Responding to FRANK’s post: you can bet your bottom dollar that Bush played the “christianity card” to get elected, only tell me this about the 2nd time around:

Since the abortion loving supreme court got him back in for the back nine, WHO OF THEM is a christian then ? OR .. did he no longer need the “christian card” and substituted the Joker ?

Keen

There is no doubt that he has some morals and strength imbued through his exposure to cultural-christianity (which derives these from true Christianity). I bet that he thinks he is a Christian, but with the way he is articulating his “faith,” it *seems* that he does not have a saving understanding of who Jesus is.

In a certain (and very real) sense, I no longer care what happens to this nation, or even the world, or even Israel. I know how the story “ends” (at least for this and the next age).

I am homesick; I want to see Abba as He sees me, and I want to enjoy Him in that context. What I *DO CARE ABOUT* is individuals, and that is what keeps me here on earth in His love. Nations may fall, but I want my neighbors (wherever they are in the world – and I know many)…I want them to be saved!

Maybe I should put this another way: I have become dispassionate about my nation-of-birth, because my “nation-of-rebirth” is the Kingdom of God. I am His; I long to be redeemed, but I am and will forever be an example of His unfathomable grace (if *anyone* has needed His grace, it has been me – between what I have done to others, what was done to me, what I *am* and I am not). I *VERY MUCH* feel as a pilgrim passing through this world on my way home.

There are nice things in this world, and I *pause* to smell the roses, but I realize that everything here is very temporary, so I appreciate without “owning” (or being “owned” by anything here). To me, this deep-in-my-heart realization is a *major blessing* from our King of Love. I disconnecting from the world (in a good way) and am becoming more solidly connected with Him – honestly, this is the best (and really only, for my circumstances) way for me to prepare for the unpleasantries to come here in the USA.

Sorry Don, I’m veering off-topic again…

If the man is a Christian he is either well backslidden or just used Christianity to get elected President.

But really, this is a comment section on George Bush and taking the Bible literally it is not a debate site on Calvinism.

From a purely human and therefore earthly perspective, we might say that man can choose to do good but this is really not the case. For instance, one might be given the choice to either donate money to an orphanage or to keep the money and go to the cinema instead. If that person chooses to donate the money to the orphanage, we might say that was a good work and that the person was able to make this decision due to his free will.

Now, does this apparent good work have any merit for God? This person might just as well have been motivated by his self-interest because he secretly wishes to reassure himself that he is not all that bad and that he did a noble thing, deserving praise. Of course from a human perspective he did the right thing, regardless of his true motivations. But the reality remains that this person’s actions mean absolutely nothing to God and will have no influence on his afterlife because his actions were neither done out of faith or to the glory of God. Man is corrupted by nature – this includes his free will.

Abraham was justified by Faith and it was counted to him as righteousness. God chose his Israelite descendents to be His people, but not all of Israel was elect – God exterminated many of them because of their sinfulness and in some instances we read He even hardened their hearts. Likewise, the Body of believers is invisible, but there is a visible Church and people also. That is why there are many who appear to fall from the faith or become apostates. The elect shall nonetheless be saved. They can be said to be the “Israel of Israel”, similar to how not all of the Israelites were truly elect despite all of them being “of Israel”.

The election cannot have meant to be a mere foreseeing because this would lead to a situation where God elects people based on their works or other personal qualities. Everyone, ranging from the mass murderer to the humanitarian worker, is equally corrupt by nature and therefore utterly unable to come to true faith and do truly good works that please God.

If the election was based on a foreseeing, then why did God choose the Israelites at all since 95 % of them were pretty much as pagan and as lost as the Gentiles? And yet He did choose the Israelites, for the sake of those whom He elected and to His glory and plans with this world. St. Paul says “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” – Ephesians 1:4-6

It follows that if some have been predestined according to God’s glory, some have been rejected. Of course this difficult for us to understand with our limited human capacities and our own corrupted notions of “justice” and “goodness”, but it is nonetheless the truth. What is important for us to realize is that the election is secret and it would be wrong for us to try and determine who’s elect and who is not. I believe that the issue of free will comes up only because of our limited human thinking. We want to understand things too much from a human perspective.

