(This continues the previous post.)
Creation is obliged to glorify the Lord. It does that automatically. What differentiates humans from the rest of the natural world is the moral responsibility of doing it by choice.
ontology — The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.
Again, we cannot comprehend the ontology of the created universe. We can study and try to make sense of what we can observe, but that cannot answer all the questions. No matter what we work out using our human capabilities, there will always be elements of our existence that make no sense. That’s because our human capabilities are within the Fallen Realm. And I’ve already said that the Fallen Realm compares favorably with a computer simulation.
Our world it not the ultimate reality. It is artificial. It is a working model, along with everything we can know about it. The proper Hebrew mindset in the Bible is that the best we can do is form a working model of things. The revelation of God is His answer to the needs of His people inside of a false reality. It gives us a baseline from which to approach things.
And revelation has always come in the form of covenants. From the beginning, ephemeral humans had a Covenant of Creation. After the Flood, they had a Covenant of Noah. The Covenant of Moses was a special implementation of Noah, applied to only one nation. (The Talmud was a corruption of Moses, so it was never valid.) Moses ended at the Cross, superseded by the Covenant of Christ. Today, every human is accountable to the Covenant of Christ.
The salvation that comes from embracing any covenant has always been a matter of human existence, not Eternity. Whether or not anyone sees Eternity is a matter of Divine Election. The Covenant is your obligation for life here in the Fallen Realm. Every human has a heart, the faculty for handling moral obligations to God. God requires every human alive to embrace Christ from the heart as soon as they develop to the point their heart is capable of making a moral commitment.
Don’t assume you understand the ontology of this. This is merely the biblical revelation of how we should operate. It represents the algorithms of the simulation in which we live. We cannot logically collate this with the Doctrine of Election. All we know is that election is a fact and so is the covenant obligation.
Meanwhile, we have a Hebrew parable that says our current mortal existence arises from a dispute between God and the Devil. God confined the Devil within time and space as punishment for the latter’s refusal to go along with God’s plan for us in the Garden of Eden. This mortal existence is a divine test case in which humans have the duty to prove that God is just in what He does, including the Devil’s punishment.
At the conclusion of this simulation, Christ will return. The Devil and his allies will be destroyed, treated like mortals and removed from existence. That includes the Watchers in Tartarus, the Nephilim roaming around, and a portion of God’s elohim staff. Then, we who are eternal will be restored to Eden and will replace the Divine Council, to boot. The parable says nothing about the final fate of humans who are not part of the Elect.
The parable also says nothing about the living flora and fauna, only that the natural world will be restored to what it was before humans made such a mess of it. Keep in mind that the Bible flatly says that the natural world is longing to see us restored to Eden and our authority to manage it. The only hope for the natural world, including mortal humans, is that you and I live by the Covenant so that we can also manifest God’s glory. It’s in the best interest of all Creation.
That sense of expectation and hope is wired into the natural world, but God demands that free moral humans willfully join in that hope. God’s promises say those who walk by His covenants will benefit in this life, in that life is much better, more consistent with the design of Creation. In the afterlife, we know that those who fail end up in Hell. We aren’t told what happens to those who obey that requirement, in that they are not differentiated from the Elect.
Should we assume they are Elect? That’s not supported by Scripture. It’s an ontological question that we aren’t supposed to ask.
Again, it’s not supposed to make sense. The whole point here is that we operate as if this is all true. There is no ontology of Election, only the implication that God has family in this world that is dominated by people who are not His family. Why the ephemera are here is never explained, so our duty is to deal with them as they are according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. Meanwhile, we should make no assumptions about the nature of the situation.
