ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1
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mitchellmckain
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The reason I am not Calvinist is not because I limit the power of God in the slightest. I agree that God can indeed be the cause of our actions if He chooses to be. I am not a Calvinist because I firmly believe that God does not wish to be the cause of our actions, but that, in fact, the predicament of mankind is entirely a result of God's DEMAND that we be the cause of our own actions. Therefore, when we refuse that responsibility, God does not take up the slack but hands us over to the devil, sin and evil, to suffer the consequences of our irresponsibility.RobE said:
Sounds good except that this is utterly contrary to the facts of Christian life and experience. It would indeed be "nice" if God would indeed control our life and make everything hunky dory. But it is rather obvious that God often puts us (back?) in the driver seat to make a mess of things in order for us to learn from our own mistakes. And the reaon for this cannot simply be to confirm the surrender of our will to him returning again and again to one simple lesson. That would amount to God ridiculing and taunting us. No, the only reason God would do such a thing is because having us simply do the right thing is not His ultimate objective. His ultimate objective is rather the transformation of our will so that we will do what is right of our own free will (sanctification).RobE said:
It is also clear to me that God's objective is not furthered by insisting that every good thing that we do is a result of the work of God alone. This is in fact an example of particularly bad parenting practice which insist that the parent is responsible for every good thing that the child does. Raising a child in this manner by insisting that the child can only feel responsible for the mistakes in his life is a recipe for crushing his spirit and ruining his life. I have no small doubt, in fact, that excessive application of Calvinist philosophy to parenting has produced such results.
Don't get me wrong. I would not dream of repudiating this aspect of Christian experience for I think it is the narrowing of view of Christian experience to the experience of a few that is the essense of heresy. Surrender to God is indeed an important part of the Christian experience and even our will must be surrendered (for various amounts of time) in order for God to reshape and return it to His original specifications.RobE said:
BUT, I think this conclusion of yours is the result of confusion between human free will and human habit. The first is the excercise of choice which determines how the second is established. Once habit is established, free will plays a diminishing role. Breaking these habits requires a an enormous act of will which most human beings are rarely capable of, often requiring the intervention of God. But one must realize that this is NOT a violation of our free will, but a part of its God's work to return that free will to our own posession.
This is why repentance is such an important part of the process of salvation. Salvation is NOT simply accepting a free gift by which all our problems are put behind us by letting God take control of our life. It MUST begin with an acknowledgement of ones sins, accepting full repsonsibility for mess we have made of our own lives. For God will NOT take a controling role in our lives with out this precondition of first embracing our own ultimate responsibility for our own lives.
Indeed Cavinism at one end of the spectrum of Christianity and I think it is proper to accept the whole spectrum as the fullness of the body of Christ. For some, the emphasis upon the surrender to God is the most essential part of their salvation experience and for others a growing sense of responsibility is the most important part. My rejection of all five points of Calvinism is not a matter of completely rejecting all merit in them. Indeed, in the case of some of them, it is by the barest and thinnest of reasons that I reject them.RobE said:
But if squashing Christian experience into the one-sided view of Calvinism is heretical in its rejection of large portions of the Christian experience, then squashing Christian experience into the one-sided view of Open Theism at the other end of the spectrum is no less heretical. Heresy is always the product of human attempts at oversimplification, for it is in this that the inexperienced Christians are vulnerable to being misled and manipulated. It is the tradition of the eccumenical councils of the fourth century to accept a compromise view embracing all the complexity of the Christian experience as well as all the scriptures with all its apparent contradictions, so that nothing of God's saving work and grace through Jesus Christ will be lost.
RobE said:
Lets take an example from a common movie theme. A kidnapper of some important person sends ransom demands. The kinapper's knowledge of police procedure and his control of the situation allows him to arrange things so that it is by police action against his instructions that a trap is triggered and the kidnap victim is killed. Who is responsible for the victim's death? Who is the cause?
