ECT What is Predestination?

[chrysostom]

What we choose is all we have. Our deepest being does the choosing the best it knows how. God puts us in a box with only one exit on one side. We choose the leave the box but that one exit is the only choice we have. The cults imagines an alternative exit route and pretends to exit the no exit wall and believes they're outside the box when they're not. Its called man made catholicism. RCC are the only choice unbelievers have. They need a ritual to pretend like they're good enough

this is pure nonsense

the church teaches us that we make many choices each day
and
each choice moves us closer to or further away from our goal

 

[Puppet]

this is pure nonsense

the church teaches us that we make many choices each day
and
each choice moves us closer to or further away from our goal

I included we make choices. You just want something better.

 

[Puppet]

really?

perhaps you can explain it to us

Let me know what he said

 

[chrysostom]

this is pure nonsense

the church teaches us that we make many choices each day
and
each choice moves us closer to or further away from our goal

I included we make choices.

We choose the leave the box but that one exit is the only choice we have.

how do we make choices
if
this is the only choice we have?

 

[Puppet]

ok, that explains things -

You can also chose to stay in the box but you didn't choose the rising flood coming. You're most likely to choose to swim out of the box through the only exit. God has ways to make sure you will exit the box to get exaclty where He wants you to be. You refuse that God arrange circumstances.

 

[chrysostom]

You can also chose to stay in the box but you didn't choose the rising flood coming. You're most likely to choose to swim out of the box through the only exit. God has ways to make sure you will exit the box to get exaclty where He wants you to be. You refuse that God arrange circumstances.

what if you put yourself in this box?

 

[Puppet]

what does that mean?

God made you exist first and then you realize that you exist but you don't know why due to total depravity .

 

[chrysostom]

God made you exist first and then you realize that you exist but you don't know why due to total depravity .

have you ever tried to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why you exist?

 

[Puppet]

have you ever tried to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why you exist?

We exist not to question why we exist.

 

[chrysostom]

We exist not to question why we exist.

so answers are out of the question?

 

[Puppet]

so answers are out of the question?

You're not asking the right ones

 

[chrysostom]

You're not asking the right ones

more like I am asking the wrong person

 

[Puppet]

more like I am asking the wrong person

Its complicated. Mass =energy. When energy stops, there's no mass. No mass means no existence. But energy pops back and we appear again. Its the power that also makes men walk on water, walk through walls and totally disappear and reappear. Create miracles Those events were recorded in the Bible. To you the complicated is nonsense cause you mind isn't advanced enough.

 

[chrysostom]

does choice require free will?

of course it does

even the puppet knows that
but
he doesn't know what the words mean

 

[Truster]

I'm interested in how people define predestination. What does it imply? Do you see scripture as saying the individual is predestined in any way

Scriptures like this need to be directly addressed :

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Romans 8:29-30

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:
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
Ephesians 1:4-6

That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:
In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
Ephesians 1:10-11

And if God is simply looking down the corridors of time and seeing what we would do and then predestining us to be in Christ, how is that Him doing the predestining? How is it not rather Him simply categorizing? And if our choices are utterly free (i.e. we are just as able at any given time to choose any one choice over any other choice) then how can God work all things according to His own will? In other words, when my autonomy runs into God's Sovereignty, who prevails?

In addition, it seems to me there is a bit of a conundrum when it comes to the traditional free will position and the eternal destiny of young children or those under the "age of accountability". If God "knows" (by seeing the future of a child before it is even born) that that child is going to not choose Him, but takes the child in infancy - is He bound to save that child? You may object that the child has not done wrong or right, but this is the same God that loved Jacob and hated Esau before the children were even born and before they did wrong or right. If all God is judging is actions, how can He justly judge someone with a murderous heart who never actually murders? How can He call those who did many good works in His name "workers of iniquity" if the works (themselves) were actually good? Casting out devils is certainly a good work...
The point there is not to say whether infants do or do not go to heaven but rather to show that the typical attempt to reconcile free will and predestination by having God simply foresee (which, I note, is not as strong as Him "foreknowing") the life of someone He created causes some problems that I can't get past.

Note that I don't know where I stand on the issue. I don't think it is a fatalism vs. free will issue. I know it is complicated, but the ways many people try to accommodate libertarian free will seem to raise problems. I believe part of the reason that God allows things to work out as they do (often messy and with no redemption) is to bring condemnation where it is needed (something only He has the capacity to know) and to shut every mouth before God. When we, for example, think we can be good in our own strength - without dependence on God - God may allow us the time to prove ourselves. And if we ever do, then the necessity of Christ is tainted. We must come to the understanding that we cannot do good. But God permits this rebellion for a season in order that "every mouth may be stopped" before Him. No one will have an excuse. And what God restrains...prevents...keeps from happening...will have been restrained because it would not be to the praise of His glorious grace.

And we only see on a very small scale - our own experience. God is looking at all this in the light of eternity. So those things that He allows to persist for generations and those people He allows to be lost - these things seem incongruous with a loving God from our puny vantage point - but there is a much larger perspective that is needed to realize that the whole motivation of God is not to serve "me" but to bring all things into subjection to "Him". Israel being in Egypt for 400+ years may have seemed cruel and unmerciful (how many generations of Israelites would have lived and died knowing nothing but slavery and bondage), but God's plan transcends the individual at any given moment.

So I'm not coming down on one side or the other of the debate - but the more I look into it, the more it seems as though the standard (libertarian) free will position has real problems.

So how do you see predestination as revealed in scripture?

Predestination is a mistranslation that does not accurately convey what the original proorizo meant. It is accurately translated as predetermined which simply means, determined prior to occurrence.

 

[Word based mystic]

Predestination is a mistranslation that does not accurately convey what the original proorizo meant. It is accurately translated as predetermined which simply means, determined prior to occurrence.

nice one liner speculative assumption to meet your own idea of a robot making God.

all scripture you dont agree with is just a mistranslation.

 

[Truster]

nice one liner speculative assumption to meet your own idea of a robot making God.

all scripture you dont agree with is just a mistranslation.

You lack the intellect, the spiritual ability and the know how to deal with the facts as I have laid them out and so you go down the usual route of ad hominem.

 

[chrysostom]

You lack the intellect, the spiritual ability and the know how to deal with the facts as I have laid them out and so you go down the usual route of ad hominem.

are you a calvinist?

 

[Truster]

To insure there is no ambiguity, or argument to the contrary, I shall state this.

It is my certain knowledge that anyone who calls themselves a Calvinist is dead in sin and has not passed into life.

That being said, I find it sad, but not surprising, that you are unable to deal with the OP or my post, but find it necessary to go about sticking labels on people. You always seem to attempt to stick the wrong label on the wrong person. Are you a shelf stacker at Walmart?

 

[Totton Linnet]

To insure there is no ambiguity, or argument to the contrary

It is my certain knowledge that Trousers is nuts