by Zico 63 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Ross: That was a good post, and I appreciate your input. Perhaps my posts in this thread show a throwback to my JW thinking, where doctrine does matter. (Or perhaps just human nature to try to comprehend the incomprehensible?) Maybe Renee's friends:
"It doesn't really matter -- we'll find out one day"
Weren't 'copping out' of the issue as much as it might appear eh?
Excellent post Ross...
reneeisorym quotes these passages from Scripture:
"He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son." "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself."
These verses are saying WHAT God has predestined (conform to the image of Jesus, to be adopted as sons), they are NOT saying WHO. He has predetermined the standard He demands.
These verses are saying HOW (He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified), they are NOT saying WHO. He has predetermined the means he has provided that enables his standard to be reached.
The decision is yours.
Doug
Rom 9:22
But if God, desiring to demonstrate His wrath, and to make His power known, endured in much long-suffering vessels of wrath having beenfitted out for destruction,Doug
What does it mean to be a vessel "fitted out for destruction"?
Look at what he says to Pharaoh in verse 17.
Doug
"He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself."
These verses are saying WHAT God has predestined (conform to the image of Jesus, to be adopted as sons), they are NOT saying WHO. He has predetermined the standard He demands.
?
You may have over-estimated me here Lore, can you elaborate please?
Sorry, I simply meant the difficulty people experience when they try to imagine a being without time. Let's say you leave time for a while and then come back in... what time period do you come back to? Not neccasarily the same period you left because that would just meen you FROZE time, not that you left it. Or let's say you are a time overlord, who exists out of time... If you effect a races future by giving them new technology, and you effect the past by eradicating all life. Then what you did to the future is nullified because they didn't exist. You however have no time, so technically you are doing both at the same time/nontime. At the same moment that you're affecting the human future, you are also in the past killing them all. You can't do one and then the other you HAVE to do them both at the same moment, so you NEED to be effected by time to get out of this impass. For any of your actions to take effect you would have to reenter time and then come back out. I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but that's the point. A being outside of time can't do anything no matter how powerful it is because time is a requirement for actions. You also can't "go to the past" and then "go to the future" because that's time travel, not existing outside of time. He's another problem. Let's say you want to create the universe, and then destroy it. For you to be able to destroy it, you need the universe to exist... so you have to FIRST create the universe and THEN destroy it... but you can't do that because you exist out of time, there is no first or second it's all at once, but if you create the universe AND destroy it all at once, then there was no universe at all ever. you would have to CREATE the universe and enter time. Then leave time after the universe has existed for a while, and destroy it. It just adds a paradox under this definition. And I don't like to think that there is such a thing as a REAL paradox. Lore
Narkissos,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain my position.
I am not a Calvinist. I do not hold to his (and the WTS’s) idea of “limited atonement”. I believe in the unconditional security of the believer, but I do not believe in unconditional security.
The following is from “Life in the Son” by Shank (pages 365 to 367)
“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Morever, whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29,30).
This passage has often been called “an unbreakable chain” -foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, glorification. For the elect, it is indeed an unbreakable chain; and only the elect are comprehended in Paul’s affirmation (v. 33). The calling, justification, and glorification constitute the implementation of the predestination (conformity to the image of the Son) which God purposed for the elect. For them, calling and justification will issue in ultimate glorification, in accordance with the eternal purpose of God to “bring many sons unto glory” (Heb. 2:10), the glory of full conformity to the image of His Son.
But there is nothing about Paul’s affirmation which establishes that election is unconditional or that all who experience calling and justification are necessarily eternally elect and will inevitably persevere. Certainly it is true that the elect (who are foreknown to God) will persevere. But that is only half the truth; for it is equally true that they who persevere are elect. The latter solemn truth is presented in the Holy Scriptures, not as the inevitable outcome of some inexorable divine decree with respect to specific individuals unconditionally, but as a matter for the constant concern and holy endeavor of believers.
The certainty of election and perseverance is with respect, not to particular individual men unconditionally, but rather with respect to the ekklesia, the corporate body of all who, through living faith, are in union with Christ, the true Elect and the Living Covenant between God and all who trust in His righteous Servant (Isa. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13-53:12; 61:1,2). Consider the following:
God’s eternal purpose in grace:
Eph. 1:4, He chose us in Christ that we should be hagious kai amomous before Him.
