What about
“The Spirit works salvation in those and only those who would come to God given such prompting by the Spirit; the only reason that they would want to come to God is through the work of the Spirit; and God knows exactly who those are because he is outside of time.”
Would a formulation of election like that be acceptable? Because that would be a more accurate description of my views on the subject.
I’ve appealed to this type of thinking many times but I think it just extends the probalem another step, it doesn’t answer it.
*Heaven enters the chat…”
I would just like to point out that Jesus quotes the beginning of the Psalm, when he easily could have quoted the end. I think he has it in view but he was just agonizing in garden before, falling to the floor almost out of control. Now he is abandoned by his followers, and being tortured and nailed to a Roman cross. The simplest meaning is he truly felt abandoned. But trusted in God for what was to come next. It is why he willingly went to the cross despite not wanting to.
I think that appears a more humane view but it certainly raises it own logical questions about free will, rests on an invented and questionable notion (maybe a true one) that because God is outside time he can know things before they happen exhaustively, and there are exegetical questions to be raised with how this coheres with various aspects of scripture. More human but it almost looks like a dues ex machina to me.
This seems to renders preaching the gospel somewhat odd. I’m only doing it because God told me to. Not because someone might genuinely respond to it. People only respond to it if God foreknew their heart and elects them to at that time and he can elect them to do this anytime, whether I choose to follow the great commission or not. I feel this creates a schism between what t I believe and the genuineness of my actions.
I see a lot of questions but certainly its better model than one where God just sends some to hell and picks others to save. At the end of the day, I am not sure why some believe and some don’t. I think scripture offers us far less certainty on this and many other issues the. Many think it does.
Vinnie
That, I will very readily agree with, though probably not on the exact set of issues with lower certainty, given the fact that we are different individuals with different theological backgrounds.
I’d say that preaching is a means by which God effects conversions and maturation in faith, and that God often uses means through human actions, but exactly how that interrelates with election is a mystery to me. As is trying to sort out exactly how God’s sovereignty interacts with human actions.
Would he be this God?:
I would still maintain, though, that God’s omnitemporality gives us a different perspective. Granted, not one we easily get our heads around, but remember Judas. He was part of God’s ‘plan’, a timebound word, but Judas was still fully responsible for his actions.
I would just read Psalm 22 (all of it from beginning to end) and not add anything to it.
Trusted in God for what? What was the concern which Jesus was filled with?
I don’t think it was his own life and comfort. 100% human, sure. But human is a large spectrum. So where in that spectrum was Jesus? At the low end or the high end? At the high end of the human spectrum are people who care very little for their own life and comfort and will sacrifice all that for a greater good – without whining of any kind (the only regret being that they could not do more. That is why I don’t believe this rhetoric about Gethsemane and Jesus cry on the cross being human weakness. I don’t believe it. I cannot aim so low in my regard, when there are so many human beings who do better.
So… trusted in God for what? I can believe it would be for making it so His work in Israel would not be for nothing. I can believe it would be for revitalizing His disciples to do what He called them to do. That I can believe. Anything less would have me looking elsewhere.
Indeed. That sort of nonsense will get no support from me. All the value I see in Christianity falls apart in that sort of theology. I am not desperate to cling to Christianity. Atheism looks fine to me. My honest opinion is that atheism is wrong… just a little too good to be true, frankly.
Okay, the word there is δόξης (DOX-ace), genitive from δόξα (Dox-a). In the time of Homer it was used for “opinion”, from a root meaning to seem, to appear, to think, to accept. But Paul’s not getting it from classical Greek, he’s getting it from the Septuagint – and the Septuagint effectively changed the meaning due to it being a translation of the Hebrew כָּבוֹד (ka-bode) the core meaning of which is close to the old slang “heavy” because it conveys both the idea of weight and that of profundity, and so is used in the Old Testament to indicate majesty and grandeur – indeed the well-known song that calls God “awesome” is quite on target; God’s “glory” is His “awesomeness”, His majesty.
A fascinating thing about כָּבוֹד is that at times it can be seen; at other times it manifests itself in another phenomenon. The most direct manifestation of the latter are the pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day when Israel was in the wilderness. But though interesting, this aspect isn’t involved in the Romans 3 passage. What is likely linked is the idea that God’s כָּבוֹד arises from His holiness, He “otherness” or apart-ness.
