Theological Opinions , PART II

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

I see that you should be a lawyer.

I read this as Sophistry with a capital "S". Where's GW when I need him?

Not this time, actually. Moral evil or sin comes about through the turning away from or opposition of one's will to God by disobedience to His commandments rather than from the act that is done. Suppose that a person determines to kill another person, but does not actually do so, because he is trampled by a herd of elephants at the very next second. He has still committed the sin, according to traditional Catholic theology at least, because he has moved his will away from God's commandments, even though he has performed no actual act.

So, since sin is the opposition of the will to God, or the turning of it from God, God by definition cannot sin, else His will would have to be opposed to itself, or turned away from itself, which is absurd, since opposition and aversion are forms of relation between two things, and God's will is one.

Originally Posted by hec

"God's image" may mean such things as discernment, logic, compassion...

It's generally considered to be reason, but I'm dubious about that, since the manner of an angel understanding is closer to the manner of God understanding than is the manner of a man understand, but I don't think angels are made in the image and likeness of God. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what the hell it means.

Originally Posted by sis

In order to see 'predestination' as 'that which we must do according to our inborn personalities', however, we must assume that beings who are 'created in God's image' are doomed to damnation.

Which is a premise for those who hold to the truth of Scripture.

Originally Posted by Lief

People grow through testing. They learn. So did Abraham. His personality may have been planned out by God and set up by God to turn out in a certain way, through tests of faith and other experiences, but it still had to grow. The results and path may have been predestined, but that doesn't mean growth wasn't occurring on that path or in those results. I don't see how growth and predestination are contradictory. Abraham was predestined to grow.

More importantly, it was done as an image of the offering of Christ.

Interestingly, according to Christian doctrine, sanctification is the process that makes us more and more like Christ, and that is the goal.

Except according to certain brands of Protestant theology in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, especially, which teach that we do not become more and more like Christ, but rather merely have Christ's righteousness credited to our account, if you will, or cover our unrighteousness. 'We are dunghills covered with snow'.

both for Christians who believe in Free Will and those who believe in predestination.

I thought you just got done saying that they weren't contradictory here...

People can act exactly as they please (ignoring sin and other such qualifications). They make decisions according to who they are, their own personalities and souls, while God makes those same decisions for them according to who he is. The will of God does not negate the will of man, for it does not confront it or overcome it, but rather works through it and with it. Mankind can still make decisions, can still learn and grow, and the fact that Love planned and uses those decisions too does not make them any less man's. It just makes them God's as well. Again, I reemphasize, man does exactly what man wants, without God forcing him to do anything he doesn't want to do, or changing man's personality against man's will. The fact that God wants and does the same as man, though for different reasons, doesn't negate man's freedom.

Or did I err?

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

More importantly, it was done as an image of the offering of Christ.

I definitely agree. I was only referring to the growth because that was what brownjenkins referred to, in using this example.

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Except according to certain brands of Protestant theology in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, especially, which teach that we do not become more and more like Christ, but rather merely have Christ's righteousness credited to our account, if you will, or cover our unrighteousness. 'We are dunghills covered with snow'.

I knew that was true of the Lutherans. I find it very sad.

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

I thought you just got done saying that they weren't contradictory here...



Or did I err?

I was referring to "having Christ's personality, which is loving and full of every virtue, take over our own personalities, abolishing the impure in them and putting on the pure, [being] a central desire both for Christians who believe in Free Will and those who believe in predestination." Belief in sanctification and being made like Christ is the belief I was saying was the same. I didn't mean to claim that the paragraph you quoted was generally accepted by people of both beliefs.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

No, but in that paragraph, you seem to affirm in some way both free will and predestination, which would indicate that they are not mutually exclusive. Or did I misread you?

By the way, Lief, just to let you know, I think over all you're spot on in this thread.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

No, but in that paragraph, you seem to affirm in some way both free will and predestination, which would indicate that they are not mutually exclusive. Or did I misread you?

It depends how we define Free Will. The way that free will has been commonly defined in my hearing, as people making choices independently from God, I'd say it is contradictory to predestination. I don't think that that's an appropriate definition, though, and I define it differently. According to my definition, the free will and predestination aren't contradictory.

