ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1
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Letsargue
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RobE said:
---Ps. 139:15,16,17.—
---15-“My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest part of the earth”.
---16-“Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them”.
---17-“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O GOD! How great is the sum of them”!
*
---------------Paul---
*
RobE said:
There is virtually an infinite number of possibilities as to who would mate with whom, what sperm/egg would unite, if mom or baby would live beyond a certain time (could both get killed in an accident), etc. My exact existence was impossible to know as a certainty before creation. Once I was conceived, God would perfectly know the genetic outcome. He would not know every moral and mundane choice that I would make, including whether I would live for Him in the end or not.
Procreation is within our makeup. God is involved at conception giving us life (or it could be inherent in the design of man).
It was possible that a parent could abort a child. This was not foreknown before the parents were conceived themselves. I was once engaged to someone else, as was my wife. If we would have freely continued with our plans with these people, then my kids would not be in existence since I would not have had sex with the one I eventually married. These things are not foreknown from trillions of years ago. Contingencies create an element of uncertainty. There is a difference between God knowing a myriad of possibilities and outcomes and actually knowing these as certainties before they become certain objects of knowledge.
seekinganswers
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godrulz said:
"Freedom is a means to the end of love relationships."
This is what I contest. Freedom does not come before love, and love is not the same as "love relationships". When a wife remains with her husband who has become a vegatable by some freak accident, her love is much more profound than the love of a man and a woman in a "reciprocal love relationship". Mutual reciprocity does not signify a greater love. And I would contest that God's love for the Creation as a whole is much greater than his love for humanity by itself, for God does not hand the Creation over to the distortion of men, but God rescues even the Creation (and God's salvation is for the whole of Creation, which groans in anticipation of it). God is sustained in Godself, for the love of the Father extends to the Son and the Spirit who return that love to the Father in praise. God does not seek out any more fulfilling love than that.
Rather, God invites the Creation to be part of that love, for in the Creaiton God wraps it all up in the Word and the Spirit, and that Word and Spirit work in the Creation to bring it to rest (worship). And though humanity has a special place in that overall work, the place of humanity is not so priviledged as to place the ultimacy of humanity above the rest of Creation. The telos of humanity is tied firmly to the telos of the Creation, and so the salvation of humanity is the salvation of the Creation as a whole.
You see, Godrulz, the image of God in humanity is lost when Adam fashions humanity in his own image (by making himself into a god, as the end of Genesis 4 puts it). When Paul speaks of Adam in Romans 5, Adam is not the archetype of humanity in the image of God, but humanity in sin. Those who are of Adam are in the image of men, and that is made manifest in the very framework of society that is built up by humanity in contrast to God (look at Cain, or pre-flood, or Babel; we are in the snare of rulers of the world and of empire). When humans forget the love of God and the love of the neighbor they forfeit the image in which they were cast, exchanging it for a broken image of man in sin. The true image of God is in God's son, which is brought about in Christ, not in Adam. Christ is humanity in the image of God, and all those who submit to Christ in faithfulness will be returned to that image (they will be a "new Creation" as Paul puts it).
So humanity in itself is lost. We are not free, but slaves of sin. And if we are to enter into Christ, we must become "slaves of Christ," as Paul would put it. We are not first called to freedom, but to a bondage, to obedience. The rich man who comes to Christ does not get a relationship, but gets a command, "Sell everything, give it all to the poor, and follow me." The disciples do not get a "relationship," but get a command, "Follow me." Isreal does not get a "relationship," but a command, "Love the Lord your God...." The Church does not get a "relationship" but a command, "Repent oh sinner and turn to Christ, that God's light might shine on you that you might be saved." This is grace, but it is costly, for it requires that one give it all up. But it is grace, for once all is given, nothing can be lost, and in the giving God is much more generous so as to lavish us with abundant and eternal life.
Relationship is a weak term used by those of us raised in a culture where our private lives are fragmented from our public life, so our interactions with others is always mediated by this "neutral" power known as the state. Relationship is nothing more than an interaction of individuals in a neutral space created by coersive powers (and through torture, both invasive and subtle). God does not call us to have a relationship, for God is the relationship (Father, Son, and Spirit) and we are called to make our dwelling in God, to be drawn into the perfection that God has called us to in his rest, that we might then allow God's love to flow through us to the other. Freedom is not the central reality, but God is. And God remains central, for true "relationship" must be grounded in truth, and God is truth. God comes first, and so love is the virtue, not freedom. And if we are to look to the other virtues of the church, they are faith and hope, not freedom. Freedom is the virtue of a liberal nation-state and of democracy and capitalism, which are not entities of God, but that are quite worldly, constructions that care less about the marginalized people within. Democracy and Capitalism do not give a voice to the disenfranchized, but rather drown them out in the cachophony of noise produced by the crowd.
God does not come to us as an equal. When we look at the story of Cain and Abel, it becomes quite clear that God does pretty much whatever God wants to do, and does so without any regard to how it makes Cain feel. God is the master, Cain is the vassel (the one whose care is from the master). And though God does not explain the reasoning for his acceptance of Abel's offering and rejection of Cain's, God still is the master of Cain, and calls Cain to obedience.
This is the "relationship" we are called to in Christ:
"If anyone were to come after me, let the one deny self and follow me. For whoever grabs hold of life, will lose it. But whoever might let go of life for my sake, will save it. What good is it for one to gain the whole cosmos, yet lose one's very life? If anyone cowers before others about me, than I will be ashamed to mention that one before the Father when I come in his glory and with his angels."
It is not coersion; it is a call to truth. Christ is the truth, and therefore all must come to the Father through him. And the only way one might be able to sustain this kind of life has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with faith, hope and love. Freedom comes from God, as God shows the powers of sin for what they really are, nothing. Freedom comes in the truth, not in our choice, for a choice made in darkness is not freedom at all. Those who grope around in the dark end up in dark places; But those who receive the light are truly enlightened.
My qualms with Open Theism is that Freedom is made into a virtue (virtue being that which sustains a practice, in this case love) but the scriptures never reveal freedom to be a virtue at all. Just because one is given light does not mean one can sustain their life in the light. To come into the light takes faith, hope and love. Freedom has one entered the scene because the church is more willing to cast itself in the image of the secular democratic state than to be grounded in the scriptures.
Peace,
Michael
seekinganswers
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godrulz said:
But the problem with your statement is that Wesley is not a theist of the free will but is a man who has embraced the theology of love, for Wesley himself was described as a man who understood God through the theology of love (not that of free will). Free-will is placed on the back-burner by Wesley, and his focus is turned to the love of God, which I would contest is much more faithful than Open Theism which interprets love through the theology of freedom. Love is what conquers all, not freedom. And freedom is non-existant without there first being love. Love is not allowed by freedom, but freedom is given place through love. Open Theism has turned things around in a way that I find to be most disconcerting. God does not first need to allow freedom for him to be a loving God. No, God first loves, and in that love produces true freedom. And those who reject the love of God live in slavery, not in freedom, for they have exchanged the light of God for darkness, and have given themselves over to choices made in the dark; and a person in the dark is not free.
Wesley speaks of preventative grace, whereby God does not allow a person's actions to lead to their own utter destruction before God gives them the light of the gospel of Christ. The Wesleyans distort this as they talk of prevenient grace, which is nothing more than a redundancy, for show me a grace that doesn't come before. You see, grace is the love of God, and it is determined by the freeness of God, who does as God pleases. As Jesus illustrates in the parable of the workers, where the master hires workers at the beginning middle and end of the day and pays all the workers the same wage. "They're my resources," says the Master, "Am I not allowed to do with them as I please?"
