(CONTINUED FROM ANOTHER THREAD at the request of the moderator)
Oxymoron quote:
SLJ quote:
I believe from looking at scripture that the primary purpose of the gospel is not for man’s sake but God’s and that salvation is a by-product of God’s grace-His grace is not contingent on our salvation. Salvation’s main focus is to display God’s glory. Agree or disagree?
Agreed! But the glory of God is, among other things, the unsurpassable beauty of his character. And of course, the same apostle who wrote that “the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” also wrote (in the same context) “God is love.”
I think Reformed theologian John Piper (of all people!) got it right when he wrote, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
Oxy,
Just to clarify, are you saying that salvation is a byproduct of God’s grace, or of His glory? You seem to be using the terms interchangeably, and I’m not sure I understand how that works.
I’d agree that salvation is a byproduct of God’s grace, and is for His glory.
Sonia
Did God set all this up, (creation, fall, bondage to evil, salvation and reconciliation, etc.) so as to reveal His glory? That’s apparently part of His purpose. I also believe He wanted children, beings created in His image. Of course, if God fails to accomplish His stated purpose of reconciling, bringing back into right relationship, all of creation then such wouldn’t be very glorious. I trust that the Lord will fully accomplish all that He set out to do and thus bring tremendous glory to God and fulfill the desire of God to create many more beings in His image! How all that works out, I don’t know; but I trust Him to accomplish His will!
I believe God’s glory reigns supreme. However, I think it is over simplistic to say that God’s plan and revelation are so single-faceted. It is clear that God’s love for his creation is enormous and that his plan of salvation is threaded throughout most of what he did/does. The way oxy presents it is as if God’s glory is what is important and the whole “man/salvation” thing is just a by-product. The plan of salvation is not “by product” stuff. It is/was central to what God is/was doing. Yes God’s glory is right at the center, but it is not a “Primary then bi-product” thing. It’s more like a primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. thing. God will always be the most important, his glory the highest thing to seek. Often Ultimate Reconciliationists will be accused of being too man centered, and sometimes that is true, but the one’s I know are seeking to be true to the scriptures and true to God’s revealed nature. They don’t want any theological system to contradict his revealed nature.
what does the term “God’s glory” really mean? what are the original words and what do they signify? it’s hard to believe that God would just create everything to grandstand and show how great He is. He IS great, but i think it’s alot more than that. i think there’s merit in the idea of God being love and wanting something to show love to resulted in His creation of us…and His continuing love proves itself through salvation.
so for me, salvation is the main product of God’s grace…
but i could be misunderstanding this whole issue lol…
Excellent point! God’s glory alone means so many things.
I think dirtboy’s post was spot on! It is an insult to God to term any good thing as a ‘by-product’.
I agree, Chris and CL, byproduct is not really the right word-- “product” would be better. So I’ll modify my statement above to read: I’d agree that salvation is a product of God’s grace, and is for His glory.
That’s the question to discuss! The idea of “God’s glory” being God’s primary interest and motivation is the thing I’d like to explore.
“glory” is the Greek δόξα – doxa – definition here: blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?strongs=G1391
There’s a beginning; I’ll try to get back later with more!
Sonia
awesome, thanks Sonia…i think this in itself could be very helpful to understanding how we can give God glory properly!
Is God showing grace to those He refuses to even try to save from their sins? Many Calvinists would say not; and even the ones who admit God must be showing them some inadvertent secondhand grace as a side-effect of acting graciously to His elect, would say that eventually God stops showing any grace at all to the non-elect (and certainly never even intended to give saving grace to the non-elect despite the potency of His saving grace being entirely capable of saving the from their sins if He so chose.)
Inasmuch as it is Calvinists (and in their own way also some Arminians) who connect God’s grace with God’s salvation of sinners from sin (as all Christians do, and even some non-Christians), and to deny one with the other, it seems strange to try to defend a claim that God does not act graciously toward some sinners by refusing to even intend (much less even try) to save them from their sins, if some variant of Calvinism is true, by replying that God’s grace is not contingent on our salvation from sin. If there is some problem perceived with God acting in an ultimately ungracious way to some sinners, by choosing never to give them even the possibility of salvation from their sins, then that problem is not resolved by the observation that God would still be acting graciously to other sinners in saving them from sin!
It seems even stranger for a Calvinist, of all people, to describe salvation from sin as a by-product of God’s grace!–as though it was some incidental and accidental and probably even unintended result of God’s grace! If God intends salvation of a sinner from sin to happen as a result of His grace, describing it as a by-product is misleading at best.
But, assuming that Oxy was not meaning to despise the riches of God’s grace as being of no account, and chose poorly in his wording, when he only meant to say salvation of sinners from sin is a result of God’s grace (but not merely a by-product result): so what?
That depends on whether the Trinity is true or not. If it is true, then God’s glory essentially is God’s grace, and for God to act to fulfill an ultimate ungraciousness to a person would be to act in contravention to God’s glory, just like any sinner would be doing by sinning.
