Carrie

--Romans 8:29-30 and Romans 9:16-23 --

I’ve had a problem with these scriptures from the beginning. People in my church tried to explain it away, but it says what is says, and means it!

These scriptues say that God predestines people to be saved. Predestined means they were chosen from the beginning of time to become Christians. It does not mean that God knew they would decide to become Christians someday and so he called them. Supposedly God calls everyone to him, but THIS says that people were predestined to be called or not.

Romans 9:16 says that it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. Sounds to me like even if a person
really desires God and tries, it doesn’t matter.

Verse 18 says God has mercy on who he wants to have mercy and hardens who he wants to harden. "So why does God still blame us?" And Paul answers that by saying, “Who are you to talk back to God?” Then he says, “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction? What
if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, who he prepared in advance for glory?”

So God PREPARED people to be objects of destruction. Predestination means that people do not have a choice. Their destination is pre-chosen for them. Some people were made for destruction, and some for salvation.

And even IF this might not be what Paul meant, many people sure believed it! Most Christians TODAY do not believe in predestination, because it seems wrong to them, but Christians
long ago really believed that some people were just made for destruction, and others were made for heaven. And there was a lot of fear and depression about this, and suicide (I saw a special about this on the Discovery channel).

So even it wasn't meant the way it reads, why would God allow a terrible and confusing scripture like this to be in his Bible?

What I think is that Paul was just spouting off from his own mouth, and this was not Inspired by God. That’s why Paul says, “what if,” because he doesn’t know, he’s just guessing. So it’s not like everything Paul said is the word or the Lord. It's just Paul’s opinion.

But if you do think Paul's words are God's words, then you can't know whether or not you'll make it as a Christian. Even if you have been one for years, you may have been predestined for destruction, and therefore your heart will get hard, and you will end up leaving Christianity. Not much security there.

There are scriptures that make a person's salvation sound more secure, but there are also a lot of scriptures that don't offer much security of salvation. But that's for a whole other thread. When I was a Christian, I never was really secure that I would make it to heaven, so there wasn't much joy in my salvation.

Jobar

Well said, Carrie.

[sarcasm]
Isn't is just wonderful how you can answer every question from the wisdom of the Bible?[/sarcasm]

doc58

Carrie,
Amazing when the light comes on isn't it?
I used to believe strongly in predestination, much to my chagrin.
Salvation by grace must, by definition, involve predestination.

I hear Christians talk about how wonderful grace is but I have realized that the concept of salvation by grace is a disgusting concept. Since grace means something God bestows on some without considering any quality of the person, then any grace bestowed is totally random. Therefore, salvation by grace is the same as salvation by drawing straws- totally random. So whether a person is in heaven eternally or tormented eternally really come down to a toss of the dice. How absurd is that?

I cannot believe I had such a huge blind spot.

Vinnie

Salvation is by grace through faith. Faith, despite what some might tell you, technically, is an "action" :-D

The real question is, how can God transform a sinner through grace without violating his free will? C'mon, any takers?

You can find verses for free will and predestination all day if you go proof-text hunting:

Here is a chart I put up:

http://www.geocities.com/ilgwamh/fre...stination.html

Here is commentary on Rom 8:29-30 by Raymond Brown in his Intro to the NT p. 583:

In Rom 8:29-30 Paul says that those whom God foreknew, he also "predestined" (from proorizein, "to decide before") and those whom God predestined, God also called. In the course of theological history this passage fed into important debates about God predestining those who would be saved. Without entering those discussions we should be aware that, despite the wording, the passage is not necessarily meant to cover God's dealings with all human beings of all times. First, it is prompted by a specific problem, namely, that most of the Jews who had been confronted with the revelation in Christ had rejected him. Second, the goal of the predestining is salvific. Paul thinks that the ultimate purpose of the hardening of Israel is "that the full number of Gentiles may come in and this all Israel may be saved" (11:25-26). Also, "God has delivered all to disobedience in order that He might have mercy on all" (11:32). This is very far from predestining some people to damnation. Third, a recognition of how Jews thought about divine causality is important. In the DSS we hear that God established the entire plan before things exist; yet other texts make it perfectly clear that people act freely. A Western logic whereby, if God has decided beforehand, that must mean that human beings are predetermined, is not easily to be imposed on Paul.

