The Reformers and Church Fathers on Nature, Grace, and Choice

When Martin Luther defied a Pope and proclaimed salvation only through the ineffable grace of God, he had no idea that he was rending the body of the ancient church that had for so long known only unity. As his revolution spread, though, all Christendom watched as the Church began to fracture like one of the rose windows smashed by a maddened Swiss mob. Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and a large portion of the Swiss cantons turned away from the faith they had known for centuries, causing no small consternation in a civilization that valued timeless truths above novelty, and which viewed the past as the repository of truth and the present and future as decay. When the reformers were accused by men like Cardinal Sadoleto of pulling away from their faith for the sake of unprecedented novelties, both Luther and Calvin responded that it was their medieval forbears who had introduced devilish novelties into the Church, and that they were merely restoring Christianity to its ancient form (“Reply,” 56).

Such claims and counter claims were absolutely vital in the spirit of those times. For if Christ had indeed left His authority with a body of believers upon his ascension, then any faction claiming to possess the true meaning of His scriptures would logically have to be in agreement with that original body that carried on Christ’s truth after His return to His Father. It is outside of the purview of the discipline of history to ask questions about the existence and nature of God or the supernatural claims of any institution. We can, however, examine the claims of historical continuity by the various parties involved: Were Doctors Luther and Calvin reclaiming an ancient theology obscured by centuries of scholastic decadence, or were they, as their opponents claimed, introducing novelties never before seen under the sun? I intend, through an examination of patristic sources in comparison to Luther and Calvin, to demonstrate that the reformers reclaimed certain Augustinian principles, but in carrying them to their logical extremes, went to lengths that were utterly without precedent.

In examining the Reformation and its dogmas, we must first understand the key fulcrum upon which the reformation turned. This point, though, is often obscured when navigating through a list of secondary issues like use of images, liturgical style, church property, etc. We would do well to note that all of these issues pale besides that which drove the reformers to the lengths they went—“Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the Word of God for its life and righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently it would not need faith.” The reformation stands or falls on the basis of the assertion that man is justified before God only through His ineffable grace, by faith alone.

At the outset, this should not seem like too much of a problem. Even the most adamant pre-Vatican II Catholic will acknowledge the corrupt nature of man and inability to approach the righteousness of Christ without divine grace. Why then, did the reformers’ preaching of grace cause such a stir? If we delve below the surface, the problem with sola fide soon becomes apparent. If salvation comes by grace through faith alone, then no works of man can have anything do to with his salvation. If that is the case, then, as Luther tells us, this discounts any act of the will, for if one were to be able to will oneself to believe, faith would simply be a meritorious work (Luther, 135). Calvin reaches a similar conclusion in his Institutes (XXI, 1), and such thinking leaves us with the uncomfortable notion that, if one is to be saved by faith alone, then man, shorn of his free will, is reduced to the role of a puppet dancing on God’s strings. This of course opens up a host of other difficulties, and the perplexed believer is left asking if God in His love also responsible for evil. In the end, the Roman Catholic Church rejected reformed dogma in order to defend the doctrine of man’s freedom (Tracy, 101).

This rejection then left the reformers in the position of standing against the ancient Catholic Church and demanding that they, rather than the ancient church, possessed apostolic truth. Erasmus of Rotterdam had this to say about Luther’s claim to have re-discovered the truth:

Since Erasmus felt it meet to bring the Church Fathers into the discussion, I shall begin my examination with patristic sources. I intend first to examine the works of Justin Martyr, a second century convert and one of the first Christian apologists. I intend to examine Justin’s work as a case study for several reasons, chief of which are that his first and second apologies were written both to answer objections to the Christian faith and outline its basic principles, and, if we are looking for a picture of early Christianity as handed down to the apostles, we could do no better than to examine the product of a Church removed from the death of the last apostle by less than a century.

To properly comprehend the early Church’s positions on the freedom of the will, we must first examine the philosophical background of the classical world from which Christianity emerged. We quickly find that, as a general rule, the classical world was hostile to the notion of humanity possessing the free ability to choose. Democritus with his mechanistic view of the cosmos and the Eleatics with their monism both held that all events and choices were under the sway of a deterministic necessity (“Free Will”). Aristotle was a bit more optimistic, allowing for contingency, but then, with his cosmos brought into being by a primum mobile, it is hard to escape the notion that all subsequent causes must be dependent of the first cause (ibid). Nor did the stoics allow for free choice, which was precluded by their pantheistic picture of the universe (ibid). It was against such background that Christianity addressed the issue of man’s freedom.

