I love your tenacity here but it won't work. Adam injected the race. Satan injected the race.
You really need to make up your mind. If God is the determinist of creation, then God purposed all of mankind to be injected. It was His full intention and will that this be done.
This is what I mean when I say that you blind yourself to other aspects of your theology when you discuss these things. Do you honestly forget that you believe that God is the cause of all things that happen?
Thus, Adam was not the cause of injecting the race. Neither was Satan. God was.
Now, if you're an Open View Theist, then you can say that Adam and/or Satan was the cause of mankind's sinful state, since God
isn't the cause, because His will was for righteousness, and did all that He could to bring that about, but also gave Adam and Eve space for them to choose to accept or reject Him.
Let me ask this simple question: Is God omnipresent?
Of course.
Another is: Can you assert with the OV theists that God knows all that is 'presently knowable' and that He knows the thoughts and intentions of men in real-time?
Yes.
Turn it around. Always turn it around before accusing another doctrinal position.
I don't have the problem of God being the cause of sin.
Who said? Faulty thinking my friend and/or somebody lied to you. God does not cause sin in a Calvinist worldview (at least not most of us).
But those who don't hold that belief are living in a huge logical inconsistency, which has been repeatedly exposed, here.
Ordained is not authoring it.
There's a problem, here. If it is ordained before anyone else exists, who authored it?
I had kids knowing they would be infected with sin's curse. Am I an unloving reprobate for having kids?
As a Calvinist, you'd have that question to ask, since you don't know if they'd be elect or not.
As an OVT, I don't, since I fully intend to teach my kids to be followers of Christ.
Doesn't my hope and purposeful intention to alter that course in their lives count or are you going to just jump to the logical conclusion I made kids knowing they'd have a sin nature and now I'm responsible for it? If (God FORBID) one of my kids doesn't turn to Jesus, am I responsible for creating sin in them? Let's say I knew ahead of time the second child would disobey, but the third child would walk very close to the heart of His God? Don't shoot this all to pieces, I'm just trying to find out what you think of me as the parent.
Again, as a Calvinist parent, you should ask these questions, along with asking whether they're going to be elect or not.
As OVT, I don't have these concerns, since I know that God desires all to be saved, including my kids, and I have faith that God will save them.
Okay, I'll not argue that point. I just want the caricatures toward a Calvinist stance to be exposed in the proper light.
The problem is the logical inconsistency in the modern Calvinist stance.
Ordaining and authoring sin are not the same.
Who authored sin, then, since it obviously was a reality before God created.
Presuppositional based on the first. How many kids should I have knowing ahead of time that only one in every four will live? (think of implications with this question, what you'd do, what possible good or bad could come from either scenario, etc.)
How many kids should you have, knowing that you're going to condemn 2/3s of them to eternal torment? (I should think zero.)
That is probably why OV exists in the first place. It isn't that there are not answers, but that you cannot see them. God is Love (1John, 5-I believe).
But your theology doesn't reflect that.
God isn't less loving because there is evil in the world.
But creating 2/3s of mankind just to send them to eternal torment? That's "love"?
If anything we see Him doing all He can to save us and love Him more for it.
Are you sure you're Calvinist? have you heard of limited atonement or unconditional election or irresistible grace?
God isn't doing
anything for the unelect in Calvinism. Nothing. Zero. Nada. They're already going to hell, no chance of getting saved. They were headed to hell before God ever created.
Sending His Son is a very incredible measure of love. Whatever we attribute to God, we have to recognize that God took extreme measures to dig us out of it, no matter what system of theology we are holding onto.
And even for the elect: God "ordains" us to sin and condemnation, and then God comes and dies to "save" us from what He inflicted upon us in the first place. That doesn't sound like "love".
Again, you have yet to explain who "authored" what God "ordained" before He "ordained" it.
No? How many pieces of silver? The potter field? Judas' rejection and God's comments? The price for the Lord of Glory? None of it?
If you study how the NT writers use "fulfilled" with respect to OT, they usually mean "It happened like what happened in this verse." If you look at Romans 9, Paul uses a verse from Hosea where God is decreeing a divorce against Israel that happens during the exile. The Romans 9 reference isn't a double fulfillment, but the use of a pattern of "this is happening again."
Same thing with Zech 11.
Why? Why must there be other possibilities? Prophecy to me must happen as God calls it. I know of no prophecy God was ever mistaken about. I have read OV objections but they do not convince me. Jonah? Ez. gives the reason why it wasn't unconditional, but conditional (if you repent, this judgement will not pass).
And OVT says that God will bring about His prophecies, that they do not fail. They just say that God brings them about in another manner.
Tyre? The island was never mentioned, the rest fell and so did the Island eventually and according to scripture. I know of no unconditional prophecy not fulfilled.
Me neither.
Infertility (1 in 6 among males), assurance of a male child, etc.
