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How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

Religion and Philosophy
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we are introducing this on a trial basis and that respect for other's views is important e.g. phrases like "your imaginary friend" or "you will go to hell" are not appropriate
Clariman
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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89893

Postby Clariman » October 22nd, 2017, 11:35 am

I've probably got enough understanding for my own purposes now. However, it really begs a huge question to me.

If modern day churches (those in the Calvanist tradition) believe in Predestination, then that calls into question any Missionary work they do. If they say "come to Jesus for ever lasting salvation", then they must know that some of those they convert will not get to Heaven because they were not part of God's predetermined Elect?

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89894

Postby beeswax » October 22nd, 2017, 11:36 am

I didn't know where to post this thought following this thread and so I will just add it on here if that is OK and its relevant to the Catholic Churches teachings on divorced people being denied the Eucharist, ie the bread and wine irrespective of who's fault that divorce was due to, even if it was a woman who was abused and battered so she had no other choice.

I suspect these great church theologians based that decision on the teachings of St Paul when he said that people who are...I think the word he used was 'unworthy' to take it and therefore should not do so...In fairness the present Pope Francis is trying to change that but has come up against the established historical position still held by most of the Cardinals and Bishops. Its therefore unlikely to be changed any time soon. IF I was Pope Francis, I would tell them to go to hell and say they had it all wrong in all that time, as it contradicts the very teachings of Jesus himself, where he mixed with the riff raff of his day, the poor, the dispossed and those with no hope and with those that considered themselves useless and unworthy.

This position that not even the great thinkers of the Catholic Church and indeed other churches too have realised this is NOT what Jesus would have done or indeed would have taught and they should be totally ashamed to exclude such people who not only should take it if they wished to but encouraged to do so...and shows all too well where theological discourse has missed the very essence of its purpose...

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89896

Postby Itsallaguess » October 22nd, 2017, 11:46 am

Clariman wrote:
I've probably got enough understanding for my own purposes now. However, it really begs a huge question to me.

If modern day churches (those in the Calvanist tradition) believe in Predestination, then that calls into question any Missionary work they do.

If they say "come to Jesus for ever lasting salvation", then they must know that some of those they convert will not get to Heaven because they were not part of God's predetermined Elect?


But surely the predestination theory says that God's predetermined Elect will ensure that those that do get to heaven do so because they 'follow the rules' on how you get there....

I'm really not sure that the theoretical quandary is as huge as you're currently thinking...

Can you give an example on how someone converted by a Missionary might then not get into heaven?

Itsallaguess

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89899

Postby beeswax » October 22nd, 2017, 11:51 am

Clariman wrote:I've probably got enough understanding for my own purposes now. However, it really begs a huge question to me.

If modern day churches (those in the Calvanist tradition) believe in Predestination, then that calls into question any Missionary work they do. If they say "come to Jesus for ever lasting salvation", then they must know that some of those they convert will not get to Heaven because they were not part of God's predetermined Elect?


Exactly and the other point was that preachers said it was their duty to proclaim the gospel to all mankind in order to be saved eg John 3:16 and it was those that heard it and rejected it would go to hell but those that have never heard it would be spared....and so the point was, why not leave people in ignorance and keep away from trying to save the peoples of the African Continent, for example..ie your point about missionary work.

I'm wondering why Calvin came up with that as a major aspect of his teachings ie if that was so because I'm not sure how that fits into the Gospel teachings where everyone could be redeemed and be forgiven? Its more likely to put people off because they would start to think they are unworthy to be saved and others will be, no matter what they do....ie once saved always saved proposition?

Thanks for raising it though and gave us an insight into stuff that is rarely raised nowadays...

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89900

Postby Clariman » October 22nd, 2017, 12:10 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
Clariman wrote:
I've probably got enough understanding for my own purposes now. However, it really begs a huge question to me.

If modern day churches (those in the Calvanist tradition) believe in Predestination, then that calls into question any Missionary work they do.

