Predestination :

Faith & Science Conversation
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Fate cannot be changed.Is a sad reality.Howver hard you try in your life youll only achieve the things fate has deemed you to achieve.Into the more theological historical concept now/

Josephus wrote that around the first century the three sects of Judaism differed on their views.The Essenes and the Pharises argued that God’s providence orders all human events, but the Pharisees still maintained that people are able to choose between right and wrong while the Sadduces didnt have any particular doctrine of it.

Now in the NT there is a verse.Romans 8-11:We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified

This verse i think has many controversies.But it really seems God has a "predestined"plan for everyone.
If thats the case then there arises many questions about suffering ,death and how God is “good”

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If you begin to lay out all the scriptures on this subject of his people versus not his people, you’ll see what I believe is evidence that biblical predestination is about his people collectively, and not individually.

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All are predestined, chosen in Jesus the Predestined, The Chosen One. The faithfulness of the saviour Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the Chosen One, the Predestined One saves all.

When the Father looks down all He sees is the Christ.

There are no complexities, gradations, ins and outs, separate justifieds and sanctifieds and glorifieds and damned.

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Well, I’m a five-point Calvinist.

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Was Jesus??

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Are you a “presuppositionalist”?

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I have not encountered that term before, what exactly does it mean?

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Meaning?Ive never heard this before sorry

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Given what I can read of His teachings, I would conclude that my views generally line up well with His (at least I think they do). But I am not a New Testament scholar, so I am not an expert in interpreting the relevant passages.

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Then, IMO, I’d say you’ve been missing out on a lot of the fun on the Calvinist “bumper car” court. :smile:
What Is Presuppositional Apologetics?

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Then, consider yourself innocent by the grace of God. :laughing:
You have enough challenges right now without jumping into and exploring that lake.

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Well, out of curiosity, are you a Reformed Baptist or an Orthodox Presbyterian?

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What is your heart’s desire?

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The latter (PCA, specifically).

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I strive, with God’s help, to make it conform to God’s law, as stipulated in the Bible.

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What is God’s law? [Sorry @LM77! Catechism and the Socratic method aren’t preferred: we’d rather write ‘systematic theology’ legalistic insurance manuals than have a full encounter with salvation which is just a tilt of the head away.]

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A gentle reminder to everyone here that we prefer users to post in more than single sentences. If you ask a question, please also provide some background to the relevance of the question. Where possible please try to post a reasonable paragraph.

I would also kindly ask, as a Calvinist and a Reformed Christian myself, that we avoid the usual Calvinist tropes and straw men that often get rolled out along with these kinds of topics.

Thank you one and all!

Your sovereignly predestined moderator :crazy_face:

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As for me…

I am an incompatibilist libertarian open theist. I reject all five points of TULIP calvinism and I find a lot of the full statement of the Arminian articles of remonstrance to be even worse.

Total depravity: is wrong but there is a grain of truth there. Total depravity is where all sin leads eventually. But it is easy to see in the Bible that God is often finding good things in people. So it is not that people cannot do anything good, but that the good in them cannot defeat the evil which is also there.

Unconditional election: Election is not about salvation but about God choosing people for a role in His providential work. Those who are elected might not be saved and those who are saved might not be elected.

Limited Atonement: Christ died for all. But God requires us to make a choice. He may have to liberate our free will before we can make such a choice. But is WE who choose whether to accept the gift or not.

Irresistible Grace: Grace may only require the smallest crack in the door… a desire for the desire to be saved and to feel repentance. But we still have to want at least that much. And yes that means that some feel they are dragged kicking a screaming through door when the larger part of them do not want to change their life. But there are those who harden their hearts and choose their sin over goodness, allowing no cracks anywhere for God to get at them.

Perseverance of the Saints: Even asking the question of whether you can lose your salvation is to throw faith out the window. This one transforms faith into entitlement which is behind all the most terrible things that Xtians have done in history. It is nothing less than an abomination, turning Xtianity into something evil.

so what does it mean to say I am an incompatibilist libertarian open theist?

libertarian means I believe in free will not as a magical addition but as a part of the self-organizing process of life itself. It is not universal, absolute, or guaranteed, but varies considerable between people and can be damaged by a great number of different things. Sin destroys free will and makes people predictable and easy to manipulate.

incompatibilist means I do not believe that free will is compatible with determinism or absolute predestination. I don’t think an already written future is even compatible with consciousness.

open theist means the future only exists as a superposition of possibilities. Knowledge is a form of power and as we have discovered in quantum physics to know the future is to create the future. Omniscient means God has the ability to know whatever He chooses same as omnipotence means God has the ability to accomplish whatever He chooses and not that He must do so.

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As you can imagine, we disagree on pretty much every point.

Alas, I have less free time as late so can’t provide a fuller response. If I did you might be surprised to find that we might agree on some of the sub-points you have made, especially around choice, human goodness, and free will. Though we would likely even then disagree over definitions, extents, and first causes! But that’s OK. :slight_smile:

What I will say is this: I am grateful for this forum bringing together such a wide range of Christians across the theological spectrum. I’ve learnt a great deal from reading and interacting with those of wildly different theology to my own. Such as yourself and others. I hope that in some small way this has been a reciprocal process.

I am also glad that we can agree that sin is real and dangerous, that Christ is the Saviour and what matters most is trusting/coming to him as such. And of course, we can agree on the factuality of evolution by natural selection too.

At the end of the day, this crusty ol’ Calvinist is happy to take those ‘wins’ and sit this one out.

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For those wanting to get a good idea about what Calvinist’s believe. Whilst not perfect, RC Sproul’s Chosen By God is as good a place to start as any other.

Equally, for a good overview of Reformed Theology, I would heartily commend the surprisingly readable Heidelberg Catechism (1563). Which you can pick up on Amazon (though plump for one with scripture references) or read it for free, here:

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