But I'll soon take care of that!
Yes. Yes you did. I couldn't be less verbose either so my apologies to anyone following along as well as you ahead of time (only about 13 paragraphs, but about 10 more than I usually try to have someone follow - I just don't think I'm THAT interesting! :yikes: )
This first section about freewill and the Fall:
My restriction to "your" was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Yes, I agree mine is finite as well.
I'm not sure I can tell what the distinction is between having a "will" and having a "free will". I suppose it's like "wholly sovereign". If our will (free or otherwise) is determined by somebody else, then it's not really our will, is it? It's the determiner's. I still think you are equating the desire with the ability to desire. And you seem to be saying God can't give the one without giving the other. That's a pretty big limitation to put on an infinite God, don't you think? That means that Satan is actually responsible for creating something--not just corrupting what God created. Maybe I'm taking the implications too far...:think:
At least 'perpetrated' sin. I'm not sure Satan has to 'invent' it in order for us to have it. It is just that He was the one lying "you won't surely die!" I've no idea how Satan got it, but only one having it can pass it along to a sinless being (Adam and Eve), as far as my understanding. I'd much rather see Satan causing sin than God 'planning it.' It is kind of weird, you and other Arminians, and even Open Theists, actually have God planning man to have a will that is 'able' to sin. A double-pred Calvinist actually agrees with you. There are then, a few of us Calvinists and Arminians that believe our free will is a result of sin. It is interesting to see the flip in thinking on what God ordained allowed, and planned. It often is a trade-off on the logical spectrum. For me, scripturally and logically, it makes better sense that a freewill is one that is separated "from" (free) God by sin and not one made in us by God's design as if the thing that would kill and destroy us could be a gift in any sense. That's like telling the President, "You can nuke the world anytime you like, just press the button, no protocols or safeguards. My gift to you."
I'll have to disagree with you here. If God tells us what to do versus what not to do, and expresses the penalty if we do the wrong thing, we "know" good and evil in a sense. I don't know that things are much different today when we debate laws and punishment for disobedience. If I tell you (as a civil magistrate) not to murder, you know the difference between good and evil. If you commit murder, you know more about it--you've experienced it--but you still knew about it before hand.
It is akin, I think, to smoking. If you'd never seen a pipe or cigarette or cigar in your life, yet I told you that it'd kill you if you smoke it. You'd have no idea about anything, having never seen it or seen it done, just a snake down on the plantation playing with a lighter.
I think this "know" is the same "know" that Jesus used when he said to the goats, "I never knew you." in Mt 25:41-46. Jesus obviously "knew" them in the sense that He knew who they were and saw their deeds.
To a degree, but Genesis 3:22 said 'man
has become like us' at that point.
I will admit that it suggests God has a more intimate knowledge of evil than just knowing the difference. It makes it sound like either God has committed acts of evil (not tenable); or maybe the "us" in Gen 3:22 is not just God; or maybe His infinite mind (as opposed to "ours") could comprehend the effects of evil without actually committing them. I'm not sure. I think I'd lean toward the latter.
I don't think it demands that. God being Creator and omniscient about His creation, is able to know what happens without having to have had to sin. Hebrews does say that our high priest, Jesus Christ, was familiar with our temptations and weakness.
Also we might need to understand what it means to be like God, which is rather difficult for us. If God had a will already that was like the one you say we were given at the fall, and it was a bad thing for us, then did God have
- a desire to do something different from what God wanted? (not tenable in my mind, but deduced from what you said)
- An understanding of the effects of sin. (most likely)
So it sounds like you admit that the eating from the tree is not what gave them that "free" will, and it sounds like you don't believe God gave them such. So that was a gift from Satan? Well, ok, but then if the will is the bad thing, then they would have the bad thing even if they never ate of the tree. The eating of the tree was a bit superfluous, right?
Actually doing the thing that they weren't supposed was likely (guessing) simultaneous with the inception of 'free' will. In this case, for me, it makes more sense to call it 'a will that no longer follows God.' Why? Because they literally could have done anything in the Garden. You'll note there was no "don't kill Eve or bash her in the head" command. Why? Because it wasn't in their nature to do such a thing. It would have been impossible for them to think of doing such a thing. The only thing that could have caused a problem was eating from a tree that would place it in their heads (by action or what have you), to know and do evil.
