ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1

[Delmar]

Jim
did you miss this?

Dear deardelmar,

From an earlier post of yours:
Justification as described in the Bible occurs on three levels:

• We are justified before others by our works (Romans 4:2 "For SINCE Abraham was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.");
• We are justified before ourselves by faith* (Romans 4:3 "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him [Abraham] for righteousness.");
  
• We are justified before God by the blood of Christ alone (Romans 5:9 "Much more then, being now justified by his blood;" Romans 8:33 "It is God that justifieth").

Jim

Where did you come up with before others and before ourselves?

 

[Philetus]

Seeking answers in empty Athenian god-talk.

Seeking answers in empty Athenian god-talk.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

OVT sees God as involved, NOT in process: a God so capable He can risk being in the wold without in anyway compromising His power or His character. Open View Theism is not Process Theology. Get over it.

Seeking: Yet God is involved in a way in which God experiences the Creation (in other words, God's experience is shaped by Creation). Whether you like it or not, the open view of God cannot avoid a God in process. Now you might limit that process to the highest degree, but the reality is that God is in process with the Open view. If God "knows" the Creation through Gods "senses" (whatever that would mean) than God is in process, for God finds himself within the series of cause and effect. Creation can become a cause that draws out an effect within God (and to a limited degree the Creation manipulates God). Now you can call this the "involved" God, but the reality is that God becomes within this order just another actor on the stage. The stage is driving the events of the Creation, and both God and humanity are along for the ride (though God might have a really good "knowledge" of the stage). You need to realize just how closely Process Theology and Open Theism are related. The proof-texts of the Process Theologians are the same proof texts for the Open Theists.

Like I said, you can stretch or shrink God’s involvement as much as you like, but you can not deny God’s interaction in the affairs of mankind and take conversation like that of God and Moses (and countless others) as serious. Call it what you like ... there is a difference in saying God is manipulated by creation and saying God is actively involved in guiding creation. God is not manipulated. God can be influenced. Otherwise, prayer is reduced to only ‘personal piety’ or dismissed all together.

[

QUOTE]Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus
You sound more like a deist than a theist. You remove God so far from His creation and creatures that even though everything is “out of him, and through him, and unto him” any practical allocations are diminished and the "God we live and move and have our being," in couldn’t be involved if he wanted to. God as you describe him couldn’t have had that conversation with Moses that you build your case on in the above post. He is too far gone. Be careful that your reaction to Process Theology doesn’t send you to another place and time.

Seeking: You have no idea what a deist is. Those statements that I gave you are ones that Paul uses in his description of God to the Athenians, and the other in his letter to the Romans. It is not my own concoction; it right out of the scriptures. A deist would want nothing to do with my statements, because a deist sees a God who sets things into motion and lets them run on their own (which is in fact much closer to the Open Theist view, where God creates laws of the Universe that are able to sustain the universe without God's presence. The statements I have quoted understand that the universe is contingent upon God, and that in God the universe consists. Without God there is no world.

Yes, I do. I didn’t say Paul sounds like a deist. I said you do. If you think Open Theist resemble deism you really are out in left field. Creatures are so dependent on God in the unsettled view that God better be involved. You only prove in the above statement that you either do not grasp Open Theism or you are so hung up on Process Theology that you can’t see past it.

Let us take a closer look at these passages. The first comes from Paul's evangelistic endeavor with the Athenians. Its local context is a small creedo concerning God (which may include elements from early Christian creeds and maybe some Jewish ties as well) found in Acts 17:24-28. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'" So, as asked you before, how on earth are you going to reconcile this with your open view of God? It is quite impossible. This is what Paul has to say to Greek listeners (to people who are hearing this message for the first time). His take on God is far from open.

The inscription referred to was that to an unknown God. Paul was not commending them for lack of knowing God. Paul was evangelizing (informing) them that the God of the universe was not some nebulous-known-not but a personal and involved God who could in fact be known. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a record of all the rest of what Paul said to the Athenians. He spent a lot more time there, talking with them about The Gospel. I guess we will just have to settle with the assumption that the rest of what he said squares with his epistles.

The second passage comes from Romans (though it is repeated in similar terms throughout the New Testament). It comes in a Doxological proclamation of God. Paul states, "Oh, the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who had been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen." Once again I find this very difficult to reconcile with the open view. God is not changing in this. God is the God in whom the whole of Creation is grounded, anchored to him in the beginning and as he brings the Creation to its proper telos.

Sounds like the God Paul was introducing the Athenians to wasn’t to be manipulated. Doesn’t mean God isn’t involved on a personal level. I hope you don’t see every honest request made of you as manipulation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

These two verses you have posted are so informative of the Open View of the future! They speak first of the past and then of the present: God created and is still personally involved! And regardless what may happen in our immediate future, ALL things will return to God. One can universalize or trivialize, but that doesn’t make the realities of living in and for Christ any less than they are. Experiencing and representing Jesus in the world is not a product of modern or post-modern or Greek thought. It is the effect of living in and having the Holy Spirit dwell in us.

Seeking: This is not what Paul is stating. Paul's statement is much more profound. God doesn't wait for the eschaton to happen. God has already begun the eschaton in Christ, meaning that right now all of Creation is subdued. The age to come is here already. It may seem that there remain enemies of God, but in fact God has defeated them all. Satan has fallen on his own sword, and the powers that be are on the run. In fact, in Colosians Paul states that God in Christ has "disarmed the powers and authorities," and has "made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" [he has paraded them as the Roman army did to its enemies when they had won the battle] (Col 2:15). God is the "Father of all, who is over all things and through all things and in all things." (Eph. 4:6). So the enemies are no more. And where is this witnessed? Within the ekklesia, which is the gathering of those who take seriously the words of Christ and live them out in a world that remains hostile to both Christ and his words. We don't "experience" Christ and "represent" Christ to this world, we are Christ in this world (the very body of Christ). The world experiences and witnesses Christ in us, in our gathering (and if our gathering is not faithful, the world has a very poor image of Christ).

They don’t, for the most part, come and witness ‘our gatherings’ any more. They have been there and done that and for the most part they have already concluded that God is not present because of our disunity and unfaithfulness. Christ didn’t say go build churches so they can come to me. Jesus said, Go make disciples and I will build my church. You say God doesn’t inhabit houses made by hands and then make your self-made gathering the link between a god that you claim isn’t in process with a world that isn’t paying attention to you. Christ is present where to or three gather in His name as members of His body, not in a building that claims His presence yet denies His power to raise the dead, and set captives free. The God of the individuals unsettled future is greater, closer and more involved than you will allow. God is involved whether you are or not; whether you realize it or not. The God who is all in all is also the God in you and in me. That is scandalous good news. Either the church goes into the world or it doesn’t represent anything other than another monument to an unknown god established for more empty Athenian god-talk.

