ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1
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Philetus
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The Awesome God of Open Theism
Question: Why Open Theism?
Answer: To liberate from the suppression of truth about God and submit totally to the God of scripture who is all He says He is and more.
How does Open Theism accomplish this?
What methods are used by the Open Theist to accomplish this?
Here's the difference in approaches to God’s involvement in the life of believers vs unbelievers:
Open Theism honors God as God by recognizing that man is created in the image of God and that living in relational obedience and faith is the only way to fulfill the purpose for which we were created. Without faith it is imposable to please God.
God going to the cross takes precedence over everything else. We are granted grace not only to believe in Him, but to share in His sufferings as well.
God alone is righteous.
Question: Why Open Theism?
Answer: To liberate from the suppression of truth about God and submit totally to the God of scripture who is all He says He is and more.
How does Open Theism accomplish this?
1) Allow God to be God who is omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, loving, personal and competent;
(2) Recognize and accept responsibility for sin and its consequences; repent and receive forgiveness; worship and enjoy God's as living, loving, good, personal and relational;
(3) Enjoy the freedom for which we have been set free in Christ by affirming justice, and recognizing that God holds men accountable for their actions;
(4) By freely choosing to love God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength and by submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.
(2) Recognize and accept responsibility for sin and its consequences; repent and receive forgiveness; worship and enjoy God's as living, loving, good, personal and relational;
(3) Enjoy the freedom for which we have been set free in Christ by affirming justice, and recognizing that God holds men accountable for their actions;
(4) By freely choosing to love God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength and by submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.
What methods are used by the Open Theist to accomplish this?
(1) By affirming that God is not ignorant but omniscient;
(2) By recognizing that the future doesn’t exist yet;
(3)By reading all of scripture and not twisting it to fit into pre-existing theologies or vain philosophies.
(2) By recognizing that the future doesn’t exist yet;
(3)By reading all of scripture and not twisting it to fit into pre-existing theologies or vain philosophies.
Here's the difference in approaches to God’s involvement in the life of believers vs unbelievers:
Unbeliever:
God is in control of everything, He made me the way I am and since He isn’t doing anything in my life to help me out of the situation he placed me in … He can’t be doing anything in the lives of anybody else either. So why ask!
Believer: God honors my faith, as little as it is and as undeserving as I am. God saved me out of the situation that I found myself in and I even helped create. God is hearing and answering my prayers for help and revealing Himself as the gracious, loving and personal God the Bible says He is. If God is so good to me then He must be willing, able and eager to help my neighbor as well.
Believer: God honors my faith, as little as it is and as undeserving as I am. God saved me out of the situation that I found myself in and I even helped create. God is hearing and answering my prayers for help and revealing Himself as the gracious, loving and personal God the Bible says He is. If God is so good to me then He must be willing, able and eager to help my neighbor as well.
Open Theism honors God as God by recognizing that man is created in the image of God and that living in relational obedience and faith is the only way to fulfill the purpose for which we were created. Without faith it is imposable to please God.
God going to the cross takes precedence over everything else. We are granted grace not only to believe in Him, but to share in His sufferings as well.
God can do anything.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
That is why God doesn’t have to do everything.
And because it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me …
I don’t do everything either.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
That is why God doesn’t have to do everything.
And because it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me …
I don’t do everything either.
God alone is righteous.
seekinganswers
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Philetus said:
Hey Philetus,
Any thoughts on my long post, or was I just rambling? Do you see why I want to talk about a God as one who encloses time with the beginning and end (beginning in the "head" [arche and rosh] and ending in culmination, purpose or telos). The God who encloses time within Godself, the God who is the actant, the driving force of the narrative, is the God who can be open in the present (a God who is patient and who is faithful). The God who drives the narrative is the only God who can allow us to be free (to have volition). The God who does not drive the narrative will constantly be at odds with human volition. But since humans do not threaten God's Creation, than God does not fear humanity nor is God forced to respond to humanity on our terms. God continues in grace (in the same grace by which God creates out of love). It is because God draws the Creation into Godself through the Word and the Spirit that we are free. And in any other state our volitional qualities are enslaved to a harsh master (the masters of sin and death).