Col. 1:22, He reconciled us to Himself in Christ, through His death, to present us hagious kai amomous before Him.
Fulfillment corporately (certain):
Eph. 5:27, Christ will present the ekklesia to Himself hagia kai amomos.
Fulfillment individually (contingent):
Col. 1:23, He will present us hagious kai amomous before Him—if we continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel.
To assume that eternal glory is the inevitable terminus of “an unbreakable chain” for everyone who once experiences saving grace is to ignore the explicit warnings, not only elsewhere in the Scriptures, but in the very passage before us. Paul warns: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God” (Rom. 8:12-14). “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (v. 17).
Let not vain assumptions concerning the meaning of such passages as Rom. 8:29, 30 destroy our concern for heeding the many warnings and exhortations to persevere in the faith. God will present us holy and unblameable and unreprovable before Him only if we continue in the faith and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel. “If we endure,” writes Paul, “we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us.” “He that overcometh,” promises the risen Saviour, “the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. . . . Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”
Doug
Littletoe,
I will admit I had to read your post a couple of times before I even began to grasp what you were saying regarding Calvinism.
Please clarify this:
Taking a strictly Chriso-biblical view, Calvary becomes the focal point for this long-running "event", where perchance it might be expressed that time touches eternity when the unstoppable object of "God the Son of God" meets the immovable object of Death.
as I don't really understand it.
Thanks.
I too consider myself to be "panentheist" whilst also being "polytheist". In my view, bearing those two labels is not contradictory.
As for predestination, I do believe in reincarnation. I believe that many things are chosen prior to any given incarnation, but that these things are not always "set in stone". There is a certain amount of freewill involved, IMHO.
Sirona
Ross,
Another question:
But it leads me to the question "does it actually matter?" Whether God dwells in eternity or not is surely irrelevant to my current existance? Whether I actually have freewill and choice, or merely imagine that I do surely has little effect on the outcome? Whether death is actually an end or merely a transition might perhaps be something that concerns me but is inevitable anyway.
Surely it matters because of the Christian view of "sin". If we have no freewill then how can we be held accountable for sins?
Sirona
Thanks for the reply to my question mark Doug.
To be clearer I'm not a believer in "God," "Jesus" or "salvation" in any literal or realistic sense anymore. But I went through other stages before when I have given some thoughts to those doctrines. Imo reducing the Pauline pattern of "election/predestination" to the setting of a "standard" (as I gathered from your previous post) does not do justice to the texts At least if by "standard" you mean something like a "way" or an "opportunity" in the classical Arminian sense. Btw I don't think that, even allowing for differences in terminology, JWs believe in anything like the Calvinistic "limited atonement". Imo they are much closer to the Arminians (and even more to Pelagians) and their doctrine of "potential universalism" -- opportunity offered to all. Perhaps the difference could be illustrated this way: JWs and Pelagians imagine the "opportunity" as a sort of God-given ladder to salvation you have to climb. Choosing to start climbing and keeping on climbing right to the top is up to you, step after step(although, to be fair, they would readily add "with Jehovah's help"). A more mainstream Arminian view would figure it rather like a kind of lift. Stepping into the lift is up to you, but there's no doubt you will get to the top provided you don't step out. This is only reassuring to those who doubt anything but themselves. Which was precisely not the case of people like Paul, Augustine, Luther and Calvin.
The problem with the Calvinistic presentation lies in its symmetry ("double predestination"), which treats the positive and the negative sides as equivalent. As I tried to explain above, I think Paul and his immediate followers avoided this problem by never treating the "no" as interchangeable with the "yes," and by including both in the perspective of a really universalistic horizon. In modern times, Karl Barth's reading of Calvin recovers some of that (although with different philosophical categories) with the idea of "dialectical universalism" which is unseparable from his general method, often described as "Christological reductionism". In Barth's perspective, Jesus Christ is both the one elect and the one reprobate. In him the universe is condemned and saved. The line between perdition and salvation runs through everyone. Our recognition of, and participation in, that mystery makes a difference, but only a provisional one.
Distant dogmatic memories, fwiw...
