Philetus
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ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2
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Philetus
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I'm sorry, GR, but if I may suggest an answer to the first question...
GR's statement is consistent with everything else he has been saying for a very long time.
themuzicman
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I just don't buy the whole, "God doesn't want to know", arguement. Just clay pots arguing over what the Potter intends for His creation. And when you really analyze it further, He isn't just the Potter.
He made the clay!
I mean, come on! He merely spoke and whole worlds were created! :noway:
Now that's power!
Fixing the game beforehand? That's easy. People make robots all the time.
Real power, the power of love and grace and mercy and justice, are found in God creating creatures that are not under His control, and accomplishing His purposes anyway.
That's real power.
Muz
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The ultimate fallacy:
"God creating creatures that are not under His control"
Using loaded language like robots, sock puppets, etc., is the tactic of the desperate and reflects the humanistic underpinnings of unsettled theism. Its proponents shake their fists in the air and declare their autonomy from their Maker.
Adam pridefully thought he was autonomous, too. It was the very first sin.
"God creating creatures that are not under His control"
Using loaded language like robots, sock puppets, etc., is the tactic of the desperate and reflects the humanistic underpinnings of unsettled theism. Its proponents shake their fists in the air and declare their autonomy from their Maker.
Adam pridefully thought he was autonomous, too. It was the very first sin.
themuzicman
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And Mr. Religion makes the fallacy of proof by personal declaration, providing zero support for his position, and simply declaring it to be true, because he, apparently, believes that he is inerrant in his doctrine.
Unfortunately, he refuses to engage in any language that would accurately describe meticulous control, calling it "loaded", and eliminating all possibility of discussion of this point.
LOL... And then he admits that Adam acted with autonomy, and that God's judgment resulted from it.
Gotta love it.
Muz
Our freedom is genuine, God-given, but finite. People are in hell because they rebel against God and reject His provision, not because God decreed that they should go there no matter what.
Compatibilistic 'freedom' is mental gymnastics to support an imperfect view of sovereignty and freedom.
God does rule, but not in a meticulous manner. He sovereignly has chose to create significant others with a measure of self-determination, including the foolish ability to live independent relationally from God, though not free from His ultimate rule over the universe. The mess the world is in is evidence of God-given freedom, not perfect divine control. Control is providential, not meticulous, unless you are prepared to blame God for the mess. Christians come under His loving rule; unbelievers reject the rule and go it alone (though He is not far from anyone...the distance is relational). There are consequences for living for Self vs living for God. Love necessitates being able to accept or reject God's rule for the individidual, but this should not be confused with God's sovereign rule over creation.
Your straw man would be valid if finite man could overthrow God's rule of the universe (even though individually His will is rejected for them Lk. 7:30) or not get thrown into hell. Autonomous must be qualified. It is also moot since believers are not rebelling against God's love and rule. If it were a matter of control, all men would be saved (love is impartial; provision is perfect). In His sovereignty, He did not create a deterministic universe, though He could have.
Sock puppet robots does make a point. Incompatibilism does make a point. Open Theism vs Calvinism does make a valid point. The fact you are so steeped in a worldview does not allow you to see the forest for the trees. One wrong assumption leads to various wrong conclusions. Assuming compatibilism vs libertarianism, assuming meticulous instead of providential control (biblical evidence supports the latter, with your proof texts having alternate understanding), etc. are part of the root issues.
I believe both our views do not undermine God's sovereignty and glory. The question is which is biblically supported (Sanders lays out the OT and NT evidence for a providential model with limited risk in 'The God who risks'...since I do not have time to reduplicate it, buy his second edition and revisit it with a more open mind).
As Philetus points out, why can AMR make unsupported assertions based on his beliefs and other posts, but I am a simpleton and rebuked if I do the same thing due to lack of time?
Lon
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No, I think you missed what I was saying here. We must be careful not to hold one attribute of God higher than another out of our own preference/egocentrism.
OV makes a very presumptuous error on my count. God meets us exactly where our emotions are, but on His own terms. I'd cast God into my choosing, but frankly He's perfect so my expectation/anticipation is not. I'd like to see the OV move toward a similar view. Not an unmoved mover or most moved mover, but one who simply is. He has His own personality and He's expressed it throughout scripture, but it is only a small picture (Like my dad going to and coming home from work when I was little-I had no idea who he was other than when he was with me very ego-centric).
RobE
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Well said!:chuckle:
And the responses:
Godrulz said:
Makes Our Lord into a bully instead of shepherd.
Muz said:
Use the 'meticulous control' strawman.
And some don't even read the post, "Adam pridefully thought he was autonomous, too.".
Philetus said:
And the pep squad chimes in.
