As we discussed in the last post, there are specific events that are theologically supposed in the beginning of the universe before time. It is important to understand that these events, while discussed chronologically are logical orders as opposed to chronologically ordered. For God, there is no time. Nonetheless, there is structure and order to this argument. The importance of these will become apparent as we go along.
The first of God’s eternal edicts is the decision to Create the universe and with it man. Later in this discussion, we will see an extreme position in which this is not the first of the eternal edicts. But for the most part, we can assume that the decision to create came first.
The second of God’s eternal edicts is to permit the Fall. Without much debate, the four major orderings of soteriology (study of the religious doctrines of salvation) will place the fall after creation. There will be some discussion in a few areas about this ordering, but again, this is fairly consistent.
At this point in all of the soteriological systems, we can start asking questions. There is the problem of evil and sin. There is also the problem of salvation, how does it happen and for whom does it happen? We will examine passages for each of these questions after we finish laying out the edicts, but I wanted to point out where the questions will arise.
I have mentioned above that most views of soteriology view that the fall of man occurs at this point. It is important to understand that a heresy that is now rampant in the modern religious world holds that the fall of man is figurative or symbolic, and that the actions of Adam could not possibly have any consequence for anyone but Adam. It must be said that the whole of Christianity other than full blown Pelagians rejected this idea in the fifth century. There is another position as well (Semi-Pelagianism,) that we will discuss later, but it does not deny the fall.
Since Pelagius, no prominent theologian advanced a theology based upon a denial of the fall of man until Charles Finney in the nineteenth century. Now, thanks to Charles Finney and revivalism, the default position of most people in the United States is Pelagian. It is hugely important to recognize that this position was uniformly viewed as heretical prior to Finney. This is the sadness we face in the church today, that so prominent a leader in US Protestantism was a heretic. In the next post, we will discuss Finney, Wesley and Arminius, and how Finney's point of view makes light of these eternal edicts, while Wesley and Arminius have somewhat different edicts.
Finishing up the eternal edicts, we have in some order depending on which school of thought, the decision by God to save some or all, the decision by God to make possible the salvation or some or all and the decision by God to not save others or passively to overlook others. That will be two points in most of the arrangements, depending on the theology involved. We will call these two steps Election and Provide salvation.
Finally, there will be some sort of Call by God to his elect or to everyone. There is some agreement again that this Calling is mediated by the Holy Spirit. Notably, in the synergistic (working together) systems, this Calling will not look the same as it does in monergistic (working alone) systems. The reason for this we will investigate in the next post.
Switching gears for a moment, there are eternal covenants as well. There is an eternal covenant between creator (God) and creature (man). There are eternal covenants between the persons of the Trinity. These covenants are not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, but they are implied by scripture. Later, we will examine how these covenants work.
In summary, the purpose of this post was to point out five eternal edicts, which have to do with salvation or soteriology. These five edicts are Creation, permitting the Fall, Election, Providing salvation and Calling. We discussed that there are eternal covenants between the Persons of the Trinity and also between God the Creator and his creation, man. In the next post, we will explore how rearranging these edicts greatly effects our theology, or vice versa.
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