I am not suggesting that the situation is identical but only parallel, for in the case of God we are talking about considerably more knowledge and control over the situation and in the case of human beings we are talking about the very choices we make (and not just the consequences of those choices). For our very choices are themselves subject to manipulation by those who know us well and can exploit our weaknesses. And God knowing precisely and absolutely how we will respond to whatever influence He has in our life cannot result in anything but absolute control over our choices.
Agree!Lonster said:
True! Because we are all responsible for our own actions/sin.
Unless of course He ordained it to be that way as settled viewers assert.
RobE
New member
Thank you for your honest and straightforward post. When reading this reply, keep in mind that my own perspective and presuppositions will take the front seat within my responses. This does not mean that they are right in reality only that they are right from my perspective and my opinionated reality.
I will answer the last statement first to achieve consistency in my thoughts.
I find the use of the term absolute control to be misleading when speaking of knowledge. Does information necessarily lead to control even in view of God's omnipotence? My position would say as you have said here.....
I would posit that God provides for us the Grace or means to be the cause of our own actions. This is not control when it only enables us to cooperatively achieve the outcome which He desires without coercion. Perfect balance must be maintained to achieve justice.
If we allow God to control our life is the key to this. He has allowed. His desire is to allow. It is not, as you have stated(and we agree), His desire to control; but His desire is to teach, instruct, support, nurture, and etc.; "so that we will do what is right of our own free will(sanctification). Isn't it true that we naturally surrender our free will to outside forces?
Nor do I insist that God works alone. He is relational, loving, and wishes to share with us creation. It's this cooperation which is noted by the Church fathers which is what I was attempting to adress in the previous post.
It may well be the essence of heresy, but my post wanted to point towards the cooperative effort and the opportunity which the Lord has given us.
Grace certainly entails the power to break the chains and achieve freedom from our habitual sin. We agree. I would just want to consider how we developed those habits to begin with and why.
Agreed.
Calvinism and open theism in its earliest forms were deemed heretical. These decisions were made on the basis that both would have to reject infallible scripture. That the truth lay between the two positions. I agree with this. Only in accepting the position of Augustine and other church fathers are we able to see all of God's saving work and grace through Jesus Christ preserved.
Nothing should be ignored since all is true. Re-stating or re-writing the scripture is not the way to achieve enlightenment.
Finally, I must ask for clarification on your statement:
I need the clarification because it would appear that the term 'absolute control' would mean that God goes beyond sufficiency of Grace into overwhelming Grace. This I disagree with.
And I guess I'm missing your response to my alternate premise:
Rob
I will answer the last statement first to achieve consistency in my thoughts.
I find the use of the term absolute control to be misleading when speaking of knowledge. Does information necessarily lead to control even in view of God's omnipotence? My position would say as you have said here.....
mitchellmckain said:
I would posit that God provides for us the Grace or means to be the cause of our own actions. This is not control when it only enables us to cooperatively achieve the outcome which He desires without coercion. Perfect balance must be maintained to achieve justice.
If we allow God to control our life is the key to this. He has allowed. His desire is to allow. It is not, as you have stated(and we agree), His desire to control; but His desire is to teach, instruct, support, nurture, and etc.; "so that we will do what is right of our own free will(sanctification). Isn't it true that we naturally surrender our free will to outside forces?
Nor do I insist that God works alone. He is relational, loving, and wishes to share with us creation. It's this cooperation which is noted by the Church fathers which is what I was attempting to adress in the previous post.
It may well be the essence of heresy, but my post wanted to point towards the cooperative effort and the opportunity which the Lord has given us.
Grace certainly entails the power to break the chains and achieve freedom from our habitual sin. We agree. I would just want to consider how we developed those habits to begin with and why.
Agreed.
Calvinism and open theism in its earliest forms were deemed heretical. These decisions were made on the basis that both would have to reject infallible scripture. That the truth lay between the two positions. I agree with this. Only in accepting the position of Augustine and other church fathers are we able to see all of God's saving work and grace through Jesus Christ preserved.
Nothing should be ignored since all is true. Re-stating or re-writing the scripture is not the way to achieve enlightenment.
Finally, I must ask for clarification on your statement:
And God knowing precisely and absolutely how we will respond to whatever influence He has in our life cannot result in anything but absolute control over our choices.
