Replies

You have never responded to the Matthew 11 response wherein the predestination is premised on foreknowledge rather than foreordination. We sidetracked into a discussion on alternate realities that "could have" been the choice of God the Father when he set creation in motion. (E.G., He could have chosen the "reality" of Tyre seeing Jesus and believing....but, He didn't. The assumption was (I think) that the chosen reality was (for some reason) the better reality from God's perspective.) You can see the implications of where we were driving that discussion. We got into the "why" a particular reality was chosen when we should have answered the question: "Is this the means by which THIS reality in which we live actually did come about?" Because it is a "predestination" based on "absolute foreknowledge."

Well, I still take issue with the "assumption that the chosen reality was (for some reason) the better reality from God's perspective". I don't think that we can "assume" that the chosen reality was (for some reason) the better reality from God's perspective; all we can say (IMHO) is that the Existent Reality is the one which God acctually did choose to Create, and that He will fully accomplish all His purposes therein. However, when we introduce into the discussion the "assumption that the chosen reality was (for some reason) the better reality from God's perspective", we start introducing negative concepts into the Nature of God Himself. Here's why:

First, let's take it as a Given that God did not have to create at all; it was not "better" that He should Create than if He should not. We are forced to accept this postulate both pragmatically and philosophically -- Pragmatically because we know that "before Creation" (or "outside of Creation" if you prefer non-temporal terminology; but "before" works equally well, given that Creation did have a "beginning" before which, God was "before the foundation of the World") existed an Eternity in which the Creation did not Exist; and Philosophically because we know that if God had to Create, if it was "better" that He should create as opposed to existing Alone in absolute self-sufficiency, this necessitates the recognition of a Deficiency within the Self-Sufficiency of God Himself (and pretty soon, we have no God at all)
Thus, I think, we must recognize that -- prior to Creation -- there are at least two "Conditional Potentialities" available to God's Freedom of Action: to Not Create, or to Create (and all the infinite "Potential Creations" available to the Mind of God are but subsequent and dependent consequents of the latter Potential Action), and that neither Choice would be intrinsicsally "better" than the other (The Doctrine of God's Self-Sufficiency demanding that the pre-existent Perfection of God is absolute and cannot be "bettered"). Ergo, God's Foreknowledge of the Events within the Potentiality of Creation is not an intrinsic Absolute, because God does not have to Create. Rather, God's foreknowledge of the Events within the Potentiality of Creation is logically conditional upon the logically antecedent and precedent question of whether or not God chooses to Create at all. If God chooses not to Create, then His foreknowledge of the Events within the Potentiality of Creation remain only a Conditional Potentiality, never an Actuality.

Thus, we are compelled to admit that all Predestination is based upon Fore-Ordination, for the Actuality of the Foreknown Events within Creation (God's foreknowledge of that Creation) is itself a Conditional Potentiality, the actuality of which is logically conditional upon the logically antecedent and precedent question of whether or not God chooses to Create at all.

Ergo, all Predestination must be spoken of as a matter of Deliberate and Elective Fore-Ordination, beginning with the logically antecedent and precedent question of whether or not God chooses to Create at all and proceeding irrevocably from that point.