All things are not waiting to return to God; in Christ God has already brought them near (in fact, "God is not far from any one of us").
Peace,
Michael

Well, duh. Romans 8 .... Learn to live with a little tension between the already and the not-yet; the God over-all and in-all; to-all and for us all.​

 

[Hilston]

Hilston wrote: Please give me one example in which [you] knew beyond any reasonable doubt God was truly involved in something in your life.

You wouldn’t understand.

That's an answer I would expect from someone who doesn't know the answer.

If you can’t hear God ... you won’t hear me even if I told you God raised the dead.

All those the Father gives to the Son will hear Him.

Have you ‘received’ the Holy Spirit since you believed?

Acts 19:2 does not refer to receiving the Person of the Holy Spirit, but to the charismatic empowerment of believers. John's disciples were not at Pentecost; they had not received the empowerment that was given there.

Ever hear of the fruit of the Spirit?

What does that have to do with God being involved in something in your life? Please be specific.

Maybe you have not because you ask not or you ask for the wrong things or with the wrong motives.

What are you talking about? The Bible teaches that God is involved in every detail of everything event that is happening at this very moment. The Open Deist is the one whose conception of an active, living, personal, relational, good and loving God is dubious. Please explain to me how God is active and involved. What is He doing?

I have asked God to provide and do things for His own name’s sake ... and God has done them.

Sounds like refrigerator magnet fluff so far. Please be specific.

I have also asked for the wrong things with wrong motives and been ignored. It isn’t either/or, it’s learning to walk in the Spirit. It is a cooperative venture that shapes the future.

Please give specific examples of cooperative involvement from God in your life.

Hilston asked: What is God doing right now? How is He involved? Please be specific.

Inspiring both the will and the deed: ...

How is He inspiring it? Please be specific.

... to love you and pray for you and accept you as a fellow Jackass who needs Christ in his life as much and I do.

What is He actively doing to inspire you to pray and to accept? When you say "needs Christ in his life," what are you referring to? Needs Christ for what? What does Christ do in your life? Please be specific.

 

[Hilston]

Where did you come up with before others and before ourselves?

I didn't come up with it. The Bible teaches it.

Before ourselves
Abraham believed God and it was counted to him [Abraham] as righteousness. How does a person know that He has been justified before God? Not by anything external, not by flesh and blood means. When Jesus asked Peter who he thought Jesus was, Jesus said it had not been revealed to Peter via flesh and blood, but by the witness of the Father, that is, internally, by faith. Peter was justified by faith before himself. The Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are the sons of God. Not by works, but by faith.

Before others
Ro 4:2 For since Abraham was justified by works, he has whereof to glory; but not before God.

Before whom did Abraham have whereof to glory? It was not before God. It certainly was not before himself. It was before others. Faith without works is dead, as far as others can see. What justifies a person before others is his works.

Jas 2:18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

James wanted to know that another was justified, and in Israel's dispensation, pure religion was manifested by the kinds of works he describes. In the Body dispensation, the works are different, but there are works nonetheless that justifies a man before others. You just can't say, I belong to Christ, I have faith.

Jas 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

James asks rhetorically: "Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?" Paul says Abraham was indeed justified by works, but not before God. Before whom then? Before others, obviously.

 

[seekinganswers]

Like I said, you can stretch or shrink God’s involvement as much as you like, but you can not deny God’s interaction in the affairs of mankind and take conversation like that of God and Moses (and countless others) as serious. Call it what you like ... there is a difference in saying God is manipulated by creation and saying God is actively involved in guiding creation. God is not manipulated. God can be influenced. Otherwise, prayer is reduced to only ‘personal piety’ or dismissed all together.

I have not denied that God is involved in the Creation. But that involvement is revealed in Christ (not in God's "conversation" with Moses on the mountain or with any other person, no matter how "good" they might have been). God does not simply interfer with men's affairs (which is to assume that men have affairs that God can "influence"). You give far too much credit to men. God is not the drug altering our state of reality; we have no state of reality ("we are dead in our tresspasses and sins"). God is not a "manipulator" (as you and I have already agreed to on more than one occasion); God is the giver of life, as we find in that wonderful proclamation of Paul to the Athenians, "And God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because God himself gives all people [wicked or not] life and breath and everything else." A manipulator only manipulates out of necessity. A dictator is utterly contingent upon his people for his own life (those under him are his servants who give him all that he needs by their own hands). A god who enslaves humanity so that humanity can "feed him" (which is the picture of the Creation given to us by the ancient near-eastern traditions) is a god that is not god. And you see this "controlling god" is very distant, only because god becomes another actor on the stage of events, which are being driven by the fates in the Greek tradition.

God is not influenced. God's will remains to the end. Abraham prays for the righteous in Sodom and Gomorra, yet God still destroys the cities. Moses prays for Israel (he abates God's wrath) and yet when he descends from the mountain it is revealed to him just how ignorant he was in his prayer and he himself brings God's wrath on the people, then gives proper atonement to God for their sins. Jonah sits outside the city of Nineveh praying for its destruction (because his prophesy is on the line and because he wants the city to be destroyed) and God's answer to his prayer is that God can do whatever he wants with this city, and is it not his place to show mercy to these people where God decides to show mercy? Jesus prays for the cup to pass, but finishes his prayer with, "Not my will, but yours be done, Lord." Do you begin to see a pattern? Prayer is not about changing God's will. As Jesus puts it, "The Father was aware of your requests before you even asked him." We aren't filling God in on the details. God is very much aware of our suffering. And the image of the saints that we are given in Revelation is that they must be patient, they must wait for God's action in this world, and they do not pray to speed it up. Even as they pray for the Lord to "come quickly and avenge their blood" they are told to wait a while longer as their number is completed (as everyone who is going to die for the Lord's sake, dies). This is not just the passivity of a bunch of weaklings. They are also active in bringing about God's will on the earth, not by forcing others to do it, but by living it out in their gathering even as the world is punishing them for it.

Prayer is not about changing God's will, it is about changing our attitude towards God, for we only pray to God, because we know that God is the giver of life, the sustainer of us all, and if we are to go to anyone, we must go to the Creator, and "God will suply all our needs, according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." We don't go to God because God only acts in response to us. We don't go to God only when our own actions fail. Notice we are to give thanks to God even for that which we have supplied by our own hard work. We go to God in order to submit ourselves to the God who has already acted and who is a God more than capable of supplying our needs. In the prayer our Lord taught us to prayer, the core of it is this, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Yes, I do. I didn’t say Paul sounds like a deist. I said you do. If you think Open Theist resemble deism you really are out in left field. Creatures are so dependent on God in the unsettled view that God better be involved. You only prove in the above statement that you either do not grasp Open Theism or you are so hung up on Process Theology that you can’t see past it.