Free will to me (on a low level- I'll talk about the higher level of what free will means later. The low level seems presently to be most pertinent to this discussion) means the ability to make one's own decisions from one's personality. The ability to be oneself. I behave the way I do because it's my personality to behave in that way, and that's freedom to be myself rather than what someone else forces me to be.

God's predestination doesn't involve forcing us to be what we aren't. Everything we do and choose, he chose for us first. He planned out everything in advance. Just as the universe is clearly crafted with a craftsman's precise care to mirror God's nature and bring him glory, praising him, so every event on this Earth also is planned out.

But if God's design from his personality is fulfilled through our actions, and our designs from our personalities are also fulfilled through our actions, then God's will does not undermine our freedom. God controls our lives and actions according to his personality, and we control our lives according to our personalities simultaneously. God's control doesn't keep us from acting according to who we are, from being ourselves and making exactly whatever decisions we want to make about how we live our lives. Hence, even though God's power is complete and he designed everything the way it is, it simultaneously isn't intrusive and doesn't negate personhood or anything that goes with it.

Unless one says freedom from God goes with it, but that carries a big bag of problems and not any significant plus, if the "slavery" to God and "puppet" issues are discarded.

The reason those should be discarded, very simply, is that the word choice implies that God is making people do things that they otherwise wouldn't want to do. And I already explained that he doesn't do that.

The problems with the Free Will perspective are:

If people were to make choices without God making those choices for them first, then God cannot have omniscient foreknowledge. For there has got to be more than one way of creating the universe, and before creating, he will know exactly how it will all turn out. He chose this option of how things will come out, instead of any of the other ways he could have created the universe. Hence, because he chose this way that the universe will turn out, and foreknowing every event chose to bring it into being by creating this universe instead of some other, he is responsible for all that takes place.

So an omniscient Creator cannot exist simultaneously with Free Will, as Free Will is currently defined by most people I've heard from in modern times. For omniscience bears with it the same result as you have in predestination, and that is that God responsible for every event.

Also, there's a problem with the common definition of Free Will which involves God's nature. The only way that an omniscient God could have not directly chosen every event beforehand is if he instead left events to random chance, to turn out how they would on their own. Which means that he left the eternal fates of human beings to the flip of a die. This doesn't jive with the character of a loving God who cares about his creations- it instead implies one who is quite heartless.

I also find it very ironic that the very people who argue so intently for a Free Will that means freedom from God's choices simultaneously seek sanctification, which most people agree means becoming Christ-like and ultimately doing only God's will in one's life. People find that the more they do God's will, the more they are freed from the slavery of the old self, so they seek to become more and more like Christ, to grow in him, to come closer and closer to him, to emanate his personality in the world, and to speak his words in the world. So even as they argue strongly for a Free Will that means freedom from God's will, they strive to live only God's will, and view living according to one's own will, separate from God's will, as slavery. So that's pretty funny to me.



The higher level of free will that I said I would talk about is this: The ability to act according to the new self and not the old. And I find that I just described it in the paragraph just before this one, so I'll just stop writing this overly long post now. Butterbeer is sure correct about me, when it comes to verbosity .

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

By the way, Lief, just to let you know, I think over all you're spot on in this thread.

Good.

[hectorberlioz]

...:::

[Count Comfect]

To be predestined is to be decided in advance (American Heritage Dictionary). If something is decided in advance, by an infallible being (say, God), it's pretty damn inevitable, wouldn't you say? In that having God's decision overridden would seem to make God fallible?

[hectorberlioz]

Gwai is a funny guy.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

And your point in saying this is...?

[hectorberlioz]

Who, me?

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Not this time, actually. Moral evil or sin comes about through the turning away from or opposition of one's will to God by disobedience to His commandments rather than from the act that is done. Suppose that a person determines to kill another person, but does not actually do so, because he is trampled by a herd of elephants at the very next second. He has still committed the sin, according to traditional Catholic theology at least, because he has moved his will away from God's commandments, even though he has performed no actual act.

So, since sin is the opposition of the will to God, or the turning of it from God, God by definition cannot sin, else His will would have to be opposed to itself, or turned away from itself, which is absurd, since opposition and aversion are forms of relation between two things, and God's will is one.

That's a perfectly fine definition of sin, but that wasn't what I was referring to, it was...

