Radio Free Geneva: DeCalvinizing Romans 8 with Leighton Flowers

Romans 8:28-30 and the Question of Foreknowledge

They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much, you start to think it's a biblical truth.

Lazarus, she says, Lazarus, come out! And Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. Do you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ?

Well, I can talk over your head like that. I know the Hebrew, the Greek, I've done theology. You can tell I know.

Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things? Um, no.

New Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.

A verse like that, to him, you know what it would sound like if you were listening to it? Blblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblblb.

It wouldn't make any sense to him. A self-righteous, legalistic, deceit, jerk.

And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism. Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge.

Then don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat. There's a reason to have the choice of that meat.

From our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

Yes, indeed, well, welcome to Radio Free Geneva. We probably should have done Radio Free Geneva the last time we were doing the program because it really was, but we had some other things to talk about.

So I guess it really wasn't a pure Radio Free Geneva, but we are today. The reason being that Dr. Layton Flowers has helped us out. I finally did locate it. I found that I had put his article, wherein he seeks to present what I think is meant to be exegesis of Romans chapter 8, verses 28 through 30, into a, well, sort of a scholarly article style format.

I had, I finally found it, don't know why Evernote didn't pull it up with what I searched for last time, but I finally found it and I put it in there in early April, as I recall, of this year and wanted to get to it, wanted to get, there's a lot of things we want to get to, and we just don't necessarily get to it in this life, actually.

Just lots of other things going on. And by the way, folks, there are some big things a-brewin' for 2020 right now. Big things a-brewin'. Yeah, yeah. We just posted the information, by the way, for the debate on the 13th of November, for those of you in Atlanta.

But yeah, there's some stuff coming up in 2020. It's going to be great. I've been very, very busy today, but mainly just sitting around going tap, tap, tap, tap, phone, phone, tap, tap, tap, phone, phone, calendar, yeah, that'll work, tap, tap, that's just all morning long.

It's been pretty wild. So anyway, exciting stuff, you can tell that I'm excited about it, but in the midst of all this, lo and behold, I think yesterday, Layton Flowers posted a video that is only 10 minutes and 48 seconds long.

Did somebody give him a Coogie or something? I don't know. This is, you know, we could end all of this if I just sent him a Coogie. Yeah, if I sent him a Coogie, we'd be lifelong friends. So the plan is to blind him?

Well, no, I think he would like a Coogie. I think he'd like Coogies. So you don't think so? You're a highly deceived man. Anyway, I can't discuss things like that with certain people, you know, that just haven't been given appreciation for the finer things in life.

So we'll go on from there.

Okay, I want everybody to see that I'm rocking a proper sweater today. This is a proper sweater. It's not your ugly Christmas sweater.

It looks just like every other red sweater on the planet. It is an excellent sweater. Absolutely nothing distinctive about it whatsoever. Go Grayton Prescott. Anyway, so it'd be really funny if Leighton ended up with like four Coogies in his mailbox.

If it'll just stop all this, I'll do it. EBay will be out of Coogies. I'd predict an XL for Leighton.

That's okay. The Salvation Army will have plenty more. Oh, man.

Man. Anyway, see what I have to put up with people? It's not easy. It's very good that my office is on the other side of the place. Anyway, he came up with, he posted a video that's 10 minutes and 48 seconds long.

Everyone who is used to the two, three-hour Leighton Flowers videos was stunned. For me, since it's the same argument as the article, same quotations, right down the line, I'm like, oh, thank goodness, because one of the reasons I hadn't gotten to respond to the article is it's lengthy and it's difficult to spend the time to disambiguate all of the sources.

He's pulling from Forrester and Marston and William Lane Craig and N .T. Wright, and all three of those are coming from very different perspectives and very questionably orthodox perspectives on many grounds, many levels.

It just takes a long time to dig that stuff. Here, he's done the work of condensing it all down, and that'll make it a whole lot easier to interact with. Secondly, some of you might be saying, oh, come on, didn't you just do an entire program, well, at least an hour on the last program, in response to David Allen and his comments on the same passage?