I am not out in left field. If you have read my discussion with Clete you would know exactly what I am talking about. The Open Theists do claim that God has ordered the Creation in such a way that it is governed by his laws (and that he himself is restrained by those laws). This is the tenant of the deists. Enyart in the post that Clete copied over to this thread makes it very clear that there are laws governing our universe to which both the Creation and God submit (meaning that God has already set things into motion) and God only intefers with that motion when things go wrong; the deist god is not distant; the deist god is just so good at what he does that once he acts in the beginning, that action is good for a while. And god need not sustain the Creation anymore. The deist god is not active in everything; God is only active as an initiator and as one who interfers. The God of the scriptures is not this god. The God of the scriptures is the God of both the Jews and the Gentiles, of both the unrighteous and the righteous; as Paul states in his message to the Athenians, "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

You are the one out in left field, for what I have said is no where near the deistic understanding of God.

The inscription referred to was that to an unknown God. Paul was not commending them for lack of knowing God. Paul was evangelizing (informing) them that the God of the universe was not some nebulous-known-not but a personal and involved God who could in fact be known. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a record of all the rest of what Paul said to the Athenians. He spent a lot more time there, talking with them about The Gospel. I guess we will just have to settle with the assumption that the rest of what he said squares with his epistles.

How about we content ourselves with what is actually in the scriptures and leave the quest for the historical Paul to the liberal protestants! Apparently the early church was quite content with the message that we have from Paul recorded by Luke. There are no major insertions into this text (meaning the early copyists did not seem to need to elaborate on Paul's message). God is not defined as "personal" and "involved" by Paul. God is first Creator ("who made the world and everything in it"); he is then "Lord of heaven and earth"; and he is much more distant than the Greeks had made the gods out to be for he "does not live in temples built by hands" nor is he "like gold or silver or stone -- an image made by man's design and skill."; we are God's offspring, which means if we are to understand who we are as humanity we must look to God; we cannot look to ourselves to know God. God needs nothing from humanity, but supplies all of humanity with everything they need. And God is the one who drives human events, determining their times and their places so that they might grope for him. Paul's concern is not that the Greeks turn from a non-personal God to a personal God (God has has been personal from the beginning whether the Greeks are aware of it or not); Paul's concern is that the Greeks turn from their idolatry to the living and true God (which is the very same message of the Jews to the Gentiles). And the reason why this is now so important is that God has acted in such a way in Christ that the judgment is near. Judgment can only come from the Father if his will is established on the earth. In Christ this has been accomplished.

Sounds like the God Paul was introducing the Athenians to wasn’t to be manipulated. Doesn’t mean God isn’t involved on a personal level. I hope you don’t see every honest request made of you as manipulation.

How many times do I have to say that manipulative God is a God who is in need, who threatens because he himself is threatened. God cannot manipulate if God is not in need. This is what I claim.

They don’t, for the most part, come and witness ‘our gatherings’ any more. They have been there and done that and for the most part they have already concluded that God is not present because of our disunity and unfaithfulness. Christ didn’t say go build churches so they can come to me. Jesus said, Go make disciples and I will build my church. You say God doesn’t inhabit houses made by hands and then make your self-made gathering the link between a god that you claim isn’t in process with a world that isn’t paying attention to you. Christ is present where to or three gather in His name as members of His body, not in a building that claims His presence yet denies His power to raise the dead, and set captives free. The God of the individuals unsettled future is greater, closer and more involved than you will allow. God is involved whether you are or not; whether you realize it or not. The God who is all in all is also the God in you and in me. That is scandalous good news. Either the church goes into the world or it doesn’t represent anything other than another monument to an unknown god established for more empty Athenian god-talk.

Yes, and this has much to do with both the Catholics and the Protestants who have forgotten to wait (hope) for the Lord to come and who have been content in unifying the church to the nationalistic endeavors of men (divorcing the church from Christ, and uniting the church in its identity as an invisible unity of all Christians, mirroring the empire and the state). The church is not a building; ekklesia in the Greek means "called out ones". Does that sound like a building to you? Peter speaks of the church as a temple composed of living stones. The church is neither a building nor a personally witnessed identity; the church is a gathering of those who have been united in Christ in such a way as to follow Christ's example and to live by Christ's words in the most radical of ways. It is not personal (individual), nor is it a systemic framework of regulations; the church is a people, the people of God who have finally been made worthy to be his people. The church cannot go into the world because the church never left the world. That's the problem with your language of the church needing to "go into the world." If the church was not in the world at first, it wasn't the church. We are in the world, we are just not of the world, and our testimony (witness) to the world of Christ is that we obey his teachings, and live by God's command. We don't teach the world about God when we are "personal" and "friendly" to the world. John the Baptist's message shatters any hope of that (which is the same message that Jesus preaches when he begins his ministry). Our message to the world is simply, "Your way of life is a way of death, and it is coming to an end (if it hasn't already been ended). Repent and be saved." And how are we able to proclaim this? Well, we must first be living in such a way as to make our proclamation true (John was raised for 40 years in the dessert on locusts and honey, probably among the essenes; Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days). If we preach the gospel message against the world but continue to live as if the world had something to offer, our message is pointless. There is a reason why the poor and the marginalized of our society can hear the message of the gospel; they already know that this world in its present form is passing away (they themselves are the victims of its passing).

Well, duh. Romans 8 .... Learn to live with a little tension between the already and the not-yet; the God over-all and in-all; to-all and for us all.

I will not live in tension; the tension will be the world's. The world that remains hostile to God will not like the message that I proclaim in the way that I live. I am seeking to live as a single man in this world, and to live in such a way as to not covet the things of the world. My call is to celibacy and to poverty, so that I might devote myself to the work of God in the ekklesia. I am not in tension, because God in Christ has transferred me into his Kingdom already. I am fully God's (because I submit to the life of his Son in the gathering, not simply as an individual). My life consists in daily repentance of sin (as I continue to allow the world in me to be put to death) so that I might continue to be raised up in Christ in the edification of the church. I do not fear death, for I know that God has already swallowed it up in life. If there is tension, it comes in the world that refuses to see that God has already conquered it, and God will not need to come in force to put down this rebellion, for God's power has already come in full force, and has declared that the enemy is his friend. Their destruction will come by their own hands. "Those who live by the sword will die by it!"

Power has not been exchanged for weakness in the cross! True power has come by Christ's death, and the powers of this world have been shattered. Christ is raised (this is the culmination of Paul's message to the Athenians, and is also the point of contention that they wish to further discuss with Paul). The resurrection is power, for by it God has rectified that which was lost! God in Christ has redeemed the world! This is not a tempered message. It is good news that must be proclaimed from every place, and is the message that has rung out in all the Creation. Learn to live in the gospel, not in tension!