If they say "come to Jesus for ever lasting salvation", then they must know that some of those they convert will not get to Heaven because they were not part of God's predetermined Elect?


But surely the predestination theory says that God's predetermined Elect will ensure that those that do get to heaven do so because they 'follow the rules' on how you get there....

I'm really not sure that the theoretical quandary is as huge as you're currently thinking...

Can you give an example on how someone converted by a Missionary might then not get into heaven?

Itsallaguess


I think it only works one way and only if you believe the following i.e. that God's predestined "elect" get into Heaven, because God knows who will follow Jesus and who will not. In other words, there is no true free-will involved. God always knew who it would be and it was predetermined.

So if one tries to convert those who do not follow Jesus, some of them will NOT be part of the "elect" and will never get to heaven even if they follow Jesus, because God had predetermined it thus.

Maybe the real paradox then is between "predestined" and the notion of "free will".

That's my understanding.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89918

Postby Itsallaguess » October 22nd, 2017, 1:57 pm

Clariman wrote:
I think it only works one way and only if you believe the following i.e. that God's predestined "elect" get into Heaven, because God knows who will follow Jesus and who will not. In other words, there is no true free-will involved. God always knew who it would be and it was predetermined.

So if one tries to convert those who do not follow Jesus, some of them will NOT be part of the "elect" and will never get to heaven even if they follow Jesus, because God had predetermined it thus.

Maybe the real paradox then is between "predestined" and the notion of "free will".

That's my understanding.


And I think that's where we're both coming at this from different directions.

I think some might take the view that predeterminism might warrant that any and all conversions, if they happen/happened, were always 'going to happen', whether they happened or not, and if some that are converted then fail to get into heaven, there will be some predetermined reason for that....

When Missionaries said they 'were doing Gods work', perhaps they were ---- because it was always predetermined that they were going to do it....

Itsallaguess

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#89924

Postby Clariman » October 22nd, 2017, 2:13 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
When Missionaries said they 'were doing Gods work', perhaps they were ---- because it was always predetermined that they were going to do it....

Itsallaguess

But that means there was no free will on behalf of the missionaries or their converts :shock:

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#90239

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 23rd, 2017, 9:42 pm

Recommended reading here: James Hogg, Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Available free at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2276

This thread illustrates the first principle of religion. As soon as you try to apply logical reasoning, you end up somewhere very bizarre and inconsistent.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92198

Postby GJHarney » November 1st, 2017, 5:02 am

Predestination had been around in Christian thought for a very long time in varying degrees. However, it took hold as a key element in theology during the Reformation period, and with Luther acting as a bridge to Calvin and Zwingli (the same is true for much else in Protestant theology).

In my opinion this was no accident, but a central part of what Protestantism represented in middle ages Europe; the rise of the urban mercantile and early capitalist bourgeoisie against the Catholicism of the feudal princes and lords. The concept of the 'elect' fitted perfectly with a rising class who were in the process of taking both economic and political power, and with a direct relationship with God without the need for a priest.

So for the 'double Predestination' of Calvin and Zwingli where not only the saved were predetermined, but also the damned, read class society and social entitlement. Of course, there was a risk that if you assumed you were saved then you could act in any way you liked and it wouldn't matter, you would get to heaven anyway, but that was accounted for by the general belief that by your works, your conduct and your piety, you would be conformed as one of the elect.

Like much else of what was a revolutionary theology due to the revolutionary social forces it interacted with the concept of the elect, and of double predestination, has been downplayed and pushed into the background of the mainstream Protestant churches (as it fits pretty badly with modern democracies, even though the class based capitalism survives), and only with the sects is it still an issue for propaganda and where it jars in its brutalism (that reached a peak with the Jehovah's Witnesses position that heaven only had room for 144,000 of them, although there is a lifeline for others that accept Jesus).

But unless you link the theology historically to the society in which it arose then it will make little sense.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92420

Postby UncleEbenezer » November 1st, 2017, 5:31 pm

GJHarney wrote:Predestination had been around in Christian thought for a very long time in varying degrees.

