Posted on 11/24/2009 4:10:44 PM PST by NYer
lolol. Consider it all good.
The more I think about predestination, the truer the concept appears to me. Whatever exists is exactly what God ultimately wants to exist at any moment in time. Or else it would be different. He's God. Nothing occurs without His predetermined intent. If it did, then something would be outside God's control, making God dependent on a man's free choice and action. Yet nothing can exist, by definition, beyond His sustaining purpose.
At the moment of creation everything that was ever going to happen in this life on this earth was written by the mind of God for His glory. And that plan was not based on men's future choices which would mean God and salvation are dependent on men's own righteousness when it is only Christ's righteousness, freely given, which saves anyone.
There's no such thing as a contingency with God (if He is who He says He is) because all "alternatives" in time were factored into God's ordination at the beginning of time.
Therefore we don't pray for God to change His mind. We pray for mercy and guidance and acceptance and strength to live out His will for our lives with a true and grateful knowledge of His grace.
When I finally understood this, life became much more lucid and secure...which is what the doctrine of predestination is meant to give to Christians (although the world works hard to convince us otherwise.)
And finally, it makes sense to me to believe that if God wanted all men to be saved, all men would be saved. I am relieved to rest in His plan for this life and the next. It all comes down to trust.
If God has determined you to be among His family from before the foundation of the world, then at a time of God's choosing the Holy Spirit will make Himself known to you and you will believe and be saved, not because you're better than your unbelieving neighbor, but because it is God's will you come to Him in faith. God's grace is thoroughly and miraculously and inevitably irresistible. As Harley says, 1 Corinthians 4:7 is reality.
Blue-duncan once wrote something I've always remembered --
"The whole sacrificial system was poor copy of the reality that was in heaven and looked forward to it breaking into time. A believers life will catch up with his election in time. At present, believers are seen as perfect in Christ and yet our sanctification is in process and ultimately when we are in the presence of Jesus our sanctification will catch up with the perfection that God sees us in now."
God's will "breaks into time" and becomes who we are and what we do. Therefore Christians are the most fortunate of human beings. It's the temporal world that wants us NOT to believe in God's predestination of all things. Resist the urge to agree with them. 8~)
If your eyeballs can handle a little more print, I really enjoyed Baptist pastor A.W. Pink's great work, "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD", with emphasis on Chapter 5, Reprobation.
And Jerome Zanchius (yes, an Italian Protestant reformer) who wrote ABSOLUTE PREDESTINATION
"Absolute." A spectacular concept in an age of trillion dollar deficits and Kenyan Presidents.
1440 for later
You are quite right. I probably had too much eggnog.
No, that's the teaching of some probably Protestant-turned-Orthodox OCA grenius who didn't leave his Protestant mindset outside when he decided to become Orhtodox....The real Orthodox Church teaches that corrupt human nature is a consequence of Adm's sin, a terminal illness that is passed (infects) on to all Adam's offspring, and salvation is spiritually healing, or restoring humanity to their original state, in the likeness of God (Christlike), or theosis.
I find your description more in line with other things that I have read, but it is difficult when searching the Internet to find an succient Orthodox description on theology.
Please don't quote to me anything that has to do with OCA because as fra as I am cocerned they are not an Orthodox Church (yet).
Well, I can't make any promises. After all, trying to remember all this stuff is difficult. It's like putting too many socks in the sock drawer, you know.
I am glad to hear that, but nevertheless the Bible says God gives you faith or God doesn't give you faith. He either hardens your heart or he doesn't. I imagine it has become obvious even to hard-core Reformists that double predestination just doesn't have much appeal these days, so perhaps not teaching it is a good call.
Perhaps predestination is not fashionable but it's nevertheless true. Many Reformers still teach it; people just don't wish to hear it. We would call it a hardened heart. It doesn't negate the fact but it refuses to give God the credit for one's salvation.
Jesus in the Bible says no one comes to him unless the Father gives someone to him. Of course that makes Jesus' rants about not believing him kinda silly, doesn't it?
I wouldn't say that our Lord Jesus "ranted" about anything. One cannot come to the Father unless the Father opens their ears and eyes to the truth. But just like Noah, we continue to build that ark in hopes that God will be merciful to some. Our Lord Jesus preached to those who He called "sons of the devil", knowing that God would never open their eyes and ears. He was faithful to God's calling knowing the situation and that is what we're suppose to be.
