There is so much argument over free will vs predestination, and nobody ever takes a step back to examine why there is an argument about it at all. Namely because the Bible has examples for both predestination and free will, so some people might emphasize one more over the other, disregarding one for the other. When in reality, just like with the trinity, this is how god has revealed it to us so we should simply accept it. That's the beauty of the lutheran middle-way. It accepts both free will and predetermination and how that goes together is a mystery. But god says so in the Bible, so that's how it is. Just like the trinity.
I don't accept that the Bible has examples of free will with respect to salvation and damnation, and neither did Luther. In The Bondage of the Will he completely rejected that salvation and damnation come about through free will. He argued that God's omnipotence and foreknowledge means that everything is predestined to happen, and that God wills that some are to be saved and others are to be damned. The “Lutheranism” which you follow didn't originate with Luther but rather with the Formula of Concord which was written several decades after Luther’s death.
This is where I am right now. That reasonable people take views on nearly all points on a spectrum between free will and determinism to me suggests that the source of the ambiguity lies in the scriptures. God did not promise that everything will be made clear to us this side of eternity. There will be a time when we will know even as we are known, but that time is not now. I am content living in an unresolved tension in the meantime on these issues that are ultimately secondary to the core doctrines of the faith.
@@jeremybamgbadeMartin Chemnitz, who was the main author of the Formula of Concord (FC), was one of Melanchthon's pupils so it's understandable how it was that he was so opposed to reprobation. Chemnitz’s interpretations of Romans 9 and other Scripture passages in the FC are deplorable. Luther would have been appalled that someone who was claiming to speak for his followers was trying to pass off such misreadings of Scripture. Chemnitz directly contradicted Luther's teachings in The Bondage of the Will. Also Luther had rightly regarded astrology as being a pseudoscience whereas Chemnitz was for a number of years a professional astrologer casting horoscopes for wealthy clients and didn't see this as being incompatible with Christianity. It's difficult to understand how it was that Chemnitz managed to eclipse Luther and convince people that Scripture teaches single predestination when Luther had rejected this in his reply to Erasmus.
Who cares what Luther taught anymore than what Augustine taught. All the Greek speaking Christians closest to the Apostles taught free will salvation. Saints from all over the Roman world: St. Justin Martyr, St. Athenagoras, St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, St. John Chrysostom, all taught free will salvation as well as a Christian’s free will to cooperate with other graces like doing good and not sinning in explicit terms. Not one taught individual predestination to salvation apart from free will until late-period Augustine, the latinizing ex-Manichean.
My reformed pastor added this nuance about irresistible grace: grace is resistible, until it becomes irresistible. And God uses the Holy Spirit to draw people to Christ through persuasion. Some may be persuaded longer than others, but ultimately if one is God’s elect, the decision to follow and believe in Jesus Christ is the inevitable decision, because God is sovereign and wills things to happen.
this isn’t necessarily a disagreement with the reformed. there were theologians are the synod of dort who affirmed the antecedent will of God to save all, universal satisfaction, etc.. further, i’m not sure what aspect of “double predestination” you’re disagreeing with. hopefully you don’t have equal ultimacy in mind. because that was actually condemned at dort. perhaps it is a disagreement with some modern “calvinsts”. but you lumped calvin in with them here, it seems.
That there were some individual hypothetical universalists at Dort does not mean the Canons of Dort give any support to their view. (Dort 2.8) says the effectiveness of Christ's redemption is for "all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father." This is a rejection of universal satisfaction, even the hypothetical version.
@@reformational the canons of dort doesn’t take either side. it allows for both views in order that the english delegates could still sign it. davenant literally said he’d rather cut off his hand than assent to the canons without the allowance of his view. the quote you provided is not at all a rejection of the english position. you cut out part of the article: “In other words, it was God’s will that Christ through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmed the new covenant) should *effectively* redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father”. we affirm Christ only died effectually for the elect. this is just the lombardian formula.
@@kyoto8911 , so what do you want to affirm in addition to what Dort says? You want to say Christ also ineffectually died for the non-elect? That Christ hypothetically died for the non-elect? Despite the wishes of the English "universal satisfactionists" (or however they might be called), Dort does *not* "allow for both views". They may have signed it, but that's not evidence that it actually allowed for their views.
@@reformational Everything in Dordt 2:8 easily comports to the Lombardian formula which the Hypothetical Universalist position rests, “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect.” You’ll notice how it speaks of effectiveness only, not sufficiency. In fact, Dordt 2:6 even claims that the believer’s damnation is **not** because the death of Christ was insufficient to save them, but rather because of their unbelief. Moreover, you seem unaware that the second point of doctrine was heavily shaped and at times almost written by the English delegation at the synod of Dordt, with an eye to allowing their views. I’d recommend “John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism” for further reading on the subject, as it goes through primary sources to demonstrate this was the case. And it wasn’t just the English at Dordt, but several West German Reformed and the French, who also sought to defend Hypothetical Universalism. I actually read 2:6 as being harder for the strict views of LA to hold in actuality than 2:8 is for HU.
@@ahumblemerchant241 , is there a claim that Christ died for all sin, or every sinner? If so, that does NOT comport with Dordt. Dordt does not allow Hypothetical Universalism.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the basic reason for all the disputes and bickering within Protestantism about predestination stems from the tension between wanting to say salvation is 100% the work of God while also wanting to assign salvific instrumentality to a wonkily defined faith. In the modern American context, faith seems to be implicitly understood in a Billy Graham sense of "choosing" Christ. But if we go full on Arminian, we basically undermine salvation being exclusively the work of God and predestined election by making salvation ultimately in our hands via our choice. Alternatively, if we focus exclusively on election and predestination, we can't really say our human choices have any sort of direct causal relationship to salvation
But it's not about choices, it's about the natural will of man that we were created in. The first state of man is one of friendship of God, that's how Adam was created, he was and we are His image. The image was stained through sin, but once freed from the bondage of sin do we not return to our natural state of being the image of God? I fail to see the need to insist that God has to actively be "causing" our salvation at all times, our ability to do anything good at all times. He created us to be good, to be in friendship with Him, to follow His will. If we have anything at all in common with Adam this natural inclination to do the will of God is still in us somewhere. Claiming that we lost the human natural will that God created us in entirely would be saying that we are ontologically different than Adam, which we cannot say. Because if we were ontologically different than Adam, then we would not be under his curse, and we would not be freed by Christ who is the new Adam. This isn't to say we can free ourselves. We are slaves to sin. But once freed we don't go into some neutral state where God then has to force us into the good camp. We serve a new master through our redemption, who is God. How we were created to be.
At the root of it is the fact that predestination and free will are diametrically opposed to each other and can't co-exist together. Logically either God determines who shall be saved and damned or we do by choosing through free will whether to believe in Christ or not. Confessional Lutheranism has brought confusion into this by saying that God has predestined people to be saved but He hasn't predestined anyone to be damned, and in effect teaching that people choose to be damned through free will. It's completely illogical and impossible to be true because predestination to heaven can't exist without predestination to hell. If for instance out of 10 people God elects to save 5 of them then it follows that the remaining 5 can't avoid being damned, and are therefore predestined to be damned. Confessional Lutherans deny this by asserting that God desires to save everyone and therefore He can't have predestined anyone to be damned. However, that is to confuse God's two wills. Luther was right to maintain in The Bondage of the Will that God only desires in His revealed will to save everyone, because through His all-powerful hidden will He has elected and predestined to save only some people and to predestine the remainder to be damned, as Paul teaches in Romans 9. Faith is the instrumental cause of salvation but only those drawn to Christ by the Father (John 6:44) are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and given faith. So one can't choose to have faith because it's only God who determines whether a person will be given it. Confessional Lutheranism is wrong to teach that the Holy Spirit operates universally through the Gospel and that it's resistance to the Holy Spirit's attempt to regenerate a person which causes a person to be damned. That wrong belief has caused confusion in the minds of many who think it's completely ok to believe in single predestination, despite the fact it's illogical, because this is what Scripture teaches. However Scripture doesn't teach this. They've misinterpreted it. The Holy Spirit doesn't attempt to regenerate everyone through the Gospel but rather irresistibly regenerates only those the Father wills to convert. This is Luther’s teaching in The Bondage of the Will, but confessional Lutherans so called don't follow Luther. They follow Martin Chemnitz who several decades after Luther’s death contradicted Luther’s teaching and denied that God has predestined anyone to be damned.
@@Edward-ng8oo very interesting. As a Catholic, some versions of Calvinism make more sense to me than others. On one end of the spectrum, there's this idea that the more immersed into the Christian life one becomes, the more confident one becomes that one's "restless heart has rested in You, O Lord", and the more confident one becomes that one is predestined unto life. This makes perfect sense from the Catholic perspective, and is basically just good ol' fashioned Augustinianism. But in this view, wedded to the Protestant understanding of Justification as Imputation, I find it hard to reconcile any form of human instrumentality in Justification, whatsoever. Like, the cause of salvation, from beginning to end is God. God selects an elect in eternity, and God Justifies them through Imputation of the work on the cross. It seems more fitting in this view to say faith is the instrumental cause of assurance that you're one of the elect predestined to receive this Imputation. Or, you could say that faith unites you to Christ, and those united to Christ are the ones who were atoned on the cross, and this atonement results in a declaration of Justification, but it seems there are still too many links in the causal chain of Justification to assign any direct instrumentality faith
@@Edward-ng8oo or, it seems if you want to be formal and say there's a sort of "Big F" Faith that's instrumental in Justification insofar as it's like a "bucket" God places on your soul to receive Justification, then it all makes sense. But this sort of Faith becomes somewhat mysterious, and we are back to the issue that the ordinary "little f" faith that we experience as part of regular Christian life, which we normally describe in terms of beliefs, trusts, and other "human mental activity" can have no instrumentality beyond causing us assurance that we have the Big F Faith that actually justifies
@@harrygarris6921Adam completely lost the image of God when the Fall happened through disobeying God. It was then that sin entered the world and caused all of Adam's descendents to become depraved and enemies of God. Everyone in this corrupted state is spiritually dead and are children of wrath as Paul calls them (Ephesians 2:3). Only a partial restoration occurs when a person is converted to faith in Christ. He still has his corrupt nature but is no longer a slave to it and can resist sinful impulses although not entirely. Full restoration to the image of God won’t happen until the next life when we will be resurrected and have pure transformed bodies incapable of sin. The fact that all people have a corrupted sinful nature means that we can't choose to come to Christ and believe in Him. It needs God to intervene in our lives and cause us to be reborn by the Holy Spirit, which the Father doesn't will to do to everyone. (John: 6:64-65). Also after we've come to faith we can't live as Christians unless we're led by the Spirit (Romans 8) and God is working within us (Phillipians 2:13).
1. Luther’s view is different here form Lutheranism, yes or no? 2. Does anyone know of a book like “plan of salvation” by war field, except a more detailed layout of each worldview, that’d help get a better grip of determining the issues of each. 3. 1:00-1:50 sounds contradictory no? That it’s not dependent ons man’s will, but grace is given to all, and some don’t reject it, salvation not being applied to all. (Edit: Okay.. so this is where mystery is appealed to, nevermind).
It certainly seems Luther's view is at odds with the view in the Lutheran confessions with regards to his famous book, The Freedom of the Will. Dr. Cooper believes people who believe that just have read Freedom of the Will wrongly. I haven't yet studied it in-depth but there are several passages that sound hardcore Reformed 🤷♂.
@@justinmayfield6579 Yea, I’m just starting to study the basics, but I’ve heard that often. Eventually I’m going to get to that book, along with another few great books on the will.
Predestination could allow us to be servants of God, but it makes it impossible to be His friend. If you are a Calvinist, please do not feel that you are predestined to give me a doctrinal diatribe. Tell me rather: 1. How did you get saved? and 2. What is your FRIENDSHIP with Our Father like?
Having faith is an endevour that the human will must cooperate in. We can't have faith without God working in us, but it is not something that God forces onto us either. No a Damascus Road moment does not qualify as forcing faith onto us, as even then we are free to disregard the miracle or to choose our own way. This formula doesn't make man the master of his own salvation, as some Calvinists might insist, as merely having faith isn't salvific outside of the context of what God has done and continues to do for us. Salvation depends on Christ's atoning sacrifice and God's promised work of sanctification on our heart. As long as we persist in faith, that work will be brought to completion. Faith is merely a hinge point wherein the lost and powerless sinner says yes to God. God carries us to that point and continues to carry us from that point unto our final glorification.
@@JW_______ What you're saying amounts to synergism not monergism. Although you're right in saying that God doesn't force faith on people in the sense of compelling them to believe against their wills, He does irresistibly work faith in people by changing their wills so that they willingly believe in Christ. If conversion was resistible then God couldn't elect and predestine anyone to be saved. Christ says that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him, and that all those who come to Him He will save (John 6:44). The Father in other words has elected and predestined some to be saved and it can't fail that they will be saved, and therefore it must be the case that they have no free will to resist being converted and saved. This is Luther's teaching in The Bondage of the Will. Luther was also right in maintaining that Scripture teaches that some are predestined to be damned. The Formula of Concord’s denial of this is false doctrine. Although it's true that those who are damned resist believing it's also true that they can't do anything else but resist as the Holy Spirit isn't efficacious through the Word towards them, as they haven't been drawn by the Father. They therefore can't be converted and are consequently predestined to be damned. The FC isn't correct in teaching the universal operation of the Holy Spirit in the Word. The Holy Spirit doesn't try to convert everyone through the Gospel, but rather irresistibly converts only those the Father draws to Christ. If it was the case that conversion was resistible then no one would be saved as everyone would resist owing to the fact that through original sin they’re depraved and opposed to God. It has to be the case that conversion and regeneration are irresistible. Also it has to be the case that although we cooperate in our sanctification this is something which is accomplished by God working in us. Our cooperation therefore isn't something we can decide to withhold as if we had free will. If we at any time fall into sin this can only happen if God has determined it will happen to teach us a lesson that we can't do anything without Him. But it has to be the case that if we're one of the elect He can't fail to restore us irresistibly in the faith so that we're saved.
