ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2

[Mr. 5020]

OV vs. Ecc. 3:15

OV vs. Ecc. 3:15

Honestly, I haven't read this entire thread, but I did a search on it, and came up empty. So...

What is the Open Theist's response to Ecclesiastes 3:15?

"That which is has already been,
And what is to be has already been;
And God requires an account of what is past."​

 

[godrulz]

Honestly, I haven't read this entire thread, but I did a search on it, and came up empty. So...

What is the Open Theist's response to Ecclesiastes 3:15?

"That which is has already been,
And what is to be has already been;
And God requires an account of what is past."​

Who said this and when? It is not revelation of didactic truth from God, but the musings of man apart from God. The same man at this point said that everything is meaningless. Inspired means the words are accurately quoted, not that it is divine revelation of truth from God.

It is true that God will hold us accountable for things that are now past, but to read Open Theism issues into this verse is sloppy (it is not a standard anti-OT verse because most recognize the context as man's thinking apart from God, not God's Words of wisdom).

 

[godrulz]

No matter what view your hold to, one cannot escape the fact that God is the ultimate first cause of everything since He created everything. Using your logic, then, God caused evil, no matter what view of foreknowledge you hold. Hence, this must be flawed as God isnot the author of sin.


Do we have Scriptural warrant to deny God's sovereignty over His creation and yet He hold's man responsible? No, we do not.

God is not the ultimate first cause of thisjgoeijgoeijgoeijgoiejgo[iejgo[eirjo[ij. He is not the first cause of the company that made my computer. He is not the first cause of me procreating.

Just because God created Lucifer does not mean He is causally linked to Him becoming Satan. Just because I conceive my children does not make me the cause or responsible for their choices.

Whatever limited sense you want to say God is the first cause is not justification for omnicausality, determinism, hyper-sovereignty, etc. You assume as true what you want to prove. Wrong assumption leads to wrong conclusion.

If God is not the author of sin (we agree), then God is not omnicausal, sovereignty is not meticulous control, determinism (soft or otherwise) is not true, etc. You have undermined your own arguments.

Again, you wrongly define sovereignty in a narrow, incorrect way and think compatibilism resolves the issue. It is a loophole to try to retain deterministic sovereignty and illusory free will, not the best solution for the issue (Open Theism is able to affirm biblical sovereignty and free will, but at the expense of EDF, an assumption, but not biblically or logically defensible).

Yes, it sounds like assertions, but your post is really the same thing assuming your views are correct as you define and understand words. The debate challenges some traditional understanding. In what sense is God immutable? Is impassibility and timelessness defensible? Does God know reality as it is (omniscience) or is that defined in a way to retain preconceptions that are uncritically accepted?

It is getting lame to always say we are humanizing God by denying Calvinism that mechanizes God. God is personal, but not human (except in Christ).

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

If God is not the author of sin (we agree), then God is not omnicausal, sovereignty is not meticulous control, determinism (soft or otherwise) is not true, etc.

:dizzy:
You lack credibility when you make these sort of statements, for they demonstrate how little you understand about sovereignty, compatibilism, determinism, etc.

Again, you wrongly define sovereignty in a narrow, incorrect way and think compatibilism resolves the issue. It is a loophole

Again, you ignore so much, it becomes tedious having to repeat myself. The narrow view is the one you have appropriated. Any biblical argument that provides a reasoned rationale for God's sovereignty and man's responsibility is a 'loophole' in your world view. You will resort to one of the following usual wave offs: preconceived lens, majority is not always right, must exegete all verses, Shank says, Finney says, I explained this once somewhere, etc. The same goes for all other topics within which you are the minority holder.

Yes, it sounds like assertions

Incorrect. It does not sound like assertions, it is asserting. But what else can you do?

It is getting lame to always say we are humanizing God by denying Calvinism that mechanizing God. God is personal, but not human (except in Christ).

What is lame are your frequent pot shots and appeals to emotionally laden argumentation. In other threads, you post "come let us reason together in proper spirit" etc., yet, at the next opportunity you are back to the sock puppet schtick. God is personal, gr, to every Reformed believer. That you resort to the usual anti-Reformed rhetoric tells me you just don't get that and many things about the Reformed doctrines. You prefer to rest in the shadow of the vitriolic musings of Sanders, Boyd, and Pinnock, who fill up their books with this sort of trite nonsense instead of doing proper exegesis.