Well, not quite. This is Romans 8, 28 to 30. He was Romans 8, 32 to 34. There's one verse in between. Obviously, it's the same section, and so what we're doing is we're dealing with, as we do on Radio Free Geneva, and I don't know why, maybe it's because we get so many new listeners and new viewers, but people ask, what's the difference between The Dividing Line and Radio Free Geneva?

There is no difference. Radio Free Geneva is a special episode of The Dividing Line we do specifically to respond to objections to Reformed theology, and those objections can be really silly, or they can be good, and normally they're in between someplace.

Sometimes they're silly and semi-good, and so on and so forth. So this is just simply where we deal with that particular subject, and we use that super awesome introductory music, which Arabic gets all excited about, and all the cage-to-cage Albinists run around inside their cages, bang their heads against the wall, and things like that.

So I've seen some great memes about the Radio Free Geneva theme. Anyway, so on Radio Free Geneva, we want to respond to what is the best arguments, the most common arguments, and then the arguments that are trending.

I mean, that's just sort of, you know, will some of these arguments pass away as far as you lose their currency because they don't have someone to promote them? I suppose. But you've got to deal with what's being discussed right now and what people are running up against.

And this is, by the way, it's relevant. When I was down in Melbourne and Sydney, you know, a lot of times the questions that come up will be, you know, I'm trying to bring Reformation to my church, but I'm running into this, running into that.

And man, these programs have been really helpful to people, literally globally. So you never know when you're going to be dealing with the exact objection, the exact issue that someone's struggling with, they haven't found an answer to, and so here we are.

That's what we will continue to do while we have the opportunity to do it. Like I said, Michael Brown can't live stream right now. He's in a YouTube timeout. And the great thing about YouTube is they don't even have to bother to tell you why.

They just do it to you. And well, they did actually, I'll take that back. They, well, they told him what the video was, they didn't tell him what it was about the video and they let the same video stay up on another channel.

So the inconsistencies, but that's the way it works. That's what we're facing today. So when I saw this video, it was decalvinizing Romans 8, 28 -30. So there, you get some idea of what we're going to be listening to when you get the idea of decalvinizing Romans 8, 28 -30.

Let me just summarize. We'll listen to it. You're welcome, Leighton. I'm going to quadruple your audience by playing it. We'll play it so that no one can say, oh, you didn't, you didn't, you know, whenever you skip like 30 seconds someplace, you can get to the next point.

So it was like, ah, see, that's what you couldn't deal with. It was like, ah, whatever. We'll play it and then we'll respond to it. We will deal with the fundamental argument being that what Romans 8, 28 -30 is actually stating.

And in fact, oh, I had a nice, I had this queued up, oh, drat. I had this queued up to a real nice summary statement and it seems to have disappeared or I scrolled it up or something. That's a shame. Anyway, fundamentally, let me see if it was down towards, oh, nevermind.

There's a lot of conversation here. So maybe I was, I was closer to it than I actually thought. Um, there is a, uh, summary statement that was given here and let me see, let me just get one more, more time, one more shot here.

All right. Anyway, the idea is that this section of Romans 8 is being written to believers who are suffering. And so it's basically saying God in the past knew the Jews and was faithful to his promises to those who loved him and were called to follow him.

That was the specific terminology. That's what I wanted to find. It might actually, I think it comes up in the, that's right, it comes up in the video. That's where the, that's where it was. We'll keep watching for that toward the end of the video.

There is a nice summary statement there. Um, not the called according to his purpose, but called to follow him. Two completely different things, but that's the idea. So God knew in the past faithful Jews who loved him and were called to follow him.

And so when we bring those things to mind, then we can be confident that God will work everything to our good and make all the bad things work to good just as he did for them. There's nothing here about predestination, election.

We can decalvinize it. And the emphasis will be upon understanding foreknown without any element of active choice or choosing on the part of God. It becomes a passive state of knowledge on God's part.

So the first verb in the whole chain in Romans eight is made to have a meaning, a completely different syntactical meaning than all the rest of the verbs in the text. Now that's not going to be defended, but that's what, that's what he does.

And there are a few people, very few people. It's an incredibly minority interpretation down to the history of the church, but, um, there you go. That's what we're going to see. So sit back, um, get yourself, I've got some diet root beer over here.