Yet despite all this, the Bible nowhere says that man does not have to repent. As one who has come to accept Calvinist doctrine, I urge everyone to repent of his sins. Why? Because Jesus told us to spread the Gospel to all nations and because the election is secret and a godly matter, hence not something we should be preoccupied with in dealing with others. It is only by the work of the Spirit that man can truly receive faith, repent, turn away from sin, and be transformed to the image of Christ through the indwelling of the Spirit. But from a human point of view, this still means that man has to convert and accept Christ, and that is what we indeed must preach to all men.

God bless.

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/90-273

http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/90-274

Both Calvin and Arminius were trying to get around the seeming paradox of how God could foreknow human events and yet allow for free-will in human individuals. I believe they were trying fit these things into the context of the limitations we have to live within (time, in particular).

First, there must be free-will or the concept of love has no meaning whatsoever: a “robot” cannot love because it cannot chose for or against someone of its own volition; this is where the Arminianism concept of Agency appears. There are many scriptural verses that support this. (The bad news is that Arminianism has to claim that people can lose their salvation, and the scriptures that teach otherwise have to be reinterpreted to mean other things.)

Second, God is sovereign. To be completely sovereign over His creation, God must be all-knowing. In particular, it is assumed that to be omniscient, He must control what is decided by his creations; this is where the concept of Election appears in Calvinism. There are many scriptural verses that support this. (The bad news here (for us) is that God has chosen who will be saved and who will not be, and the scriptures used to demonstrate our free-will are reinterpreted to mean other things.)

How can the two be true simultaneously?

How can God be responsible for Electing people and the people be held responsible for their choice by God (Agency)? Why bother to pray?

I believe that neither Calvin nor Arminius properly accounted for the fact that God created the universe (time/space/matter) and is therefore not subject to any of its limitations.

In particular, God created time, and He is not limited to it as we are. He exists outside the plane of that dimension. Though He can step into it at any point (as Jesus did when He became incarnate), the things we see as paradoxical about knowing and doing things (in the context of time) simply do not apply to God.

God “stands” outside of time and can therefore “see” all the choices made by His human creation, from start to finish. Scripture supports this. BUT the fact that He knows what choices will be made does not mean that He makes them for His creation. It’s this ability to step-outside-of-time that bypasses the paradox of agency vs. election. Unlike the view from within the limitations of time, God’s foreknowing does not require that He be the cause of that which is known.

Think of our 3 1/2 dimensions (space and time) as if they were a sheet of paper. On that paper, there are lines drawn from the left to the right. All the lines are relatively short, all proceed from the left to the right. At the very left-most part of the page, we see a line representing Adam. On the right is the very end of time as we understand it. Each of these lines reprents a human life; their leftmost point, their birth and the rightmost, their death (or their exit from time). Each line veers to the top of the page (towards God) or the bottom of the page (away from God). Some lines end pointed up (saved) and some down (unsaved). God created this, so He is not part of this; He is not locked into the paper itself (as we humans are). (He did “jump into” the paper as Jesus incarnate, so there is a line representing Jesus.) Now, since God is other than the paper, He can see the entirety of the paper all at once: in a real way, EVERYTIME is NOW for Him. He can look a any particular life and see how it progressed from start to finish. He knows what a person will ultimately choose without forcing the person to choose one way or another. At the same time, EVERY choice, EVERY sin can be enumerated from this vantage point. This is how Jesus was able to pay for every sin ever committed, for ALL OF TIME! Now, it’s possible for God, seeing someone like Pharaoh who would not choose Him anyway, to “confirm” the hardness of his heart – God saw that Pharaoh would be an unbeliever, so to make a point, He “pushed” Pharaoh “hard” over to that choice – He “hardened his heart.” Likewise, God, knowing who will ultimately choose Him, can work in their lives so that “all things work to the good of those who love God…” So praying matters!

I’m sure that this analogy is imperfect, but it helps me to get my mind around these things and to take scripture at its word.

So I am neither Calvinistic nor Arminian! I think both are correct about some important things and both are wrong about important things. By the way, nothing says you have to believe either one to be saved! They were thinking like humans instead of considering God’s position as the creator of time and the universe with all that implies!

I hope you find this analogy useful and encouraging!