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Kathy said:
I am enclosing a link that articulates what I would never be able to... (I have a feeling most of you will be against it) concerning Predestination and what seems to me... becomes unfruitful to overemphasize. Maybe that is the point... When things become overemphasized... Flat outright -- I do not claim to know your individual understandings concerning.... growing
Kathy,

As you will see, you aren't going to be "attacked". Why would "I" for example do that when I can just as easily ban you!?? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/rofl.gif" alt="" />

Secondly, you are 100% correct that I for one reject the author's views in that article out of necessity. Why? Because he has no biblical basis for what he set forth. #1 He rejects the biblical teaching concerning the doctrine of "Total Depravity" and asserts "free-will" is part of fallen man. #2 He eschews the ability of man to use his brain; to reason and comprehend that which God has revealed in the Scriptures for the very end that he might know. #3 He bases his views on the atonement (universalism) not on Scripture but on the very thing he asserted in #2; i.e., such knowledge is incomprehensible. And in doing so he uses "reason" to defend his view based upon three arbitrarily selected attributes of God, where he should have dealt with the biblical texts themselves and then offered his exegesis and application of them.

It is well known or should be that there is a vast gulf that separates the "Orthodox" church's doctrines from those of historic "Protestantism". What he wrote is but the tip of the iceberg between the two camps. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

However, I will agree with you that ANY doctrine which is over-emphasized to the detriment of another is unacceptable. And history is replete with examples of people who have done this; aka: Hobby Horse Theologians. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/giggle.gif" alt="" />

For a defense of the biblical doctrine of "Definite Atonement", aka: "Particular Redemption", aka: "Limited Atonement", see here: The Atonement of the Lord Christ.

In His grace,


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simul iustus et peccator

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