Get yourself a seat in the chair and let's, uh, let's listen to what Leighton Flowers has to say here.

Romans eight 28 through 30 is one of the most referenced passages by Calvinist to support their view of individual election to effectual salvation. First 28 reads, and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him and who have been called according to his purpose.

Now before proceeding, let's look at the context of the passage. Remember what we've learned. A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text. Earlier in the chapter, Paul wrote, we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up into the present time.

Paul goes on to encourage the believers that we wait eagerly for the hope of our glorification as we endure through the sufferings today. And he reminds us that the spirit will help us when we pray in our weakness with groanings and words that we cannot possibly even understand.

In verse 28 there is a shift to provide comfort for believers who in their weakness are suffering. And Paul reminds the Christians, we know that in all things, God will work things out for good. He will redeem the bad that is happening for those who love him.

Those of us who have been called according to his purpose. And how do we know that God will do this? Well, just look at all that God has done for those who followed him before. Which leads right into verse 29, for those he foreknew.

Notice the shift to the past tense in verse 29. He references those foreknown in the past. In fact, all the verbs from verse 29 and following are in the aorist active indicative tenses, which indicates that the action of the verb has already taken place with respect to the subject of the verb.

So when we read verse 30, it says,. And those he predestined he also called. Those he called he also justified. Those he justified he also glorified. Again, all in the past tense. Which the most basic understanding grammatically would be in reference to those in the past.

Thus the word prognosco, which we translate into the word foreknew, can simply be in reference to those formerly known in times past. In the Calvinism versus Arminianism debate since the 16th century that's dominated western Christianity, many have failed to look outside of the parameters set in the 16th century to understand various ways to interpret this passage that would be more consistent with the first century language.

Many modern scholars, therefore, only see two options with regard to this text. Prognosco either means foresee or it must mean to foreordain. Prominent Calvinistic pastor John Piper, for example, says option one is God foresaw our self-determined faith.

We remain the decisive cause of our salvation and God responds to our decision to believe. Option two, according to John Piper, is God chose us not on the basis of foreseeing faith, but on the basis of nothing in us.

He called us and the call itself creates the faith for which it calls. We believe that John Piper, like many modern day theologians, have simply set up a false dichotomy by presenting only two possible options to this text when more options are actually available.

In fact, the most simple basic understanding of the word prognosco is formerly known or known before. Romans 11 2 is the only other time the word prognosco is used in the letter to the Romans. God did not reject his people whom he foreknew.

This clearly is in reference to the Israelites of the past who God knew formally. One other time the apostle Paul uses this term is in Acts 26 verse 4 and 5 when he speaks about his manner from youth and says they have known for a long time, which is again the word prognosco simply interpreted as knowing something in the past.

So the term prognosco or foreknew simply means to formally know or to know before. It does not need a lot of philosophical esoteric baggage attached to it. It's a very simple word and just as Paul uses it in Acts and in Romans 11 2, it simply can be in reference to the Israelites of the past who loved God and were called according to his purpose.

Dr. William Lane Craig in his book The Only Wise God references the word study of Drs. Forrest and Marston, God's strategy in human history, saying, quote, God foreknew them or knew them of old. Thus it does not mean that God entered into some former time into a relationship with the Israelites of today.

It means that he entered a two way relationship with the Israel that existed in early Old Testament times, and he regards the present Israelites as integral with it. Dr. William Newell, a friend and colleague of D .L. Moody and R .A. Torrey, taught thousands of people as a Bible teacher in Moody's Bible College.

In his book, Romans Verse by Verse, he discusses that God, quote, had acquaintanceship with the Israelites of the past. So it was not, quote, mere divine pre-knowledge of certain individuals, but a real intimate pre-acquaintanceship.

So what was Paul's intention in this passage? I believe he simply is saying, Christians, don't worry. We know from past experience that God always works out everything for those who love God and are called to follow him.

If you want proof, look at those God previously knew, loved and called in the past. He determined them to be conformed to the image of his son so that his son would become the firstborn of many brethren.

What better example of God working out all things together for good than his work through the Israelites of old to bring the Messiah to this world for the redemption of all mankind? While I am convinced that the term progenosco is best understood as in reference to those of the past, there are other viable interpretations from a non-Calvinistic perspective.

