Crackpot wrote:Do you even read context? Romans 9 10-13 is talking about Jacob and Esau and not speaking of salvation or damnation. What then follow is a bunch of "What ifs".
Reading all of Romans you'll see he makes arguments to both arguments (predestination and free will)and doesn't say sit down and shut up at all. being that the overall subject he is dealing with is the extension of salvation to the gentile as well as the fact that Jews aren't saved by default.
He doesn't? Gee, here I thought I'd read this:
One of you, then, will say to me, "If this is so, how can God find fault with a man? Who can resist God's will?"
(Romans 9:19 (TEV).)
That, of course, is the question: If God has already decided who is to be saved and who is to be condemned to eternal torment, how can that result be predicated on a person's "free" will rather than on God's immutable will? And immediately comes the answer:
But who are you, my friend to talk back to God?
(Romans 9:20 (TEV).)
How is that substantively different from "Sit down and shut up"?
Romans continues:
A clay pot does not ask the man who made it, "Why did you make me like this?"
(Romans 9:20 (TEV).)
So a person does not ask God "Why did you make me such that I would not be saved?" Or, conversely, "Why did you make me such that I would be condemned to eternal torment?"
Romans continues:
After all, the man who makes the pots has the right to use the clay as he wishes ....
(Romans 9:21 (TEV).)
So God has the right to choose whether I will be saved or condemned; I do not. So much for my supposed free will.
Romans continues in like vein. I won't bother quoting it all, because you know it as well as I do.
Romans tells us straight out that God decides who will be saved and who will be condemned to eternal torment. We do not make that decision; we have no "free will" -- at least, none that matters to the outcome, and (even assuming that there is some other kind, an assumption which, at a minimum, tortures the language) that is the only kind that matters at all -- with respect to whether we are saved or condemned.
AS for revelation 13 It doesn't suprise me since you have previously admitted to not getting paradoxes which actually this predestination/free will question hinges on: If a being exsists outside of time and view it in it's entirity at once does that negate free will?
It 's not as cut and dry as one might suppose. One could argue that free will is effected by an observer no more that a rock is effected by it's observer. THat is on it's own it exists as is independent of it's viewer.
So you are saying that God is merely an observer? The Bible says that he is the creator, not merely the observer of something with whose creation he had nothing to do (as the observer of a rock has nothing to do with the rock's creation). The Bible says that God chooses who will be saved and who will be condemned -- not just observes; chooses. (That is what "election" means.)
All the word games you can play cannot evade the problem. (After all, if the problem had a ready solution, it would no longer be a problem. Some solution offered centuries ago would have ended the matter. In fact, however, Christian thinkers themselves continue to wrestle with it, which should be proof enough to anyone that even within Christianity, the problem has not been solved.)
So I present the implacable logic again:
Before God created me, he knew whether I would or would not do what it takes to end up saved. God cannot be wrong. Therefore, whichever way it (from our perspective) turns out, before God created me, that result was already inevitable.
If you deny that the result was already inevitable, how do you reconcile that with God's having known even before creating me what the outcome would be? And if God knew even before creating me what the inevitable outcome would be, how do I have any free will with respect to that outcome?
Reason is valuable only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe.
