Romans 33 The Spirit’s Groanings 8:26-30/31

SBC Family,

We have some famous verses to look at tonight. Many Christians memorize Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good…” and yet, guess what? It doesn’t say that in the original text. Neither “God” or the verb “causes” are in the best manuscripts. It is a likely addition by an Alexandrian text editor. I will explain this.

Then we have the famous 8:29, “for those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of God…” It’s an explanation of the reasoning behind the prior verse 28. So, we have a number of controversial words and ideas to discuss; foreknowledge, predestination, calling are a few.

I have racked my brain over these passages and concepts over the years. I once spent about three years working on these words and concepts such as election, free will, sovereignty, etc…and covered a lot of territory involving various theologies such as Augustinianism, Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, and Calvinism, and ideas like LIbertarian Free Will, Compatabilism, Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Fatalism, etc…

It’s very complicated and millennia’s of discussion. I’m doing my best, but my explanations will not be “standard fare” commentary. I really don’t like teaching these things because they are conceptually different from what is “standard” and that makes them very difficult to communicate. At any rate, I don’t think there is anything in the “standard” Calvinist or Arminian explanations that is accurate, and I have to teach what I understand and am convinced that the word of God is teaching, so I will do that.

See the attached notes.

Here are some resources for those of you who can’t leave this issue alone:

Samuel Fisk, Election & Predestination (good)
Samuel Fisk, Calvinistic Paths Retraced (super good)
Forster and Marston, God’s Strategy for History (very good)
C. Gordon Olson, Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism (helpful)
Basinger & Basinger, Predestination and Election: 4 Views (ok)
John Feinberg, No One Like Him (helpful for compatabilism)

If you need standard fare stuff you can get that just about anywhere. Just type it in google.

If I could read just one I would recommend reading Samuel Fisk, Calvinistic Paths Retraced. It is interesting and covers a lot of history. It quotes some of the Forster and Marston book, and it includes lots of quotes from people throughout church history, but mostly post-Reformation, on ideas that are not standard fare. It is helpful to see that there are a lot of people who have not fallen prey to the standard Calvinist vs Arminian approach. It also describes how Latin translations have contributed to the concepts that are standard, so pretty much the entire issue is not accessible without getting back to the original languages which very few have done even among lexicographers that we all depend on. I am very dependent on some of this work that is outside the lexicons as well as within them. You should know that in advance. It’s not possible for me to evaluate all of it and do all the work.

Grace to you,
Jeremy

Attachment:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B20IpXsP_rz2_XCdtXAEagPRtN2PD0Zs/view?usp=drive_link