.

You said "Body of Christ," a GROUP of people.

Then you tried to change it to "anyONE," which is a specific individual, not a group.

The GROUP is what was chosen to be "in Him," not specific individuals.

It is individuals who are chosen to be "in Christ" or "in Him." Are you saying that the Body of Christ existed in "time" before the foundation of the world?

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

 

[JudgeRightly]

"He has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time" (2 Tim.1:9).​

"in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time" (Titus1:2).​

Sorry, but that's just a bad translation. In the Greek, there's no verb "began" in those verses:

"Before time eternal" does not mean "before time began."

In fact, a more accurate translation than what is shown above of what Paul wrote is "before the times of the ages," as both the noun and the adjective are plural.

Bad Translations: "Before time began" (2 Tim. 1:9 & Titus 1:2) is widely quoted yet in the Greek text of the New Testament there is no verb "began" in the original language. And the singular word "time" does not appear. Instead, Paul wrote, "before the times of the ages," which is very different from the way many of our Bible versions render this phrase, which translations do not flow from the grammar but from the translators' commitment to Greek philosophy.

http://kgov.com/time

And NONE of the above changes the fact that the Bible DOES NOT DESCRIBE GOD as outside of time, but rather that He has a past, present, and future.

It is individuals who are chosen to be "in Christ" or "in Him."

Um, no.

The GROUP was chosen, not the individuals themselves.

Are you saying that the Body of Christ existed in "time" before the foundation of the world?

I'm saying that God determined that the GROUP OF PEOPLE who accepted Christ, the GROUP, NOT THE INDIVIDUALS IN THE GROUP, would be called the Body of Christ, and that the BoC would be the GROUP that would go to heaven.

Again, think of it as a dispatcher planning for a plane to go from point A to point B, but not the individual people on the plane.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

You missed it.

"blessed us"
"chosen us"
"that we"

GROUP, NOT INDIVIDUAL.

 

[Jerry Shugart]

In fact, a more accurate translation than what is shown above of what Paul wrote is "before the times of the ages," as both the noun and the adjective are plural.

The "ages" refer to time so before the time of the ages refers to the beginning of time.

Um, no.

The GROUP was chosen, not the individuals themselves.

Do you really think that in the following verse the one Spirit is performing a "group" baptism?:

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor.12:13).​

It is individuals believers who are baptized into the Body of Christ, not "groups" of believers. Your idea is ridiculous!

 

[JudgeRightly]

The "ages" refer to time

No, Jerry, it does not.

The word (poorly) translated as "time" in the English versions is a PLURAL WORD in the Greek.

TIMES.

NOT TIME.

It simply refers to the time before the first age, which was creation.

so before the time of the ages refers to the beginning of time.

There's no indication of "beginning" ANYWHERE in those two verses, Jerry.

It's before the ages.

An "age" is a PERIOD of time, not time itself.

"Before the times of the ages" means before time was MEASURED in periods. It DOES NOT MEAN that time began, but it indicates that time was already progressing when those ages began.

In other words...

Paul is talking about before the creation of the earth, the first age.

Do you really think that in the following verse the one Spirit is performing a "group" baptism?:

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor.12:13).​

It is individuals believers who are baptized into the Body of Christ, not "groups" of believers. Your idea is ridiculous!

It's talking about people baptised into A GROUP. That group is called "The Body of Christ."

THE GROUP is called the Body of Christ, Jerry.

You're conflating the individual with the group.

You should stop.

I am not the Body of Christ.

YOU are not the Body of Christ.

WE are MEMBERS of the Body of Christ.

The BODY OF CHRIST will be allowed into Heaven.

The verse literally says, "we are baptized into" what?

"ONE BODY."

A BODY is BY DEFINITION a group of people!

"a group of persons or things: such as . . . a group of individuals organized for some purpose"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/body

You're trying to say that a GROUP of people is not a group of people. That's violates the law of non-contradiction, which means your position is inherently WRONG.

