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Laika,

Abraham had a son named Ishmael, who was part of his family. Is it still so simple?

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God is often referred to as the "God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob", which narrows down the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and then Jacob. This excludes Ishmael's line.

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Besides, it says "chose us" to be in Him.

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It's "chosen us in Him", not "chose us to be in Him". Here's Ephesians 1:4 KJV:

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:"

We got the driveshaft back on my 1947 Dodge 1 1/2 ton truck this weekend. Remember the old Dodge work series trucks, 1941-1947?

You got any old trucks or pickups around the farm?




Edited by - Laika on 07/24/2003 11:03:57 PM

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Hi Paul,

Was Israel the elect/chosen people of God?

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Lewis B. Smedes (a fairly independently thinking Calvinist) on Election, in "Union with Christ", pp.85-90
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5. ELECTION IN CHRIST

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Eph 1:3,4)

No other sentence that Paul wrote carries more mystery into our union with Christ than this doxology. And the doxology can easily be spoil by trading the mystery for a crisp formula. The Christian faith is better off when it bows before the mystery of antecedent love than when it carries off the prize of a precise formula. Still, the words are in front of us. And words are meant to help our understanding as well as to kindle our devotion.

What does the doctrine of election tell us about our life in Christ? This is the reverse of the question that one ordinarily asks of this texts: what does the fact that we are chosen in Christ tell us about the doctrine of election? But the two questions are interwoven. And, in a sense, we are forced to ask them both at the same time. For each question, if asked separately, implies that we already have the answer to the other. So we had better ask again about "election in Christ" and also ask if it illumines the reality of our being in Christ. **footnote**

First we must observe that Paul sings his song to electing love from within the reality of life in Christ. He begins from where we are -- in Christ. We are, he says, blessed in Christ and are present with Christ "in heavenly places" (1:3). "Heavenly places" points to the new creation that is really, but not comprehensively present. So it is the language of hope; the "heavenly places" point ahead to a future reality -- the reality of "all things" united in Christ. The surprising fact is that we are already included in the new reality.

Only a sense of wonder and the experience of surprise inspire songs. A person is not moved to sing by commonplaces. The inevitability of syllogism does not inspire a doxology. We sing when we wonder; our songs are born of mystery. And the wonder here is that people {i]like us are "in the heavenly places with Christ." How does one account for this reality, this "being in Christ"? There is no accounting for it. There is no reason in heaven or earth we should be so blessed.

It is a gift. Paul ran from Christ; Christ pursued and overtook him. Paul resisted Christ; Christ disarmed him. Paul persecuted Christ; Christ converted him. Paul was alien; Christ made him a member of the family. Paul was an enemy; Christ made him a friend. Paul was "in the flesh"; Christ set him "in the Spirit." Paul was under the law.; Christ made him alive to God. how does one give reasons for this? He does not give reasons; he sings: "Blessed be God who blessed us . . . even as he chose us in him."

The reason for saying this is to remind us that Paul is not philosophizing about the eternal plan of an absolute deity. He is stricken by grace, overwhelmed by love. and he sings. What he says of election in Christ is a song, a confession, a hymn of wonder. Love is not a reason; it is a mystery to sing about.

We must now turn to the fact that our election was in Christ from before the worlds were made. This means that Christ, too , was elect. And to say this is only to repeat what the New Testament ways again and again. Jesus' death was predestined (Acts 2:23; 4:28). "This is my Son, my chosen," Luke reports the Father as saying (Luke 9:35). God loved Him before the world was founded (John 17:24). He is the Lamb of God, elect to be slain for man's atonement (1 Pet. 1:20). And like Melchizecek he was a priest with not earthly antecedents to account for him (Heb. 7:16). Moreover, he was appointed "the heir of all things, through whom he [God] also created the world" (Heb. 1:2).

He was elect as the concrete individual doing the specific task that He was chosen to do. But we must also note that His election was not only as the comprehensive Christ. Paul is always concerned with Jesus in his total significance, in his grand contest.

The contest, is, first of all, the election of Israel. Israel is God's chosen; out of all the nations of the earth, she was God's unique concern. "You only have I chosen our of all the families of the earth," says Jehovah (Amos 3:2). Israel may have distorted and twisted the meaning of its won election, but it could not undo the fact of it.