I don’t know about recent attacks, but as a child a friend that lived down the street from my Grandparents tried to get me to go to her Baptist Church meetings. When I told her I was a Catholic and had my own obligations she basically told me my Grandparents were worshiping evil and prayed to evil people that the Catholic Church had made saints i.e., Cleopatra! This was in fourth grade mind you... I was pretty upset and could not understand why she thought we prayed to Cleopatra. I can only surmise that her Church meetings had something to do with her religious education. I was never taught to judge her choice of worship... and did not understand why she so poorly misjudged mine.
Woooo-doggy. People sure make this complicated. Thanks but I'll stick with Augustine's interpretation. I can understand that.
Amen to your beautiful post. Pink is an excellent read. But I always remember your comment, “If God wanted all men to be saved, then all men would be saved.” I think that is about as clear as it can get.
Not really. Go to any Orthodox source, just not the OCA sources. They are just not there yet. The don't think Orthodox. They are Protestants in Orthodox vestments. Just because you can dress like a doctor doesn't make you a doctor...okay.
Go instead to Greek, Russian, Serbian, and other established Churches that have been around for quote some time (Greek is the Mother Church after all!). Go to Patristics and Church Fathers. Not some shake-n-bake quasi-Orthodox Protestant OCA wonder regurgitated in St. Vald's...
Or, better ye, ask Kolo or someone else who is familiar with this stuff.
I wouldn't say that our Lord Jesus "ranted" about anything
Well, that's your opinion. Turning over moneychangers' tables would qualify as a fit or calling people "vipers" and "dogs" (the worst insult in the Middle East), or children of the devil, or ignorant, would certainly qualify as a rant.
Why didn't God in his goodness simply open moneychangers' eyes and soften their hearts and make them "see" and "feel" the error of their ways, so they could repent and turn over their own tables? Wouldn't that have been a much more Christ-like thing to do?
Our Lord Jesus preached to those who He called "sons of the devil", knowing that God would never open their eyes and ears
So why did he preach to them? Wouldn't he had been more effective healing some poor soul instead of wasting his time on hardened hearts that he knew would not believe him? What was the point of that?
HD, I believe the fellow you quoted, a Fr. Stephen Fraser, is a convert from Protestantism, educated at the hopefully soon to be closed or seriously reformed OCA St. Vladimir’s Seminary. I believe (unless there are two Fr. Stephen Frasers) he left canonical Orthodoxy for the “Church Of The Genuine Orthodox Christians In The United States”, a sort of “bring your own snake” version of something which looks a lot like Orthodoxy but isn’t.
At any rate, Kosta’s suggestion is a good one (exclusive of setting me up as an expert). Stick with the Greek, Slavic, Romanian or Arab church sources. The OCA, especially under its new loudmouth convert presiding hierarch, has gone off the rails seriously. Even then, be real careful of what you read and who wrote it. The Fathers are the best source and they are available online, but even then you can find some odd stuff.
(Did you mean to have a number 3 in your list?)
Every answer you’ve given proves my point. If 1 and 2 are true, then every “genetic” Jew still falls under the Abrahamic covenant since expanded by Moses and tradition. They are, in God’s eyes, under obligation. To be a Jew is both a religious and matrilineal truth.
In your 4 you create an inconsistency. One cannot postulate that all worship must be to YHWH, Adonai, the Lord, God of Israel, etc. and that the same God who postulated and demanded this Law doesn’t want to be worshiped, just obeyed. Who obeys what they don’t believe in? That is an absurdist conclusion. It smacks of just wanting to be right, while ignoring the facts.
The entire Exodus story is one working to get Pharaoh and the Hebrews to believe in God.(Although, the belief v. obedience argument is irrelevant to this post)
A Jew (genetic) who worships anything is still a Jew by your item 1. Your item 2 latter half is immaterial to this argument, particularly since Jewish converts make up such a small part of modern Judaism (genetic (impossible) or religious (rare)).
