ryanelijah wrote:CJaKfOrEst. I like what you said and it is a pretty good pat christian answer, though incorrect. God did not predestine us from the beginning.Firstly, you might like to reread what I wrote, and not assume you know what side of the Calvin/Arminus debate that I sit on. The reality is "predestinated" is the word used is Eph 1. What Paul actually meant has had Christians scratching their heads since he wrote it (after all Luther and Augustine were both more "Calvinistic" than Calvin). My point in my post was that too many people spend too much time stressing about the this one word that occurs so little in scripture.Sorry to say, but God does know the future. He knows the end from the beginning. He is surprised by nothing. Whether that makes him like a master chess player who can predict every possible outcome, or whether He actually mapped it out from the beginning I don't know, and I don't lose any sleep over it, trusting the He is bigger than silly questions like this.Keith Daniel put it this way, "Be careful of choosing a side. When it comes to choosing a side, choose the Bible." (slight paraphrase) Fact: He chooses us before we choose Him, and we can't come to Him unless He calls us first. Fact: We are responsible for our own actions, and will be judged accordingly. Fact: If God has appointed some for salvation and some for damnation, that's none of our business, He is God after all.Flesh that out how you will, because both a Calvinist and a Arminian could say that they agree with those statements, but the fact is, they would both more likely claim that they are wrong.Call that a pat answer or not, but my Bible tells me the the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" is the birthplace of all sin. I believe it was Karl Barth who stated (and seconded by Art Katz):The man who lives under the sign of the tree of life, cannot know of himself, that which he must know, and which has therefore to be told him (to be explained and interpreted to him). The reality of Devinely given life speaks for itself. The possibility of Devine likeness does not do so. It obviously does not commend itself. Man has to be told specifically and in fact is told that from that tree he must not eat. It's not an opinion. Not an evaluation he makes, he needs to be told, and to recieve the word that comes to him, from God, as being the statement of the Lord. This is the relationship that God has wanted to establish, from the first in the garden, that man is not to make his own independent assessments or determinations by the operation of his own mind, which is eating of the wrong tree, but that he recognises that there are things that he can not know.The reality is, most "pat answers" are an admission to the fact God has given no comprehensive answer to the question. The question that really should be asked is why we need to fill in gaps, that God has left open, with human logic that God refers to as "A way that seemeth right unto man..." (need I finish the verse)?In Him.