For me it is clear that God as revealed in Christ is the same God who is revealed to Israel. It is not as though God has transformed before our eyes. God in Israel is the same God who creates the heavens and the earth, and in his creation of the Heavens and the earth has invited the creation to share in the feast he has prepared for us. God is the host and we are the guests at his table. God is the owner of the garden who has opened his garden to us freely to share in its blessings and to receive divine hospitality and to learn this hospitality from God that we too might freely share with others the gifts that God has given us (the abundant life that is ours in God through Christ and by the Holy Spirit). Christ doesn't reveal a new God to us, but demonstrates to us the God who has always been and always will be, but in concrete form. Jesus shatters our understanding of God and reveals the true God of heaven. We had once thought we knew who God was, but in Christ we encountered a God we hardly knew (if we knew him at all). God does not transform in Christ, but we are transformed in Christ to be the Creation that God has called us to be, and to commune with God in the way that God had called humanity to himself in the garden.
In Christ God's call to the humans in the garden is repeated, "Where are you?" God is the Father who is anxiously awaiting the return of his children. And he is more than willing to forgive us if we repent of our sins, and to transform us into the people he has called us to be, by instructing us in the most personal of ways (showing us the way).
Peace,
Michael
Calvinists, Open Theists, and Arminians do not desire to be free from God's sovereign right to rule us. Jn. 3:3 is a command, not optional. He has a right to rule us because of who He is. Hilston creates a straw man by saying OT desires to be free from God or create Him in our image. He claims to read the same OT books I do, yet in 25 years, I have never seen his caricatures in OT literature. He twists and misunderstands the view (straw man). Any Christian in any of the 3 camps affirms God's great attributes and Lordship over the believer. We differ on the nature of His sovereign control. Saying the future is partially open resonates with Scripture and reality. Even a hyper-Calvinist lives as if determinism is not true. The nature of the future, not the attributes of God, is the debate.
As an Open Theist, I find nothing in formal expressions of OT that create God in our image nor remove me from under His rightful Lordship.
As an Open Theist, I find nothing in formal expressions of OT that create God in our image nor remove me from under His rightful Lordship.
sentientsynth
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I must be missing something then. I thought his critique was dead on the money.godrulz said:
BZZZT!
Wrongo. Please play again.
The two issues, as I see it, are intimately interwoven and it's exactly right here where Open Theism goes astray by reverse rationalizing from the finite creature's experience of time, free will, and notion of justice toward the attributes of the infinite Creator. Stanky stanky.
SS
sentientsynth
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deardelmar said:
Because God uses human agencies to bring about His purposes. Such as with the death of our Lord. It was God's foreordained plan that Jesus would be put to death on the cross, but He used evil men to bring about that purpose. And just as those evil men are culpable for their evil deeds, we are rewarded for our good deeds, all in accord with the will of the Father.
SS
Letsargue
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sentientsynth said:
---Are you not all guilty of putting to death the Lord??? -- If you say it wasn’t you, you lie.
---Acts. 2:23. –“Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain”: ----- That was men out of every nation under Heaven. God said they were Guilty.
---Gal. 3:1 –“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, BEFORE WHOSE EYES JESUS CHRIST HATH BEEN EVIDENTLY SET FORTH, “(“CRUCIFIED AMONG YOU”)”?? ----- That letter was to the Churches at Galatia, who were Gentiles. -- God said the Lord was crucified among them. They were not even there when Jesus died, but they were guilty. --- You guys are not?????
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---------------Paul---
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deardelmar said:
Calvinism does reduce the impetus for preaching the gospel. Charles G. Finney noted this sad trend in his day as hyper-Calvinism was very passive. Finney preached the gospel persuasively as they did in the NT. Whosoever will may come. His love is not limited or partial. All those who believe become part of the elect. Those who reject the Gospel remain condemned. This was not decided in eternity past. The warfare vs blueprint plays out on a daily basis. There is a war for the souls of men. He has entrusted us with the Gospel and is preparing people for the harvest. There are many out there who will believe if they have a clear presentation ot the Gospel of love and power.
sentientsynth
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WHAT?!?godrulz said:
He's entrusted us with the Gospel?