And which of these is dependent upon the free will of man? Which is God unable to bring about without violating free will?
It isn't a word game. If I influence your decision I've helped determine your decision.
KEY WORD: HELPED. You didn't DETERMINE my decision. I did. Again, more word games.
If we vote, I'm influencing the decision (determinism).
Again, more word games. Influence isn't determinism. Determinism says that
everything has been determined beforehand. There is no influence in determinism.
Perhaps you are seeing that word (determinism) as 'total control.' We probably have some definition qualifiers here that need worked out. It isn't a word game.
You're trying to redefine "determinism.' that's word games.
You are asking me to dump what I naturally see in my scripture reading and just happen to agree with the traditional stance.
I'm asking you to think critically about the traditional stance. Don't assume determinism and EDF.
Granted, after time I've allowed the distinctions to relax but I was very careful in building my theology over time.
Oddly enough, you've aligned yourself perfectly with the traditional stance. Do you suppose tradition had more to do with your theology building than you originally thought?
I was in a Liberal Methodist church so I became very wary of systematic theologies. It has taken many years to come to the place I am today and I'm becoming more of a Calvinist 'as a result' of my studies. I've never been trained as a Calvinist until very recently by a much appreciated man of God. I've had a lot of Armenian/dispensational influences. It is scripture that is bringing me to a covenantal/calvin stance.
Then let's start a thread on the exegetical foundation of Calvinism. As I've studied it, I've found several problems there.
Yes, just read it in my last post for this conversation. It still isn't a natural flow from the text for me and still doesn't touch what I view as Jesus' foreknowledge of Peter's actions.
But we're not dealing with your view, nor does the text say ANYTHING about foreknowledge.
In fact, I see it as the total opposite of what I'd expect. I mean He was bold to even be there in the first place. His love for Christ was incredibly daring at that point.
Again, you see this because you presuppose foreknowledge.
Given Peter's character up to this point, I'd call it "bravado", especially given Peter's reaction later on. Again, a natural reading of the text without God's forcing Peter's will reveals this.
We are both assuming this of one another and I believe you 'are' truly convinced this is true because of the strength in which you disagree and I hold the same view. I think it is Jesus' grace and mercy that could ever shift one of us because one or both of us are clearly wrong.
We probably both are. But I would challenge you to the exegetical foundations.
Why not?
It goes back to the doctor and my 'father' discussion which needs careful reading.
Ordains (allows).
Except that this isn't what the Calvinist really means.
The doctor example fails to take into account who causes the small pox.
The father example has the same issues.
I'm not playing word games (not intentionally anyway). I agree I need to speak these plainly to you for understanding, but you can continue to help me with either statements like this or other thoughtful questions. I do desire for our discussion to at least understand one another. If we are brothers, we can disagree as Arminianist do. We do need to always discern whether our differences are salvific or whether we can agree to disagree in God's grace as brothers.
I think you need to figure out what "determinism" means. You need to grasp what "Exhaustive, Definite Foreknowledge" means. You need to grasp what "free will" means. You need to come to a better understanding of how the pieces of Calvinism fit together. Calvinist first talk about God's sovereignty over every event of creation and that God is the cause of all things, and then turn around and say that God only "ordains" sin, but that man sins because his nature determines his desires which determine their decisions, but then say that man is still free to choose that which was determined by his nature... it's a mess.
It goes back to the classic arminian/calvinist debate then doesn't it? I'm not sure if I'm following your propositon here. AMR would be great on this question. Before it was all debate in house. There were Calvinistic and Arminian priests who had classic discussions and hard stances with one another. I'd love that history lesson.
See, I'm not Arminian, either. I'm OVT.
Now you have perked my curios ears
"Heidleburg you say...."
Question 4. What doth the law of God require of us?
Answer. Christ teaches us that briefly, Matt. 22:37-40, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first and the great commandment; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Question 5. Canst thou keep all these things perfectly?
Answer. In no wise; [c] for I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor. [d]
Question 6. Did God then create man so wicked and perverse?
Answer. By no means; but God created man good, [a] and after his own image, in true righteousness and holiness, that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love him and live with him in eternal happiness to glorify and praise him. [c]
Question 7. Whence then proceeds this depravity of human nature?
Answer. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, [d] in Paradise; hence our nature is become so corrupt, that we are all conceived and born in sin. [e]
Question 8. Are we then so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and inclined to all wickedness?
Answer. Indeed we are; [f] except that we are regenerated by the Spirit of God. [g]
Question 9. Doth not God then do injustice to man, by requiring from him in his low, that which he cannot perform?
Answer. Not at all; [a] for God made man capable of performing it; but man, by the instigation [c] of the devil, and his own willful disobedience, [d] deprived himself and all his posterity of those divine gifts.
Notice that 5 and 9 are in obvious contradiction.
Muz