THE BODY OF CHRIST will inherit heaven.

Not the individuals in the group, but the group as a whole.

 

[ttruscott]

In Hebrew, Jeremiah 1:5 says "before I formed you in the womb".
...
The word used for form DOES NOT MEAN to bring into existence. It means to form or fashion, as a potter does to clay.

Strong's h3335
- Lexical: יָצַר
- Transliteration: yatsar
- Part of Speech: Verb
- Phonetic Spelling: yaw-tsar'
- Definition: to form, fashion.

...

In other words, God knows us in the womb, not before it, because as you said, "it is impossible to know someone before they exist." It is also impossible to know about someone before they exist.

Your statement "The word used for form DOES NOT MEAN to bring into existence. It means to form or fashion, as a potter does to clay." implies that we must have come into existence before our earthly existence because yatzar only implies fashioning not creating, ...which is what I suggested.

Also: the verse does NOT say "GOD knows us IN the womb" as you suggest (and which I bolded) BECAUSE IT does SAY "BEFORE I formed you in the womb I KNEW thee!!!" <sigh>

 

[Jerry Shugart]

Paul is talking about before the creation of the earth, the first age.

Since an age is made up of time and the first age began at the creation then that means that there was no age and thus no time before the creation.

It's talking about people baptised into A GROUP. That group is called "The Body of Christ."

Yes, a group. But it is "individuals" who are chosen to be members of that group:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

The believer inherits the spiritual blessings individually, as we read later in the same chapter:

"In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise" (Eph.1:13).​

Different people believe at different times so they are not sealed as a "group," and since they believe at different times they are baptized into the Body of Christ at different times and not as a "group":

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor.12:13).

Were you baptized into the Body of Christ at the same time, and in a group, as those who were baptized into the Body of Christ in the first century when this epistle was written? Of course not!

Your whole argument falls apart if you can't make it a group baptism into the Body of Christ. Let us look at the following passage again:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

Do you think there were any people who were blessed with spiritual blessings "in Christ" before the foundation of the world?

 

[Jerry Shugart]

Also: the verse does NOT say "GOD knows us IN the womb" as you suggest (and which I bolded) BECAUSE IT does SAY "BEFORE I formed you in the womb I KNEW thee!!!" <sigh>

So are you teaching the pre-existence of souls?

 

[ttruscott]

He knew we would reject Him, and that we deserve Hell... but He chose to save us anyway. He could not create people without the choice to reject Him.

Yes, free will is necessary.. But how is it necessary that HE actually create those whom HE knows will reject HIM and end in eternal suffering by their free will and not just create only those HE knows will chose by their free will to accept HIM?? I'm NOT talking about the ones HE saves but how is it loving to create those HE knows HE will not save but send them to hell? HOW is it righteous? HOW is it just?

You totally ignore this question.

His desire is a love relationship with us. We all deserve Hell, but God created us anyway and provided a salvation plan. You seem to suggest that God should have only created robots to obey Him? ...The Bible clearly tells us we inherited Adam's sin nature.

You are changing the topic as well as being wrong - I champion our free will and so I reject inherited sin as false and a blasphemy.

There is none righteous... If we could be sinless on our own, then Last Adam and Calvary would not have been necessary.

How does rejecting the origins of our sin to be in Adam claim that we "can be sinless on our own???" Also: how do you think the holy elect angels got to be sinless when Satan chose to be eternally evil? They chose to be sinless!!! Making us human and forcing us to inherit Adam's sin does NOT allow us to choose to be either sinful nor sinless!

For example...is it possible the elect angels are departed saints?

Doubtful... they were created before the creation of the physical universe as ALL the sons of GOD saw the creation of the physical universe, Job 38:7.