@Edward-ng8oo You are intelligent and articulate, and I have no doubt you are seeking to be faithful to Christ and the Bible in your theology. However, what you are teaching amounts to a false doctrine of God's character and nature. We both believe that God has the power to save every individual soul and must wrestle with why God does not do so. Under the view of most of the church fathers, the reason not all are saved, even though scripture tells us that God desires for all to be saved (e.g. 1Tim 2:1-6), is that God created mankind in His image with freewill, and God will not violate that image in us by forcing our love and obedience. He will do work in us through His grace to make that love and obedience possible, but ultimately we must participate in that with Him. Under your (perhaps we can say Augustinian) view, God has no reason that prevents Him from forcefully changing the will of every human being and thereby saving mankind, given that, under your view, that is exactly what He does for those who are saved. That is why Calvinists have posited that people are damned for God's glory - that God's original end and desire for the damned was that they be damned. This is not the character of the God who scripture tells us loves all mankind and would have us all be saved if we would but turn to Him. Yes, he will trun us towards Him, because we cannot turn ourselves - BUT only if we say yes.
@@JW_______ The church fathers who taught free will were teaching incorrectly as Scripture teaches that people are predestined to be saved and damned (Romans 9, Ephesians 1 and 2 etc). In Ephesians 2 Paul explains that everyone is dead in sin and following the Devil in the passions of their flesh, (and therefore can't choose to believe in Christ), and that faith is a gift from God so that no one can boast that they’ve obtained salvation through their works. If salvation was as a result of choosing to be saved through free will then that makes faith a work of man and not a work of God in man. It's true that God through the Gospel desires everyone's salvation but the way to understand this in combination with predestination is as Luther explained it in The Bondage of the Will which is that God has more than one will and that although He has a general desire to save everyone though Christ, He also has a hidden will through which as the omnipotent ruler of the universe He has predestined people to be saved and damned.
@Edward-ng8oo God predestined before the creation of the world that those who have faith in Christ would be united with Him. When scripture speaks of individual election, the elect are those who put their faith in Christ. It's not that they put their faith in Christ because they are elect, but rather that they are elect because they put their faith in Christ. There is no strong argument why the term "dead in sin" should mean unable to place one's faith in Christ. Dead in sin means damned if left to one's own devices, unable to get from point A (enslaved to sin) to point B (saved by Christ) without divine intervention. But as I put forth in my last two comments, we are not left to our own devices. God has intervened in every individual case. God saved us through (1) Christ's atoning work on the cross, and (2) by working His grace and holy spirit on our hearts to free us from our sinful nature's hold on us. This occurs to bring us to the point of faith, and continues to occur as we are sanctified, bringing us someday to perfect unity with God. I disagree with the idea that God can have two contradicting wills. Either He wants the damned to be saved, or He doesn't. He can't want want someone both to be saved and not to be saved. This doesn't mean, to be clear, that God can't want someone to be saved under certain conditions but not under other conditions. That would only be nuanced, not contradictory. For example, God can want us to be saved, but not at the cost of violating our free will or at the cost of allowing evil to persist. However if you believe that God is already violating the free will of all whom He saves, and that there is no difference between those who are saved and those who are not, what basis can there be for God saving some and not others, other than a lack of love, or as some have suggested, for His own glory?
@dromines03 , the "confessionally" Reformed (eg, Westminster, Dort), say 1) Christ atones for (accomplishes redemption on behalf of) the elect only, and 2) there is a foreordination from eternity (or part of God's eternal degree) that some should be justly condemned; this is called "reprobation." If one is Amyraldian and denies at least the first point, one is not "classically" Reformed in the confessional sense.
Yeah Calvanism is just consistent Lutheranism when it comes to predestination. We are dealing with first and second causes. There truly is antimony here.
37* All that* the Father gives me will come to me, and* whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For* I have come down from heaven, not to do* my own will but* the will of him* who sent me. 39And* this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but* raise it up on the last day.
If election is unconditional then how is atonement universal or potentially universal. If those who receive grace do so due to unconditional election then how would those who do not receive saving grace not destined to do so bc if they did it would mean they are elected to do so?
That is a good question. Universal atonement or a universal offer are simply not compatible with a limited election. Election in Romans 8 is unseparable from the love of the Father the calling of the Spirit, and the intercession of Christ. Christ intercession is not an offer just as Election is not an offer
In reality, election isn't complicated because it simply refers to the fact that in eternity God chose out of fallen humanity those He was going to save and those He wasn't going to save. It's because the Bible has been misinterpreted by those who wish to deny that God has predestined some to be damned that it appears complicated.
There is one elect. The New Man, Christ. "He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth IN HIM, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring ALL THINGS TOGETHER IN HIM, things in the heavens and things on the earth. "
It actually isn't all that complicated if one understands it in line with Luther's explanation in The Bondage of the Will. Basically his explanation runs like this: God is omnipotent and everything that happens is willed by Him to happen, and since He knows what He has willed to happen His foreknowledge necessitates everything happening as it does, which means everything is predestined to happen, and everyone is either predestined to be saved or predestined to be damned. With regards to election, those who are predestined to be saved God has elected to save, and they are irresistibly regenerated (born again) by the Holy Spirit so that they come to faith in Christ, and this faith saves them. Those God hasn't elected to save aren't regenerated by the Holy Spirit and are left without faith to suffer the consequences of their unbelief and sins. The complications with respect to election that exist in confessional Lutheranism exist because the Formula of Concord doesn't agree with Luther's teaching. The FC rejects double predestination and teaches that the Holy Spirit doesn't irresistibly regenerate anyone but seeks to regenerate everyone through the Gospel. This therefore is in logical contradiction to election because God can't elect certain people to be saved (the elect) if it's the case that He tries to make everyone born again. The Lutheran doctrine of the universal operation of the Holy Spirit in the means of grace (Gospel and sacraments) therefore can't be true. And indeed it isn't because Christ’s explanation of why some are unbelievers isn't because they resisted being born again, but is because they weren't drawn by the Father and granted the ability to believe. (John 6:64-65). It follows therefore that the Father doesn’t will to regenerate everyone and that in the case of unbelievers the Holy Spirit isn't efficacious in the Word. It's impossible therefore that they can be born again and saved, which means that they've been chosen (elected) by God to be damned. This situation is obviously disagreeable to us, but Luther had some advice which is that we shouldn't judge the matter with our limited understanding but wait until the next life when all will be revealed and we'll see that God was acting perfectly justly in having elected and predestined some to be damned.
Of course some are going to object to the above on the basis that Scripture states that God desires everyone's salvation, which according to them means that He hasn't predestined anyone to be damned. And they will also say that Luther taught that God desires everyone's salvation (which he did), from which they will also conclude that Luther rejected predestination to hell. However this conclusion is false because Luther made a sharp distinction between God's hidden will (which has determined who is to be saved and who is to be damned) and His revealed will in Christ (which desires everyone's salvation). We can see evidence of both these wills in operation when Christ lamented over the fate of Jerusalem. (Matthew 23:37). Christ desired that they should all be saved even though God by His hidden will had predestined some of them to be damned. (This is what Luther maintained is true in reply to Erasmus who brought up this Scripture verse) Also when those who believe in single predestination (to heaven) object to predestination to hell on the basis that God desires to save everyone, they don't seem to be aware that one can equally conclude from this that God can't have predestined only some people to be saved, as this also conflicts with His desire to save everyone. I’ve been convinced through reading The Bondage of the Will that Scripture teaches that God through His hidden will has predestined some people to be saved and the remainder to be damned, even though He desires the salvation of everyone through Christ.
Luther rightly said the following: “It is certain that whosoever does not rightly believe or desire one article (after he has been admonished or instructed) he surely believes none seriously and in true faith... Therefore you have the choice: either believe everything and all, plainly and simply, or else believe nothing. The Holy Spirit does not permit himself to be separated or divided so that He would teach or have us believe one doctrine truly and another falsely. Exceptions (of course) are the weak who are ready to be instructed and do not contradict maliciously.” What Luther held on predestination can be ascertained from The Bondage of the Will. In this book he showed from Scripture that both salvation and damnation aren't due to free will but to divine predestination, and that everything that God foreknows is predestined to happen. It follows therefore that he wouldn't regard those who deny this in any way, to be true Christians. I agree. Similarly he maintained that the Scriptures teach the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper, and therefore again it follows that he held that those who deny this aren't true Christians. So in Luther's eyes both confessional Lutherans who deny predestination to hell, and Calvinists who deny the Real Presence, aren't true Christians - unless that is they're simply deceived and are open to being corrected. But if they're entrenched in their positions then according to Luther they're not true Christians. I agree. Those who claim to be confessional Lutherans will try to counter this by saying that Scripture teaches that God desires all to be saved, and Luther also agreed, and therefore he rejected that God has predestined any to be damned. But although he agreed that God desires everyone's salvation through the Gospel he confined this to God's revealed will only, as he maintained that God through His hidden will has determined everything that happens because He’s omnipotent. Double predestination is the teaching of Paul in Romans 9, and Luther maintained that this is what Paul is teaching, in his reply to Erasmus. Those who believe that Luther only sounded like Calvin but didn't actually agree with him on double predestination are entirely wrong. The truth is that Luther would have rejected the teaching of single predestination in the Formula of Concord and would have held it to be false doctrine had he been alive in the 1580’s. CFW Walther who read The Bondage of the Will and denied that it was in conflict with the FC was blind to the truth. It is in conflict with the FC. The FC misinterprets Romans 9 and doesn't teach the truth about predestination. I’m so certain of this that I stake my eternal salvation on this being true.
But do any Lutherans hold to the primacy of the incarnation as church fathers such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Maximus held to as well as what more modern supralapsarians like Scotus, Goodwin, and Barth have argued for?
Is not the primacy of the incarnation (God’s decision to become a man in Jesus even before there was sin) a separate question from infra and supra-lapsarianism? The question of whether God had the incarnation as a goal before sin is an interesting one. And it’s certainly possible. Aquinas and others seem to avoid this question as not answered in scripture and that we are only told that it is for us and our salvation that the incarnation occurred. Even in Athanasius’ statement that God became man that man might become God (I.e. partake in the immortality of the divine life), it’s not obvious that such a salvation does not presuppose man having lost this life first by disobedience in the garden. And if man had this life before the fall, then how could it be said to be conditioned upon the incarnation itself? But of course, even if the incarnation was not necessary because man never fell, it might still have been the will of God be incarnated as the king of this creation. That is, there may have been a historical telos and plot-line that included the progress of creation toward the incarnation even apart from sin. I actually like this way of thinking (and I remain a soteriological infralapsarian), but it can only be tangentially inferred from scriptures that speak of the world being made both by and FOR Christ, and then supposing that sin never happed. I would also note that this emphasis on the incarnation in the Fathers is very different from Bath’s notion of the incarnation (and his supralapsarianism). Like with many things, Barth is redefining things such that one can have Schliermacher’s universalism and pan-en-theism but without his starting point in a liberal natural theology/philosophy of absolute dependence and religious feeling, but as revealed in the scriptures and more particularly in the person of Jesus. So for Barth the creation of the world seems to be the same act as the incarnation of Jesus and the election of all human beings to salvation (I’m willing to be wrong about this, but it does seem to be the inference). For the Fathers the emphasis upon the incarnation was not directly tied to a belief in universal election of all to salvation in Jesus. Nor was there a denial of natural or general revelation as can be found in Barth. Barth’s view of supralapsarianism is very unique and not really able to be included in the same category as Thomas Goodwin. At least those are a few of my reflections on the topic.
@@jrhemmerich only thing I would respond with is in regards to Barth he's treated more favorably by EO patristic scholar John Behr in his "Paschal gospel" where he argues there's agreement with Irenaeus and Barth in that Jesus Christ is the key means by which we know both God and man. I'm still learning myself though and I'm trying to take utilize the best of Barth as thinkers like Behr and Torrance have.
Jesus lamenting over Jews rejecting him is all the proof you need to know that God gave us free will to reject the Holy Spirits draw. Also, how many times can you count in the old testament God pleading with Israel to change or face punishment. Why play games with them if you created them to never be able to accept you and your laws? It goes on and on. God doe know who will be saved, but he forces no one to repentance or it isn't really repentance, is it?
This kind of thinking seems to emerge from a cosmology that sees God as merely a player amongst other, albeit less powerful, players. God's will, God's actions, God's existence ultimately inhabit the most fundamental plane of reality which everything created, including time, our will and existence, etc., merely sits on top of. Jesus lamenting is about the tragedy of the Jewish rejection of Him. God can make choices for the greater good that have hard consequences and Jesus can mourn what is lost. The only way around that reality is to either recast God as an essentially pagan god in terms of power and nature or to be a universalist.
Erasmus in the 16th century when opposing Luther’s position that God has predestined everyone to be either saved or damned, said basically the same thing that you've just said, and Luther answered him in The Bondage of the Will by saying that God has more than one will, and that although Christ laments over the inhabitants of Jerusalem for rejecting Him, it's at the same time also true that God through His hidden has willed that they reject Christ because He has predestined them to be damned. This is the teaching of Scripture particularly Romans 9 where God is likened to a potter forming vessels of dishonour as well as vessels of honour, corresponding to the damned and the saved, and also John 6 where only those drawn by the Father to Christ believe in Christ and will be saved, which shows that this drawing can't be resisted. The Holy Spirit only converts those who the Father draws to Christ, and only they're born again and regenerated. The rest aren't converted and continue being estranged from God. Christ said that only His disciples had been granted the ability to believe by the Father as the multitude hadn't been given to know the truth: “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” (Matthew 13:11 ESV) God's pleading with people to follow Him in no way implies that people have free will to choose to do so, rather such statements in Scripture show to the elect that they need God's grace if they're to comply and follow Him. No one is forced to repent against their will but unless they're converted to Christ by the irresistible drawing of the Father they have no desire to repent and believe. No one can freely decide to repent and believe in Christ. It only happens through God predestining people to be saved and irresistibly converting them through the Holy Spirit.
