Saved Or Predestined ???
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You are making more of this than is there. I suppose you are trying to say this preservation was unconditional election, a predestining of certain individuals.
Certainly this is an act of God regarding these men, but God's act is conditioned on the fact that they "have not bowed the knee to Baal." God is telling Elijah, "There are more than just you who have remained faithful. Indeed, I have identified and singled out from the great majority of Israelites a group of seven thousand true worshipers. I have separated them from the rest; in my sight they are a different group, a remnant. These are the ones I have kept in my saving grace and in close fellowship with myself."
It's not either/ or. It's not God having to force those who were already his to remain his. God preserves the faithful. If they are no more faithful, they are no more his.
They are the ones, God says, "I have reserved for myself." They are "his people" in a special, spiritual sense. In this spiritual sense only these seven thousand belonged to God; the rest were Baal's. This remnant alone was the true Israel of 9:6b.
So here too, the "election" of these seven thousand is conditioned on their faithfulness – those won by grace are thereby "elected," whereas the Calvinist would reverse the order, with election leading to conversion and faithfulness.
No, because you are again trying to reverse the order. As I said, they believe, then call on the Lord. All men are capable of choosing to believe. What is hard to understand about that?
God desires salvation for all and offers his grace to all.
"Who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
Contradiction only exist in your mind Renniks.
You said "If some are chosen for eternal life any choice they make in that regard is logically already made for them before they were ever concieved...so it is in fact, forced on them." God's election of people is far from being God making the choice and having made the choice for them. That's an erroneous thinking. While it could be said, when viewed from the beginning and end point, that the elect will be saved, what transpires between those points must not be ignored or dismissed if one will argue about their "free will" or the choice they make with regards the matter of salvation, which is in the scope, not in their having been elected at the start nor at the end point, but in their existence and life between those points. Each person's existence and life between those points are very much significant in the plan, workings, and the creation of God. If not, then God certainly would just have skipped all of that and started out with the saved people to begin with in His creation of mankind. Now, let me give one good and known elect, Saul (Paul). As revealed now to us, he was among those chosen by God for eternal life. Yet his choices were his own. God did not chose Jesus Christ for him. In fact, Saul, before his Damascus road experience, by his own "free will" chose unbelief in Jesus Christ even to the point of persecuting those who believe. God did not chose that for him. Now, when the time of his conversion came, did God force the choice on Saul to believe in Jesus Christ? No sir. To the contrary, it is Paul who chose to believe, that is, by his own "free will". You may now stop thinking that God made the choice for them and already made the choice for them.
Tong
R0615
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Many people, if and when the words of God reach them and is preached to them, do respond, though not in the positive.
So, you believe that people do not get saved because they have, by their own "free will", chosen not to believe in God. And so, logically, you believe that people get saved because they have, by their own "free will", chosen to believe in God, right? But here you say to the contrary that your salvation was not of your will, that is, not of your choosing. Are you not now showing some confusion?
So let me repeat the question: Do you believe that you will be saved by God because you, by your own will and initiative and working out, believed in the gospel, in God, in Jesus Christ, and that the others will not be saved because they have not done such things? By what you say there, your answer should be a yes. However, you said "Not quite". So again, are you not now showing some confusion? Check that out, if I may suggest.
That's right, it is faith, that I believe and claim that I am among the chosen. I would be lying to myself if I said it is not. For ALL things that pertains to what God had done, I could only understand by faith and also then, I could only claim anything God had done involving me, such as have chosen me unto salvation, by faith.
What I claim about faith is not quite what you say I claim there. What I claim is that faith comes from God and not from man. And that faith is given by God to man.
I am thinking that you might be reading my posts too fast. Because it now becomes apparently clear, your consistent misunderstanding of what I post. Please consider reading more slowly and with more thought, if that is the case.
Tong
R0616
My argument was "To not be able to see and not be able to believe is not the same as being against God." And you don't have a refutation on that. Instead you want to change the issue to another, saying "To not be able to see and believe because God made you born incapable of doing so, is the issue."
So, unlike you I don't run away from arguments, and so, without your refutation to my argument, I will proceed to address the new issue you brought up and your argument there.
Firstly, I do not know of any scriptures that effectively say that God had made any man born hardened. So, I don't believe God had.