Needless to say, I agree that is is a very horrible view that God predestines some to hell. I find it to be morally repugnant!

Vinnie

Gringo

This very issue became my stumbling block after engaging some Calvinists on the T.U.L.I.P. doctrines. The first four-- total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistable grace-- were the ones I found to be the most disagreeable. Many of these guys believed that even babies, because of Adam's sin, deserved eternal damnation. I don't believe this last concept is supported anywhere in the Bible, but in studying the Bible to defeat these guys' arguments, I found so many things that seemed so unjust. Supposedly, since Adam, we have known the difference between good and evil. So many things I've read of these doctrines seemed so evil. Depressed, I kept reading for months and months article after article and several books on the dotrine of election. I was also reading the Bible to a greater extent than I ever had before, and was finding even more troubling things. Among the fruit Christians were supposed to bear were love, joy, peace, kindness, and goodness. I saw little of these attributes in the learned Calvinists who had the proof texts to clobber me with. They seemed to have faithfulness, faithfulness to cruel doctrines. Faithful biblioidolators. Then, after a long period of grief and anxiety for myself, my heretical ancestors (mostly of Arminian persuasion), my posterirty, and the rest of humanity, I came across this article, had a good laugh and eased up a bit. This same turmoil brought me to this web site, which has been helpful. I'm still caught in that uncomfortable place to be, between believing and unbelieving. My fear and expectation of judgement are a bit fainter, but at least I look a bit more critically at my memes.

Mageth

"God has delivered all to disobedience in order that He might have mercy on all" (Rom 11:32).

This verse leaves something to be desired. Why didn't god just not deliver anyone to disobedience and thus not be required to have mercy on all? That would have been more just course, in that none would be "lost".

Vinnie

I personally don't believe God delivered people to such a state. Our free will pushes God away from us. We are not held responsible on account of Adam (who is mythical anyways!!!!) or Eve.

And I find election to be a pretty sour doctrine myselm. I consider harder form of calvinism to be unethical. Its close to racism in my book.

I think the Brown quote helped explain Paul's mind on this. Somehow he probably thought free will and determinism were compatible. The same for many other ancients. That is why the Bible speaks so much of both election and free will. Plus, Paul's comments were in light of a specific historical problem that he needed to explain. Why were the Jews not accepting the message? That might have made him scratch his head once or twice and he had to explain it somehow. He was optimistic thought if you read the account.

Gringo, you know not all Christians hoild to the tulip or "original sin" right?

Vinnie

Gringo

Yes, Vinnie. I was raised in Southern Baptist, Pentacostal, Nazarene and United Methodist churches, none of which hold to TULIP, although the Southern Baptists hold to P. I thought Calvinism was a dead thing until I ran into some. For a good example of the hard Calvinists we're talking about, read a couple of these articles . I can see why so many millions died in religious violence between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. These guys forgot to love their enemies, because they were too busy stomping on serpents' heads. And to them, everything and everyone who does not interpret scripture in their narrow vision is a serpent. Our fore-fathers dealt with exactly this crew in dealing with the Puritans. It's a good thing our fore-fathers separated church and state.

Read this poem by Robert Burns . Though it is a satire, it defines their attitudes and hypocrisy perfectly. I'm not saying all Calvinists are this way, but those who hold firmly to High Calvinism are. As I went to Calvinistic church for awhile, I had the opportunity to pray with some and hear some pray, and prayers such as this satire were not at all unusual. I know these guys are a minority in Christendom, but they're out there. In grounding myself in the Bible to contest what I construed to be their blasphemies, I've found some tough hurdles to overcome, much tougher than arguements involving science vs. religion, but arguements involving good vs. evil.