I'd like to ask people something based on this post (which I've left a bit out of btw).
Originally Posted by
Jonathan david
The Calvinist domination of the "Foreordain" narrative means that it "sounds right" and becomes "default" to many/most new believers, until they probe deeper.
There are three major possibilities here, of which I excerpt from a larger article:
Foreseen = God saw through the corridors of time who would believe and chose those individuals based on their "foreseen faith." (Classical Arminian)
Foreordain = God set his love on certain unconditionally pre-selected individuals before the world began ("foreloved") and effectually works to change their hearts so that they want to come to Him for salvation. (Calvinist)
But there is a THIRD (which I won't go into ...FFO)
Obviously I believe the second option which is worded in the WCF like thisGod from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty ... taken away.
So in my belief, 1) God decided what would happen in the universe; 2) God created the universe; 3) Exactly as He's decided will happen does happen, including who will and won't be saved.
The idea that "God saw through the corridors of time who would believe" has a couple of sticking points for me and I wonder how people handle them.
Questions:
1. When did God see through the corridors of time?
Well surely He couldn't before "time" was created could He? (I may go back to that later), but that leaves three options does it not; a) between day one, the creation of the universe and day six, before He created man; b) between when He created man on day six and when man fell; or c) after man fell.
If we go 1. a) between day one, the creation of the universe and day six, before He created man, there are a couple of obvious questions like i) Why did He go ahead creating man then? and ii) as man wasn't created yet could He have created them another way, cause if He can't then I'd have to ask if He really is God?
If we go 1. b) between when He created man on day six and when man fell then doesn't that imply that God didn't know what He was creating, making Him, it would seem to me, less than God?
If we go 1. c) after man fell then we not only have what we have in 1. b), but even after creating man God didn't know what He created. But then, if God could "look through time" now, why was He unable to in cases 1. b) and 1. a)?
2. When did God decide that believing was the way to salvation?
Many believe that "God saw through the corridors of time who would believe" but when did God come up with that idea? It's easy to quote John 3:16, but Jesus dying in our place; becoming sin; propitiation; the OT sacrificial system which was a mirror of the cross; etc. etc. are complicated, involved, but also very precise. And God had to come up with all this as well as setting "believing" as being the way in even though it looked, for a while, that keeping the Law was the way in. Did God think this all up between Gen 3:11 and Gen 3:13?
3. Don't you and I exist only because of God's decision(s)?
We are all descendants of Noah. If God had not wiped out ever one else in the flood (or rescued Noah's twin sister Nora and her husband and children instead [joke guys!]) none of us would exist. This introduces another problem to "looking through time". If God only decided at the time of Noah to destroy the world what would He have seen looking through time 2,000 years earlier? If He saw He'd take that option then (which means He took that option beforehand, but that's a tangent I won't go on) then doesn't God see that we exist before He sees that we believe? Even if we say they happen simultaneously we still only exist and are able to believe because God first chose that we'd exist.
Johnathan said "The Calvinist domination of the "Foreordain" narrative means that it "sounds right" ... until they probe deeper."
Meanwhile for me probing the idea that "God saw through the corridors of time who would believe" just brings up more and more questions.
How do you handle it?
A spanner? Maybe? On the sixth day when God created man He told him that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he would die.