I need the clarification because it would appear that the term 'absolute control' would mean that God goes beyond sufficiency of Grace into overwhelming Grace. This I disagree with.
And I guess I'm missing your response to my alternate premise:
Your premise 3 would be acceptable if it mentioned necessity.
i.e. Premise3 version 3: God, having unlimited power, knowledge, and presence; has a pervasive, intimate, and inescapable impact on all events in your life according to His desire to do so(which isn't born out of necessity)
i.e. Premise3 version 3: God, having unlimited power, knowledge, and presence; has a pervasive, intimate, and inescapable impact on all events in your life according to His desire to do so(which isn't born out of necessity)
Rob
If the knowledge is EXHAUSTIVE then you do in fact lose choice. That's why the past is settled: because we (and God) have EXHAUSTIVE knowledge of it.Lonster said:
EXHAUSTIVE knowledge leaves no stone unturned (so to speak). EXHAUSTIVE knowledge includes everything and leaves out nothing.
You do indeed have foreknowledge about your wifes future. You do not have EXHAUSTIVE foreknowledge about your wifes future.
That's true and nobody would suggest otherwise.
But now lets assume that God knew an eternity ago that your wife would call in sick this morning.
Assuming God's EXHAUSTIVE foreknowledge was accurate (if it wasn't accurate it wouldn't be knowledge or exhaustive) then your wife had NO choice but too get sick and call in to work this morning.
Not if God knew accurately an eternity ago this would take place.
Exactly! You don't have exhaustive foreknowledge therefore no matter how many examples like this you dream up they will never be relevant to the discussion because they are not accurate analogies.
If your analogy is accurate you do not believe that God has EXHAUSTIVE foreknowledge.
A. Do you believe that God has EXHAUSTIVE foreknowledge?
B. Do you believe that there has ever been a time when God did not have EXHAUSTIVE foreknowledge?
C. Do you believe that God's foreknowledge is accurate?
mitchellmckain
New member
Your qualification is a bit of a tautology. How could his influence not be according to His will. The question we are considering is how is possible for God's pervasive, intimate and inescapable impact on the events of our life including our choices, not to be a controlling impact? If every detail of our choices and actions are precisely according to His will then that is a controlling impact. How is it possible in face of God irresistable power and knowledge for any choice or action on our part to be a consequence of our own will rather than God's? Yes it is God's will that our free will have some control over what we choose and so to that extent what we do is "within" His will, but which choice we actually make is according to our will - that is what free will means, is it not?RobE said:
It does not mean this precisely because I reject the idea that God knows precisely and absolutely how we will respond to His influence, and that God does not know this because He chooses not to. If God's choices are based on a knowledge of precisely and absolutely how we will respond to His influence, then it is God's choices that determine our actions rather than our choices because God inflence is obviously irresistable. The only way for our free will to exist is therefore if God refrains from such knowledge. It is the lesson of quantum physics that knowlege cannot be competely divorced from interference when the observer is a part of the system which he observes. Some things can exist an indeterminate state and knowing its state is indistinguishable from changing it from that indeterminate state to a determined one. The very act of knowing determines the state of reality.RobE said:
Therefore it is necessary to understand God's omniscience as meaning that all knowledge is available to God if He chooses to have it, and not that God is chained to our definition of Him as omniscient, such that He has no choice but know everything. Is God capable of giving us privacy? My answer is yes. God is capable of giving us whatever privacy He chooses us to have and that, in fact, our free will rests on the privacy He gives us regarding our future choices.
This point of view can be called an orthodox version of Open Theism that rests somewhere between the extremes of Calvinism on one end and Open Theism on the other. Naturally, this point of view is not much different from your liberal Calvinism that likewise rests somewhere between the extremes of Calvinism on one end and Open Theism on the other.
RobE
New member
mitchellmckain said:
His influence may not be according to His will when His will is(and his influence enables)to 'allow'.
Through allowance.
It is.
I have considered this and it may well be true.
Calvinism.
