[redgolum]

While I may come to regret it, I will wade in a bit here.

As a Lutheran, I believe in single predestination. Which means simply that God causes a person's heart to be opened to receive Him, but that we have the free will to reject His Grace. I can not come to Christ on my own, but we are free to leave Him.

In other words, since I was born in the 20th century in the US, I have every opportunity to find and receive Christ. If I was born around 100 AD on the steppes of what is now eastern Europe, I would probably live the rest of my life without every hearing about Christ. That is a very basic example, and not the best one, but the only one that came to mind.

Since God does not exist in time, but outside of it, the question "Does God control the future?" has little meaning. There is no "future" for God, He is the first and the last, and is not bound by time. I think that is where so much of the predestination/free will stuff goes off the track.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

As a Lutheran, I believe in single predestination.

I think Luther agreed with Paul and Augustine and the early Reformers regarding the truth of double Predestination. Single Predestination is really no different than what the RC and Orthodox posters are saying.

Here's a link to an excellent article:

DOUBLE OR NOTHING: MARTIN LUTHER'S DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION

Humanism has attempted to work its magic on men and God's will since the garden, day by day trying to chip away at God's sovereign decrees. Single predestination seems to be just more hedging of our bets, giving men the credit that belongs to God alone.

[kosta50]

As a Lutheran, I believe in single predestination. Which means simply that God causes a person's heart to be opened to receive Him, but that we have the free will to reject His Grace

That is consistent with the Orthodox/Roman Catholic teaching: God loves us more than we love Him, so He always makes the first move. And we either accept His offer or reject it.

I can not come to Christ on my own, but we are free to leave Him

Again if this is the teaching of the Protestant churches then I don't know who all these other people are on this thread.

It may interest you that the Lutherans approached Constantinople on several occasions in the 16th century shortly after Luther's death. When Austria began to use Lutherans in its administration towards the end of the century, the Austrian ambassador to Istanbul was instrumental in getting a response from the Greeks on their Augsburg profession of Faith. Earlier attempts were ignored because they were a source of embarrassment for the Patriarch. Cornered by the politics of the day, +Jeremiah II, Ecumenical Patriarch, basically rejected the Confession on three times and then broke off permanently with Lutheran divines.

One thing that struck me when reading this was the fact that originally the Lutherans ensured the Patriarch that their differences were minimal and basically geographical:

"Lutheran divines added a letter, in which they said that, though because of the distance between their countries there was some difference in their ceremonies, the Patriarch would acknowledge that they had introduced no innovation into the principal things necessary for salvation; and that they embraced and preserved, as far as their understanding went, the faith that had been taught to them by the Apostles, the Prophets and the Holy Fathers, and was inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Seven Councils and the Holy Scriptures." [Benz, Wittenberg und Byzantium, pp. 73ff]

Nowhere does it say by Bible alone or sola scriptura. So, it appears to me that some of the Protestants of today are second-derivaitives of original Lutherans who apparently were struggling to contain their runaway denial of all Church authority and that splinter groups within the movement gave birth to Protestant-Protestants with little theological semblance to the original version.

Thanks for sharing your views.