One on One: BR X - A Calvinist's Response (Ask Mr. Religion vs. Enyart)

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ38

AMRA-BEQ38

BEQ38: Regarding anti-openness author Bruce Ware’s publication of a paper calling for a reformulation of the doctrine of immutability (and your own acknowledgement that God is able to change in relationship), please inform me and the readers as to whether immutability, as taught by Calvin and Calvinists now for centuries, has always explicitly declared that God is able to change, or is it a newer theological development to explicitly declare that?

AMRA-BEQ38 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Ware argues that there are so-called value-neutral changes against the orthodox position that any change is a change for either the good or the worse.

I disagree that such value-neutral changes exist. They are chimeras chased by philosophers. Consequently, if God is learning new things from the actions of His creatures, He is accreting knowledge, and this knowledge is not value-neutral. Therefore God is changing. If He is changing for the better, then the God of Abraham was less good than the God I am praying to daily. If God changes for the worse, then the God of my grandchildren will be less good, and the God of millennia from now may be wholly malevolent (more precisely, omnipotent and malevolent).

The doctrine of immutability as taught by the Reformers is as I have described that doctrine in AMRA-BEQ1, AMRA-BEQ9, AMRA-BEQ17, AMRA-BEQ21. In AMRA-BEQ34 I affirmed my agreement with Grudem on the attribute of God’s impassibility. This is probably the only item that is not a universally held belief of the Reformers. Ware’s position on immutability is outside the mainstream of Reformed theology.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ39

AMRA-BEQ39

BEQ39: If you agree that Bruce Ware was calling for a reformulation of immutability for a valid reason, that is, because the doctrine had not previously explicitly declared that God is able to change in relationship, does that indicate an extraordinarily fundamental theological shift which will require a reconsideration of other doctrines which have been based upon immutability?

AMRA-BEQ39 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Firstly, as I noted in AMRA-BEQ38, I do not agree that Ware’s reasons behind his paper in 1986 on immutability were valid reasons.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ40

AMRA-BEQ40

BEQ40: I obtained a copy of Reymond’s 1,200-page textbook used by Knox a few days after this debate began, and if you recall, I only submitted a scan from his Table of Contents to illustrate that immutability is Calvinism’s core teaching regarding God’s nature. I have only read dozens of scattered pages, and have been unable to find Reymond declaring that God can change in relationship. Whether he has or not will be instructive regarding Calvinism’s coming to terms with the problem of General Immutability. Please indicate if Reymond addresses this, and if so, please cite him.

AMRA-BEQ40 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
I do not think that the Reformed believers need to come to terms with the “problem of general immutability”. For, as I have argued in numerous posts, starting with my very first post, the “problem” lies with the misunderstandings of immutability by unsettled theism’s proponents.

Nor does Reymond feel there is any problems with immutability. See page 178:

“Everywhere he [God] is portrayed as One who can and does enter into deep, authentic interpersonal relations of love with his creatures, and as a God who truly cares for his creatures and their happiness."​

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ41

AMRA-BEQ41

BEQ41: When you [Lamerson] answered BEQ21 regarding the future that God “has never changed it,” I’m sure that you meant to say that God has not changed what would have been other than when He originally foreordained all of eternity future. Otherwise, the Bible’s God would be almost exactly like Zeus, stuck in a Fate that even He Himself did not ordain. Please indicate if this more accurately reflects your position, or if not, please explain how the future came to be settled.

AMRA-BEQ41 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Well, I am glad that Dr. Lamerson and I are in agreement on matters related to the future. As I stated in AMRA-BEQ21: God decreed from eternity all that was, is, and will be.

It is always bemusing to have others attempt to tell me what I mean to say, or what I believe, because, after all, such persons “was once a Calvinist” or “was once taught these things in seminary”, etc. I submit that on both counts, these persons were asleep during catechism or classroom instruction.

So my answer to your question is no, I have not “meant to say” this or that, for I try to be precise in what I write.

