Hey, how you been. Lots of interesting questions, since I have no memory I can only remember the last one …and here’s a comment (not an answer)… I don’t know what word Jesus actually said, but “nation” meant something when he said it than most people seem to inerpret it. Nation was not, at that time, linked to a territory or a state like is in the modern world. It meant something much closer to “people group” and since Jesus’ disciples lived in a multi-ethnic empire near the crossroads of three continents, there is no conflict between “make disciples of all nations” and “make disciples of your neighbors”.

I’ll take Luther’s view with a prevenient grace chaser

agree about the boundaries. is God even free without boundaries?
totally agree that God’s cosmic plan is in view here.
is the question here really, “who will believe”? wouldn’t this insert a predeterministic understanding into a phrase that seems to point the other way? the statement is that “…who ever believes…” and this 1] gives rise to the question that threatens to undermine predeterminism and the portrait of God that predeterminism draws and 2] points to the possibility that man’s salvation/condemnation is not automatic.

As for John 3:16, I think it affirms a couple of things: First, that it is indeed the ‘cosmos’ and God’s cosmic plan of redemption that is in view. It wasn’t just people, but the whole of his creation that groans for redemption. Beyond that, the phrase ‘whosoever believes’ could probably be used on either side of the predestination coin, since the question isn’t about whether someone believing will be saved, but ‘who will believe?’

Well–I typed this shortly after some frosted mini-wheats in gloomy michigan but still enjoyed it.

you may be right. i may be confusing the two.

i’m mostly addressing the portrait of God that envisions Him condemning all and then predetermining who will remain condemned and who will be saved. calvinism may be the wrong technical/historical handle, but it is the label generally associated with views that tend in that direction.

i know reformed thinkers that do not advocate a double edged predeterminism. thanks for the reminder.

when so many great minds (Luther for one, I understand) are possessed by the idea that man has no free will, it is risky to suggest otherwise. i juxtaposed universalism (God saves all) and Prederminism (God condemns some and saves some) because they are the same view of reality with regard to man’s free will. They both assert that all decisions are made by God in eternity. however, in the back of my mind, i’m also having a conversation with today’s scientific prederminism that speaks of an unbreakable sequence of cause and effect. [HT: Barzun, Dawn to Decadence]. It is my understanding that this is the working assumption of anyone working in a lab: There is no free will. This spills over today in the social view that criminal is not responsible for his actions because he is “conditioned”. In other words, he has not received “grace”. [Barzun]

To me this scientific predetermimism, universalism, and “calvinism” [for lack of another term], all point in the same direction. Are the static processes in the three views above undermined by John 3.16? Does not the phrase, “…that who so ever believes…,” suggest that man’s salvation is more than the automatic effect of a prior cause? [Emphasis on "automatic"]. Does it suggest that man is a willful actor in history?

thanks, Mike. i’m sitting here in Florida with a cup of coffee and a bowl of prunes and much enjoying the opportunity to think as I write. i consider this a devotional exercise. Thanks for the input.