Christianity teaching about election

Question 1

Who is election/predestination usually associated with?

Answer 1

1. John Clavin (but NOT first to identify it)
2. Augustine in the 4th century, made a firm case for election
3. popularly-held belief in the Middle ages

Question 2

What does it mean to believe in election, in Christian terms?

Answer 2

the belief that God chooses the eternal destiny for each human person. God knows, even before we are born, who will be damned to the fires of hell and who will rise to glory in heaven.

Question 3

Where does the doctrine of election arise from?

Answer 3

the belief that God’s omniscience means that literally nothing is unknown to God. God does not have to wait and see what happens, because he is outside time and space (transcendent). In some versions of Christian teaching about the election, God does not just know who will be saved and who will be damned but chooses it himself

Question 4

What are the 3 main ‘divergent’ views about election?

Answer 4

1. AUGUSTINE - only a few Christians will be saved so there will only limited election
2. people are called to salvation, in an unlimited way, but not everyone responds to that call and so only some are saved
3. JOHN HICK - holds a universalist belief in which all people will be saved

Question 5

What is Pelagianism?

Answer 5

the popular view of Augustines’ time that proposed that people were born with a ‘blank slate’, neither good nor evil, and could earn a place in heaven

Question 6

Did Augustine agree or disagree with Pelagianism?

Answer 6

disagree

Question 7

What did Augustine believe in - instead of Pelagianism?

Answer 7

he believed that all people were born with ‘original sin’ because of the sin of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden (the Fall), every subsequent human being to be born was already sinful from the start.

Nobody, thought Augustine, could earn salvation because that would be the same thing as telling God ‘I deserve reward in heaven’, and this did not fit in with Augustine’s firm belief that everyone shares in the sin of Adam and cannot possibly reach God’s standards through his or her own efforts, but only by the grace of God

Question 8

Why did Augustine initially believe that people were predestined for heaven/hell?

Answer 8

because of God’s foreknowledge God would therefore already know people’s destinies before they were born.

Question 9

What is meant by ‘God’s foreknowledge?

Answer 9

the idea that God knows everything with certainty

Question 10

What was Augustine’s changed belief about the idea of people being predestined to heaven/hell?

Answer 10

he moved towards the belief that God did not only know who would be saved but chose those people, deciding who was going to receive his saving grace and who was not going to be saved from Original Sin.

Question 11

What did Augustine base his belief that God did not only know who would be saved but chose those people on?

Answer 11

ROMANS 8:29
“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

EPHESIANS 1:5
“he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”

Question 12

For Augustine, what was election a sign of?

Answer 12

the grace of God

Question 13

How is election a sign of God’s grace?

Answer 13

all people, he believed, were born with original sin, and so no one deserves eternal life with God. It is, therefore, evidence of God’s great love and mercy that he allows anyone at all to be saved

Question 14

What was John Clavin’s main point regarding election?

Answer 14

taught the idea that God had predestined some people to eternal punishment and others to eternal life with God.

Question 15

Where does John Calvin’s ideas come from?

Answer 15

Augustine

Question 16

What were John Calvin’s ideas based on?

Answer 16

his belief that in the unshakeable sovereignty of God - God is in absolute control over everything that happens. Therefore, it would not be possible for anything to happen that was beyond God’s control or outside God’s knowledge; no one could reject God when God had expected otherwise.
Therefore it had to be the case that God already knew who would be saved and who would not, and this could not be a situation that God knew about but had no control over, so, therefore, God would have to have chosen the destiny of each human life before it began

Question 17

Give a quote from John Calvin

Answer 17

“all are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation”

Question 18

Why is the idea of limited election not universally accepted by Christians?

Answer 18

1. gives a controlling picture of God that it does not leave any room for human freedom of choice
   - if God already knows and controls everything we do, then there is little point in us making any effort to act morally, or making any effort to worship God - whatever we do, God will control it anyway so that we have no other choice than to behave in the way God has chosen. If we are predestined for heaven/hell then perhaps we can behave however we like, as we cannot change anything about the end result

Question 19

What is the doctrine of unlimited election?

Answer 19

that the message of Christianity is that the love of God and the possibility of salvation that it brings is for all people, not just a few and that everyone will be saved

Question 20

Who developed the doctrine of unlimited election?

Answer 20

Karl Barth in 20th century

Question 21

What did Barth argue in Church Dogmatics?

Answer 21

that Jesus Christ brought salvation for the whole world. Barth saw the election in terms of choice and wrote about the election as the choice that God made to send Jesus, the elected man, into the world. God made this choice timelessly for the purposes of saving sinful humanity.

Question 22

What did Barth try to do in his book, Church Dogmatics?

Answer 22

Barth tried to combine the idea that people are only saved if God chooses, and no through their own efforts, with the idea that a loving God would not choose only a few for salvation.

Question 23

Give a quote from Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics

Answer 23

Jesus is “both the electing God and elected man in One”