You see, God's love is not determined by our being free. God's love is determined by God's freedom, to do as God pleases, but not as a tyrant who seeks to control what does not submit to him (for in this way the tyrant doesn't do as he pleases but does as others drive him to act). Rather, God is a loving ruler, whose care of the Creation determines his place as king. God is Master in the garden not because God controls the rebellious, but because God cares for what God has made. Grace is the factor of the loving God, not human free-will. And because God is a gracious God, God does not allow the Creation to do as it pleases. We either receive life from God, or we die. We either receive the abundance that God offers us despite our worthiness to receive it, or we embrace destruction. We are not free. We are either servents of God or servants of darkness. Our reality hangs on the truth, and if we reject the truth, we reject all life; we reject our very existence.
Those who reject God do not drive his actions (as they do a tyrant's actions). Those who reject God go to destruction as God decreed from the very beginning, "eat of it and you will most assuredly be destroyed." It won't be because God is threatened by the rebellious, but it will be because the power they think they have is no power at all. Christ on the cross is not God's desparate pleading with the rebellious people of the world; Christ on the cross is the last battle-cry by which the powers of sin are defeated, and the true power of God in love, in the Creation, is made known. God's power is much greater than the power of the sinful and rebellious, for what the unrighteous think they can destroy, God raises to new and eternal life. The true power is not in one's ability to destroy what is made (for that power depends on another power, for only what has been made can be destroyed). And if the one who destroys has no power to create, than the power of destruction that seems so great has become their own destruction, for what they set into motion they can no longer control, and they end up destroying themselves. True power is in the Creation, and that power of Creation comes from the first Creation all the way to the New Creation.
Peace,
Michael
It seems to me you sound like an open theist. Unless you are meaning different things, most of us would agree with the gist of what you are saying. Wesley had good ideas, but not everything he believed was infallible or consistent.
Sanders (Open Theist) also argued for the supremacy of love, not freedom. I think this is in line with most open theists who emphasize God's love, relationality, responsiveness, etc. We contrast our freedom as those in the image of God with robotic determinism. We are not pitting freedom against love and recognize the supremacy of love, which does involve free choices and reciprocal relationships freely entered into. We do not need to create a false either/or dichotomy. It is both love and freedom as legit concepts, not either love or freedom.
Sanders (Open Theist) also argued for the supremacy of love, not freedom. I think this is in line with most open theists who emphasize God's love, relationality, responsiveness, etc. We contrast our freedom as those in the image of God with robotic determinism. We are not pitting freedom against love and recognize the supremacy of love, which does involve free choices and reciprocal relationships freely entered into. We do not need to create a false either/or dichotomy. It is both love and freedom as legit concepts, not either love or freedom.
seekinganswers
New member
godrulz said:
But what continues to baffle me is the fact that freedom never takes center stage as a Christian viture when we talk about the scriptures. Faith, hope, and love are the virtures that surpass all (not freedom). And when Paul speaks of love, he does not once tie it directly to freedom (i.e. the unaltered will of man). Love for Paul is the power of God to enact the Creation without coersion or violence. God does not manipulate what is. God casts out what is not to make room for the Creation. And love is what sustains the Creation. God's love is not made manifest in give/take relationships; God's love is made manifest in the Creation as God sustains life in the Creation through the Son and the Spirit. Humanity is not the stage of God's love, but the Creation is. And humanity is wrapped up in that love in as much as humanity recognizes its place in the Creation. The Son and the Spirit from the very beginning are drawing all of the Creation to God. And humanity doesn't get it.
That is why Christ comes in the flesh, not because God changed his plan based on the free-will of men, but because humans were so dense in their "will" that they ignored the truth to embrace a lie, and the light of God needed to shine on them once again. Humans were not special receivers of God's love; humans rejected the love of God that sustains the Creation in order to attempt to sustain their own life, to set what is "right" for themselves. They rejected love (the love that continued to sustain the Creation despite the disobedience of men) only to find that without the love of God their very life would cease. Like the prodigal Son in the pig slops what they need to do was come to their senses and remember exactly who their Father was (the Father that was extremely loving of his own sons, but just as loving to his slaves as well). Love is not found in the relationship between God and men. Love is found in God and God alone, so that anyone who loves can only be found in God. Love is not a relationship; love is a person; love is God.
Open theists turn love into a relationship, and that is blasphemous for me, because it then brings in virtues of our world (like freedom) that cannot be found in the scriptures. Freedom (as an unaltered will) is the virtue of Democracy and Capitalism (it sustains our current "justice" system in blindness, and supposedly keeps in check our leaders); it is not the virtue of the Christian, however. Truth comes first for the Christian, not freedom. For any freedom found outside of the truth is not freedom but slavery. A person making choices in the dark is not free. So the virtues of the Christian are faith, hope, and love, for they draw a Christian into the truth that is God, so that freedom is subsequent to the truth (for we cannot be set free until we come into the light). And we do not have freedom in ourselves (for we are slaves of sin); thus, we must be set free which means we become slaves (douloi) of a different Master. And because our new Master is kind, with an easy load and a light burden, we are truly set free. "If the Son has set you free, then you are free indeed!!"
There is a hierarchy to love and freedom. Love does not end where freedom ends (for that would mean that the love of God is brought to an end at the fall, where we become slaves of sin). Love conquors all (even in the absence of freedom). Christ overcomes the powers of sin, even as the powers of sin have a firm grip on humanity.
Love is not a relationship; God is love.
Peace,
Michael
Freedom is a self-evident gift from the personal Creator, who is the most free of moral agents. It is why we are responsible/accountable for our actions. It is why we can drive a car without puppet strings on our back. It is why we can procreate or receive/reject Christ.
Certainly, love is paramount. Love is not coerced nor caused, so freedom is an aspect of love. Love is volitional, not just emotional.
The Bible is relational, not deterministic. Uphold the virtues of love, but why nit pick about the simple nature of free will? Do you want to turn us back to the bondage of Islamic fatalism or Calvinistic determinism?
Free will is self-evident. Just because there is not a I Cor. 13 love chapter equivalent on freedom, does not mean it is not part of the warp and woof of any personal beings experience.
Certainly, love is paramount. Love is not coerced nor caused, so freedom is an aspect of love. Love is volitional, not just emotional.
The Bible is relational, not deterministic. Uphold the virtues of love, but why nit pick about the simple nature of free will? Do you want to turn us back to the bondage of Islamic fatalism or Calvinistic determinism?
Free will is self-evident. Just because there is not a I Cor. 13 love chapter equivalent on freedom, does not mean it is not part of the warp and woof of any personal beings experience.
seekinganswers
New member
godrulz said:
God is not a moral agent. To make such a statement is to seperate morality and God. An agent is one who participates in morality that is distinct from the agent. So to call God the "most-free of moral agents" is to set morality outside of God (as a neutral space) in which both the Creator and the Creation participate. Morality is not something in which God participates. God is morality, righteousness, justice, mercy, grace, and love. God does not simply participate in these.
Yes we are accountable for our actions; yes, we can drive a car without God "being our pilot"; yes, we can receive or reject Christ. But know that this volition does not come by our freedom, but by God's freedom. It is by grace that such things are possible. Grace is the freedom of God by which God need not respond toward us according to what we have done, but that God might live freely as God. It is grace that frees God from tyrany, for a tyrant is a slave to those who rebel against him, and a tyrant always sees the rebellious as a threat to his control. God is not a tyrant, for God is not threatened by rebellion. And so it is by God's grace that we have a will and volition of our own. It is by God's grace that we are saved.
Freedom is not a doctrine of the Church; grace is. Freedom (as that which establishes "moral agents") is the doctrine of a secular world, the foundation for Capitalism and Democracy. We are not called in God to be "moral agents." To be a moral agent is to take right and wrong into one's own hands and to set them for yourself (to set right and wrong outside of God and yourself and to place yourself as your own mediator to the "good"). This is sin; this is slavery; this is death. Any good that is found outside of the Creator is no good at all. All that is good and right finds its sustanance in the Creator and nowhere else.