Etc, etc, etc,.....
Ask Mr. Religion
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Mainly because I make my comments with Scripture support and explanation, you do not, as the post immediately above indicates.
As another case in point, other than pointing me to a book, where are your rejoinders to my responses to the questions you answered:
here:
http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1548091&postcount=168
here:
http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1548156&postcount=170
and,
here?
http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1548246&postcount=175
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He knowingly and intentionally rejects everything that makes God who He is. Even his own descriptions of God, which sound the same as ours, he acknowledges as mere figures of speech. He reject the notion that God died for his sins. He rejects the notion that one is saved if they call on the name of Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead, in fact he believes the opposite. That one calls on the name of the Lord and believes God raised Him from the dead IF they are saved.
I could go on and on really. Pretty much any doctrine you want to name, AMR turns it on its head and believes the opposite of what the Bible teaches. His god is arbitrary, capricious, and unrighteous and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the living, personal, relational, loving and righteous God of Scripture. He is therefore not a believer in the real God of the Bible but instead worships an idol made of stone and teaches others to do the same.
I should point out that it is possible that while AMR is not currently a believer in the God of Scripture, he may well yet be saved. I have no idea what he believed before he became so up to his neck in the cult of Calvinism and so if he responded to God in faith, calling upon Christ for the forgiveness of his sins and believed on the basis of God's word that God raised Jesus from the dead, then regardless of how deceived and depraved his mind has become in his flesh, his soul is hidden in Christ and he will be saved but as though through fire. However, since I have no evidence that this is in fact the case, the best course would be to give him the benefit of the doubt and presume that he is unsaved and remains in his sins.
To directly answer your question though, it is possible to call yourself Reformed and be a true believer, yes. But it is not possible to truly understand the origin of the key doctrines of Calvinism, hold to them with that understanding, and remain a believer in the God of Scripture. Most Calvinists don't have any idea that their church teaches that God cannot be moved by love or that the TULIP is rationally derived from Aristotelian/Neo-Platonist philosophy and most of those who do know don't really grasp the implications of those facts. AMR is not one of these blissfully ignorant Calvinists. In fact, he prefers his immutable Greek version of God to the dynamically living God who created him.
No kidding!
You really should try harder to think through the things you say before you say them godrulz. Not only is Open Theism defensibly Biblical but did you really think that I would have said something like this based solely on the label 'Calvinism' that AMR wears? I base my rejection of AMR as a believer based on both his stubbornly unrepentant behavior as a blatant hypocrite, as well as his own plainly stated beliefs concerning who God is and what God has and has not done.
You are so naive its embarrassing. Ask AMR if God died for his sins and watch him squirm.
He bloviates uncontrollably about Calvinist doctrine but he doesn't even make any attempt to persuade anyone nor does he make any actual arguments. He simply spouts the Calvinist party line. He recites his doctrine and pretends like that amounts to making an argument. It does not!
You don't make arguments either godrulz. In fact, as hypocritical as it is for AMR to be the one pointing it out, he is mostly correct about the complete lack of substance your posts offer. But at least you don't camouflage your lack of substance with an over abundance of words and ego.
Resting in Him,
Clete
I agree that relational, personal theism (Living God vs philosophical concepts of God) is the way to go.
AMR: Did Jesus, the God-Man, die for your sins? What is Clete getting at?
With the last paragraph, I am going to get a complex:noid:
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Indeed I do, sir, for fifty years and counting. Glad you made the proper qualification, "the God-Man" and not "God". At least some think things through from time to time.
I don't care what the that humanist is getting at, as my opinion of his current state is well-known and documented elsewhere. Since making my opinion known I have dropped the matter and simply ignored him. Yet he makes that difficult by continuing to follow me around and post hate-filled rhetoric directed at me, as his spiritual nature (and lack of formal study) dictates. Some cannot accept that their fifteen minutes is up and gracefully fade into obscurity.:think:
themuzicman
Well-known member
Well, it seems as though the Calvinist crowd has been reduced to proof through declaration, with all their proof texts exposed as pretexts, and their objections to OVT answered.
I'd say it's time to play a dirge over Calvinism.
Muz
I'd say it's time to play a dirge over Calvinism.
Muz
Why did you change the question?
Now I am forced to ask you!
Did God die for your sins?
Yes or no! - A one word answer is all that is necessary.
Think this through you wolf in sheep's clothing!
Revelation 1:12 Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. 14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; 15 His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; 16 He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. 17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me,[h] “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. 18 I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
AMR denies that anything divine died on Calvary's cross. Jesus' body died but not Jesus Himself, not God the Son, just the shell of flesh that He indwelt.