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
But I hope you see what I mean about God being responsible for the same actions people committed, but not having committed the same sins. For they committed those actions for evil purposes, whereas God committed them for holy purposes that come out in perfect righteousness, in the end. And the only guilt, therefore, lies with the created objects, and it is God in his wisdom, and not us, who has the knowledge to know whether or not it is right to create certain people to be evil and judged for their crimes.

If, as Lief seems to be saying, we are free to act within our "personalities" (whatever that really means, since I think one can either be free or not), but the big moral decisions (whether we act in a good way or an evil way) are predestined by god, then how can "sin" not be the responsibility of god?

If god must do something that appears evil to achieve a greater good, it's perfectly fine to claim that it's jusified. And one could even say, that since humans do not see the "big picture", it's perfectly fine for us to define people as good and evil, because our perspective is much less encompassing than god's.

However, it's perfectly illogical to claim that god is somehow not responsible for the evil just because the greater goal is good. At best, you can say that that evil was not really evil, but god is still responsible for it, if you buy the idea that good and evil are predestined by god.

In your example you say:

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

He has still committed the sin, according to traditional Catholic theology at least, because he has moved his will away from God's commandments, even though he has performed no actual act.

Unlike Lief, you are giving humans the free will to choose whether or not to follow god's commandments.

This angle of discussion began with these statements by Lief:

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
You've put your finger on one of the problems I have with free will. Free will means that humans decide whether or not they'll be saved. God saves, but people have to choose his salvation, which means God was not in control of their futures but instead left their futures to them, which is equivalent to leaving it to random chance from God's perspective, since his hands are off.

A God who predestines his creatures to be with him forever, and is in control of their futures and lives, is one who clearly cares about them intimately. He cares about them enough to ensure that those he has chosen reach him. Which means he is picking the "rat" up out of the cave and bringing it to his bosom, rather than waiting to see which one finds its way out.

That is another problem I have with free will. The emphasis on personal achievement. If we make our own decisions in our lives, choosing our own actions and fates, then while God calls to us and seeks that we come near to him, we always have the option of refusing. Hence our eternal destinies are in our own hands, and hence our salvation doesn't come only from God but also from us. And we also have the freedom to turn away from God at any time after the initial encounter, which means that our sanctification comes not only from God but also from us. In fact, to rejoice in salvation at all, we must have faith in ourselves, and in our own capability to hold to God to the end as he holds to us.

So humility is, to a pretty significant extent, voided. For it really is human achievement as well as divine intervention by which we are saved. Which, in my view, stinks.

Do you agree with them?

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

The way I look at it is that there are things that occur which are opposed to God's will, but which are according to his plan. Such as when an author writes an event and hates what he or she is writing, and finds it tragic and weeps over it, but simultaneously knows it needs to occur for the good of the story. It's against his will, but in his plan, for in the end, it is better that it occur.

So it's better that evil exist for a limited time, because of what will result from it. I'm out of time- I'll try to talk more about this later.

The problem with this idea is that god does not have an audience. An author includes both good and evil to make a story believable to their audience. Rowling doesn't put Voldermort in so that the book character "Harry Potter" will develop. She created and controls Harry Potter and he can develop any way she chooses. In fact, she could even create the character in an already-developed state.

Doing something "for the good of the story" assumes that someone is actually reading the story. Or that the characters participating in the story have some level of control over the outcome. This is not the case in your predestination scenario, where the only audience is god and the only one with any real level of control is god as well.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

I behave the way I do because it's my personality to behave in that way, and that's freedom to be myself rather than what someone else forces me to be.

God's predestination doesn't involve forcing us to be what we aren't. Everything we do and choose, he chose for us first. He planned out everything in advance.

But god gave you that personality, correct? What you seem to be saying is that god does not force you to like chocolate ice cream but instead created you as someone who likes chocolate ice cream. So, from your perspective, you are exercising your free will by eating chocolate ice cream, and god is certainly not forcing you to eat it each and every time you do. But, ultimately, your "like of chocolate ice cream" comes from god, and is thus his responsibility, whether you realize it or not.

Basically, your "free will" is simply a perception of free will.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

The reason those should be discarded, very simply, is that the word choice implies that God is making people do things that they otherwise wouldn't want to do. And I already explained that he doesn't do that.