Our volition does not consist in our ability to sin; our volition is the result of God's grace. Without God's freedom (which is true freedom) we can never have volition. We will always be slaves to another. But by yielding ourselves to God, by becoming slaves of Christ we gain true freedom.
godrulz said:
But love is a person. Love is embodied in God, in Christ. Love is not an abstract neutral space in which to plant our relationships. Love is not a relationship; God is love.
godrulz said:
And what about the nihlism of the Democratic world? Oh yes, you will outcry the deterministic values of the Calvinists and the Islamists, but you will not see the evil within democracy, which leads to a nihilism and existentialism that is just as perilous as the others. You will see the dangers of Marx and Mohommed, but you will not see the danger inherent to Kant and Tillich, the two most influential scholars in United States theological studies. Even the scholars you are reading now in Open Theism are in the line of Paul Tillich and Immanuel Kant (and let us not forget the Niebuhr brothers, who were the reactionaries against liberalism that still embraced liberalism). And it is by your understanding of the "free will" (which only comes into the picture after the advent of Existentialism) that I know you are reading in the line of Tillich and Kant. You claim to be "getting back to the beginning," but what you are ignorant of is the fact that your supposed "beginning" is being seen through the eyes of Modernity, through the Enlightenment, and so you have distorted the beginning. Determinism is evil. But so are nihlism and existentialism. All of them take an aspect of the truth and twist it to their own desires. To reject one evil but exchange it for another is just as wrong as embracing the first.
I am reading in the line of Barth the father of neo-orthodoxy. He is not like the Niebuhr brothers who in their attempt to reject the liberalism handed to them by the protestant scholasticism of the Enlightenment, end up embracing liberalism. Barth truly reacts against the human-centered liberal theology of the Enlightenment to once again embrace Christ as the core of the Church and its theology.
This is not me nit picking unimportant details. This is the very core of the problem of the church today, and Open Theism remains ignorant of this very problem.
godrulz said:
And here we see the fact that you embrace what is not scriptural. You have stated above very clearly that your "free-will" doctrine cannot be found in the scriptures. You assume that it is the grounding for the early church, but that is only because you are looking at the early church through the lens of modernity. Love and grace are written throughout the scriptures; free-will is nowhere to be found. Which of the two is more faithful to the tradition?
Peace,
Michael
I'll let godrulz reply to the rest of your post but after reading this first paragraph I thought you should read this...seekinganswers said:
From Battle Royale VII....
From Zakath's 7th round post...
5. God's nature defines the absolute standard of right and wrong.
With his claim that "many Christians have unwittingly undermined the holiness of God by suggesting that he can be spiritually arbitrary, because he is God…", Pastor Enyart posts an answer to an argument that I have not yet posted. (His point actually sounds like even more support for my Argument from Confusion). To be fair, I'll now post the argument, Euthyphro's Dilemma, so you can have a bit of context to understand where he's coming from.
Euthyphro's Dilemma
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato discussed the issue of how ethical standards come from deity and what the different theories mean to theists in his dialogue Euthyphro, a young man of that name meets Socrates. They have a discussion while Euthyphro is on his way to court to act as a sort of "state's attorney" to prosecute a murder case. Unfortunately for Euthyphro, the man he will be prosecuting is his own father. Since the Greeks (and their gods) valued loyalty to family highly, Socrates asks Euthyphro to explain why his prosecution of a family member is not immoral in the sight of the gods. During the ensuing discussion, Euthyphro attempts to defend a position called "divine command theory" of ethics. This theory, apparently held by Pastor Enyart and many other theists, states that we humans know what is good because a deity tells us what is good. If Pastor Enyart does not believe this, I hope he will explain just what he does believe…
Plato's story proceeds to one of Socrates' famous two-point questions (called a dilemma, in Greek):
* a) Is something morally good (pious) because the gods command it? or
b) Is something morally good (pious) because the gods recognize it as good?
In the ensuing twenty centuries, these two questions have become known as Euthyphro's Dilemma. A discussion of these two questions may shed some light on Pastor Enyart's views on the relationship of absolute morals and his deity. Let's begin with the first point; that something is good because God commands it. In essence we are saying that God's will defines what is good…
A. God's will defines good
In this position, the one Pastor Enyart appears to hold, we find that, quite literally, anything goes as long as it is the deity's will. What kinds of things are included in Pastor Enyart's deity's will? He has refused to discuss the Bible, but for most Christians it provides a touchstone for describing the will and nature of the Christian God. According to the Bible, genocide, murdering children, incest, killing the unborn, even stealing virgins for brides are all acceptable acts to God because he ordered them. Remember that the basis of the "divine command theory" is that if God commands it, it's good. So by definition, good and evil exist only at the whim of the deity.
As the philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out:
"If the only basis for morality is God's decrees, it follows that they might just as well have been the opposite of what they are; no reason except caprice could have prevented the omission of all the "nots" from the Decalogue." (Russell, B. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. New York. Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1962, pg. 38)
Essentially, Russell is saying that the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue) could have been just the opposite of what they are and they would still be the will of God, since that is the definition of good, in this viewpoint.
Theists who accept this horn of Euthyphro's Dilemma must admit that they do not operate from or even have a standard of ethics. They have replaced their ethical standard with obedience – they do what their God commands. Unfortunately, they have confused the obedience of a slave with ethics.
Next, it makes little logical sense to say that "God is good" if god is the standard of goodness. After all, if God is good, in the sense that God is identical to the standard of goodness, then to say "God is good" is merely to say "God is god." Such a statement is fundamentally uninformative. In such a statement the subject and predicate nouns are the same object so the sentence loses its meaning.
Furthermore, this stand of Divine Command Theory makes it difficult, if not impossible to tell if a given being is a deity. There is no set of standards with which one could compare that being to identify it as "God." In human experience, if I want to determine whether a person is a clinical psychologist, I can develop a list of actions which I might expect a person knowledgeable in psychology to perform. This might include things like understanding how to conduct a patient interview, having a particular type of university training, knowing a variety of psychological theories, etc. In addition, I can also develop a list of actions that would indicate that the subject is not a clinical psychologist. Such a list might include failure to be properly licensed, not understanding a range of psychological theories, never having conducted a patient interview, etc. I can then measure my candidate against my concept of a clinical psychologist. If the individual measures up, I can declare him or her a clinical psychologist. In the case of God, when Pastor Enyart declares that "God is the standard", there is no list or set of criteria to identify whether such a being is the good God or something else entirely. Since God can perform or command any act because he is the standard, what kinds of acts could we put into our identification list? There is no action about which we could ever say, "An evil being might command these but a good being would not." All we would be doing is placing our preferences on an allegedly absolute standard, a process it's likely that Pastor Enyart would abhor. Thus no action could be required or ruled out with regard to God since the deity could always decide to perform or command the opposite of any given criterion. After all, GOD SETS THE STANDARDS, doesn't he? Without an independent standard of moral and immoral acts against which to measure him, god could never be identified by his moral standard. We risk falling into the trap of applying our subjective preferences to the behavior of God with which we agree (blessings, financial prosperity, healing, or otherwise meeting our needs) while selectively ignoring or rationalizing away those behaviors we may find disagreeable (genocide, child slaughter, murder, human sacrifice, human slavery).
Morally speaking, there is no objective way to distinguish between being a slave to an evil demon (a very real possibility, according to some religionists) as opposed to being a slave to a god (the belief of Christians). In both cases the one in command could order any action whatsoever and carrying out that command would be, by definition, a good, moral act. Anything from rape to murder to genocide can be considered good if commanded by the being who serves as the standard.
One objection commonly raised by theists to this argument is the proposal that God will not act against his own nature. Unfortunately, to define the nature of a being we cannot see, touch, hear, or smell, we must look at his actions in the physical universe. So, we must define God's nature based on what God does. You may see how this rapidly becomes a circular argument. In addition, we have already shown that no action can be forbidden for the being giving the commands because the being giving the commands would not have any independent standard of morality by which it could be limited to a certain set of acts. So no action performed by God can be out of his character
If such a situation exists, the only true immoral (evil) act is disobedience to God. His followers must be committed to a system of blind obedience to a being who cannot meaningfully be called "good".