The Bible teaches that God the Son the second person of the Trinity was separated from the Father, forsaken by Him on account of sin. It is God who had the ability to live a sinless life, it is God's life which is of such value that it is sufficient to pay the sin debt of the whole world for which God died. If all God needed was a sinless lump of flesh to die, He could just as easily sent a sinless angel to indwell human flesh and die for us but the death of mere flesh doesn't cut it. Death is spiritual not merely physical. Death is spiritual separation from God. When Jesus died on the cross He did not ascend to the Father but went to the place of the righteous dead, a.k.a. paradise, a.k.a. Abraham's bosom. He had been forsaken by the Father which is spiritual death, died physically, and gone to the place of the righteous dead. He was just as dead as any righteous person had ever been and in all the same ways. Jesus said that He had the power to lay down His own life and He had the power to take it up again. Could Jesus' body do that? Could the non-divine humanity of Jesus do that? NO! God is the only one who can such a thing!
AMR denies that Jesus died in this manner for one and only one reason. His precious and beloved doctrine of immutability cannot under any circumstances survive the death and resurrection of God. AMR has been given a choice, the gospel or Calvinism and he has chosen the latter.
Resting in Him,
Clete
Philetus
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In, Out of the Question...Into the Mystery: Getting Lost in the GodLife Relationship, author Leonard Sweet writes:
Much of todays church (at least in the West) seems to be going through withdrawals from its addiction to Christendom and its struggle to become the people of God IN the world rather than 'missionaries' halfway around it. Cravings for what must be surrendered ... the church as a place rather than a people, and cherished views of a Christendom-shaped West rather than an identity as a distinct community that is itself sent by God into its own social arena (the world), and the preoccupation for catechizing and guiding the faithful, rather than equipping and mobilizing witnesses to engage the world, and its tendency to guard and preserve rather than advance and grow ... are causing many to deny their own addictions. This is altogether logical, of course, if the whole of society is by definition already under the lordship of Christ or as some think that Jesus utterly failed to inaugurate the Kingdom at all. But it lapses into mere self-centered lust for power over others if we see Jesus as having established His kingdom at His first coming even and especially if His reign is being resisted.
The danger as I see it is that the great advancements in un-reforming the previously reformed will simply become another theological hiding place from the world. That rather than actually living the relationship and adventure of knowing ourselves to be in Christ and Christ in us, we will continue to make every effort to establish the church in our own image as lords over the world. Why continue to settled for our own little kingdoms until Christ returns to put an end to such nonsense as resistance to His reign over ALL things for the church (resistance which is evident even in the church as it jousts for positions to lord-it-over one another)?
Why settle for crumbs under the table when the Master has invited us to join Him for a banquet feast? Why not live in the freedom for which Christ has set us free? The time to surrender is today, not at the second coming. We all have residual thinking to overcome tomorrow as we go to our refrigerators and pantries to choose what we will eat for breakfast and then to our closets to decide what we will wear ... as if God didn't already know. The big question remains: Will we seek His Kingdom first?
Philetus
Much of todays church (at least in the West) seems to be going through withdrawals from its addiction to Christendom and its struggle to become the people of God IN the world rather than 'missionaries' halfway around it. Cravings for what must be surrendered ... the church as a place rather than a people, and cherished views of a Christendom-shaped West rather than an identity as a distinct community that is itself sent by God into its own social arena (the world), and the preoccupation for catechizing and guiding the faithful, rather than equipping and mobilizing witnesses to engage the world, and its tendency to guard and preserve rather than advance and grow ... are causing many to deny their own addictions. This is altogether logical, of course, if the whole of society is by definition already under the lordship of Christ or as some think that Jesus utterly failed to inaugurate the Kingdom at all. But it lapses into mere self-centered lust for power over others if we see Jesus as having established His kingdom at His first coming even and especially if His reign is being resisted.
The danger as I see it is that the great advancements in un-reforming the previously reformed will simply become another theological hiding place from the world. That rather than actually living the relationship and adventure of knowing ourselves to be in Christ and Christ in us, we will continue to make every effort to establish the church in our own image as lords over the world. Why continue to settled for our own little kingdoms until Christ returns to put an end to such nonsense as resistance to His reign over ALL things for the church (resistance which is evident even in the church as it jousts for positions to lord-it-over one another)?
Why settle for crumbs under the table when the Master has invited us to join Him for a banquet feast? Why not live in the freedom for which Christ has set us free? The time to surrender is today, not at the second coming. We all have residual thinking to overcome tomorrow as we go to our refrigerators and pantries to choose what we will eat for breakfast and then to our closets to decide what we will wear ... as if God didn't already know. The big question remains: Will we seek His Kingdom first?
Philetus
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