Skip to main content

Predestination, continued

A problem with the Calvinistic points of unconditional election and irrestible grace is the concept of regeneration of the believer. A common argument by some Calvinists goes like this: A person cannot choose to accept Christ, as s/he is spiritually dead (see previous post about this). Therefore, God must choose that person, and then somehow make the person alive, or otherwise change the person's nature somehow, in order for the person to choose Christ, or God must first change this person first before s/he can choose Christ. However, Calvinists who argue this do not explain very clear how this happens, but simply use this as an argument for the necessity of predestination.

But this leads to God arbitrarily giving some people the ability to be saved and not others. Calvinists would say that God is just, though not necessarily fair from our point of view, in doing so, simply because he is God and can do what he wants. But this is merely a semantic game, making an artificial distinction here between 'just' and 'fair', and still presents a God who can be arbitrary, contrary to his nature. But God cannot act contrary to his nature by arbitrarily selecting some for salvation. God is not unfair or arbitrary or only gracious to some, as that would contradict his nature. Nor can his unfathomable ways be reduced to a rationalistic religious system like Calvinism.

This Calvinistic claim also leads to an artificial distinction of two stages of salvation, with no scriptural support: the stage where God makes a person alive and able to choose, and the point where s/he actually chooses and is saved. The first stage sounds like regeneration, in fact. But regeneration and salvation are part of the same event or process. This claim muddies the two and seems to impose an artificial distinction between the two, or makes for a two-stage salvation process. This is similar to the "three comings of Christ" in pre-trib dispensationalism (he comes at the "rapture" and the "official" second coming). I find this problematic in Calvinism - an artificial construct is created to get around difficulties in the theory, leading to a more convoluted theology. So when is a person saved or reborn? When God enlivens the person, or when s/he consciously chooses? Can a person be so "enlivened" and then reject Christ with this new-found spiritual ability? This theology is problematic, and lacks scriptural support.

Okay, in my next posts I'll try to get around to either the 'foreknowledge' issue and/or implications of predestination theology.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Popular posts from this blog

Book review: Green Eggs and Ham (Dr. Seuss)

Green eggs and ham, as a recolorized staple breakfast food, captures the reader's attention by turning this diurnal sustenance into an unexpected and apparently unappetizing foodstuff. It thus symbolizes the existential angst of modern life, wherein we are unfulfilled by modern life, and are repelled by something that might impart nourishment. The "protagonist" to be convinced of its desirability remains anonymous, while the other actor refers to himself with an emphatic identifier "Sam I am", formed with a pronominal subject and copular verb of existence. This character thus seeks to emphasize his existence and existential wholeness, and even establish a sense of self-existence, with an apparent Old Testament allusion to Elohim speaking to Moses as the "I Am". This emphatic personal identifier thus introduces a prominent theme of religious existentialism to the narrative, probably more in line with original Kierkegaardian religious existentialism, rat

IBM Lotus Symphony - Hardy installer for Ubuntu / Debian / Mint Linux

I recently upgraded my Linux to Ubuntu 12, and I had major difficulties installing the IBM Lotus Symphony. It would not install, complaining about dependencies involving some libnotify program. I found and installed libnotify, but then Lotus would not start up. I found that there's a problem with the currently available Debian installer / program for Lotus, and following some advice I found from my Google search, I tried a previous version of the Lotus installer, and everything seems to work fine. I'm making the installer available here for people who need it, since I can't seem to find it on the IBM website.  Details: The current installer is designated for the Lucid version of Ubuntu - symphony_3.0.1-1lucid1_i386.deb - for Ubuntu / Debian versions since March 2010. Installing this in the most recent versions of Ubuntu / Mint Linux (versions 12-14) doesn't work for some people, leading to the following error message - or the program simply won't start up.  .....

Portraits of Christ: John’s Gospel, part 2

In John’s Gospel we have an emphasis on Jesus that is unique compared to the other gospels. John not only emphasizes his deity, but his mysteriousness. The reader is left with an impression of Jesus as a mystical teacher, in the sense that his words and actions are not only those of a profound religious teacher, but of one who is other-worldly. So often in this gospel we read of Jesus making statements that the crowds, the religious teachers, and even his own disciples sometimes could not fathom. For starters, there are the “I am” statements (e.g., I am the bread of life; I am the living water; I am the good shepherd; I am the way, the truth, and the life), which were clearly claims to divinity, for these statements in the Jewish context referred to God’s title “I am,” given when Moses inquired of his name at the burning bush. Jesus makes much use of mystical metaphors like these and others, like all the ‘day’ and ‘night’ references in this book, which portrays him as mystical or my