And there's no responsibility, right? Since Satan gave them the bad thing--"the Devil made me do it"? It can't be that they wanted it (wanted the desire to want something God didn't want them to want, if you get my drift), because you're saying their desire for something outside of God's provision was the bad thing that God didn't give them the ability to have. And it can't be that they accepted the temptation, for they couldn't accept this "desire for something God didn't want for them" unless they had a desire for it already.
That is the way of temptation. Somebody had to figure out that rubbing alcohol was good for cuts, but being a wood alcohol, was poison as consumption.
Dr: "You may pour this on wounds, but don't drink it or you'll go blind and likely die."
Tempter: Drink a little, it won't make you blind, and you'll love the way you feel. You won't die. Smell it in this berry juice? Smells good? Drink a little, it won't kill ya.
The guy doing the tempting is sinning. The guy finally doing what he was told not to, is also sinning, he's doubting the good doctor, doesn't understand the 'evil' of the tempter or why he'd lie. He doesn't even know what a lie is, it all happens as soon as he takes a drink is what I conclude.
And what if he uses a forum like this to tell us our presuppositions are wrong and He wants us to change them?? (though signals are likely to get mixed up, it's somewhat the same going to different churches).
Lots of prayer. Stay faithful to reading and rereading His word, talk to your pastor, etc. I think a forum can but help a bit. I really don't like to see them go past a good place for discussion. We've had a few, sadly on TOL who aren't going back and reading their bibles, they aren't going on to discuss these things with their pastors.
I agree this is an important doctrine. And if it is so important, biblically derived oppositions to currently held beliefs should not be dismissed too quickly. I get the feeling that's what is happening in many cases in the open view debate.
One interesting note from my quick perusal of those links: the second one says: "God is the only One Who possesses limitless knowledge." I agree with this in its intention, but it points out one of the ways the two sides seem to talk past each other. If God possesses limitless knowledge, then He must know everything, even things that aren't. Because one limitation on knowledge is that God knows everything that is, but He doesn't know anything that isn't. He doesn't know the name of my pet pony, for instance, since I don't have one.
(
This portion until the next bolded section can be treated as the one topic of God's omniscience and whether it is acquired vs innate)
This would be 'dependent' knowledge or 'gained' knowledge. In addition to 'what God knows' is the question of 'how He knows it.'
I do not believe in a 'gained' knowledge because such would imply there are things God does not, or cannot know, until they happen. There are members here who literally believe God didn't know where Adam was when He came to find him. Genesis 3:9
Open theists use this same idea to "limit" God's knowledge to what is possible to know. Classical theists must do the same. The difference is how they define "possible to know".
Briefly[?]:
<___________________________>
._____.
A segment and a line. A line is infinite. A segment is finite and definite. ALL that is contained in a segment is within the full expression of the line, therefore from point A to point B is 'already' part of the line. There is no 'forward' to a line because a line is equally going forever back as well as forever forward. That means the experience of the segment, whether it has been 'drawn' already exists before it is drawn/segmented from the line.
The 'act' of sementing is temporal (time) and finite (time/limited between two points/considerations). God thus, is completely interacting with us, or more correctly, we are interacting with Him.
Thus, God already has the name of your pony that doesn't exist simply because in the time-line, it is already part of His infinite expression (the line). Because of that, God is said to be relational to time, but cannot be constrained by it because such is a segmented, thus finite expression of what has always infinitely existed. Perhaps confusing, but this much is a reality between a segment and line that at least is easily seen and easily grasped as true, regardless of how clearly one understands or sees the rest. They can at least grasp the truth, that a segments full expression is grasped within the line, without measurement.
Classical theists add that God can't accumulate knowledge, because if He does, that would make Him less yesterday than He is today. I would say the same thing is true of glory. If He receives glory from man, then some of that glory was not yet in existence yesterday morning, before we glorified Him at church during our worship service. I guess you could say that because God is outside of time, then that glory is not deficient at any point in time, but that locks God into a condition where He is dependent on our existence--if He decided (before time began, I suppose) that He didn't want to make the world and humans, then His eternal glory would be deficient what humans contribute to it, whatever little that might be. And because it isn't possible that God could be any less than what He is, that glory is required. Thus, God HAD to make man.