Peace,
Michael

 

[seekinganswers]

Like I said, you can stretch or shrink God’s involvement as much as you like, but you can not deny God’s interaction in the affairs of mankind and take conversation like that of God and Moses (and countless others) as serious. Call it what you like ... there is a difference in saying God is manipulated by creation and saying God is actively involved in guiding creation. God is not manipulated. God can be influenced. Otherwise, prayer is reduced to only ‘personal piety’ or dismissed all together.

I have not denied that God is involved in the Creation. But that involvement is revealed in Christ (not in God's "conversation" with Moses on the mountain or with any other person, no matter how "good" they might have been). God does not simply interfer with men's affairs (which is to assume that men have affairs that God can "influence"). You give far too much credit to men. God is not the drug altering our state of reality; we have no state of reality ("we are dead in our tresspasses and sins"). God is not a "manipulator" (as you and I have already agreed to on more than one occasion); God is the giver of life, as we find in that wonderful proclamation of Paul to the Athenians, "And God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because God himself gives all people [wicked or not] life and breath and everything else." A manipulator only manipulates out of necessity. A dictator is utterly contingent upon his people for his own life (those under him are his servants who give him all that he needs by their own hands). A god who enslaves humanity so that humanity can "feed him" (which is the picture of the Creation given to us by the ancient near-eastern traditions) is a god that is not god. And you see this "controlling god" is very distant, only because god becomes another actor on the stage of events, which are being driven by the fates in the Greek tradition.

God is not influenced. God's will remains to the end. Abraham prays for the righteous in Sodom and Gomorra, yet God still destroys the cities. Moses prays for Israel (he abates God's wrath) and yet when he descends from the mountain it is revealed to him just how ignorant he was in his prayer and he himself brings God's wrath on the people, then gives proper atonement to God for their sins. Jonah sits outside the city of Nineveh praying for its destruction (because his prophesy is on the line and because he wants the city to be destroyed) and God's answer to his prayer is that God can do whatever he wants with this city, and is it not his place to show mercy to these people where God decides to show mercy? Jesus prays for the cup to pass, but finishes his prayer with, "Not my will, but yours be done, Lord." Do you begin to see a pattern? Prayer is not about changing God's will. As Jesus puts it, "The Father was aware of your requests before you even asked him." We aren't filling God in on the details. God is very much aware of our suffering. And the image of the saints that we are given in Revelation is that they must be patient, they must wait for God's action in this world, and they do not pray to speed it up. Even as they pray for the Lord to "come quickly and avenge their blood" they are told to wait a while longer as their number is completed (as everyone who is going to die for the Lord's sake, dies). This is not just the passivity of a bunch of weaklings. They are also active in bringing about God's will on the earth, not by forcing others to do it, but by living it out in their gathering even as the world is punishing them for it.

Prayer is not about changing God's will, it is about changing our attitude towards God, for we only pray to God, because we know that God is the giver of life, the sustainer of us all, and if we are to go to anyone, we must go to the Creator, and "God will suply all our needs, according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." We don't go to God because God only acts in response to us. We don't go to God only when our own actions fail. Notice we are to give thanks to God even for that which we have supplied by our own hard work. We go to God in order to submit ourselves to the God who has already acted and who is a God more than capable of supplying our needs. In the prayer our Lord taught us to prayer, the core of it is this, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Yes, I do. I didn’t say Paul sounds like a deist. I said you do. If you think Open Theist resemble deism you really are out in left field. Creatures are so dependent on God in the unsettled view that God better be involved. You only prove in the above statement that you either do not grasp Open Theism or you are so hung up on Process Theology that you can’t see past it.

I am not out in left field. If you have read my discussion with Clete you would know exactly what I am talking about. The Open Theists do claim that God has ordered the Creation in such a way that it is governed by his laws (and that he himself is restrained by those laws). This is the tenant of the deists. Enyart in the post that Clete copied over to this thread makes it very clear that there are laws governing our universe to which both the Creation and God submit (meaning that God has already set things into motion) and God only intefers with that motion when things go wrong; the deist god is not distant; the deist god is just so good at what he does that once he acts in the beginning, that action is good for a while. And god need not sustain the Creation anymore. The deist god is not active in everything; God is only active as an initiator and as one who interfers. The God of the scriptures is not this god. The God of the scriptures is the God of both the Jews and the Gentiles, of both the unrighteous and the righteous; as Paul states in his message to the Athenians, "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

You are the one out in left field, for what I have said is no where near the deistic understanding of God.

The inscription referred to was that to an unknown God. Paul was not commending them for lack of knowing God. Paul was evangelizing (informing) them that the God of the universe was not some nebulous-known-not but a personal and involved God who could in fact be known. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a record of all the rest of what Paul said to the Athenians. He spent a lot more time there, talking with them about The Gospel. I guess we will just have to settle with the assumption that the rest of what he said squares with his epistles.

How about we content ourselves with what is actually in the scriptures and leave the quest for the historical Paul to the liberal protestants! Apparently the early church was quite content with the message that we have from Paul recorded by Luke. There are no major insertions into this text (meaning the early copyists did not seem to need to elaborate on Paul's message). God is not defined as "personal" and "involved" by Paul. God is first Creator ("who made the world and everything in it"); he is then "Lord of heaven and earth"; and he is much more distant than the Greeks had made the gods out to be for he "does not live in temples built by hands" nor is he "like gold or silver or stone -- an image made by man's design and skill."; we are God's offspring, which means if we are to understand who we are as humanity we must look to God; we cannot look to ourselves to know God. God needs nothing from humanity, but supplies all of humanity with everything they need. And God is the one who drives human events, determining their times and their places so that they might grope for him. Paul's concern is not that the Greeks turn from a non-personal God to a personal God (God has has been personal from the beginning whether the Greeks are aware of it or not); Paul's concern is that the Greeks turn from their idolatry to the living and true God (which is the very same message of the Jews to the Gentiles). And the reason why this is now so important is that God has acted in such a way in Christ that the judgment is near. Judgment can only come from the Father if his will is established on the earth. In Christ this has been accomplished.

Sounds like the God Paul was introducing the Athenians to wasn’t to be manipulated. Doesn’t mean God isn’t involved on a personal level. I hope you don’t see every honest request made of you as manipulation.

How many times do I have to say that manipulative God is a God who is in need, who threatens because he himself is threatened. God cannot manipulate if God is not in need. This is what I claim.

