Predestination

Here's another one, Brother Jerry:

 

And one lst one, Brother Jerry:

Predestination starts and end with Christ. God chose His Son to die for the sin of the world. Those who believe from the heart that Jesus is Lord, they are grafted into the Vine, Jesus.

 

The problem is that Scriptures speak of various ways a person is "in Christ."

1. By choice before the world began - Eph. 1:4
2. By representation - Rom. 5:12-19
3. By creation/regeneration/spiritual union - Eph. 2:10
4. By baptism or symboliclly - Rom. 6:4-6
5. By membership/metaphorically - 1 Cor. 12:27
6. By justification/legally - Rom. 4
7. By experience/walk - Co. 2:6

So what you have done is simply confused one aspect with another.

 

Part 1,
For Catholics, when God "establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace" (CCC 600). Thus, anyone who is finally saved will have been predestined by God because it was God’s predestined plan and God’s grace that went before him and enabled him to be saved.

However, this does not mean that God has predestined anyone for hell. Indeed, the Bible cannot be any plainer than to say God is, "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pt 3:9). God wills all to be saved. To be damned, a person must willfully reject God’s "predestined plan" for his salvation, simple enough.

The above comes from the teachings of the Catholic Church and so is much of the following

But for a Calvinist, Ephesians 2:1 declares all who are apart from Christ to be "dead in trespasses and sins." In that view, to say a man could freely choose to accept or reject God’s grace and invitation to salvation would be as ridiculous as saying a corpse could choose to raise itself from the dead. Moreover, for Jesus’ declaration that a man must be "born anew" in John 3:3 to include the freedom to reject the offer would be akin to saying a baby has a say in whether or not he will choose to be born.

Romans 9:18-22 is perhaps the favorite-among-favorites of Calvinists:

So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills. You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me thus?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction . . .

Could Paul be clearer? Our salvation is entirely dependent on God’s unchangeable will. The free will of which the Catholic Church speaks is simply unbiblical. Shall we all join the local Calvinist ecclesial community, then? The answer seems—predestined.

Part 2 to follow-

 

Spiritual, Not Literal, Death
In fact, the Catholic Church agrees with the Calvinist in saying those who are "dead in trespasses and sins" do not have the power to "bring themselves back to life." Man cannot "work up" grace or faith; these are unmerited gifts from a loving God (see Eph 2:8-9). The hundreds of millions of babies the Church has baptized should suffice to make this point obvious. How many good works has a baby done to merit anything from God?

A key area, among others, where Catholics and Calvinists diverge is at the definition of "dead in trespasses and sins" and "born anew." Calvinists seem not to understand that these are metaphors. Paul is speaking of a spiritual death. Thus, the "dead" man to whom Ephesians 2:1 refers is still a human person complete with a living soul and a functioning intellect and will. No separation of soul and body requiring the reconstitution of personhood has occurred.

Moreover, by "born anew" in John 3:3, Jesus did not mean the sinner’s soul somehow ceased to exist, needing to brought into being from non-being. If this were so, then there would truly be no sense in which the sinner would be able to cooperate with God in the process.

The truth is: The soul of the unregenerate man "dead in sin" remains alive and able to know and to will (assuming we are talking about an adult convert). His soul is spiritually dead. Even though an unregenerate soul cannot merit anything from God, this does not mean he cannot cooperate with God who calls him to salvation. This seems to be what we find in the case of Saul of Tarsus. If ever a man was "dead in sin," it was Saul. Yet, in Acts 22:16, he was asked to cooperate with the grace of God in the cleansing of his sins when Ananias said to him, "rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name."

 

In Scofields view the order of God's decrees go this way

So in a pedestinate-fatalistic way everyone choice has been made for them.

 

Yes and no. He promulgated dispensationalism and had issues with covenant theology.