Some classical Arminians have simply understood foreknown as to mean foreseen in the sense that God simply knows beforehand who is going to have faith and those are the ones he is predestined to be conformed into the image of his son.

Some non-Calvinists believe that God's foreknowledge of an individual's faith is the basis for his decision to save them and predestine them to be conformed to the image of Christ. Calvinists often caricature this position by saying something like, God looks through the quarters of time to see who will believe and therefore elects those individuals, and then they paint all non-Calvinists as to holding this position.

What must be understood is that on this perspective, God is omniscient, not omnideterministic, which means that God's knowledge is rooted in his eternal nature as God, not his ability to look through the quarters of time, which is why this is a caricature painted by Calvinists to dumb down this perspective and make it sound unreasonable.

Another non-Calvinistic interpretation of Romans 8 .29 is to understand the word progenosco or foreknown to be in reference to those known in Christ through faith. This is known as corporate election.

It observes that the election of God's people in the Old Testament was a consequence of the choice of an individual who represented the group, the corporate head and representative. So from this perspective, the verse might mean, for those God foreknew would be in Christ by faith, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his son.

I believe any of these interpretations are more valid than that introduced by Calvinism and their golden chain of redemption as seen exemplified here.

What Romans 8 .28 through 30 or maybe even just 29 and 30 would be called, would be called what we see as the golden chain of redemption is what's classically known. In other words, there are links within that chain, whereas none of them are ever broken.

So if you are part of any one of those, you will make it to the end of those. And it starts with the foreknowing of God and all eternity past and the predestination moves on to the calling, the justification and the glorification.

And there's not a broken link in any of that.

So Calvinist, more fatalistic interpretation of the word prognosco is understood as forechosen or foreordained. And thus those who are foreknown in eternity past are fated to believe when they are called.

And then they are justified and glorified for reasons that are beyond their control, which logically entails that all other people are fated to damnation for reasons beyond their control. As John Calvin himself wrote,.

By predestination, we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation.

And accordingly, as each has been created for one or the other of those ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death. There is no basis on which to conclude that most people are fated to unbelief for reasons that are beyond their control, which is ultimately the logical end of the Calvinistic interpretation of Romans 8, 28 through 30.

As Paul reminded Timothy,. This is good and pleases God, our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.

Please like.

Okay, please like. All right. So there's the argument, and there's some extraneous stuff at the end that we didn't really necessarily need to get into, but we will deal with that when it comes up. So what I'm going to do is, instead of replaying it visually, I'm going to move it out of the way, and we'll listen to the audio and respond to the audio.

And I will be looking at what we have in the New Testament. I don't know if Rich wants to do the screen there or whatever, but we will be responding to the points as they were brought up. So is it a valid...

Well, first of all, we were told every one of the synergistic interpretations are better than the one that recognizes the golden chain of redemption, which is an amazing statement. They're all better.

So okay. All right. So with that, did we get a clear understanding of what was said? Let me... Here's the... I found it, and I marked where it was. Here is the paraphrase. This is what I was mentioning before him.

Christians, don't worry. We know from past experience that God always works out everything for those who love God and are called to follow him. If you want proof, look at those God previously knew, loved, and called in the past.

He determined them to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that his Son would become the firstborn of many brethren. That is the interpretive paraphrase that Dr. Flowers himself provides. Is that consistent?

Does that do justice to the text? Would that lead into the next section, where Paul talks about the unnecessary work of Christ, the elect of God, their justification? Is this consistent, or is this, as I believe to be, a desperation attempt to get around what the text is plainly saying by fundamentally changing its meaning?

Well, let's find out and get into it here, and now we'll go point by point. The text.

Earlier in the chapter, Paul wrote, We know that the whole creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up into the present time. Paul goes on to encourage the believers that we wait eagerly for the hope of our glorification.

Now once again, I will simply point out, there's always two ways to approach the Scripture. And in this instance, one way hears the focus upon mankind, the other hears the focus upon what God is doing that has impact upon mankind, but it's the redemptive work of God in all of creation that is in view, that is going to end up in that final hymn of praise, Who will separate us from the love of Christ Jesus, and height or depth, and everything else is found at the end, is not about us.