Anyone that reviews my posts and the responses to them will readily see that all the elements of grammar that I use are carefully picked over and pounced upon by the jaded unsettled theist who hopes to find error, contradiction, etc., and then proclaim they have refuted all of classical theism or the Reformed faith. I humbly submit that the fate of both areas surely does not rest on my words. If I have failed in my knowledge or my ability to articulate the classical and Reformed positions, the error is solely mine, and not the great truths of the Scriptures I have attempted to faithfully represent.

In this 1:1 I have given my best efforts at accurately reflecting classical and Reformed thinking. My hope is that the more reasoned who come across my words will give them serious consideration and weigh them against the usual vitriolic rhetoric, or the mind-numbing, vacuous repetitiveness of some of the most prolific posters in these forums.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ42

AMRA-BEQ42

BEQ42: I need a clarification, can God apart from reliance on foreknowledge make a rooster crow? If possible, please unequivocally answer yes or no.

AMRA-BEQ42 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
There is no answer to your question as posed. Your question misunderstands foreknowledge and uses the term as a causative, when foreknowledge is merely knowledge of future happenings. Please carefully review my discussion in AMRA-BEQ12. A recap appears below:

By foreordination, I mean that God predisposes all that is to come to pass and the conditions in such a manner that all shall come to pass according to God's eternal plan. These events may come to pass via the free actions of moral agents (both saved and lost) or via God's causative acts.

By God's foreknowledge, I mean God knows always and at all times everything which is to come to pass. Why does God know this? God foreknows what is to come to pass because, as stated above, God has prearranged the happening of what is to come to pass. Thus we say that God foreknows because He has foreordained. This last statement makes sense when we observe that when we say, “I know what I am going to do,” it is evident that we have already determined to do so, and that our knowledge does not precede our determination, but follows the determining and is based upon the determining. To admit foreknowledge carries foreordination with it.
So, lest anyone claim I did not answer your question, let’s formulate it properly.

Foreknowledge presupposes foreordination, but foreknowledge is not itself foreordination.

Necessity of a hypothetical inference...
If God foreknew the rooster would crow, then the rooster cannot refrain from crowing. (Incorrect)

The interpretation above wrongly interprets God's foreknowledge as impinging upon the rooster’s instinctive agency. The proper understanding is:

The necessity of the consequent of the hypothetical...
Necessarily, if God foreknew the rooster would crow, then the rooster does not refrain from crowing. (Correct)

In other words, the actions of moral free agents or instinctively driven, non-sentient creatures do not take place because they are foreseen, the actions are foreseen because the actions are certain to take place.

Lest anyone think I am not answering your question, let’s formulate it correctly:
Can God apart from reliance on His foreordained decree make a rooster crow? If possible, please unequivocally answer yes or no.

No.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ43

AMRA-BEQ43

BEQ43: In <st1>SLA-</st1>BEQ13/20, you wrote, “Prophecies of the future dealing with free agents and without error do prove foreknowledge.” Please indicate how you could rule out divine foreknowledge for FDR, who declared from the bombing of Pearl Harbor that America would win WWII, asserting on December 8, 1941 that, “the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. …we will gain the inevitable triumph,” even though the decisions and actions of millions of independent humans, including the nations of the world, were required for the eventual fulfillment of FDR’s prophecy. (And I’m not sure if you can find an FDR prophecy which did not come to pass, like <st1:city w:st="on"><st1>Nineveh</st1></st1:city>’s, but if so please indicate how you can know it was not conditional.)

AMRA-BEQ43 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Please review my discussion of this matter in AMRA-BEQ13.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ44

AMRA-BEQ44

BEQ44: Please answer BEQ32: Considering not verbal revelation, but actual divine historical intervention, can you indicate if this statement is true: When God intervenes in history, the actual intervention itself cannot be a figure of speech!

AMRA-BEQ44 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Asked and answered. See AMRA-BEQ32.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ45

AMRA-BEQ45

BEQ45: I am curious, when Sam re-claimed Isaiah 40-48 as indicating exhaustive foreknowledge in 6A and 7A, why would Sam do so without addressing my extensive rebuttal of that argument in 3B?