For theists, this option is undesirable.
B. God recognizes another standard of good
The other horn of the dilemma is that God recognizes what is good from a source outside himself, and then wills in accord with that good.
Pastor Enyart has NOT chosen this horn of the dilemma, but for interested readers, I'll explain it briefly.
When a theist chooses this path, that God commands what he recognizes as good, the theist is admitting the standard of good and evil is independent of God and that God, in fact, is not the standard of morality. This is because this view tells us that God, in some way, observes or "sees" what is good and the n tells us what to do on the basis of that observation. Since the action observed by God is what he commands, he is not acting as a source of morality, but merely a channel. In this view God becomes an intermediary or a reporter about ethics and morality, but not the source.
This is undesirable for the theist since it admits that God is not the source of their ethics and morals. This horn of the dilemma is particularly unpopular because if God is not the source, there is no sound argument which demonstrates that atheists could not have an ethical system apart from God.
In the question of whether or not God can be the source for "absolute morals", the choice for the theist boils down to this choose between:
admitting that he has no real standard of morality, only a morality based up on the slavery of blindly following orders; or
Admitting that God is not the source of morality.
Neither position actually allows for the possibility that god is source of a system of ethics or morals. The Euthyphro Dilemma demonstrates that the Divine Command Theory of ethics and morality cannot work.
With his claim that "many Christians have unwittingly undermined the holiness of God by suggesting that he can be spiritually arbitrary, because he is God…", Pastor Enyart posts an answer to an argument that I have not yet posted. (His point actually sounds like even more support for my Argument from Confusion). To be fair, I'll now post the argument, Euthyphro's Dilemma, so you can have a bit of context to understand where he's coming from.
Euthyphro's Dilemma
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato discussed the issue of how ethical standards come from deity and what the different theories mean to theists in his dialogue Euthyphro, a young man of that name meets Socrates. They have a discussion while Euthyphro is on his way to court to act as a sort of "state's attorney" to prosecute a murder case. Unfortunately for Euthyphro, the man he will be prosecuting is his own father. Since the Greeks (and their gods) valued loyalty to family highly, Socrates asks Euthyphro to explain why his prosecution of a family member is not immoral in the sight of the gods. During the ensuing discussion, Euthyphro attempts to defend a position called "divine command theory" of ethics. This theory, apparently held by Pastor Enyart and many other theists, states that we humans know what is good because a deity tells us what is good. If Pastor Enyart does not believe this, I hope he will explain just what he does believe…
Plato's story proceeds to one of Socrates' famous two-point questions (called a dilemma, in Greek):
* a) Is something morally good (pious) because the gods command it? or
b) Is something morally good (pious) because the gods recognize it as good?
In the ensuing twenty centuries, these two questions have become known as Euthyphro's Dilemma. A discussion of these two questions may shed some light on Pastor Enyart's views on the relationship of absolute morals and his deity. Let's begin with the first point; that something is good because God commands it. In essence we are saying that God's will defines what is good…
A. God's will defines good
In this position, the one Pastor Enyart appears to hold, we find that, quite literally, anything goes as long as it is the deity's will. What kinds of things are included in Pastor Enyart's deity's will? He has refused to discuss the Bible, but for most Christians it provides a touchstone for describing the will and nature of the Christian God. According to the Bible, genocide, murdering children, incest, killing the unborn, even stealing virgins for brides are all acceptable acts to God because he ordered them. Remember that the basis of the "divine command theory" is that if God commands it, it's good. So by definition, good and evil exist only at the whim of the deity.
As the philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out:
"If the only basis for morality is God's decrees, it follows that they might just as well have been the opposite of what they are; no reason except caprice could have prevented the omission of all the "nots" from the Decalogue." (Russell, B. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. New York. Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1962, pg. 38)
Essentially, Russell is saying that the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue) could have been just the opposite of what they are and they would still be the will of God, since that is the definition of good, in this viewpoint.
Theists who accept this horn of Euthyphro's Dilemma must admit that they do not operate from or even have a standard of ethics. They have replaced their ethical standard with obedience – they do what their God commands. Unfortunately, they have confused the obedience of a slave with ethics.
Next, it makes little logical sense to say that "God is good" if god is the standard of goodness. After all, if God is good, in the sense that God is identical to the standard of goodness, then to say "God is good" is merely to say "God is god." Such a statement is fundamentally uninformative. In such a statement the subject and predicate nouns are the same object so the sentence loses its meaning.
Furthermore, this stand of Divine Command Theory makes it difficult, if not impossible to tell if a given being is a deity. There is no set of standards with which one could compare that being to identify it as "God." In human experience, if I want to determine whether a person is a clinical psychologist, I can develop a list of actions which I might expect a person knowledgeable in psychology to perform. This might include things like understanding how to conduct a patient interview, having a particular type of university training, knowing a variety of psychological theories, etc. In addition, I can also develop a list of actions that would indicate that the subject is not a clinical psychologist. Such a list might include failure to be properly licensed, not understanding a range of psychological theories, never having conducted a patient interview, etc. I can then measure my candidate against my concept of a clinical psychologist. If the individual measures up, I can declare him or her a clinical psychologist. In the case of God, when Pastor Enyart declares that "God is the standard", there is no list or set of criteria to identify whether such a being is the good God or something else entirely. Since God can perform or command any act because he is the standard, what kinds of acts could we put into our identification list? There is no action about which we could ever say, "An evil being might command these but a good being would not." All we would be doing is placing our preferences on an allegedly absolute standard, a process it's likely that Pastor Enyart would abhor. Thus no action could be required or ruled out with regard to God since the deity could always decide to perform or command the opposite of any given criterion. After all, GOD SETS THE STANDARDS, doesn't he? Without an independent standard of moral and immoral acts against which to measure him, god could never be identified by his moral standard. We risk falling into the trap of applying our subjective preferences to the behavior of God with which we agree (blessings, financial prosperity, healing, or otherwise meeting our needs) while selectively ignoring or rationalizing away those behaviors we may find disagreeable (genocide, child slaughter, murder, human sacrifice, human slavery).
Morally speaking, there is no objective way to distinguish between being a slave to an evil demon (a very real possibility, according to some religionists) as opposed to being a slave to a god (the belief of Christians). In both cases the one in command could order any action whatsoever and carrying out that command would be, by definition, a good, moral act. Anything from rape to murder to genocide can be considered good if commanded by the being who serves as the standard.
One objection commonly raised by theists to this argument is the proposal that God will not act against his own nature. Unfortunately, to define the nature of a being we cannot see, touch, hear, or smell, we must look at his actions in the physical universe. So, we must define God's nature based on what God does. You may see how this rapidly becomes a circular argument. In addition, we have already shown that no action can be forbidden for the being giving the commands because the being giving the commands would not have any independent standard of morality by which it could be limited to a certain set of acts. So no action performed by God can be out of his character
If such a situation exists, the only true immoral (evil) act is disobedience to God. His followers must be committed to a system of blind obedience to a being who cannot meaningfully be called "good".
For theists, this option is undesirable.
B. God recognizes another standard of good
The other horn of the dilemma is that God recognizes what is good from a source outside himself, and then wills in accord with that good.
Pastor Enyart has NOT chosen this horn of the dilemma, but for interested readers, I'll explain it briefly.
When a theist chooses this path, that God commands what he recognizes as good, the theist is admitting the standard of good and evil is independent of God and that God, in fact, is not the standard of morality. This is because this view tells us that God, in some way, observes or "sees" what is good and the n tells us what to do on the basis of that observation. Since the action observed by God is what he commands, he is not acting as a source of morality, but merely a channel. In this view God becomes an intermediary or a reporter about ethics and morality, but not the source.
This is undesirable for the theist since it admits that God is not the source of their ethics and morals. This horn of the dilemma is particularly unpopular because if God is not the source, there is no sound argument which demonstrates that atheists could not have an ethical system apart from God.