The Greeks had a highly developed form of it, long before Christianity. It's at the heart of greek tragedy, such as the Oedipus story.

What the reformation brought to the table was an era of people thinking through the logic of christian doctrine, and reaching the kind of Calvinist nonsense that Hogg satirised.
Last edited by UncleEbenezer on November 1st, 2017, 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92421

Postby beeswax » November 1st, 2017, 5:33 pm

Every now and then, some Christian religious nutter comes up with an 'end day' prophecy when Jesus is coming back again and we have just had another and the day passes with nothing happening and off they go and keep very very quiet until the next time, hoping we won't remember how wrong they have been over 2000 years..and still are!

All they need to do is read the NT where Jesus told his followers that God's judgement and the end of days was coming in that generation, not hundreds or thousands of years later. He even clarified that to tell that 'Some standing here will not taste death until all these things are fulfilled"

Now how much proof do they need when its all there in black and white for anyone to read and so why do they persist with this prophetic nonsense? There is not one prophecy in the bible that has been proved or proved to have been written AFTER the event...

Calvin and the early Church Fathers should have concentrated their minds on these texts and not some obscure passage written in Gobblygook to justify something that is not provable and is actually again nonsense and not reasonable or logical when its put to any test of credibility..

I'm minded the whole time that most people today are far better educated than these so called preachers and church fathers and were probably no more than a GCSE border line pass in biblical studies..:)

It is a serious point that most people were illiterate and so anyone that could read the Sun Newspaper were Geniuses and were looked up to as the most learned of men...no women need apply! ;)
Last edited by beeswax on November 1st, 2017, 5:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92423

Postby Lootman » November 1st, 2017, 5:36 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:
GJHarney wrote:Predestination had been around in Christian thought for a very long time in varying degrees.

The Greeks had a highly developed form of it, long before Christianity. It's at the heart of greek tragedy, such as the Oedipus story.

What the reformation brought to the table was an era of people thinking through the logic of christian ideas, and reaching the kind of Calvinist nonsense that Hogg satirised.

The reformation, the renaissance and the age of reason/enlightenment were all contemperaneous, give or take a century or so. They all reflect the recapture of the ability to think and question, after the mindless centuries of the dark ages. The fact that GJH sees it instead as a vast right-wing capitalist conspiracy tells you far more about his ideological bias than it does about history :-)

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92428

Postby UncleEbenezer » November 1st, 2017, 5:52 pm

Lootman wrote:The reformation, the renaissance and the age of reason/enlightenment were all contemperaneous, give or take a century or so.

Erm, Luther to Voltaire was a little over two centuries. The Enlightenment falls roughly halfway between the reformation and our own time.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92431

Postby Lootman » November 1st, 2017, 6:00 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:
Lootman wrote:The reformation, the renaissance and the age of reason/enlightenment were all contemperaneous, give or take a century or so.

Erm, Luther to Voltaire was a little over two centuries. The Enlightenment falls roughly halfway between the reformation and our own time.

OK, perhaps I should have said a century or two . :-)

Although I'd probably track the beginning of the beginning of the enlightenment to Descartes rather than Voltaire.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#92437

Postby Stonge » November 1st, 2017, 6:37 pm

There isn't really a problem here.
God sees the past and the future both the same. We see the past as God does (though poorly) but we do not see the future.
The fact that you know what decisions you made in the past doesn't stop those decisions being made freely. Likewise, that God knows what decisions you made in the future doesn't stop those decisions being made freely.
All this is in accord with the latest physics theories i.e. quantum gravity which recognise that there is no such thing as time.
It is therefore not your decisions that determine whether you have got (will get) to heaven but your nature. Your decisions, mere illusions of cause and effect, merely show evidence of your nature.
Religions have nothing to do with God but are the half baked fantasies of ignorant men.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#93669

Postby GJHarney » November 6th, 2017, 7:54 pm

Lootman wrote:The reformation, the renaissance and the age of reason/enlightenment were all contemperaneous, give or take a century or so. They all reflect the recapture of the ability to think and question, after the mindless centuries of the dark ages. The fact that GJH sees it instead as a vast right-wing capitalist conspiracy tells you far more about his ideological bias than it does about history :-)



No ideas come out of a vacuum Lootman, but are always related to the material environment they evolve in.