My reply:
Not when God has competing wills. One for man to freely choose and the other for man to choose Him. For this reason grace is given only to the point of being sufficient and resistable. Foreknowledge is necessary to achieve the dispensation of Grace. How else could it be said that the Grace given was indeed sufficient enough to make the responsiblity the man's own.
This applies to the present state of affairs, but not to a contingent(and non-existent) future. It being indistinguishable from the event may be perspectively accurate, but not realistically accurate. You're right in stating that it 'cannot be completely divorced from interference' and it is not through the administration of graces. Is the future real?
I completely agree that it is not necessary for God to have no choice but know everything.
I disagree that free will rests on the privacy since the outcomes of knowledge are not necessary to be realized for the knowledge to be true.
I prefer the term 'Traditional Christianity'.
Let me appeal to authority for a moment.....
From Augustine's Confessions, pp 78,79:
For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? ... Thou lovest, and burnest not; art jealous, yet free from care; repentest, and hast no sorrow; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy ways, leaving unchanged Thy plans; recoverest what Thou findest, having yet never lost; art never in want, whilst Thou rejoicest in gain; never covetous, though requiring usury ... [Emphases added]
From the Letters of Augustine, pp. 949, 950
... this Word of God, I say, took to Himself, in a manner entirely different from that in which He is present to other creatures, the soul and body of a man, and made, by the union of Himself therewith, the one person Jesus Christ, Mediator between God and men, His Deity equal with the Father, in His flesh, i.e. in His human nature, inferior to the Father, unchangeably immortal in respect of the divine nature, in which He is equal with the Father, and yet changeable and mortal in respect of the infirmity which was His through participation with our nature. [Emphases added]
Thanks for your detailed reply,
Rob
themuzicman
Well-known member
RobE said:
That's fine. The problem isn't that a decision was or wasn't contingent in the past. The problem is whether it is STILL contingint at the point the decision is made. And it's not.
Well, you'd have to show that the principle in 5 is false, first.
But we're not proving free will. We're demonstrating the incompatibility between free will (which you've defined fairly well) and EDF. If you deny free will is possible, then you're a determinist. It's OK to say that.
There are lots of people who consider things that God has done to be evil, so I can't definitively say 'no'.
Ah, there's one source of confusion. You're confusing unlimited ability with free will. I don't have the ability to choose to flap my arms to the moon, but that isn't a limitation of my will, but a limitation of my ability.
Because it's His choice.
No, the definition of free will dictates the ability to choose or refrain from doing something that is an option to us.
Literally:
IF agene X in circumstance Y at time Z, X may do A or ~A.
So, it's not a matter of whether God or you or me are able to do ANYTHING, but whether we are able to do or refrain from doing the things that are options for us.
No one has said that. I've already shown the error, here.
And there is an equivocation, here, too. You're saying that foreknowledge of what we will specifically do is the same as claiming to have general knowledge of what God will NOT do, because of His promise to us.
So, there is a logical error, as well.
yes, but this is a far different claim than saying that I know everything that Jesus Christ will do. It's apple and oranges.
Sorry, but your logic doesn't hold up. You're equivocating all over the place.
Muz
RobE
New member
Musicman,
I would like to focus the conversation on premise #9 and the presupposition which comes with it.
1. We infallibly foreknow that God will never do otherwise in the case of refraining from evil.
2. The fact that we foreknow this (according to premises #1-#8) means that God is unable to do otherwise.
3. Premise #9 would then state that God's will is not free when considering to do evil or not.
Are you able to see my equivocation better in this form?
When applying these premises to known quantities instead of hypotheticals does it survive scrutiny?
What happens to righteousness when we apply this in this fashion?
Do I infallibly know that God will refrain from sin in the future?
Rob
I would like to focus the conversation on premise #9 and the presupposition which comes with it.
1. We infallibly foreknow that God will never do otherwise in the case of refraining from evil.
2. The fact that we foreknow this (according to premises #1-#8) means that God is unable to do otherwise.
3. Premise #9 would then state that God's will is not free when considering to do evil or not.
T = God would refrain from sin in the future.
