God's Foreknowledge and Human Free Will, Romans 9:14-33 - Deep in Scripture

A few key points for today's discussion:
1) This is Paul's Theodicy—i.e. his justification of the ways of God. 
2) His purpose is to explain the ways of God in allowing the Gentiles to share in the Jews' privileges of the Covenant.
3) The text never says that God predestines people to damnation.

Send us your questions and/or comments!

Twitter: @MarcusGrodi

[ramanometh]

Eisegesis if I ever did see it. These two gentlemen are so eager to affirm free will they read it into a passage that explicitly excludes the idea.

[ramanometh]

Again this discussion irritated me somewhat, how often it happens too! Catholics or atleast anti-calvanists miss characterize Calvinsim as hyper-calvinsim. These two things are very different, one is biblically sound, the other is falsehood and heresy. It would be nice if people didn't confuse these things, being labeled a heretic by accidental implication is still being labelled a heretic. Lastly, not to make this a competition of sorts, let the world world be evangelized by Catholics or protestants, so long as the name of Christ is preached, we are satisfied.

[TheRomansGuy]

Well, perhaps the understanding of Gods sovereignty and man’s free will hasn’t been understood by you two gentleman but it’s probably only because no one has taught it to you and you didn’t conceive of it yourselves. And then antimony crutch isn’t needed and it’s not open theism.

It’s really rather simple. We can agree that God created man with free will, the will to choose to abandon himself and worship God or the ability to refuse and worship himself. What has been missed is the correct understanding of God’s omniscience.

W
Omnipotence is Gods ability to do whatever he pleases, and his omnipresence is his ability to be at all places in whatever degree of glory he so chooses. But we mistakenly define omniscience as Gods knowledge of all things. In the other omnis we allow God some choice, some power in the exercise of his power but not so with omniscience. But we should. Omniscience should be rightly described as God’s ability to know everything he wished to know. With this correct definition God can be all-powerful, all-knowledgeable, create mankind with free will and yet choose not to know if they will decide to worship or not and therefore not be the director of their choices. It’s a shame this isn’t taught in seminaries.

[amonesotera]

If you say Romans 9:11 Predestination is inaccurate, where humans DO have free will, then you're saying your god infact doesn't know all things before they happen, correct ? Is your god all knowing or not ? If he is, then surely he knew your predestination, correct or not ?

Stop lying to people; doing your best to justify one verse with another.

Either your god is all knowing or He isn't !!!