Sabine Grant

Jake.... I would suggest you read or attempt to read ( I recognize how tedious the task can be) the Westminster Confession of Faith to have a better understanding of calvinist theology. You can probably get a macro vision by reading only the shorter catechism part of the document.

What Romans 8: 28 and 29 states is that God predestinated those He foreknew to be conformed to the image of His Son. I personaly understand this verse to refer to Christlikeness not to God planning people's lives. I believe it refers to God knowing whom will or will not come to Christ. But again, it is my personal belief.
Can you please quote verses which clearly state that God planned our lives? ( the many times you referred to in your post).

Sabine Grant

no I do not believe that God controls people like robots and plans their lives. ( that is the erroneous meaning given to predestination). yes I believe that God has knowledge of what choices a person will make. But He does not control those choices. Can you see the difference?
Same suggestion to you as I made to Jake. It is only when I studied that document that I could understand the nuances of calvinist theology. I think it is better to study the document itself than to form any opinion based on what other christians believe or do not believe. All theological themes presented in the Confession are indeed supported by scripture quotes....and not just a random verse taken out of context.
I am hoping a scholar calvinist will jump in this thread....

SteveD

Sabine,
Thanks for answering my question.

Whether god directly controls your choices or whether they unfold of their own accord, if they can only turn out one way then that sounds like predestination to me. It seems to me that if god knows what your choices will be then there is only one thing that can, and will, happen. Why do you not consider this to be predestination? There must be some subtlety that I am missing.

Steve

MrFrosty

That is more or less how I personally interpret Calvinist predestination: if I read the spoiler about a particular film, e.g. it informs me who dies off halfway through or who survives to the very end, then those characters are going to have no choice based on the script / screenplay but to act in a manner that brings about that end result. In a nutshell, the means may be unknown (i.e. the scenes leading up to the result) but the end is not. They still live or survive no matter what they do or say.

Similarly, certain individuals are supposedly predestined to be saved irrespective of the means of arriving at that destination. So, can you really say those people have complete and total free will?

There are many ways of travelling to Washington D.C. but you still end up there -- if God knows you will arrive at Washington D.C., the path taken is irrelevant, then does that traveller have free will? I think not. They have no choice but to end up there if God already knows who will ultimately reach Washington D.C. They may choose from different paths -- flights, roads, trains, etc -- but they cannot choose not to arrive at Washington D.C. It is an inevitable result in the same way as knowing the score of a sports game before watching the highlights.

This is akin to fatalism, is it not? Somebody clarify this point please.

wade-w

How is that different from predestination? If your god knows, in advance, who will believe and who will not, then we have no real choice in the matter. Thus our final destination is pre-determined.

Sabine Grant

I understand the word predestination ( as in destiny) to be a direct intervention from God in controling the outcome. It is related to fate indeed as brought up before. However it is not the meaning I understand from those verses.

Are we dealing on the word destiny or destination here? same in french... destin or destination..

The choice to believe or not believe is not imposed by God. There is no fate factor involved in that choice. The choice remains personal. The cause for faith is not a telepathic act from God on human beings.

That God predestines those who accept Christ to be conformed to Christ ( that means they benefit of the pardon of their sin thru the rigtheousness of Christ) does not imply that God made those individuals accept Christ.

wade-w

If your god is omniscient, then he already knows who will and who will not believe. Thus, the outcome is predetermined. Therefore there is no true choice involved.

Rousseau_CHN

I got a laugh out of this thread. Huge flaws in the Bible, whoa, what an insight.


The Illiad is full of inconsistency too. One damning example is the fact that Troy was already destroyed even before the first wave of supposedGreek invasion even occured.

Shall we now start to correct the obvious flaws int he Illiad.

No because it's just a story, it's jsut a myth...and let's treat it taht way.

the same with the Bible, it's just a story, it's just a myth.

Rousseau_CHN

in my brief stay in the II. I have discovered that it's does not augur very well with anyone to be discussing about nonsense.

I wouldn't be caught dead passionately arguing that Cinderalla couldn't have possibly left her glass slipper one december night.

In the same manner that I now refuse to be embroiled in nonsense like three persons in one God. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Predestination.

If they do exist, they belong to an entirely different world, for which we have no knowledge and have no care.

SimplyAtheistic

Hey, I needed a title to grab attention
Jake