ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1

[Delmar]

First of all, your arguments concerning God's will, intelect and emotions are all based on anthropomorphisms of God,

How do you know that?

as if God's image could be understood by human characteristics.

God is clever enough to explain things so that even I can understand them.

All humans have will, intelect, emotions, ect., yet none of those characteristics are a reflection of God in a humanity that is in sin.

Adam and Eve were created with all those properties before the fall

The image of God is not held in us but in Christ (who had will, intelect and emotions the same as us, thus making God's image something quite distinct from those qualities). Will, intelect, and emotions are not what make us like God. In fact, I find that even animals have volition (will), intelect, and emotions, yet they are not "created in the image of God." On top of this, any argument made concerning the fact that such traits must be grounded in time assumes that we could actually know what timelessness was. And the fact that such traits are contingent qualities (i.e. dependent on a cause and effect relationship) would ground them within a mortal reality, not within the immortal (or timeless). If God's will is made to depend on anything (as a will contingent upon something else), what makes God to be God has been removed. God ceases to be transcendent at all and becomes utterly contingent (not even immanant). God is driven by the Creation just as much as God is the mover of Creation (and you have accomplished nothing greater than the process theologians).

I have no idea what you are saying here, but somehow that doesn't bother me.

Open theists claim to be expressing a novel idea,

No, we claim that the Bible, mostly, means what it says. I don't think that is such a novel idea.

and yet continue to succomb to Process Theology, claiming that it is not Process Theology. The God who is in "relationship" with the Creaiton in such a way as to place both the Creation and Creator into a category of agency is to follow the move of Process Theology. You are trying to get the best of both worlds and instead you frustrating the two.

A God who knows all possible futures is a God that is powerless,

Only a fool would claim that God is powerless!

for the God who "knows" all futures yet who fails to be able to bring those futures about is a God with no more power than the scientist who looks at the universe and disiphers its secrets.

There is no Open Theist, that I am aware of, who believes that God is not able to cause anything to happen that he wants to happen. You are making this up!

So what if God knows the future? Such knowledge is no better than the knowledge of academicians in our own world. It is the picture of a god who sits back and lets things happen (both to God and to the Creation). Your view of the cross is that God is passively engaging the world (because if God were active in the world, that activity would necessarily be expressed in violence and coercive power, with an absence of love). Your assumption is that if God is driving events in the world, God must enter into the world in violence and coersion (God's activity will violate our "freedom").

Myassumtion is that you have no idea what OVers believe!

What's funny is that you hold onto the very understanding of power that the fundamentalists claim for their own view of God, only pushing it off into the eschatological future. In this much you have distinguished yourself from the Process Theologians, only now God is schitzophrenic and not simply ignorant.

Your understanding of the Biblical grammar is appalling. First of all, tense in the Hebrew (the Psalms) has nothing to do with time. There are only two "tenses" in the Hebrew (perfect and imperfect) and both can convey past, present and furture timed actions. We only translate the tenses within finite time grounded tenses in the English because there is no other way to express action in English. The Hebrew doesn't express the time; English does. As far as your example is concerned for the Greek in Revelation, once again you have misunderstood the grammar. In verse eight we have participles being used to express God, and if you know anything about Greek grammar, tense in participles has nothing to do with time, and everything to do with aspect. A present participle expresses continuous action. The only finite verb (which has time) is the past form of eimi (en ). Yet the participles that we translate as "the one who is" and "the one who will be" are both present indicting a continuous action within the timeframe of the finite verb (past). So God in the past was both present and future, which is a really muttled idea (and might have something to do with the fact that John is not the best at Greek grammar). Nonetheless, the phrases neither lend themselves to being "timeless" nor expressions of "endless time."