In the question of whether or not God can be the source for "absolute morals", the choice for the theist boils down to this choose between:
admitting that he has no real standard of morality, only a morality based up on the slavery of blindly following orders; or
Admitting that God is not the source of morality.
Neither position actually allows for the possibility that god is source of a system of ethics or morals. The Euthyphro Dilemma demonstrates that the Divine Command Theory of ethics and morality cannot work.
And Bob Enyart's brilliant response in post 7b....
4) God’s Accountability to an Unchanging Standard: This section goes beyond the point in the Absolute Nature of Laws section above, where Zakath said that I hold to an “anything goes” morality and that for this morality, “by definition, good and evil exist only at the whim of the deity.” (Interestingly, atheists often do this with humans, justifying homosexuality as an inborn nature, denying the personal responsibility of drug addicts, and some even defending rapists and murderers as simply living out their natures.) Zakath then carried this one step further claiming that therefore: “…no action performed by God can be out of his character;” that is, because if God does something, then by definition it is in His nature to do it, and we theists would also declare anything He does as righteous. So Zakath misrepresented my position by implying that I had not already responded to this. He ignored an important clarification in my post:
Bob: “God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy.”
Why did I insert the word present into the above sentence? Zakath, if you read carefully, I will resolve Euthyphro’s Dilemma for Plato and Socrates, and deny you the honest use of it in the future. But Zakath, if while reading this section you allow your mind to fly through a thousand counter arguments, without discipline, you will once again fail to even understand the point. So please put your auto-pilot Bible rebuttal mode in its upright and locked position, and first comprehend this new material.
God’s nature is not sufficiently pliable that it could embrace truth and perjury, private property and theft, loyalty and disloyalty, and punishing and rewarding of the same behavior. Thus, God could conceivably violate His own nature, because once His nature is described (in what becomes a definition of righteousness), then anything God does contrary to that description would correctly be deemed as unrighteous. For example, using the biblical paradigm, if Jesus Christ gave into temptation by submitting to evil and worshipping Satan, then He would not have remained righteous.
It is not that anything God conceivably could do would therefore be moral, just because He did it. It is that we expect God to remain steadfastly good, consistent with the existing description of His nature. God does not save those who trust Him because He has no choice, but because He wills to, but if He willed to embrace evil (as described currently by His nature) then He would no longer be the righteous God. Quoting the overlooked sentence again:
“God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy.” Thus, moral inconsistency is an absolute determinant for wrong. Plato and Socrates missed this important test partly because their dialogue was replete with mentions of Greek gods who, as Socrates noted, contradicted one another as to goodness. Thus the contradictions within the mythical pantheon of Greece falsified any claim of absolute morality made by Euthyphro on behalf of his gods and goddesses. But Plato recorded this dialogue without the knowledge that you possess Zakath, that of the claim of a Christian God who has no such internal inconsistency. God does not fight within Himself about what is right and wrong; but if He ever did, then He would no longer remain the holy God. And there is nothing remotely circular about this. We look for inconsistencies in courtroom testimony because inconsistencies reveal lies and deceptions. Thus consistency is a necessary property of righteousness (and thus of being right). “A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness will utter lies [and inconsistencies]” (Proverbs 14:5). Again, moral inconsistency is a litmus test for evil. Thus a religious book like the Bible generally claims in forty passages that the steadfast love of the Lord never changes in that He is faithful, that is, He is consistent.
Humans are social beings, and our morality magnifies itself in our actions toward others. But because we are social beings, even actions committed against ourselves affect others, as for example when we hurt ourselves to manipulate others, like Gandhi did; or even the person seeking to escape his own pain by committing suicide, who hurts those around him. Thus because morality is social, a social God who interacts with multiple persons has an additional context in which to objectively demonstrate His morality. Let me illustrate the implications of this using the Christian conception of the Trinitarian God, Father, Son and Spirit, three persons in one God. If God is a Trinitarian God, then He has an eternal track record of interaction between the persons of the Godhead. And if during that eternal fellowship, if any moral inconsistency appeared, then God would be objectively evil. But an atheist may ask, “What if there was no inconsistency because this God is consistently evil?” A God with other persons to interact with has other frames of reference, that is, other perspectives from which to declare Himself. Thus if the Son willingly submits to the Father, because He implicitly trusts the Father from whom He has never experienced harm, and the Spirit brings glory to the Son, because He has never felt threatened by the Son, and the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, never having His wellbeing jeopardized by either, then “by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.” Thus even though it is the only standard He has ever known, God the Father can determine that His own standard is righteous because He has never violated it, and because the independent persons of the Son and the Spirit testify that the Father has never violated their own self-interests [Luke 16:12].
This process is greatly amplified when God creates other beings, and as He reveals Himself to them in various ways. For, He must behave toward them in their own best interest, or else He violates His own standard of love. And He must punish those who hurt others, or else He violates His own standard of justice. And if God’s intention was not for the welfare but for the harm of created eternal beings, then He would have violated His own declared standard.
Thus while moral inconsistency indicates wickedness, eternal consistency proves either continuous good or continuous evil; and multiple perspectives from independent persons provide information regarding whether God acts on behalf of, or against, their best interests. Of course, an atheist will accuse the Bible’s God, if He exists, of endless evils, but since atheists deny any system of absolute morality, for their logical argument to succeed, they would have to show that the concept of the Christian God is internally inconsistent, violating His own standard of righteousness.
In his talk, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” Bertrand Russell wrote that: “if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat [arbitrary decree] or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”
Plato, Socrates, Bertrand Russell… morons. (Actually, I’m just quoting from Princess Bride, one of our favorite movies.) Well, not morons, but fools yes, because they denied the Creator. Because of their prejudice against God, their fertile minds did not conceive of the simple possibility that a description of God’s nature is independent of His nature itself, and thus, God could hold Himself to that description of His nature, which description I admit initially existed only within Himself, but after Creation it would exist in any of the manifest ways in which God has revealed Himself. And so, right and wrong are not due to God’s arbitrary decrees, but flow from the description of His nature, a description which He could theoretically violate. Thus, the system of morality based upon God is not logically unsound as claimed by atheists.
Because Zakath uncritically accepted the popular atheist use of the Euthyphro Dilemma, he summed up its challenge this way: “In the question of whether or not God can be the source for ‘absolute morals,’ the choice for the theist boils down to this, choose between: admitting that he has no real standard of morality, only a morality based upon the slavery of blindly following orders; or admitting that God is not the source of morality.”
Zakath, do you agree that I have solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma by observing that, if God exists, a description of God’s nature can be independent of His nature itself, and thus there is no logical contradiction in the possibility that God’s nature defines an objective moral standard?
If there were no God, then absolute right could not exist. Thus, atheists reason correctly from their atheistic premise when they declare that absolute right and wrong do not exist, for if God did not exist, neither would right and wrong. Thus, for the reader questioning the existence of God, weigh the evidence: ask yourself, is it really wrong to rape a woman, lynch a black, torment a child, or are these not absolutely wrong, but simple valid preferences of others. If such crimes are not really wrong, then there is no God. If crimes are truly wrong, then a personal, loving, and just God does exist and you should ask Him for forgiveness for the hurt that you have inflicted upon others.
Also, you attempted another slight of hand with this: If “‘God is good’ [and] if god is the standard of goodness… then to say “God is good” is merely to say “God is god.”“ Oops. You are confusing the property of an entity with the entity itself. If the boss is also the janitor, you do state a pointless tautology by substituting one for the other to get the boss is the boss. But to say that the boss is the janitor speaks volumes. And to say God is love [meaning that His nature defines commitment to others], or that Michael Jordan is the standard [meaning that he has defined basketball skill], does not require us to reduce either to God is God or Michael is Michael, as though nothing real is being communicated. Otherwise, you make the bizarre claim that no aspect of a thing could ever conceivably set a standard. For example, by your faulty logic, the speed of light cannot even theoretically be an absolute, because then all Einstein said was, “the speed of light is the speed of light.”
