A while ago, I found out that the word church comes from the Greek "ekklesia," which means "a called out assembly."
I found out recently that "elect" comes from the Greek "eklektos," which seems to have been translated faithfully into English.
I guess ekklesia is technically a derivative of "kaleo" ("to call") but the relationship to eklektos seems obvious to me.
I know there's a lot of differing opinions out there about the relationship between election, predestination, and God's foreknowledge, but to me, I feel like this is what I see in the Bible:
The "church" (ekklesia) is a called out assembly of elect (eklekta) and predestined individuals, not simply foreknown about but foreknown *BY* God (because you wouldn't fill an ekklesia with people you didn't know) for the express purpose of conforming us to the likeness of the Son.
Does this sound right, based off the Greek words? My mom calls me Calvinist and my dad says it's a heresy. I feel like I can't un-see this in my Bible. I feel that people who boil it all down simply to foreknowledge (meaning, God does not choose His elect, He just knows ahead of time who will and won't be saved) basically just say that words don't mean what they clearly mean, and that's their whole argument. They skip right over every instance of the words "elect" and "predestine" in their Bibles and use the occasional "foreknown" as a get-out-of-jail-free card so that they don't have to wrestle with tough theology. Or am I just retarded? I would love to know other people's opinions on this and refine my own.