What you just wrote makes God the Son seem like some petty bystander, who can merely sit back and react to what the Father does. Sounds barely Christian.
Isn't there a sense of implicit double predestination in John 3:18? What are we to say about Pharaoh or Judas, were they not predestined to wrath? Were not both necessary to fulfill God's purpose?
@@SojournerDidimus If one takes John 3:16 in conjunction with John 6:44 (No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.) then it follows that the reason why some don't believe in Christ is because they haven't been drawn to Christ by the Father, and haven't been converted irresistibly by the Holy Spirit and given faith, which means they've therefore been predestined to be damned by the Father.
@@Edward-ng8oo I understand that. Thing is, that leads to a very clear Calvinistic understanding. I'm fine with that, however the reason I asked is to get the Lutheran view on it.
@@SojournerDidimus Rather than repeat what I've written elsewhere below this video can I ask you to find the post by someone calling himself WaterMelon Cat where I discussed the fact that what Luther believed and what Lutherans believe are opposed to each other.
@@Edward-ng8ooThanks for your detailed exposition there. I will definitely put Bondage of the Will on my reading list! Yet, my challenge to confessional Lutherans remains, namely to exposit John 3 according to the view from their confession. Another question to you specifically: as you identify as Lutheran but reject the confession on a key issue, what church (and denomination) are you with?
@@SojournerDidimus With respect to John 3:18 (Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.) those who describe themselves as confessional Lutherans since they hold that God hasn't chosen in eternity that some are to be damned but that the Holy Spirit is always efficacious in the Word and that damnation is caused by resistance to the Holy Spirit, will only view damnation as something which is determined in this life by those who refuse to be born again. So they'll understand 3:18 as meaning that condemnation to hell is something which can be declared now because people refuse to allow the Holy Spirit to give them faith. This means that they reject that God's foreknowledge of who will be damned necessitates the fate of individuals in hell, whereas Luther affirmed the opposite. Confessional Lutherans can't explain how it is that God has perfect foreknowledge of who will be damned when according to them He hasn't predestined them to be damned. I'm not actually a member of any church or denomination as I'm unable to find one which is in full agreement with the doctrines that Luther taught.
It's always seemed to me that predestination always implies double predestination. If God chooses to elect some people and not others, then it seems that God has chosen to not elect those others. I guess that "choosing not to save" and "choosing to condemn," while perhaps technically different, still really seem like the same thing to me. Especially given how easy it would be for God to just elect everyone to salvation.
The confessional Lutheran belief is that whilst God elects to save only certain people this doesn't involve Him in not willing to save the rest. According to confessional Lutherans God wills to save everyone (by both His revealed and hidden wills), and that damnation is due to resistance to being regenerated by the Holy Spirit, who supposedly works efficaciously through the Gospel in order to try to convert everyone. This obviously contradicts election to salvation because as you rightly say if God elects only certain people to be saved, then it follows He doesn't elect to save the remainder, which is the same as saying He doesn't will to save them, which means He doesn't work through the Holy Spirit in order to save them. The confessional Lutheran position is logically contradictory and therefore if only for that reason it can't be true. Luther himself however didn't agree with confessional Lutherans. He argued rightly that God has not only elected and predestined some people to be saved but that He’s also elected and predestined some to be damned. I think part of the confusion that arises in connection with what Luther held is that Luther also maintained that God through the Gospel desires to save everyone, but the thing is he didn't pit this against God's hidden will of predestination, whereas confessional Lutherans have made the error of assuming that if God desires to save everyone through Christ it must follow He hasn't by His hidden will predestined anyone to be damned.
Single predestination is an oxymoron for the very reason you just pointed out. If a person can only arrive at one of two possible destinations (salvation or damnation) and God elects some to the former, then the others are necessarily predestined to perdition.
@@jeremybamgbadeYour comment about single predestination is plainly true and most confessional Lutherans will probably agree that their belief doesn't make any logical sense. However the problem with their belief system is that it doesn't require logical consistency. They've wrongly concluded that because for instance the Trinity can't be comprehended but is true, so in a similar fashion single predestination is above comprehension but also true. However I don't accept that this comparison is correct. A belief in single predestination isn't the same as holding that God is three Persons in one Divine essence. The Trinity is above comprehension but it isn't logically contradictory as is a belief in single predestination. Single predestination is on a par with asserting that there are three Gods in one God. It's an outright contradiction which can't be true in reality. Unfortunately confessional Lutherans define themselves in terms of universal grace - not only that Christ's atonement is universal but also that the Holy Spirit works universally through the Gospel so that everyone potentially can be saved. Whilst I agree that Christ atoned for everyone's sins I don't accept that the Holy Spirit works universally through the Gospel. John 6:44,64,65 shows that the Father doesn't send the Holy Spirit to convert everyone. This was also Luther's position in The Bondage of the Will, which is a book which Luther regarded as one of his most important writings which set out the absolute truth. Unfortunately again confessional Lutherans will say that they don't have to accept everything that Luther taught and that they subscribe to what the Formula of Concord (FC) teaches on predestination. Therein lies the problem because the FC teaches unscriptural doctrine on predestination.
@@Edward-ng8oo That makes sense. I also kinda think that a lot of people are emotionally uncomfortable with double predestination (especially supralapsarian kinds) even if they intellectually accept it.
Preaching Calvinism denies Calvinism. Please do not try to persuade me to choose to believe that I do not have the capacity to choose to believe something. They do not enter in themselves, and they hinder those who would enter in. Watch, a Calvinist will try to argue that we should choose to believe their lie, even though they will exercise all the powers of free will they have to spit in the face of The One True God. Sad...
What distinguishes Lutherans from Calvinists is that Lutherans reject predestination to hell, irresistible grace and limited atonement. They're right to reject limited atonement but not right to reject double predestination and irresistible grace. According to Lutherans the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Word and endeavours to regenerate everyone through the Gospel and failure to come to faith is attributable to man’s resistance to the Holy Spirit and not to God having predestined them to be damned by withholding the Holy Spirit from them. I don't accept that they're correct. I agree with Luther that Scripture teaches that conversion is irresistible and only those the Father draws to Christ are converted (John 6:44), and that Paul teaches double predestination. Lutherans aren't in actual fact Lutherans because they don't agree with Luther's teaching in The Bondage of the Will (which Luther regarded as the absolute truth), but believe the teaching on predestination in the Formula of Concord which was drawn up several decades after Luther's death. The main author of this, Martin Chemnitz, rejected the truth that God by His hidden will has determined everything that happens and that His foreknowledge necessitates everything happening as it does, and that people are predestined to hell as well as heaven. This is what Luther maintained is true in the above book but so called Lutherans either won't accept that Luther defended double predestination, which is the majority view, or alternatively they don't agree with him.
Lutherans believe in monergism and total depravity and man's inability to come to faith, but because they also believe in resistible grace they freely admit that they can't explain how anyone can be saved given that they believe that everybody in their fallen state is opposed to God and unwilling to believe in Him. They refuse to accept that in order to come to faith in Christ a person must be irresistibly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This of course is the only possible explanation given they also hold (rightly) to total depravity. But they can never accept that conversion to Christ happens through irresistible grace because that would destroy their belief system as their central belief is that the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Gospel and tries to convert everyone to Christ and that non-belief isn't due to God's will and predestination but is due to resistance to the Holy Spirit. So their belief system can't allow that the reason why people are saved is because God has caused them to not resist the Holy Spirit. It's a central tenet of theirs that salvation isn't due to irresistible grace. So their belief system is illogical. It can't explain how anybody can be saved because logically it entails that no one can be saved. That of course completely destroys their belief system but they have a nifty way of avoiding having to admit this and that is to assert the truth doesn't need to be logical because God can mysteriously do things which defy logic. They point to the Trinity and say that's true and can't be logically explained and in a similar way their belief system is true and can't be logically explained. However I don't accept that the Trinity is comparable to their belief system. God’s existence as three Persons is mysterious and beyond our understanding but it isn't logically contradictory as is their belief in total depravity and universal resistible grace. They're totally contradictory and if one is true then the other can't be. So those like myself who haven't been deceived by the Formula of Concord can see that the confessional Lutheran system is internally flawed and can't possibly be true apart from the fact of course that it isn't Scriptural.
Lutherans believe in monergism and total depravity and man's inability to come to faith, but because they also believe in resistible grace they freely admit that they can't explain how anyone can be saved given that they believe that everybody in their fallen state is opposed to God and unwilling to believe in Him. They refuse to accept that in order to come to faith in Christ a person must be irresistibly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This of course is the only possible explanation given they also hold (rightly) to total depravity. But they can never accept that conversion to Christ happens through irresistible grace because that would destroy their belief system as their central belief is that the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Gospel and tries to convert everyone to Christ and that non-belief isn't due to God's will and predestination but is due to resistance to the Holy Spirit. So their belief system can't allow that the reason why people are saved is because God has caused them to not resist the Holy Spirit. It's a central tenet of theirs that salvation isn't due to irresistible grace. So their belief system is illogical. It can't explain how anybody can be saved because logically it entails that no one can be saved. That of course completely destroys their belief system but they have a nifty way of avoiding having to admit this and that is to assert that truth doesn't need to be logical because God can mysteriously do things which defy logic. They point to the Trinity and say that's true and can't be logically explained and in a similar way their belief system is true and can't be logically explained. However I don't accept that the Trinity is comparable to their belief system. God’s existence as three Persons is mysterious and beyond our understanding but it isn't logically contradictory as is their belief in total depravity and universal resistible grace. They're totally contradictory and if one is true then the other can't be. So those like myself who haven't been deceived by the Formula of Concord can see that the confessional Lutheran system is internally flawed and can't possibly be true apart from the fact of course that it isn't Scriptural.
Lutherans believe in monergism and total depravity and man's inability to come to faith, but because they also believe in resistible grace they freely admit that they can't explain how anyone can be saved given that they believe that everybody in their fallen state is opposed to God and unwilling to believe in Him. They refuse to accept that in order to come to faith in Christ a person must be irresistibly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This of course is the only possible explanation given they also hold (rightly) to total depravity. But they can never accept that conversion to Christ happens through irresistible grace because that would destroy their belief system as their central belief is that the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Gospel and tries to convert everyone to Christ and that non-belief isn't due to God's will and predestination but is due to resistance to the Holy Spirit. So their belief system can't allow that the reason why people are saved is because God has caused them to not resist the Holy Spirit. It's a central tenet of theirs that salvation isn't due to irresistible grace. So their belief system is illogical. It can't explain how anybody can be saved because logically it entails that no one can be saved. That of course completely destroys their belief system but they have a nifty way of avoiding having to admit this and that is to assert the truth doesn't need to be logical because God can mysteriously do things which defy logic. They point to the Trinity and say that's true and can't be logically explained and in a similar way their belief system is true and can't be logically explained. However I don't accept that the Trinity is comparable to their belief system. God’s existence as three Persons is mysterious and beyond our understanding but it isn't logically contradictory as is their belief in total depravity and universal resistible grace. They're totally contradictory and if one is true then the other can't be. So the confessional Lutheran system is internally flawed and can't be true apart from the fact that it isn't Scriptural.
Jesus didn't claim degrees of non-resistance. He made it quite black and white, " Anyone who is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters."
The verse you're referring to (Luke 11:23 ESV - Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters) isn't actually about conversion as it's referring to the fact that one can't maintain a neutral stance towards Christ because either one believes that He’s doing the work of God or one doesn't. And if one doesn't accept in this instance that He was casting out demons by the power of God then one is against Him. With regards to conversion I agree that it's irresistible and that it's not possible to resist being born again by the Holy Spirit. Those God has elected and predestined to save are saved irrespective of the fact that they're dead in sin and are God's enemies. The Holy Spirit irresistibly works in their hearts to change them from being God's opponents to being His followers who willingly put their faith in Christ as their Saviour. Luther believed in irresistible grace and double predestination, but because of Martin Chemnitz who denied this in the Formula of Concord those who subscribe to it (confessional Lutherans) no longer believe as Luther did. They've formulated a different theology based on the erroneous belief that the Holy Spirit operates universally through the Gospel and seeks to convert everyone, and that conversion is resistible. They therefore reject that anyone has been predestined by God to be damned and instead attribute damnation to human free will in resisting the Holy Spirit. This is unscriptural and false.
It depends on the language in question. In Germany naturally one follows Luther's translation of the Bible. In Spanish we follow the Reina-Valera (usually the 1960 and the contemporary Reina-Valera are used; the latter is the one used, for example, by the Spanish version of the Lutheran Study Bible). In English the ESV is very well accepted and in fact it is the text that is usually used in other works when quoting from the Scriptures, although the King James is widely used and preferred by many.
First time I have heard of it, and I attend an English-speaking LCMS mission here in Germany. Although it could be the case on a private level, of course. Moreover, in the latest Concordia publications, as is the case with the Catechisms among others, they use the ESV. Besides being the translation used for the biblical texts in the Lutheran Service Book.
I think Mark 4:26-29 shows us clearly that we cannot understand faith as fully as we may want. Definitely not a satisfying answer to our empirical and binary western minds, which means we should adjust them
That parable of "growing seed" is not about "faith". It's about how the Word of God that is planted in us make us grow mysteriously and independent of our own efforts to mature us in our Christian lives.