(I can already hear the atheists in the Grandstands whining: “Wha wha wha, none of that proves that God exists!” Quick, somebody call them a whambulance! I offer the above not as proof but to rebut this argument of atheism.)
Bob: “God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy.”
Why did I insert the word present into the above sentence? Zakath, if you read carefully, I will resolve Euthyphro’s Dilemma for Plato and Socrates, and deny you the honest use of it in the future. But Zakath, if while reading this section you allow your mind to fly through a thousand counter arguments, without discipline, you will once again fail to even understand the point. So please put your auto-pilot Bible rebuttal mode in its upright and locked position, and first comprehend this new material.
God’s nature is not sufficiently pliable that it could embrace truth and perjury, private property and theft, loyalty and disloyalty, and punishing and rewarding of the same behavior. Thus, God could conceivably violate His own nature, because once His nature is described (in what becomes a definition of righteousness), then anything God does contrary to that description would correctly be deemed as unrighteous. For example, using the biblical paradigm, if Jesus Christ gave into temptation by submitting to evil and worshipping Satan, then He would not have remained righteous.
It is not that anything God conceivably could do would therefore be moral, just because He did it. It is that we expect God to remain steadfastly good, consistent with the existing description of His nature. God does not save those who trust Him because He has no choice, but because He wills to, but if He willed to embrace evil (as described currently by His nature) then He would no longer be the righteous God. Quoting the overlooked sentence again:
“God could not do evil (anything against the present description of His nature), and remain holy.” Thus, moral inconsistency is an absolute determinant for wrong. Plato and Socrates missed this important test partly because their dialogue was replete with mentions of Greek gods who, as Socrates noted, contradicted one another as to goodness. Thus the contradictions within the mythical pantheon of Greece falsified any claim of absolute morality made by Euthyphro on behalf of his gods and goddesses. But Plato recorded this dialogue without the knowledge that you possess Zakath, that of the claim of a Christian God who has no such internal inconsistency. God does not fight within Himself about what is right and wrong; but if He ever did, then He would no longer remain the holy God. And there is nothing remotely circular about this. We look for inconsistencies in courtroom testimony because inconsistencies reveal lies and deceptions. Thus consistency is a necessary property of righteousness (and thus of being right). “A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness will utter lies [and inconsistencies]” (Proverbs 14:5). Again, moral inconsistency is a litmus test for evil. Thus a religious book like the Bible generally claims in forty passages that the steadfast love of the Lord never changes in that He is faithful, that is, He is consistent.
Humans are social beings, and our morality magnifies itself in our actions toward others. But because we are social beings, even actions committed against ourselves affect others, as for example when we hurt ourselves to manipulate others, like Gandhi did; or even the person seeking to escape his own pain by committing suicide, who hurts those around him. Thus because morality is social, a social God who interacts with multiple persons has an additional context in which to objectively demonstrate His morality. Let me illustrate the implications of this using the Christian conception of the Trinitarian God, Father, Son and Spirit, three persons in one God. If God is a Trinitarian God, then He has an eternal track record of interaction between the persons of the Godhead. And if during that eternal fellowship, if any moral inconsistency appeared, then God would be objectively evil. But an atheist may ask, “What if there was no inconsistency because this God is consistently evil?” A God with other persons to interact with has other frames of reference, that is, other perspectives from which to declare Himself. Thus if the Son willingly submits to the Father, because He implicitly trusts the Father from whom He has never experienced harm, and the Spirit brings glory to the Son, because He has never felt threatened by the Son, and the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, never having His wellbeing jeopardized by either, then “by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.” Thus even though it is the only standard He has ever known, God the Father can determine that His own standard is righteous because He has never violated it, and because the independent persons of the Son and the Spirit testify that the Father has never violated their own self-interests [Luke 16:12].
This process is greatly amplified when God creates other beings, and as He reveals Himself to them in various ways. For, He must behave toward them in their own best interest, or else He violates His own standard of love. And He must punish those who hurt others, or else He violates His own standard of justice. And if God’s intention was not for the welfare but for the harm of created eternal beings, then He would have violated His own declared standard.
Thus while moral inconsistency indicates wickedness, eternal consistency proves either continuous good or continuous evil; and multiple perspectives from independent persons provide information regarding whether God acts on behalf of, or against, their best interests. Of course, an atheist will accuse the Bible’s God, if He exists, of endless evils, but since atheists deny any system of absolute morality, for their logical argument to succeed, they would have to show that the concept of the Christian God is internally inconsistent, violating His own standard of righteousness.
In his talk, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” Bertrand Russell wrote that: “if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat [arbitrary decree] or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”
Plato, Socrates, Bertrand Russell… morons. (Actually, I’m just quoting from Princess Bride, one of our favorite movies.) Well, not morons, but fools yes, because they denied the Creator. Because of their prejudice against God, their fertile minds did not conceive of the simple possibility that a description of God’s nature is independent of His nature itself, and thus, God could hold Himself to that description of His nature, which description I admit initially existed only within Himself, but after Creation it would exist in any of the manifest ways in which God has revealed Himself. And so, right and wrong are not due to God’s arbitrary decrees, but flow from the description of His nature, a description which He could theoretically violate. Thus, the system of morality based upon God is not logically unsound as claimed by atheists.
Because Zakath uncritically accepted the popular atheist use of the Euthyphro Dilemma, he summed up its challenge this way: “In the question of whether or not God can be the source for ‘absolute morals,’ the choice for the theist boils down to this, choose between: admitting that he has no real standard of morality, only a morality based upon the slavery of blindly following orders; or admitting that God is not the source of morality.”
Zakath, do you agree that I have solved Euthyphro’s Dilemma by observing that, if God exists, a description of God’s nature can be independent of His nature itself, and thus there is no logical contradiction in the possibility that God’s nature defines an objective moral standard?
If there were no God, then absolute right could not exist. Thus, atheists reason correctly from their atheistic premise when they declare that absolute right and wrong do not exist, for if God did not exist, neither would right and wrong. Thus, for the reader questioning the existence of God, weigh the evidence: ask yourself, is it really wrong to rape a woman, lynch a black, torment a child, or are these not absolutely wrong, but simple valid preferences of others. If such crimes are not really wrong, then there is no God. If crimes are truly wrong, then a personal, loving, and just God does exist and you should ask Him for forgiveness for the hurt that you have inflicted upon others.
Also, you attempted another slight of hand with this: If “‘God is good’ [and] if god is the standard of goodness… then to say “God is good” is merely to say “God is god.”“ Oops. You are confusing the property of an entity with the entity itself. If the boss is also the janitor, you do state a pointless tautology by substituting one for the other to get the boss is the boss. But to say that the boss is the janitor speaks volumes. And to say God is love [meaning that His nature defines commitment to others], or that Michael Jordan is the standard [meaning that he has defined basketball skill], does not require us to reduce either to God is God or Michael is Michael, as though nothing real is being communicated. Otherwise, you make the bizarre claim that no aspect of a thing could ever conceivably set a standard. For example, by your faulty logic, the speed of light cannot even theoretically be an absolute, because then all Einstein said was, “the speed of light is the speed of light.”
(I can already hear the atheists in the Grandstands whining: “Wha wha wha, none of that proves that God exists!” Quick, somebody call them a whambulance! I offer the above not as proof but to rebut this argument of atheism.)
I know , I know! It's sooo looong!
READ IT!
Please!
Resting in Him,
Clete
I use moral in contrast to metaphysics. God is holy/righteous vs God is uncreated spirit. This is a technical distinction, so do not read more or less into it than intended. God is not immoral. God is not just metaphysical principle. God can act, think, feel, experience, relate. He choses the highest good of Himself and others. God is love, light, and truth. He is not evil nor cosmic principle. His holy character is based on His perfect being.