The essential meaning of Israel's election is: God and His people in vital community. community is the purpose or end of election. But it crystallizes the meaning as well as the goal: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:33). Jeremiah's conviction is echoed by prophet after prophet. And it is echoed in new forms in the new Testament until, in the vision of the Apocalypse, John hears the great voice from the throne crying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them" (Rev. 21:3).

Israel was elect as Jehovah's servant for the blessing of the nations; Jesus is the culmination of Israel's election, for He is the "suffering servant of Jehovah" for the salvation of the world. His cross and resurrection are what Israel's election was all about. He established a covenant "in His blood" that cannot fail. And the core of His covenant is the same as the core of Israel's covenant -- God and humanity is reconciled partnership (Isa. 42:1).

This thought must be brought back to our election in Christ, God's election is His "plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him (Eph. 1:10). Christ was elect as the Christ "to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross" (Col. 1:20). He is elect as the one in whom a new creation is brought into being through the reconciliation of men with God at the cross. he is elect as head of His body, the Church, which is the harbinger of the coming new creation. This is the comprehensive sense in which we must think of the election of Jesus Christ. Christ the concrete individual, the Man for others, is elect. But His election, like Israels's, and with Israel's, is the decision of God to create a new world of people in partnership with Him. When we think of election, we must think of God's comprehensive decision to have a "new creation."

Thus, when we think of ourselves as elect in Christ, we must think of ourselves as elect in the comprehensive Christ. when Paul says "Christ" he includes His universal goal and its universal achievement. We are in God's decision to unite "all things" in Christ. So is the Christ within whom all things are recreated. And we are elect within that concrete and comprehensive Christ.

If we reflect on our "election in Christ" in this way, we will be spared from the frightening abstractions that have so often plagues the doctrine of election. *^*footnote*^* We will never think of election as a grace-less love-less decree to select some individuals for heaven and to reject other individuals for hell. The election in Christ is not a matter of numbers. Paul is talking, as we said, as a man dumbfounded that he and we were included in God's election. He is singing of the mercy of God that included us; he is not speculating on why certain others are not included.

We are elect in Christ. How hard it is to say what this means! Christ and Christians, the Lord and His subjects, the King and His kingdom, the Reconciler and the reconciled, the Leader and His followers, the Head and His body are elect together. Bavinck says: "The community and Christ are together in the one decision; they are, as one community, the elect." Perhaps this is what we should be content to say. God wanted a new creation with people in it who were His people, and this was His election. He elected a kingdom with a King, a body with a Lord, and sinners with a Savior. He elected us in the comprehensive Christ, the Christ who was -- in faith -- first defined as "Lord of All."

Being chosen in Christ means that we can no more be the object of God's agapic desire apart from Christ than a fraction can exist without an integer, a part without a whole. He is the circle in shich we are included. He unites the whole of which we are individual parts. He is the elect head of whom we are the body. To confess that we are chosen is, then, to confess that our new being is in Christ fundamentally and eternally; and that is to say that we are included in the new creation in Christ only through God's agapic, free decision of love. To make the discovery that one is in Christ is, at the same time and with the same wonder, to confess that one is in Christ because God in love freely desired a new creation in Christ.

What, then, does election by God's free agapic decision tell us of union with Christ? It tells us that the new order begun at the cross and resurrection, which sweeps into the here and now under His lordship and in the power of His Spirit, and which will culminate in the new earth where all things are reconciled, is rooted, not in time present, but in God's own eternal desire in love to give himself in partnership with men and to restore a situation where we will be "his people" and He will be "our God" and Christ shall be all and in all.

__(footnotes)__

** Footnote: That the nature of our union with Christ was explained by Paul's doctrine of election was firmly believed by Albert Sweitzer. "Once it is perceived," he writes, "that we have to start from the conception of the predestined solidarity of the Elect with one another and with the Messiah, the mystical body of Christ is at once explained." This is too large a claim, it seems to me. But it does have point. Taken in its whole breadth, to include the foal of election as well as the fact of it, to include God's purpose to unite all things in Christ by means of His resurrection, it does tell us something truly significant about union with Christ. But Schweitzer's entire book was weakened, in my judgment, by finding in the "preordained solidarity" of the Messiah and His people the key to understanding Paul's "mysticism." There is too much of real history, including our experience and discovery of God in history, to make pre-ordination the key to Paul.