@@thomasc9036 but isn't that the old school Calvinist understanding of "faith"? In modern American Democracy, faith seems to be associated with a "conscious decision for Christ", but if I understand Calvin correctly, faith is much more mysterious. To have faith is basically a code word for being a baptized member of the elect, predestined to receive imputed righteousness, and can start at infancy. Faith in that sense is not caused by any decisions or doctrinal beliefs a person has, but typically includes or influences those things as the mind develops. Ofc, as a Catholic, I'm definitely no expert on Protestant definitions of faith
@@WayneDrake-uk1ggI am not sure why you ask such a strangely confusing and twisted question with a nonsensical premise. Even Roman Catholics believe that "Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him" according to your catechism. When Peter declared that Jesus was the Son of the Living God, Jesus replied that the answer didn't come from "flesh and blood", but from the Father in heaven. Most Protestants (there are many who claim to be Protestants, but I will be the first to admit that many of them are heretics) believe the same. The faith is the gift of God, so your statement about about it is a "code word for being a baptized member" makes no sense. It is quite sad that so many professing Christians view "predestination" and "election' as some rigid determinism. It was always meant to be understood as comforter for Christians as they struggle and suffer in Christ. Jesus said "And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day". As we struggle and sometimes fall away, "predestination and election" is that Jesus will not let go. He will hold on to those the Father has given to him. He loves us enough to hold on to us. That's what predestination and election is meant to convey.
@@thomasc9036 very confusing and twisted answer! I was simply pointing out that in Calvin's view, to the extent I understand it, if a person is elect, he will have the seeds of faith at baptism, even if he is an infant completely unable to profess Christ, and if a person is not elect, he can believe in and profess Christ "on a human level", but still not have faith. And I concluded that makes "faith" a very mysterious thing
@@WayneDrake-uk1gg That's not a Calvinistic view at all. Calvinistic view is is the Baptismal regeneration for those who are Elect. Meaning, those who are not Elect will fall away from the faith later in life even though they were Baptized as infants. That is one of the major differences between Roman Catholics and Reformed. We don't believe that you (Elect) can lose salvation/faith while Roman Catholics do. To some degrees, Roman Catholics believed this as well considering that Thomas Aquinas articulated the predestination and elect. Are you using "mysterious" in terms of the original meaning? Too many Christians use the secular view of the word "mysterious". The original meaning of the word is used to mean "not completely understood now, but revealed later"...just like a "mystery" novel. The secular version is just "unknowable".
Doing something does not automatically equal earning something. Naaman did not earn his healing by dipping in the Jordan 7 times. To stop resisting grace is to do something. It would be merit if all works produced merit.
If you mean by Lutheran predestination the teaching of the Formula of Concord which affirms only single predestination to heaven and rejects predestination to hell then it isn't biblical. On the other hand if you're referring to what Luther taught in The Bondage of the Will which is that God has predestined people to both heaven and hell (i.e. double predestination) then it is biblical.
The idea that God can foreknow in advance what people will decide according to their own free will is logically impossible. God doesn't elect people to be saved on the basis that He foreknows what they’ll choose. The truth is that all people are depraved through original sin and enemies of God and no one can come to faith unless God irresistibly converts them through the Holy Spirit. This means that God must choose who to save and then actively go about saving them. He decides who is saved and who is damned not us. This is Luther's teaching in the Bondage of the Will. He rejected free will and maintained that God has predestined people to be saved and damned from before they were born.
@@TheOtherCaleb What do you mean by intuitu fidei then? I understand it to mean that God has elected those people to be saved who He foresaw would have faith, and since this means that God isn't responsible for the fact that they have faith, it must follow that the only reason that they do have faith is because they obtained it through their own free will.
It doesn't appear that there is any transcript. Transcripts are necessary for real study unless viewers are expected to type everything out to do research. Even sermons should have a transcript and be readily available for people to do our own research.
The confessional Lutheran position is fundamentally flawed because it's logically contradictory. They believe with Calvinists that everyone is depraved and can't believe in Christ unless they're regenerated by the Holy Spirit, but then they also believe contrary to this that the Holy Spirit tries to regenerate everyone through the Gospel and that failure to acquire faith is caused by resistance to the Holy Spirit, from which it follows that non-resistance to the Holy Spirit is what saves a person which is synergism not monergism. None of it makes sense. They believe only those elected to be saved will be saved but there's no possible way God can predestine the elect to be saved if people can through free will resist the Holy Spirit and not come to faith. Luther rejected what confessional Lutherans believe in his reply to Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will. He defended hard determinism and maintained (rightly) that the Scriptures teach absolute predestination where God through His hidden will has omnipotently willed and predestined everything that happens, and where His foreknowledge necessitates everything happening as it does. He stoutly maintained that God has predestined people to be saved and damned and that regeneration by the Holy Spirit is irresistible. The problem is though that even when confessional Lutherans get round to reading Luther's book they've been so conditioned by their allegiance to the Formula of Concord and the erroneous belief that Luther was in agreement with it on single predestination, that when they read it they do so through an ideological filter which misinterprets all statements of Luther's which defend the doctrine of double predestination. So it's impossible to convince those who are die hard defenders of single predestination that Luther wasn't in agreement with them.
My question is aren't we created in the image and likeness of God? Adam fell into sin and served a new master, and we're all born serving a new master, but once freed from this sin are we not still His image? The view that humans can only do sin and cannot do anything of God unless God actively intervenes and "causes" them to do so at all times sounds less like we're the image of the true God... and more like we're an empty vessel. How can we reconcile this with Genesis 3, God already willed us to the good in our creation. We were created in friendship with God and to friendship with God we return once we are freed from our slavery to sin. There is no "neutral state" we return to that God then has to go actively grab us out of and make us then be good - because we were not created to be neutral we were created to love and serve God.
Through Adam's fall into sin we’ve all been infected with original sin which causes people to actively commit sin. However when we’re born again by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel our fallen nature isn't removed, it’s still there but the Spirit enables us to resist its sinful impulses so that we don't lead a sinful lifestyle. Unless we're led by the Holy Spirit and have faith in Christ we can't do anything good because our human nature is corrupt and depraved which we won't be free of until we die. Complete restoration to God's image won't happen until the next life.
@@Edward-ng8oo if our human nature is corrupt and depraved and can’t do anything good then how come Jesus Christ, who shares our nature, was able to live without sin and do the good in his human nature? Jesus wasn’t some flesh puppet controlled by a divine mind, he was a real human being with a real human will, and yet he did not sin.
@@harrygarris6921 Christ wasn't born with a fallen nature but was conceived through the Holy Spirit without a human father, so He wasn't afflicted with original sin as the rest of mankind are. This meant that although He experienced what it's like to be tempted by the Devil He had the capacity to never acquiesce in sin and so He remained sinless throughout his earthly life.
@@Edward-ng8oo uh, what? Think about the implications of what you’re saying for a second. Original sin is some kind of substance passed on by fathers through the marital act?
@@harrygarris6921 Original sin isn't a substance but a corruption of nature which is passed on through human conception. Our corrupted nature originated with Adam and was transmitted to all his posterity with the result that everyone who is born in the normal way inherits a corrupted nature. Only Christ was exempt as He was conceived through the Holy Spirit.
lol... basically, Lutheran theology don't want to mention reprobation because it can be misunderstand. "Although we agree with Calvin, we will seem like Arminian so we can be called the nice guys" theology.
@@Dilley_G45 lol... Luther was an Augustinian monk. He agreed with Augustine and Thomas Aquinas on predestination and election. He didn't come up with his theology. Lutherans sound just like Roman Catholics on predestination and election. They agree with Thomas Aquinas but don't want to admit it.
@@thomasc9036 I know who Luther was mate. And what's wrong with agreeing with Rome when Rome gets it right? Luther wasn't about being anti-catholic. Luther was a Catholic Priest who spotted errors that had crept into the teaching and tradition of the Church. Augsburg Confession and apology explain it very well
@@Dilley_G45 Why be ashamed of the scripture? Luther didn't want predestination and election to be emphasized because they may put stumbling blocks for unbelievers or those who just came to faith through the gospel, not because it wasn't true.
God locks all in stubbornness, and will have mercy on the same all (Romans 11:32), thus salvation for all. It's all God's work, just not in the perverted Calvinistic model.
I don't accept that you've correctly interpreted Scripture. In Romans 9 Paul says that God only has mercy on those He wills to have mercy, and that He hardens others in their unbelief, so Paul can hardly be meaning in 11:32 that God has mercy on everyone in the world. He plainly doesn't mean this because in verse 28 he's talking only of the elect Jews, and in the following verses he’s referring to the elect gentiles. So when he says in verse 32 that God has consigned all to disobedience that He might have mercy on all he's referring to all those who have been elected to be saved from both the Jews and gentiles not everyone in the world. So it's the Formula of Concord which has perverted the teaching of Scripture by denying that God has predestined some to be damned.
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect. Most are currently locked in stubbornness. Some have been show mercy. This is the present condition of mankind, but not the permanent one. Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)? Paul says "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26. God has already saved the whole world through His Son. Now it's just a matter of God granting belief to each individual. The granting of belief can be in this life, which it is for the elect, or later for the non-elect. Jesus said He came to save the world, including the repudiators, and He did it. John 12:47-48 And if ever anyone should be hearing My declarations and not be maintaining them, I am not judging him, for I came not that I should be judging the world, but that I should be saving the world. 48 He who is repudiating Me and not getting My declarations, has that which is judging him; the word which I speak, that will be judging him in the last day Obviously, many will go through judgment. But the effect of their judgment will not last forever. The effect of the judgment is "aioniou," not everlasting (Hebrews 6:2).
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect. Most are currently locked in stubbornness. Some have been show mercy. This is the present condition of mankind, but not the permanent one. Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)? Paul says "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26. God has already saved the whole world through His Son. Now it's just a matter of God granting belief to each individual. The granting of belief can be in this life, which it is for the elect, or later for the non-elect. Jesus said He came to save the world, including the repudiators, and He did it. John 12:47-48 And if ever anyone should be hearing My declarations and not be maintaining them, I am not judging him, for I came not that I should be judging the world, but that I should be saving the world. 48 He who is repudiating Me and not getting My declarations, has that which is judging him; the word which I speak, that will be judging him in the last day Obviously, many will go through judgment. But the effect of their judgment will not last forever. The effect of the judgment is "aioniou," not everlasting (Hebrews 6:2).
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect. Most are currently locked in stubbornness. Some have been show mercy. This is the present condition of mankind, but not the permanent one. Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)? Paul says "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26. God has already saved the whole world through His Son. Now it's just a matter of God granting belief to each individual. The granting of belief can be in this life, which it is for the elect, or later for the non-elect. Jesus said He came to save the world, including the repudiators, and He did it. John 12:47-48 And if ever anyone should be hearing My declarations and not be maintaining them, I am not judging him, for I came not that I should be judging the world, but that I should be saving the world. 48 He who is repudiating Me and not getting My declarations, has that which is judging him; the word which I speak, that will be judging him in the last day Obviously, many will go through judgment. But the effect of their judgment will not last forever. The effect of the judgment is "aioniou," not everlasting (Hebrews 6:2).
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect. He will have mercy on all because it is His will that all be saved. 1 Timothy 2:4, “[our Saviour, God] wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth.” Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)?
"The kings of the earth will bring their glory and honor into [the new Jerusalem]." Rev. 22:24 Men possess the image of God. They have a glory all their own if they choose it. @@willhk4809
@@Catholic-Perennialist even a murderer is capable of not being a total jerk 100% of the time. That doesn’t mean that he is any less a murderer if he helps a grandma cross the street once. We have a moral law written on our hearts and a basic understanding of right and wrong. However, any common good we do is overshadowed by the fact we are dead in sin and unjust in God’s sight. It is only when Christ righteousness was applied to us, that any good works we do become pleasing to God. Even the Mormons are nice people. They recognize human virtue and can try their best to do good things in life. This merits nothing and is worse than if they had not even tried at all to attain justification. Because only Jesus justifies us through his perfect work on the cross that we are capable of any real spiritual good, because we are united to Him.
There is so much argument over free will vs predestination, and nobody ever takes a step back to examine why there is an argument about it at all. Namely because the Bible has examples for both predestination and free will, so some people might emphasize one more over the other, disregarding one for the other. When in reality, just like with the trinity, this is how god has revealed it to us so we should simply accept it. That's the beauty of the lutheran middle-way. It accepts both free will and predetermination and how that goes together is a mystery. But god says so in the Bible, so that's how it is. Just like the trinity.
I don't accept that the Bible has examples of free will with respect to salvation and damnation, and neither did Luther. In The Bondage of the Will he completely rejected that salvation and damnation come about through free will. He argued that God's omnipotence and foreknowledge means that everything is predestined to happen, and that God wills that some are to be saved and others are to be damned. The “Lutheranism” which you follow didn't originate with Luther but rather with the Formula of Concord which was written several decades after Luther’s death.
This is where I am right now. That reasonable people take views on nearly all points on a spectrum between free will and determinism to me suggests that the source of the ambiguity lies in the scriptures. God did not promise that everything will be made clear to us this side of eternity. There will be a time when we will know even as we are known, but that time is not now. I am content living in an unresolved tension in the meantime on these issues that are ultimately secondary to the core doctrines of the faith.
@@Edward-ng8oothis is 100% correct. Lutheranism has lamentably been influenced by Melanchthon to a far greater degree than Luther.
@@jeremybamgbadeMartin Chemnitz, who was the main author of the Formula of Concord (FC), was one of Melanchthon's pupils so it's understandable how it was that he was so opposed to reprobation. Chemnitz’s interpretations of Romans 9 and other Scripture passages in the FC are deplorable. Luther would have been appalled that someone who was claiming to speak for his followers was trying to pass off such misreadings of Scripture. Chemnitz directly contradicted Luther's teachings in The Bondage of the Will.
