Ah yes...
The P in TULIP...
No thanks.
Fascinating stuff.
I am a believer that you talk about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.
I think God can handle it. ; )
Predestination = letting someone else run you life...
We saw predestination in the Soviet Union where people knew they were in for misery and they would accept misery as inevitable.
Predestination or the belife in it is a killer of motivation as it creates an attitude of “Why Bother”.
I do believe in predestination, of course.
“.... ground rules for how we must talk....” HUH?
Rules? MUST? Nonsense! Free and open discussion, without rules or dictates (other than for decorum), is how all things should be discussed.
What’s the use of talking about predestination if it’s gonna happen anyway?
But wait a minute... was it predestined that we’d ask the question about talking about predestination?
Bye...
Free will! Even God doesn’t know what man will do - until a man decides!
Oh course we should talk about it, and of course we will: It had been predestined that we will.
This thread, and all its responses, has been predestined. Those whose comments are sinful were predestined to make them, and will go to hell. Those whose comments are pleasing to God were also predestined to make them, and will go to heaven.
Freepers talk much about freedom vs tyranny. Predestination gives us the best, and the worst, of that entire spectrum: We have free will to do whatever we want, but what we want and do, and the reward or punishment we get, is already controlled, cradle to grave, by a tyrant who may or may not ultimately already plan to make us suffer, and who has given us a highly user-unfriendly manual for figuring out the rules, and who makes NSA spying and drone kills look like child’s play.
I know my understanding may be out of synch with the labyrinthine reasoning theologians bring to this absurd argument, but there you have it.
The only problem I have with Predestination is that, if it’s true, there’s nothing you can do about it.
So what’s the point of preaching about it?
It also amuses me that the issues people really go to war over, will slit throats over, have the most absolutely ferocious certainty about, etc., are things that nobody can possibly have any experience of, or perceive in any way—like “prevenient grace.”
The logic of it is very interesting. If He knows the number of hairs on my head and the world runs according to His plan, then I presume He knows what I will choose and when, even though I myself am free to choose along the way. Seems incorrect to think that He doesn’t know how this will end for each of us.
Maybe this is just really a discussion on the precise definition of predetermination/predestination or whatever.
I’ve not bought into the argument that this can’t be discussed because “if the answer is already known, the weak minded will just give up trying.”
From God's point of view, knowing the beginning from the end, all is predestined.
From humans point of view, all we know are the choices we make.
Was Abrahams almost sacrifice of his son for God or for Abraham? Of course God knew the outcome, but Abraham didn't until he prepared to plunge the knife.
Think about it logically. It's predestination - do we really have a choice to talk or not talk about it?
Free will is indisputable.
Predestination is a history lesson. Problem for most is they fit Peter's description of IIPeter 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of,
that by the word of God the heavens were of OLD, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6 (When predestination took place) Whereby the world that then WAS, being overflowed with water, perished:
This is not Noah's flood...
Young earth creation is not Biblical.
"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!" (Rom 10:13-15 KJV)
Whether that was predestination, or not, I do not know. It did not happen in a church, because I had not been inside a church in over a decade.
Philip