They don’t, for the most part, come and witness ‘our gatherings’ any more. They have been there and done that and for the most part they have already concluded that God is not present because of our disunity and unfaithfulness. Christ didn’t say go build churches so they can come to me. Jesus said, Go make disciples and I will build my church. You say God doesn’t inhabit houses made by hands and then make your self-made gathering the link between a god that you claim isn’t in process with a world that isn’t paying attention to you. Christ is present where to or three gather in His name as members of His body, not in a building that claims His presence yet denies His power to raise the dead, and set captives free. The God of the individuals unsettled future is greater, closer and more involved than you will allow. God is involved whether you are or not; whether you realize it or not. The God who is all in all is also the God in you and in me. That is scandalous good news. Either the church goes into the world or it doesn’t represent anything other than another monument to an unknown god established for more empty Athenian god-talk.

Yes, and this has much to do with both the Catholics and the Protestants who have forgotten to wait (hope) for the Lord to come and who have been content in unifying the church to the nationalistic endeavors of men (divorcing the church from Christ, and uniting the church in its identity as an invisible unity of all Christians, mirroring the empire and the state). The church is not a building; ekklesia in the Greek means "called out ones". Does that sound like a building to you? Peter speaks of the church as a temple composed of living stones. The church is neither a building nor a personally witnessed identity; the church is a gathering of those who have been united in Christ in such a way as to follow Christ's example and to live by Christ's words in the most radical of ways. It is not personal (individual), nor is it a systemic framework of regulations; the church is a people, the people of God who have finally been made worthy to be his people. The church cannot go into the world because the church never left the world. That's the problem with your language of the church needing to "go into the world." If the church was not in the world at first, it wasn't the church. We are in the world, we are just not of the world, and our testimony (witness) to the world of Christ is that we obey his teachings, and live by God's command. We don't teach the world about God when we are "personal" and "friendly" to the world. John the Baptist's message shatters any hope of that (which is the same message that Jesus preaches when he begins his ministry). Our message to the world is simply, "Your way of life is a way of death, and it is coming to an end (if it hasn't already been ended). Repent and be saved." And how are we able to proclaim this? Well, we must first be living in such a way as to make our proclamation true (John was raised for 40 years in the dessert on locusts and honey, probably among the essenes; Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days). If we preach the gospel message against the world but continue to live as if the world had something to offer, our message is pointless. There is a reason why the poor and the marginalized of our society can hear the message of the gospel; they already know that this world in its present form is passing away (they themselves are the victims of its passing).

Well, duh. Romans 8 .... Learn to live with a little tension between the already and the not-yet; the God over-all and in-all; to-all and for us all.

I will not live in tension; the tension will be the world's. The world that remains hostile to God will not like the message that I proclaim in the way that I live. I am seeking to live as a single man in this world, and to live in such a way as to not covet the things of the world. My call is to celibacy and to poverty, so that I might devote myself to the work of God in the ekklesia. I am not in tension, because God in Christ has transferred me into his Kingdom already. I am fully God's (because I submit to the life of his Son in the gathering, not simply as an individual). My life consists in daily repentance of sin (as I continue to allow the world in me to be put to death) so that I might continue to be raised up in Christ in the edification of the church. I do not fear death, for I know that God has already swallowed it up in life. If there is tension, it comes in the world that refuses to see that God has already conquered it, and God will not need to come in force to put down this rebellion, for God's power has already come in full force, and has declared that the enemy is his friend. Their destruction will come by their own hands. "Those who live by the sword will die by it!"

Power has not been exchanged for weakness in the cross! True power has come by Christ's death, and the powers of this world have been shattered. Christ is raised (this is the culmination of Paul's message to the Athenians, and is also the point of contention that they wish to further discuss with Paul). The resurrection is power, for by it God has rectified that which was lost! God in Christ has redeemed the world! This is not a tempered message. It is good news that must be proclaimed from every place, and is the message that has rung out in all the Creation. Learn to live in the gospel, not in tension!

Peace,
Michael

 

[Philetus]

[

Yea, so what’s your point, Michael?

You said that in your judgment, I (Philetus) am a Process Theologian. I am not. I said you (Michael) sound like a deist. I know you are not. See any difference?

And except for the insults on my intelligence, my experience of Jesus and the celibacy thing :chuckle: (I’m married and my wife and I share a common commitment of poverty) you and I come closer to agreement here than anywhere. My contention with your position is that it is so one-sided. Sure, I could pick out a phrase or word or even a statement here and there and rant for the Unsettled View. That is fruitless. (In that we will no doubt always disagree.) I agree with so much of what you have said. I just think that you emphasize a position that contradicts what is so practical in what you said that nobody is listening any longer. I didn’t suggest that you get all up tight, (tense) I suggested you need to realize that it is both/and not either/or. (However, this is your best post ever … I may try to stir you up with a little more tension. You have some good stuff when you get off your philosophical high horse and just talk about Jesus.)

I don’t care if you think God is in meticulous control or not. That makes no difference to me. How Christ shapes our lives is far more important. I say we influence God when we are in step with the Spirit. You say we don’t influence God regardless. So be it.

Michael, I’m not interested in ranting about or defending myself to you. You and I have two very different experiences of the church. I say to you, great, go for it! Be all Christ has called you to be. Just acknowledge you are not the only flock on the planet. And yours is not the only way to read scripture.

You keep harping on this maverick approach that you assume I am taking. Wrong! We just don’t own a building or waste time trying to reinvent church government. Why swap one pope for another? The church has a head. WE are the body of Christ, His church in the world. And we guard ourselves even as you do to keep our selves from being of it. The world has nothing to offer us anymore than we have anything to offer Christ. I don’t know who you are arguing with, but it isn’t me. All we are doing is following our Lords commands to love God and love our neighbors. You have no idea what that looks like in the place where God in Christ has placed me.

One major difference is that we acknowledge your place in the body regardless of your one sided view of the present and the future. We are not the whole church and who are we to tell another man’s servant what to do. We are seeking to do the will of God even as I believe you are. We experience the power of Christ’s resurrection and could care less how you define it or limit it to the elect, the saints or the celibate. I do see Jesus in the world. I see him already at work in the wretched that haven’t even come to realize his love for them. I know the kingdom is here, you just don’t seem to want to admit that I’m in it too. Perhaps you don’t recognize us because we don’t hang out much at base camp. Not only have we been called out, we have been sent in. (You still sounded like a deist in your previous post. Even Jim picked up on our exchange and made reference to Open Deism or something like that.) Oh, well.

Thanks for the post. And even though you sounded like a Deist in your previous post, I celebrate your faith and the work of Christ in you. But, neither you, nor I have a corner on the church market. We are His church and I pray Christ's prayer will be answered and we can be One.

See you in the alley,
Your little brother, Philetus.​

 

[Philetus]

Seekinganswers,
Go back and edit post #2390. You made it look like I said everything in the quote block.
I don't want to have that to deal with.

And lets take this in smaller bites or get off this thread. It takes longer to format these and to write em.
Can I get an Amen?
Philetus

 

[Philetus]

Hilston wrote: Please give me one example in which [you] knew beyond any reasonable doubt God was truly involved in something in your life.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

You wouldn’t understand.

