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NASB | Galatians 2:17 "But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Galatians 2:17 "But if, while we seek to be justified in Christ [by faith], we ourselves are found to be sinners, does that make Christ an advocate or promoter of our sin? Certainly not! |
Bible Question (short): "Decree" can mean "allow?" |
Question (full): Thank you for such a detailed answer! But I must ask you to clarify something that you wrote. Please be patient with me if I am asking things here that, by the sounds of things elsewhere, might already have been hashed over to the point where some people were getting somewhat emotional. That is not what I want. I just want to try and sort out some of my understanding (and no doubt some mis-understanding) about predestination (and at some point a little later on, about limited atonement), and to do so in as rational a way as possible ("rational" here meaning both logical and free of emotion). You see, I don't seem to fit very well into either the Arminian or Calvanist camps (and that might not be a bad thing!), and I want to know if that is because I don't understand one or both of them well enough. So, with your permission, a question from your response: You wrote: "The understanding of it hinges on grasping the meaning of the word 'decree.' To decree something is to simply declare that that thing shall happen. In the case of God's sovereign decree, the decreed event can either come from God causing it directly, or by God allowing it to happen." How does God's action of decreeing that something will and must take place equate to God simply allowing something to take place, especially if He would really rather that the thing not happen in first place? To my way of thinking, (and I have certainly been wrong before and will be again) fore-telling or predicting that something would happen is a very different thing than decreeing that it will and must happen. Is there something that I'm missing here? And I could ask this same basic question of you from several of your paragraphs. For example: "From eternity past, God knew that His creation would rebel against Him." To me, that speaks of God's fore-knowledge. That is different than predestining something, isn't it? or... "God, by creating the agents involved and allowing them to sin on their own, decreed what would come to pass." To me, "allowing them to sin on their own" seems to speak of something other than what Spurgeon was talking about when he said "In eternity past, God did most wisely decree...and [did] in a most holy and infallible manner execute all his decrees, without being author of the sin of any creature." There are a few other places that I could I quote for you, but fearing that I might be laboring my point, please permit me one more. You said "The simple fact is that God is in control of every infinitessimal detail of His creation. Nothing happens unless He ultimately allows it...." As your statement reads, I don't think that there are many believers from either camp who would disagree with it in the slighest. But if by the phrase "in control of" you actually mean that all these details are absolutely predestined, that they are that way precisely because God decreed that they would be, and that God has not left any room for them to be any other way (which is what it seems to me that Spurgeon was saying, and which is what I have understood the Calvanistic view of predestination to say), then that must mean that God would be the author of sin (which, I presume we both agree, cannot be). I don't know any other way around that conclusion. Please show me how you have avoided this. This is a long post. Thank you for your time and consideration. It is appreciated. Bob |