Now you can live with your caricatures of Reformed thinking or you can actually open your mind up to learning more about it. Dig deep and try to find some latent irenic bone in your body and be willing to "carry on a debate without knee-jerk reactions" if you want to frame the debate in the proper spirit. (These previous two links show clearly and irrefutably how double-minded you are.)

You lack credibility--wrong assumptions lead to wrong conclusions. Are you willing to start anew? To set aside your preconceptions?

 

[Lon]

Who said this and when? It is not revelation of didactic truth from God, but the musings of man apart from God. The same man at this point said that everything is meaningless. Inspired means the words are accurately quoted, not that it is divine revelation of truth from God.

It is true that God will hold us accountable for things that are now past, but to read Open Theism issues into this verse is sloppy (it is not a standard anti-OT verse because most recognize the context as man's thinking apart from God, not God's Words of wisdom).

That assessment is entirely too bold and unsubstantial. When he says all is meaningless I agree with him and so do you (hear me out).

He is presenting a very vivid argument for meaning in his entire treatise. The truth of Ecclesiastes is this: Without God, everything is meaningless. In other words, Solomon reflected upon his life and realized only one thing ever mattered in his life: God. He offers poignant truths and God saw fit to keep this book canonized.

The entire message is inspired because Solomon is correct: without God, life loses purpose. His last verse sums up what he is saying perfectly.

Near the beginning of this treatise is this verse:

Ecclesiastes 3:15
"That which is has already been,
And what is to be has already been;
And God requires an account of what is past." Ecclesiastes 3:15


He is expressing it as a truth observed just as life without God IS the truth observed in his other comments. Ecclesiastes is all truthful and I agree with Solomon 100%. This book is true and inspired. I see this book as his own accounting of his life with and without God's presence where only his involvement with God in his life had any kind of meaning.

 

[SaulToPaul 2]

Ecclesiastes is all truthful and I agree with Solomon 100%.This book is true and inspired.

:up:

 

[chrysostom]

:up:

Does it agree with the Paul part?

 

[SaulToPaul 2]

Does it agree with the Paul part?

Romans 15:
4For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

 

[RobE]

God is not the ultimate first cause of thisjgoeijgoeijgoeijgoiejgo[iejgo[eirjo[ij. He is not the first cause of the company that made my computer. He is not the first cause of me procreating.

Sure He is! God created you. God created matter. God created all of mankind. God created your ability to procreate. Without God none of these things would exist or continue to exist.

Just because God created Lucifer does not mean He is causally linked to Him becoming Satan. Just because I conceive my children does not make me the cause or responsible for their choices.

Sure it does! God created Lucifer and allowed Lucifer to sin. You participated(with your wife and God) in the creation of your children knowing full well they would sin. God and you are indirect first causes of those actions. This is far different from saying you are the direct cause of those sins.

If God is not the author of sin (we agree), then God is not omnicausal, sovereignty is not meticulous control, determinism (soft or otherwise) is not true, etc.

Sure God is omnicausal, but not omni-responsible. Just as you are in the first cause of your children and an indirect cause of their actions. Without your actions those sins would not exist. Are you responsible?

 

[Clete]

ThomasJ,

I'm breaking my boycott of this thread in order to respond to your recent comments about the problem of evil. Hopefully, you will prove more substantive and rational than those here who have driven me nearly mad in the past.

The point you are missing about this whole problem of evil thing has nothing to do with whether or not God permits something to exist. Everything that does exist is permitted to exist by God or else it wouldn't exist at all. So permission isn't the issue, the issue has to do with what it means to be righteous.

If it were not possible to be unjust, it would be meaningless to call someone just. If it were not possible to be immoral, it would not be possible to be moral either. If you cannot be evil, you aren't good either. If you incapable of hatred, you cannot love. This is so because morality requires choice. If you could not have chosen to do other than you did then your action was not a moral one. God created us so that He could love us and we could love Him back. That single point means that it was necessary to permit the possibility of evil.

Calvinism, however is in a spot from which it cannot escape with any rationally coherent theodicy because Calvinism categorically denies the existence of choice. Thus for the Calvinist, there is no evil! Everything that happens does so because and only because God has decreed it to happen. Indeed, every time the Calvinist utters the word "evil" they commit a stolen concept fallacy because they deny the existence of the very thing that would make evil possible. And so you and Muz, while your conversation has been an interesting one, have been missing the whole point of the problem of evil. It isn't about assigning blame for the existence of evil, its about whether or not one's theological system allows for a rationally coherent theodicy. Calvinism fails on this count and a hundred more, whereas the Open View presents a totally rational and self-consistent explanation for the existence of evil.