AMRA-BEQ45 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Dr. Lamerson responded:

“SLA-BEQ45: I believe that you will find my answer above more than enough. As to why I waited, I was trying to get clash on specific passages of Scripture. I choose the New Testament passages. Bob choose not to reveal his passages to me until the debate was nearly over and in a post that is way, way overlong.”

You are probably unhappy with the response, and will be unhappy with my own in previous questions, for your “extensive rebuttal” is a meandering discussion of President Roosevelt’s tenure during World War II. Please review my discussion in AMRA-BEQ13 to refocus thinking on the Scriptural.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ46

AMRA-BEQ46

BEQ46: Using the very first definition for change from Webster.com, “to make different in some particular,” please answer forthrightly, “Is God able to change such that He can have true relationship?”

AMRA-BEQ46 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Asked and answered numerous times. Please review AMRA-BEQ35 for a summary and references to other AMRA-BEQx responses.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ47

AMRA-BEQ47

BEQ47: Which of the following sets of God’s attributes do the four Gospels give emphasis to (whether to all, or to a subset):
A: Living, Personal, Relational, Good, Loving
B: Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Impassibility, Immutability

AMRA-BEQ47 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Please review AMRA-BEQ3 for a proper treatment of the attributes of God. For example, “relational” is not an attribute, but a derivative of the attribute of “personality”. As I have argued in AMRA-BEQ3, unsettled theism should resist using the methods of the cultists by creating lexicons that are at odds with orthodoxy.

All of the Gospels give emphasis to all of God’s attributes. As answered in AMRA-BEQ2, every positive attribute of God inheres in all positive attributes of God.

Matthew: Christ is the Messiah
Mark: Christ is the Son of God and the Son of Man
Luke: Christ is the Savior of the elect
John: Christ Incarnate, the theanthropic God-man

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-BEQ48

AMRA-BEQ48

BEQ48: Before the foundation of the earth, did God foresee how proteins would be assembled, and then take the credit for designing the process (Ps. 139:13-16), or was it God’s own creative genius and abilities that enabled Him to design and implement DNA apart from foreseeing how a protein would be formed?

AMRA-BEQ48 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
As I have argued in many responses, God decree determined all that was, is, and shall be. His decision to create was not made with any foreknowledge, but only from within His own good counsel and will. When God spoke the opening words of the Scriptures all physical and temporal existence began.

There is not a single charmed quark, much less DNA that is not under God’s direct providential control in the universe. If God’s will is not sustaining the very structures that are holding the double-helix together, they (and we) would simply not exist.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMR-BEQ49

AMR-BEQ49

BEQ49: Did God the Son remain as immutable through the Incarnation and the Crucifixion as you believe that God generally is?

AMRA-BEQ49 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
Yes. Please see the extensive treatment of the Incarnate Christ in AMRA-BEQ16.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMRA-50

AMRA-50

BEQ50: Concerning the doctrine of immutability, give your definition of change, and explain how it is that God can change in relationship:
A. within the Trinity, and
B. with His creatures.

AMRA-BEQ50 - Ask Mr. Religion Responds:
God does not become different in some particular (i.e., change). He is eternally the same in all that He has revealed to us in His general and special revelations. God does not change in His relations to His creatures. God’s creatures change in relation to Him. We love God, He loves us with His unchanging love. We hate God, His wrath burns with an unchanging intensity. God the Father has eternally loved the Son and the Spirit with His unchanging love. Amen.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Concluding Comments

Concluding Comments

Well, this was fun and very hard work. These questions forced me to crisp up many things I had not thought much about in many years. For that I am grateful to have been given the opportunity and the forum by TOL.

I hope the reader of this thread comes away with a greater appreciation for the doctrines of classical theism and the Reformed faith. If they do, then I count my labors as having been successful.

For those wanting the reader's digest version of some of the key points of Reformed doctrines, see the three links in my signature below.

 

[Bob Enyart]

AMR, Knight asked me for now to answer your one question...

AMR, Knight asked me for now to answer your one question...