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New member
Clete said:
There is a problem in both of the posts, for they posit something to which all cannot agree always. Euthyphro's Dilemma is the grounding for this entire discussion, and the problem of it is that the Dilemma makes certain presuppositions that should not be made. Firstly, the Greeks placed matter (the physical world) in opposition to the Spiritual (the gods). Thus, inherent to their ideology is a good that stands outside of any of the characters within. The gods did not determine good by their will (for as Socrates points out later in the discussion, the wills of the gods are multitudinous and contradictory). Thus goodness for the Greeks was already held in what was eternal. They presupposed that there is a good (they didn't presuppose God), and then evaluated the gods based on that goodness (eternity). Since matter was fleeting always, matter was evil. And since the pantheon was eternal, it was good. So the question of Euthyphro's Dilemma comes down to whether the gods participated in good are not, and how. From the very beginning good is set up as an eternal and absolute ethical standard that is im-personal and neutral. Only the eternal is good, not the fleeting. And so the gods (if they are good) must participate in this eternity. Both Enyart and Zakath presuppose that there is a good. They don't start with God (for Zakath does not first believe in God) but they start with a neutral and distinct good, only afterwards moving on to talk about God. This is not a Christian world-view, but is grounded in Greek philosophy. And Enyart allows Zakath to make this presupposition to lead the argument on in his own way. Zakath can now talk of ethics (a public good) vs. morality (a private good). Good is the absolute for Zakath but both the secular world and the religious worlds can participate in this universal standard in their own ways. Enyart thinks he has won the battle, when in fact he has lost the war.
Secondly, the two presuppose a standard of good that is impersonal. Goodness is an atribute for them, not a reality. Even for the Greeks this was the case. Goodness was held in what was eternal. And that meant there was something other than goodness found in the fleeting reality. Good allowed for the existance of evil; evil allowed for the existence of good. So as we listen to Enyart and Zakath speak about good in their own ways they both at the same time affirm the existence of another reality opposed to good known as evil. They not only speak about light as having ontology, but darkness also has ontology for them. Once again, this is not Christian. For Christians there is but a single reality and that is good. What is good is real. What is not good is a lacking, an absence. To give evil an ontology is to assume that there is another framework of Creation by which something can be sustained (and against which God must act, or it will threaten the true reality). But you see, in the Christian mindset, evil is not a reality that sustains its own life appart from God. Evil is a twisting of the good, so that in the end evil results in destruction. Evil is not an alternative power of Creation; evil is a distortion that only has reality in as much as it is dependant on the good, on the Creation. So murder for the Christian is not an evil act in and of itself, it is a distortion of the true act of life. Murder is not a powerful act; it is a destructive act. So those who murder distort reality by taking life where they have no right to take it. God is the sovereign one over life. God gives life and God takes it away. But the reality of life is held in God, and is the only true reality. Death is not a state, but a lack of a state. Death is chaos. Do once again, Enyart thinks he has won the battle, when he has really lost the war.
You see, Enyart is reacting against the liberalism found in the proto-Democratic framework of the ancient Greek world, which has been brought to the present by the Enlightenment. And Zakath is very much grounded in this liberalism, which places humanity at the center of all ethical, philosophical, and moral discussions, for humans are the "neutral" observers of the harsh reality around them, and must discover the truth by the means of observation that have been given to them. And though Enyart wants desperately to fight against this on one front, he has let down his gaurd on the other, so as to end up embracing the very liberalism he is reacting against. You see, Enyart has rejected atheism but has embraced existentialism. The atheists see the world entirely through their "neutral" observation. Enyart is looking at the world through the "free-will" of observation. Both are grounding the Creation in the reality of empericism, by which the truth is an abstract lying outside of the observer that must be passively received by the observer through right practices of observation (the scientific method).
You want a Christian response to this. Look at Paul's serman to the Athenians in Acts 17: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." You see, Paul doesn't start with good, Paul starts with God.
24"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. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From 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. 27God 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. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'"
Even here, Paul has yet to talk about good (something the stoics themselves were obsessed with). And what Paul points out at this point is that the observations of men are nothing more than a blind groping on our part so that "perhaps [we would] reach for [God] and find [God]." Also note something else, God is the one in whom all things are sustained. God is not far from us, "for in him we live and move and have our being." God's status is not first understood in light of his ranking with regards to a good standard set up appart from God. No, God's status as God is held in his ability to Create. All that is consists in God. Anything that is not in God, is not.
Now this is a very different approach than Enyart's, and one that is much more faithful to the Christian message (seeing how we find it right in the midst of the scriptures themselves).
And how does Paul conclude his message?
29"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. 30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
You see, goodness is not some passive absolute standard that stands outside of God. Goodness is held in the active person of Jesus the Christ, by which justice will be established on the earth. Good is not a passive and observable reality that stands outside of us. Good is the substance of our life, and when we are not good, we distort and destroy what is (even our own life). God is not simply a being that holds to a standard; God is the Creator, and so is the good by which all things in the Creation hold together and consist.
The problem with the discussion you posted, Clete, is that it is grounded in the presuppositions of the Enlightenment, a liberalism that centralizes all questions of ethics, politics, religion, morality, and life, in an assumed "neutral" observer, the individual person. For Zakath it leads to nihilism (the complete rejection of beliefs and values associated with moral and traditional social structures). For Enyart it leads to emotionalism and romanticism as embodied by the 20th century theologian Paul Tillich.
Peace,
Michael
themuzicman
Well-known member
seekinganswers said:
Well, not being dispensational, may not fit this post, but there are some things that need to be corrected.
There is a freely loving commuity within the Godhead which is sufficient. So, freedom and love are eternal and necessary characteristics of God.
OK, you're committing a word fallacy in changing the meaning of "free". God could have created a world with free creatures without the capacity to love.
And this completes the fallacy. We're talking about freedom in terms of being able to choose one's own course.
Which is a good reason to be OVT rather than determinist.
You just erected a straw man. Who said that love is weak?
False dichotomy. Just because we dont' have the ability to flap our arms and fly to the moon doesn't mean that we can't choose from the choices that we are able to attempt.
A lot of this is really off topic, so I skipped large portions of it.
Michael
seekinganswers
New member
themuzicman said:
How are you defining freedom at this point? As I have said in other posts, love is very much grounded in God, and God is the only truly free being. But when you speak of love and freedom as characteristics of the divine "nature", that is where I draw the line. Your understanding of love and freedom has been abstracted into universals that have been disembodied in order to give them a sense of eternity. You understand love and freedom appart from God (because you turn love and freedom into abstractions that can be used to describe God, categories in which to place God; love and freedom become your gods). In many ways you are being very platonic in this sentiment. Love and freedom are ideas that remain eternal and disembodied, and because of their separation from the flesh they are perfect. All "morally responsible beings" (whether God or men) must participate in these perfect, disembodied and eternal ideas, in order that we might rightly describe one as loving or free. I will not describe God as simply freely loving; God is love.
You see, love and freedom are not abstract ideals for the Christian or the Jew. Love and freedom are held in God and are united to the flesh in Christ. Love and freedom are not eternal. God is eternal. And love and freedom only have an all-encompassing ontology within God. And they become embodied within the Creation (that is the Creation that submits itself to God's rule). Those who sin are not free, neither are those who submit to God. Freedom means lack of contingency, and the Creation is never sovereign, but is always contingent on God. God is free; the Creation is not. Freedom is grace not choice, for a choice is always grounded in a contingency. You must choose between what is presented to you; your choice is not free from external influence. Choice is grounded in what already is. Freedom for the Creation does not consist in being able to make a choice against God, for such a choice is always grounded in a contingency. The choice must be presented for us to take it. So humans are volitional in the scriptures, but they are not free. They can manifest influence through choice, but they are not driving the action. The action is driven by God and God alone, while humanity must respond to that action in one way or another. Humans are volitional beings, but they do not possess "free-will." Free-will is grace.