Maybe "automaton" would be a better word than puppet.

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

The problems with the Free Will perspective are:

If people were to make choices without God making those choices for them first, then God cannot have omniscient foreknowledge. For there has got to be more than one way of creating the universe, and before creating, he will know exactly how it will all turn out. He chose this option of how things will come out, instead of any of the other ways he could have created the universe. Hence, because he chose this way that the universe will turn out, and foreknowing every event chose to bring it into being by creating this universe instead of some other, he is responsible for all that takes place.

So an omniscient Creator cannot exist simultaneously with Free Will, as Free Will is currently defined by most people I've heard from in modern times. For omniscience bears with it the same result as you have in predestination, and that is that God responsible for every event.

Which is why I said that a god that is not absolutely omniscient makes more sense, though you said that was out of line with christianity.

Does the bible say, in plain words, that god is 100% omniscient?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

that Leif's described behavior

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

The problem with this idea is that god does not have an audience. An author includes both good and evil to make a story believable to their audience. Rowling doesn't put Voldermort in so that the book character "Harry Potter" will develop. She created and controls Harry Potter and he can develop any way she chooses. In fact, she could even create the character in an already-developed state.

Doing something "for the good of the story" assumes that someone is actually reading the story. Or that the characters participating in the story have some level of control over the outcome. This is not the case in your predestination scenario, where the only audience is god and the only one with any real level of control is god as well.

is a completely psychotic way for someone to behave, whether you define that someone as "God" or not.

Authors who bring themselves to tears with the behavior of their own characters need a faceful of cold water, a nice brisk walk, and a swift change of hobbies. Same goes for actors who forget that they're not actually an indecisive Dane, and people on American Idol who think they'd have been a star anyway.

I can hardly post in this thread because so little reason peeks out to discuss. What could be more supportive of "moral relativism" than saying sin is defined completely by intent? That's absurd, and not supported by anything real. And it's kinda scary, too, cast in the form of religious fundamentalism. *shivers*

[Count Comfect]

Originally Posted by Lief

That is another problem I have with free will. The emphasis on personal achievement. If we make our own decisions in our lives, choosing our own actions and fates, then while God calls to us and seeks that we come near to him, we always have the option of refusing. Hence our eternal destinies are in our own hands, and hence our salvation doesn't come only from God but also from us. ...
So humility is, to a pretty significant extent, voided. For it really is human achievement as well as divine intervention by which we are saved. Which, in my view, stinks.

Humility is NOT voided. We act selfishly in seeking salvation - the search for self-preservation is necessarily selfish - and so there is nothing to be proud of in acting in the way God has pointed out for salvation. It is still God's eternal mercy that provides that salvation; God still owes no one salvation, but has in mercy offered a path to that salvation.

One way out of the conundrum of omniscience and omnipotence vs. free will is that free will is God's greatest gift to creation: God's first decree is that his creation shall have that free will, and all later decrees are subject to that first command (lest God should contradict himself). God can still do all, and knows us better than we know ourselves (thus he can tell what we will do with free will) but chooses as a deliberate, generous act to give us that free will.

As a side note, is thinking it stinks a legitimate reason to object to God's intent? I seem to recall being told by you, Lief, that one's opinion of revelation didn't matter.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

To be predestined is to be decided in advance (American Heritage Dictionary). If something is decided in advance, by an infallible being (say, God), it's pretty damn inevitable, wouldn't you say?

I agree completely. That doesn't refute my point, though. I was saying that man makes exactly what decisions he wants, freely acting in accord with his personality and who he is. God doesn't force him to behave in unnatural ways, but instead planned out his personality, nature and choices beforehand. So the human is completely himself and completely God's at the same time.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

If, as Lief seems to be saying, we are free to act within our "personalities" (whatever that really means, since I think one can either be free or not), but the big moral decisions (whether we act in a good way or an evil way) are predestined by god, then how can "sin" not be the responsibility of god?

I know you're not talking to me here, but I'd like to respond anyway, as you're misunderstanding me. God controls our personalities as well as the big moral decisions we make. He controls every single thing we do or think, and every single thing that happens in the universe. Yet simultaneously, even as he controls everything that occurs, he doesn't make us behave in any way that is out of character, and we maintain our personalities and identities and act in exactly whatever ways we want to behave, in accord with those personalities.

