God is outside time. He sees all at once whether or not we will choose His will or our own, without causing it. To think God dictates who will choose rebellion because He knows the outcome is to deny His extremely great gift of freedom by which He wants to give us His divinity as much as we the adopted are able to receive it. The situation has been likened to God being the Author of a story in which He writes all the characters and knows what they will do. But the added mystery is that He enters the story Himself as a character, Jesus.
>>God is outside time. He sees all at once whether or not we will choose His will or our own, without causing it. To think God dictates who will choose rebellion because He knows the outcome is to deny His extremely great gift of freedom by which He wants to give us His divinity as much as we the adopted are able to receive it.
That’s a nice workaround, but is neither Calvinst nor non-Calvinist. It is more Buddhist, if you think about it.
Embrace the utter sovereignty of God! He isn’t your buddy. He doesn’t need your worship. You and I add nothing to him. He is the Lord, your God: a being of unimaginable power and knowledge with motives that are as alien to you as your motives are to an ant. If you saw him, you would die. The fact that he stops to choose an unknown percentage of people to know him, desire him, and be drawn to him is the greatest story in the universe.
The Pelagian Heresy, Arminianism, Weslyanism, etc are all just way to make people think that they have the power to “do something” to add to their salvation as a way to convince them to come to church and serve (that was Pelagius’ actual motive. His disciple turned it into a heresy). All non-Calvinist Christianity is literally a way of adding a cliffhanger to this week’s sermon to insure that you show up “next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel”.
God is awesome. Everything else isn’t. Oh sure, some things are great, wonderful, or the best ever. But only God is awesome.
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>> “God is outside time.” <<
Its amazing how few people understand this fact.
He literally created time and space, 6000 years ago as measured here on Earth.
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Agreed! Just because Almighty God knows all things (omniscience) before even one thing happens, it doesn't mean He forces anyone to choose or reject Him. I guess someone could say because He knew beforehand that a person would go to hell when he died but created him anyway, that somehow proves God "chooses" who will be saved and who will be damned and that He is "unfair". That is so wrong not only because, who are we to judge God, but why do we even think for a moment that we can comprehend the infinite? We can't. It is why there ARE volumes and volumes of theological writings from great thinkers who try to do that. In the end we must simply accept that God is good and everything He does is righteous altogether. He HAS provided a way of redemption.