ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2

[Philetus]

Is human emotion a result of the fall or creation?

[Philetus]

If you knew what you are talking about you would know that the answer is the Great Commission commands it for we do not know who the elect are; the elect answer God's call from the hearing of the Word. You are wrong and clearly jaded.

QUOTE=Ask Mr. Religion; God's decrees are made without the use of the foreknowledge that God possesses. God's providence is unrelated to the decrees. God's providence is all about sustaining that which God has decreed.

commissions, commandments, foreknowledge, all made meaningless by God's decrees ....

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Another thing I've wondered is the use of Calvanism. Even if foreknowledge and predestination are as AMR defines them above, what use are they to us? Nobody can say who is saved and who is not and it leaves no reason to act with any great urgency to the plight of those who are lost.

Think of it like prayer when you ask for something. God already knows what you want before you ask. You must ask, for the asking is in the chain of the predestination. Similarly, the elect are called to God in the chain of the predestination of their hearing the Word of God.

We don't have because we don't ask in prayer.

You wrote: "I prefer to witness to people out of a sense that I am active and appreciated for my efforts."

The elect become regenerated because we obey the commandment to preach the Good News to everyone. In so doing you are actively participating in the chain of events leading to God's predestination of the elect. You are loved by God because you have done as He commanded--loving God means obeying Him.

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Would you trust God if He did not have exhaustive foreknowledge, let alone exhaustively predestining everything.

No I would not, for God would not be sovereign, but a contingent being, and we would not be assured that His will would be realized. In effect, what the Scriptures have clearly stated about God's sovereignty and omniscience would be untrue. Who could trust this kind of God?

[Yorzhik]

Start a thread on the philosophy of religion or something if you want philosophical discourse. I majored in the subject before switching to theology for obvious reasons.

New thread here

[elected4ever]

I'd rather trust God.

Then why don't you Philetus. What you guys keep saying is that we remain subject to the human will and then say that we act in accordance with that will and therefore sin or not sin as a matter of choice. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Christ took upon Himself the acts of the human will which are not subject to God and operates according to its own lust and desires. It is dead to God and cannot do the will of God. The human will becomes dead to us and we are no longer subject to its lust and desires. It has them but we are not subject to them. They no longer exist as for as God is concerned because they were nailed to the cross of Christ.

In order to do the will of God you must be of God, born again, then you have the righteousness of God and do according to the righteousness of God.

We really do according to our own will but is that will born of man of is it born of God?

In essences that is the only choice we have isn't it. I present the gospel because it is my nature to do so. The will I obey in doing so is my own. That will is born of God and is without sin.

[Ask Mr. Religion]

New thread here

My very long reply has been posted to the thread you started.

[PKevman]

I have done as such. No one here is in any doubt of what I believe and why if they have read my posts. What is clear is that you have not been following the many posts I have made and need to come up to speed.

Quite frankly I have a busy life, I read what I can and respond to what I have time to. This is an internet forum, so people are free to discuss and/or respond to whatever they wish to. I don't always have the time to spend 5 hours reading your enormous posts. (no offense). It is not necessary to read through an entire thread to make a comment or to post a rebuttal to a specific argument presented.
This is not a Battle Royale where things have been cohesively structured all the way through. In most threads people jump around quite a bit.

Perhaps you are pressed for time, I don't know, but you have shown me much less of the courtesy I have extended to you. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I will simply await your personal exegesis of my original response detailing why the verses I have shown and rationale used can be interpreted differently.

Very simple. Your whole premise is based on faulty preconceived notions. All of Calvinism rests on these SAME preconceived notions. The fact that you are unwilling to examine and consider how God presents Himself in the Bible eludes you because you have been confused by a haze of theological mumbo jumbo. Wake up! God does not get the glory from every little wicked thing that occurs. In fact God hates sin. God is not responsible for the creation of sin either. Calvinism is false teaching, plain and simple.

[FONT=Verdana]From the below, I see you want to move on to what appears to be yet another new topic.

Actually it was answering your demand for posting Bible verses, but you let that go over your head.

Your quoted reference for this question is Ge. 2:19, but we need to go back one verse to get the full context. Here we find God saying that, of all the animals, when they had been placed in order, not one was found which might be a fit helper for Adam. There was no affinity of the nature of these animals that Adam could choose for himself a companion for life out of any one species.