(1) Yesterday we infallibly believed T. [Supposition of infallible foreknowledge]
(2) If E occurred in the past, it is now-necessary that E occurred then. [Principle of the Necessity of the Past]
(3) It is now-necessary that yesterday we believed T. [1, 2]
(4) Necessarily, if yesterday we believed T, then T. [Definition of "infallibility"]
(5) If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p → q), then q is now-necessary. [Transfer of Necessity Principle]
(6) So it is now-necessary that T. [3,4,5]
(7) If it is now-necessary that T, then God cannot do otherwise than refrain from sin in the future. [Definition of "necessary"]
(8) Therefore, God cannot do otherwise than refrain from sin in the future. [6, 7]
(9) If you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]
(10) Therefore, when God refrains from evil in the future, he doesn't do it freely. [8, 9]
(1) Yesterday we infallibly believed T. [Supposition of infallible foreknowledge]
(2) If E occurred in the past, it is now-necessary that E occurred then. [Principle of the Necessity of the Past]
(3) It is now-necessary that yesterday we believed T. [1, 2]
(4) Necessarily, if yesterday we believed T, then T. [Definition of "infallibility"]
(5) If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p → q), then q is now-necessary. [Transfer of Necessity Principle]
(6) So it is now-necessary that T. [3,4,5]
(7) If it is now-necessary that T, then God cannot do otherwise than refrain from sin in the future. [Definition of "necessary"]
(8) Therefore, God cannot do otherwise than refrain from sin in the future. [6, 7]
(9) If you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]
(10) Therefore, when God refrains from evil in the future, he doesn't do it freely. [8, 9]
Are you able to see my equivocation better in this form?
When applying these premises to known quantities instead of hypotheticals does it survive scrutiny?
What happens to righteousness when we apply this in this fashion?
Do I infallibly know that God will refrain from sin in the future?
Rob
themuzicman
Well-known member
RobE said:
mitchellmckain
New member
You appear to have some difficulty with conditional statement. When someone says, "if A then B", they are not asserting B and they are not asserting A. But such a statement does allow you to conclude "if not B then not A". Which is precisely my purpose for making the statement. So when I say,RobE said:
"If God's choices are based on a knowledge of precisely and absolutely how we will respond to His influence, then it is God's choices that determine our actions rather than our choices because God inflence is obviously irresistable"
My intent is to say that God's choices are NOT based on a knowledge of precisely and absolutely how we will respond to His influence, because what you call Calvinism, that "God's choices that determine our actions rather than our choices" is not acceptable.
These are just words. If God knows what we will do as a consequence of His own choices then what we do is a consequence of His choices rather than ours. Therefore I deny that He has any such knowledge, by His own choice.RobE said:
Competing wills? God is conflicted? Contradiction vanishes here with clarity of thought. God's will is for us to live, but our life requires us to connect with the source of life ("choose Him" as you say). But this avails nothing if we do not choose freely. Free will is the essence of life, therefore we cannot live unless we choose Him of our own free will. So it is by the Grace of God that He intervenes in our life to liberate our free will from the bondage of sin sufficient for us to make a choice. It is just that many people living long in the habits of sin feel like they are dragged against their will because they confuse these habits with their free will. Our free will is clearly seen afterwards when we are free to return to our sin like a dog to its vomit, if we so choose.RobE said:
It would be fair to say that I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. I see no reason why foreknowledge is necessary to achieve Grace. Certainly I do not see any reason why God's providence requires anything like exhaustive foreknowledge. Grace is not about prediction but about a relationship with God. Either we are under the relentless downward acceleration of the law of sin (like the law of gravity) or we are in the hands of God. Grace is sufficient because God is sufficient and He does not need to predict when He is there to take whatever action is needed to make it so.RobE said:
I think perhaps you are confusing Grace with the fact that we can only know who is saved by to who makes it to the end. But God knows who He has taken into His care without any such foreknowledge.