You argued "You can't rebel against what you are incapable of receiving. But if you indeed are capable and have the same chance as the one who humbled himself, then you are receiving just punishment." Please clarify and explain what you meant by that. I am sorry, I can't seem to follow here.
Tong
R0616
It is you who brought up the matter of God preserving those who are faithful to Him. In my responses to that, I am in the understanding that what you meant by "preserving" is synonymous to "keeping" and "sustaining". Now, if that is not what you mean by "preserving", what do you mean to say by it? Remember, you said about God "preserving" those faithful to Him in relation to the elect remnants in Romans 11.
Whether that is a condition or an identifier is arguable. May I ask, was their not bowing down to baal a good work? Also, may I ask, was not bowing to Baal a condition given to Israel, that if they have complied, they will be elected by God for salvation?
Obviously you are just speaking what's in your mind there, not what scriptures says. It's going beyond scriptures and adding to it. For this is what scriptures simply says “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”
Why do you keep insisting about God forcing people, when there's no forcing those people? Even those men whom He reserved for Himself in the days of Elijah, there was no forcing there Renniks. It is only you who insist there is.
What? Can you even understand your self destructive argument here, that "God preserves the faithful. If they are no more faithful, they are no more his."? Wow! If God preserves them faithful, they will be preserved, that is, kept to be faithful. The preserving is God's responsibility, not them who are being preserved by God.
Further, we are talking about those God reserved for Himself. If God reserved them, what does that mean, but that they have been saved? Why do you not seem to understand any of that?
Tong
R0617
Me reversing the order? And I am not even concerned nor was talking about any order you are talking about there. Just unbelievable! Aren't you at least a bit ashamed of doing that everytime you have no refutation to give? As I said, you have just refuted your own belief that all man, that is, "everyone", can call on the Lord, when you just admitted that those who call on the Lord are believers, qualifying the word "everyone". Now, not all are believers, is it not?
Anyway, since you are bringing up those issues as a way to get away from my arguments, and so are not really making any refutation of my arguments, then that's it with that then.
Tong
R0619
I was referring to Renniks. That comment and question goes out to him, not really to you.
Tong
R0622
There were four questions put to you and not one have you answered. I can only surmise the reason and it is a ploy to evade the questions or it is because you did not understand the meaning of the words which by the way, are God's inspired words.
Illogical. All you are stating is the same old Calvnist form of "free will" that is not really free in any way. It's only an illusion of choice. I find it amusing that you state God did not choose unbelief for Paul, but that God did choose him for salvation. Don't you see the logical conclusion of thinking this way? Paul chose to believe of his own free will, after being chosen for salvation before he was born? What you are talking about here is called capatabilism.
Logically, in your theology, God did in fact, choose everything for Paul.
Says who?
Now, let's be clear about what you are pushing. It's called Compatibilism.
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.
Or as Theopedia puts it:
Theopedia
Compatibilism
Compatibilism, sometimes called soft determinism, is a theological term that deals with the topics of free will and predestination. It seeks to show that God's exhaustive sovereignty is compatible with human freedom, or in other words, it claims that determinism and free will are compatible. Rather than limit the exercise of God's sovereignty in order to preserve man's freedom, compatibilists say that there must be a different way to define what freedom really means.
I on the other hand believe in:
Theopedia
Libertarian free will
Libertarian free will means that our choices are free from the determination or constraints of human nature and free from any predetermination by God. All "free will theists" hold that libertarian freedom is essential for moral responsibility, for if our choice is determined or caused by anything, including our own desires, they reason, it cannot properly be called a free choice. Libertarian freedom is, therefore, the freedom to act contrary to one's nature, predisposition and greatest desires. Responsibility, in this view, always means that one could have done otherwise.
Now that we see what is really on the table, perhaps we can quit talking past each other.
You can't have true Free Will if your choice, any choice has already been determined in eternity past.
Well that's just obvious. Of course being not able to believe is to be against God. Anything not from faith is sin. Case closed.
If one is predestined for damnation, or rather not predestined for salvation, which is exact same thing by default, then one is obviously born incapable of receiving God. He cannot Receive because he's not capable of doing anything but what he was born to do, that is, sin. To punish the one incapable of receiving God is not justice. However, if he is capable, but rebels, his blindness as punishment is just.
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