Job 4
17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker? 18 Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly: 19 How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?
Job 15
15 Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. 16 How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?
No wonder scores and scores plunge into eternal hell on a daily basis. Obviously, the god of Open Theism has put his trust in the wrong place.
Wow. Better and better all the time.
Jesus said that men wouldn't believe even if a person rose from the depths of hell to warn them. And His miracles didn't foster belief, but hardened hearts against Him.
But godrulz says that "many out there" are just waiting for a "clear presentation of the Gospel of love and power."
Better and better all the time.
SS
Sure he uses humans, but you didn't really answer the question. If someone was elected before time, it really doesn't make a bit of difference wheter you share the gospel with them, becaused they will be saved no matter what. Right?sentientsynth said:
seekinganswers
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godrulz said:
And yet Finney follows after Jonathon Edwards who is a well-known Calvinist who is really the Father of the First Awakening movement. He did circuit preaching across the Eastern United States and England. Finney believed in preaching as Edwards did, which meant you gather a bunch of people together and do all you can to make them feel guilty. And once they feel guilty about their sins you call them to feel forgiven (because if you are elect, God will give you the assurance of the forgiveness of your sins). Edwards is the one who moves preaching outside of the church into the fields and camp movements under the guise of collecting money for orphan children (he was still ordained by the church).
What is funny about this type of preaching is that it never calls anyone to have anything more than an emotional experience of guilt and a "purging" of the guilt through a sense of forgiveness. Finney follows after Edwards intensifying this method. Finney begins to move this circuit preaching back into the church in order to transform the normative life of the church into a set of "new measures" by which one produces the guilt necessary for the awakening experience. This type of thinking has led to a lifespan for the church that is about 50 years. The church only lasts as long as the methods used to gather the church, and once those methods no longer produce the desired effect, the church must change or die. Hence our modern arguments concerning music and "worship styles". They have nothing to do with worship and everything to do with these "new measures" (as Finney has identified them) and enslave the church to generational and demographic niches. You no longer have churches with "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" but rather define the church according to those divisions.
Finney is nowhere near the early church. The lifespan of the early churches was well over hundreds of years, not fifty.
You are not as familiar with Finney as you might think. He was much closer to Calvinism than you even realize.
Peace,
Michael
sentientsynth
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And are we humans responsible for our actions?deardelmar said:
Right. That's why I don't feel compelled to share the gospel with every single person I encounter but am quite comfortable sharing it only with those with whom I am moved to share it and only in those instances when I'm moved in such a direction.
And the possibility comes up all the time. I'm eager for a chance. Like the other day, my friend made a remark about homosexuality. Ba-bam. Here comes the gospel. My friend's grandmother died. Ba-bam. Here comes the gospel. I spread it all the time. I'm spreading it right now. God is using me for His purposes.
SS
Sent: Are we ambassadors for Christ preaching the Gospel as He commanded in the Great Commission or does He use angels and sky writing to proclaim truth? The Holy Spirit convinces and convicts, but He has chosen men to preach the person and work of Christ. Have you not read Acts?
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Yes.sentientsynth said:
Sure we are, but some of our actions are more important than others. How important is it to share the Gospel with, or pray for the salvation of, sombody who is going to be saved no matter what we do? Come to mention it if God didn't elect somone it is probably wrong to pray for their salvation!sentientsynth said:
sentientsynth
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Oh. So it's not just in our hands and in our hands alone. Thanks for clarifying.godrulz said:
You mean the whole thing?!?
I asked: And are we humans responsible for our actions?
Lighthouse said:
So God uses us for His purposes AND we're responsible for our actions. Do you agree? How would you clarify this if you felt it needed clarifying?
SS
sentientsynth
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Very important. It is God's will that we share the gospel and pray intecessory prayers.
I hope not. I have a friend who I don't think will ever repent, but I pray for him nontheless.
SS
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