Yet the phrase that begins verse eight does give us a concrete image of time as bounded by God. "I am the alpha and the omega," which is later qualified in Revelation by another phrase "the beginning and the end." You see, the scriptures assume that time has begun and that time will move forward towards a purpose (a telos). Time by nature must begin and must move towards an end (otherwise there is no time). Time has limits, it is not "unlimited." Time is the contingency in which the Creation is bound (we are not eternal, i.e. unbound). For events to occur in time there must be something that initiates those events and there must be a reaction of events to the initial cause. Time by definition is a series of cause and effect (and thus time by nature has a beginning, a "head" if you will, as the scriptures convey it). If God is bounded by time (i.e. caught up in the series of cause and effect) God ceases to be God, for the real God is the one who drives the events (the one who initiates the actions and brings them to their telos). Either time has become God, or you have caught God and the Creation up in a nihilism that is worse than any we have ever faced.

The phrase "I am the alpha and the omega" tells you all that? WOW! You might be the most brilliant human ever to walk the face of the Earth! Funny thing is I too believe that God is the Alpha and the Omega and that he shall reign forever and ever!

No, God is the bounds for time, and God also draws the whole Creation into Godself. Please, godrulz, tell me how you would interpret these wonderful phrases of Paul: "In God we live and move and have our being," (Acts 17) and "For out of God, and through God, and unto God are all things" (Rom. 11:36). These phrases seem to fly in the face of what you are saying.

Peace,
Michael

 

[Frank Ernest]

God knows what is happening.

Luke 12:5-7 "[jesus]But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.[/jesus]"

God does not dictate what is happening, except in circumstances of His choosing in order to further His plan.

Jermiah 25:9 "Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations."

 

[themuzicman]

3) When asked how Jesus foreknew this you said, "I never said God was dumb. In fact, He's smart enough to bring about events in such a way that 11 of the 12 disciples become true to Him, and one of them, who was known from the beginning, betrays Him."
Here you said God arranged it(caused it)!

Your Answer : Arrange is a far cry from cause. They are not synonyms.

Main Entry: foreordain
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: doom
Synonyms: destinate, destine, fate, foredoom, foretell, prearrange, predestine, predetermine, predict, preordain, reserve
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1)
Copyright © 2006 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.​

Did you miss this in the earlier posts? In your view is foreordination a cause?

1) The question isn't whether foreordination is a cause, but whether all causes are foreordinations. This is one point where you're imposing your presuppositions.

2) "Prearrange" is not the same as "arrange". To "prearrange" means "To arrange in advance." (www.dictionary.com

"Arrange", on the other hand, means "To plan or prepare for: arrange a picnic." Arranging can happen before or during a particualr process.

So, you're assumption that "arrange"="prearrange" and "cause"="foreordination" is a complete non-sequitor.

Then why wasn't Judas 'drawn' according to you.

Because he was the one who was going to betray Christ.

Michael

 

[themuzicman]

Godrulz,

Try to connect the dots:

God is bound by time.
God is not infinite.

God is infinite.
God is not bound by time.

Do you know what infinite means? It means "not bounded."

The (il)logic of your claims goes like this: God is bounded by time but God is not bounded.

:kookoo:

Nice if you to post your portrait at the end of your post, here.

 

[themuzicman]

Any action on our part, whether meritorious or not, undermines the sufficiency of Christ's finished work. The Biblical view is that Christ's death alone was sufficient to save those whom the Father gave Him; that no one given to Him by the Father would be lost. The Biblical view is that Christ stated unequivocally on the cross: "It is finished." The Open View assaults the sufficiency of Christ by putting conditions on salvation. On the Open Theist's conception of soteriology, Jesus could not say, "It is finished," because more would have to be added later. The best He could say would be: "Let's see if this works."

You know, it helps if you read the entire verse (and I know it's asking alot, given your attention span, but the whole chapter would be good, too). Notice that Jesus immediately after saying that he won't cast out those who come to him, says that "the one who beholds the Son of Man and believes in him will have ternal life, and (Christ) will raise him up on the last day." (vJohn 6:40)

Clearly there is a faith response required before God gives someone to Christ. Otherwise, none of this makes sense.

What one "deserves" has nothing to do with it. Rather, it has everything to do with the sufficiency of Christ's work. If you had to accept the gift in order to receive salvation, then Christ's work was not sufficient to save you.

