Theological Opinions , PART II

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Lief: if "Only the unselfish will deserve God's reward," as you say, doesn't that require free will, and not predestiny? Because "deserving" implies that one had a choice; an ability to do otherwise.

In general, this argument sounds like an attempt to have your cake and eat it too, to say that we are allowed to "act within our personality" and yet both that personality and every single action of ours is dictated by God.

What's the alternative to God creating our personalities? That with Free Will, we decide for ourselves who we will be in life? That's self-creating our personalities.

If we self-create our own personalities, then what's the "we" that does the self-creating? And where does it come from?

And if you say genetics, environment and family create our personalities without God also creating them, and that after these forces fashion our personalities, we act according to who we are, then our choices are being predestined by humans and nature (though they don't know what they've produced), for we'll act according to the personality they've given us.

We don't have freedom from God, but freedom from God is not necessary for real freedom to exist. We have the freedom to be what God made us to be; we have the freedom to be ourselves and do whatever we choose to do in life.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Take a specific choice - someone comes to me, hands me a gun, and tells me to shoot him in the head. Do I do it or not? If I am to bear the responsibility for this choice, I have to HAVE a choice; if God has already determined that I will not do it, how can I be said to deserve anything for my refusal to violate his commandments, and conversely, if God has already determined that I will, how can I deserve punishment for violating his commandments? The specific trouble I find is your insistence that God does everything (omnipotence) not that he knows everything (omniscience). I for instance knew how you were going to respond to my comments, despite not having any control over you, because I've argued with you before. How much more must God know how we will act, knowing us perfectly? This does not demand predestiny, only predictability.

You did not create me or the world. God created me and the world, knowing what my choices would be. Hence the responsibility for my choices is his, and because he knew what they would be and created the universe, world and me in the way he did even with that foreknowledge, my choices are his choices.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

But your scheme seems to require actual predestiny, with the attribution of responsibility for all acts to God. That's why I addressed the issue of omnipotence. If God has determined that our free will is the first priority, I feel it avoids the problem of why God would cause us to sin, and then blame us for it. Because I feel that's still the gaping problem with your argument - God creates us as we are, and then micromanages our actions, but STILL blames us for actions we take; and not only that, but even those that are necessary for a greater good (as you claim all actions are, taken on God's level) are given punishments for being evil on our own scale. Thus we are punished for actions we "had to" take in two different senses - both "forced to" and "for the greater good." That seems to me to be the essence of injustice.

Spanking a child, taken by itself, without any explanations or results looked at, is an evil act. It's just abuse. But if the spanking is done for a reason and with good result, it is no longer evil at all. In this way, none of God's actions are evil. We are simply walking into a room and witnessing a spanking taking place without hearing the explanations or seeing the results yet. And we are making a judgment on the parent, God, without knowing any of this. So we can drop the "evil for the greater good" aspect, for God does no evil. Only God's created creatures do evil.

Humans do evil with evil intent and evil result. As far as they have any control over what they are doing, evil is all that comes of their actions. Hence they are not responsible for the good God brings from their choices, but only for the evil they planned and accomplished, as it is all they intended and achieved. From them, it is evil. From God, it is good.

And as for being forced to do things, we are not forced. It would be the height of absurdity if a character in a book I was writing complained to me, from the book, "why don't you allow me to give that character a present?" I would reply, "don't be silly. Give the character a present." I write the story and the characters' personalities, and I determine their actions, but I don't make them behave in ways that are out of character. So that character who addressed me could easily go and give the other character a present. I wasn't stopping him, because God is a good author and only a poor writer interferes with his characters' personalities and makes them behave in ways that are out of character.

God doesn't force people to do anything. He predestines that they do exactly what they want to do, according to their own choices that come from their personalities, who they are. They are individuals with equal freedom to God. God has no more freedom than they do. God can only act according to his personality, and in that sense, his "free will" is limited in that he cannot behave in any way other than according to who he is. And his actions must and always will come from his personality. Just as our actions will come from our personalities. We and he have the freedom to be ourselves- no more, no less, and God's power over us does not deprive us of that freedom in any way.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Take the fate of Moses - if God ordered him to talk to the rock instead of striking it, then MADE HIM strike it, then punished him for doing that instead of talking to it... where is the justice? God makes the rules, makes the violation, and then metes out punishment for a violation he orchestrated.

Where's the force in "making" someone do exactly what they wanted to do, chose to do, and did themselves? God's will is done in the person's action, but so is thet person's will. Hence there is no abuse of the person's will. The fact that the person's personality from which that will comes has been determined by God is only natural- it has to come from somewhere, and God, omniscient Love, is a pretty reliable source for it to come from.

Brute force would only have been used if God had made Moses do as God commanded, because it was in Moses' character to refuse to do what God commanded at that time.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Why not just skip the whole action and punish to start with?

That would be evil, for there is no justice in it. The justice is in judging people for the wrong actions that they commit. If God willed for the person to commit the action, and willed for the person to will for that action to be committed, there is still a problem in the personality that justly should be judged. God put it there, but he does right by putting it there because of the eventual good result, but once the fault in the personality is there and creates wrong, it should be judged because it is wrong.

Do you think that a sinner shouldn't be judged if he or she is taught to sin by someone else, and then sins? No, I think you think the person should still be judged because he chose to accept the wrong teaching and act according to it. In the same way, sins that come to a man, which God plans will come and enter the man, only enter him because of his choices that he makes according to who he is and according to his personality. It's not like God forces the entry of sins in any illogical fashion. Man does his own will, and God does his own will, but man sins and God does not, because man purposefully commits evil while God does no evil, but commits the same actions with good motives and results. From God, the actions are not evil, but from man, with man's planning evil and accomplishing only evil as far as he is responsible for the results of his actions, these actions are evil.

So man and God both are responsible, for as different entities who have equal freedom, they both committed the same actions according to who they are. But man created evil and God good, so although both are responsible, only man is guilty.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Why do we need this life if the next is determined and acted out for us with no hope, as brownjenkins has pointed out, of redemptive growth?

You're interpreting what I'm saying incorrectly, as though we were puppets in God's hands, things without wills of their own, personalities, life, or the freedom to do what we want. The fact that God plans us doesn't impose upon us. If he didn't plan us, we would be meaningless, the results of random chance, since any action God did not choose, he must necessarily have left to random chance. The only way to escape the problem of God's foreknowledge is to say he left how we would turn out to random chance, rather than selecting an Earth and universe, a way of creating, in which everyone "freely" chose him.