Who here thinks they are one of God’s elect?
I think I am
Why?
Because although I sometimes stray away from Him I always end up returning to Him
I believe in the Calvinist notion of “Irresistible Grace”
That if God wants you there is no means of escaping Him
I think that the reason why I always return to God is because of irresistible igrace
Although I am a Hindu, I find this topic a bit interesting. I know about it because my father is a Christian and he believes in the five points of Calvinism. What you call Irresistible Grace is of course one of those five points or doctrines. When I was a Christian, I was deeply interested in soteriology, so I learned a lot about the views of Augustine, Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, and Arminius on the 'mechanics' of salvation. Moreover, I used to read certain Pauline epistles back then through the lenses of those soteriologies in order to find out which one was more consistent with Paul's writings. My eventual conclusion, which I came to shortly before leaving Christianity, was that the best way to understand Paul's soteriology is to ask him for clarification on it, which can't be done today without a time machine.
The doctrine of Irresistible Grace is of course tied to the doctrine of Unconditional Election, the teaching that the specific human individuals who are meant to obtain salvation in Christ were chosen for it before creation and not according to any foreseen merit of their own. Because they are unconditionally chosen for salvation, they have to be irresistibly drawn to Christ by God and never die in unbelief. With respect to human beings who were not elected to salvation, some Calvinists believe in double predestination while others don't. Double predestination is the view that just as some individuals were elected or predestined to salvation, other individuals were predestined to damnation. What my father told me is that everybody equally deserves damnation, but God chose to save some of them to the praise of his mercy and to leave the rest to damnation to the praise of his justice.
In Hinduism, there is a doctrine about election found in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, which is one of the Vedic scriptures, but the teaching is very, very different from any Christian understanding of election. It has absolutely nothing to do with Israel, the Church, Jesus of Nazareth, salvation, damnation, etc. Instead, it is concerned with how an individual attains the ultimate goal, namely,
mokṣa, liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. The Upaniṣad says, "This Soul (Ātman) is not to be obtained by instruction, / Nor by intellect, nor by much learning. / He is to be obtained only by the one whom He chooses; / To such a one that Soul (Ātman) reveals his own person" (Kaṭha Upanishad 2.23). In other words, realization of the Self or Ātman (translated
Soul in the quotation), who is the very source of existence as we know it, occurs when the Self chooses to reveal itself to an individual. Academic or intellectual knowledge about the Self will not directly make us Self-realized. Lastly, considering that the Vedas teach that we live countless lifetimes in the cycle of death and rebirth, there is no concept of everlasting damnation in Hinduism. Madhvāchārya might beg to differ though.
My apologies for the long post.
Works Cited
Kaṭha Upanishad.
The Thirteen Principal Upanishads: Translated from the Sanskrit with an Outline of the Philosophy of the Upanishads and an Annotated Bibliography, translated by Robert Ernest Hume, Oxford University Press, 1921, pp. 341-61.
Internet Archive, archive.org/details/thirteenprincipa028442mbp.