And all of this from the Hebrew carries over into the Greek δόξα, so by the time Paul is writing the word is practically a Greek container for the Hebrew concept.
Give me a Lamborghini and I’ll boast about it – just long enough to get a good price for it and do some house repairs.
What you’re referencing here is the response to God’s glory; “boasting” is a good word. The standard word is “glorifying”, which can be defined as declaring God’s majesty. But that’s not what Paul is saying; he’s essentially summing up verses 10b - 18 and stating a result: we have sinned, and sin does not declare God’s majesty, thus we have fallen short of God’s glory – not short of glorifying Him, although that is true, but short of sharing the majesty for which He meant us. We are supposed to be awesome by sharing God’s awesomeness, but the least sin short-circuits that.
Ah, but here is a point where philosophy helps: “substance” in philosophy means the essential characteristics; it does not imply anything at all. So in this instance philosophy rescues the discussion from common understanding.
In this case God is the space that He fills.
Correct. But you guys are arguing around a question posed for debate at a conference I attended long ago: “Is God a thing?” That was really a way of asking just what noun can we use as a referent for God without dragging in baggage.
This is a point where I like my older brother’s conception of God as an entire universe to/of Himself: He is the void, and He is that which fills it.
The Greek word is better: Παντοκράτωρ (pan-toh-KRA-tore) indicates that all the power that there is, is His. That escapes the “He can do anything” silliness with its inherent logical contradiction(s). What it tells us is that whatever power something or someone has, that power comes from God. This applies not just to impressive majestic feats of power but to the very least: my fingers tapping my keyboard do so by God’s power; my puppy Knox scratching his neck does so by God’s power; the drops of water freezing outside my window, making an icicle longer happens by God’s power; the photons and electrons carrying the words I’m typing do so by God’s power all just as much as Jesus walking on the water.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
This is the famous word “ὁμοούσιος” (ho-mo-OU-see-ohs); the phrase in the Creed is “ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί”. The word comes from ὁμός (ho-MOS), “same” and οὐσία (OO-see-ah) “being” or “essence”, thus “[of] the same essence”.
“Of one being” is an older, somewhat traditional rendition; “of the same essence” I think was first used by the Orthodox; “of one substance” was common around seventy-ish years ago. “Of one being” really doesn’t get the idea across to modern Western folks, I don’t think.
Careful with the spelling! That one vowel in the middle makes a difference: with the “i” it means something will happen soon; with the “a” it means “looming” (in the older sense) or “deeply present”.
Specifically, foreknowledge. Calvin’s failure here was a matter of geometry, of regarding God as ‘stuck’ in the same timeline we are. Take that line and add in two more dimensions and foreknowledge no longer means necessary. In fact that is contrary to the scriptures, since there are instances saying something is going to happen but then it doesn’t happen, something else does.
He is so Eastern in this! also very much like Dr. Micahel Heiser (which is probably one of the reasons I really like Heiser).
Here he’s not quite so Eastern; the Orthodox are far more likely to just say “Don’t speculate”. That’s why the East (and Luther) never accepted transubstantiation – not because it’s wrong but because it is speculation.
Oh, so true!
I’ve always put this in the category of “the mystery of godliness” that Paul mentions. God “made Him to be sin” is just mind-boggling and admits of no sensible explanation.
Interestingly when Jesus first starts preaching His proclamation is almost always misunderstood, especially in the West: we take "the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the good news” as a pair of statements where “repent” is something to be done once; instead there are two things we miss – first, that the command to repent is in the present imperative form that is far better translated as “be repenting”; second, that this is in parallel with the first statement and so being repenting and believing the good news is what constitutes our transition to the Kingdom. Thus when we pray “Your Kingdom come” we are praying that we will keep repenting and keep believing and in doing so will spread that message to others.
That reminds of the present continuous tense shown in the YLT of John 14:21:
Not being an antinomian, thanks for showing me another ‘rule’ – not to be legalistic about, but another one of the moral ‘laws of love’, a ruler to test ourselves against, “Be repenting!” (Not just parenthetically, I’m not enough like that.)
It does give some credence to the Orthodox contention that works are necessary, doesn’t it?
And if we’re not testing, we’re not being. (That’s reminiscent of academia – if we’re skipping tests, we’re not being good students. ; - ) I don’t think you have to be Orthodox to affirm the latter half of James 2. 