If the Trinity is not true, then God’s glory has nothing intrinsically to do with the grace of fair-togetherness (righteousness) between persons, and so may only be about the exercise of God’s power instead; in which case God may act to ultimately fulfill ungraciousness and non-fair-togetherness between Himself and some other person without violating the principle glory of His foundational existence as the ground of all reality. Or, maybe He would act graciously toward other people anyway, even if they are sinners. The difference is that it would not be a violation of God’s intrinsic nature if He chose to do otherwise. (A point I occasionally debate our local unitarian Christians on–so this is of no small importance as a topic among trinitarians!)
In short, if the Trinity is true then God’s glory would in fact necessarily involve acting graciously (even if wrath is also required) to save sinners from sin: to save the ungracious from ungraciousness into graciousness; to save the unjust from injustice into justice; to save the unrighteous from their unrighteousness and into righteousness.
To suppose that God would glorify Himself by acting to ensure that unrighteousness continues to hopelessly exist as such (or even that the unrighteous person should cease existing without fulfillment of the positive justice God expects from the righteous as doers of righteousness and not hearers only), would be similar to supposing that doers of unrighteousness are not sinning but rather are glorifying God in their doing of unrighteousness.
And even a unitarian, I think, would strenuously deny such a thing to be true about God.
Much moreso should a trinitarian Christian deny it!!
Which, as it happens, I do. 
In conclusion: if acting for salvation of sinners from sin is primarily for God’s sake and not primarily for man’s sake, which is technically true from an ontological standpoint (i.e. God is not required to do so by anything lesser, greater or other than Himself), the then to act against the salvation of sinners from sin is to act against God’s sake. Consequently God would not act in such a way. But it is Calvinists, and some Arminians, who insist that God acts in such a way, either originally or eventually. Not universalists.
Whereas if God has no inherent need to act graciously (as would be true, by contrast, if trinitarian theism is true–i.e. if ortho-trin is false), nor any inherent need to save sinners from sin thereby, then while it still may be true that the primary purpose of the gospel (ontologically speaking) would be for God’s sake and not for the sake of sinners (much less for the sake of righteous creatures who need no salvation), such a gospel of salvation from sin would have nothing inherently to do with God, including with God’s glory. So at best such a gospel would be neutral in regard to God’s glory. Any display of God’s power, such as creating and permadamning sinners as an alternate exertion of power, would be just as well–there would be no special value to the gospel from God’s perspective, even though naturally there would be a value of convenience from the perspective of any sinners God chose to save from sin. Grace would not boast over judgment unto victory, and while there might be some incidental by-product righteousness in such salvation it would have nothing to do with God’s glory because God’s glory (if God has no inherent need to act graciously among persons so as to fulfill fair-togetherness) would have nothing to do with dikaiosunê (fair-togetherness, justice, righteousness).
In shorter: it depends on what the truth is about the glory of God. Is it a trinitarian glory, uniquely distinct from any other proposed theistic glory? Or is it not?
If it is, then we may expect certain results to follow on God’s side of things, and omnicompetently so: namely, that God will act toward fulfilling fair-togetherness among persons, whether those Persons are of the uncreated Deity or are created persons.
If not, then eh, who knows what results may follow. Maybe God would create a set of persons, ensure that they sin, and then choose not to save them from sin, as a variation in His exercise of mere power. Or, maybe He would do something else. Either option would be morally equivalent, since (in such a case) morality would have nothing ultimately to do with fair-togetherness between persons.
Without getting too bogged down and I haven’t read all the above as yet (time forbids at present) but just wanted to make a point regarding:
Quoting from Corpselight :
“That’s the question to discuss! The idea of “God’s glory” being God’s primary interest and motivation is the thing I’d like to explore.”
IMO
God performing a saving act which stems from His character which in essence is Love or anything else He does cannot be secondary in any sense. All His acts are primary, however seemingly trivial to us, In that if a thing is done by God it must surely by definition be totally worth doing, in fact of infinite worth, simply from the fact that He deems it so; deems it worth doing.
All God’s acts, His very being must bring Him glory.
Cheers
S
The fact that we are saved for his name’s sake tells me that salvation, and glory when it comes to God are mutually essential to one another. Might even perhaps, speculate to say mutually necessary. But for now I will stick with mutually essential.
Salvation glorifies God, and the glory of God brings Salvation.
God is internally and perfectly consistent, he doesn’t produce by-products, but purpose is in everything that he is, and does, without error.
If God’s grace doesn’t save, his grace did not bear fruit. If Salvation is for his name’s sake, then Salvation is for his glory, and if Salvation is not achieved, his glory suffers for it; as Salvation was not achieved for his name’s sake; and so fruit was not borne for his glory, and his glory is robbed. Salvation, Grace, and Glory - therefore, are mutually and equally dependent upon one another to achieve the purposes of God, not only in God’s actions, but in God’s being.
