Yet the Bible is exceedingly clear that there are no necessary or adequate qualifications whatsoever.
Chosen by God - A study in Election
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I think that you are perilously close to believing that actual justice is YOUR justice.
Not at all, God is the judge and His methods are what they are. But there is no justice if there are no criteria, if there's no standard. Then it's just capriciousness and justice means absolutely nothing.
The issue is you've mistaken your soteriology which is based on human systematic theologies for God's actual methods. You've mistaken the philosophizing on Biblical texts by men like Augustine and Calvin as actual Biblical truth whether you've read them or not because it is what you have heard preached.
You ignore God calling numerous men righteous in favor of a quotation of a poem and other proof texts. You ignore God calling men to choose in favor of that same philosophizing.
God's justice is real justice, the righteous are saved and the wicked damned. Even if we can't see immediately who is and isn't wicked.
Frankly that is none of our business, and we should thank God for that.
Furthermore it's God's problem not our problem.
Moreover, since there are absolutely NO preconditions pertaining to salvation, then we can preach to every living creature with complete confidence and zero prejudice.
But beyond all of that there is no way that any human being could ever perceive who is elect and who is not, so as far as we're concerned everybody and anybody gets a free and fair shot at salvation.
Works for me!
Your issue is you set YOURSELF up as the judge. Setting standards. Elucidating lists of criteria. Fine-tuning the scales of justice. Declaring what is fair and right.
Pretty outrageous really.
I wouldn't touch any of that with a 10 foot pole.
It's not a matter of fairness, it's a matter of cohesion. If the word justice is to mean anything with regard to God it must differ from human justice not in kind but in degree.
If the soteriology you set up were true God could certainly call Himself just but the word would be meaningless. It wouldn't have any semantic value because it is entirely different from what we mean by justice.
You accuse me of setting myself up as the judge for pointing out the flaws in your system because as is common to Calvinists your pride is your doctrinal knowledge.
The only thing I judge is the idol set up by a human system. The monster that Calvinist soteriology tries to hoist in the place where only the true God properly sits.
You think by teaching that God saves some wicked while punishing another group that is no more guilty than those saved is somehow honoring God. You think that by distorting the attributes of God to the point where they have none of their common meaning is preserving God's doctrines, but instead you make the personal God impersonal and unknowable.
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EleventhHour
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They make God morally ambigous.
It is a travesty and they hide behind, statements like "we cannot question God's ways."
R.C.Sproul and the Calvinite teachers make evil sound good and intellectual.
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EleventhHour
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Strange how we mere humans understand what is just..... I wonder how we know better than your god.
Reminds me of another Calvinism heresy ..how we are to love those whom God hates... as though the believer is more moral than God?
All groups claim their teachings are based on the Bible. They believe they have the most truth, more than others .
Okay, they resisted the Holy Spirit they did not want to be saved, just like the elect? The only reason the elect eventually want those things is because God has elected them, and given them new hearts and repentance and faith. God could have done the same to those others who resisted the Holy Spirit, but did not.
Humanly just or not the modus operandi is as follows:
John 6:65
And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
6:37
Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never drive away.
6:44
"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
Justice? Or gracious gifts? That is the question.
I'll tell you what: you can have the justice and I will receive the gifts.
Matt 13:11
He replied, "The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.
John 3:27
John replied, "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.
Then one of the soldiers confessed Jesus as Lord. Are you a universalist or something?
Salvation is not potential, but rather it is actual.
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