Election
A Part of Eternal
Security vs. Conditional Perseverance
by Ray Moore and Mike
Stine
| View
on election
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Arminianism- God elected
those who he knew would believe of their own free will.
Election is conditional, based on man's response in faith.
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Calvinism- God
unconditionally, from eternity past, elected some to be saved.
Election is not based on man's future response.
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Intro
Election
Grace
Perseverance
Conclusions
Bibliography
There is a stumbling block here that I find within the view of
conditional perseverance. If God elected those who he knew would
believe, he would also know those who would fall away. However,
if we are given total free will over our salvation and it is simply a
gift of God for us to pick up, God doesn't force anything on us and
simply allows us to have the gift. He does not say, "No,
you can't have salvation because I know you'll later just give it
back."
Foreknowledge in this use by
Arminians makes it seem like God is
helpless in the outcome of prophecy regarding who would be saved and
would not. By these statements it would appear that God has
watched time unfold, gone back, then elected, and watched things happen
with very little intervening.
The election of saints is based on God's design for man. If
he has designed something and planned it, of course he knows the
outcome because he is the designer and sustainer of all things.
If you have designed something, you know what the expected outcome of
it is and if the outcome did not end up being what it was designed to
be, you would simply destroy it. Because of this, eternal
security is needed. We see this from Psalm 139: 13-16.
However, simply because God should give free will to his creation,
not absolute free will, but free will within his own boundaries, he
does not lose control over salvation. It is God's will that all
should be saved, but we know very well that not everyone shall
be. This doesn't violate God's plan. Neither should the
fact that some have tasted God's goodness and foolishly turn away.
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Grace
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