You might compare Salvation, Grace, and Glory’s mutual essentialness in achieving God’s purposes, and being to God’s love;
God loves, because God is Love.
God saves, because God is Salvation. God gives grace, because God is Grace. God is glorified, because God is Glory.
If God did not save; Salvation failed to save. If God did not give grace, Grace failed to be graceful. If God is not glorified unto himself by saving, and giving grace, and being himself; then Glory failed to be glorified by expressing his glory. If God does not love, then Love failed to love.
Effectively, God is no hypocrite; God is internally consistent. His “do” is in accord with his “who” and his “who” is in accord with his “do” - equally, and essentially, and perfectly. Error in his do, or his who, would necessitate a breaking of that internal consistency, which would render God - not-God.
Exactly well put. Lefein
Nope. Salvation is the goal of God’s grace, not a by-product.
i love how inevitably the “Discussion Negative” threads become “Discussion Affirmative” threads.
thanks for starting this discussion, Oxy…this continues the trend of “counter-arguments” serving to cause me to believe even stronger in God’s universal reconciliaton of us all.
Considering that in the Incarnation YHWH insists on having the name Yeshua, “The Lord Saves” or “The Lord Is Salvation”, if God refused to save any sinner YHWH Himself would be denying the name of YHWH!
Which, we are told numerous times, would not be expedient for anyone to do. 
I feel a need to revisit and re-emphasize a point I discussed yesterday.
Mr. Vincent: I choose to believe you weren’t intentionally disparaging the salvation and the grace of God as being of no account. But your implied argument only works if salvation is only an incidental by-product (not a primary result) of grace toward sinners, and if grace is only an incidental by-product (not a primary result) of God’s glory.
Universalists, along with at least some Arminians, believe God’s grace is not only a primary result of God’s glory, it actually is God’s glory; consequently the salvation of sinners is a primary result of God’s glory exhibited to sinners. But I also know Calvinists who would rather spit one of their kidneys out their nose than to regard the grace of God as being nothing more than a mere by-product result of God’s glory, much less the salvation of God being nothing more than a mere by-product result of God’s grace.
The problem is that if God’s grace is at least a primary result of God’s glory (much moreso is God’s glory–a position uniquely strong in trinitarian theism compared to any other theism), then God’s grace is not some merely incidental disposable action that God might easily cast aside or refuse to do toward a person. Similarly if salvation of sinners from sin is a primary result of God’s grace (even though admittedly not equivalent to God’s grace, God can be gracious to unfallen creatures who have never sinned, much moreso the Persons of God to each other), then salvation of sinners from sin cannot be some merely incidental disposable action that God might easily cast aside or refuse to do toward a person.
But Calvinism, in whatever variant, requires that God’s salvation of sinners from sin, and even God’s grace, must be something God can easily refuse to do toward a person. That’s why it’s tempting to regard God’s salvation of sinners, and even God’s grace, as being merely a by-product. The more central and strong God’s grace is, the more central and strong God’s grace is to sinners, too; but even soft Calvinism must deny God acts with any saving grace at all, or even ever intended to ever act with saving grace, toward some sinners (the ones God chooses not to elect for salvation). Those two ideas are at conceptual tension with each other.
I urgently implore you to consider that, Mr. Vincent. I understand there can be a pressure among Calvinists, because of inherent characteristics of Calvinist theology, to regard God’s salvation and even God’s grace as being of only incidental worth, basically of no account except for the mere convenience of those God chooses to give it to. But that is not a biblical doctrine, and if anything the scriptures warn explicitly against regarding the salvation and the grace of God as being of no account.
If someone has been teaching you to think of God’s salvation and grace this way, I strenuously recommend you either ditch them (for another Calvinist teacher if you must) or plant a giant red warning flag over that part of their presentation.
An inadvertent error on this can be easily excused, but still needs correcting as soon as possible out of respect and love for God and the truth.
To intentionally disparage the salvation and the grace of God, though?–in order to argue against the salvation of the unrighteous into righteousness and in favor of the permanent existence of unrighteousness?!–and against the salvation of people other than yourself?!!
I really don’t have words strong enough to warn against doing that.
(But the scriptures sure do.)
Hi Jason,
I agree with what you and others have been saying in response to Oxy - and just to be clear, the agreement I expressed in my response was with the last thing Oxy said (“Salvation’s main focus is to display God’s glory. Agree or disagree?”), not with his description of salvation as a “by-product.” I too think the expression was inappropriate, but I think what he might have been trying to say is that our salvation (while very much important to God and, I believe, a necessary expression of his benevolent nature) is secondary in importance to the display of God’s glory (and, I would add, the upholding of his reputation).
Also, I just wanted to let you know that I responded to a few things you’ve said on this thread on another thread that I felt would be more appropriate to continue the discussion on (UK Radio Show - On Universalism). Hope that’s cool.
Would anyone care to comment on this message by Piper?
Is God for Us or for Himself? by John Piper
A snippet …
And the conclusion …
Sonia