 

[Clete]

Clete, that makes sense if God is constrained by time. However, consider the following written by Loraine Boettner:

"Much of the difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Predestination is due to the finite character of our mind, which can grasp only a few details at a time, and which understands only a part of the relations between these. We are creatures of time, and often fail to take into consideration the fact that God is not limited as we are. That which appears to us as 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' is all 'present' to His mind. It is an eternal 'now'...Just as He sees at one glance a road leading from New York to San Francisco, while we see only a small portion of it as we pass over it, so He sees all events in history, past, present, and future at one glance."​

I'm always amazed when someone who is about to explain something starts off by stating that we can't understand it.

The problem with this outside of time idea is two fold (at least).
First of all it's an idea that is born out of an a-priori doctrine. In other words, the only reason anyone ever says that God is outside of time is because they're forced to do so in order to make any sense whateover of their doctrine. If the doctrine they bring to the discussion is false then there is no need for any such "outside of time" silliness which only serves to replace one contradiction with another anyway, which brings me to the second problem which is the notion of being outside of time is not merely difficult for us to understand, it cannot be understood by anyone at all because it is self-contradictory nonsense. The sentence, "God exists outside of time." is self-contradictory because the concept of existence implies duration. If something has no duration it does not exist, by definition. Thus the idea that God exists outside of time commits a special kind of contradiction known as a stolen concept fallacy in that it both rejects and uses the concept of time. They have "stolen" the concept of duration. It is therefore irrational and cannot be true.

On top of all that, it is entirely, totally and in all other way completely unbiblical. No Christian anywhere believed it at all until Aristotle's errant logic was introduced into Christian doctrine by Bishop Ambrose and Augustine. The bible is full of phrases that directly indicate that God is, in fact, in time. (Rev. 8:1; Rev. 6:10-11; 11:17-18; Rev. 22:2; Heb. 10:12-13; Isa. 42:14; Mat. 8:29)

From this we can understand that in "time" the LORD does not know when a person believes until he believes. But since the LORD lives in the ever present "now" then it can be said that that person was chosen for salvation before the foundation of the world because with the LORD the same moment when He sees someone believe is the same moment before the foundation of the world.

The following verse demonstrates that this is true:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

No! The phrase "before the foundation of the world" has no meaning outside of time. If anything, that biblical phrase shows that God is in time, not out of it!

Since the Body of Christ (in Him) did not even exist before the foundation of the world then how is it possible for anyone to be chosen "in Him" before the world came into existence? It is not possible!

Of course it is! You just have to make some effort to stay on the same page that God is on and understand when a figure of speech is being used.

It's analogous to when you board an air plane. The owner of that plane determined in advance when it would leave and where it would go. If you get on board then the plane's destiny becomes your own and it could be rightly said that you were destined to arrive at DFW, "in that plane", before you ever bought the ticket because the plane's destination (destiny) was set before you decided to buy it.

It's not a perfect analogy but it's good enough for you to see the point. God planned the Body of Christ before He created the Earth and predestined that anyone who joins that group with be glorified by virtue of Christ's glorification. The passage does not teach that any one particular individual or set of specific individuals were predestined to glory but rather the group was predestined. In fact, that is generally the case throughout the bible, whenever predestination is mentioned it is almost always (if not always) talking about groups, not individuals.

The believer is not baptized by one Spirit into the Body of Christ until he believes. So no one was baptized into the Body of Christ before the foundation of the world. But since the LORD exists outside of time in the ever present "now" then the moment when the LORD sees anyone believe is the same moment which can be said to be before the foundation of the world with the LORD because He exists outside of time.

Once again, you are contradicting yourself. There is no "before" outside of time!

You aren't alone here, by the way. It is entirely impossible to discuss or even mention the notion existence outside of time without contradicting yourself. It is utterly irrational. If this idea is not falsified by the law of contradiction then nothing ever could be! And if the law of contradiction does not work then reason itself does not work and no concept, no matter how inane can be falsified and knowledge itself becomes impossible. It would then seem rather difficult to claim to know that God exists outside of time.