Let’s accept your theory that we cannot really know the Sadducees because their history was written by their enemies and we have no certain proofs. We do know about the Pharisees and their teachings. (We’ve just had Hanukkah - a battle against Hellenization and Hellenized Jews - Read the First Book of Maccabees)
What did the Pharisees (the bitter opponents of the Sadducees) believe/practice? The Oral Law, the Talmud of Rabbinic Judaism, and the Kosher Laws. Separateness from others is a central tenet of Phariseeism. Rejection of other cultures, religions and opinions (much like radical Islam) is also concomitant to Pharisaical practice. Given the vitriolic response to the Sadducees by the Pharisees it is safe to assume that the Sadducees were not observant to the Pharisaical standard, were more tolerant of outsiders (Greeks, Romans, Pagans, Gentiles, etc.), ignored Kosher Laws and were more liberal than the insular Pharisees.
What does modern Judaism look like today (remember it is both matrilineal and religious, but in God’s eyes they cannot be separated)? From your previous post, ‘Orthodox Jews comprised 10%, Conservative 26%, Reform 35%, “Just Jewish” 20%, and 9% are made up of “other”’ Accepting these numbers as correct. At best 50% of Conservative Jews practice Halakha in their daily lives. This would include the laws of Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath); the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher); the practice of thrice daily prayer; observance of the Jewish holidays and life-cycle events. In short what a Pharisee would practice.
Therefore it is safe to conclude that 64% or more of Jews are nominally not Pharisaical. I concede that we cannot be certain what the Sadducees believed with exactness, but they certainly were more epicurean than the Pharisees.
So in modern Judaism (matrilineal and religious) we see that some 64%-85% do not practice Pharisaical Judaism.
Do you see what I am getting at? A Jew is a Jew and to the Pharisees it is matrilineal and religious. To ignore the Pharisaical practice is to be something other than Pharisaical by default. You can call it what you want, but Sadducean as opposed to Pharisaic makes sense. That is the state of modern Jewry.
Are you really arguing that Christ is introducing cannibalism as a ritual? Is Greek really that literalistic and without subtlety? Is it a language bereft of double meanings or idioms?
Now there's just about the oldest canard ever flung at The Church! Surely that adds nothing to the Protestant position! From the very beginning of The Church there were those who did not accept the Real Presence in the Eucharist, Christ's plain words to the contrary notwithstanding. Those people, from the beginning, were condemned and in fact not even considered Christians. Since the Reformation I don't think that non Anglican or Lutheran Protestants are considered non-Christians, but they certainly are considered as being outside The Church and in great measure because of their rejection of the Eucharistic theology of The Church.
Is Greek really that literalistic and without subtlety? Is it a language bereft of double meanings or idioms?
Greek is full of puns, idioms and double meanings. It is exactly for that reason that Greek is very precise and as for subtlety, well, one letter, "ι", makes the difference between what we as Christians believe and proclaim in the Creed and what the Arian heretics believed.
The Greek of the Gospel according to John is both sublime and sophisticated. It's beautiful, TenTen. The Hellenized Greeks it was written for understood exactly what +John was writing as verse 51 demonstrates.
Meant to ping you to 1451
It is a mystery like anything to do with an entity Who lives outside of time. But molinism, the teaching that God predestines outside of time what we choose in time, is not complex. Everything else is.
“are you are suggesting John writes (at the very end of the first century) to Jewish Christians? Where do you get that from?”
The purpose of John in composing his Gospel is clearly stated in John 20:30-31. He points out that his work is essentia1ly selective. He has chosen to record some of the signs that Jesus did in the presence of His disciples, that his readers may be encouraged to hold fast their belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that in so doing they may experience the higher, eternal life that it is in His power to bestow upon them.
The main themes of his writing would appeal to Jewish Christians.
John introduced his writing with a Wisdom Christology (John 1: 1—3) as did the writer of Hebrews (Hebrews 1: 1—3). The root of this Christology, on which John and the writer to the Hebrews drew, was the Old Testament passage in which Christ, as the Wisdom of God, is said to have created all things, (Proverbs 8: 22ff.), where Wisdom personified speaks in the first person as the beginning of God’s way, his darling first-born child and his evaluator when he created the world. The wording of this passage underlies the description of Christ as “the beginning” of Genesis 1: 1; that is to say, the “beginning” in which God created heaven and earth was Wisdom. Christ, as the Wisdom of God, is the beginning “in” whom all things were created; He is the “in” of Genesis 1: 1: “in the beginning God created heaven and earth”,
He stresses the Messiahship of Jesus in;
the fulfillment of the many Old Testament prophecies about the work the Messiah,
His performing a Messianic action in ‘cleansing’ the temple on His first visit to Jerusalem after His ministry had begun.,
His claims to ‘work’ on the Sabbath involving the healing of the paralyzed man at Bethesda, and in the gift of sight to a man born blind,
His revelation of Himself to the Samaritan woman,
His feeding the hungry Galilaeans, though He escapes from them as soon as they try to enthrone Him as an earthly monarch,
His approach to Jerusalem for the last time, though as soon as He is greeted as a warrior-king He finds an ass and rides into the city as a king of peace.
