[quote]Cortes wrote:<<< That is, if you are inclined to really find the answer to your question, and are not just here to stir up shit ;)[/quote]If you’re addressing this to me I don’t have a question. I haven’t had a question about this since 1989. I know the gospel truth about the all sovereign all governing King of all creation. What I don’t know is how He does it and I no longer care because somewhere along the way I took the Spirit speaking though Paul seriously and stopped answering back to God.
He made it clear to me thereby that it was presumptuous insolence that persisted in probing His mysteries deeper than either He had created me to understand or that He had chosen to reveal.
BTW, that nightmare passage of self fancied autonomous men, the 9th of Romans in the 22nd verse, the deadly word rendered as fitted for in the Douay-Rheims, made for in the New American Bible and prepared for in the English Standard Version is a Plural verb participle in the perfect tense, accusative case, and PASSIVE voice. It is a present state resulting from being acted UPON in the past. Oh yes it is and even the Catholic scholars translated it that way because they don’t wanna be laughed out of the koine Greek club =D .
These are people “fitted for”, “made for”, “prepared for” destruction. Yes, this form can IN VERY SPECIFIC contexts be rendered in the middle voice (prepared themselves), but NOT here hence, nobody translates it that way. Not even most protestant Arminians who long every bit as badly as you do to answer back to God about why He made people this way. They will not do it because it’s just not honest.
Face it. God creates people to destroy them. Not only this whole book of Romans actually, but the system of thought revealed through the whole of scripture declares the unchangeable decree of almighty God. Do I like that? Who cares? He hasn’t asked my opinion. So this is a theocentric governing passage wherein God has declared in no certain terms an aspect of His nature and being. I then see anything the bible says as unable to alter that because God… GOD, the main man, the head honcho, the big cheese, has nowhere said that He has condescended His eternal divinity to our derivative humanity. Show me that. I dare ya. Not the incarnation either with Christ acting in His humanity.
While were at it: Isaiah 46: 8-11
8 "Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
11 calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.
Show me where the Father chooses not to know something. I’m not talkin about some obvious anthropomorphic/anthropopathic linguistic device. Where is God saying “I choose not to know things future because a lot of Catholics and Arminians will be happy if I don’t?” (ok, I’m bein snarky). Oh yeah. Think with me for a minute after you find out that there is absolutely NO actual or possible object of knowledge, past, present or future about which God is not exhaustively, comprehensively and contemporaneously cognizant of. God’s knowledge of the future (to us, He’s not limited by time) is certain … period. Or God may be deceived. For Him to KNOW something as future renders that thing utterly certain.