It's about what God's been doing. And so, even we talk about eagerly hoping for glorification, that's all the stuff that God is doing. This is the extension of God's power. Very important to keep that in mind.

Endure the sufferings today. And he reminds us that the Spirit will help us when we pray in our weakness, with groanings and words that we cannot possibly even understand. In verse 28, there's a shift to provide comfort for believers.

Now, to provide comfort for believers, Romans 8, 28 definitely provides comfort, but is that what is being said here? When it says, we know, at the beginning of verse 28, is this saying we just look back at history, or is this a present knowledge that we have?

Well, that's what Oida men would mean here, is that this is a present knowledge. We know, this is a conviction that we have concerning the nature of God, that God causes all things to work together. There's some textual variants here.

There are a couple of manuscripts that want to make it very clear, this is God who does these things. But God is the one who works all things together for the good. And then we have two phrases. We have tois agaposin ton theon, to the one's loving God.

And then we have tois kata prothesin kleitos usin. So you have two phrases that are being used in parallel to one another, and they are a positive. That is, they are renaming the same group. It's not one group, it's separate from another group.

And so, we know that to the one's loving God, that is, the ones who are called according to his purpose, God works all things according to the good. So, we're not the focus there. It's God working all things to the good, and even those who love God are defined as those who are the called according to his purpose.

Now, it's interesting that in looking both at the article and at the video, the element of this, which is the phrase, so purpose is one, two, three, four words in front of praegno, which is praganosko, to know beforehand.

So, this is the immediate context of foreknowledge. Not foreknowledge as a noun, but to foreknow as a verb. This is something God is doing. The immediate context includes those who are called. We don't have an accordance available?

Okay, all right. I was just... Well, I'm sitting here talking about it, so the opening is the door is open. According to his purpose, right here, according to... And here's the called. See, there's the article with called.

The according to purpose called ones, okay? And so, here up above, here you have twice, to the ones loving God, to the ones according to purpose, the called ones. So, it's important to recognize that when you're talking about the meaning of a word, it's one thing to run off to other texts.

That's important. Where else did Paul use this? Where else does he use the New Testament? But its meaning is determined by its immediate usage in its context, first and foremost. And in the immediate context of here's praegno, praganosko, in the immediate context of that term, you have election.

You have God's purpose. Now, let's notice that praegno is used a few other places in the New Testament. And you look it up here, and we see that here is... Blow it up a little bit more. There you go. That's a little bit larger.

So, we know here is according to his purpose, Romans 8 28. Well, Ephesians 1 11, it's the same term. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Here is the purpose again, and here's the counsel of his will, and one word away, praorizo, to predestine according to his purpose. So, this purpose in Paul's thinking is the very will of God that then becomes expressed in his predestination, in his activities within time.

In Ephesians 3 11, this was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. The purpose of the ages, the eternal purpose, which he did literally, which he realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, here you have the same term, notice in the exact same forms found here in Romans 8 28, according to his purpose. And then finally, 2nd Timothy 1 9, who saved us. Notice these are all in satirological context.

He saved us and called us with a holy calling. So, you've got calling here, both in the verbal form and the noun form, called us a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own what?

Prophecy, purpose, and grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus before all ages, before the ages began. So, every use we have of this term is deeply satirological and deeply predestinarian, using the very term predestination in Ephesians 1, very clearly the same meanings in every other place where it's used.

So, that's its meaning here too, right? So, we would have to recognize that and go, oh, to those who are called according to his purpose is God's sovereignty. But did you remember, we'll see it again, but did you remember the very subtle re-rendering of that phraseology in the section we read?

Those who are called to follow him? That's not what it's about. That's not even close to what it's about. Not even close to what it's about. So, one of the most important preceding terms that establishes the context in which we're dealing, gone.

It's not even just... And the shift is to us and people that God knew in the past and instead away from God's predestining activity, because that's what we don't want it to be about. So, that's how you do it.

So, those who are called according to his purpose. So, verse 28 says, this says, verse 28 is a shift to provide comfort for believers. I don't accept that. That's an invalid interpretation.

