(November 10, 2011 at 6:27 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Perhaps you'd like to become a contributing editor? Are you claiming to know the will of god in this matter, specifically with regards to yourself? You'll also need to establish that your interpretation of scripture is accurate (otherwise you have faith in false doctrine, not faith in god, a gift from someone other than god, I believe is the common idiocy asserted in the christian waters), after you've demonstrated the existence of said god, before your claims have any weight whatsoever. So have at it.
I see you are still incapable of any knowledge outside of Wikipedia. God’s choice is not based upon foreseen knowledge, faith, works or merit. That is absolutely correct. However, faith is a necessary result of God’s election, so if a person possesses genuine faith they can be fully assured that they themselves are part of the elect. I don’t know whether anyone other than myself possesses genuine faith, so that is why I don’t speculate on who is and who is not part of the elect besides those scripture tells me were or were not.
"Accordingly, those whom God has appointed as his sons are said to have been chosen not in themselves but in his Christ [Eph. 1:4]; for unless he could love them in him, he could not honor them with the inheritance of his Kingdom if they had not previously become partakers on him. But if we have been chosen in him, we shall not find assurance of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we conceive him as severed from his Son. Christ, then, is the mirror wherein we must, and without self-deception may, contemplate our own election. For since it is into his body the Father has destined those to be engrafted whom he has willed from eternity to be his own, that he may hold as sons all whom he acknowledges to be among his members, we have a sufficiently clear and firm testimony that we have been inscribed in the book of life[cf. Rev. 21:27] if we are in communion with Christ. " - John Calvin
I don't know, maybe you think you know more about Calvinism than John Calvin did, I would not be surprised at all if you thought you did.