1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

TULIP: Unconditional Election

Discussion in 'Other Christian Denominations' started by SpiritualMadMan, Dec 9, 2010.

  1. SpiritualMadMan

    SpiritualMadMan New Member

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2003
    Messages:
    2,734
    Likes Received:
    0
    WARNING THIS THREAD COULD GET HOT!

    OK,

    GE Posted this:

    'TULIP' for:
    'T' for Total Depravity of man ...
    'U' for Unconditional Election ...
    'L' for Limited Atonement ...
    'I' for Irresistible Grace ...
    'P' for Perseverance of the saints ...

    Please explain Unconditional Election.

    I *think* I understand this one from our debates on Predestination. If so, this could get *very* interesting. With a lot of "Proof Texting". :)
     
  2. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jun 5, 2010
    Messages:
    33,373
    Likes Received:
    1,568
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Its very wise for you to have asked this question in "Other Christian Denominations" My complements to your sense of survival...LOL
     
  3. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jun 5, 2010
    Messages:
    33,373
    Likes Received:
    1,568
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Here is a good baseline for you

    Taken from "By Grace Alone"
    a d o c t r i na l s t u dy b y J im McCl a r t y

    For a more theological explanation, Pastor David Morris defines election
    this way:
    “Because of man’s Total Depravity and inability, salvation from
    sin and its penalty is completely of the Lord, our Triune God. In
    eternity past, before the worlds were created, God chose in Christ
    a great multitude that no man could number. The election of this
    number out of the mass of damnation of ruined mankind as they
    stood in Adam was based on God’s grace and good pleasure and
    on nothing in man by way of condition or foreseen quality. God
    purposed this election for His own glory.”
     
  4. Thinkingstuff

    Thinkingstuff Active Member

    Joined:
    May 14, 2008
    Messages:
    8,248
    Likes Received:
    9
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    unconditional election is a statement simply stating that there are no conditions set by God in which he uses as a litmus to elect individuals to be saved. There is niether quality nor merit that a person may attain in order for them to be elected. I call it random however most hold to soveriegnty.
     
  5. billwald

    billwald New Member

    Joined:
    Jun 28, 2000
    Messages:
    11,414
    Likes Received:
    2
    >Please explain Unconditional Election.

    In one sentence, God can save anyone he chooses "in" Christ Jesus.
     
  6. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jun 5, 2010
    Messages:
    33,373
    Likes Received:
    1,568
    Faith:
    Baptist
    this could get *very* interesting. With a lot of "Proof Texting".

    Not so heated I'm thinking.
     
  7. annsni

    annsni Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    May 30, 2006
    Messages:
    20,914
    Likes Received:
    706
    Yep - basically that God chooses who He will save just because. There is nothing inherent in the man or woman that would cause God to choose him - He just does.
     
  8. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2010
    Messages:
    6,890
    Likes Received:
    1
    Unconditional election is God’s choice of certain individuals unto salvation before
    the foundation of the world while others are passed by. This choice is based on
    God’s sovereign will alone and not on anything in or about the one chosen.

    http://www.fbccarmel.com/ccpapers/Unconditional Election.pdf
     
  9. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    GE:

    The difference between 'at random' and 'sovereignty', is the difference between 'fatalism' and 'sovereignty'. And that difference is that God acted Tri-Unely. Were God's decisions of only the Father, or only the Son, or only the Holy Spirit, God's Eternal Predestination would have been no different than Islamic fatalism.

    Then the Living Actual Truth of this difference between the Predestination of the God who is God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the fatalism of Unitarianism or and Islam (and, in my opinion between the God of Arminianism and the God of Calvinism), is, That God EVER, and ONLY acts (—and to have Predestinated the eternal destiny of every work of His hands is as much an ACT of God as was its creation—) BY, IN, AND THROUGH, AND TO THE GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST. God is dead, lived He not by, in, through, and to the glory of Jesus Christ— Jesus Christ who became Man and lived and acted and taught to the glory of God only and WAS the Glory of God— the Glory of God: The Father and The Son and The Holy Spirit.

    Now THIS and ONLY true and living GOD, through Jesus Christ ever acting, EVER AND ALWAYS, ACTS “to US-ward”, or He is a dead God. And “to us-ward” means, ‘to-the-SALVATION-ward-of-us’, TO THE EFFECTIVE, TRIUMPHANT, GLORIOUS, salvation of us. So that in no single case of an Elect of God ("God knows them who are His"), God would FAIL— FROM EVERLASTING, would not fail; “so that WHO-SO-EVER BELIEVETH in Him (and NO other), should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

    (Thinkingstuff, you are right handed, are you?)
     