That's an answer I would expect from someone who doesn't know the answer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

If you can’t hear God ... you won’t hear me even if I told you God raised the dead.

All those the Father gives to the Son will hear Him.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

Have you ‘received’ the Holy Spirit since you believed?

Acts 19:2 does not refer to receiving the Person of the Holy Spirit, but to the charismatic empowerment of believers. John's disciples were not at Pentecost; they had not received the empowerment that was given there.

So? Have you? Are you empowered? To do what? Is that not God working in your life. Do you experience it or is it just a theory?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

Ever hear of the fruit of the Spirit?

What does that have to do with God being involved in something in your life? Please be specific.

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.” Gal.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

Maybe you have not because you ask not or you ask for the wrong things or with the wrong motives.

What are you talking about? The Bible teaches that God is involved in every detail of everything event that is happening at this very moment. The Open Deist is the one whose conception of an active, living, personal, relational, good and loving God is dubious. Please explain to me how God is active and involved. What is He doing?

Everything? Dubi, dubi, dubious.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

I have asked God to provide and do things for His own name’s sake ... and God has done them.

Sounds like refrigerator magnet fluff so far. Please be specific.

Yea, but it is on the out side of the refrigerator where it can be seen.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

I have also asked for the wrong things with wrong motives and been ignored. It isn’t either/or, it’s learning to walk in the Spirit. It is a cooperative venture that shapes the future.

Please give specific examples of cooperative involvement from God in your life.

No. It is a wicked and perverse request.

Hilston asked: What is God doing right now? How is He involved? Please be specific.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

Inspiring both the will and the deed: ...

How is He inspiring it? Please be specific.

Right now? Well, for one, he helps me recognize the bait of the enemy and avoid his snares.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Philetus

... to love you and pray for you and accept you as a fellow Jackass who needs Christ in his life as much and I do.

What is He actively doing to inspire you to pray and to accept? When you say "needs Christ in his life," what are you referring to? Needs Christ for what? What does Christ do in your life? Please be specific.

I’ll leave the first as a matter of prayer. And simply say to the other: everything and especially Christ helps me shape the future by making decision that honor His lordship over my life. Please, I don't want to know what you think of that.

Jim, I’m not going to get into it with you. It is quite evident that you have no respect for anyone and little for your self. I’m content to be a jackass to you. Maybe I need Christ in my life more than you do. What ever. I think you are capable of more love and long suffering than you have reflected in your posts. Mock away. And let him who has ears to hear, hear what the spirit is saying.​

 

[seekinganswers]

Seekinganswers,
Go back and edit post #2390. You made it look like I said everything in the quote block.
I don't want to have that to deal with.

And lets take this in smaller bites or get off this thread. It takes longer to format these and to write em.
Can I get an Amen?
Philetus

2391 is the edited version. Sorry about the mess. And Amen to that.

Peace,
Michael

 

[seekinganswers]

[

Yea, so what’s your point, Michael?

You said that in your judgment, I (Philetus) am a Process Theologian. I am not. I said you (Michael) sound like a deist. I know you are not. See any difference?

And except for the insults on my intelligence, my experience of Jesus and the celibacy thing :chuckle: (I’m married and my wife and I share a common commitment of poverty) you and I come closer to agreement here than anywhere. My contention with your position is that it is so one-sided. Sure, I could pick out a phrase or word or even a statement here and there and rant for the Unsettled View. That is fruitless. (In that we will no doubt always disagree.) I agree with so much of what you have said. I just think that you emphasize a position that contradicts what is so practical in what you said that nobody is listening any longer. I didn’t suggest that you get all up tight, (tense) I suggested you need to realize that it is both/and not either/or. (However, this is your best post ever … I may try to stir you up with a little more tension. You have some good stuff when you get off your philosophical high horse and just talk about Jesus.)

I don’t care if you think God is in meticulous control or not. That makes no difference to me. How Christ shapes our lives is far more important. I say we influence God when we are in step with the Spirit. You say we don’t influence God regardless. So be it.

Michael, I’m not interested in ranting about or defending myself to you. You and I have two very different experiences of the church. I say to you, great, go for it! Be all Christ has called you to be. Just acknowledge you are not the only flock on the planet. And yours is not the only way to read scripture.

You keep harping on this maverick approach that you assume I am taking. Wrong! We just don’t own a building or waste time trying to reinvent church government. Why swap one pope for another? The church has a head. WE are the body of Christ, His church in the world. And we guard ourselves even as you do to keep our selves from being of it. The world has nothing to offer us anymore than we have anything to offer Christ. I don’t know who you are arguing with, but it isn’t me. All we are doing is following our Lords commands to love God and love our neighbors. You have no idea what that looks like in the place where God in Christ has placed me.

One major difference is that we acknowledge your place in the body regardless of your one sided view of the present and the future. We are not the whole church and who are we to tell another man’s servant what to do. We are seeking to do the will of God even as I believe you are. We experience the power of Christ’s resurrection and could care less how you define it or limit it to the elect, the saints or the celibate. I do see Jesus in the world. I see him already at work in the wretched that haven’t even come to realize his love for them. I know the kingdom is here, you just don’t seem to want to admit that I’m in it too. Perhaps you don’t recognize us because we don’t hang out much at base camp. Not only have we been called out, we have been sent in. (You still sounded like a deist in your previous post. Even Jim picked up on our exchange and made reference to Open Deism or something like that.) Oh, well.

Thanks for the post. And even though you sounded like a Deist in your previous post, I celebrate your faith and the work of Christ in you. But, neither you, nor I have a corner on the church market. We are His church and I pray Christ's prayer will be answered and we can be One.

See you in the alley,
Your little brother, Philetus.​

Philetus,

Where I am frustrated in all of this is that people fail to see that I am neither presenting a closed view of God nor am I supporting the open view. In fact, I see the entire question posed by the two positions to be unfounded altogether. What I see in both positions is a an intellectual exercise to empirically reach at God, and I am just not comfortable with doing this. "Let God be God, everyone else is a liar."

The reason that the question posed in my opinion is wrong is simply based on the fact that the scriptures do not approach time in the way that we do in our modern age. When we think of time, we think of something that is marching onward, almost in a nihilistic fashion, completely neutral of any position. Time has become for us a canvass on which the events of our lives are painted, whether for the good or for evil. Time is just a neutral reality for us in our modern world, that allows for good and for evil, and we are constantly trying to fight the coming of the end (our death). For the closed view this means a pseudo-determinism, in which God acts according to his "extensive" knowledge of the future (as if the future were a reality in and of itself that was certain and came as a result of God's past action). Open Theists view that future as being just as certain, and once again coming about by God's past action, but that remains in a present nihilism in which God just allows evil to triumph for a time, but there will be a point when God decides to act once again (in the eschaton where everything comes to a violent conclusion) and then evil will be destroyed (which, suprisingly, is a very Jewish understanding of the ages, that is the Jews from the first century).

