by Sandy » Mon Jan 02, 2017 11:25 am
I think creeds, and the lists of things we put together as "requirements," or perhaps affirmations of belief, are for our own assurance, and aren't particularly definitive when it comes to salvation. There are places in the New Testament where the confession is pretty simple, and grace is present. John's gospel, and epistles, narrow the creed down to a confession of Jesus as the Christ, without any pre-conditions. In the context of how he addresses this point, it appears that the only element of God's sovereignty which might be involved would be that a person would have to be in a physical location where the gospel was being preached and taught, in order to hear it and respond to it. Peter's epistles make a similar point.
The other point is that human beings have free will, and if God uses his sovereignty, and his eternal power to manipulate situations or circumstances to cause a particular outcome, or lack of a particular outcome, is that really free will?