Unconditional Election? News Flash: Foreknowledge is a Condition!

We are going to examine the following verses:

Romans 8:29
For whom he did foreknow [proginōskō], he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Romans 11:2
God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew [proginōskō]. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying,

1 Peter 1:2
Elect according to the foreknowledge [prognōsis] of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

1 Peter 1:20
Who verily was foreordained [proginōskō] before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,

Acts 2:23
Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge [prognōsis] of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:

Irrational attacks against the Bible

Co-Worker:
It is a matter of history that the bible is the invention of a group of men coming together in a room to decide which books would go in and which ones wouldn’t therefore it isn’t the Word of God.

James:
It should be immediately apparent to any student of logic that the argument above amounts to making many mistakes in reasoning. Assuming that the above claim is referring to the famed 397 AD Council of Carthage, it would then also be false for espousing historical inaccuracies as the canon that emerged from that council differs from the canon that I axiomatically subscribe to and which is found in, for instance, the KJV or any other bible based upon the Textus Receptus.  Furthermore, any account suggesting that the scriptural canon was the result of scholars deliberating in some Roman Catholic-driven council is defied by the very words of Scripture itself.  For instance, in 1 Thessalonians 2:13  we are told of Christians who recognized that the Apostle Paul’s words were of divine origin and received it as the Word of God without the help of a council. This scripture is corroborated by Christ’s claim in John 10:27, 5  which suggests that Christians–by virtue of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God–are individually able to discern what is God’s Word and what isn’t. In fact, the bible goes as far as stating that Christians DO NOT NEED a person, a council or any other man made establishment in order to arrive at truth since they are indwelt by the Arbiter of truth, namely, the Holy Spirit of God (1 John 2:27). Finally, there is reason to believe that the skeptic above is equivocating on the word God since in the context of this conversation it became evident that he was largely ignorant of the Biblical God to whom the claim above pertains.

Other Errors in reasoning

1. Asserting the Consequent:
   (P – The Antecedent) If the proposition that the bible is NOT the word of the biblical God is to be affirmed (Q – The Consequent) the bible’s transmittal and assembling will involve the efforts of men. (Asserting Q) The bible was transmitted and assembled through the efforts of certain men (P) therefore it is impossible for it to be the Word of the Biblical God.
   The form of this logical fallacy is:  if P then Q, Q therefore P (where P and Q are premises).
   The classic example that is used to demonstrate the absurdity of this reasoning is: (P) if it is raining then (Q) the streets are wet; (Q) the streets are wet, (P) therefore it must be raining. The reason that this line of reasoning is fallacious is because there are many other reasons that could equally explain why the streets are wet so the conclusion that it must be raining is not a necessary inference, thus it is an invalid inference. Likewise, the conclusion that the bible cannot be the Word of God because of man’s involvement in its composition introduces an arbitrary and unnecessary restriction on how God chooses to reveals His word to man; therefore, it is an invalid inference and a mistake in reasoning.
2. Falsifying the Axiom:
   The central Christian axiom of Scripture states that the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God. This axiom, just like any other, is not open to further discussion about it’s truthfulness or falsehood and yet the skeptic above tries to demonstrate that this axiom is false; hence, the error in reasoning. To quote the Christian Philosopher Dr. Gordon H. Clark:“One does not, need not, and cannot prove axioms. Yet they are indispensable; every philosophy and every person must have axioms, or there would be no philosophy and no persons. From this axiom [the 66 Books of the bible alone are the Word of God] , all other Christian doctrines follow.”
   

   If the skeptic would like to criticize an opponents worldview, the skeptic must be willing to temporarily accept the axioms of the offending worldview in order to perform an internal critique and demonstrate that the axiom’s necessary consequences are not congruent with reality; the skeptic must show that they lead to logically unacceptable conclusions.

3. Appealing to an Artificial Authority:
   The skeptic above would have us believe that his statement above is a true statement yet he has not demonstrated himself to be a valid arbiter of truth and is therefore incapable of authoring propositions that must be considered truth. It is an error in reasoning for the skeptic to elevate his opinion to the level of truth unless of course it can be demonstrated that his opinion coincides with a previously revealed proposition from the Arbiter of truth or it is the corollary (a necessary inference) of such a proposition. In other words, how does the skeptic know that his conclusion is “true“?

The bible is a “confluence” of ideas from other cultures that were prior…

“Some persons, some of whom are academics, insist that they do not have any axioms. That is like denying that one speaks prose. Persons, like systems of philosophy, must begin their thinking somewhere. Any system of thought—whether it is called philosophy or theology or geometry—and any person—whether he is called Christian or humanist or Buddhist—must begin thinking with some initial proposition. That beginning, by definition, is just that, a beginning. Nothing comes before it. It is an axiom, a first principle. That means that those who start with sensation—sense experience—rather than revelation, in an effort to avoid axioms, have not avoided axioms at all: They have merely traded the Christian axiom of propositional revelation for the secular axiom of sense experience. That was the sin of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.” – Dr. John Robbins, The Promise of Christian Economics