And this is the thinking that falls short of human understanding of justice causing people to throw Christianity in the garbage can. It is why many are turning to the less Biblical answer of universalism, because calling it justice to punish the finite misdeeds of human beings with eternal torment sounds more like insanity than justice. This is made even worse with the idea that all have sinned and that sin poisons everything they do making it impossible for any good they do to be worth anything but damnation for all time.
This makes Christianity sound like pure psychological poison and we see these deranged examples of parents telling their young children that they are evil and must be punished. The only thing that seems good for, is raising your children to be serial killers with no respect whatsoever for human life. NO! This theology is WRONG!
The answer is that heaven, hell, and salvation has nothing to do with being good enough. Yes by the time we can speak we have learned some of the self-destructive habits of sin (and so none can say they are without sin). But the reason why this dooms us is not because we are made evil and worthy of eternal damnation but because it is the nature of sin to grow and destroy everything that is good. Thus the difference between heaven and hell is not about those who are worthy but about those who are willing to change.
NO! Children are not evil. And no, children are not worthy of eternal punishment. And Jesus says we should become like children because children are the most willing to change, spending all their time learning new things and trying to become more and better at everything. This is why I don’t need this “age of accountability” Band-Aid that many come up with to soften their theology in regards to children. The need for arbitrary fixes like this should be telling people that something more fundamental is wrong with their theology.
Human justice is the cause of most abhorrent theology. We seem to need wrongs to be punished. The whole concept of forgiveness seems to stick in the craw.
God claims not to think as we do so to impose human justice on God is futile.
It is humans trying to emulate God that claims all the depravity and evil. And the upshot of this is eternal torment.
Richard
It strikes me that nowhere is it written that “His justice endures forever” but it is written that His mercy endures forever. That should tip the scales towards mercy!
It also sounds contrary to the scripture that decrees an eye for an eye. On that basis I could see punishment lasting however long it took to make a person relive all his/her offenses against others from the side of those others, but anything longer than that violates the principle that the punishment cannot exceed the crime. So the objection against eternal torment arises out of the changes that Christianity brought to Western civilization.
I remember in an educational psychology course it was noted that in English-speaking cultures parents tell children “You are bad!” while in Germanic and Latin cultures the statement is “You did a bad thing”. So kids in English-speaking cultures end up with a built-in guilt trip and thus a psychological deficit. This matched a study I read about a few years ago that was looking at why the U.S. has such high levels of mental illness compared to other developed countries and tentatively concluded that people in the U.S. have been burdened by guilt since childhood.
True – they are broken, but broken does not equal evil. If you’re broken, that suggests you can be repaired, but if you’re evil you can only be punished or at best be burned to get rid of the evil.
I remember encountering that idea for the first time and finding it revolting. The difference between children and adults doesn’t lie in some contrived legal patch but lies in the children and the adults themselves: we are in essence “professional sinners” while children are mere dabblers or amateurs.
Later I encountered the “age of accountability” idea in a Lutheran context, but it was a very different thing: it referred to when someone has grown enough they can start taking responsibility for their own spiritual life. That made it a positive thing, a step forward, not an excuse to rescue God from Himself.
That is an oversimplification. The truth is more that theology clings to archaic ideas of justice while the ideas of justice in human society has greatly improved. That is one of the reasons I am skeptical of St. Roymond’s claim that these improvements come from Christianity. It is more reasonable to credit God with that, where even the work of secular societies on these improvements might ultimately come from God.
People can project anything on to God and call that God’s idea of justice. But the point is that this theology which says it is justice for finite misdeeds to get an eternity of torment will no longer be accepted. It doesn’t make sense. My resolution is different than the universalist one, which is to reject the notion that heaven, hell, and salvation has anything to do with justice and what we deserve, and is instead about the destructive power of sin and the need to change.
No,
A child is innocent until corrupted by society
How anyone can condemn a baby is beyond me
Richard
I don’t think that is necessary. If a religion helps people build a relationship with God and a reverence for what He has created they might develop an affinity for eternity which transcends the need for their own physical or psychic immortality. Such a perspective could enable anyone to elaborate or reformulate ‘the rules’ and would go a long way toward improving our life here and now.
A society, population of 2. 
Most little kids don’t need to be taught to grab a toy from another and say “MINE!”
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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