For me, time is not a neutral reality in which either good or evil has a space (just a place where any will can drive the action). No, time is held entirely in God, and therefore is only a space for the good. Time works in this way in the scriptures: that which is not (that which is evil) will come to nothing through time; that which truly consists in God will be sustained into eternity. Time is not something that allows for both good and evil; time brings the evil to the nothing that it is and allows the good to thrive.

Thus, to talk about the knowledge of the future as a knowledge of events is absolutely absurd to me, and is certainly not something that the scriptures entertain with regards to God (because such a view of time is relegated to fortune telling, which is something quite corrupt in the scriptures, and is only practiced by humans). To know future events has nothing to do with knowing the future. When God knows the future in the scriptures, God is the one who drives all actions to their proper telos (purpose). There is a certain eventfulness in this as well, but future is more a question of the driving force (purpose) as opposed to the specific events involved. The future is telos (purpose) in the scriptures more than it is eschaton (a cataclismic event).

So when I say that God "knows" the future, I am speaking in a very Hebraic sense, because to know in the Hebrew is an active process not a passive observation. God knows the future actively, not passively. We know things passively and actively (though our will is hardly ultimate), but God knows in the active sense, for God's will, God's purpose, God's telos, is driving all events. From beginning to end God's purpose is being brought about.

All three views presuppose a certain ontology of evil. Both the closed and the open views present evil as an ontological reality. There is something that is that is opposed to God. And the way they answer it is that either 1. God is responsible for it (God is in control; closed view), or 2. God is not responsible for it (so God is fighting evil; open view). I do not like either position, for evil is not a reality in the scriptures. In the creation evil is presented as a void (a nothingness). Evil is not a reality in itself but is something that is parsitically feeding off of the good. And as it is utterly contingent on the good, it cannot sustain itself, and once it destroys the very thing on which it relied, it ceases to be at all. So there isn't evil. There is good, and there is what is less than good, but there is not evil. The only true substance is of God, and God does not create anything that is opposed to him. And that which is opposed to God has lost its very foundation (it has in declaring God the enemy, fallen on its own sword).

I don't know if this clears anything up, but I can only hope that I have been clear in this post.

Peace,
Michael

 

[Hilston]

This post is to Philetus primarily, but since he seems to be caving under the pressure, this is open to any Open Theist who can answer my questions below:

Hilston wrote: Acts 19:2 does not refer to receiving the Person of the Holy Spirit, but to the charismatic empowerment of believers. John's disciples were not at Pentecost; they had not received the empowerment that was given there.

Have you? Are you empowered?

Luke was describing the charismata of Israel. No one living today has the charismata of Israel.

Do you experience it or is it just a theory?

The testimony of Scripture trumps experience. Let God be true and every man a liar. We are not to base our understanding of God and scripture on human experience.

Hilston wrote: What does [the fruit of the Spirit] have to do with God being involved in something in your life? Please be specific.

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.” Gal.

Please, all I'm looking for is a specific example of God being involved in your life. What is He doing?

Hilston wrote: What are you talking about? The Bible teaches that God is involved in every detail of everything event that is happening at this very moment. The Open Deist is the one whose conception of an active, living, personal, relational, good and loving God is dubious. Please explain to me how God is active and involved. What is He doing?

Everything?

Please be specific. What is He doing? How does He answer prayer, for example? Please name a specific prayer that you saw answered by the involvement of God. Please don't avoid this question. It will help me to understand the Open Theist conception of an active, living, personal, relational, good and loving God.

I have asked God to provide and do things for His own name’s sake ... and God has done them.

Like what exactly? Specifically? Please answer this so I can know what you mean when you say God is "involved."

Hilston asked: How is He inspiring [both the will and the deed]? Please be specific.

Right now? Well, for one, he helps me recognize the bait of the enemy and avoid his snares.

How did He help you recognize that? Did you hear His voice? Did He cause you to turn to a certain page in your Bible? Please be specific.

Hilston wrote: What is He actively doing to inspire you to pray and to accept? When you say "needs Christ in his life," what are you referring to? Needs Christ for what? What does Christ do in your life? Please be specific.

I’ll leave the first as a matter of prayer.

What will you pray? And how do you think God will go about answering it? What does God actually do in answer to prayer?

And simply say to the other: everything and especially Christ helps me shape the future by making decision that honor His lordship over my life.

How is He actively involved in helping you shape the future and make decisions that honor His lordship over your life? Please be specific. What does He actually do? Can any Open Theists answer these questions? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[Bob Hill]

I always want a biblical basis for an alleged biblical answer. Where does the Bible say that God has exhaustive foreknowledge. To phrase it a little differently. Please check me if I’m misrepresenting you, but you believe that God foreknew everything that would happen in the universe before He created anything, right? Where does the Bible say that? When does the Bible show He foreknows everything?

If God foreknew everything that will ever happen at some point in time past, when was that point? Then, if He foreknew everything that will ever happen in time past, all His responses to all of your prayers were also foreknown by Him. Since all of your thoughts, actions, responses, etc. were foreknown, along with His responses, then, God couldn’t change anything that He had foreknown. Then, no matter what you do, it was already foreknown and was locked in, with no possibility of any fluctuation of even one electron being different. Since God predestines what He foreknows, in Rom 8:28-30 we, then, see that we were predestined at the same time we were foreknown: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”

Therefore, according to this thinking, everything in the future is and was determined before God created the universe. However, this can’t be shown from the Bible when we understand what the word repent really signifies – a God who is able to change His mind. The absolute foreknowledge view would contradict God’s ability to respond to anything, now, because our prayers and actions and His responses were already locked in, sometime in eternity past.

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

Further, the Scriptures say that God changes His mind, answers prayer and repents. Many Christians don’t sympathize with Calvinism at all.

Many Calvinists believe that a solution to the problem of God’s repentance in over twenty passages in the Bible is found in what Paul Tillich borrowed from Greek philosophy: “The eternal now, that God is not in time.”

I have been studying this topic for 40 years and have not found one place that says God is outside of time or even alludes to that idea. Instead, the Bible shows God working with us in time.

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

There are 2 passages in the Bible that say “before time began.” They are 2 Ti 1:9, “who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began”, and Tit 1:2 “in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.”

However, when we look at the Greek, it literally says “before age times” pro xronon aiwniwn. The word xronon (In these transliterations, the w’s stand for the Greek omega.) means times. The word aiwniwn is an adjective similar to the noun aiwn (age). It can be translated many ways, but as the adjective it is translated, eternal, age abiding or age, as in age times. Eternals wouldn’t make any sense.

