[quote]Chris wrote: To be in despair because you won’t be saved is saying that God cannot save you, which he can.[/quote]There is nobody who really wants to be saved and isn’t. Judas Iscariot could have repented except for the fact that he was ordained to perdition and God did not raise him from sin. He went and murdered himself instead of falling around the Lord’s ankles ankles and begging his forgiveness.
Like everyone else, he did not want to be saved.
[quote]Cortes wrote:<<< 1. If what you say is true, that EVERY movement of every subatomic particle from the moment the cosmos was decreed, does not move so much as the length of a planck unit of its own volition, then:
- Everything you wrote above most certainly DOES amount to pure determinism, hence, fatalism.
I will admit that while you have made a very strong (though I feel flawed) case for #1, you have, as far as I have seen, made NO case whatsoever for the falsity of #2.
Please, do explain when you find the time.
[/quote]Cortes good buddy. I’m half asleep here again. What I have never once even attempted to make a case for is the autonomous reconciliation of the two because no such concession to my arrogant finitude is either required or even possible from the God in whose decree lies every flip of every coin. (lot cast). That one AWESOME statement in Proverbs 16:33 stands for all time and eternity as an unassailable testimony to the eternal governing decree of a God whose comprehensive providence cannot be defeated even when men employ gambling devices for the expressed purpose of introducing a speck of contingency into His universe.
It is not fatalism because of all the man focused biblical statements you guys are so fond of hurling at me. I believe those passages too. Once again. I cannot improve upon the magnificent work of the Westminster Divines. The confession of 1646. [quote]Chapter III
Of God’s Eternal Decree
I. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
II. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.
III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.
IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.[/quote] THAT IS what the bible says if taken as a systematic whole. I’m with them. The Word says God is the source of whatsoever comes to pass, is NOT the author of sin and does not violate the will of man in His decree. HOW!!! I have no idea. See I don’t demand an autonomous explanation. That being one that fits between my ears. I am supremely satisfied with the knowledge of the fact that HE knows how. I don’t have to. That s what faith is all about. “The substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen”. Hebrews 11.
To me it is the pinnacle of divine comfort. Why is it that my whole earthly life is in a flaming tailspin while at the same time I’ve never ever been more content or closer to God? The question IS the answer. I KNOW that nether a stubbed toe nor the onslaught of the legions of hell can come against me without my Father’s having so ordained and if He has so ordained He has also promised victory for His own glory and as the bonus of all bonuses I will for this victory one day hear Him say to me: “well done thou good and faithful servant”. If I had to believe in a god who is an observer because He’s eternally there, but not a King because He’s universally sovereign? I’d blow my brains out right now.