I think the question of whether the future is real or exists is irrelevant, for this is merely a matter of ones point of view. We can think of the future existing and yet retain free will if some aspects of the future exists in an indeterminate state. Do not forget that Christianity includes things like prophecy and predestination. One can think of our world of time and space as book for which God has written the broad outlines while leaving portions or details of the story for us to write ourselves. God can open the book to any page but why would He do such a thing? For the greatest enjoyment and participation in our live, aesthetics dictates that He will read the book in a time ordered fashion, and therefore not knowing the portions we write until the proper time.RobE said:
It is another lesson of physics that it often takes several seemingly contradictory ways of looking at the same thing to get a complete understanding of it.
Your reasoning here is not intellegible to me.RobE said:
That is a misuse of the this term I think, because I believe Traditional Christianity embraces the whole spectrum of Christian experience from Calvinism to Open Theism. The term Traditional Christianity more usually refers the the results of the fourth century eccumenical councils and the emphasis on the teachings of Paul as the basis for Christian theology, which is why I like to call it "Pauline Christianity" (although I must admit that calling it this would certainly have horrified the apostle Paul himself). In any case this term refers to the constrast with such groups as Mormons, Jehova Witnesses and the Moonies who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus and who draw much of their ideas from the Bible but who do not abide by the eccumenical councils and have a bit of difficulty with the teachings of the apostle Paul.RobE said:
I not only do not recognize the authority of Augustine, I do not even hold him in much regard. I consider the means by which his difficulties with Pelagius were resolved to be typical of the depths to which the Catholic church (and Augustine himself) had sunk. Sure the views of Pelagius were extreme but no more so than Augustine himself (with the heavy influence of Manicheaism he brought to Christianity) who once said that salvation was simply a matter of God selecting replacements for the angels that had fallen. I do not see the hand God working in the church (as in the eccumenical councils) past the fourth century. For while in the fourth century eccumenical councils we see divinely inspired compromise to embrace the fullness of Chritianity, in later autocratic decisions of the Catholic church we see a narrowing of Christianity as typified by Augustine's condemnation of Pelagius.RobE said:
RobE
New member
theMusicMan said:
I think you are missing the point that God's future actions are definitely foreknown and He will also remain free during His future decisions.
My point is that freedom does not require the ability to do otherwise. Making premise #9 invalid. It only requires that you are able to do that which you want to do.
Righteousness requires one to choose right over wrong does it not? If the choice isn't real(according to the premises) then neither is the righteousness according to the definition.
Why not? Isn't God powerful enough to violate His own Word such as He supposedly did in the cases with Nineveh or Tyre?
Rob
RobE
New member
I'm not sure what I meant here either.
Anyway.....Unacceptable?
I spoke to Calvinism when you mentioned irresistable Grace.
When I speak of foreknowledge being needed to establish the sufficiency of Grace, I'm speaking that God must know in advance what His influences will produce. This seems reasonable. How could it be said that the Grace was sufficient if it could not possibly produce the desired result in any circumstance?
Bear with me, I'm a little more obtuse than most,
Rob
Lon
Well-known member
patman said:
Naw, this was a good example because it is actually what does happen in the automotive industry. They are not executed. They just do the recall and hide the paperwork of defect until after the fact "we just discovered it after the cars were sold." Maybe it's just the starter? That doesn't create deaths. I don't know, I'm just assuming you went for the worst case scenario. In our case, it isn't a defective part, it is user/driver abuse. We took a Cadillac offroad. This is the reality. It wasn't that God created defective people. He created people to not do something and they were tempted to do it anyway by the deceiver. It is just like taking a cadillac offroad, a no-brainer. "Don't do it."
Tree-garden, "Don't do it."
Eliminating objections with a view like Open doesn't answer the question, it just proposes to eliminate the question. "God didn't know you were going to take a Cadillac offroad."
I like my SV answer: "God didn't make Cadillacs for offroad ventures. No wonder you are stuck there in the mud in that ravine. After He comes by to get you outta that rut, stay on the road!" Note also, it isn't the misperception "God wanted you to get stuck in that rut in that ravine so He could pull you out." We get characterized with that answer, but it isn't correct. God never planned for us to get in a sin rut. We were supposed to stay on the straight road.
Lon
Well-known member
patman said:
This is somewhat true, but what you are leaving out is that we all are players in this scenario and outcome. God's foreknowledge is based on 'our' actual choices made.