"...who in their weakness are suffering.". And Paul reminds the Christians, we know that in all things, God will work things out for good. He will redeem the bad that is happening for those who love him, those of us who have been called according to his purpose.

Who have been called according to his purpose. I don't think that latencies, that those are huge, glowing, neon signs of God's sovereignty. And that that determines who the ones who love him are, too.

I mean, you look at Paul's anthropology, which he laid out in chapters 1, 2, and 3, who loves God? Those that he has changed. And even at the beginning of Romans 8, same chapter, who can submit to the law of God?

Only those who are, have been made alive in Christ.

And how do we know that God will do this?

Well, just look at all the... Well, it doesn't say, how do we know? It says, we know. In other words, there is already a conviction on the part of believers. We know God, and we know what God has done.

Not how do we know. And nowhere is Paul saying, oh, look at what God did in the past. This is setting things up for the redefinition of prognosco, to remove... And this is the key, if you don't get anything else, get this.

It is Layton Flowers' intention to remove from pro-egno, which is an active verb, it's something God does, any element of active choice. Why would he want to do that? Because the active choice in salvation in a synergistic system is man, not God.

So what you've got to do is get rid of anywhere where God is the one making an active choice that actually results in the true salvation of individuals, because synergism dies at that point. So what you're going to see is he's going to change the meaning of pro-egno, and he's going to remove from it any element of choice and activity on God's part.

God just knew people back then. Well, God knew everybody back then. God's known everybody from the beginning. So everybody's foreknown. So if you actually say, well, God knew folks back then. Yeah. He knew the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the Assyrians, just as he knew the Israelites.

There is a personhood, a personal attribute to the relationship that God has to those that he foreknows, because there is a choice, because it's something God does. So we could properly say God did not foreknow Pharaoh, in the sense of the term being used here.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed. To change that to just, he knew some Jews back then, and he did these things for them, is to create in the first verb an understanding and force that you then allow in the rest of the verbs, but you can't allow in that one.

We can allow the same force all the way through, because we're allowing the text to speak, because we're not trying to read something out of it. We're trying to let everything stay in it that is actually there, including called according to his purpose, not according to our purpose, his purpose.

Okay, so how do we know? God has done for those who followed him before, which leads right...

Now see, for those who followed him before, see where the shift is going? God did these things for those who followed him before. This is all man. So God's responding to man's actions. Instead of, God has a purpose, he calls according to that purpose, and therefore you have the context for foreknowing.

For those whom he foreknew. All right? Into verse 29.

For those he foreknew. Notice the shift to the past tense in verse 29.

Now this is going to be very important to his argumentation. Very, very important to his argumentation. And the problem is that, and I had a conversation, actually had almost the same conversation with someone at ReformCon recently.

Why are these all in the past tense? We have to be very careful. We've all, especially when you're first learning the language, you fall into this trap fairly regularly. But, for example, these are in what's called the aorist.

And generally, the aorist is referring to something that happens in the past. But not always. That is, the aorist is the simplest form of expression in the Greek language. That's the simplest way to say that something happened.

You have to start complicating your verbs a little bit when you move them into the present. For us, the present seems to be more the basic. And we teach Greek wrong, to be honest with you, in some ways, because we start with the present, and then we move to other forms, not recognizing that, in reality, the most basic roots are normally the aorist roots, rather than present tense.

And you start looking at the endings, and there's more going on. And anyways, the point is this. Um, the emphasis in the Greek is on the kind of action, only secondarily on the time of the action when the context provides indicators of that.

And so we, in our thinking, tend to go, well, I don't get why this was all in the past tense, and, you know, why isn't it, if this was happening now in the present tense? If you're going to be talking about God's actions in time, how else would you put it?

So in other words, we might try to sit here and think, well, you know, writing in the New Testament, you know, does Paul have knowledge of how long the period of time is going to be where God's going to be gathering his elect people?

How long the church age is, as we might describe it in that way. And so, would he be using future tenses for people up there, thinking they're going to be reading my words, so I'm going to need to use a future tense to talk about what's happening up there?

Or is he simply describing the reality of what God has done? It wouldn't make any sense to use the present tense. It wouldn't make any sense to use the present tense to talk about God's decree that is forming the very fabric of time.