You have not answered the question asked. The text answers the question. Let's see if you can get it right: Why did God bring the animals to Adam? The text shows it. You denied what the text says when you said this:

God did not need to know the names of these animals as He already knew what Adam would call them.

The Word of God says:

Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.

The Hebrew translated in Gen. 2:19 “to see” is an indirect question “to observe” or “to behold”. The same use of the Hebrew appears in other verses, such as:

From the Hebrew, we clearly see that the meaning here has nothing whatsoever to do with God’s learning something. Instead, as noted above, God is enacting and observing a trial of wisdom for Adam’s sake, that Adam might come to know His relationship to the world he has been given dominion (authority) over and to show Adam how necessary the help meet God is to provide him is to be.

Wow this text really bugs you doesn't it. To see means simply to see as you already observed above. It means the Lord wanted to see what Adam would call the animals. God interacts with man because He loves us and is interested in us. This is shown throughout the Bible. God was excited to see what His brand new creation (created in His image) was going to call the other animals He had created!

1. God planned woman. Woman was as much the creation of God as was man.

I agree with this. God can make plans and follow through with those plans. He is God. I agree too that God planned woman when He created man. He had done this with all of His other creatures, so I see no reason why He wouldn't have planned to create the woman as well. I am not sure what this has to do with answering the question asked though. You are blurring the issue, and I am not sure if it is intentional or not.....

2. God planned woman because man needed a helper, a companion—a suitable helper and companion. The Hebrew word "meet" or "suitable" (keneghdo) means fit, corresponding to, adapted to, agreeing with, counterpart, opposite, equal to.

Agree.

[B]Yet, midway in this discussion of the creation of a companion for Adam, we find the naming of the animals. Why?

Because it happened. And God wanted us to know how He interacted with Adam. That is why He told Moses to write it.

3. God needed to reemphasize a critical fact: He is the Creator of all man's companions, of all living creatures. Man needed to learn this, to have it driven into his mind. If man was to have a special companion—a companion with his very own nature—God was the One who had to create her. Man had to depend upon God to give him the companion who would be a perfectly suitable partner.

This is certainly a possibility, however we are not told this explicitly in the text, so we are really guessing at this point. You understand that the above is not Bible but your own view, correct?

4. God shows man that man is superior in intelligence, authority, and being to the animals.

Agreed.

5. God's purpose was to show man his great need for woman, for a companion just like himself.

That may have been a purpose of God's, but again the text does not tell us this explicitly, so we have to guess at that. The text does tell us that Adam realized he had no helper suitable for him. I suppose it isn't a far reach to believe that God planned all of that for Adam to realize he too needed a helper. If you believe that just because I'm an open theist that I believe God had no clue He had made Adam alone, then you are badly mistaken! It seems that your views on open theism are based on a lot of misunderstandings and false assumptions on what OT'ers actually believe! The question is are you willing to listen to the points brought up by open theists rather than your presupposed false views of us? We love the Bible and God just as much as you do!

The “God is Love” (1 John 1:48) mantra of open theism is a classic example of the fallacy of adopting an interpretive center in biblical hermeneutics.

No. It is affirming a Biblical doctrine and position. What does God value more- Love or prophecy?

This is the error of designating a clear text, an interpretive center, a theological and hermeneutical key, a locus classicus, a defining passage, a starting point that serves as a filter for all other interpretations of Scripture. To interpret obscure passages in light of such “a clear text” may seem reasonable on the surface, but it robs other passages of their distinctive contributions to the broad revelation of Scripture.

Hermeneutics is an art and a science, and one that I am well-versed and familiar with. The best way to interpret Scripture is with Scripture. Would you agree or disagree with this statement?

God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent

AMR- do you realize that THIS is a hermeneutic by which YOU interpret Scripture?

The whole "hopscotch" analogy does not fit this situation as that is not what I was doing when I stated to you that God is love and that God loves us. My point was in citing one of my clear texts on the issue we are discussing and showing that it is the love of God for mankind that leads Him to change His mind about judging them, even if He had PLANNED to do so, and even if he had SAID to do so! That is clearly what He says in the text I quoted! When a man repents it changes God's mind about His intentions for that man!
As to the rest of your asinine posts, I will just say that I utterly reject the false doctrines of Mormonism, Universalism, Annihilationism and the like. Please attempt to be more substantive with your answers and understand that the amount of words typed does not always indicate substance to an argument!

