@Samuel_23, before addressing anything else I would like to address this:
Your view aligns with limited predestination, where God chooses some for salvation, and “passes by” others leaving reprobation a mystery.
This would be incorrect. I don’t subscribe to this view; as you note here:
Damnation results from human rejection, not divine neglect
That is true. God has not passed by, nor neglected anyone. This view that God has chosen some, while passing by or “neglecting” others is associated with the Reformed Tradition, specifically the TULIP, or five points of orthodox Calvinism as defined at the Synod of Dordtrecht.
Because Reformed Protestantism (in both the Calvinist, as well as the Arminian off-shoot expressions) is the predominant form of Protestantism in much of the globe–in particular the English-speaking world, there is often a tendency both among Protestants as well as among non-Protestants to understand the subject of election and predestination within a Calvinist-Arminian dichotomy.
However the Lutheran Tradition is an emphatically distinct theological tradition. There are some similarities between the Lutheran and Reformed Traditions, some similarities are because there are things we do, in fact, agree on; other similarities however are less similar than they first appear; and then in some cases there is only a superficial similarity. The matter of Predestination is an example of the latter. Both Lutherans and Reformed speak enthusiastically about Predestination, but we do not mean the same thing.
In the Reformed Tradition predestination is about God’s Sovereign decree, God’s decree that certain persons would be saved, predestined in Christ for salvation. This is decree, based solely on God’s Sovereign choice is why it is called Unconditional Election in TULIP. And it is rooted in this idea that the rest of TULIP continues: Limited Atonement (Christ died only for the elect), Irresistable Grace (those who are elected to salvation will believe, for God has sovereignly chose and predestined them, and so this grace cannot be resisted), and finally Perseverance of the Saints (those predestined, the elect, cannot fall away).
Lutheranism does not agree with any of that. The Lutheran Tradition might give a suspicious nod to Unconditional Election, essentially we’d put a big giant asterisk by it, and have to go on to clarify and explain where we depart from the Reformed understanding. We can agree with our Reformed friends that Election is not dependent upon anything we do, so it is not as though predestination means that God foresaw what we would say/do and then chose us based on His foreknowledge. God doesn’t know we will say yes, and then choose us beforehand based on that knowledge; rather God’s choosing us is an efficient cause of our salvation–we believe because God chose us. However, here is the huge asterisk: We do not believe that God, in His Eternity, decreed who would believe (thereby choosing them), with the implication that therefore there are those not chosen, and who would not believe (what you have called “divine neglect” in your post). That is to say, God did not go around saying, “You, you, not you, you”. Thus Predestination is not based on God’s Sovereign Decree. That is not what makes Election unconditional; what makes Election unconditional is that God, in His love, chose us in Christ. God’s love is not conditional, but unconditional–for God loves all. No exceptions.
-continued in the next post-