Thanks for going through all those 50 BR X questions AMR. I'll answer the one question you've asked for now (per Knight's request). On TOL we often discuss God and the future. We Open Thesists argue that God is a living Person, and that He therefore has a will, and therefore has the ability to decide, and that He remains eternally creative, and able to bring truly new things into existence (flowers, songs, books) and that therefore, because God has a will, and is eternally able, free and creative, the future is open because God is able.

Before I answer your question, consider this personhood issue:

To be a person means to possess a will. There is one God in three Persons, and each Person of the Godhead possesses a will. The primary way we can distinguish that God exists in a Trinity of three Persons (as opposed to a unitarian God) is by noticing in Scripture their respective wills, most explicitly portrayed in Gethsemane when God the Son said, “not as I will, but as You will” (Mat. 26:39).

Greek words for will are thelo, boule, boulomai, etc. These words are used of the persons of the Trinity (John 5:30; 6:38, etc.), and basically of all other persons. As I glance very quickly at the New Testament I see these Greek words used: of the Gentiles (1 Pet. 4:3), of Joseph’s will (Mat. 1:19), of a plaintiff’s will (Mat. 5:40), of a debtor (Mat. 5:42), of any man with self interest (Mat. 7:12), of Christ’s enemies (Mat. 12:38), of Herod (Mat. 14:5), of Joseph of Arimathea’s will (Luke 23:51), the majority’s will (Acts 27:12), the evil soldiers’ will (Acts 27:42), the wills of evil men (1 Cor. 4:5), etc., etc., etc.

Personhood requires a will. (Notice, by the way, how central this personhood thing is, and this made in God’s image thing, which must be admitted for a right understanding of most everything.) AMR, I’m taking it from memory that you asked me how it is, if the future is open, that I could trust that God will have the final victory. And here I pick up the dialogue from your post. I answered:

BE: I have faith in God's wisdom, power, and love.

AMR: Do you believe that God acts as a master chess player with wisdom, skill, and resourcefulness to bring about His purposes?

(And then [I haven’t looked up if anything transpired before the next quote]):

BE: ...there is no such thing as overruling someone's will. That is a non sequitur. I'm not saying just that it is not possible, I am saying that it is not rational (it is illogical). Will is the ability to decide.

AMR: I don't want to misunderstand you. Are you saying that you believe that God will always respect the free will of His creatures? Or are you saying that God cannot interfere with a person's free will--that it is an impossibility?

Now fast-forward to the present. I try to not dodge questions, but to be direct and complete when I answer. So I’ll answer your question, as you put it, and then I’ll answer a few variations of your question, as I think you meant it.

I am saying that God created creatures with a will, which is their ability to decide. Thus, when Gabriel loves God, it is not God deciding to love Himself through a zero-sum portal. It is Gabriel, this creature, exercising his will. There IS NO SUCH THING as God exercising Gabriel's will. That is a non sequitur. It is irrational. The very notion flows from a misunderstanding of fundamental personhood. There is no such thing as God exercising AMR's or Bob's wills, that is a non sequitur. (And I'm really glad that God is not the one who exercised my will in the godless ways that I have exercised it.) God created beings in His likeness, with a will (the ability to decide) and therefore, with the ability to love or hate, like Gabriel and Lucifer. God does not love Himself through Me, any more than He hates Himself through Lucifer. These are nonsense ideas.

When you ask if God can “interfere” with a person’s free will, perhaps you were imprecise. Interfere? I’ll answer your question with the word interfere, and then I’ll answer it with overrule, and some variations on overruling. If someone is counting to ten, and I spook them, I’ve interfered. If a Christian is deciding whether to marry an unbeliever, and I quote from Paul’s epistle, I’ve interfered. God can rightly educate, urge, trick, etc., a person and thereby interfere with the exercise of his will, that is, to influence the outcome of the use of his will. That is a natural everyday process. But in the end, it is the man’s will, deciding. But I think you wanted to ask something else, and something that is so irrational, that it is somewhat difficult to put into words. But I’ll try.

If you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He physically compel that man to take an action he otherwise would not take? For example, Can God levitate a gun into a man’s hand, point it at someone, and force the man’s muscles to pull the trigger? Of course. Yes. God has the raw power to pull the man’s tendons. But is that overruling the man’s will? No.