And I might add that volition is not a prerequisite of love. As I have stated before God loves the entire Creation, everything God has made. And not all things possess volition within the Creation. A rock does not will, nor does a plant will. Yet God still loves the rock and the plant despite the fact that the rock and the plant have no choice in the matter. In Christ God is not simply bringing humans into proper relationship with him, but in Christ all things in Heaven and on earth are being drawn together under a single head (which is Christ) so that Christ might present the Creation to God, to bring the Creation to its rest in worship, and to proclaim as all in all.
themuzicman said:
I didn't change the meaning of free, but you managed to take "free" in a distinct way. That only shows the utter ambiguity of the word. Freedom can be used to describe the abolition of slavery, it can be used to describe the Democratic process, it can even be used to describe the manner of economics within the western world. Yet none of these definitions really apply to the way in which "freedom" is used in the scriptures with regards to humanity. When God is described as free, we use one category of words. When humans are described as free, we use another category. So I have not changed the meaning of the word, but have been trying to use "freedom" in a way that is faithful to the scriptures. I guess the reality is that "freedom" is a really poor term to use in the first place. So I will make plain my definitions. Freedom with respect to God in the scriptures refers to God's incontingency, God's ability to act appart from any cause or effect. This is identified as providence or God's election, and better Wesleyan term is grace. God does as God pleases despite what other things might occur in the Creation. Freedom with respect to humanity, however, is never the same as freedom is for God. Freedom for humanity is used to speak of being freed from coersion. Better terms for this would be deliverance or liberation. Humans are not made "free" by God but are set free from the powers of coersion and death. The reason I say this is the fact that Paul can speak of his freedom in the midst of his slavery to Christ. Freedom for humanity is not in the will, but is in the context, i.e. who is our Lord.
So yo are right in sensing a switching of terms, but it is not a decision made in fallacy, it is the ambiguity of the term, which drives me to say that freedom really is not a Christian ideology whatsoever, for it collapses the Creator and Creation into a single category. I prefer to speak of grace and of deliverance over "freedom."
themuzicman said:
And as I said before, we cannot choose our course. We do not decide what decisions we can make. The path is set before us, and our only power is volitional, to choose between the options. We don't tread the trail; we choose the paths set before us. As it is well put in the law, "Today, I present to you all life and death, choose life that you might live." Life and death are not paths that we tread. We are not trailblazers in the Creation. These are paths laid out before us, and we only have a volition to choose one or the other. Life and death are determined. Just as the scriptures will tell us it is determined once for a person to be born and to die. Just as the number of days are set for a person from the beginning. It is not to say that God has mapped out a detailed plan for the person (for that would remove all volitional aspects of the human will). But it is to say that God has set the limits. We are not free, because God sets borders around us that we cannot cross.
You see, we have wrongly translated the Hebrew term torah into the English as "law." This is a mistake because the borders that God sets for us is not in torah. We truly can murder, and steel, and covet, and commit idolatry. This are not limits set for us that humanity cannot possibly cross. In fact, we cross them far too often each and every day (at least on a societal scale, but also on an individual one, mostly due to ignorance or to stubborness). The real borders set for us is in our contingency, in our mortality. What we do will not last forever (and there really is no indication that this limitation was given to us only after the fall; for we were creatures of the dust even before our taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). Contingency is the limitation of humanity, that if humans do not sustain their life by receiving sustanance from God, their life will come to an end. As Jesus puts it, "Humanity does not live by bread alone." Mortality is the "law," if you will. Torah, however, has a very different feel about it. Torah signifies "teaching" or "instruction". It is not the rigid precepts of a God who will immediately repay those who fail to do them. Torah is an invitation by God to his people that they would embrace his grace extended to them through Abraham, that they might be a blessing to the nations. Torah is instruction for the people of God in exactly how they can embrace their call to be this people.
This is why the Pharisees just didn't get it. They took torah to mean law, that is precepts set in stone never to be crossed or there is immediate recompense. Torah in the law sense means the words of God without God. Torah in the true sense is instruction, which means if we are to receive the words of torah we must first receive God. Instruction means we submit to an instructor. Law means we just have words. And here is the wonderful revelation of Jesus to the world: in Christ is fulfilled the law and the prophets, for in Christ the words of God are united to God in the flesh.
themuzicman said:
So I exchange determinism for existentialism and nihilism?
themuzicman said:
I did not erect a straw man, for the Open Theists make it very clear that because God is loving, humans can drive God's actions. In other words, humans can become a cause that affects God. So God's plans are altered by human action, which means love is weak and can be manipulated by the coersive powers. And by weakening love in this way, you have given power to coersion that should not be given it. When Christ dies on the cross, he is not giving in to the powers that be; when Christ is on the cross he is embodying love in such a way that even the powers cannot touch him. Christ doesn't come to shame on the cross; Christ comes to his throne.
themuzicman said:
It is not a false dichotomy. As I explained above there is a distinction in the scriptures made between freedom and volition, between God and humanity. Freedom is sovereignty, and is only held in God. Volition is contingency, and is the choice that humans possess in the midst of the choices set before them. Choice is not a freedom, it is a contingency.
You see, you have bought into the lie of the democratic world that says that in the ability to vote (to choose) a people is made free. This is not true. For you see, voting is a contingent process that relies on the choices that are given. Candidates are placed on the ballot, and only then can a vote be cast, can a choice be made. It is not freedom in any true sense. It is volition (and it is not entirely free from other volitional forces such as lobyists and campaigning efforts, as well as platforms and parties, not to mention the money and mud-slinging of politicians). Humans are never free because we can never escape the contingencies of life. We are locked into a cause and affect reality. God, however, is able to make choices appart from the Creation, appart from cause and affect. God can elect a man out of no where to bring about his purposes (and if you would actually read the story of Abraham you would see just how many times Abraham put in peril the promises of God, yet God remained faithful to the promises). Moses was chosen, and God was going to use Moses whether he liked it or not. Pharaoh was going to be God's instrument whether he did so willingly or not so willingly. And Israel was going to be God's people, whether they chose to or not (and if you would read some of the rabbinic literature on what happens at the Mount in the giving of the law, God's election of Israel is set not because of merit, but because God said so; and if the exile as seen through prophets is not and indication of God's election, I don't know what is).
God elects and God gives grace, which are choices of God that do not depend on any given cause. They are the freedom of God to do whatever God desires. Now if God were a coersive power, he would not be free, because, you see, coersion is ever so dependent on what truly is (it is volitional force, if you will). One cannot coerse without there first being something real that threatens the one coersing. So a coersive (deterministic) God is not free, because the determinist God is locked into the very fabric of the Creation, into cause and affect. Kings coerse because they need the food that is produced by the labor of their people. Kings coerse because rebellions rise up and threaten their reign. Kings coerse because they must demand worship from their people (otherwise it would not be given to them). But God need not coerse, for God is not in need of any of these. God's kingship is equated to his care of the Creation. If God did not give food and care to the Creation, the Creation would end; if God did not put an end to rebellion, the Creation would cease to be, it would revert into utter chaos; if the Creation were not called to worship, the Creation would never be drawn to completion in God's rest. So you see, it is the free (i.e. transcendent) God who is the only God who can love. Love does not depend on the free-will of humanity; love is sustained in God and God alone only because God is God.
themuzicman said:
Maybe you weren't hearing what I was trying to say.
Peace,
Michael
themuzicman
Well-known member
seekinganswers said:
That's an interesting statement. You almost seem to be saying that "Love is god."
The rest seems to be a strawman, since I neither worship love nor freedom, nor are they my gods.
If I were to be platonic, I would be saying that the flesh is evil and the spirit is good. I don't recall saying that, either.
Lovely preaching.
Another lovely sermon.
I have yet to see you use any scripture, so it's hard to see how your vague and shifting use of 'freedom' fits into it.
Why must we speak of one and not the other?
OK, this appears to be a long way of saying, "because we can't do everything we don't have freedom of will", which is incorrect. You're referring to freedom of ability, which would mean that you could do anything you wanted.
Freedom of will simply refers to being able to choose between option A and option B in a given situation without external determination. You describe that accuratlely when you cite Deuteronomy.
seekinganswers
New member
themuzicman said:
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