(December 12, 2013 at 2:58 pm)Upside Down Dog Wrote:(December 12, 2013 at 2:45 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: The short of it is that you can't even know that you've been saved. After all, God could merely be using your false sense of certainty to accomplish other things, despite you not actually having attained salvation.
I'll submit to that. There is no way I can know for sure. But, as I stated in the agnostic theist thread, there is no way I can "know" anything for sure. Nothing is 100% because I'm not omniscient.
That's nonse and worse, self-refuting. Do you KNOW that there is no way you can know anything for sure? Further, there are things I know with complete certainty:
-That I exist (thank you Parmenides and Descartes)
-That things are themselves (law of identity)
-Things aren't not themselves (law of non-contradiction)
Quote:I can have reasonable belief that I am elect based on the examples and instructions of the elect as described in the Bible.
Only if you presuppose the truth of the Bible and your interpretation of the relevant passages (which historically has been far from agreed upon amongst Christians).
Quote:Following those examples, one can deduce with reasonable certainty (relative to actual knowledge) that one is elect.
And yet you could very clearly still not be.
Quote:This also plays into the concept of faith. Faith is a gift from God to His elect, and it serves has a way a person can have that "knowledge" or 100%... because we can't reach that on our own. That has to be given to us by God.
This is in contradiction to your earlier claim that we can't be completely certain of anything. And it's clearly possible that God, on your view, could merely make you THINK you were 100% certain, while you are not.