    #9 Gerhard Ebersoehn, Dec 9, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 9, 2010
  10. billwald

    billwald New Member

    Joined:
    Jun 28, 2000
    Messages:
    11,414
    Likes Received:
    2
    TULIP only gets complicated because True Believers want the rest of us to end up in Hell and thus can't make themselves believe that God would "elect" everyone as the null position/condition.
     
  11. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2010
    Messages:
    6,890
    Likes Received:
    1
    Bill

    Sounds like you may have some course work in non-parametric statistics.....Null Hypothesis.

    :)
     
  12. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian

    GE:

    YES! Except for two factors of Divine intervention in the affairs of men:

    One, That none are simply "passed by", or simply 'chosen for salvation'. Each whether saved or reprobate, is visited with "the strength of sin", which is the Law. Those of God’s election “in Christ”; those not of God’s Election, in themselves.

    Two, God’s Election is based on God’s sovereign will realised in eternity and time in Christ “by the sacrifice of Himself”, and not on anything in or about the one chosen except that his being a chosen elect of God’s mercy from eternity is as real as the fact that he was born a death-deserving sinner among death-deserving sinners.

    God looked for that Divine Predestination IN his elect —not only ‘about’ his elect— for to save them through and IN, Jesus Christ.
     
  13. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    GE:

    "Amazing grace"! Grace that not always surprises us could be human goodness, but not the grace of God.
     
  14. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2010
    Messages:
    6,890
    Likes Received:
    1

    Gerhard, I am a simple man, could you please assist me in understanding what you were saying here.

    BTW: I was only offering that definition for my "reformed" brethren. I myself do not consider myself to be "reformed", and thus I remain at present "unconvinced" with regard to "unconditional election".

    Mercy, peace and love in abundance.
     
  15. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    GE:

    YES!

    But God's Predestination doesn't mean He just 'saves' at the throw of the coin. That's Islam and fatalism.

    Paul says that the mystery of Godliness that in past times has always been hidden, now has been made known by the hearing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing that God does, He just does; not even with respect to those whom He chose for salvation and saved, because God BOTH chose and saved to the Glory of our Saviour Lord Jesus Christ.

    The Name of Jesus Christ cannot but be mentioned first and last in the salvation of any. Because there IS NO OTHER NAME!
     
  16. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    God
    Redeems
    All
    Chosen
    Elected
     
  17. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.
    C.H. Spurgeon
     
  18. annsni

    annsni Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    May 30, 2006
    Messages:
    20,914
    Likes Received:
    706
    Yep but from our view, we just know He chooses some and no others and we DO know that it has nothing to do with what we've done. But absolutely the purpose is to glorify Him. :)
     
  19. Gerhard Ebersoehn

    Gerhard Ebersoehn Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 31, 2004
    Messages:
    9,025
    Likes Received:
    8
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    GE:

    YES! I know we agree, and am thankful for it.

    I only want to stress:
    that God does absolutely NOTHING towards our salvation in which the Name and Person and involvement of Jesus Christ could pass unnoticed and unmentioned. His Name MUST SOUND and be sounded.

    The Jews never mentioned God's Name; the Christian never speaks but uses the Name of God and Christ in honour.

    Especially in this our own day of lethal viruses like the Jesus Revolution or New Reformation and Religious Pluralism and Ecumenism, Unitarianism and Neo-Theism - there is no end to the list - people find it possible, easy and necessary to work out a salvation that can and must leave the mention of Jesus' Name OUT.
     
    #19 Gerhard Ebersoehn, Dec 9, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 9, 2010
  20. Thinkingstuff

    Thinkingstuff Active Member

    Joined:
    May 14, 2008
    Messages:
    8,248
    Likes Received:
    9
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    No matter how complicated you deem the trinity it boils down to Predestination, fatalism, etc... Just because its too the Glory of Jesus Christ doesn't change this fact or that his method of choosing the elect is, since its not based on anything about the individual, based on either a random sampling selection or some other similiar issue. If his divine will chose the elected because of how they effected the outcome of the define plan it would fall back onto the individual merit rather than God's choice therefore unless you come up with some better way of explaining it God randomly selected the elect.
    BTW I am right handed.
     
Loading...