God also is responsible for sin, but when he plans that evil will be done, he does not sin, because his motives and the results of his actions are only good. The people who committed those actions had evil motives, though, and the results of their actions, as far as they controlled and planned them, were evil. God takes those actions the final steps though, and brings good from them. Thus, actions that from humans are motivated by evil and result in evil (as far as humans control and intend them) are good from God. So humans and God alike are responsible for having committed the actions, but humans are the only ones who did evil, for the motives of God's actions were good and his final results will be very good, whereas humans' motives and the final results of their actions, as far as they controlled and planned them, were evil and produced evil.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

If god must do something that appears evil to achieve a greater good, it's perfectly fine to claim that it's jusified. And one could even say, that since humans do not see the "big picture", it's perfectly fine for us to define people as good and evil, because our perspective is much less encompassing than god's.

However, it's perfectly illogical to claim that god is somehow not responsible for the evil just because the greater goal is good.

When a parent spanks a child, if someone else walks inside the building in the middle of this act and then runs out to get help, he might just see the spanking. A spanking itself, taken as an isolated event without any mediating factors, explanations or positive results witnessed, is evil. It's just a pointless abuse of one person by another. But if it is done with good intentions, in a measured fashion, and produces good results, it is not evil.

We are the person who enters the house where the child is about to be spanked, sees the spanking, and judges the action without waiting to see the explanations or the results. The parent is responsible, but we don't know what he is responsible for.

In the same way, humans may commit abusive acts, but if God has planned them, even though he is responsible, they are not evil when coming from him like they are when coming from other humans. He is responsible for these acts, but from him, they are not crimes. Humans, on the other hand, as their motives and the results of their actions were evil as far as the humans controlled and planned those events, are guilty.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
The way I look at it is that there are things that occur which are opposed to God's will, but which are according to his plan. Such as when an author writes an event and hates what he or she is writing, and finds it tragic and weeps over it, but simultaneously knows it needs to occur for the good of the story. It's against his will, but in his plan, for in the end, it is better that it occur.

So it's better that evil exist for a limited time, because of what will result from it. I'm out of time- I'll try to talk more about this later.



The problem with this idea is that god does not have an audience.

The audience is God's created creatures. Angels, humans, perhaps animals, and whatever other spirits, creatures or entities of other forms exist and which we don't know exist. Humans will gain from the evil that we encountered and were saved from.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

An author includes both good and evil to make a story believable to their audience. Rowling doesn't put Voldermort in so that the book character "Harry Potter" will develop. She created and controls Harry Potter and he can develop any way she chooses. In fact, she could even create the character in an already-developed state.

That's not true about the reason authors include evil . Speaking as an author myself of about 2,000 pages of presently unpublished fantasy material, I put evil in there to make the story exciting . Not to make it believable, but to make it enjoyable. Which gives the audience pleasure. I feel certain that published authors write evil into their books for the excitement rather than for believability.

That isn't quite the same point to evil as God has. God seeks to develop the good characters, which is one objective of most authors in including evil in their stories, though not their primary objective. It is the primary objective for God, though, for he wants an eternal relationship with his creatures, and hence he has a rather different objective in his writing than the rest of us do.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Doing something "for the good of the story" assumes that someone is actually reading the story.

And there is .

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Or that the characters participating in the story have some level of control over the outcome. This is not the case in your predestination scenario, where the only audience is god and the only one with any real level of control is god as well.

Of course you're right that in the final analysis, God writes it all. However, humans still get to act freely according to their personalities in the circumstances they're in, and can change their circumstances through their wills, whatever their will may happen to be, and it will also be God's. One thing that no character should be able to complain of to the author in a good book is, "I wanted to do this one thing, but you intervened, messed with my character and prevented me doing what I would naturally do." Good authors create characters who behave in exactly the ways that are natural for them to behave in. Poor writers tamper with the personalities of their characters in unrealistic ways.

