godrulz said:
Based on this brilliant insight, I see no reason why it only applies after death and not during this life.
Because we have been sealed by they Holy Spirit. Did you miss that part?
The Spirit has been given as an earnest payment. That is, to put it in terms consistent with the idea of earnest payments on future transactions, the Spirit is given as God's guarantee that we will be carried through to see the Day of Atonement at which time the "deal", if you will, will be closed.
We cannot undo the deal because none of the terms of that deal are ours to fulfill. Once we entered into the deal, everything else is up to God and God alone and He cannot deny us because we are in Him via the Spirit of God and He cannot deny Himself. Our safe delivery to the Day of Redemption is as sure and secure as it the faithfulness of Jesus Christ Himself.
There are many examples in Church history of those who have shipwrecked their faith despite a strong and genuine start.
This is undisputed.
I object to dispensationalizing away the clear warnings in Scripture about the possibility of falling away/apostasy for believers after the resurrection of Christ.
Who cares what you object too Godrulz? Not to be overly harsh or insulting here but it just doesn't make any difference what you like or dislike. The truth is the truth whether you object to it or not.
Genetic Jew vs Gentile does not change the fundamental issues surrounding the plan of redemption and relationship (I find your view of salvation too metaphysical; perhaps you find mine too relational...open theism is relational theism/free will theism, not metaphysical nor determinism).
I'm sorry but this made no sense to me.
Ephesians 1 is a classic Calvinistic proof text passage (this should get your goat against me...peace bro). Ephesians is about Christ and the Church. Election is corporate. Certainly those who are in Christ are eternally secure and sealed. This is not in dispute. What is in question is if it is possible to be in Christ and then revert back to godless unbelief like a dog returning to vomit or a pig to the mud. Just as an unbeliever can change heart and mind to faith, I see no reason why a believer cannot change mind and will and become ensnared in false religion (Muslim, Mormon, etc.) or even atheism (Charles Templeton...former Billy Graham contemporary evangelist died agnostic or atheist). Some may return to the faith, but not all do. Some were never genuinely saved, but some were.
This sounds like you are suggesting that a believers eternal security is only as eternally secure as it their own ability to stay true to Christ. You will not be able to establish this doctrine without reverting back to the Dispensation of Law and thus turning your salvation into a faith + works (i.e. works = faith) based salvation. I'd love it if you'd try to prove me wrong.
Eternal life is in the Son, not inherent in us. Faith requires continuance, not a punctiliar fire insurance. Those who reject the Son, whether they once believed or not, are not in the Son and are condemned with the rest of those outside His grace.
This is classic Dispensation of Law teaching. You get this from focusing on the Gospels and the epistles written to the Jewish believers of that dispensation and by ignoring or explaining away the clear meaning of Paul's teaching in his epistles. You will simply not find any such teaching in any of the writings of Paul.
Further, if what you've said here is true then the following passages have no meaning.
Eph. 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
II Corinthians 1:21 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, 22 who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
II Corinthians 5:4 For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
Ephesians 1:13 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 Who is the guarantee of our inheritance , to the praise of His glory.
What do you suppose the Spirit is a guarantee of if not our salvation.
Those who are in the corporate body of Christ will share all the privileges of being in Christ, including eternal life. If an individual goes on to reject Christ and His church, I do not see how they are in the corporate elect. They forfeit their relationship and standing.
That doesn't sound much like a guarantee to me. And again, you can find no such teaching in anything Paul taught.
Paul addresses BELIEVERS and affirms their SECURITY. Other passages warn APOSTATES (falling away from truth, by definition) or those who are in a state of UNBELIEF (whether they once believed or not) that they have no such hope and need to come to or return to trusting Christ and His finished work alone.
None of those "other passages" are Pauline. One things for sure, Paul believed that once you were saved you were always saved.
If Hebrews warns genuine believers (at least you admit that they were Jewish Christians who could lose their faith...unlike Calvinistic commentators who must say they were never saved...despite the strong wording of the passage in Heb. 6:4-6; 10:29) against apostasy and losing eternal life, then why is it a stretch to think the same principles do not apply to those born to Gentile parents who left worship of Zeus for Christ, but then return at a later date to their former trust in paganism vs Christ? Surely this is possible and should not be glossed over or distorted due to a 'dispensational' framework that is not self-evident to most Christian scholars and readers of the Bible.