Why not? If the Coast Guard flys out to you to save you from floating in the ocean, and you have to grab a rope, was the Coast Guard's work in building ships and preparing helicopters and divers so that when you needed saving they could get there insufficient?

(Oh, my bad. You don't like the Coast Guard. You think that you save yourself when they come out to pull you out of the water.)

No one deserves salvation under any circumstances; no one deserves a wife under any circumstances. The only thing we all deserve is hell. That's what makes Christ's work so blessed and awesome for those He died for.

Who sets the standard for salvation? God or you?

He does. Absolutely. He holds every atom inside your brain together. Col 1:16,17. That's micromanagement.

Wow... The non-sequitors just keep on comin'

False dichotomy. God predetermined that we would have give-and-take reciprocal love relationships.

ROFL... Maybe you need someone to explain "love" to you. You aren't married, are you?

God's decrees always comes to pass. But His commands are not always obeyed. Please have a look at the following link for elaboration on this. God's Prescriptive vs. Decretive Will.

Yeah, the sczitophrenic God: "Do this" "No, disobey me!" "You're going to hell"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Not an absurdity; a necessity. God must have exhaustive foreknowledge precisely because He determined it all in advance.

Right, God determined that in his loving nature, he would condemn most of mankind to eternal judgment. Why does God sound like a psychotic, deranged killer who demands that the victims he lets live love him, after the Calvinist gets done with him?

He is a loving Father who, through His son, holds every atom of the universe together. This is not a "cosmic control freak." This is God. He cannot NOT be in complete and utter cosmic control of all things whatsoever. Only the humanist/existentialist will be so bold and insolent as to question God's prerogative, indeed the necessity, to control the cosmos down to every last detail.

So, God CANNOT create a universe where there are agents who act outside of his determinitive will? Sounds like a human limitation to me.

Hypocrite, moron, jackass, and liar,
Jim

The first step to solving a problem is admitting it. I'm glad to see you've taken the first step.

Relieved.
Michael

 

[Bob Hill]

I am a person who believes the Open View of God.
It develops an honest responsible character.
It allows real choice for man, rather than making man a semi robot.
It produces moral responsibility.
It causes freedom for man and contingency to exist.

The application of these laws to certain passages clears up problems.
The future actions of men under the law of freedom are unknowable. There are some things God does not know before hand. Gen 22:12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.

Even when God thinks or says something will happen, it may not under the law of freedom. “God said ‘She will return to Me!’ But she did not return” Jer 3:7 And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return..

 

[godrulz]

Any action on our part, whether meritorious or not, undermines the sufficiency of Christ's finished work. The Biblical view is that Christ's death alone was sufficient to save those whom the Father gave Him; that no one given to Him by the Father would be lost. The Biblical view is that Christ stated unequivocally on the cross: "It is finished." The Open View assaults the sufficiency of Christ by putting conditions on salvation. On the Open Theist's conception of soteriology, Jesus could not say, "It is finished," because more would have to be added later. The best He could say would be: "Let's see if this works."

I have grown up and can use quote boxes (thx to GIT). God in His sovereignty and wisdom set conditions on how we are to enter into a relationship with a holy God. We subjectively appropriate His objective provision. He initiates and provides, but we respond to His drawing and conviction. Love and faith are not coerced, but are an intelligent, volitional response to truth. Some reject the truth because they love darkness. Others receive Him (active vs passive) and become children of God (Jn. 1:12; 3:16, 36). God's 'atonement is not limited. His love is not arbitrary, but it is impartial.

The GROUNDS of salvation (reason for which) are grace and the person and FINISHED, sufficient work of Christ. We cannot save ourselves. Receiving this gift does not take away from its perfection nor make it self-salvation.

The CONDITIONS (if...then...whoever believes, etc...NOT WITHOUT WHICH) are set by God and are the way we enter into right relationship with Him. The reason some are not saved is not due to a limited atonement or an arbitrary decree in eternity past. The reason is that men reject truth and light. This is why they are culpable and condemned (Acts 17 shows the different responses to the gospel...receive/reject/procrastinate).