Also Luther had rightly regarded astrology as being a pseudoscience whereas Chemnitz was for a number of years a professional astrologer casting horoscopes for wealthy clients and didn't see this as being incompatible with Christianity. It's difficult to understand how it was that Chemnitz managed to eclipse Luther and convince people that Scripture teaches single predestination when Luther had rejected this in his reply to Erasmus.
Who cares what Luther taught anymore than what Augustine taught. All the Greek speaking Christians closest to the Apostles taught free will salvation. Saints from all over the Roman world: St. Justin Martyr, St. Athenagoras, St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, St. John Chrysostom, all taught free will salvation as well as a Christian’s free will to cooperate with other graces like doing good and not sinning in explicit terms. Not one taught individual predestination to salvation apart from free will until late-period Augustine, the latinizing ex-Manichean.
My reformed pastor added this nuance about irresistible grace: grace is resistible, until it becomes irresistible. And God uses the Holy Spirit to draw people to Christ through persuasion. Some may be persuaded longer than others, but ultimately if one is God’s elect, the decision to follow and believe in Jesus Christ is the inevitable decision, because God is sovereign and wills things to happen.
this isn’t necessarily a disagreement with the reformed. there were theologians are the synod of dort who affirmed the antecedent will of God to save all, universal satisfaction, etc.. further, i’m not sure what aspect of “double predestination” you’re disagreeing with. hopefully you don’t have equal ultimacy in mind. because that was actually condemned at dort.
perhaps it is a disagreement with some modern “calvinsts”. but you lumped calvin in with them here, it seems.
That there were some individual hypothetical universalists at Dort does not mean the Canons of Dort give any support to their view. (Dort 2.8) says the effectiveness of Christ's redemption is for "all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father." This is a rejection of universal satisfaction, even the hypothetical version.
@@reformational the canons of dort doesn’t take either side. it allows for both views in order that the english delegates could still sign it. davenant literally said he’d rather cut off his hand than assent to the canons without the allowance of his view.
the quote you provided is not at all a rejection of the english position. you cut out part of the article: “In other words, it was God’s will that Christ through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmed the new covenant) should *effectively* redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father”. we affirm Christ only died effectually for the elect. this is just the lombardian formula.
@@kyoto8911 , so what do you want to affirm in addition to what Dort says? You want to say Christ also ineffectually died for the non-elect? That Christ hypothetically died for the non-elect? Despite the wishes of the English "universal satisfactionists" (or however they might be called), Dort does *not* "allow for both views". They may have signed it, but that's not evidence that it actually allowed for their views.
@@reformational Everything in Dordt 2:8 easily comports to the Lombardian formula which the Hypothetical Universalist position rests, “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect.” You’ll notice how it speaks of effectiveness only, not sufficiency. In fact, Dordt 2:6 even claims that the believer’s damnation is **not** because the death of Christ was insufficient to save them, but rather because of their unbelief.
Moreover, you seem unaware that the second point of doctrine was heavily shaped and at times almost written by the English delegation at the synod of Dordt, with an eye to allowing their views. I’d recommend “John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism” for further reading on the subject, as it goes through primary sources to demonstrate this was the case.
And it wasn’t just the English at Dordt, but several West German Reformed and the French, who also sought to defend Hypothetical Universalism. I actually read 2:6 as being harder for the strict views of LA to hold in actuality than 2:8 is for HU.
@@ahumblemerchant241 , is there a claim that Christ died for all sin, or every sinner? If so, that does NOT comport with Dordt.
Dordt does not allow Hypothetical Universalism.
Open theism is still the best explanation for free will.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the basic reason for all the disputes and bickering within Protestantism about predestination stems from the tension between wanting to say salvation is 100% the work of God while also wanting to assign salvific instrumentality to a wonkily defined faith. In the modern American context, faith seems to be implicitly understood in a Billy Graham sense of "choosing" Christ. But if we go full on Arminian, we basically undermine salvation being exclusively the work of God and predestined election by making salvation ultimately in our hands via our choice. Alternatively, if we focus exclusively on election and predestination, we can't really say our human choices have any sort of direct causal relationship to salvation
But it's not about choices, it's about the natural will of man that we were created in. The first state of man is one of friendship of God, that's how Adam was created, he was and we are His image. The image was stained through sin, but once freed from the bondage of sin do we not return to our natural state of being the image of God?
I fail to see the need to insist that God has to actively be "causing" our salvation at all times, our ability to do anything good at all times. He created us to be good, to be in friendship with Him, to follow His will. If we have anything at all in common with Adam this natural inclination to do the will of God is still in us somewhere. Claiming that we lost the human natural will that God created us in entirely would be saying that we are ontologically different than Adam, which we cannot say. Because if we were ontologically different than Adam, then we would not be under his curse, and we would not be freed by Christ who is the new Adam.
This isn't to say we can free ourselves. We are slaves to sin. But once freed we don't go into some neutral state where God then has to force us into the good camp. We serve a new master through our redemption, who is God. How we were created to be.
At the root of it is the fact that predestination and free will are diametrically opposed to each other and can't co-exist together. Logically either God determines who shall be saved and damned or we do by choosing through free will whether to believe in Christ or not. Confessional Lutheranism has brought confusion into this by saying that God has predestined people to be saved but He hasn't predestined anyone to be damned, and in effect teaching that people choose to be damned through free will. It's completely illogical and impossible to be true because predestination to heaven can't exist without predestination to hell. If for instance out of 10 people God elects to save 5 of them then it follows that the remaining 5 can't avoid being damned, and are therefore predestined to be damned. Confessional Lutherans deny this by asserting that God desires to save everyone and therefore He can't have predestined anyone to be damned. However, that is to confuse God's two wills. Luther was right to maintain in The Bondage of the Will that God only desires in His revealed will to save everyone, because through His all-powerful hidden will He has elected and predestined to save only some people and to predestine the remainder to be damned, as Paul teaches in Romans 9.
Faith is the instrumental cause of salvation but only those drawn to Christ by the Father (John 6:44) are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and given faith. So one can't choose to have faith because it's only God who determines whether a person will be given it. Confessional Lutheranism is wrong to teach that the Holy Spirit operates universally through the Gospel and that it's resistance to the Holy Spirit's attempt to regenerate a person which causes a person to be damned. That wrong belief has caused confusion in the minds of many who think it's completely ok to believe in single predestination, despite the fact it's illogical, because this is what Scripture teaches. However Scripture doesn't teach this. They've misinterpreted it. The Holy Spirit doesn't attempt to regenerate everyone through the Gospel but rather irresistibly regenerates only those the Father wills to convert. This is Luther’s teaching in The Bondage of the Will, but confessional Lutherans so called don't follow Luther. They follow Martin Chemnitz who several decades after Luther’s death contradicted Luther’s teaching and denied that God has predestined anyone to be damned.
@@Edward-ng8oo very interesting. As a Catholic, some versions of Calvinism make more sense to me than others. On one end of the spectrum, there's this idea that the more immersed into the Christian life one becomes, the more confident one becomes that one's "restless heart has rested in You, O Lord", and the more confident one becomes that one is predestined unto life. This makes perfect sense from the Catholic perspective, and is basically just good ol' fashioned Augustinianism. But in this view, wedded to the Protestant understanding of Justification as Imputation, I find it hard to reconcile any form of human instrumentality in Justification, whatsoever. Like, the cause of salvation, from beginning to end is God. God selects an elect in eternity, and God Justifies them through Imputation of the work on the cross. It seems more fitting in this view to say faith is the instrumental cause of assurance that you're one of the elect predestined to receive this Imputation. Or, you could say that faith unites you to Christ, and those united to Christ are the ones who were atoned on the cross, and this atonement results in a declaration of Justification, but it seems there are still too many links in the causal chain of Justification to assign any direct instrumentality faith
@@Edward-ng8oo or, it seems if you want to be formal and say there's a sort of "Big F" Faith that's instrumental in Justification insofar as it's like a "bucket" God places on your soul to receive Justification, then it all makes sense. But this sort of Faith becomes somewhat mysterious, and we are back to the issue that the ordinary "little f" faith that we experience as part of regular Christian life, which we normally describe in terms of beliefs, trusts, and other "human mental activity" can have no instrumentality beyond causing us assurance that we have the Big F Faith that actually justifies
@@harrygarris6921Adam completely lost the image of God when the Fall happened through disobeying God. It was then that sin entered the world and caused all of Adam's descendents to become depraved and enemies of God. Everyone in this corrupted state is spiritually dead and are children of wrath as Paul calls them (Ephesians 2:3). Only a partial restoration occurs when a person is converted to faith in Christ. He still has his corrupt nature but is no longer a slave to it and can resist sinful impulses although not entirely. Full restoration to the image of God won’t happen until the next life when we will be resurrected and have pure transformed bodies incapable of sin.
The fact that all people have a corrupted sinful nature means that we can't choose to come to Christ and believe in Him. It needs God to intervene in our lives and cause us to be reborn by the Holy Spirit, which the Father doesn't will to do to everyone. (John: 6:64-65). Also after we've come to faith we can't live as Christians unless we're led by the Spirit (Romans 8) and God is working within us (Phillipians 2:13).
1. Luther’s view is different here form Lutheranism, yes or no?
2. Does anyone know of a book like “plan of salvation” by war field, except a more detailed layout of each worldview, that’d help get a better grip of determining the issues of each.
3. 1:00-1:50 sounds contradictory no? That it’s not dependent ons man’s will, but grace is given to all, and some don’t reject it, salvation not being applied to all.
(Edit: Okay.. so this is where mystery is appealed to, nevermind).
It certainly seems Luther's view is at odds with the view in the Lutheran confessions with regards to his famous book, The Freedom of the Will. Dr. Cooper believes people who believe that just have read Freedom of the Will wrongly. I haven't yet studied it in-depth but there are several passages that sound hardcore Reformed 🤷♂.
@@justinmayfield6579 Yea, I’m just starting to study the basics, but I’ve heard that often.
Eventually I’m going to get to that book, along with another few great books on the will.
@@ZachFish-See my replies to someone calling himself WaterMelon Cat below this video.
Yes Luther was a man. He is not the pope of the Lutheran church.
Predestination could allow us to be servants of God, but it makes it impossible to be His friend.
If you are a Calvinist, please do not feel that you are predestined to give me a doctrinal diatribe. Tell me rather:
1. How did you get saved?
and
2. What is your FRIENDSHIP with Our Father like?
Let's see if Edward CHOOSES to respond...
Having faith is an endevour that the human will must cooperate in. We can't have faith without God working in us, but it is not something that God forces onto us either. No a Damascus Road moment does not qualify as forcing faith onto us, as even then we are free to disregard the miracle or to choose our own way. This formula doesn't make man the master of his own salvation, as some Calvinists might insist, as merely having faith isn't salvific outside of the context of what God has done and continues to do for us. Salvation depends on Christ's atoning sacrifice and God's promised work of sanctification on our heart. As long as we persist in faith, that work will be brought to completion. Faith is merely a hinge point wherein the lost and powerless sinner says yes to God. God carries us to that point and continues to carry us from that point unto our final glorification.
You’re conflating sanctification with justification. They are not the same
@@JW_______ What you're saying amounts to synergism not monergism. Although you're right in saying that God doesn't force faith on people in the sense of compelling them to believe against their wills, He does irresistibly work faith in people by changing their wills so that they willingly believe in Christ. If conversion was resistible then God couldn't elect and predestine anyone to be saved. Christ says that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him, and that all those who come to Him He will save (John 6:44). The Father in other words has elected and predestined some to be saved and it can't fail that they will be saved, and therefore it must be the case that they have no free will to resist being converted and saved. This is Luther's teaching in The Bondage of the Will.
Luther was also right in maintaining that Scripture teaches that some are predestined to be damned. The Formula of Concord’s denial of this is false doctrine. Although it's true that those who are damned resist believing it's also true that they can't do anything else but resist as the Holy Spirit isn't efficacious through the Word towards them, as they haven't been drawn by the Father. They therefore can't be converted and are consequently predestined to be damned. The FC isn't correct in teaching the universal operation of the Holy Spirit in the Word. The Holy Spirit doesn't try to convert everyone through the Gospel, but rather irresistibly converts only those the Father draws to Christ. If it was the case that conversion was resistible then no one would be saved as everyone would resist owing to the fact that through original sin they’re depraved and opposed to God. It has to be the case that conversion and regeneration are irresistible.
Also it has to be the case that although we cooperate in our sanctification this is something which is accomplished by God working in us. Our cooperation therefore isn't something we can decide to withhold as if we had free will. If we at any time fall into sin this can only happen if God has determined it will happen to teach us a lesson that we can't do anything without Him. But it has to be the case that if we're one of the elect He can't fail to restore us irresistibly in the faith so that we're saved.
@Edward-ng8oo You are intelligent and articulate, and I have no doubt you are seeking to be faithful to Christ and the Bible in your theology. However, what you are teaching amounts to a false doctrine of God's character and nature.
We both believe that God has the power to save every individual soul and must wrestle with why God does not do so. Under the view of most of the church fathers, the reason not all are saved, even though scripture tells us that God desires for all to be saved (e.g. 1Tim 2:1-6), is that God created mankind in His image with freewill, and God will not violate that image in us by forcing our love and obedience. He will do work in us through His grace to make that love and obedience possible, but ultimately we must participate in that with Him.
Under your (perhaps we can say Augustinian) view, God has no reason that prevents Him from forcefully changing the will of every human being and thereby saving mankind, given that, under your view, that is exactly what He does for those who are saved. That is why Calvinists have posited that people are damned for God's glory - that God's original end and desire for the damned was that they be damned.
This is not the character of the God who scripture tells us loves all mankind and would have us all be saved if we would but turn to Him. Yes, he will trun us towards Him, because we cannot turn ourselves - BUT only if we say yes.
