So noted. 
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Absolutely. That’s why I wanted another poll option in Terry’s list. 
It’s not the ‘free ticket to Heaven’ that @Edgar kept characterizing my stance as presenting, nor is it ‘entitlement’, per @mitchellmckain’s characterization.
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How so? I like Romans 8 … and 7 and 6 and 9, 10, and 11 which all help give a context for where Paul goes with the salvation theme. And especially in Ephesians 1 as well - another magnificent chapter!
But I don’t really mean to press this here if Terry wants more people to engage in his poll before we dicker about any of it down here.
In Romans 8 there is this,
and
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?
and also this:
That means once we are adopted, we are forever. Nothing, including hypothetically ‘my choice’, can dissolve that bond.
ahh! Well in that case I guess I’m in agreement too - other than I don’t draw as much out of the earlier referenced “predestined” as I guess Calvinists would.
And I also realize that these two chosen terms for this poll probably represent much deeper and more extensive systems of thought than my (mostly ignorant) preference for one of them here can take into account on short notice. No doubt they both manage to embody some concepts that have a place in our collective corpus.
So much more to say, and so much more reading/listening to do!
Ya’ think so?
Let’s review the record:
- From my post #9 in Salvation:Faith or works?
- Terry_Sampson
- salvation = getting out of undesirable circumstances
- Jewish phylogeny
- Jews living in Egypt
- Yahweh appears to Moses and says: I want Israel, but not as slaves in Egypt, so I’m going to save them. Go break the news to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go, but don’t expect him to do it, because he doesn’t know who I am and doesn’t have the motivation to set my chosen people free.
- After a number of lessons in what Yahweh can do, Pharaoh gets to know a little about Yahweh, decides that he doesn’t like Him, and figures he can avoid him, by avoiding Moses and Aaron.
- Question: At this point, Pharaoh is annoyed and treating Israel worse, Moses and Aaron are starting to think they;re on fools’ errands, and Israel is still in Egypt and worse off than before Yahweh took an interest in them. How many “faith” points should we give to Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh, and Israel? How many “work” points should we give to Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh, and Israel?
- Then, Yahweh establishes the calendar and tells Moses and Aaron, to tell Israel to obtain year-old, male lambs without blemish, slaughter and roast them whole, paint their doorposts with lamb’s blood, and eat their last meal with their hiking clothes on, because it’s time to leave Egypt.
- Then Yahweh passed through Egypt and killed the firstborn of everybody–from Pharaoh down to prisoners in Pharaoh’s dungeon, including the Egyptians’ livestock. The Egyptians decided it was time for Israel to leave and told them so. Israel high-tailed it out of town.
- That’s the end of the 1st phase of Israel’s salvation from Egypt.
- Now how many “faith” and “work” points would you give to each of the parties in this story, so far? From where I sit, the only one doing any work is Yahweh, and Moses, Aaron, and Israel get “faith” points, but no “work” points unless someone wants to give them a point for leaving Egypt, which would seem weird to me to do.
- Next comes the one-day bus ride into Canaan; oh, wait, … Israel didn’t ride a bus into Canaan, did they? How long did Israel take to get into Canaan? Check our source material: I think it was about 40 years wasn’t it? whining and complaining most, if not all, the way; following a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
- How many “faith” and “work” points do you want to hand out for this second phase of Israel’s salvation, and to whom? IMO, I’d say “1 faith” point for each of the humans, and “1 work” point to Yahweh
Correct me if I misunderstand your position, but it seems to me that you’re inclined to give Israel a “work” point for killing a lamb and painting their door posts with its blood, and another “work” point for putting one foot in front of another on their trek through the desert for 40+ years following the Cloud by day and the Pillar of Fire by night.
- Christian Ontogeny (i.e. the Christian version of Israel’s salvation):
- Jesus of Nazareth, the unblemished Lamb of God, provided by the Father, was crucified, died, was buried, and was resurrected by the Father.
- What part of believing that Jesus died for you do you want a “work” point for, when you wouldn’t even know that he did if someone else hadn’t told you?
- Then there’s what I call “the second phase of salvation”: putting one foot in front of the other, through the desert, in response to the call: “Come follow me.” Do you want a “work” point for leaving “Egypt” and trusting the Lord?
It’s one of those tensed verbs (as opposed to all the other kinds 
), but ‘draw as much’? What’s to draw? It’s pretty binary.
I guess I don’t share in all this preoccupation with “work points”. All your examples are rather making my point for me, are they not? There seems to be a lot of responsive participation in the whole salvation project. There are a few cases in the bible where people (or entire armies) are instructed to just stand still and watch God “gitter done”. But a whole lot more yet give instructions for people to trust God enough to actually do something … like painting door posts with blood and getting ready to leave in the middle of the night.