I’ll give you a modern example as it might make it a little clearer. When Keynes developed his theories around state-led deficit spending to grow out of a recession (or depression) it was against the background of huge capitalist events since the First World War. Like his theories or not, they could only arise during late capitalism and where the state had become a significant factor in capitalist relations. His ideas would not have come about 200 years earlier, and in an early capitalist setting where they would have made no sense at all.

But ideas are not just mere reflections of material reality. They interact with it, and potentially shape it going forward. This has clearly been true of Keynes and in the policies and outlook of many state governments around the world in the decades since.

But back to Protestant predestination. It is not about ‘capitalist plots’, but it is about the developments in social and economic relations that gave the ideas legs. The developing power of the mercantile urban bourgeoisie in parts of Europe was the driving force that was undermining feudalism, and with it the twin feudal power structures of the lords and the church. It was no accident that what became Protestantism grew out of humanist ideas that were very much a part of the rebellion of the individualist urban middle classes against the lords and church. These ideas influenced Luther and Zwingli, who while both priests set ideology and its development outside the traditional theological seats of learning (the monasteries etc.) and instead continued the humanist centers of learning outside church control. It is important to note in this context that Calvin, who really developed predestination as a central idea of his ‘elect’, was a humanist lawyer, and not a priest at all.

And just like with the example of the ideas of Keynes coming out of late capitalism and then influencing its development, with Calvinism it had a revolutionary impact on social and state structures across many parts of Europe, including in Britain and where it was one of the ideological driving forces of the Revolutions of 1640-60 which saw the final end of any feudal/Catholic power here, and a state where the developing capitalist class were put into political control, including control of the monarchy as the role of the London Corporation in the invitation to Dutch King Billy to replace a politically and religiously suspect James shows.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#93825

Postby dfrgth » November 7th, 2017, 12:56 pm

This is a serious question (not prompting an argument) which I would like a simple Christian answer to. I'm doing some study which relates to religion and (as a non-believer) I am struggling to get my head round it.

The basic notion of Christianity, as I understand it, is that one needs to believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour, confess your sins, and you get to Heaven. That in a nutshell is what sets Christianity apart from Judaism etc.

So how does that work with the religious (including Christian) notion of Predestination? If I understand that correctly, it means that God has already decided who will and who won't get to Heaven. So if it has already been decided by God, what difference does it make if you believe in Jesus as saviour?


I don't know if it is possible to give a "simple" Christian answer but I will attempt to explain it as best as I can.

Humans were created by God to be body and soul i.e. there is a spiritual aspect to our nature, that spiritual nature has it's life in God thus if we are separated from God spiritually then we are spiritually dead. That separation from God occurred with Adam's sin and since then by nature we, as humans, are dead spiritually and therefore unable to respond to the call to believe and trust in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.

God has chosen, predestined, those to whom he has given spiritual life and thus they are able to respond to the call to believe and trust in Jesus. This is beyond predeterminism or fore knowledge as it does not depend on anything in us or that we do or will do. The evidence that you have been predestined is that you respond to the call to believe and trust in Jesus as Saviour, so Christians are saved by believing in the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus but the life necessary to believe is a gift of God.

An analogy might be going into a graveyard and calling on the residents to get up, it is impossible for them to do so because they are dead, for them to respond to your call someone needs to give them life, the evidence that they are alive would be that they respond.

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#93974

Postby beeswax » November 7th, 2017, 7:51 pm

dfrgth wrote:
This is a serious question (not prompting an argument) which I would like a simple Christian answer to. I'm doing some study which relates to religion and (as a non-believer) I am struggling to get my head round it.