And so, to sum up, you have neither any rational basis, nor any biblical need for believing that God exists outside of time.

If you want a very thorough, bible based proof beyond what I've stated here, I encourage you to read the following article by Bob Enyart...

Is God Outside of Time? Not according to the Bible.


Clete

 

[Jerry Shugart]

God planned the Body of Christ before He created the Earth and predestined that anyone who joins that group with be glorified by virtue of Christ's glorification.

The passage is not speaking of God "planning the Body of Christ before He created the earth" but instead the passage says that we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

Do you think that in "time" there were people who were chosen in the Body of Christ "before the foundation of the world"? Do you even think that anyone who is in Christ existed before the foundation of the world?

 

[Clete]

God's choice that we would sin is in His creation. We being creatures of flesh and the lust thereof can not refuse sin. God absolutely predestined that we would sin because he knew His creation. We can not avoid our fallen state that we inherited from Adam by birth thus we choose to sin because sin is in the flesh. Man cannot overcome sin save one because He was both man and God.

Calvin taught this, the bible doesn't.

If I gave someone a gun and the ability to use it to protect and provide for themselves and they accidentally or intentionally blew their head off with it then by law I did not commit murder and cannot be held responsible. God did predestinate all would be born in sin except one whose Father was not Adam.

This is interesting. You combine an intuitive understanding of what justice is with an accusation (implicit) that God is unjust.

No one is "born in sin" in the sense that God holds them responsible for evil that they themselves did not commit. Romans 5 is all about how Christ's death on a tree undid what was done at THE Tree thus no one is condemned for anything other than their own sin. See Ezekiel 18 - the whole chapter. It completely crushes the doctrine of original sin into powder.

 

[Clete]

The passage is not speaking of God "planning the Body of Christ before He created the earth" but instead the passage says that we were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Eph.1:3-4).​

Repeating your argument doesn't count as a rebuttal.

Do you think that in "time" there were people who were chosen in the Body of Christ "before the foundation of the world"? Do you even think that anyone who is in Christ existed before the foundation of the world?

I've already answered this question. It is the Body of Christ, as a group, that is predestined. God has no idea who or how many will join that group, (unless He has some upper limit in mind (Rom. 11:25)), but whomever does has been predestined to be glorified because He has been predestined to be glorified.

It really isn't that difficult to understand. The only reason people reject it is because they want to cling to the entirely irrational notion that God exists outside of time and they only cling to that because they believe that God is immutable.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Since an age is made up of time and the first age began at the creation then that means that there was no age and thus no time before the creation.

Yes, as I said, an age is made up of time.

Yes, I agree that the first age began at creation.

No, that does not mean that there was no time BEFORE those ages.

Your argument is a non-sequitur, it doesn't follow.

Just because there is no "age" does NOT inherently mean that there is no time.

And in fact...

Spoiler

WARNING: Lengthy spoiler ahead, click at your own risk!

Spoiler

Time is a Prerequisite of Creation: Many have been told that time was created by God, and that it is not an aspect of His existence. Please consider though that time cannot be created. Why not? Because creation means going from non-existence to existence, which itself is a sequence, a before and after. And any before and after sequence requires time. Time therefore is a precondition of creating. Thus time itself cannot be created. Scripture describes God's creation of matter and space, light and life, but not of time. And even the secular BBC begins their Before the Big Bang program acknowledging that the notion of time coming into existence, "may be a logical contradiction." The scientific fad, with its ubiquitous acceptance, of claiming that time came into existence with the big bang, could effortlessly disappear if not needed by the next fad, the multiverse. For although the statement that "time came into existence" launched a million words in its defense, men have no way of even thinking about the notion. Why not? Because it is meaningless. (Similarly, men have no way of even thinking about the evolutionary notion of how a merely physical system could give rise to a biological information system, let alone, achieve consciousness. So in the alleged materialist evolution of information, and of consciousness, and in the claim that time came into existence, meaninglessness reveals itself through this inability even to think about such things.) If God indeed were atemporal and could experience no sequence and hence, no change, He could never decide to create time, nor could He ever move from a decision to the actual act of creating time. If such an irrationality were plausible, God would have had to always have created time, and all of creation, from eternity past. Yet this is all gibberish. Further, because time does exist, even if that time had been created, an atemporal deity who experiences no succession and no change in His knowledge could therefore only know Himself as co-existing with time. Thus for theologians to say that God exists apart from time would be positing something of Him that He Himself could not know. Instead, the simple truth is that a timeless deity could not create time and does not exist.