Characters do have some control over what happens around them and over what choices they make, but God has complete control. Their control and God's control don't contradict one another- that's my point. The characters make their decisions according to their own personalities, if the author is a good one. And they too are the audience observing the events that are taking place in the book, if they actually have life, and we're assuming that God gives life to his creatures. So in that sense, the analogy fails to work, for characters in books aren't alive. The characters could both be audience of what occurs and be the participants in what occurs, if they were alive.

The characters in books can mature and grow, can make decisions, and still turn out in exactly the way the author intended without him interfering with their freedom to be themselves. The characters in the book have many of the characteristics of real people, which makes them my favorite analogy in discussing predestination, though the weakness in the analogy is obviously that they don't have real life or the complexity and depth of existence that real people have.

In view of that, it interests me that authors may weep over their characters and feel like the characters they write are their personal friends, and readers can sometimes loathe characters. Readers and writers have strong reactions to created, predestined characters, nonreal though they are. In view of the fact that we are real and alive, and of incalculably greater value and importance than these fictional characters, how much more will God react emotionally to our actions?

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

But god gave you that personality, correct? What you seem to be saying is that god does not force you to like chocolate ice cream but instead created you as someone who likes chocolate ice cream. So, from your perspective, you are exercising your free will by eating chocolate ice cream, and god is certainly not forcing you to eat it each and every time you do. But, ultimately, your "like of chocolate ice cream" comes from god, and is thus his responsibility, whether you realize it or not.

I do realize it, and I agree. I define free will differently than you do, because I think the definition you are arguing for (without believing in it), and which I have commonly heard from other people, makes no sense.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Basically, your "free will" is simply a perception of free will.

No, it is not. It's true that from our perspectives we have freedom, and God doesn't control us in a forceful way. But the definition of free will that I'm using is "that we have the freedom to be ourselves." God's will doesn't keep us from being ourselves, so it can't be called slavery.

Originally Posted by The World English Dictionary

Freedom

1) A state in which somebody is able to act and live as he or she chooses, without being subject to any, or to any undue, restraints and restrictions.

God doesn't restrain or restrict us, but allows us to be ourselves. Hence we are free. And if God's will is fully done in our lives too, that doesn't mean we are enslaved. He ordains everything, but that is not a constraint on our liberty. We can be ourselves. Are you arguing that we should be able to be something other than ourselves?

Being something other than what God plans us to be is being something other than ourselves, and to be something other than ourselves means to have no personality. It comes down to meaninglessness.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Maybe "automaton" would be a better word than puppet.

It's a better word than "puppet," and it could have some utility (no pun intended ) as an example of certain aspects of predestination, but obviously it's not an accurate description of what predestined people are.

An automaton lacks life, feeling and personality. It lacks all the most important qualities that humans have. So clearly automaton doesn't match what we are. The automaton doesn't choose what the maker chooses from any personality the maker created, for the maker didn't make it any personality. Just mechanical obedience.

Since the automaton has no personality, my definition of freedom, which is that it make its own decisions freely according to its personality, cannot apply. But even if it did have a personality, it has no life, and therein lies the biggest problem.

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Which is why I said that a god that is not absolutely omniscient makes more sense, though you said that was out of line with christianity.

Does the bible say, in plain words, that god is 100% omniscient?

Yes. 1 John 3:20 says, "God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." Hebrews 4:13 says, "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lief
That is another problem I have with free will. The emphasis on personal achievement. If we make our own decisions in our lives, choosing our own actions and fates, then while God calls to us and seeks that we come near to him, we always have the option of refusing. Hence our eternal destinies are in our own hands, and hence our salvation doesn't come only from God but also from us. ...
So humility is, to a pretty significant extent, voided. For it really is human achievement as well as divine intervention by which we are saved. Which, in my view, stinks.


Humility is NOT voided. We act selfishly in seeking salvation - the search for self-preservation is necessarily selfish - and so there is nothing to be proud of in acting in the way God has pointed out for salvation. It is still God's eternal mercy that provides that salvation; God still owes no one salvation, but has in mercy offered a path to that salvation.

Yes, but humans chose from their free will to take it. In the Old Testament, Abraham's faith in following God was credited by the deity as righteousness. So the faith shows a righteousness superior to that of those who did not take it. Hence, even though the faith benefits oneself through taking the risk of trusting God, it is something that one could take pride in, if Free Will existed.