Or, if you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He psychologically manipulate a man to freely do something that he would never otherwise do? For example, Can God deceive a man into shooting someone he would never shoot of his own free will? Of course. Yes. God has the raw power to play such a trivial mind game, and give a person a delusion and make him think he is doing one thing, when he is actually doing another, or give him a delusion to make him think he must do a certain thing, for a very good reason, which reason doesn’t actually exist. In some circumstances, administering drugs can do likewise. But is that overruling or overcoming the man’s will? No.

Or, if you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He compel a man to freely do something that the man would never otherwise do, something the man is fully aware of, but something he would never do of his own independent will? For example, Herod willed to put John the Baptist to death. And although Herod willed (Greek thelo, will) to murder John, he feared the multitude, so he did not do what he willed (Mat. 14:5). A billion times a day God’s influence moves men to do otherwise than they would have done had His Spirit, His law, His Church, etc., not influenced them otherwise. But is that overruling or overcoming a man’s will? No. Did the multitude overrule Herod’s will? No.

Or, if you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He… [ad infinitum]

This is an exercise in nonsense. The best I can infer from your question AMR is that you mean to ask something like this: Can God overrule a man’s free will in such a way that now the man actually wills something by his own free will that his own independent free will does not will. This is gibberish.

Ask Mr. Religion, you don’t realize this, but your question, Can God overrule a man’s free will, is the same as asking, Can God unmake a person? Did God put eternity in a man’s heart? That is, Is man created as necessarily an eternal creature? Or, Can God unmake a person? That is what you are asking.

-Pastor Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church & KGOV.com

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Thank you for your response. I appreciate the dissection of my question, but I don't think you keyed in on my actual words, to wit:

AMR: I don't want to misunderstand you. Are you saying that you believe that God will always respect the free will of His creatures? Or are you saying that God cannot interfere with a person's free will--that it is an impossibility?

Can you respond to the specific questions above? I believe you have answered the second item as "no, it is not impossible for God to do so, but it is absurd". Fair enough. But you have left the key item unanswered. Does God always respect the free will (by 'free will' I mean the libertarian free will assumed by the open theist) of His creatures?

 

[Bob Enyart]

AMR, I'm done with your question of "will"

AMR, I'm done with your question of "will"

AMR, I'm done with your question of will. I answered you directly.

In December, Lord-willing, I plan on looking at your answers and making a reply. As for your answers to the BR X material, I hope you answered my questions directly and substantively. You just gave us an example of using obfuscation to ignore an answer to your own question. It would have been more instructive if you had actually addressed my answer, and then offered a follow up question.

It is my observation, after many years of doing this (see BR X and our Bob Debates a Calvinist DVD), that Open Theists show more courage in answering questions directly, not because they are better debaters, but because we have truth on our side, and are therefore not afraid of any question. But thanks for participating here on TOL, so that various claims about truth and reality can be compared to Scripture and then weighed by so many others.

The only regret I have in such debates is that a hardened Calvinist is far more of an insult to God than is a casual Calvinist. A studied Calvinist often disdains non-Calvinists, I believe, because they bring to his mind the severity of the charge, that the Calvinist falsely attributes all vulgar wickedness to the mind of God. To teach that from before the foundation of the world, God decreed all of mankind's sexual assault, cruelty, filth and rebellion is of course, blasphemy. Thankfully, God is rich in mercy even toward such Christians who insult His holiness.

-Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church & KGOV.com

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

AMR, I'm done with your question of will. I answered you directly.

In December, Lord-willing, I plan on looking at your answers and making a reply. As for your answers to the BR X material, I hope you answered my questions directly and substantively. You just gave us an example of using obfuscation to ignore an answer to your own question. It would have been more instructive if you had actually addressed my answer, and then offered a follow up question.

I gave your response its just due. I read it and easily saw it for what it was--a transparent attempt to avoid directly answering a simple question. Perhaps you can learn a thing or two from some of the other TOL regulars who seem to have no problem directly answering the question: "Does God always respect the free will of His creatures?" After all, you have truth on your side, no?