The basic notion of Christianity, as I understand it, is that one needs to believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour, confess your sins, and you get to Heaven. That in a nutshell is what sets Christianity apart from Judaism etc.

So how does that work with the religious (including Christian) notion of Predestination? If I understand that correctly, it means that God has already decided who will and who won't get to Heaven. So if it has already been decided by God, what difference does it make if you believe in Jesus as saviour?


I don't know if it is possible to give a "simple" Christian answer but I will attempt to explain it as best as I can.

Humans were created by God to be body and soul i.e. there is a spiritual aspect to our nature, that spiritual nature has it's life in God thus if we are separated from God spiritually then we are spiritually dead. That separation from God occurred with Adam's sin and since then by nature we, as humans, are dead spiritually and therefore unable to respond to the call to believe and trust in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.

God has chosen, predestined, those to whom he has given spiritual life and thus they are able to respond to the call to believe and trust in Jesus. This is beyond predeterminism or fore knowledge as it does not depend on anything in us or that we do or will do. The evidence that you have been predestined is that you respond to the call to believe and trust in Jesus as Saviour, so Christians are saved by believing in the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus but the life necessary to believe is a gift of God.

An analogy might be going into a graveyard and calling on the residents to get up, it is impossible for them to do so because they are dead, for them to respond to your call someone needs to give them life, the evidence that they are alive would be that they respond.


I used to be Christian but never believed in any of that stuff and wonder who dreamed it up and why? I would have loved to have questioned the origins of such thinking now because they would fail the test of reason and logic and the whole purpose of God actually. Why, well now we know that Adam and Eve were not real people and humans were not created by God as we are now. Secondly it suggests God was some kind of psychopathic unforgiving monster that condemned the whole human race because of a pretty mild thing as eating an apple without his permission. I've often said that people forgive 'unconditionally' and yet God doesn't when Christians claim what they do? That makes humans more loving and more kind, more just and more forgiving than God. The very things they claim what God does...

The other thing is why did God wait hundreds of thousands of years before Jesus lived before he decided we needed a 'Saviour'?

Its why I rejected the whole thesis of Christianity and most of the bible even though I have not yet anyway rejected the notion and idea of a 'Creator/God' that seems not to get involved in human affairs or natural disasters. I take the view that someone or something started it all and so its a faith position without proof...

The other reason I have often stated is why Christians still believe that Jesus will be coming back when he clearly and unequivocally stated that he would be returning in his own times and that generation. The problem with the the early church and its Fathers and all the so called theologians since, including the later ones like Calvin we are discussing on this thread is they had no real challenges to these beliefs or THEIR assumptions like predestination and even today the Church refuses to engage for very good reasons of course but as more people start to think about these things the more irrelevant Christianity and the Church will be...I know when have discussed these things or try do with my Christian friends who most are ex friends now, great example they are, they would much prefer to walk away and indeed that is what they do..

If I was the Pope reading or believing that Jesus and his disciples could do miracles including raising the dead and I could not save one little baby from dying must surely think its a just a job I am doing and not a real vocation or sincere belief...or even on the evidence that for 2000 years, since those times nobody else has either! Its a good living and has yielded much money and power over others including Kings and Queens and still does and so that deception continues for a while...

I know Clariman didn't want to get into this sort of discussion but its a quiet board now and so just doodling along...

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#94061

Postby jackdaww » November 8th, 2017, 8:13 am

dfrgth wrote:
Humans were created by God to be body and soul


.


=======

is that a fact ?

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Re: How does believing in Jesus to get to heaven, map to Predestination?

#94277

Postby dfrgth » November 9th, 2017, 8:54 am


dfrgth wrote:

Humans were created by God to be body and soul
.

=======
Jackdaww wrote:

is that a fact ?


Yes, I don't think there is much dispute that we have a spiritual element to us as humans, every society that has ever been discovered indulges in worship and whenever you hear of a death pretty soon some relative or friend will be quoted as saying that so and so is now in heaven or words to that effect. So yes I think it is a fact that we are body and soul.


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