He shows that the salvation Jesus came to bring was the climax of Jewish religion;
He shows that the blessings Jesus had to bestow were prefigured in the blessings bestowed by God upon Israel in the past;
He shows that the truths enshrined in the ritual of the Jewish festivals, particularly the Passover, were symbolic of the final truth revealed in Jesus.
John conspicuously sets forth the self-revelation of Jesus as the unique Son of God. (John the Baptist’s testimony, ‘I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God’ John 1:34);
John, having considered the many miracle signs of Jesus, chose seven to demonstrate the true identity of Jesus. These miracles appear to have been selected to appeal to Jewish Christians (cf. the water that Jesus made into wine had been used for “Jewish rites of purification”. The miracle of the loaves and fish provided an opportunity for Jesus to describe himself as the “true bread” [John 6:32-33], as compared with the “manna in the wilderness” [John 6:31]). These “signs” demonstrate that Jesus fulfills and ends the old covenant, so that further involvement in Judaism as a religious system is now pointless.
the turning of water to wine at Cana (2:1-11)
the healing of the son of the nobleman in Capernaum (4:45-54)
the healing of the cripple at the pool in Jerusalem (5:1-9)
the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness (6:1-15)
the healing of the blind man in Jerusalem (9:1-8)
the raising of Lazarus from the dead in Bethany (11:1-44)
the resurrection of Jesus himself in Jerusalem (20:1-29)
Two of the constantly recurring themes of this Gospel are the nature of the unbelief which led the Jews to refuse to accept Jesus as the Messiah, and the factors of the faith which led His disciples (Jews) to acknowledge Him as the One ‘of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write’
“If you have a copy of John 20:31 as it appears in P66 (Bodmer papyrus II)”
Google “Bodmer Papyrus”. There are copies there on some of the sites.
“That’s an admission that the Bible is not a pristine word of God but that it contains uninspired text.”
I don’t see where that follows from what I wrote. John, as an after thought, added a postscript.
“Rather than go into descriptive opinions about Bultmann’s style, just give me specific answers to the particular verses he motions.”
To be quite frank with you I don’t have the time or the inclination to debate Bultmann. Back 30 years ago when I studied his theology I became convinced by the writings of other scholars, a few I mentioned in my previous post, that his methodology was wrong and therefore see no value in answering his position point by point.
I do value our discussions and hope this does not insult you or discourage you in any way.
Fascinating, Kolo and thanks for your insights.
So in the Greek Christ’s words can only be interpreted as literally His flesh and blood? There is no other possible interpretation or explanation? One that is a plausible alternative? (I do wish I read Greek)
BTW - I don’t defend the Protestant position. I view Protestantism as a schismatic branch of Catholicism.
Beautiful !
As a sister I love once noted there is great comfort in “Calvinism”
When you cede to God what is already His (sovereignty), you can rest in His power and His might and know you are wrapped in His arms from conception to death..
Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
For I, the Lord your God,
hold your right hand;
it is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I am the one who helps you.”
—Isaiah 41:10,13
“So in the Greek Christ’s words can only be interpreted as literally His flesh and blood?”
Clearly not. The words have been interpreted otherwise since the beginning and by native Greek speaking Hellenized people. But the words mean what they say. The Hellenized Jews we are asked by the author of John to believe heard the words and responded understood them to be meant literally.
Others later felt otherwise, apparently. Interestingly, the Arians and the Nestorians never questioned the Real Presence any more than Luther or the Anglican Divines did.
Many people ask the question about Calvinism, "So What! What dies it matter?"
Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?
Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.
Now that is the beauty of Calvinism. We are not our own...
That would make you a God robot than,and somehow God needs to break into time to turn you into a robot because we are mindless zombies until that happens.
Calvinism is incredibly goofy
Sounds like an Orthodox denomination. ;O)
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