In Chapters XLIII and XLIV of his Second Apology, Justin examines the question as to whether or not men are free. His conclusion is an unambiguous rejection of the classical world’s determinism. Martyr makes several arguments, one based on a usage of the term “devour” in Isaiah, and another on the dubious notion that Plato learned what he knew from the Hebrew prophets (Martyr, XLIV). We shall pass over these, though, in favor of the much more powerful argument of responsibility. He tells his reader “unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions” (Martyr, XLIII). Justin hammers this point home further in stating that God made man, “not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice” (ibid). For Martyr, the sinner would not be worthy of punishment if his action were not of his own volition, but a result of the condition in which he was made (ibid). He then quotes Deuteronomy 30:15, 19: “Behold before thy face are good and evil: choose the good” (1.2.5).

Augustine in his answer affirmed that man does evil through the use of his free choice (Free Choice, 1.16.35), and that evil comes not from God, but rather from a negation of His goodness, that is, in a man turning from the good that which is God to follow his own desires (ibid, 2.20.54). In agreement with Justin Martyr, he asks rhetorically, “How could a man be punished justly, if he used his will for the very purpose for which it was given” (ibid, 2.1.3)? He goes on to state that to be justly punished, sin must be committed by a free act of the will (ibid).

In this context, when Augustine speaks of the decrees of God, he speaks of God’s predestination as coming through the foreknowledge of His omniscience. Indeed, he goes out of his way to state that foreknowledge is not the same as compulsion (Free Choice, 3.4.10), and states that, simply because God has foreseen an evil does not mean that He is responsible (ibid, 3.4.11). He draws the notion of foreknowledge to its logical conclusion, stating that because God foreknows everything, then events must happen as He has foreseen (ibid, 3.3.8). This appears to satisfactorily wrap up the issue of God’s decrees.

All of the above would seem to create the impression that God’s only action in working out His will is in foreseeing that which will occur and thus working out His will through man’s will. But we must carefully bear in mind that Augustine is speaking of the origins of evil. We have not yet examined what Augustine taught from scripture concerning, not man’s reprobation, but his salvation. When we look to this issue, the picture of Augustine becomes much murkier.

Augustine notes that the first man fell through his own completely free choice. Adam, in Augustine’s thinking, was completely free to choose either good or evil, and opted for evil (Free Choice, 3.24.73). From this point, humanity was enslaved to original sin. The original sin came through free will, but subsequently, though still free, the will was subject to corruption, and thus, unable to rise to salvation. This can be summed up in the statement, “But, though man fell through his own will, he cannot rise through his own will” (ibid, 2.20.54).

At this point in his career, Augustine might have been willing to acknowledge that man can freely look for the grace of God in order to assist him in doing good, stating that man, though subject to concupiscence, nonetheless has the knowledge of God, by whose grace he might rise to a higher state (ibid, 3.19.53). If we were to cease our examination of Augustine here, we would find a ready partisan of Rome, affirming man’s free choice, predestination through foreknowledge, and the ability of man to choose God. Alas, the picture is not that simple.

For at the turn of the fifth century, the notorious heretic Pelagius preached that man in and of himself had the ability to be perfect, and that the fall of Adam, rather than plunging the whole of the human race into sin, served merely as a bad example (Nature and Grace, 9.10). To the dismay of the good Doctor, Pelagius and his followers sought to bolster support for their beliefs with Augustine’s very own writings on free will (Retractions, 1.9.3). Augustine’s response to this heretic’s teachings generated his later writings on the will, predestination, and divine grace.

It must be noted that Augustine’s later writings on original sin and predestination seems to show a markedly different posture from his earlier work on free will. While it has been argued that this hardened stance was due either to his reaction to the fall of Rome or the Pelagian heresy, it is more likely that his own views were gradually evolving under the influence of St. Paul, independent of external circumstances. I base my judgment on Augustine’s quotation of his Retractions in On the Predestination of the Saints:

We will be going too far, though, if we make Augustine a five point Calvinist. We must note that, for starters, when he issued a retraction concerning his first writings on the nature of evil, he stated that free will was inadequate for man to rise to God. He never, though, changed his statement that evil comes only from the free exercise of the will, and never denies that in choosing to do evil, Adam was under no compulsion. When he mentions predestination, he is quite clear that only by God’s predestination can man come to an efficacious and saving faith, but what is striking is that predestination is only mentioned regarding salvation. Those that are condemned do so merely because they follow their own corrupt will, and God justly punishes their evil deeds. Augustine takes his stand for grace and salvation through election, while at the same time avoiding the horror of double predestination.