Also, taking the path God offers is not selfishness, for it involves destroying oneself and surrendering one's own life to Christ. We must be willing to give up all that we are and surrender all that we have to him, or else, in his words, we are not worthy of the kingdom of heaven. It involves absolute obedience and service, and involves not following our own way but his. This brings physical and spiritual rewards of far greater worth than what we gave up, but it comes from the destruction of the self, and God may take these rewards away and surrender his disciple to persecution if he chooses, and the disciple must humbly and joyfully obey. No one can reach heaven through greed, but only through the death of selfishness. Only the unselfish will deserve God's reward.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

One way out of the conundrum of omniscience and omnipotence vs. free will is that free will is God's greatest gift to creation: God's first decree is that his creation shall have that free will, and all later decrees are subject to that first command (lest God should contradict himself). God can still do all, and knows us better than we know ourselves (thus he can tell what we will do with free will) but chooses as a deliberate, generous act to give us that free will.

Yes, I've heard that argument many times, and it makes sense to me with regard to omnipotence. But I haven't been talking about omnipotence, but about omniscience. It doesn't work as regards omniscience, because if God foreknew how everything would come out and created anyway, then he's responsible for every event that has occurred. There have got to have been a large number of other ways he could have created the universe, which would have come out so that humanity didn't reject him, but he didn't choose those options. Hence, his choosing this option while knowing how it would come out means that he chose that it all happen this way, which comes out to the same result as him having predestined it.

So even if he decreed that people would have free will (a view that I don't think the scripture supports), he'd still have foreknown everything they'd do and created anyway, so their "freedom" is only to do exactly what he planned they'd do. When I use the word "planned," I use it because of all the options of ways to create, God chose this way, so his foreknowledge translates into massive, very likely complete, control of how he would create and thus how things would turn out. And even if he couldn't make a perfect world where everyone chose him freely, out of all the options, his choice to create in the way he did anyway still makes him completely responsible for every event. They're all his fault because, foreknowing as he did how everything would come out, he created in this way anyway.

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

As a side note, is thinking it stinks a legitimate reason to object to God's intent? I seem to recall being told by you, Lief, that one's opinion of revelation didn't matter.

I said in the past that because we don't have the same perspective as God, things that he does which look evil to us may not be evil. So yes, our opinions don't matter, if they aren't aided by the Holy Spirit. And my statement on that matter wasn't one that I heard from the Holy Spirit, so it is unguided and prone to error. It's simply a logical inconsistency I see between the nature of God and this action, but because I see a logical inconsistency doesn't mean there is one, and I might be wrong.

However, all that agreement with your comment being spoken, I don't think that this is an opinion of mine rejecting revelation. I don't think that there is any revelation in the scripture that says man's fate is the flip of a die, or random chance. Rather, I see a scripture that says the flip of the die comes out in the way God intends it to come out, and multiple scriptures which say God is in complete control of people. I find those passages in both the Old and New Testaments, so I don't think that my opinion is going against revelation, but rather that my opinion is going with it.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Count Comfect

We act selfishly in seeking salvation - the search for self-preservation is necessarily selfish - and so there is nothing to be proud of in acting in the way God has pointed out for salvation.

Does a man act selfishly when he seeks to marry the woman he loves? (if his desire is to love and cherish her, not to marry her for her money). I think the selfish angle is sometimes used incorrectly.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Does a man act selfishly when he seeks to marry the woman he loves? (if his desire is to love and cherish her, not to marry her for her money). I think the selfish angle is sometimes used incorrectly.

And the issue should be "Will she be happiest with me?" not "Will I be happiest with her?"

I'm not against selfishness per se, a lot of good things come from an appropriate regard for one's self and one's understanding. But certainly man/woman love is a place where selfishness is often farthest from godliness, kwim?

[Count Comfect]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Does a man act selfishly when he seeks to marry the woman he loves? (if his desire is to love and cherish her, not to marry her for her money). I think the selfish angle is sometimes used incorrectly.

It IS selfish. It's not evil - the two are not the same - but it is selfish, and I would not in fact say it is something to take pride in. Be glad of, yes, but not be proud of. I hope to be selfish in that way in my life. I think Selfish is too often equated with Evil.

[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. 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.

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.

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