God bless.

[Delmar]

If you knew what you are talking about you would know that the answer is the Great Commission commands it for we do not know who the elect are; the elect answer God's call from the hearing of the Word. You are wrong and clearly jaded.

Take that back! I am not wrong about how every Calvinist I have ever asked that question, has answered it! Every one of them has given the same answer! "because God commanded us to."

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Take that back! I am not wrong about how every Calvinist I have ever asked that question, has answered it! Every one of them has given the same answer! "because God commanded us to."

Let's be clear, you wrote:
"their answer is, that they only share the gospel because God commanded them to. Not that it makes a difference."

See that last part? We are commanded to preach the Good News to all peoples because we do not know the elect who come to righteousness from the hearing of the word. God predestines the elect and the means of their answer to the call. Preaching the Good News fulfills the chain of the predestination of the elect. In other words, it DOES make a difference. Your statement was wrong.

[Delmar]

Let's be clear, you wrote:
"their answer is, that they only share the gospel because God commanded them to. Not that it makes a difference."

See that last part? We are commanded to preach the Good News to all peoples because we do not know the elect who come to righteousness from the hearing of the word. God predestines the elect and the means of their answer to the call. Preaching the Good News fulfills the chain of the predestination of the elect. In other words, it DOES make a difference. Your statement was wrong.

"Not that it makes a difference" was a separate sentence and was my own editorial comment! If it seemed like I was claiming that Calvinists would say that I apologize.

edit: Is this more clear?

their answer is, that they only share the gospel because God commanded them to. Not that their answer makes a difference.

[elected4ever]

Dalmar, every christian preaches the gospel as an act of his own will. It is the Father's will that we do so. Is it wrong that the nature of the christian to act in accordance with the nature of God? I think not. That should be the expected act of a righteous person not some person following orders. If you know the will of God and you know that those who are born of God do the will of God, why do you call the christian a robot when it is his nature to do the will of God?

[Stripe]

Think of it like prayer when you ask for something. God already knows what you want before you ask. You must ask, for the asking is in the chain of the predestination. Similarly, the elect are called to God in the chain of the predestination of their hearing the Word of God. We don't have because we don't ask in prayer.You wrote: "I prefer to witness to people out of a sense that I am active and appreciated for my efforts."The elect become regenerated because we obey the commandment to preach the Good News to everyone. In so doing you are actively participating in the chain of events leading to God's predestination of the elect. You are loved by God because you have done as He commanded--loving God means obeying Him.

But we can just as easily choose not to act according to God's will.

[Delmar]

Dalmar, every christian preaches the gospel as an act of his own will. It is the Father's will that we do so. Is it wrong that the nature of the christian to act in accordance with the nature of God? I think not. That should be the expected act of a righteous person not some person following orders. If you know the will of God and you know that those who are born of God do the will of God, why do you call the christian a robot when it is his nature to do the will of God?

I am not the one who believes any man is a robot!
Christians who believe in free will, preach the Gospel because they understand that it is God's will and because they know it makes a difference! (faith comes from hearing) If Christians who do not believe in free will, preach the Gospel, it could only be because they believe it is God's will. It could not be because preaching the gospel is of any consequence, because those who were elected will be saved, and those who were not elected, will not be saved!

[elected4ever]

I am not the one who believes any man is a robot!
Christians who believe in free will, preach the Gospel because they understand that it is God's will and because they know it makes a difference! (faith comes from hearing) If Christians who do not believe in free will, preach the Gospel, it could only be because they believe it is God's will. It could not be because preaching the gospel is of any consequence, because those who were elected will be saved, and those who were not elected, will not be saved!

Is the free will of the saved different than the free will of the lost? I think so. Jesus came to do the will of the Father. Does the fact that Jesus could not sin and was born of the seed of God in the flesh make Jesus any less a free will agent? To me, being born again or being of the elect has no bearing on the free will agency of the person because of who the person is.To me, the teaching that a person born of God commits sin is an irrational position. The ability to sin has become a choice that is unavailable to the child of God because the life of the child of God is of God and not of man. We are in the world but not of this world. The ability to commit sin is taken from us so the choice to sin is not a choice we can make.