I couldn't care less what "most Christian scholars and readers of the Bible" find to be self-evident. The teachings of Paul are inconsistent with the rest of the Bible. Paul was either teaching a different gospel or he was a deceiver and the Bible is compromised and therefore false and thus the entire Christian faith crumbles to pieces. Dispensational theology, and more specifically Acts 9 Dispensationalism, is the only possibly correct theological system because of the rational impossibility of the contrary.
Oops...time to get off the bunny trail soap box...
Open theism...go for it (Open Theist John Sanders in "The God who risks" lays out reasonable arguments from a free will theism perspective why OSAS or POTS is not defensible...it still surprises me that TOL Open Theists adopt a view that I think is more consistent with Calvinism/determinism...secondary to Mid-Acts assumptions...new twist).
If you think that my view is at all consistent or even remotely compatible with Calvinism then you do not understand Calvinism or my view or both. They are near polar opposites. Calvinists don't believe in OSAS because of some guarantee that God has made by given believers His Spirit. They believe that those who will be saved cannot be lost because everything is predestined. The two views have almost nothing at all in common and no Calvinist anywhere could accept for even half a second that once we've been delivered safely to the Day of Redemption that any could possibly have any ability whatsoever to walk away from eternity with God. Calvinists don't even believe you have an ability to accept God in the first place! My view and Calvinism couldn't be any more different.
As an aside, the Gordon Olson "Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism" book I am reading, is against Calvinism in many ideas and is also no friend of Open Theism (appendix dissing it). He must be moderate Arminian (mediate theology between Calvinism/Arminianism). I like many of his anti-Calvin ideas. He relies on foreknowledge in his election discussions (Wesleyan idea). Here's my point...He also believes that believers are eternally, unconditionally secure. He talks about God's preservation of the saints (Godward), not man's perseverance of the saints. I like the concept that God does preserve believers despite our inability to persevere on our own. However, just as the saving power and grace of God can be resisted by men, so the keeping grace and power of the Spirit can be resisted by believers (hence, do not quench, grieve the Spirit lest one's heart grows fatally hard and cold). The great passages of the security of those who believe and continue to believe must also be understood in light of the stern passages that warn about the possibility of falling away/apostasy (not confined to 'circumcision' books...Demas and others shipwrecked their faith...John also wrote years after Paul, so why relegate him to ignorance and an earlier supposed dispensation?).
Look godrulz, you've got to get it into your head that I couldn't care less about what anyone
thinks is Biblical. This Olson guy is as irrational as any other Arminian. He picks which passages he likes and explains the rest in light of those particular passages. He's no different that every other author who has written a book on any number of various theologically debated points. He takes his proof texts, says that they mean what they say and then either explains how his problems texts don't mean what they sound like they mean or else completely ignores them all together.
Paul taught that you could not lose your salvation and those who believe that you cannot point to his writings as their proof texts.
Peter, James and John taught that you could lose your salvation and those that believe you can, point to those writings as their proof texts.
Only Acts 9 Dispensationalists can consistently acknowledge both of the above two points and have their theology remain intact. Everyone else picks and chooses arbitrarily based on the latest book they've read or on some fuzzy feeling they get in the stomach or on the fear that what Paul taught will be a license to sin or God knows what.
The bottom line is that our theology must be Biblical, not popular or published. And passages in the Bible should be taken to mean what they seam to mean unless compelling reason is given why they shouldn't be. The books of the Bible were not written in some sort of code, nor where they written to people who had the benefit of a completed cannon of Scripture. They were written as letters from a specific persons to specific audiences and they must be interpreted in such a way as makes sense in that context. Meaning simply that James meant what he wrote just the way he wrote it as did Peter, John AND Paul. When the Bible is read with this clearly in view, the resulting theology will inevitably be Acts 9 Dispensationalism. The reason why the theology is not "self-evident to most Christian scholars and readers of the Bible", as you put it, is because they refuse to read the Bible in the context in which it was written. They read other people's mail as though it was addressed to them, which of course results in mass confusion, the evidence of which is ubiquitous and is the primary reason why this website exists.
Resting in Him,
Clete