Luther would be in perfect concord with Augustine in his affirmation of salvation by grace through faith. In The Bondage of the Will, though, he arrives at Augustine, but then passes him completely, arriving in territory where none have trodden before. Augustine stated that man’s fall came through his choice, and the resulting corruption of human nature resulted in a will that commits sin of its own volition. Luther does the good doctor one better, though, and asserts that the wicked man sins “under the impulse of divine power” (Luther, 130). Luther even challenges Augustine in his definition of free will, stating that, if in a fallen state the will is unable to seek God, then it is not in fact free (ibid, 113), and that Augustine and others who have called such a will free are degrading the very word (ibid, 120). Luther goes to the extreme end of the spectrum, and then beyond the pale, but recognizes and embraces this: “Therefore, we must go to extremes, deny free will altogether, and ascribe everything to God” (ibid, 133)!

Indeed, his statement that a will unable to do good is in fact under compulsion makes fine logical sense, but the end result is a man with no freedom, and one whose evil must be the responsibility of divine omnipotence. Luther here returns to the Augustinian notion that in His omnipotence God allows but does not cause the workings of evil in order to further His divine plan (ibid, 130). It almost seems here that Luther is pulling back from the brink of a precipice to which he has been running headlong, staring into an abyss to which he dare not attempt to apply his own feeble reason. And indeed, though throughout this debate on free will with Erasmus Luther employs the techniques of reason and dialectic, in the end he felt that any attempt to use reason to fathom the mind of God was a fairly silly exercise (ibid, 129). As the reformation continued, though, another figure would arrive who would see no problem in attempting to apply human reason to the workings of the Eternal God, taking every statement on grace, sin, and God’s decrees to their horrifying ends, leaping joyfully into the abyss from which Luther held back. That man was Jean Calvin.

Even the extreme bombast of Luther’s Bondage of the Will does not take the horrific final step in the picture it paints of God’s omnipotence. Like Augustine, Luther admits that since the fall, man has been a slave to sin, but Calvin finally dares to examine from whence came the fall. His conclusion, unlike Augustine’s, is that God actively caused the fall of Adam and the whole human race into sin and damnation as part of His “wonderful plan” (Institutes, XXIII, 7). The ruthless Frenchman then goes on to state that God is nonetheless just in punishing the reprobate (ibid, XXIII, 4). Though this horribly contradicts both Augustine and Justin Martyr’s writings of responsibility, Calvin barely hesitates when he states that he is leaving behind the bulk of the Church’s traditions in favor of his alleged ruthless adherence to scripture (ibid, XXII, 1). Calvin has no problem in that asserting that, since salvation is not by works, then neither is damnation (ibid, XXII, 11), and that the reason for the eternal torment of the vast majority of the human race lies, not in their guilt, but in the arbitrary choice of God.

This horror, then, is the end result of the reformation: God has arbitrarily predestined some to eternal life, and has likewise predestined others to eternal damnation. Calvin then states that certain people might object to this, stating that it makes God a cruel tyrant, to which he responds that since God is both omnipotent and the creator of everything, then all that He decrees, ipso facto, is righteous, good, and just (Institutes, XXIII, 2). He then has the chutzpah to go on and tell the reader that his dogma is not one of absolute might, since God is “free from fault,” and the quintessence of Law and Right (ibid).

Jean Calvin then, has started from Augustine, who among the Church Fathers was most friendly to predestination, and taken the teachings of predestination to their logical extreme, crafting a dogma that would have caused St. Augustine to blanch in horror. Did St. Augustine believe in divine election and predestination of believers? Most assuredly. It was up to Jean Calvin, though, to add double predestination and eliminate Augustine’s free will theodicy in favor of a God who has decreed evil and suffering for his own amusement.