...AND...

Misconception 2: Measurement of time equals time itself. It doesn't. Simply pointing out this nearly ubiquitous error should suffice to correct it. Secular folks and believers alike frequently assume this non-sequitur with Christians suggesting that there could be no time prior to the Earth's orbit or its rotation. Their confusion equates to the claim that if man possessed no ruler then there could be no length, or no scale there could be no gravity, or no speedometer then no velocity, so no clock, no time. Thoughtlessness abounds. The measurement of something does not equate to the thing itself and (as pointed out since at least 1885 by the Rev. J. J. Smith's Duration as Applied to God) neither does the ability or lack thereof to measure something equate to the thing itself.

...AND...

Misconception 4: God cannot cross an actual infinity: Because it would take infinitely long to cross an infinity, many philosophers claim that not even God could cross an infinity. Thus, they claim if He lived "in time", then regardless of how long He has existed, the Lord Himself could never reach any particular point in time, let alone reach "the present", because He would have to cross an infinity to arrive at this (or that) moment. On How to Cross an Infinity: Spoiler However, consider the relationship between two valid arguments: everything that has a beginning has a cause and likewise, nothing that has a beginning can cross an infinity. God, however, has existed through the "beginningless past". Though we reject much of Wes Morriston's reasoning in his paper Beginningless Past, Endless Future, and the Actual Infinite published in 2010 by the journal Faith and Philosophy (Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 439-450), we agree with his biblical conclusion, that God has existed through the beginningless past. The vast majority of Christian theologians though, who reject that God has existed through the beginningless past, typically do so by being inconsistent. Therefore their objection is easily neutralized and then answered. For example, William Lane Craig rejects the possibility of an actual infinity. (See his reformulated medieval Islamic Kalam cosmological argument.) So along with many theologians he disagrees with the biblical argument presented above of: "from everlasting to everlasting", and thus he denies that God has existed throughout time immemorial, infinitely into the past. For if an actual infinity cannot exist, Craig argues, then even God cannot cross one. (Aristotle, for example, claimed that the infinite is never actual; he, however, did not know God.) Inconsistency: Spoiler Yet while Craig doesn't admit it, he himself believes that God has crossed an actual infinity. For God's thoughts are actual. They are not merely theoretical. They are actual. They are His thoughts. And Craig believes that God has had exhaustive foreknowledge of a kingdom that never ends. That of course would require divine knowledge of an infinite future, with this knowledge comprised of actual thoughts in God's mind. (This would be like God having counted to infinity.) Further, because Craig happens to hold the untenable and rather grotesque belief that God knows every possible future, that philosophical claim requires God to cross an infinite number of actual infinities. (This is because there are an infinite number of possible futures. Forget about Chuck Norris doing so twice, this amounts to a claim that God counted to infinity an infinite number of times.) Instead, in actuality, God has once crossed the single infinity of the beginningless past. Assuming the Conclusion: Spoiler Using a typically unstated assumption, an argument against God's "beginningless past" insists that He could not have crossed an infinite past because regardless of how much time has actually passed, "infinity" would require passage of even more time to arrive at any given moment. The unstated assumption in this objection however is that it assumes its conclusion, namely, that this past period must have had a beginning. For this objection essentially asserts that this past period that God has existed through is of finite duration. Theologians mishandle this issue the way that atheists mishandle the argument that everything that has a beginning has a cause. Bertrand Russell, by asking "Who made God?", assumes he has either falsified Christianity or disproved the argument. Of course, on its face, Russell has done neither because his application falsifies only the pagan cosmogonies