Buy the Ticket : Get the Ride

Aviel said:

Reader..

We understand that God has free will. and Jesus has Free will.

If not, who is pulling their strings? Who is controlling them, as that would be THEIR God.

A.) Not possible.

So, God and the Pre-incarnate word........ said..."let US.... make man...in OUR Image".

"Image" = Likeness......and having free will is a part of that "Likeness' or "Image."

Reader, God would have never told Adam and Eve, what NOT TO DO, if they had no capacity (free will) to not choose to do what they were told not to do.
A&E....= They were not pre-destined by God to do what they were commanded by God, not to do.

And if a person dies, as a John 3:36.......its not because God pre-destined them to not believe in Jesus.

Let me show you something that might "click" inside your Mind, regarding this "pre-destined" theology, if you are still trying to see it clearly.

The Cross of Christ is offered to us all. John 3:16
And God knows (foreknowledge) who isn't going to believe, and God's Foreknowledge knows, who will believe, before you die.
This is KNOWN about you and me, and everyone, by God, before we are born.

And God has created a "pre-destined" end result for those who believe in Christ and are born again, and regardnig also..those who do not believe in Christ and die in unbelief, never born again.

See those 2?

You have the believers born again, and the unbelievers never born again., And God has a pre-determined OUTCOME waiting for both groups that happens to both.

So, what is pre-destined by God,....... is based on how you DIE... regarding having done this or not.....

= Jesus said..>"YOU must be .. .born......again".

1.) So....Did you die rejecting Jesus, never born again..???? . then in that case, there is a pre-determined situation/outcome waiting for you... its pre-destined for all the Unbelievers... Its called the 2nd Death.

2.) Did you die "IN Christ'. .A CHRISTian ?? . then if so, God has a pre-destined outcome waiting for you, after you die, or after you are raptured, Its called "conformed into the Image of Christ".

Now, What "pre-destined" theology does.. is it twists the 'pre-determined" outcome regarding what happens to you AFTER YOU DIE, and places it in front of your actual Birth, as if becoming the Christian or not, is the pre-determined situation, when God's reality has the predetermined happen to you AFTER you are Born again, or not.

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Let me simplify this for a new Christian.

If you go to an amusement park....and you want to ride the Roller Coaster... then you buy a ticket.

The TICKET pre-determines the RIDE, as the ticket predestines you to the car and the track .. the RIDE.

Now, Salvation is the TICKET that YOU CHOSE.. and the RIDE is what happens after you are born again.... that is pre-destined based on you choosing the Ticket. (Faith in Christ).

The Ticket is not the Ride. The Ticket is the free will CHOICE to receive Christ.. that predestined the SUBSEQUENT... RIDE.

A.) Salvation that is the TICKET, has a RIDE that happens that is pre-destined, after you die or are raptured.

And if you never CHOOSE the Salvation Ticket, then your RIDE is pre-destined also., after you die, and that is the 2nd Death.. The Lake of Fire.

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Aviel said:

Thank you for reading.

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Aviel said:

We understand that God has free will. and Jesus has Free will.

If not, who is pulling their strings? Who is controlling them, as that would be THEIR God.

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The Liturgist said:

Let us be more precise: God the Father, and our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Logos, who is fully God and fully Man, and finally God the Holy Spirit, all three persons of the Trinity, are fully God.

Specifically, God consists of one essence, that of the unoriginate Father, which is shared with the other two persons, the uncreated and only-begotten Son, and the uncreated Spirit who proceeds from the Father eternally. Each person has a hypostasis. In the person of the Son, our human nature is united hypostatically with the divine nature. So the only begotten Son and Word of God, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, is of one essence* with the Father and also is consubstantial with humanity. And the Lord, the Giver of Life, the Holy Spirit, is likewise of one essence with the Father from whom He proceeds, and with the Son, who sent him into the world on Pentecost, just as the Holy Spirit caused the Son to be conceived without sexual intercourse in the womb of the Theotokos.

Also, returning to your ride analogy, I fear one aspect may have been omitted: the often unpleasant part of waiting in line. By this I don’t mean pujrgatory, but rather, in this life, once we become Christians, part of being Christian is spreading the Gospel according to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) and this we are warned will cause us to experience persecution, because the devil, and worldly people, really don’t want us doing that, however, we are promised that if we confess Christ before men, He will confess us before the Father, so if we are tortured or martyred, it is to our credit, for we will have passed the most extreme tests of faith. So just as standing in line waiting to board a ride at Disneyland or another theme park can be miserable (despite efforts at making the queue areas more pleasant), and that misery is further eclipsed by the lines one must stand in at the airport, even in First Class, before the exhilaration of a flight to another country, we have to endure the trials of this world while we await the end of our lives and repose in Heaven before the Last Judgement, where we hope on our faith in Christ Jesus that we will be admitted to the World to Come, the New Heavens and the New Earth (and if we do repose in Heaven then we can rest assured we will be counted among the righteous, whereas if we do not, that does not bode well for our future eschatological outcome.**