I don't think that's a feasible scenario, but that's the one classical theists seem to be advocating.
This is part of the time constraint: We haven't gotten to the end from A to B yet (or A to ZZ etc.) but it is within the expression of the line already. So, while we, as a segment, are constrained from A moving to B that hasn't happened yet, God, being infinite, is necessarily 'already there' and beyond. A lot of this is philosophical, but it is expressed in scripture, thus that Jews believe this about God and have been very resistant to outside influence upon their theology.
This next portion is all about my idea of 'assertion' that was started a few posts back now. It can be treated as a whole and probably "Oh, Okay." would work as a response (if you agree that is
)
Don't we have the potential to do this for every type of scripture, not just the parables? But if we decide not to take the teaching from the scriptures that teach us about God, whether parable or not, aren't we refusing to "know" Him?
It depends upon how you view them, but, for instance, I lift up the above logical proofs and philosophy with a bit of clarification: They are not inspired so are not necessarily infallible. Now a mathematic problem can be expressed infallibly so I'm simply saying I'm more cautious and tend to try to say something about God with scripture than my own. The initial point was what God must do in order to be a just or righteous God. I'm just not comfortable with me qualifying something in Him, that I am not. I am
just in Christ, and am
righteous in Christ, but I'm still learning to walk after that new position. I can tell you what "I think" a righteous God would look like, but that's my point, I'd say: "I think, if I understand correctly, a righteous God would...." It allows for God to correct me, as well as you, if my assumption/assertion is wrong. That's pretty much the objection in a nutshell.
On the other hand, if we can't glean anything from the parable about the king of the kingdom of heaven, since he's an integral part of that kingdom, can we glean anything about even the kingdom from the parable? Of what use, then, is the parable? If all we can do is "repeat scripture", and we can't even discern a meaning of it to share with others or even to learn something ourselves, the scripture loses its value. All scripture needs to be interpreted by those that hear it, with aid of pastors and teachers, perhaps, but their words, too, in giving instruction, also will need to be interpreted by their hearers.
Going to the original:
A sovereign (at least a good one) will make sure his will is done by punishing bad behavior or banishing the one behaving badly.
I think I agree with the point, but I was merely saying for me, it would be something like this: "God is a good sovereign because the scripture says so, and it tells us He must judge rightly and so I deem as a good Sovereign, God will need to judge the righteous and the unrighteous accordingly." As I said, I think I even agree with you, I just have a harder time asserting something 'in case' my own logic prowess is wrong. That way, another who comes behind me and says :nono: is able to disagree with me, and realize he/she may not be disagreeing with God on that point. IOW, I don't want my ideas passed off as if they were the words or ideas of God very God. That being the case, I should have just said "I think I agree with this."
Going back to your parental illustration, our children when they were younger, had some difficulty understanding us. When we first sang a lullaby to them that said "go to sleep", did they actually do it at our command? No, they likely didn't understand what we were saying and a cooing without words would have likely been just as effective. (Later on, when we said the same thing, they likely looked for ways to ignore or postpone the expectation.) I expect my understanding of scripture to grow as I read it more and more, but each time I read it, I interpret it, and hopefully find decent ways to apply that interpretation. If we aren't ever allowed to look at scripture to determine what scripture means, including parables, scripture becomes dead to us.
I don't think we are arguing so much over interpretation but rather disagreeing on how far we go. For me: When scripture is clear - be bold and clear! The gospel is very clear. But when we are yet working on something, such as His justice, it is more like: "As I understand scripture, I think a hell necessary for God's righteousness to be expressed over against the consequences and experience of sin."
As I said above, I should probably have just said "I think I agree" at that point, because this is a rabbit trail I didn't intend shoving you into the hole before me! (nor had I realized it would travel 5 posts or so :noway: )
May He bless our conversation(s) and make them even more meaningful.
Derf
