Foreordination & Predestination, continued

Tuesday morning, August 5, 2008 (sunny and muggy),
Your responses to yesterday's perspective have motivated me to follow it with this, also from Gerstner's, "A Predestination Primer": "Thus, when I drop a piece of chalk, foreordination generally and predestination specifically are being carried out. The chalk's dropping is an instance of foreordination proper. It is a part of that totality of things which have been eternally decreed by God. But since the chalk is inanimate and not a free moral agent it does not belong to the domain of predestination, properly speaking, but rather to foreordination, properly speaking. It does not will to fall. It does not choose to drop. It is acted upon and not acting. It, therefore, does not pertain to predestination but it is a part of foreordination, merely. When, however, we consider my dropping the chalk, we have an instance of predestination. Unlike the chalk, which does not decide to fall, I am a free moral agent, who does decide to cause the chalk to fall. Being a free moral agent, I come within the domain of predestination. Thus when we speak of the chalk's falling, we speak of foreordination; and when we speak of my dropping the chalk, we speak of predestination."
Got it? Good!

Now listen to what Paul had to say, "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:5; NASB).
Got that? Even better!

Now listen to what Mac has to say (for whatever it is worth!): Had God failed to foreordain and, thus, predestine that some of the human race be His children, all of us would be eternally and hopelessly lost!