* hommousios, to use the exact language of the Nicene Creed that the Arian heretics such as Emperors Constantius and Valens found sufficiently offensive that it was over this language that they persecuted Christians, therefore, we can say that it is an extremely important aspect of the Christian faith that we use the word “homoousios” (one nature) and not “homoiousios” (like nature) or “heteroousios” (different nature) when describing the nature of Jesus Christ and the Father. Some modern day Pietiists might be tempted to downplay the importance of this, but the Nicene Creed was incredibly important to the early church, and is the basis for normative Christianity, being the one thing that all objectively Christian churches agree on; it is also part of the Christian Forums statement of faith.

** Some churches, such as mine, controversially practice prayer for the dead for various reasons, including as a means of improving the eschatological outcome; in contrast to Roman Catholics, we do not believe in purgatory, so while Roman Catholic prayers for the dead are primarily aimed at getting people out of purgatory, our prayers are instead prayers that our Lord will have mercy on the departed at the Last Judgement. However I will note this is a controversial practice; only a few Protestant denominations such as Anglicans engage in practices of this nature (CS Lewis, who was a high church Anglican, but not very high church or Anglo Catholic, is an example of a Protestant who felt strongly about the importance of prayer for the dead).

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AlexB23 said:

though you used a lot of Greek in your post,

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The Liturgist said:

Any serious discussion of Christianity will involve the use of Greek words, knowingly or unknowingly. And actually most people do use Greek words on a regular basis, such as economy, ecology, biology, genesis, genetics, logic, philosophy, theology, ecclesia, synod, catholic, orthodox, liturgy, hierarchy, soteriology, eschatology, Christology, pneumatology, and so on, and the Greek words I used were mostly at that level, with just three exceptions, which were in a footnote, and which I translated into English.

One thing I will never do, out of respect for the immense intelligence of the members of this forum, is to dumb down my posts, because I have been consistently delighted by the capability of the members of this forum to handle advanced theological concepts. Indeed there are several members who are vastly more intelligent and more learned than I am ( @ViaCrucis and @prodromos tower above me intellectually).

In particular, it is pointless to translate commonly used Greek theological terms into English given that anyone in doubt over what they mean can simply copy and paste them into Google; if I translated these into English, my translation might be non-standard, and as a result when reading any serious book on theology or Christology or ecclesiastical history, one would have no advantage at all as a result of having read my post, because I invented English words to replace the perfectly good Greek words which all Christian scholars of theology understand. So instead of doing that, which makes no sense, it is better to just use the words that are used consistently throughout academia, to such a large extent that they can be considered, for all practical purposes, Greek loanwords used by English, since in that manner if someone comes across a word they do not understand, they can just Google it, and find out what it means according to several competing dictionaries, or alternately go directly to the website of a dictionary such as Mirriam-Webster, and in so doing, anyone who reads what I write or what my colleagues write on Christian Forums will be prepared to read works of theological scholarship. And the beauty of this site is that most of our members are up for that, particularly those who post in the Theology forums.

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AlexB23 said:

We must not hasten our wait in line through reckless actions though,

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AlexB23 said:

Cool stuff. For myself, I use a mix of technology and interpretations to analyze scripture. But yes, economy, ecology, biology, genesis, genetics, logic, philosophy, theology, ecclesia, synod, catholic, orthodox, liturgy, hierarchy, soteriology, eschatology, Christology, pneumatology are all Greek words, and I use 90% of those, but mainly the scientific ones.

Anyways, God bless my friend.

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The Liturgist said:

This is a good point. Suicide, except where it is the result of mental illness, is regarded as a grave sin that Christians should avoid.

Now, one might argue that all suicides are a form of mental illness, but I can think of a few situations where that would not be the case. For example, opting for euthanasia / doctor-assisted homicide, which only the far left revisionists who preside over the mainline denominations embrace, but which the vast majority of Christians and Christian denominations regard as a vile sin, on a par with abortion, as a means of avoiding the discomfort of a terminal illness, would be an example of suicide not related to a mental illness. For that matter, if someone engaged in extremely reckless conduct out of laziness, such as driving at unsafe speeds without wearing a seatbelt, that would also seem to fit the bill, unless the reason for it was the product of a mental illness such as depression.

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The Liturgist said:

God bless you too! And I am glad you use those words; I believe in you and in your ability to serve Christ with your mind, by helping to communicate in an elegant manner scriptural truths, as you did in response to my post with that well-made table!

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