divine sovereignty and human responsibility

Excellent post! :thumbs:

 

If God "allows" sin, and is still Sovereign, then why can't He allow "repentance" and still be Sovereign????

BBob,

 

You cannot reconcile them perhaps, but others have. Of course they do not hold to your erring position on election, hence they do not suffer the self-inflicted wound of incompatible tenets in their theology.

While there is a recognizable tension for humans regarding capacity for conceptualizing, they (Divine Sovereignty and Human Volition) are quite harmonious in their operation and the conflict exists only in the minds of those who have hold to conflicting theological beliefs.

 

God, logic and His attributes

This discussion has taken place recently. The end of your argument places God as an agent of His foreknowledge and unable to act outside of it but forced to acquiesce.

In the thread a person asked how God relates to His attributes (particularly foreknowledge) and my response was:

The poster's response to this was very astute:

And

Applying what has been said before we can say, God's foreknowledge did not determine who these elect were. It gave Him the capacity to accomplish the election, but not the mentality to determine the elect." A brilliant enlightenment from this poster.

 

Scripture is on your side. :thumbs:

 

Exellent choice of scripture. :thumbs:

Q's posts make me go.....

 

Yes, and are you familiar with its context? Or is this just a verse you use to bow out of a dialogue you initiated that possibly you imagined was impenetrable only to discover you are in the midst of a collapse?

You see friend, though YOU are not comfortable with having to think through what I have said and someone else has said in response (though your rather verbose OP came with the imposition on everyone else to read and consider your heavy dialogue) others have had no problem following it, responding to it and benefiting from it.

So possibly, instead of vainly imagining you are ready for the meat of the Word and then choking on that meat you might want to have it chewed by someone else next time before trying to consume it instead of taking a passage of God's precious Word out of context to feign weakness and solicit pity. And for the record, it appears you are the one confounded right now (as the passage you pointed to states).

 

I think that you raise some important and interesting issues, although I do not share your view on a number of points. In this post, I repost something I posted in another thread when the subject of Romans 9 was brought up. I trust that you and others will not see this counterargument as an "attack" but simply as my contribution to our collective effort to work all this stuff out. Here goes:

Romans 9; 20-23 is not about God's treatment of individuals but is rather about his treatment of national Israel.

Romans 9 is about how God has been faithful to the covenant with national Israel and, more specifically, the "potter's account" in verses 20 - 23 is Paul's explanation of how God "has the right" to use national Israel for a specific purpose in his redemptive plans. It has nothing to do with matters of individual persons being elected to receive or not receive faith.

The fact that Romans 9 and 10 is all about the covenant with national Israel is clear and I suggest that the evidence for this is overwheming. I shall return to this. In a context where Paul is clearly explaining things about national Israel, it makes no sense to have him suddenly go off on a tangent and make theological statements about individuals being pre-destined to saving faith (whether Jew or Gentile or whatever).

What has Paul been talking about just prior to his giving the potter account? He has been talking about a hardening - the hardening of Pharoah. Why has Pharoah been hardened? To effect a great act of redemption of God's part - the deliverance of the Hebrews out of Egypt. It then follows that Paul's giving of the potter's account should also address a hardening that takes place in order to effect great redemptive purpose. Who is being hardened? Israel is being hardened. What is the great redemptive act? - accumulating the sin of the world onto national Israel so that it can then be transferred onto her Messiah. I will provide arguments for all this in other posts.

Now back to Romans 9 (and 10) being all about the covenant: Note the following from Romans 10:

"But the righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down)"or 'Who will descend into the deep?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,"that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming."

Now consider the following from Deuteronomy 30:

It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

Is anyone going to deny that Paul is "transcribing" from this text in Deuteronomy. But what is Deuteronomy 30 all about?

It is about covenant renewal. Starting at verse 1 we have

When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes [a] and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.

This clear reference to the covenant - and specifically the element of covenant renewal - comes at the end of a retelling of the covennat story that begins in Romans 9. Its all there - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the disobedience of the people to the covenant, exile, and here in this text - covenant renewal.

If you come to Romans 9 wanting it to affirm a belief that you bring to the text about individuals being predestined, you can always come to vv 20-23 and claim that your belief is supported. But you do so at the price of ignoring a powerful body of evidence that shows this material is about the "election" of Israel. If one ignores context, almost any position can be argued for.

 

Though you and I may or may not agree on one or more doctrines (I don't know if we do or don't I am simply making a qualifier here), your statement is universally prescriptive and fundamental to grasping the context of any passage, particularly controversial ones.

 

No, I got the point, but being this thread is about Sovereignity of God, I been wanting to ask this question.

Question; If God "allows" sin, and is still Sovereign, then why can't He allow "repentance" and still be Sovereign????



BTW; I believe God is Ominipresent. He don't have to look down through time, He sees all, knows all.

BBob,

 

I do not think that Ephesians 1 makes a case for "election" of individuals generally unto salvation.

In this present post, I intend to demonstrate the mere plausibility of the following claim: Paul’s identification, in parts of chapters 2 and 3, of a well defined set of “prophets and apostles” serves to specifically determine who exactly is being pre-destined as per the material in Ephesians 1.

Please note that in verses 3-12 of chapter 1 Paul continuously refers to an “us” that has been the recipient of numerous blessings, including, I fully admit, a seemingly clear statement that this “us” has indeed been pre-destined to membership in the covenant family.

But, and this is key, a person that is coming to the text unbiased by previous commitments must concede that “us” need not necessarily refer to all people generally – it may refer to a very specific subset of Paul’ contemporaries. In this regard, I will assert that in 21st century evangelicalism we tend to implicitly assume that all Scriptural teaching is being delivered to all human beings “across the gulf of the centuries” as if writers such as Paul were not also sending specific messages to specific people in their own time and culture. Remembering that Ephesians was written to a real set of people 2000 years ago helps us realize that Paul might indeed not be making statement of universal applicability when he talks about an “us” being pre-destined.

Here is Ephesians 2:19-20

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

This text shows that Paul certainly does see the set of “apostles and prophets” as a distinct group of persons and at least proves that we cannot simply assume that in the first 3 chapters of the book, Paul is simply making declarations about what is true for all people. We are being made aware that Paul sees the apostles as a distinct group.

And in Ephesians 3:4-5, Paul writes:

By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit

Again, we have Paul identifying a well-demarcated subset of all human persons. Of course, this and the 2:19-20 proves nothing for the present over and above showing that Paul has in mind this very specific set of persons as a distinct group. In later posts, the case will be made that the pre-destination spoken of in 1:4-5 and 11 is indeed specific to this small group.

To summarize what I claim this post has done: It has been shown to be at least plausible that the “us” who are predestined (as per chapter 1) are in fact the set of “prophets and apostles” later clearly identified as a distinct group (in chapters 2 and 3).

The task of making this particular case that Ephesians 1 does not support the doctrine of election requires a number of posts. I may follow up with more. I assume that arguments that neither Romans 9 nor Ephesians 1 supports election are relevant to this thread.