In the same way history past doesn't change though we freely made choices. Even though we can choose 'between' several options, we only ever choose just 'one' in a series of choices. It is very linear. It is always linear. I cannot choose to either go to sleep now or two hours from now after the choice has been made. I will either choose to do so now or in two hours, not both. We always have but one actual choice. Many options, but only one choice. We are free to make only one choice. In a CD store, I can walk away from it with many choices of CD's but my choice is the only one that is reality.
I don't get hung up on the guy watching me from the counter. He knows what I finally chose, but it doesn't mean he had anything to do with my choice (he could have by suggestion or serving my purchase). If God knows our choices beforehand, it doesn't mean anything about my freedom of choice.
Lon
Well-known member
mitchellmckain said:
We as humans affect other's freewill all the time. Freewill is never absolute. There are times we are very constrained in our freewill. If a road is blocked by a working crew, I have no choice but to take a detour. My freewill has been over ridden. God does impose on our freewill. I make choices about it, but it is an imposition nonetheless. I have been asked to be loving and refrain from sin by Him. This greatly constrains my freewill as I choose to follow and obey and this by free choice. God requests it, we choose to constrain ourselves and comply.
Bob Hill
TOL Subscriber
We can see from these passages,
Deut 8:2 And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Deut 9:13,14 “Furthermore the LORD spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stiff-necked people. 14 ‘Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’”
Deut 9:18-20 “And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger. 19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was angry with you, to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me at that time also. 20 And the LORD was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.”
Deut 13:1-3 “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’ - which you have not known - ‘and let us serve them,’ 3 “you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
God doesn't know some of the future according to these passages.
Bob Hill
Deut 8:2 And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Deut 9:13,14 “Furthermore the LORD spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stiff-necked people. 14 ‘Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’”
Deut 9:18-20 “And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger. 19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was angry with you, to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me at that time also. 20 And the LORD was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.”
Deut 13:1-3 “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’ - which you have not known - ‘and let us serve them,’ 3 “you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
God doesn't know some of the future according to these passages.
Bob Hill
mitchellmckain
New member
That is why your response seemed so strange to me. I was arguing against irresistable Grace and against Calvinism in favor of some modified version of Open Theism,, which holds that God does NOT know what our future choices will be. I call this modified version, Orthodox Open Theism, because this lack of knowledge is a matter of choice rather than inability.RobE said:I'm not sure what I meant here either.
Unacceptable?
I spoke to Calvinism when you mentioned irresistable Grace.
Since God is not aloof but intimately involved in our lives, our choices cannot be independent of God's involvement, which means that if God knows what we will do as a result of His involvement then the manner in which He chooses to involve Himself effectively controls what we will do. Therefore the only way that God can both be intimately involved in our lives and yet not control our choices is if He does not know how we will respond to the manner in which He chooses to involve Himself.
I suppose it can be argued that He does know but refuses to allow that knowledge to affect His decisions. But this is beyond belief. The smallest gesture or kind word is usually all that is needed to change how people will respond. And the refusal to make such a gesture or kind word does not in any way sound like the God described by Jesus who knows the numbers of hairs on our head and who would not give us a stone if we asked for bread. NO! The only thing that explains God's inaction is that our free will absolutely depends on Him not knowing how we will respond to His involvement in our lives. Thus He does give what kind word or gesture that His reason or heart advises but without absolute foreknowledge of their effect upon our choices.
NO!!!!!! His Grace only needs to bring liberation from the enslavement to the habits of sin to a sufficient degree and span of time that we have a free choice. Grace therefore actually obliterates the "foreknowledge" that arises from the predictable nature of our sinful habits. In other words it is just the opposite of what you say. Grace requires the removal of foreknowledge.RobE said:
God's Grace is sufficient because acceptance brings a living relationship with the living God who is sufficient for the solution of any problem. But that relationship is only offered and is therefore subject to our refusal. God does not know in advance whether His influence will result in our salvation or not (because it is our free will and choice which decides this). To know that would be irresistable Grace.
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