The word "foreknow" in scripture in terms of God is not "to know" as to "ascertain pre-existing information." God already "knows" all pre-existing information because He made us the way we are - either vessels to display His mercy or vessels to display His judgment.
The word "foreknow" in terms of God means "to love personally and with specificity."
And this love is individual, targeted, transformative and the first cause of all and every righteousness, including the desire to believe. Without it, there is only darkness. With it, there is light eternal. Either/or, according to God's good pleasure alone.
Election according to "foreseen ability and desire to believe" nullifies the truth of men's total inability to know God, love God and obey God unless and until God first regenerates the dead (natural) man into an adopted (spiritual) Son who knows his salvation is by Christ alone.
So if a man's regeneration by God is the reason for the difference between men then "foreseen faith" is not a determing factor in election, but instead a result of God's election. We believe because He enabled us to even want to believe.
And if it was a determinate act, then was there some deliberative thought process that went into that election? Or was it simply random, like a computer picking numbers for the lottery?
THAT is the part of predestination we don't have the ability to understand. Scripture only tells us it is due to "God's good pleasure." Why God chooses some men to lift from from their misery and bring to Himself in faith while leaving others in their fallen, God-denying state is His alone to know. All men fallen. Some men saved.
I really doubt God's purpose in creating his family is "random." But any "deliberation" is all of one moment, so to speak. God waits for nothing and no man. For what outcome is He weighing that He has not already ordained from before the foundation of the world? He is at all times omniscient. It's His show. We breath because He causes the brain to enable the lungs to inhale and exhale.
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
Think about it. Who benefits by telling men they must do something in order for God to love them and choose them and redeem them?
Answer:
1) those churches who presume to barter and sell God's grace, and
2) the temporal world that works hard to convince Christians there is no Christian distinctive; there is no eternal, predestined love shown believers; and most especially, that men are in control and not God.
If you don't understand it, then you can't foreclose the idea that foreknowledge as a basis for his determinate election. That is where the Westminster Confession and I part company. The WCF forecloses even to possibility that God has determined to elect even one person on the basis of His infinite foreknowledge. Yet that same document purports to state that His determinate counsel is an unknowable mystery.
Seems contradictory to me. Either you don't know why, or you do.
You can't state that you don't know the reason why, and then categorically rule out at least one or more reasons. You don't know. That is the whole point. Nobody does.
1) those churches who presume to barter and sell God's grace, and
2) the temporal world that works hard to convince Christians there is no Christian distinctive; there is no eternal, predestined love shown believers; and most especially, that men are in control and not God.
No Catholic Church in either one of those answers.
Thank God for that.
The word
You are displaying many quotation marks, Dr. E. and are not attributing them. Where are you getting these definitions from? Who says that "foreknow" in terms of God means "to love personally and with specificity." Where is your proof?
THAT is the part of predestination we don't have the ability to understand. Scripture only tells us it is due to "God's good pleasure." Why God chooses some men to lift from from their misery and bring to Himself in faith while leaving others in their fallen, God-denying state is His alone to know. All men fallen. Some men saved.
Even St. Paul rejects this completely.
1 Corinthians 15: 26 11 The last enemy to be destroyed is death, 27 12 for "he subjected everything under his feet." But when it says that everything has been subjected, it is clear that it excludes the one who subjected everything to him. 28 When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will (also) be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.
The only way that God may be all in all in a Calvinist universe is if He specifically condemns men to hell for his own pleasure. Paul calls Calvin a liar.
Philippians 2: 9 Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name 7 that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, 8 of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 9 to the glory of God the Father.
Men condemned to hellfire forever are not going to praise God, nor bend a knee to Him. Paul calls Calvin a liar.
Colossians 1: 18 He is the head of the body, the church. 9 He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness 10 was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross 11 (through him), whether those on earth or those in heaven.
All things, making peace by the blood of His Cross. Paul calls Calvin a liar. There. Peter may have denied Christ three times, but been forgiven; Paul calls Calvin a liar three times just here; is Calvin forgiven?