Question for Arminians and Calvinists on foreknowledge

[TibiasDad]

@TibiasDad

I agree David, it should matter.
One reason we have our bible with these doctrines in them is to study because they do matter. Doug, you being a pastor, I think would agree.

It doesn’t matter as far as salvation goes!
This whole rabbit hole started as a response to @Eleanor in post 37 in which I was responding to her response to an answer I had posted to her previous question regarding my view of Rom 9:10-13.

My reference to “hill of beans” was in in the context, not of the order of salvation, but my increasingly growing sense that the world is about to change in a very dramatic fashion in which we, as believers in, and followers of, Christ are going to be targeted and become public enemy #1! In is this context that I said that I am becoming less argumentative (though expressing my disagreements with you or anyone else that I differ with in opinion) because I believe that all who claim the grace of God in their lives as believers that God, through Christ, has forgiven us and adopted us as his children, need to bond together in our calling Jesus Lord, and not the gods of this world, or the eventual rise of the Antichrist who will ultimately ask one question: Are we going to live with Jesus as our Lord, or him as Lord.

This situational dynamic is why I believe these doctrinal points of disagreement “will not be worth a hill of beans!” Arminian and Calvinist and all others within the pale of Orthodoxy, will all be in the same boat, and will need to support each other, or as Hebrews states it, “encourage each other all the more as the day approaches.”

We shouldn’t be killing each other on the hills of theological differences. We need each other!

Doug

PS I know that the details of my reasoning for the “hill of beans” comment were not expressed in that original post, but that is the reason I am trying not to get into a prolonged debate over issues that many of us have been having with each other for years.

Doug

 

[TibiasDad]

There's more to it than that, such as Jude 1:3.

And what is the Faith that we are contending for? Jude said, “although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share…”, which ironically would include all things soteriological, but rather he was compelled to change direction and “urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.”

And what was the change of focus? From “salvation”, to “certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”

If you honestly think that this is what I am doing then I don’t think we can ever have a honest and godly conversation about this or any other point of discussion. But I most certainly do not and have not perverted the grace of God into a license for immortality (I’m a Wesleyan, Holiness, Nazarene pastor for goodness sakes), nor have I denied Jesus Christ as “our only Sovereign and Lord! (In fact I’ve written a book defending him as being such, as opposed to the JW’s view of Christ.)

Doug