IT IS FINISHED (grounds). Appropriating this (conditions) does not mean that we are adding to the perfect provision. You confuse conditions/grounds and cling to a deductive theology that is not based on exegesis.

What one "deserves" has nothing to do with it. Rather, it has everything to do with the sufficiency of Christ's work. If you had to accept the gift in order to receive salvation, then Christ's work was not sufficient to save you.

Christ's work is sufficient, but not everyone receives Him. Accepting a gift is not a work, nor meritorious. It is a response to God's drawing. Your causative/coerced views do not resonate with the nature of love, relationship, and freedom (compatibilism is as strained as a decretal system or Molinism).

No one deserves salvation under any circumstances; no one deserves a wife under any circumstances. The only thing we all deserve is hell. That's what makes Christ's work so blessed and awesome for those He died for.

This is correct, but you are making God's love and justice limited and partial, contrary to His revealed character and ways. God does not save some, but not save others that He could save if He wanted to (elect vs non-elect is a wrong doctrine...corporate vs individual election is defensible). The atonement is not limited; grace is not irresistible; election is not unconditional.

He does. Absolutely. He holds every atom inside your brain together. Col 1:16,17. That's micromanagement.

This is true for metaphysics or atoms. It is not applicable to moral, relational, volitional, freedom, love issues. You are proof texting atoms and applying it to those created in the personal, moral, spiritual image of God :nono:

False dichotomy. God predetermined that we would have give-and-take reciprocal love relationships.

God did set the parameters for this. This includes genuine, significant freedom. He does not predetermine every moral and mundane choice (negating freedom/responsibility). He does determine that we would have the capacity to chose between alternatives. God's will is not the only factor in the universe. He is not the only free moral agent. This is by His sovereign choice and design. You go beyond the text to think this means exhaustive, meticulous control vs providential control/responsiveness (omnicompetent vs exhaustive control).

God's decrees always comes to pass. But His commands are not always obeyed. Please have a look at the following link for elaboration on this. God's Prescriptive vs. Decretive Will.

God does not have a secret will back of His apparent will. A decretal system is needed to prop up a defective theology.

Not an absurdity; a necessity. God must have exhaustive foreknowledge precisely because He determined it all in advance.

There are two motifs in Scripture. You are prooftexting one motif (Is. 46; 48) that God predestines some things and brings them to pass by His ability (not foreknowledge=Arminian), while ignoring the other motif that some of the future is contingent, open, unsettled (e.g. changes like Hezekiah/Moses/Jonah).

He is a loving Father who, through His son, holds every atom of the universe together. This is not a "cosmic control freak." This is God. He cannot NOT be in complete and utter cosmic control of all things whatsoever. Only the humanist/existentialist will be so bold and insolent as to question God's prerogative, indeed the necessity, to control the cosmos down to every last detail.

God could have chose this type of controlling, deterministic universe. The evidence is that He chose a providential vs exhaustive control. Calvinism and Islam are fatalistic, not biblical. God holds the universe together, and creates the parameters that His creation will operate in. This does not necessitate that He dictates whether I will chose vanilla or chocolate or which way I will drive to work.

You extrapolate from a specific idea and wrongly over-generalize it.

Hypocrite, moron, jackass, and liar,

How wude...where's the soap for your mouth?

You said you read "The God who risks". While not perfect, it is unfortunate that you persist in a no-risk, deterministic view rather than the self-evident relational, risk view of God's self-revelation. God is not humanized by Open Theism. Rather, God's great love and wisdom are exalted as we see how great He is to be able to govern a universe of significant others without treating us like pawns on a chess board. Nothing and noone can thwart His project and plans. This does not mean that He gets His way in every detail (Hitler/hell).

You are a smart man, but evidence of how a preconceived theology can blind one to simple, biblical truth :readthis:

 

[godrulz]

I am a person who believes the Open View of God.
It develops an honest responsible character.
It allows real choice for man, rather than making man a semi robot.
It produces moral responsibility.
It causes freedom for man and contingency to exist.