@@JW_______ The church fathers who taught free will were teaching incorrectly as Scripture teaches that people are predestined to be saved and damned (Romans 9, Ephesians 1 and 2 etc). In Ephesians 2 Paul explains that everyone is dead in sin and following the Devil in the passions of their flesh, (and therefore can't choose to believe in Christ), and that faith is a gift from God so that no one can boast that they’ve obtained salvation through their works. If salvation was as a result of choosing to be saved through free will then that makes faith a work of man and not a work of God in man.
It's true that God through the Gospel desires everyone's salvation but the way to understand this in combination with predestination is as Luther explained it in The Bondage of the Will which is that God has more than one will and that although He has a general desire to save everyone though Christ, He also has a hidden will through which as the omnipotent ruler of the universe He has predestined people to be saved and damned.
@Edward-ng8oo God predestined before the creation of the world that those who have faith in Christ would be united with Him. When scripture speaks of individual election, the elect are those who put their faith in Christ. It's not that they put their faith in Christ because they are elect, but rather that they are elect because they put their faith in Christ.
There is no strong argument why the term "dead in sin" should mean unable to place one's faith in Christ. Dead in sin means damned if left to one's own devices, unable to get from point A (enslaved to sin) to point B (saved by Christ) without divine intervention. But as I put forth in my last two comments, we are not left to our own devices. God has intervened in every individual case. God saved us through (1) Christ's atoning work on the cross, and (2) by working His grace and holy spirit on our hearts to free us from our sinful nature's hold on us. This occurs to bring us to the point of faith, and continues to occur as we are sanctified, bringing us someday to perfect unity with God.
I disagree with the idea that God can have two contradicting wills. Either He wants the damned to be saved, or He doesn't. He can't want want someone both to be saved and not to be saved. This doesn't mean, to be clear, that God can't want someone to be saved under certain conditions but not under other conditions. That would only be nuanced, not contradictory. For example, God can want us to be saved, but not at the cost of violating our free will or at the cost of allowing evil to persist. However if you believe that God is already violating the free will of all whom He saves, and that there is no difference between those who are saved and those who are not, what basis can there be for God saving some and not others, other than a lack of love, or as some have suggested, for His own glory?
I’m gonna be honest, maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see where you disagreed with Classical Reformed theology. All of this felt very in line with it.
@dromines03 , the "confessionally" Reformed (eg, Westminster, Dort), say 1) Christ atones for (accomplishes redemption on behalf of) the elect only, and 2) there is a foreordination from eternity (or part of God's eternal degree) that some should be justly condemned; this is called "reprobation."
If one is Amyraldian and denies at least the first point, one is not "classically" Reformed in the confessional sense.
Yeah Calvanism is just consistent Lutheranism when it comes to predestination. We are dealing with first and second causes. There truly is antimony here.
37* All that* the Father gives me will come to me, and* whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
38 For* I have come down from heaven, not to do* my own will but* the will of him* who sent me. 39And* this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but* raise it up on the last day.
If election is unconditional then how is atonement universal or potentially universal. If those who receive grace do so due to unconditional election then how would those who do not receive saving grace not destined to do so bc if they did it would mean they are elected to do so?
You are assuming there is such a thing as the reprobate.
That is a good question. Universal atonement or a universal offer are simply not compatible with a limited election. Election in Romans 8 is unseparable from the love of the Father the calling of the Spirit, and the intercession of Christ. Christ intercession is not an offer just as Election is not an offer
Election is such a complicated topic.
In reality, election isn't complicated because it simply refers to the fact that in eternity God chose out of fallen humanity those He was going to save and those He wasn't going to save. It's because the Bible has been misinterpreted by those who wish to deny that God has predestined some to be damned that it appears complicated.
@ScribeintheinkBecause to do so you would have to acknowledge that God is an evil son of a bitch.
There is one elect. The New Man, Christ.
"He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth IN HIM, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring ALL THINGS TOGETHER IN HIM, things in the heavens and things on the earth. "
It actually isn't all that complicated if one understands it in line with Luther's explanation in The Bondage of the Will.
Basically his explanation runs like this: God is omnipotent and everything that happens is willed by Him to happen, and since He knows what He has willed to happen His foreknowledge necessitates everything happening as it does, which means everything is predestined to happen, and everyone is either predestined to be saved or predestined to be damned.
With regards to election, those who are predestined to be saved God has elected to save, and they are irresistibly regenerated (born again) by the Holy Spirit so that they come to faith in Christ, and this faith saves them. Those God hasn't elected to save aren't regenerated by the Holy Spirit and are left without faith to suffer the consequences of their unbelief and sins.
The complications with respect to election that exist in confessional Lutheranism exist because the Formula of Concord doesn't agree with Luther's teaching. The FC rejects double predestination and teaches that the Holy Spirit doesn't irresistibly regenerate anyone but seeks to regenerate everyone through the Gospel. This therefore is in logical contradiction to election because God can't elect certain people to be saved (the elect) if it's the case that He tries to make everyone born again. The Lutheran doctrine of the universal operation of the Holy Spirit in the means of grace (Gospel and sacraments) therefore can't be true. And indeed it isn't because Christ’s explanation of why some are unbelievers isn't because they resisted being born again, but is because they weren't drawn by the Father and granted the ability to believe. (John 6:64-65). It follows therefore that the Father doesn’t will to regenerate everyone and that in the case of unbelievers the Holy Spirit isn't efficacious in the Word. It's impossible therefore that they can be born again and saved, which means that they've been chosen (elected) by God to be damned.
This situation is obviously disagreeable to us, but Luther had some advice which is that we shouldn't judge the matter with our limited understanding but wait until the next life when all will be revealed and we'll see that God was acting perfectly justly in having elected and predestined some to be damned.
Of course some are going to object to the above on the basis that Scripture states that God desires everyone's salvation, which according to them means that He hasn't predestined anyone to be damned. And they will also say that Luther taught that God desires everyone's salvation (which he did), from which they will also conclude that Luther rejected predestination to hell. However this conclusion is false because Luther made a sharp distinction between God's hidden will (which has determined who is to be saved and who is to be damned) and His revealed will in Christ (which desires everyone's salvation). We can see evidence of both these wills in operation when Christ lamented over the fate of Jerusalem. (Matthew 23:37). Christ desired that they should all be saved even though God by His hidden will had predestined some of them to be damned. (This is what Luther maintained is true in reply to Erasmus who brought up this Scripture verse)
Also when those who believe in single predestination (to heaven) object to predestination to hell on the basis that God desires to save everyone, they don't seem to be aware that one can equally conclude from this that God can't have predestined only some people to be saved, as this also conflicts with His desire to save everyone.
I’ve been convinced through reading The Bondage of the Will that Scripture teaches that God through His hidden will has predestined some people to be saved and the remainder to be damned, even though He desires the salvation of everyone through Christ.
Luther rightly said the following:
“It is certain that whosoever does not rightly believe or desire one article (after he has been admonished or instructed) he surely believes none seriously and in true faith... Therefore you have the choice: either believe everything and all, plainly and simply, or else believe nothing. The Holy Spirit does not permit himself to be separated or divided so that He would teach or have us believe one doctrine truly and another falsely. Exceptions (of course) are the weak who are ready to be instructed and do not contradict maliciously.”
What Luther held on predestination can be ascertained from The Bondage of the Will. In this book he showed from Scripture that both salvation and damnation aren't due to free will but to divine predestination, and that everything that God foreknows is predestined to happen. It follows therefore that he wouldn't regard those who deny this in any way, to be true Christians. I agree.
Similarly he maintained that the Scriptures teach the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper, and therefore again it follows that he held that those who deny this aren't true Christians.
So in Luther's eyes both confessional Lutherans who deny predestination to hell, and Calvinists who deny the Real Presence, aren't true Christians - unless that is they're simply deceived and are open to being corrected. But if they're entrenched in their positions then according to Luther they're not true Christians. I agree.
Those who claim to be confessional Lutherans will try to counter this by saying that Scripture teaches that God desires all to be saved, and Luther also agreed, and therefore he rejected that God has predestined any to be damned. But although he agreed that God desires everyone's salvation through the Gospel he confined this to God's revealed will only, as he maintained that God through His hidden will has determined everything that happens because He’s omnipotent. Double predestination is the teaching of Paul in Romans 9, and Luther maintained that this is what Paul is teaching, in his reply to Erasmus. Those who believe that Luther only sounded like Calvin but didn't actually agree with him on double predestination are entirely wrong. The truth is that Luther would have rejected the teaching of single predestination in the Formula of Concord and would have held it to be false doctrine had he been alive in the 1580’s. CFW Walther who read The Bondage of the Will and denied that it was in conflict with the FC was blind to the truth. It is in conflict with the FC. The FC misinterprets Romans 9 and doesn't teach the truth about predestination. I’m so certain of this that I stake my eternal salvation on this being true.
But do any Lutherans hold to the primacy of the incarnation as church fathers such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Maximus held to as well as what more modern supralapsarians like Scotus, Goodwin, and Barth have argued for?
Is not the primacy of the incarnation (God’s decision to become a man in Jesus even before there was sin) a separate question from infra and supra-lapsarianism?
The question of whether God had the incarnation as a goal before sin is an interesting one. And it’s certainly possible. Aquinas and others seem to avoid this question as not answered in scripture and that we are only told that it is for us and our salvation that the incarnation occurred.
Even in Athanasius’ statement that God became man that man might become God (I.e. partake in the immortality of the divine life), it’s not obvious that such a salvation does not presuppose man having lost this life first by disobedience in the garden. And if man had this life before the fall, then how could it be said to be conditioned upon the incarnation itself?
But of course, even if the incarnation was not necessary because man never fell, it might still have been the will of God be incarnated as the king of this creation. That is, there may have been a historical telos and plot-line that included the progress of creation toward the incarnation even apart from sin.
I actually like this way of thinking (and I remain a soteriological infralapsarian), but it can only be tangentially inferred from scriptures that speak of the world being made both by and FOR Christ, and then supposing that sin never happed.
I would also note that this emphasis on the incarnation in the Fathers is very different from Bath’s notion of the incarnation (and his supralapsarianism). Like with many things, Barth is redefining things such that one can have Schliermacher’s universalism and pan-en-theism but without his starting point in a liberal natural theology/philosophy of absolute dependence and religious feeling, but as revealed in the scriptures and more particularly in the person of Jesus.
So for Barth the creation of the world seems to be the same act as the incarnation of Jesus and the election of all human beings to salvation (I’m willing to be wrong about this, but it does seem to be the inference).
For the Fathers the emphasis upon the incarnation was not directly tied to a belief in universal election of all to salvation in Jesus. Nor was there a denial of natural or general revelation as can be found in Barth. Barth’s view of supralapsarianism is very unique and not really able to be included in the same category as Thomas Goodwin.
At least those are a few of my reflections on the topic.
@@jrhemmerich only thing I would respond with is in regards to Barth he's treated more favorably by EO patristic scholar John Behr in his "Paschal gospel" where he argues there's agreement with Irenaeus and Barth in that Jesus Christ is the key means by which we know both God and man. I'm still learning myself though and I'm trying to take utilize the best of Barth as thinkers like Behr and Torrance have.
Jesus lamenting over Jews rejecting him is all the proof you need to know that God gave us free will to reject the Holy Spirits draw. Also, how many times can you count in the old testament God pleading with Israel to change or face punishment. Why play games with them if you created them to never be able to accept you and your laws? It goes on and on. God doe know who will be saved, but he forces no one to repentance or it isn't really repentance, is it?
Correct. In our human nature, we have the free will to reject the Holy Spirit's draw. But not accept it.
This kind of thinking seems to emerge from a cosmology that sees God as merely a player amongst other, albeit less powerful, players. God's will, God's actions, God's existence ultimately inhabit the most fundamental plane of reality which everything created, including time, our will and existence, etc., merely sits on top of. Jesus lamenting is about the tragedy of the Jewish rejection of Him. God can make choices for the greater good that have hard consequences and Jesus can mourn what is lost. The only way around that reality is to either recast God as an essentially pagan god in terms of power and nature or to be a universalist.
Erasmus in the 16th century when opposing Luther’s position that God has predestined everyone to be either saved or damned, said basically the same thing that you've just said, and Luther answered him in The Bondage of the Will by saying that God has more than one will, and that although Christ laments over the inhabitants of Jerusalem for rejecting Him, it's at the same time also true that God through His hidden has willed that they reject Christ because He has predestined them to be damned. This is the teaching of Scripture particularly Romans 9 where God is likened to a potter forming vessels of dishonour as well as vessels of honour, corresponding to the damned and the saved, and also John 6 where only those drawn by the Father to Christ believe in Christ and will be saved, which shows that this drawing can't be resisted. The Holy Spirit only converts those who the Father draws to Christ, and only they're born again and regenerated. The rest aren't converted and continue being estranged from God. Christ said that only His disciples had been granted the ability to believe by the Father as the multitude hadn't been given to know the truth: “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” (Matthew 13:11 ESV)
God's pleading with people to follow Him in no way implies that people have free will to choose to do so, rather such statements in Scripture show to the elect that they need God's grace if they're to comply and follow Him. No one is forced to repent against their will but unless they're converted to Christ by the irresistible drawing of the Father they have no desire to repent and believe. No one can freely decide to repent and believe in Christ. It only happens through God predestining people to be saved and irresistibly converting them through the Holy Spirit.
What you just wrote makes God the Son seem like some petty bystander, who can merely sit back and react to what the Father does. Sounds barely Christian.
@@Edward-ng8oowhere in bondage of the will does Luther say that God wills for them to reject Jesus?
Isn't there a sense of implicit double predestination in John 3:18?
What are we to say about Pharaoh or Judas, were they not predestined to wrath? Were not both necessary to fulfill God's purpose?