I submit, though, that such questions concerning free will and predestination would inevitably have come to the fore and been the cause of controversy even without Luther and Calvin. The reason for this is that Augustine loomed large over the western Church down through the centuries, and at times there seem to be two Augustines. Why is this the case? The reason that there seem to be two St. Augustines lies in the Bible itself, since there seem to be two St. Pauls*. We have the Paul who tells the believer in Romans Chapter 9 that God prepares some men for eternal life and some for damnation, answering the obvious objection to this with a “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God” (Romans 9:20)? On the other hand, we are also told that there is a loving God who “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Such contradictions in the Christian faith, then, were present at its inception.

Indeed, such difficulties are inevitable in any faith that attempts to posit a God who is all-powerful, all knowing, and all good. Paul, who likely never intended to be considered a basis for systematic theology, is all over the map when it comes to how to resolve such questions. As such, there is no pat resolution to these seeming contradictions. Perhaps the error of the church was to seek one; Luther is at his best not when he is glorying in the slavery of man, but when he is proclaiming the mercy of Christ.

---. “Reply to Sadoleto.” A Reformation Debate. Ed. John C. Olin. New York, Fordham University Press, 2000. 43-88.

“Free Will.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Michael Maher. 1909. Transcribed 1999.

you to CCWoody: No, I only take one 'hate Calvinism' pill a day (thats all I need). What Calvin got 'right' is far outweighed by what he got wrong i.e. Predestination.

Well, Arminius claimed that Calvin's Commentaries were, next to the Bible itself, the most worthy reading in all Christian history including the work of the early church fathers.

Perhaps Arminius, having been at Geneva and been a student of Beza, Calvin's colleague, knew something about Calvin's scholarship that you don't want to recognize because you reject the TULIP so vehemently. I personally think that many who dislike the TULIP doctrines fail to look at the Commentaries seriously. Arminius separated Calvin's excellent general Bible scholarship from his work in the Institutes. Maybe you should ask yourself why he did that. And you must be aware of the Textus Receptus bibles produced in the major European language at Geneva at that time, generally by Calvin's associates. The KJV translators drew upon the previous scholarship that had gathered in Calvin's Geneva.

I don't think a KJV supporter should throw quite so many stones at a man who was so instrumental in the history of the KJV and other sound Reformation bibles. You know, you never have a good word to say of Calvin's huge body of work and his influence in so many areas which has endured for centuries in both religious and political matters. He was a humble learned giant and subsequent history reveals he is the greater man when compared to Luther.

Can a man rob God? I think not. Can a man underestimate God? I think it happens every day.

I said that Mormonism attempts to rob God of His glory. It cannot and all who go to their grave beilieving the lie will understand that they will Glorify God with their destruction. The rest of us will see this and fear and laugh him to scorn saying: "This is the man that did not make God his strength." (Psalm 52)

What if God, choosing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction; and this, that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, whom He had prepared before unto glory, even us whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

Perhaps you should ponder these words of Isaiah:

Isaiah 43:10 "You are My witnesses," says the LORD, "And My servant whom I have chosen, That you may know and believe Me, And understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me.
Isaiah 44:8 Do not fear, nor be afraid; Have I not told you from that time, and declared it? You are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one."'
Isaiah 45:5 I am the LORD, and there is none else; there is no God besides Me.

Mormonism underestimates God in a eternally fatal way. God is infinitely jealous of His glory.

Does God "reward" His children for acts over which they supposedly have no control or choice in the matter? As the dictionary puts it:

I am trying to figure out if we are talking about the same thing..I am saying that man can do NOTHING to merit his salvation.The defination of grace says it all
Grace is God's Unmerited favor

Ephesians 2
6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

On works it continues

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

I believe there are indeed "rewards" for our faithfulness and obedience....In the OT God asks "Is not obedience better than sacrifice?"

Our obedience (in "works)is in response to our salvation ,and in obedience to Him..it merits noting toward our salvation..

What do you mean 'decisions do not create character-ofcourse they do! The decision to believe in Christ or not, the decision to walk in the Spirit or not etc etc.

No, decisions do not create character; never have and never will. Like nearly everything else, you also get this wrong, not knowing the Scripture

And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Your belief is so very new-age. The only thing that produces character is tribulation. This is precisely why everyone will endure a fiery trial who claim to be saved by Christ. The chaff, who have merely decided that they believe, will be burnt up and will not endure to the end because they do not have the Holy spirit within their hearts.