The application of these laws to certain passages clears up problems.
The future actions of men under the law of freedom are unknowable. There are some things God does not know before hand. Gen 22:12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.

Even when God thinks or says something will happen, it may not under the law of freedom. “God said ‘She will return to Me!’ But she did not return” Jer 3:7 And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return..

A normative, literal, contextual, grammatical, cultural, historical approach to Bible interpretation will resonate with open theism. One must resort to an unwarranted figurative approach to dismiss many passages to come up with a deterministic philosophy that misrepresents God and His ways.

 

[Bob Hill]

When we look at a lot of the material in the O.T., God is limited in His promises to bless when man does not do as He commands.

Psa 78:41 Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.

 

[godrulz]

When we look at a lot of the material in the O.T., God is limited in His promises to bless when man does not do as He commands.

Psa 78:41 Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.

This is a voluntary self-limitation. God could have acted unilaterally, but He desired reciprocal relationships. Prayer is God's sovereign choice as a means to have us personally relate to Him rather than being mere automatons. Love trumps control. God is not insecure nor weak in the face of changing contingencies.

 

[Bob Hill]

Even promises that appear to be unconditional may be broken. God said "For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you."

Ex 23:27-31 I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 “And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. 29 “I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beast of the field become too numerous for you. 30 “Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land. 31 “And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.

 

[Bob Hill]

God emphasized His promise again and again.

Ex 33:1,2 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Depart and go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ 2 And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.”

Deu 7:1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you

 

[Bob Hill]

Joshua 3:10 is especially strong.

Josh 3:10 And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites.”

 

[Bob Hill]

But, in the book of Joshua, we read these promises did not happen.

Josh 15:63 As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem to this day.

Josh 16:10 And they did not drive out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites to this day and have become forced laborers.

 

[Bob Hill]

It continues in Judges 2:1-3 Then the Angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you. 2 ‘And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this? 3 Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.’ ”

 

[Bob Hill]

God had ample reason to punish Israel. Therefore He said in Judges 2:20-23:
Then the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel; and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded My voice, 21 I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, 22 so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the LORD, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not.” 23 Therefore the LORD left those nations, without driving them out immediately; nor did He deliver them into the hand of Joshua.

What nations did God not drive out?

 

[Bob Hill]

God did not drive out those He said He would drive out. Instead, He would use them to discipline Israel.

Judges 3:1-5 Now these are the nations which the LORD left, that He might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan 2 (this was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war, at least those who had not formerly known it), 3 namely, five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who dwelt in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal Hermon to the entrance of Hamath. 4 And they were left, that He might test Israel by them, to know whether they would obey the commandments of the LORD, which He had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. 5 Thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

God broke a promise sworn to the fathers of Israel because of disobedience (Num 14:23,30,34).

All of the future is not locked in like most people seem to think. God can change His mind, and He does.

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

I do agree with godrulz, that God is in total control. He allows man to cause problems. God changes His program as He sees fit when mankind disobeys.

 

[Clete]

Godrulz,

Try to connect the dots:

God is bound by time.
God is not infinite.

God is infinite.
God is not bound by time.

Do you know what infinite means? It means "not bounded."

The (il)logic of your claims goes like this: God is bounded by time but God is not bounded.

:kookoo:

The error is that being bound by time isn't really being bound. Time does not exist. You can't be literally bound by something that does not exist. Saying God is bound by time (although I don't recall ever seeing anyone use the phrase but you) would be a figure of speech just as talking about being "in love" is a figure. Love is not a place or a thing. There is no vat of love that one can fall into, its a figure us speech. It's precisely the same with time. Time is a concept not a place or a thing which one can be litterally bound to or by. It wouldn't be any more meaningful to say that God was bound by time than it would be to say that God was bound by existence, except as a figure of speech, the meaning of which should be obvious but is determined by the context whether it is obvious or not.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Clete]

Do you deserve your wife anymore than you deserve salvation?

I deserve death so I suppose that would be a no.