@@SojournerDidimus If one takes John 3:16 in conjunction with John 6:44 (No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.) then it follows that the reason why some don't believe in Christ is because they haven't been drawn to Christ by the Father, and haven't been converted irresistibly by the Holy Spirit and given faith, which means they've therefore been predestined to be damned by the Father.
@@Edward-ng8oo I understand that. Thing is, that leads to a very clear Calvinistic understanding. I'm fine with that, however the reason I asked is to get the Lutheran view on it.
@@SojournerDidimus Rather than repeat what I've written elsewhere below this video can I ask you to find the post by someone calling himself WaterMelon Cat where I discussed the fact that what Luther believed and what Lutherans believe are opposed to each other.
@@Edward-ng8ooThanks for your detailed exposition there. I will definitely put Bondage of the Will on my reading list!
Yet, my challenge to confessional Lutherans remains, namely to exposit John 3 according to the view from their confession.
Another question to you specifically: as you identify as Lutheran but reject the confession on a key issue, what church (and denomination) are you with?
@@SojournerDidimus With respect to John 3:18 (Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.) those who describe themselves as confessional Lutherans since they hold that God hasn't chosen in eternity that some are to be damned but that the Holy Spirit is always efficacious in the Word and that damnation is caused by resistance to the Holy Spirit, will only view damnation as something which is determined in this life by those who refuse to be born again. So they'll understand 3:18 as meaning that condemnation to hell is something which can be declared now because people refuse to allow the Holy Spirit to give them faith. This means that they reject that God's foreknowledge of who will be damned necessitates the fate of individuals in hell, whereas Luther affirmed the opposite. Confessional Lutherans can't explain how it is that God has perfect foreknowledge of who will be damned when according to them He hasn't predestined them to be damned.
I'm not actually a member of any church or denomination as I'm unable to find one which is in full agreement with the doctrines that Luther taught.
It's always seemed to me that predestination always implies double predestination. If God chooses to elect some people and not others, then it seems that God has chosen to not elect those others. I guess that "choosing not to save" and "choosing to condemn," while perhaps technically different, still really seem like the same thing to me. Especially given how easy it would be for God to just elect everyone to salvation.
The confessional Lutheran belief is that whilst God elects to save only certain people this doesn't involve Him in not willing to save the rest. According to confessional Lutherans God wills to save everyone (by both His revealed and hidden wills), and that damnation is due to resistance to being regenerated by the Holy Spirit, who supposedly works efficaciously through the Gospel in order to try to convert everyone. This obviously contradicts election to salvation because as you rightly say if God elects only certain people to be saved, then it follows He doesn't elect to save the remainder, which is the same as saying He doesn't will to save them, which means He doesn't work through the Holy Spirit in order to save them. The confessional Lutheran position is logically contradictory and therefore if only for that reason it can't be true. Luther himself however didn't agree with confessional Lutherans. He argued rightly that God has not only elected and predestined some people to be saved but that He’s also elected and predestined some to be damned.
I think part of the confusion that arises in connection with what Luther held is that Luther also maintained that God through the Gospel desires to save everyone, but the thing is he didn't pit this against God's hidden will of predestination, whereas confessional Lutherans have made the error of assuming that if God desires to save everyone through Christ it must follow He hasn't by His hidden will predestined anyone to be damned.
Single predestination is an oxymoron for the very reason you just pointed out. If a person can only arrive at one of two possible destinations (salvation or damnation) and God elects some to the former, then the others are necessarily predestined to perdition.
@@Edward-ng8oo great explanation
@@jeremybamgbadeYour comment about single predestination is plainly true and most confessional Lutherans will probably agree that their belief doesn't make any logical sense. However the problem with their belief system is that it doesn't require logical consistency. They've wrongly concluded that because for instance the Trinity can't be comprehended but is true, so in a similar fashion single predestination is above comprehension but also true. However I don't accept that this comparison is correct. A belief in single predestination isn't the same as holding that God is three Persons in one Divine essence. The Trinity is above comprehension but it isn't logically contradictory as is a belief in single predestination. Single predestination is on a par with asserting that there are three Gods in one God. It's an outright contradiction which can't be true in reality.
Unfortunately confessional Lutherans define themselves in terms of universal grace - not only that Christ's atonement is universal but also that the Holy Spirit works universally through the Gospel so that everyone potentially can be saved. Whilst I agree that Christ atoned for everyone's sins I don't accept that the Holy Spirit works universally through the Gospel. John 6:44,64,65 shows that the Father doesn't send the Holy Spirit to convert everyone. This was also Luther's position in The Bondage of the Will, which is a book which Luther regarded as one of his most important writings which set out the absolute truth. Unfortunately again confessional Lutherans will say that they don't have to accept everything that Luther taught and that they subscribe to what the Formula of Concord (FC) teaches on predestination. Therein lies the problem because the FC teaches unscriptural doctrine on predestination.
@@Edward-ng8oo That makes sense. I also kinda think that a lot of people are emotionally uncomfortable with double predestination (especially supralapsarian kinds) even if they intellectually accept it.
Preaching Calvinism denies Calvinism.
Please do not try to persuade me to choose to believe that I do not have the capacity to choose to believe something.
They do not enter in themselves, and they hinder those who would enter in.
Watch, a Calvinist will try to argue that we should choose to believe their lie, even though they will exercise all the powers of free will they have to spit in the face of The One True God. Sad...
Let's see if Edward CHOOSES to respond...
But wait, if the "non-resistance" is also God's doing, and not of your own will, then how are you different from Calvinists on this point?
They aren’t, they like to give lip service that they are
What distinguishes Lutherans from Calvinists is that Lutherans reject predestination to hell, irresistible grace and limited atonement. They're right to reject limited atonement but not right to reject double predestination and irresistible grace. According to Lutherans the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Word and endeavours to regenerate everyone through the Gospel and failure to come to faith is attributable to man’s resistance to the Holy Spirit and not to God having predestined them to be damned by withholding the Holy Spirit from them. I don't accept that they're correct. I agree with Luther that Scripture teaches that conversion is irresistible and only those the Father draws to Christ are converted (John 6:44), and that Paul teaches double predestination.
Lutherans aren't in actual fact Lutherans because they don't agree with Luther's teaching in The Bondage of the Will (which Luther regarded as the absolute truth), but believe the teaching on predestination in the Formula of Concord which was drawn up several decades after Luther's death. The main author of this, Martin Chemnitz, rejected the truth that God by His hidden will has determined everything that happens and that His foreknowledge necessitates everything happening as it does, and that people are predestined to hell as well as heaven. This is what Luther maintained is true in the above book but so called Lutherans either won't accept that Luther defended double predestination, which is the majority view, or alternatively they don't agree with him.
Lutherans believe in monergism and total depravity and man's inability to come to faith, but because they also believe in resistible grace they freely admit that they can't explain how anyone can be saved given that they believe that everybody in their fallen state is opposed to God and unwilling to believe in Him. They refuse to accept that in order to come to faith in Christ a person must be irresistibly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This of course is the only possible explanation given they also hold (rightly) to total depravity. But they can never accept that conversion to Christ happens through irresistible grace because that would destroy their belief system as their central belief is that the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Gospel and tries to convert everyone to Christ and that non-belief isn't due to God's will and predestination but is due to resistance to the Holy Spirit. So their belief system can't allow that the reason why people are saved is because God has caused them to not resist the Holy Spirit. It's a central tenet of theirs that salvation isn't due to irresistible grace. So their belief system is illogical. It can't explain how anybody can be saved because logically it entails that no one can be saved. That of course completely destroys their belief system but they have a nifty way of avoiding having to admit this and that is to assert the truth doesn't need to be logical because God can mysteriously do things which defy logic. They point to the Trinity and say that's true and can't be logically explained and in a similar way their belief system is true and can't be logically explained. However I don't accept that the Trinity is comparable to their belief system. God’s existence as three Persons is mysterious and beyond our understanding but it isn't logically contradictory as is their belief in total depravity and universal resistible grace. They're totally contradictory and if one is true then the other can't be. So those like myself who haven't been deceived by the Formula of Concord can see that the confessional Lutheran system is internally flawed and can't possibly be true apart from the fact of course that it isn't Scriptural.
Lutherans believe in monergism and total depravity and man's inability to come to faith, but because they also believe in resistible grace they freely admit that they can't explain how anyone can be saved given that they believe that everybody in their fallen state is opposed to God and unwilling to believe in Him. They refuse to accept that in order to come to faith in Christ a person must be irresistibly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This of course is the only possible explanation given they also hold (rightly) to total depravity. But they can never accept that conversion to Christ happens through irresistible grace because that would destroy their belief system as their central belief is that the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Gospel and tries to convert everyone to Christ and that non-belief isn't due to God's will and predestination but is due to resistance to the Holy Spirit. So their belief system can't allow that the reason why people are saved is because God has caused them to not resist the Holy Spirit. It's a central tenet of theirs that salvation isn't due to irresistible grace. So their belief system is illogical. It can't explain how anybody can be saved because logically it entails that no one can be saved. That of course completely destroys their belief system but they have a nifty way of avoiding having to admit this and that is to assert that truth doesn't need to be logical because God can mysteriously do things which defy logic. They point to the Trinity and say that's true and can't be logically explained and in a similar way their belief system is true and can't be logically explained. However I don't accept that the Trinity is comparable to their belief system. God’s existence as three Persons is mysterious and beyond our understanding but it isn't logically contradictory as is their belief in total depravity and universal resistible grace. They're totally contradictory and if one is true then the other can't be. So those like myself who haven't been deceived by the Formula of Concord can see that the confessional Lutheran system is internally flawed and can't possibly be true apart from the fact of course that it isn't Scriptural.
Lutherans believe in monergism and total depravity and man's inability to come to faith, but because they also believe in resistible grace they freely admit that they can't explain how anyone can be saved given that they believe that everybody in their fallen state is opposed to God and unwilling to believe in Him. They refuse to accept that in order to come to faith in Christ a person must be irresistibly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This of course is the only possible explanation given they also hold (rightly) to total depravity. But they can never accept that conversion to Christ happens through irresistible grace because that would destroy their belief system as their central belief is that the Holy Spirit operates universally in the Gospel and tries to convert everyone to Christ and that non-belief isn't due to God's will and predestination but is due to resistance to the Holy Spirit. So their belief system can't allow that the reason why people are saved is because God has caused them to not resist the Holy Spirit. It's a central tenet of theirs that salvation isn't due to irresistible grace. So their belief system is illogical. It can't explain how anybody can be saved because logically it entails that no one can be saved. That of course completely destroys their belief system but they have a nifty way of avoiding having to admit this and that is to assert the truth doesn't need to be logical because God can mysteriously do things which defy logic. They point to the Trinity and say that's true and can't be logically explained and in a similar way their belief system is true and can't be logically explained. However I don't accept that the Trinity is comparable to their belief system. God’s existence as three Persons is mysterious and beyond our understanding but it isn't logically contradictory as is their belief in total depravity and universal resistible grace. They're totally contradictory and if one is true then the other can't be. So the confessional Lutheran system is internally flawed and can't be true apart from the fact that it isn't Scriptural.
Jesus didn't claim degrees of non-resistance. He made it quite black and white, "
Anyone who is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters."
The verse you're referring to (Luke 11:23 ESV - Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters) isn't actually about conversion as it's referring to the fact that one can't maintain a neutral stance towards Christ because either one believes that He’s doing the work of God or one doesn't. And if one doesn't accept in this instance that He was casting out demons by the power of God then one is against Him.
With regards to conversion I agree that it's irresistible and that it's not possible to resist being born again by the Holy Spirit. Those God has elected and predestined to save are saved irrespective of the fact that they're dead in sin and are God's enemies. The Holy Spirit irresistibly works in their hearts to change them from being God's opponents to being His followers who willingly put their faith in Christ as their Saviour.
Luther believed in irresistible grace and double predestination, but because of Martin Chemnitz who denied this in the Formula of Concord those who subscribe to it (confessional Lutherans) no longer believe as Luther did. They've formulated a different theology based on the erroneous belief that the Holy Spirit operates universally through the Gospel and seeks to convert everyone, and that conversion is resistible. They therefore reject that anyone has been predestined by God to be damned and instead attribute damnation to human free will in resisting the Holy Spirit. This is unscriptural and false.
What version of the Bible do Lutherans follow?
It depends on the language in question. In Germany naturally one follows Luther's translation of the Bible. In Spanish we follow the Reina-Valera (usually the 1960 and the contemporary Reina-Valera are used; the latter is the one used, for example, by the Spanish version of the Lutheran Study Bible). In English the ESV is very well accepted and in fact it is the text that is usually used in other works when quoting from the Scriptures, although the King James is widely used and preferred by many.
@@fernandoduranmanzano english
@@RealisticHistoryLutherans use the Douay-Rheims Bible.
First time I have heard of it, and I attend an English-speaking LCMS mission here in Germany. Although it could be the case on a private level, of course. Moreover, in the latest Concordia publications, as is the case with the Catechisms among others, they use the ESV. Besides being the translation used for the biblical texts in the Lutheran Service Book.
@@P-el4zd No we don't lol
I think Mark 4:26-29 shows us clearly that we cannot understand faith as fully as we may want. Definitely not a satisfying answer to our empirical and binary western minds, which means we should adjust them
That parable of "growing seed" is not about "faith". It's about how the Word of God that is planted in us make us grow mysteriously and independent of our own efforts to mature us in our Christian lives.
