| Hi Jack,
Things kind of slow? (Meaning: Once Saved, Always Saved (OSAS) vs. the
ability to fall from grace is one of "those" topics).
After hundreds of replies, I've come to see the issue as a paradox of
both. A paradox is "a seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless
be true."
I see OSAS as in the realm of timelessness, eternity, God's realm and
responsibility. I see falling from grace as in the realm of time and
space, our responsibility.
How eternity and time intersect is the mystery (I know some people react
to that word) that creates the paradox. I think the hard-liners on
both sides would have to claim there is no paradox at all and claim one
or the other. I thought Marshall Watkins was as close as one can come to
radical Calvinism (salvation of the elect) as one can get. But seeing the
evidences for both sides, it becomes the more difficult task to say that
one is correct *to the exclusion* of the other. (That is, we have no free
will, or we are not predestined.)
The point is that we have free will, complete and free, and we are still
predestined and elected. Why? Because Timelessness intersects with time,
and Timelessness can see all of time as one still photo; so the future is
known as easily as the past is known. Yet, we trudge on in our dimension
of time and space - we don't see the future as well as the past and we
don't know how we will choose - but choose we must.
We are independent agents of our will; this is a kernal of truth that
one must grasp. God knows the beginning to the end; this we also understand.
For God to impose a change to our will at any point nullifies the very
idea of free moral agency; free will. So, even though God knows which
way some of us will choose, He does not interpose Himself against it because
without free will, we cannot love Him. We need free will to love; God designed
us to have free will to love.
Mark
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