No matter, I will take your previous lumbering response as "yes, God always respects the liberty of indifference (libertarian free will) of the person". I assumed this would be your answer. It strengthens the orthodox position that any guaranteed hope for the eschaton is impossible for the unsettled theist. Such a hope rests with a probabilistically governing God who not only cannot fix the date of the eschaton with certainty, but cannot even know when to fix that date.

It is my observation, after many years of doing this (see BR X and our Bob Debates a Calvinist DVD), that Open Theists show more courage in answering questions directly, not because they are better debaters, but because we have truth on our side, and are therefore not afraid of any question. But thanks for participating here on TOL, so that various claims about truth and reality can be compared to Scripture and then weighed by so many others.

Polemics and marketing commercials notwithstanding, your previous response is a veritable model of obfuscation and exudes the fear of a direct answer you just claimed to not possess.

The only regret I have in such debates is that a hardened Calvinist is far more of an insult to God than is a casual Calvinist. A studied Calvinist often disdains non-Calvinists, I believe, because they bring to his mind the severity of the charge, that the Calvinist falsely attributes all vulgar wickedness to the mind of God. To teach that from before the foundation of the world, God decreed all of mankind's sexual assault, cruelty, filth and rebellion is of course, blasphemy. Thankfully, God is rich in mercy even toward such Christians who insult His holiness.

Well, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. Like many within these forums, you presume to tell me what I and Calvinists believe. Not that I would mind, if only you and others would take the time and effort to get things correctly. Loaded language may be currency of the fanatical, but you cannot spend it among the more reasoned for such misinformed rhetoric is the hallmark of the superficial and intellectually lazy.

Lord willing, if you ever get around to offering rejoinders to my responses to your questions, I hope you do so directly and substantively. If your most recent response is typical of your intentions, I recommend you forego the effort in favor of spending the holidays with your family.

 

[Bob Enyart]

I think AMR may have proved his claim against me...

I think AMR may have proved his claim against me...

AMR, you said that I did not directly answering your question, and I think you’ve come very close to proving your accusation. I was going to dismiss your claim, since I tried to answer fully, not only your question, but variations of your question that came closer to what you really meant to ask. But with all that, you convinced me that I must have been unclear when you took my answer to be the opposite of what I had intended. You gave me a multiple choice question with suggested A or B answers. My answer utterly rejected A, and I MUST HAVE BEEN UNCLEAR to some extent because, after reading my answer, you assumed I had actually answered A.

Wow.

So, I’ll repost, and make my answer more clear.

Are you saying that you believe that [A] God will always respect the free will of His creatures? Or are you saying that God cannot interfere with a person's free will--that it is an impossibility?

I did not answer A. By A, I believe you meant: Bob, Does your Open Theism lead you to conclude that God willingly chooses to not violate a man’s free will? I definitely don’t mean that. (I hope I am being clear.) Selecting A would imply that there is a choice to make, but there is no such choice. Here are examples of this: God does not refrain from making a duplicate God fully like Himself by choice. That is irrational. God cannot duplicate Himself; He cannot make a rock bigger than He could lift, and then lift it; He cannot make Himself wicked and remain righteous; He cannot undo His own existence. These are irrational concepts. And so, if you were to ask Me, Does God refrain from duplicating Himself because He respects monotheism?, I would answer: Your question betrays a confusion about reality. That is an irrationality; that is not something God could do. And that is how I was responding to you.

My answer to your A or B question included:

There IS NO SUCH THING as God exercising Gabriel's will. That is a non sequitur. It is irrational. The very notion flows from a misunderstanding of fundamental personhood. There is no such thing as God exercising AMR's or Bob's wills…

Rejecting A as the answer, I went on to address B separately, because they were two different questions. And it seemed to me that your terminology was too loose to get to your actual question. I stated that “interfere” is perhaps too broad a word for what you meant to ask, because we all commonly “interfere” or, influence one another in the exercise of our wills, and this has nothing to do with your notion of “respecting someone’s free will.” Of course, God can and does interfere, i.e., influence us, in the exercise of our wills.

