Brief thread with a few quotes because someone asked whether individuals are chosen by God to be saved or damned (according to Christianity). (This is an issue that most Christians agonize rarely about because the concepts below are quite commonly held today).
"In fact, there is not a single passage in the Bible that explicitly affirms that specific individuals (apart from God’s Son) have been chosen before creation for either eternal life or eternal damnation."
— @MatthewWBates, Gospel Allegiance (Brazos Press, 2019), 84.
Oliver Crisp on Karl Barth's view:
"All human agents are elect only in the derivative sense of having a saving relation to the set of the elect and its single member, Christ."
“For God’s eternal election of grace is concretely the election of Jesus Christ . . . And we in the world … are elected and willed by God in Him.”
– Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2 (1958), p. 31, 33.
Limited atonement (double predestination) or universalism (all are saved)? “If God told us the answer to the problem in advance of the eschaton, we would harm ourselves on one side or the other.”
— Bruce McCormack, “So That He May Be Merciful to All,” 240.
"churches need to be responsible for all … And for that reason, I would say, neither limited atonement nor universalism should ever be made church dogma."
— Bruce McCormack, "So That He May Be Merciful to All: Karl Barth and the Problem of Universalism," (2011), 241.
Timing of salvation is inexact because "Jesus Christ is not only the one who has come (in the incarnation); He is also the One who comes (in the power of the eschatological Spirit); and the One who will come (in His visible return)."
— Bruce McCormack, "So That He …", 247-248.
Jesus on people trying to figure out who is and who is not a child of God.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them."
— Matthew 13:28-29.
Originally tweeted by Andy Rowell (@AndyRowell) on September 10, 2022.