cash@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter Cash) (11/10/89)
[In a comment on a posting by Terry Coatta, I said >[The best place to go for the Biblical background on election is >certainly Romans. Probably you should read at least Rom 9-11. ... >Remember that for those who believe in election, >things happen on two levels at the same time. It does not remove >decision: people do still make choices. It's just that God has >arranged things so that they make the choices that he wants. It does >still make sense to call on people to decide: your calling may be part >of the means God is counting on to carry out his election. --clh] ... I know you "don't want to go into all this again", so I hope that you will forgive me if I do so anyway. If God "arranges" decisions, then these are very strange "decisions"; if that's how things are, then people don't make "decisions" in the way that we ordinarily speak of the term. On this view, people are automata who go through the motions ordained by their creator much as puppets go through theirs. I wonder how you arrive at this view? I suppose that you want to reconcile the doctrine that God has chosen us from the beginning of time with our freedom to choose or reject God. However, this is a pyrrhic victory--you remove the conflict by giving up the notion that people actually have the freedom to make choices. I don't think that such an extreme move is necessary; I think that there need be no contradiction between the doctrines of election and of free will. It is a misunderstanding to suppose that divine election implies that our decision is made for us by God. It's a bit like a coach selecting a particularly promising young athlete to be on the team. The coach has been watching the young man for some time. When the time is right, he approaches the athlete and asks him to be on the team. The athlete is overjoyed, and immediately accepts. Several things should be noted about the decisions of both the coach and the athlete. First and foremost, the coach's selection wasn't arbitrary. It was based on the coach's assessment of the kind of man he was dealing with. I'm not just talking about his abilities, but also about his character. He was the kind of man who would fit in on the team, who would work together with the other players and complement their abilities--and he was a young man who _wanted_ to excel, and who wanted to be on the team. Sure, the athlete had the freedom to reject the coach. But because he was the kind of man the coach had assessed him to be, the thought never came into the athlete's mind. Now, the coach certainly didn't make the athlete's decision for him. The athlete could have refused; he just didn't _want_ to refuse. This is a case where free will and election are quite compatible. Some might say that this example is just fine, but that it does not hold in the case of God's election of men. Why might one think this? I suppose one could say that God knows all things _before_ they happen. He has, after all, selected us from the beginning of Time, and not just the football season. But why should that make the slightest bit of difference? Why should it affect the example if the "coach" is in fact omniscient? The player is still free to make his choice. Of course, if God chooses you, then the possibility of refusing doesn't enter your mind...He is never wrong about his selections. But this does _not_ imply that we have no choice--only that God knows perfectly well what our choice will be. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | The fleshe is bruckle, the Feynd is slee -- | Peter Cash | timor mortis conturbat me! | cash@convex ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Again, I'm not going to try to convince you that these ideas are true, but merely make it clear where they came from. In fact it is possible to read Romans rather differently, and there are existential problems with these views that in their way can be just as serious as the problems they are trying to solve. But I do think that predestination came from a serious attempt to follow out Paul's views, particularly in Romans, and also that it is based on real religious needs. You seem to be saying that God elects those who he forsees are worthy of election. This idea is certainly not an uncommon one. However it would not have satisfied the Reformers. It implies that God chose the elect because he found some specific quality in them that he liked. The Reformers' reading of Rom 9 is that election does not depend upon any quality of the elect, but is strictly God's free choice. Luther had a clear existential motivation for these views: His own religious experience had led him to believe that nothing about himself could be relied on. Only if salvation depends entirely upon God could he have any confidence in it. An argument similar to yours can also be used to explain the Reformers' concept of election. Think of sin as a disease of the will. It causes the will to be incapable of choosing good. (Paul describes this disease in Rom 7:15-24.) God's grace heals the disease. It removes the bondage created by sin, and enables the will to respond to God. Once we have been renewed by grace, we will *want* to live as God's children. If our will is working properly, why would we ever reject God's love? Only the disease of sin would cause us to do so. Grace doesn't force us to respond to God. It enables us to. --clh]
davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) (11/15/89)
In article <Nov.10.02.12.13.1989.10953@athos.rutgers.edu> convex!cash@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter Cash) writes: (actually our moderator commented) >... If our will is working properly, why would >we ever reject God's love? Adam and Eve were created in an absolutely perfect state. Their wills would have been functioning flawlessly. In this wonderful state, one which none of us is even remotely close to, they exercised the free will to reject God. Do you, or anyone else for that matter, really believe that you can make better choices than they? I, for one, know without a doubt that I, were I given the free will to either accept or reject God, would choose to reject Him. I may have a healed soul but I still have sinful flesh. Adam and Eve even had sinless flesh. I am less perfect than they and must assume that I would choose to sin quicker than they. The beauty of God's election program is that He, knowing full well that none of us would want to implicitly trust Him with everything, still chose a people for Himself, and that He paid such an unimaginably enormous price to accomplish HIs goal without compromising His integrity. Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3 [Perhaps I was not clear in what I said. I do not mean to imply that if people are left alone without God's grace, I think they are going to accept God. I believe, as you do, that grace is needed before we can respond to God. What I was trying to point out is that the result of grace is to enable us to make decisions that are in accord with our nature as God intended it. I was concerned that people not interpret election in a mechanical fashion, with God as a sort of master manipulator who forces people into making choices that don't reflect real decisions on their part. Election should be seen as God freeing us, not constraining us. My reaction on Adam and Eve would have to be that they obviously were not given this grace. (Note that I am a supralapsarian.) --clh]