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

Many of the posts that maintain that God does everything came from the same place that the liberal philosophical theologian, Tillich got his. He did not make many of his statements, originally, he got them from Plato. Plato was the one that influenced Augustine the most through another philosopher, Plotinus. I think Augustine, who lived from 354-430 AD, was the most influential theologian who ever lived. Most scholars in the ancient world of Augustine understood Plato’s concept of God. He had influenced almost all the schools of philosophy of that time.

Plato explained God’s immutability this way in, “A dialogue between Socrates and Adeimantus.” “Is it not true that to be altered and moved by something else happens least to things that are in the best condition . . . that those which are well made and in good condition are least liable to be changed by time and other influences. . . . It is universally true then, that that which is in the best state by nature or art or both admits least alteration by something else. . . . But God, surely and everything that belongs to God is in every way in the best possible state. . . . Then does he (God) change himself for the better and to something fairer, or for the worse and to something uglier than himself? It must necessarily . . . be for the worse if he is changed . . . the gods themselves are incapable of change. . . . Then God is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself. (Plato. Republic, Loeb Classical Library, pp. 191-197.)

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

Dear Calvinists,

The Neo-Platonist, Plotinus (about 205-269), lived about 150 years before Augustine. He was very influential upon Augustine. The concept of God being in the state of Eternal Now (Atemporal), or being outside of time, was received from Plato through Plotinus. I want to examine the parallel thought’s of Plotinus and Augustine. We’ll see Augustine was greatly influenced by the thoughts of Plotinus.

Plotinus
“seeing all this one sees eternity in seeing a life that abides in the same, and always has the all present to it, not now this, and then again that, but all things at once, and not now some things, and then again others, but a partless completion . . . Necessarily there will be no ‘was’ about it, for what is there that was for it and has passed away? Nor any ‘will be,’ for what will be for it? So there remains for it only to be in its being just what it is. That, then, which was not, and will not be, but is only, which has being which is static by not changing to the ‘will be,’ nor ever having changed, this is eternity.” (Plotinus, Ennead, The Loeb Classical Library, p. 305.)

Augustine
“so that of those things which emerge in time, the future indeed, are not yet, and the present are now, and the past no longer are; but all of these are by Him comprehended in His stable and eternal presence . . . but beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness” (The City of God, p. 364). Augustine believed that God exists in an eternal present in which the future and the past are comprehended as existing now. Plotinus said the eternal does not have a “was” (past) or a “will be”(future) but only an “is”(present). Since God exists in an eternal state the past, present and future are viewed as existing in that present state at the same time as the present.

Augustine allowed reason to first dictate his ideas about God’s attributes. Then, the details were to be filled by Scriptures. The most damaging presupposition, which has severely harmed Christianity, was the immutability of God. That He was unchangeable and outside of time. This idea of timelessness and immutability influenced his doctrines of impassibility, predestination and foreknowledge.

Later, these doctrines were absorbed by Calvin. This influence of Augustine over Calvin is attested by Calvinists. For example, Benjamin Warfield wrote, “The system of doctrine taught by Calvin is just the Augustinianism common to the whole body of the Reformers—for the Reformation was, as from the spiritual point of view a great revival of Augustinianism.” (Warfield, Benjamin. Calvin and Augustine, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1956, p.22)

Even though the Old Testament literally shows a mutable, changeable God, Augustine agreed with the group he was in for a number of years, the Manicheans, that a mutable God was totally unacceptable. In this conflict between the Platonic doctrine of immutability and the literal interpretation of Scriptures what had to change? Augustine’s answer was that the literal interpretation of Scripture had to change. For Augustine the plain narratives of Scripture had to be reinterpreted by spiritual or allegorical methods. The Manicheans knew the Old Testament revealed a God who was mutable or could repent, and they rejected it. Since the Platonists believed that God was immutable this idea of God was a source of ridicule for the Catholic Church. Augustine was so embarrassed by these arguments that he chose to reinterpret Scripture rather than depart from Platonic philosophy.

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[seekinganswers]

Yea, so what’s your point, Michael?

You said that in your judgment, I (Philetus) am a Process Theologian. I am not. I said you (Michael) sound like a deist. I know you are not. See any difference?

Where have I ever made such a statement? I spoke of Bob's use of the scriptures mirroring the process theologian's use of them. I spoke of the similarities between the views of process theology and open theism. I even spoke of how open theism is running down a very dangerous slope that is similar to the slope of process theology. Where did I say that you (Philetus) were a Process Theologian?

You are taking my critiques of the Open Theist view and making it much more personal than I ever made it out to be. In fact, the original post that you responded to was never directed at you. If you want to distinguish yourself from Bob and identify a different strain of Open Theism, be my guest. But my major concern in my response to Bob was his poor use of the scriptures (because he only looks at the conversation between God and Moses without showing Moses going down the mount and realizing just how serious the situation was and just how ignorant he was; the first conversation was pointless; Moses had to bring the people to repentance and then ascend the Mount again to make atonement for them; only then was God's wrath avoided).

Peace,
Michael

 

[Bob Hill]

Repentance as it relates to our almighty God/

The Bible shows us that God always presents Himself as being in time. The passages that show this the best are those that God says He repents, or changes.

First, repent is used when people change their minds or repent. Ex 13:17 Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest perhaps the people change their minds repent (they repent) when they see war, and return to Egypt.”

Job 42:1-6 Then Job answered the LORD and said: 2 “I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. 3 You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 4 Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’ 5 I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. 6 Therefore I abhor myself, and repent (I repent) in dust and ashes.”

Sometimes people do not repent
Jer 8:6 I listened and heard, But they do not speak aright. No man repented (ish nacaam) of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his own course, as the horse rushes into the battle.

Now we will see a number of passages that show God repents.
Gen 6:4-7 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. 5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry (naachem Yahweh, Jehovah repented) that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry (nichamtiy, it repenteth me, I repent) that I have made them.

1 Sa 15:11,24-29,35 I repent that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments. And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the LORD all night. 24 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. 25 “Now therefore, please pardon my sin, and return with me, that I may worship the Lord.” 26 But Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.” 27 And as Samuel turned around to go away, Saul seized the edge of his robe, and it tore. 28 So Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you. 29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent (in this case of taking the kingdom from Saul). For He is not a man, that He should repent. 35 And Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul, and the LORD repented that He had made Saul king over Israel.

In Christ,
Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

God repents of disaster or good.
Jer 18:1-12 The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?” says the LORD. “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel! 7 “The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, 8 “if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. 9 “And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, 10 “if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will repent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it. 11 “ Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.” ‘ “ 12 And they said, “That is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his evil heart.”

In Christ,
Bob Hill