that originate their gods, but he leaves untouched the eternal God of Scripture. Likewise, theologians (inherently) take the valid argument that nothing that has a beginning can cross an infinity and misuse it by claiming, "God can't cross an infinity." If there is a valid theological system that denies God's ability to cross an actual infinity, then it would not support a philosophical claim that contradicts its own system (see Inconsistency, just above), and neither will it merely assume its conclusion. Mathematics 101: Spoiler Let's consider an analogy, from geometry, and then an excuse, from mathematics. As an illustration, a geometrical line is infinite in both directions whereas a ray has a terminal point yet is infinite in one direction. For our analogy, consider the ray as extending through eternity past and being terminated in God's present. For the present is where God lives, in the fullness of time so to speak, with God's past illustrated by that ray. Consider also that Georg Cantor died only in 1918. Perhaps there is a (weak) excuse then for theologians who failed to understand God existing in time, partly because they lived prior to this mathematician who taught the world so much about infinity. (Remember that mathematicians had problems even with the concept of negative numbers until the 17th and 18th centuries, let alone with infinity.) So Craig's Islamic theologians and countless Christian theologians (including Augustine, even though he was right to apply the concept of infinity to God), could hardly have comprehended the concept that God could have existed for an infinite time and that daily He also could add more time to that same infinity. God has done this however. For He must increase! So the terminal point on that divine ray has moved, for example, more than two thousand years since the moment of the Incarnation, something that few could have conceived of throughout much of human history. Forward Looking: Spoiler Finally, as Solomon wrote, God put eternity into our hearts. Yet unlike God, our life is not endless in two directions but only in one, namely, into the future. So to use our analogy again, in reverse, you are like a "ray" that begins at a point (of conception) and then proceeds forever (Eccl. 3:11). Thus, a man does not "enter eternity" at his death, but at the moment of conception. (Likewise, King David wrote that, "in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." This passage did not refer to the days till his death but to the days till his birth, that is, to fetology. Regarding the developmental biology that God designed for the human fetus, Psalm 139 refers not to the days of an entire life but to the days in the womb.) Therefore, our eternal soul provides for us a context in which we can develop a gut feel for what it means to live forever (throughout eternity future). Yet we lack the divine intestinal fortitude, so to speak, that we would need in order to relate to His beginningless past. So because the above arguments falsify atemporality, one realizes that if God could not cross infinity, then He could not have existed for eternity. But He has. In summary, by the Scriptural teachings regarding time (see above) and because time could not have been created (see above), we therefore teach that God's goings forth are from of old, from everlasting, from ancient times, the everlasting God who continues forever, from before the ages of the ages, He who is and who was and who is to come, who remains forever, the everlasting Father, whose years never end, from everlasting to everlasting, and of His kingdom there will be no end.

... all apply here.
http://kgov.com/time

 

[Cntrysner]

Calvin taught this, the bible doesn't.


This is interesting. You combine an intuitive understanding of what justice is with an accusation (implicit) that God is unjust.

No one is "born in sin" in the sense that God holds them responsible for evil that they themselves did not commit. Romans 5 is all about how Christ's death on a tree undid what was done at THE Tree thus no one is condemned for anything other than their own sin. See Ezekiel 18 - the whole chapter. It completely crushes the doctrine of original sin into powder.

Why do you want to label me as a calvinist when I said this...

"God's predestination displayed at creation and man's ability to choose coexist. It took both God and man for sin to enter the world and it took a God Man to reconcile it."

Would Calvin agree with what I said? Address what I said and don't omit it.