I’ll retract that. It is a mystery beyond our comprehension how our omnitemporal God executes his providence in sequential, linear time. And again, tensed words – and any word beginning with ‘pre-’ is timebound! – tensed words cannot be directly applied to God.
I’m sure it does … and I’d be disappointed if James wasn’t worked in somehow!
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I’m not preoccupied with them, I’m just calling them what they are: credits for doing what one is instructed to do.
Not by a longshot.
“Responsive participation”??? Ha! I’m a Christian monergist: Free Will is an illusion. So, although I would agree that there’s “responsive participation”, I suspect that you and I don’t agree on what it is. To me, “responsive participation” is “fruit of the Holy Spirit” and not a reward for obedience.
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Well then; I guess you were fated to be a monergist, and I was fated to disagree.
Now … to find the “Christian monergist” emoji … dang! There are a lot of categories the emoji industry hasn’t covered yet! If somebody ever needs a job …! 
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That’s why I’m not. We do have real responsibility and God is absolutely sovereign… at the same ‘time’. Except God is not bound in or by time. Have I mentioned the wonderful mystery of how God providentially orchestrates the timing and placing of events in his interventions? Maybe you have seen me mention Maggie before.
“We have to believe in free will, we have no choice.” I.B. Singer 
Though it’s a bit off topic, or rather a more specific subtopic , I am seeing it pop up which could give the illusion that “once saved always saved” is tied to one of the polled choices.
I just wanted to add that’s not necessarily true. I got one don’t believe in once saved always saved and believe that the terms “predestined” is aligned towards the body as a whole and nkt the individual. The church will never become lost, the body will always be his bride, but the individuals can reject their salvation and turn back to sin. Just like how you can get off the wide road you can also get back on it.
Fated? Is the opera over? I haven’t heard Brünhilde sing yet.
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I have read a lot of it. I just don’t have time to list out scripturally why I believe this. But it’s also something I’m fully convinced off. I place OSAS into the same boat as other subjects I have spent years on and tracing statements made in the New Testament to the Old Testament and placing it in proper context. The verses fit so much better with predestination referring to the entire body versus the individual Christians inside of it. Later on I’ll make an thread backtracking two or three of the most scriptures I see from the new testament being quoted as OSAS and how it was used in the Torah to mean Israel will be saved, not necessarily the Israelite.
I think that the books by Dan Corner did a great job of tracing down these verses and what they mean.
I don’t really fit into either synergist or monergist categories, but I suppose I am more in the synergist category since it is monergism which is the more uncompromising.
Salvation is 100% the work of God, but it is work on living beings with free will in order to change what they want. Thus describing our role as passive receivers is absurd. So while the process of change requires us to want that change at some point, we do not have the knowledge or ability to be in charge of that change – especially in the beginning! So to suggest that we are the initiators is equally absurd.
To position myself on the posted table of positions:
salvation: is sanctification, the removal of the self-destructive habits of sin. It is not divine magic but the result of a long, difficult and painful process, where God teaches us through experiences (before and after death) to change who we are.
assurance of salvation: not possible. It is a contradiction in terms. To look for assurance is to seek damnation for that is the only result to which one can ever be entitled.
predestination: election only refers to roles in God’s providential work not to the eventual personal outcome. Sin makes us predictable. The liberation from sin can only bring us back to Adam where the fall into sin is possible once again.
reprobation: something that people do to themselves by refusing to let go of their sin.
human bondage to sin: Everyone is not the same with regards to sin except in the eventual outcome. For sin is a progressive degenerative illness destroying free will and leading to hell.
original sin: original event with consequences for all including the contamination of the inheritance of the mind we have from God through Adam to include self-destructive habits. We have no guilt from Adam’s sin and we are not born sinners. We are condemned only by our own choices and actions.
where does human contribution come in: at every point. It is after all a change in us. So result is indistinguishable from contribution – they are one and the same thing.
what is justification: After God liberates our free will enough for us to do so, justification is the assent God requires for continuing His work for our salvation. It is to leave the law of sin and put ourselves in the hands of God. But as God lifts us up our freedom only increases. So to say that we cannot jump out of His hands is wrong.
I have previously described myself as a incompatibilist libertarian open theist opposed to both Calvinism and Arminianism.
libertarian: believe in free will… far from absolute or universal, it varies a great deal and is quite fragile, and its role in our actions is probably rare, but it does exist and is the essence of life itself.
incompatibilist: free will is not compatible with determinism or predestination.
open theist: The future only exists as as a superposition of real possibilities, and thus even for an omniscient being the future is only knowable as such a superposition unless one becomes the cause of that future precluding the power to change it (i.e. moving forward in time and making it the past instead). Free will means that God refrains from being the sole cause to chose what happens in such a way.
God’s choosing:
…and yet we are responsible.