Question about Double Predestination: What is it?

[One Little Nail]

.......Earl Satan.........

I knew Earl was a sinner and all, but.............

Ah yes the missing , that should "Earl,Satan" my apologies,funny though

 

[Peairtach]

Brad

Peairtach
The most consistent atheists - including Marxists - have always been hard and fatalistic determinists.

OK. Not sure what that has to do with this discussion, but sounds reasonable.

I'm just making the point that although we don't understand how God's sovereignty establishes, rather than overthrows, Man's free will and responsibility, the fact that those who go further and further away from the Biblical God of total sovereign omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, fall into hard determinism illustrates the fact that such a God is the necessary precondition of Man's metaphysical free will (ethically bound for sure until conversion) and moral responsibility.

Of course many of them also don't believe that Man has a spiritual nature, and if they are consistent with their philosophy they will say that Man is an irrational animal/machine with no free will and responsibility, at the whim of fatalism and chance.

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.

Brad

It seems as though some folks find His creating the reprobate for the purpose of demonstrating wrath to be inconsistent with those individuals being fully culpable for their sin and deserving of that wrath. I see no inconsistency there, so these curious attempts to obscure the fact that God has actively done SOMETHING that results in their condemnation make no sense to me. But I'm kinda thick.

I doubt you're thick. I agree with what your saying, although I think we have to acknowledge that we don't really understand how God does this, although we can imagine that He being the God He is can and does do it - i.e. He can make the thoughts, words and deeds of individuals certain while maintaining, indeed establishing, their free will and responsibility - and accept the teaching of Scripture although we don't understand.

 

[Mushroom]

I doubt you're thick. I agree with what your saying, although I think we have to acknowledge that we don't really understand how God does this, although we can imagine that He being the God He is can and does do it - i.e. He can make the thoughts, words and deeds of individuals certain while maintaining their free will and responsibility - and accept the teaching of Scripture by faith.

Oh, I'm plenty thick, brother, just ask my kids...

But I agree with everything you said above. Maybe that's the point I'm trying to make, yet not so clearly. I take it for granted that I'm not going to understand most of how God does what He does, so maybe being thick helps me here - I don't really see the need to have an explanation for it.

Thanks, Richard.

 

[Peairtach]

Well hey, I haven't even sat down to work out how a mobile phone, or even something simpler, like a TV or radio, works yet.