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Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie  So how else could God have saved sinners in a manner consistent with His justice? God is bound by His own nature, therefore, Paul says that He "cannot lie." God cannot save sinners by setting aside the demands of His justice; that is what the "god" of Islam and Judaism does. |
God's counsel is simple. God decreed sin, He decreed death to be the punishment of sin, and He decreed Christ to die in the place of elect sinners to save them from sin. One cannot speculate what God might have done differently in one aspect without calling into question the whole series of things decreed. It is "absolutely" possible that God could have forgiven sin by a mere declaration, but then it raises a series of questions respecting what else might have been differently decreed. It is better simply to adhere to Scripture, to what is, rather than ascend the ethereal realms in order to hypothesise what might have been.
Concerning this statement respecting the god of Islam and Judaism, I cannot see what relevance this has on a system which acknowledges decretal necessity. But I do detect in the statement the idea that God
must do certain things in order to be God, which is as unreformed as both Islam and Judaism.