But you interpreted all this as:

I will take your previous lumbering response as "yes, God always respects the liberty of indifference (libertarian free will) of the person".

Boy! I must have been unclear for you to think I was selecting A as an answer. I had just utterly rejected A as irrelevant. But your confusion is reasonable evidence that I must have been unclear. Hence, this post…

And not wanting to be unresponsive to the deeper question that you meant to ask, I went on to answer your question restated to: Can God overrule a man’s free will? And I answered four versions of that question: physical, psychological, compel against his free will, compel with his free will.

So, with your question restated, to Can God overrule a man’s free will?, for all four versions of this question, I answered, “No.” (For the first three, I actually wrote the word, “No,” and for the fourth version, I used an idiom: gibberish which means “No!!”.)

And even with all that clarification (I hope I am being clear), I still think it will be easy for AMR and others to misunderstand my answer, because people have a hard time separating the meaning of “will,” which is the ability to decide, from the figures of speech that grew out of that word, which are matters of achievability, instances, and valuations. Let me explain this, and then I’ll re-answer your question. Consider…

Definition: Will is the ability to decide.

Implications: Will can only be free. The Father wills to love the Son. Love requires will, meaning that it cannot exist apart from the ability to not love (hate). One’s will is commonly confused with:
* being able to achieve what we will (what we call ability or power)
* an instance of the exercise of the will (a choice, decision, selection)
* sets of values that the will prioritizes and decides between (preferences, principles)

People confuse these figures for the original all the time! And for my TOL friends who have debated the meaning of will, consider that this pattern of confusion is not unexpected. For words have spheres of meaning, and words commonly become figures of speech taking on the above relationships. For example, to breathe means to inhale and exhale, which should not be confused with:
* achieving the goal of each inhale (to be breathing, i.e., to be alive)
* an instance of breathing (a breath)
* sets of instances of easy respiration (take a breath, catch your breath, he needs a breather)

On the next line, I’ve typed a word, followed by three related figures of speech:
will, will, will, will.

This word has an original meaning, and popular usage replicated it creating secondary figures related to the original.

This happens with the word will, and people have a hard time distinguishing the ability to decide from achievability, instances, and valuations. For the remainder of this post, please keep these uses distinctly separate in your mind, and realize we are not talking about the common figures of will but will in its original meaning, which is, the ability to decide. Now to answer AMR’s question again:

To be a person means to possess a will. [And for Nang’s sake, I’ll clarify: I did not intend that to be a definition; personhood means a lot of things, with a primary attribute being the possession of a will.] There is one God in three Persons, and each Person of the Godhead possesses a will. The primary way we can distinguish that God exists in a Trinity of three Persons (as opposed to a unitarian God) is by noticing in Scripture their respective wills, most explicitly portrayed in Gethsemane when God the Son said, “not as I will, but as You will” (Mat. 26:39).

Greek words for will are thelo, boule, boulomai, etc. These words are used of the persons of the Trinity (John 5:30; 6:38, etc.), and basically of all other persons. As I glance very quickly at the New Testament I see these Greek words used: of the Gentiles (1 Pet. 4:3), of Joseph’s will (Mat. 1:19), of a plaintiff’s will (Mat. 5:40), of a debtor (Mat. 5:42), of any man with self interest (Mat. 7:12), of Christ’s enemies (Mat. 12:38), of Herod (Mat. 14:5), of Joseph of Arimathea’s will (Luke 23:51), the majority’s will (Acts 27:12), the evil soldiers’ will (Acts 27:42), the wills of evil men (1 Cor. 4:5), etc., etc., etc.

Personhood requires a will… God created creatures with a will, which is their ability to decide. Thus, when Gabriel loves God, it is not God deciding to love Himself through a zero-sum portal. It is Gabriel, this creature, exercising his will. There IS NO SUCH THING as God exercising Gabriel's will. That is a non sequitur. It is irrational. The very notion flows from a misunderstanding of fundamental personhood. There is no such thing as God exercising AMR's or Bob's wills, that is a non sequitur. (And I'm really glad that God is not the one who exercised my will in the godless ways that I have exercised it.) God created beings in His likeness, with a will (the ability to decide) and therefore, with the ability to love or hate, like Gabriel and Lucifer. God does not love Himself through Me, any more than He hates Himself through Lucifer. These are nonsense ideas.

