Rev. Timothy G. Muse

Two issues come to mind:
1. Who is Judging Who? - One one level, does not GOD, the sovereign creator of the universe, have the right to do what he wants? To try to condemn God is to set one up as HIS judge. This is not only to get things backwards, but not the position you want to be in when he comes as Judge.

2. Is God Unjust in Election? - The answer is no. Salvation is by grace and not by man's merit. God does not owe salvation to anyone, but is "gracious" in saving some. For example, if I have ten dollars in my pocket that fully belongs to me, and choose to give two dollars of that money to one person, am I being unjust or unfair to another person just because I don't give them any? The answer is no! If the money belongs to me, and I do not owe either person anything, then I would be just in choosing one to give to and not the other.

Mageth

If you believe "might makes right", sure.

The OP was questioning, not judging.

Above you assert that we should not judge God. That precludes you from being able to make this judgment as well.

If that's the case, then why not salvation for everyone?

And it follows that God is not gracious by not saving the others.

Rev. Timothy G. Muse

Grace can be compared with love. Let's say I love my wife, but do not show the same love to everyone else in the world, does that mean I am not loving?

The same is true of grace. You can be gracious to some, without having to show the same measure of grace to all!

Mageth

It means you are not loving towards everyone else in the world, yes.

Yeah, but then I'm not God, am I?

In another thread today, you called God "the sovereign, omnipotent, and omniscient one." Do you not consider God omnibenevolent?

Again, why does God show grace to some and not to others, if no one at all deserves grace by their own merit?

Warthur

This analogy would be more accurate if:

a) You had an infinite amount of money (god's grace is supposed to be boundless, after all) and

b) Everyone else needs to accept $2 from you or burn in hell forever.

In such a situation, holding money back from someone seems mean-spirited.

Rev. Timothy G. Muse

In Romans 9:14ff we read: "What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy."

You must remember it is MAN, not God who SINNED against God, and therefore incurred the judgment, wrath and curse of God. "For the wages OF SIN (not the lack of God's graciousness) is death"

I wonder if you asked the Surviving family members of the 9/11 victims if they would consider themselves to be "mean spirited" when not giving gifts of whatever size to the terrorist or terrorist groups who carried out acts of hatred toward them.

Grace is not ultimately dependent upon the amount one possesses, the amount needed by others, or the consequences to be faced by others, but lies with the choice, pleasure and desires of the one who chooses to extend it or nott.

Chris Weimer

So basically, we all get fucked because of Adam. Yeah, God is great all right. God, if he exists, is an evil God and loves to play with people, sending some to heaven and some to hell. Hey wait a minute, God did make us after his image, meanspirited and Nazi. At least there are some people here on Earth who hate Hitler.

Mageth

So, how does that make God not unjust, exactly?

Neither you nor the author of Romans prove that God is unjust. You both just point out that we're stuck with whatever God arbitrarily decides.

But ALL of us are BORN sinners (and not by our choice), and all sin (it's apparently unavoidable). According to the Bible, that's the way we all are, and just like none of us can do anything to merit grace, none of us did anything to merit being born sinners and thus, unavoidably, sinning. Why the heck is God wrathful at us for being born in a way that we had no choice in? I wasn't there with Adam and Eve, that's for sure.

That's a totally inapt analogy. What had I done to God on the day I was born? And I thought God was supposed to be big on forgiveness, love your enemies, and whatnot.

A better analogy, perhaps, would be if, thirty years down the line, one of those surviving family members refused to pull an Arab-American from in front of a speeding car.

Again, you do not prove that God is unjust. You just point out that we're stuck with whatever God arbitrarily decides.

Rev. Timothy G. Muse

Your argument is from a Western versus a Biblical viewpoint of humanity. In the west, we tend to view each person simply from an "invididual" standpoint. However, the Bible views of all as Sons of Adam, not only born phyically from or as descendants from his loins, but represented by him who is the Father of humanity. (Physically speaking, he was our physical/representative head, and therefore you and I WERE represented (or present in one sense) in the Garden such that his choice was in effect the choice of all humanity. This is clear from Rom 5:12 that says "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through ONE MAN (ADAM), and death through sin, and in this way death came to ALL MEN (US INCLUDED), because ALL (US INCLUDED thru Adam) sinned." The good news though, is that in the same way Adam was a Federal Head for all humanity; Jesus Christ has become a Federal Head for those who seek salvation through him by faith.

jbernier

Hang on there. We are talking about viewing each person from an individual standpoint by the very fact that we are talking about personal (or individual) salvation.

You are, right, though, I think. I think that a big part of the reason we find Biblical patterns of thought so difficult is that they tend not to reduce the social world to a agglomeration of individuals in need of personal salvation and/or self-actualization. The community is almost always the locus for God's redemptive and reconciliatory activity. The notion of a 'chosen people' only makes sense from this perspective: That, for some reason, there are certain communities (in traditional Christian thought, Israel and the church) within which God is working out redemption and reconciliation.

The idea of Adam as a "Federal Head" is only clear because you threw in parenthetical commentary. Let us remove those: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned." What we seem to have is an argument that looks like this:

One man sinned.
Therefore sin entered the world.
Death enters the world through sin.
"In this way" death came to (or, perhaps better, "among") all men.
As all sinned.

Now is it actually saying that all men sinned in Adam? Or it is merely saying that death entered the world as a result of that one man's actions and that, since all men since Adam have sinned, therefore all men since Adam died. In short is it establishing a causal relationship between Adam's sin and our sin or is it merely saying that death enters the lives of each person in the same way that it entered the live of Adam: Sinfulness. Put elsewise, I think that the passage might be saying "Look, sin and death go together. They went together in the life of your father Adam and they go together in your life today." I am not at all convinced that Adam is clearly presented as a "Federal Head" in any fashion here.