Do you think that the wedding guest without a garment did not decide that he was suppose to be be there? Do you think that all these did not believe that they were suppose to be there? Do you not think that there will be many who have decided and believed that they are properly covered with a garment of salvation?

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith--the salvation of your souls.
For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
And ye shall seek Me and find Me when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.
Therefore say, `Thus saith the Lord GOD: I will even gather you from the people and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.' And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the detestable things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep Mine ordinances, and do them. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God. But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord GOD."

Many will say to Me in that Day, `Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name have cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?' And then will I profess unto them, `I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.' Do you not think that all these, even more than deciding they were saved, also believed with a false heart that they were saved?

You have been shown the clear teaching of the Bible. Decisions do not create character; they reveal good character. For it says by their fruits you shall know them. You can either continue to believe that you can decide that you are saved or you can repent of this. The choice is yours. A "decision for Christ" is not a total, complete, and utter committment of falling upon the Rock.

The can receive the things of God if God (The same God that the Calvinist is always screaming is Omnipotent,) wants it to be so. The issue does make the choice for the individual, or does He make the choice understandable I find it amazing that Calvinists limit the Omnipotence of God by stating He cannot make the Gospel understandable to someone who is spiritually dead! The real issue is that the Calvinist system demands that man be passive while Love demands a active response. Being a woman, I am sure you understand that important difference. God (intiates-grace) man responds (faith-receive the free gift)-very simple.

My dear friend..You were gone for a long time...(or at least our paths didn't cross :>) My son was also saved as a child..the gospel was preached and he shot up like a rocket and ran down to the altar.His mom could not restrain that 7 year old boy. He has never wavered in his faith (that is now 20 years ago), That was the grace of God.He never asked me if it was alright...he never hesitated..he flew into the arms of God. He never considered refusing.That is irresistible grace.
As I fell to my knees ,I never considered that there was a choice involved. In the presence of God there is nothing else to do...you fall on your face in repentance (and then spend the next 25 years ,this year, praising Him for His grace and mercy). God did indeed initiate the moment of my conversion.His presence and His grace turned my heart toward Him. I could not have said no, because it never occurred to me..

Now for years I would watch people say they were "debating" going to the altar.I wondered how any man could "debate" or fight the grace of God. I would look around me and see a world that pays lip sevice to God..but lives like children of satan..I would ask myself, how is it that they do not seek God? How can they ignore Him and joke about hell? They have "heard" the gospel,they know the consequences of continued refusal of God, yet they "refuse" to hear Him>

I asked you a very plain question..what makes the nice Methodist lady next store to me "different" than me ? She never misses church. She is not out on the streets sinning , but outside church on Sunday there is no evidence of a relationship with Christ. What is the difference FTD? I have come to believe that the difference is the grace of God..nothing of me. He showered me with His amazing grace.....and as it washed over me there was no other response but "Why me Lord ??Why me?" Words I repeated over and over in response to being given a new life, words I still say "Why me Lord? Why me?. Then and now I desire Him above all else..

Since each conversion is different one can not make an issue of it.

Yes God finds us in very different places. But I think we must make an issue out of it,or else we can find ourselves in error.

Finally, why some receive the illumination and some do not? All receive some Illumination. (Psa 19:1-3, Rom 1:19). At that point of general Illumination an individual is either positive (desiring more) or negative (rejecting God-Rom.1:21). God will provide more Illumination to those who will believe.

The will is the issue here isn't it?

The Gospel goes out and will fall on hard ground and soft. The 'soft' ground will respond freely.The 'hard' ground react and reject.

And then the question why is some ground not "turned over?" It is God's "job" to prepare the soil to receive the seed..(all we do is toss it out).....yet he leaves some ground hardened..unable to receive the seed..

There are areas of the world where the negative volition is so great that those areas have been closed to the Gospel. One Missionary spent I believe 40 years in Mongola and had one convert! Depravity does not mean a dead will. It means a weakened, corrupted will but one that can still cry out save me

I am not talking about the 3rd world..I am talking about the USA where most everyone has been exposed to some degree to the gospel,and yet they refuse. Why would a corrupt will that wills to sin call out for forgiveness?

It is God's "job" to prepare the soil to receive the seed..(all we do is toss it out).....yet he leaves some ground hardened..unable to receive the seed..