When you ask if God can “interfere” with a person’s free will, perhaps you were imprecise. Interfere? I’ll answer your question with the word interfere, and then I’ll answer it with overrule, and some variations on overruling. If someone is counting to ten, and I spook them, I’ve interfered. If a Christian is deciding whether to marry an unbeliever, and I quote Paul, I’ve interfered. God can rightly educate, urge, trick, etc., a person and thereby interfere with the exercise of his will, that is, to influence the outcome of the use of his will. That is a natural everyday process. But in the end, it is the man’s will, deciding. But I think you wanted to ask something else, and something that is so irrational, that it is somewhat difficult to put into words. But I’ll try.

If you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He physically compel that man to take an action he otherwise would not take? For example, Can God levitate a gun into a man’s hand, point it at someone, and force the man’s muscles to pull the trigger? Of course. Yes. God has the raw power to pull the man’s tendons. But is that overruling the man’s will? No.

Or, if you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He psychologically manipulate a man to freely do something that he would never otherwise do? For example, Can God deceive a man into shooting someone he would never shoot of his own free will? Of course. Yes. God has the raw power to play such a trivial mind game, and give a person a delusion and make him think he is doing one thing, when he is actually doing another, or give him a delusion to make him think he must do a certain thing, for a very good reason, which reason doesn’t actually exist. In some circumstances, administering drugs can do likewise. But is that overruling or overcoming the man’s will? No.

Or, if you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He compel a man to freely do something that the man would never otherwise do, something the man is fully aware of, but something he would never do of his own independent will? For example, Herod willed to put John the Baptist to death. And although Herod willed (Greek thelo, will) to murder John, he feared the multitude, so he did not do what he willed (Mat. 14:5). A billion times a day God’s influence moves men to do otherwise than they would have done had His Spirit, His law, His Church, etc., not influenced them otherwise. But is that overruling or overcoming a man’s will? No. Did the multitude overrule Herod’s will? No.

Or, if you were to ask, Can God overrule a man’s free will? You might mean, Can He… [ad infinitum]

This is an exercise in nonsense. The best I can infer from your question AMR is that you mean to ask something like this: Can God overrule a man’s free will in such a way that now the man actually wills something by his own free will that his own independent free will does not will. This is gibberish [which being translated, is: No].

Ask Mr. Religion, you don’t realize this, but your question, Can God overrule a man’s free will, is the same as asking, Can God unmake a person? Did God put eternity in a man’s heart? That is, Is man created as necessarily an eternal creature? Or, Can God unmake a person? That is what you are asking.

-Pastor Bob Enyart
Denver Bible Church & KGOV.com

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Thank you for taking the time to elaborate more completely. It is appreciated. I am acknowledging I have seen your post and will respond, but before I do I think some clarifications are in order.

Your argument is focused on assuming a definition of 'will' as the "ability to decide". It is a definition that I can agree with only in part and will so discuss in my forthcoming response. By making "the ability to decide" synonymous with 'will' as the linchpin of your response, you have moved the discussion dangerously close to the realm of philosophy, thus we will have to reach agreement or disagreement on what 'will' really means in a world full of living creatures. As you have written elsewhere I am forced to conclude that your notion of 'will' is not as simple as you would have me assume. Moreover, in a response to Lamerson's SLQ-3, you wrote "will is the ability to decide otherwise", yet your reply to me has omitted the key libertarian free will (the liberty of indifference) distinction, 'otherwise'. Am I to assume you have omitted this word intentionally or that your response to me defining 'will' should actually have included the word 'otherwise'? I am not trying to obfuscate here. I just need a very clear understanding of your definition of the word, 'will', given the different way you have so defined 'will' elsewhere.

I assume that you will want to offer some clarification in light of these observations, especially since you are keen enough to understand why I am making a big deal about these two variants of the definition in light of our discussion, so I will await them before responding in full.