*^* Footnote: In "Divine Election" (pp153f) Berkhouwer says that Ephesisns 1:4 is the text which, more than any other, keeps us from "abstractions and determinism in which the traits of the living God, the Father of Jesus Christ, are obscured by the hiddenness and the menace of inscrutable fate."


Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/24/2001 5:48:43 PM

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Learned men have again and again attempted to clear the sacred text from these extraneous elements. But we have at last hit upon a better plan even than this, which is to set aside this textus receptus altogether, and to construct a fresh text, derived immediately from the most ancient and authoritative sources. This is undoubtedly the right course to take, for in this way only can we secure a text approximating as closely as possible to that which came from the Apostles. source

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I found this in an account Tischendorf wrote,

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Learned men have again and again attempted to clear the sacred text from these extraneous elements. But we have at last hit upon a better plan even than this, which is to set aside this textus receptus altogether, and to construct a fresh text, derived immediately from the most ancient and authoritative sources. This is undoubtedly the right course to take, for in this way only can we secure a text approximating as closely as possible to that which came from the Apostles. source
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You may object that Tischendorf's Codex Sinaiticus is from an Eastern Orthodox monastery, but it is Alexandrian in content, which is Roman Catholic (RC) just like Codex Vaticanus. Now, ask yourself why you would accept RC texts, that differ from Byzantine texts, when you don't accept RC doctrine that is derived from RC texts? Rome wants you back and this (modern translations based on RC texts) may be (I'm not saying it is for sure, but maybe) the camel getting its nose in the tent.

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The oldest vehicle I ever owned was a '49 Chevrolet coupe. My "farm truck" now is a 1984 3/4 ton Chevrolet 6.2 diesel with a "gooseneck" hitch, but the diesel is so heavy I usually get stuck in the pasture.

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My dad gave me his '89 Ford F-250 with gas 460 that he had a fifth wheel in the back. It'll pass anything but a gas station.
Combines were always best for getting things unstuck, they're pulling machines.

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[QUOTE]DLW: Now, I was born with a hole in my heart. It likely may have been part of God's greater plan for me to be born with such a defect. However, given the current prevalence of abortions in our world, it seems that one could say that such abortions apparently are also part of God's will.

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During the 20th century, the RCC has promoted unity within Christianity. In 1908, they set aside a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity each year to pray for unity through "the return of heretics and schismatics to the Church of Rome." Unity was to be achieved by having individuals leave their church of origin and join the RCC -- the "the one true Church of Christ." However, in recent decades, the RCC has conducted ecumenical negotiations with various Christian groups (e.g. Anglicans, Evangelical Protestants, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutherans, Mennonites) in order to resolve past disagreements and work towards Christian unity.

Dialog with other branches of Christianity and with other religions is part of the RCC's mission of evangelizing the world.
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As a linguist and one who has dabbled in the Bible translation process for some years, I affirm that a "perfect" translation is impossible. Indeed, a tolerably reasonable approximation is often difficult enough to achieve. It follows that any divine solicitude for the precise form of the New Testament Text would have to be mediated through the language of the Autographs -- Greek. Evidently ancient versions (Syriac, Latin, Coptic) may cast a clear vote with reference to major variants, but precision is possible only in Greek (in the case of the New Testament). <snip>

Each of the early MSS that is assigned to the Alexandrian text-type is in itself a poor copy -- demonstrably so. Not only that, they disagree among themselves to an astonishing extent. Not to mention the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times they disagree, as a group, with the rest of the world. source

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Pickering, 1977. Wilbur Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1977; 2nd edition, 1980.

Pickering presents the case for the "majority text method" (see Hodges and Farstad 1982), and critiques other methods. This book is the most thorough defense of the traditional text to appear since the days of John Burgon, and is regarded by Hodges and Farstad as providing the appropriate Prolegomena to their text, but as a work of scholarship it falls well below the ordinary standards. Pickering's arguments are essentially theological, and he depends upon unreliable secondary sources for most of his text-critical information. For criticism of this book see chapter ten of Epp and Fee 1993. For other more cautious defenses of the traditional text see Sturz 1984 and Pierpont and Robinson 1991.

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