@@thomasc9036 but isn't that the old school Calvinist understanding of "faith"? In modern American Democracy, faith seems to be associated with a "conscious decision for Christ", but if I understand Calvin correctly, faith is much more mysterious. To have faith is basically a code word for being a baptized member of the elect, predestined to receive imputed righteousness, and can start at infancy. Faith in that sense is not caused by any decisions or doctrinal beliefs a person has, but typically includes or influences those things as the mind develops. Ofc, as a Catholic, I'm definitely no expert on Protestant definitions of faith
@@WayneDrake-uk1ggI am not sure why you ask such a strangely confusing and twisted question with a nonsensical premise. Even Roman Catholics believe that "Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him" according to your catechism. When Peter declared that Jesus was the Son of the Living God, Jesus replied that the answer didn't come from "flesh and blood", but from the Father in heaven. Most Protestants (there are many who claim to be Protestants, but I will be the first to admit that many of them are heretics) believe the same. The faith is the gift of God, so your statement about about it is a "code word for being a baptized member" makes no sense.
It is quite sad that so many professing Christians view "predestination" and "election' as some rigid determinism. It was always meant to be understood as comforter for Christians as they struggle and suffer in Christ. Jesus said "And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day". As we struggle and sometimes fall away, "predestination and election" is that Jesus will not let go. He will hold on to those the Father has given to him. He loves us enough to hold on to us. That's what predestination and election is meant to convey.
@@thomasc9036 very confusing and twisted answer! I was simply pointing out that in Calvin's view, to the extent I understand it, if a person is elect, he will have the seeds of faith at baptism, even if he is an infant completely unable to profess Christ, and if a person is not elect, he can believe in and profess Christ "on a human level", but still not have faith. And I concluded that makes "faith" a very mysterious thing
@@WayneDrake-uk1gg That's not a Calvinistic view at all. Calvinistic view is is the Baptismal regeneration for those who are Elect. Meaning, those who are not Elect will fall away from the faith later in life even though they were Baptized as infants. That is one of the major differences between Roman Catholics and Reformed. We don't believe that you (Elect) can lose salvation/faith while Roman Catholics do. To some degrees, Roman Catholics believed this as well considering that Thomas Aquinas articulated the predestination and elect.
Are you using "mysterious" in terms of the original meaning? Too many Christians use the secular view of the word "mysterious". The original meaning of the word is used to mean "not completely understood now, but revealed later"...just like a "mystery" novel. The secular version is just "unknowable".
Doing something does not automatically equal earning something. Naaman did not earn his healing by dipping in the Jordan 7 times.
To stop resisting grace is to do something. It would be merit if all works produced merit.
Are you denying Reprobation altogether?
Seems like a good idea to me
@@vitaignis5594 Even though the Bible clearly teaches it?
in luthreanism we rejet it totally! because that contradict the nature of loving God
@user-oh1qe3om3n Your rejection of it contradicts the Bible too.
@@mkbr1992 maybe your interpretation of the Bible which has no authority whatsoever
Lutheran predestination is both biblical and Augustinian.
If you mean by Lutheran predestination the teaching of the Formula of Concord which affirms only single predestination to heaven and rejects predestination to hell then it isn't biblical. On the other hand if you're referring to what Luther taught in The Bondage of the Will which is that God has predestined people to both heaven and hell (i.e. double predestination) then it is biblical.
Seems "Amyraldian." Doesn't it?
Personally, I’m a fan of the intuitu fidei view of the majority of the 17th century scholastics.
No casserole for you.
Yes so you deny the Formula and are a Pelagian.
The idea that God can foreknow in advance what people will decide according to their own free will is logically impossible. God doesn't elect people to be saved on the basis that He foreknows what they’ll choose. The truth is that all people are depraved through original sin and enemies of God and no one can come to faith unless God irresistibly converts them through the Holy Spirit. This means that God must choose who to save and then actively go about saving them. He decides who is saved and who is damned not us. This is Luther's teaching in the Bondage of the Will. He rejected free will and maintained that God has predestined people to be saved and damned from before they were born.
@@Edward-ng8oo Bro has not read Gerhard. 💀
@@TheOtherCaleb What do you mean by intuitu fidei then? I understand it to mean that God has elected those people to be saved who He foresaw would have faith, and since this means that God isn't responsible for the fact that they have faith, it must follow that the only reason that they do have faith is because they obtained it through their own free will.
It doesn't appear that there is any transcript. Transcripts are necessary for real study unless viewers are expected to type everything out to do research. Even sermons should have a transcript and be readily available for people to do our own research.
Kinda makes less sense then either, but it’s a safe position that isn’t hard determinism or libertarian free will.
The confessional Lutheran position is fundamentally flawed because it's logically contradictory. They believe with Calvinists that everyone is depraved and can't believe in Christ unless they're regenerated by the Holy Spirit, but then they also believe contrary to this that the Holy Spirit tries to regenerate everyone through the Gospel and that failure to acquire faith is caused by resistance to the Holy Spirit, from which it follows that non-resistance to the Holy Spirit is what saves a person which is synergism not monergism. None of it makes sense. They believe only those elected to be saved will be saved but there's no possible way God can predestine the elect to be saved if people can through free will resist the Holy Spirit and not come to faith.
Luther rejected what confessional Lutherans believe in his reply to Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will. He defended hard determinism and maintained (rightly) that the Scriptures teach absolute predestination where God through His hidden will has omnipotently willed and predestined everything that happens, and where His foreknowledge necessitates everything happening as it does. He stoutly maintained that God has predestined people to be saved and damned and that regeneration by the Holy Spirit is irresistible. The problem is though that even when confessional Lutherans get round to reading Luther's book they've been so conditioned by their allegiance to the Formula of Concord and the erroneous belief that Luther was in agreement with it on single predestination, that when they read it they do so through an ideological filter which misinterprets all statements of Luther's which defend the doctrine of double predestination. So it's impossible to convince those who are die hard defenders of single predestination that Luther wasn't in agreement with them.
Well said
My question is aren't we created in the image and likeness of God? Adam fell into sin and served a new master, and we're all born serving a new master, but once freed from this sin are we not still His image?
The view that humans can only do sin and cannot do anything of God unless God actively intervenes and "causes" them to do so at all times sounds less like we're the image of the true God... and more like we're an empty vessel. How can we reconcile this with Genesis 3, God already willed us to the good in our creation. We were created in friendship with God and to friendship with God we return once we are freed from our slavery to sin. There is no "neutral state" we return to that God then has to go actively grab us out of and make us then be good - because we were not created to be neutral we were created to love and serve God.
Through Adam's fall into sin we’ve all been infected with original sin which causes people to actively commit sin. However when we’re born again by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel our fallen nature isn't removed, it’s still there but the Spirit enables us to resist its sinful impulses so that we don't lead a sinful lifestyle. Unless we're led by the Holy Spirit and have faith in Christ we can't do anything good because our human nature is corrupt and depraved which we won't be free of until we die. Complete restoration to God's image won't happen until the next life.
@@Edward-ng8oo if our human nature is corrupt and depraved and can’t do anything good then how come Jesus Christ, who shares our nature, was able to live without sin and do the good in his human nature? Jesus wasn’t some flesh puppet controlled by a divine mind, he was a real human being with a real human will, and yet he did not sin.
@@harrygarris6921 Christ wasn't born with a fallen nature but was conceived through the Holy Spirit without a human father, so He wasn't afflicted with original sin as the rest of mankind are. This meant that although He experienced what it's like to be tempted by the Devil He had the capacity to never acquiesce in sin and so He remained sinless throughout his earthly life.
@@Edward-ng8oo uh, what? Think about the implications of what you’re saying for a second. Original sin is some kind of substance passed on by fathers through the marital act?
@@harrygarris6921 Original sin isn't a substance but a corruption of nature which is passed on through human conception. Our corrupted nature originated with Adam and was transmitted to all his posterity with the result that everyone who is born in the normal way inherits a corrupted nature. Only Christ was exempt as He was conceived through the Holy Spirit.
lol... basically, Lutheran theology don't want to mention reprobation because it can be misunderstand. "Although we agree with Calvin, we will seem like Arminian so we can be called the nice guys" theology.
Calvinians like to claim Luther as a Calvinist. Because they can't understand Lutheranism
@@Dilley_G45 lol... Luther was an Augustinian monk. He agreed with Augustine and Thomas Aquinas on predestination and election. He didn't come up with his theology. Lutherans sound just like Roman Catholics on predestination and election. They agree with Thomas Aquinas but don't want to admit it.
@@thomasc9036 I know who Luther was mate. And what's wrong with agreeing with Rome when Rome gets it right? Luther wasn't about being anti-catholic. Luther was a Catholic Priest who spotted errors that had crept into the teaching and tradition of the Church. Augsburg Confession and apology explain it very well
@@Dilley_G45 Why be ashamed of the scripture? Luther didn't want predestination and election to be emphasized because they may put stumbling blocks for unbelievers or those who just came to faith through the gospel, not because it wasn't true.
@@thomasc9036 😆 Luther wasn't ashamed of scripture. You're 100% wrong. Sola scriptura. Not scriptura with calvinist lense
The Luther lack of clarification on predestination has pretty much been my only issue in regards to being a confessional Lutheran.
Should they know more than the Bible?
@@langreeves6419 no, however I do believe election can be answered. Lutheranism just refuses to do so
@@WaterMelon-Cat maybe cause the Bible doesn't give an answer, and Luther was sol scriptura
@@langreeves6419 Sola Scriptira does not mean tradition can not provide answers
@@WaterMelon-CatHe was clear-Christ died for all.
God locks all in stubbornness, and will have mercy on the same all (Romans 11:32), thus salvation for all. It's all God's work, just not in the perverted Calvinistic model.
I don't accept that you've correctly interpreted Scripture. In Romans 9 Paul says that God only has mercy on those He wills to have mercy, and that He hardens others in their unbelief, so Paul can hardly be meaning in 11:32 that God has mercy on everyone in the world. He plainly doesn't mean this because in verse 28 he's talking only of the elect Jews, and in the following verses he’s referring to the elect gentiles. So when he says in verse 32 that God has consigned all to disobedience that He might have mercy on all he's referring to all those who have been elected to be saved from both the Jews and gentiles not everyone in the world. So it's the Formula of Concord which has perverted the teaching of Scripture by denying that God has predestined some to be damned.
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect.
Most are currently locked in stubbornness. Some have been show mercy. This is the present condition of mankind, but not the permanent one.
Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)?
Paul says "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26.
God has already saved the whole world through His Son. Now it's just a matter of God granting belief to each individual. The granting of belief can be in this life, which it is for the elect, or later for the non-elect.
Jesus said He came to save the world, including the repudiators, and He did it.
John 12:47-48
And if ever anyone should be hearing My declarations and not be maintaining them, I am not judging him, for I came not that I should be judging the world, but that I should be saving the world.
48 He who is repudiating Me and not getting My declarations, has that which is judging him; the word which I speak, that will be judging him in the last day
Obviously, many will go through judgment. But the effect of their judgment will not last forever. The effect of the judgment is "aioniou," not everlasting (Hebrews 6:2).
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect.
Most are currently locked in stubbornness. Some have been show mercy. This is the present condition of mankind, but not the permanent one.
Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)?
Paul says "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26.
God has already saved the whole world through His Son. Now it's just a matter of God granting belief to each individual. The granting of belief can be in this life, which it is for the elect, or later for the non-elect.
Jesus said He came to save the world, including the repudiators, and He did it.
John 12:47-48 And if ever anyone should be hearing My declarations and not be maintaining them, I am not judging him, for I came not that I should be judging the world, but that I should be saving the world. 48 He who is repudiating Me and not getting My declarations, has that which is judging him; the word which I speak, that will be judging him in the last day
Obviously, many will go through judgment. But the effect of their judgment will not last forever. The effect of the judgment is "aioniou," not everlasting (Hebrews 6:2).
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect.
Most are currently locked in stubbornness. Some have been show mercy. This is the present condition of mankind, but not the permanent one.
Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)?
Paul says "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26.
God has already saved the whole world through His Son. Now it's just a matter of God granting belief to each individual. The granting of belief can be in this life, which it is for the elect, or later for the non-elect.
Jesus said He came to save the world, including the repudiators, and He did it.
John 12:47-48 And if ever anyone should be hearing My declarations and not be maintaining them, I am not judging him, for I came not that I should be judging the world, but that I should be saving the world. 48 He who is repudiating Me and not getting My declarations, has that which is judging him; the word which I speak, that will be judging him in the last day
Obviously, many will go through judgment. But the effect of their judgment will not last forever. The effect of the judgment is "aioniou," not everlasting (Hebrews 6:2).
@@Edward-ng8oo Romans 11:32, "For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all." We all start out locked in stubbornness. His will is to have mercy on the same all He has locked up in stubbornness (that's all mankind, except for Christ). This is all people in the context, including Israel and the nations, not just the elect.
He will have mercy on all because it is His will that all be saved. 1 Timothy 2:4, “[our Saviour, God] wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth.”
Are you saying the Israelite "enemies" of the evangel are the elect Israelites (Romans 11:28)?
This is the most harmful doctrine. If you tell a congregation they are naturally incapable of choosing the good, they will begin acting as such.
The Catholic denies original sin??
That's the teaching of all Christian denominations, including Lutherans and Catholics.
@@gumbyshrimp2606 I've met unbaptized men who could recognize and choose the good.
Reality will always trump dogma.
"The kings of the earth will bring their glory and honor into [the new Jerusalem]." Rev. 22:24
Men possess the image of God. They have a glory all their own if they choose it.
@@willhk4809
@@Catholic-Perennialist even a murderer is capable of not being a total jerk 100% of the time. That doesn’t mean that he is any less a murderer if he helps a grandma cross the street once.
We have a moral law written on our hearts and a basic understanding of right and wrong. However, any common good we do is overshadowed by the fact we are dead in sin and unjust in God’s sight. It is only when Christ righteousness was applied to us, that any good works we do become pleasing to God.
Even the Mormons are nice people. They recognize human virtue and can try their best to do good things in life. This merits nothing and is worse than if they had not even tried at all to attain justification. Because only Jesus justifies us through his perfect work on the cross that we are capable of any real spiritual good, because we are united to Him.