Doesn't the notion of God's supremacy over all fact, to include his non-dependence on time for the meaning of anything, take care of that? To me, he spoke the whole matter into fact, to include even our glorification and unity with him, which doesn't depend on anything else but him alone...
The monergist's chief document of authority outside of scripture, the WCF, makes is very clear what God ordained from eternity was ordained 1) without His authoring sin, 2) without His doing violence to the human will, and 3) without His doing violence to the contingency of secondary causes. Therefore, when saying, "
he spoke the whole matter into fact," we must make sure we are not also making the fact of sin His doing.
It is very important.
Because the ordaining God ordained from eternity occurred within His knowledge of sin's occurrence and the lack of volitional agency caused by sin. God does not cause violence to the creature's will when He saves a person because the sinfully dead and enslaved but still animated corpse has no soteriological agency.
, but WE see it going into effect, bit by bit.
I get what you're saying but what we "see" is irrelevant.
To my mind, anyway, this (time or temporal progression) is but a tool to bring it to pass.
Not sure I understand the intent or meaning of the word "
tool" in that sentence. A "
tool" is a device used to affect some specific outcome and, usually, a tool is created for a specific application (a hammer to drive nails, a screwdriver to turn screws). Time is nothing more than a measure of cause-and-effect. Time is a creation of the Creator. Technically it was created the moment He uttered the first words creating creation. "
Let there be.........." and time ensued the moment the effect occurred. Nails and screws hold things together and the hammer and screwdriver effect that outcome but the driving of the nail or the turning of the screw are not themselves "
tools". The movement of the nail or the screw is simply the effect of the hammer and nail's interaction, or that of the screwdriver turning the screw.
If I have understood the analogy correctly, I don't think it is accurate to call time a "
tool." Time is simply a measure of cause and effect.
I would also discourage any use of a tool analogy that makes God dependent on His tools for any outcome. God's "
tool" is his word. The sentiment expressed most concisely in Psalm 33:9 is found throughout scripture, from beginning to end.
Psalm 33:9
For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood firm.
.
Don't get me wrong —this temporal reality is real; after all, Christ died here— but it is, to my mind, like an envelope within the larger reality of accomplished Fact.
Certainly. God exists external to that which He created AND it is reasonable to consider the earth a constituent element of the larger heavens. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1) and the heavens are His throne and the earth His footstool (Isa. 66 and elsewhere). In the end the heavenly city of peace comes to earth from which a river of life flow with the Son as its light.
I agree completely that we aren't familiar with eternity enough to know what we are talking about..........
Yes, but revelation is given specifically for the purpose of revealing that which is not known. We are meant to know and understand what is revealed. The precedent of scripture's revelation of humanity's understanding readily shows understanding does not occur overnight - even when what can be known is apparent. It's quite likely the conversation about time, space and eternity would have been impossible with the ECFs simply because their understanding of it all was proto-Newtonian.
Yep.
And the reason that is important is because, eschatologically speaking, there are many who say they subscribe to the already-not-yet model but in actuality espouse a happened-already-and-then-again-and-another-yet model (either deliberately or unawares. this is observable anytime a New Testament report of prophecy fulfilled occurs, but a poster says, "
There's going to be another fulfillment of that OT prophecy," or "
That was only a partial fulfillment."
No. Scripture plainly stated "
X" was fulfilled and scripture did NOT say, "....
partially..."
Jesus, the eternally existing word of God that is God and was with God in the beginning is the guarantor of a better covenant. That guarantee is not a contingency. It was decided from eternity.
Personally, I subscribe to what is now known as the "Progressive Covenant" model, not classic the classic Covenant Theology model. I read scripture to say all the God-initiated covenants are Christological in nature and their examples in Old and New are simply a gradual, progressive, revealing of what was "in the beginning" and single covenant. Rarely does the Bible use the word "covenant" in its plural form. There is no plural use of the word in the OT and only two uses in the NT, both only by Paul and both occur under then same unifying element of God's promises.
That, imo, is how Hebrew 7's "
better covenant" and the obsolescence of any other covenant should be read and understood.
Isaiah 28:18
Your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; When the overflowing scourge passes through, Then you will be trampled down by it.
A covenant with death is not a covenant with God. As sinners, as sinful people, we did not have the ability to cancel or negate that covenant. We were helpless in sin but the Almighty One of God is the guarantor of a new covenant, one begun in the beginning.
Pretty cool, imo
.