So, in your understanding of the plan of salvation, when God choses to leave a particular patch of ground hardened, and that patch of ground fails to receive the seed (not out of choice, but because it is simply unable to do it since God chose to leave the ground hardened), then it is entirely just for God to send that patch of ground to hell for eternity as a result of not receiving the seed.

Wow: God is a bouncer at a nightclub. "Not on the list? Sorry, you don't get in. Don't complain to me, simply because I made the list, and you never, ever had even a remote chance of getting in. I'm running the show here, and I'll play favorites if I darn well please. OK, who's next? Your name? Let's see... oh, I'm sorry, you're not on the list, either. What's that you say? You claim that you turned your life over to Jesus, and that you really are saved, that I should doublecheck for your name on this list? Nope, sorry: I don't make mistakes; if anybody is mistaken here, believe me, buddy, it's you. I said you're not on the list, so you're not on the list. I should know, I made the list ahead of time, OK? Next...?"

If that's eternal justice, then the athiests are right: there is no God.

Do you believe that there will be people who sincerely believe they have turned their lives over to Christ and who will claim to have felt the constant influence of the Holy Spirit and who kept the commandments and who yet will be told by God at the last day, "Sorry, you're not on the list, you don't get in"?

If so, how can you ever be sure you're not going to be one of them?

You still don't apprehend our Biblical position. The soil is hard and barren and like a desert precisely becase man has already made his choice:

Professing to be wise, we became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we in agreement. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.

Who are you to complain because God is pleased to leave most men to wallow in their hatred for Him? All men everywhere have made their choice. The Bible is crystal clear about this. God, in His infinite grace toward some, has chosen to redeem some of us not for our sakes but for His name's sake.

If the Gospel was designed so that it resulted in salvation due to some merit on our part, it would reduce the Gospel to a monstrosity:

I would have you remember that the view under which Jesus beheld us was not only the true one, but, for us, the kindly one; because had it been written that Christ died for the better sort, then each troubled spirit would have inferred "he died not for me." Had the merit of his death been the perquisite of honesty, where would have been the dying thief? If of chastity, where the woman that loved much? If of courageous fidelity, how would it have fared with the apostles, for they all forsook him and fled? There are times when the bravest man trembles lest he should be found a coward, the most disinterested frets about the selfishness of his heart, and the most pure is staggered by his own impurity; where, then, would have been hope for one of us, if the gospel had been only another form of law, and the benefits of the cross had been reserved as the rewards of virtue? The gospel does not come to us as a premium for virtue, but it presents us with forgiveness for sin. It is not a reward for health, but a medicine for sickness. Therefore, to meet all cases, it puts us down at our worst, and, like the good Samaritan with the wounded traveller, it comes to us where we are. "Christ died for the impious" is a great net which takes in even the leviathan sinner; and of all the creeping sinners innumerable which swarm the sea of sin, there is not one kind which this great net does not encompass. - Spurgeon Sermon (For whom did Christ die?)

And you are exactly trying to make the Gospel just another work of the law because like all carnal flesh everywhere, we want to think that we actually do have some merit and can say to the others: "See, I was (insert prideful adjective here) enough to accept it."

But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God. There it is, the Good News in black and white. He came to save that which was lost.

. Wow: God is a bouncer at a nightclub. "Not on the list? Sorry, you don't get in.

Yep there is a list...and He keeps it..did you ever doubt that he was not going to let everyone in ?

Philippians 4:2-4And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.

Revelation 3:5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

Revelation 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Revelation 17:8 The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

Revelation 20:12And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

Revelation 20:13And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Revelation 21:27"And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Revelation22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Revelation 22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

That is a difficult question to answer, because there are alot of people that have non saving faith. They have a non Biblical faith in churches and rituals,faith that is Jesus + someting (Jesus plus the church ,Jesus + the sacraments, Jesus + works) There are lots of folks that belong to "cults" that believe they are saved.

If you are discussing someone that has responded to the gospel,repented and has continued in his walk..that is a different question. I believe the Spirit gives witness and that saving faith is evident to those around ,it is manifested by the fruit of the Spirit ,and perseverence.

To make a long story short. I suspect that there will be some that will be turned away that thought they were saved

Matthew7
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

We have a God of Love,and mercy but do not be deceived He is also a God of justice and judgment!

No answer on the other post to you???

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