I'll look forward to your response.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[RobE]

I read stuff like this and I immediately start to wonder how you know when to come in out of the rain! Your posts are seriously pathetic, incomprehensible nonsense.

Your validation of my arguments is always appreciated. Maybe someone will read them now!

Thank You,
Rob Mauldin

 

[Philetus]

Your validation of my arguments is always appreciated. Maybe someone will read them now!

Thank You,
Rob Mauldin

:dizzy:

Not likely.

 

[Varangian]

I'm breaking my boycott of this thread in order to respond to your recent comments about the problem of evil. Hopefully, you will prove more substantive and rational than those here who have driven me nearly mad in the past.

I'm more than happy to attempt to engage and discuss, however I can already tell from your initial post that we're not neccessarily defining certain terms and concepts in the same way so I'm going to first highlight a few of those here initially to see if can reach enough mutual understanding if not agreement on those to have a substantive conversation rather than something that just breaks down into yelling and insults like many of the discussions on this topic seem to.

The first major difference in understanding is highlighted by these two sets of statements:

The point you are missing about this whole problem of evil thing has nothing to do with whether or not God permits something to exist. Everything that does exist is permitted to exist by God or else it wouldn't exist at all. So permission isn't the issue, the issue has to do with what it means to be righteous.

And

[Within Calvinism]Everything that happens does so because and only because God has decreed it to happen.

Within the Calvinist understanding though, permission is a kind of a decreeing, and is what is meant it is said that God foreordained something. This is placed in contrast to when it is said that God predestined something meaning that He actively worked to bring it about. This is, strictly speaking, the line of demarcation between Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism. (Though unfortunately the latter term gets abused so frequently that its meaning often becomes sort of muddled.)

Now of course you will find Calvinists who are sloppier in their terminology and just use predestine for everything, but you can see this distiction quite clearly in more precise writings regarding Calvinist theology such as the Westminster Confession of Faith.

If it were not possible to be unjust, it would be meaningless to call someone just. If it were not possible to be immoral, it would not be possible to be moral either. If you cannot be evil, you aren't good either.

Would you acknowledge though that the possibilities are not required to exist in actual fact, only in theory? That is to say there need not be actual unjust men in order for just men to exist, only the theoretical possibility of unjust men?

I think I'll stop there for now as much of the rest of what I would have to say rests on reaching some level of mutual understanding on those two topics.

 

[themuzicman]

Honestly, I haven't read this entire thread, but I did a search on it, and came up empty. So...

What is the Open Theist's response to Ecclesiastes 3:15?

"That which is has already been,
And what is to be has already been;
And God requires an account of what is past."​

Ecc 3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; 13 moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has [so] worked that men should fear Him. 15 That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by. 16 Furthermore, I have seen under the sun [that] in the place of justice there is wickedness and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness.​

A better translation.

God has already seen what has already happened. Nothing new is going to come along, but every man should work to do good in all he does, and we should fear God because of His work. This is true, past, present and future.

Has nothing to do with EDF.

Muz

 

[godrulz]

One should not confuse inspiration with revelation. Inspiration is the accurate recording of things, even if they are the lies of Satan or the musings of men (Job's comforters did not always speak divine truth, but their words are accurately recorded). Solomon's musings in Eccl. are not always true or endorsed by God, but they are accurately recorded. Eccl. 3:15 has nothing to do with EDF (sheer eisegesis), but does support the idea that history repeats itself, God is involved in history, and we should trust His plan and dealings with man as we work together with Him in submission (though many do not do so, to their detriment).

There are also alternate Hebrew readings, so more research is needed than one English version. Context is also important, so watch the proof texting.

 

[Clete]

I'm more than happy to attempt to engage and discuss, however I can already tell from your initial post that we're not neccessarily defining certain terms and concepts in the same way so I'm going to first highlight a few of those here initially to see if can reach enough mutual understanding if not agreement on those to have a substantive conversation rather than something that just breaks down into yelling and insults like many of the discussions on this topic seem to.

It isn't the discussions that are the problem, its the morons who seem to like to kill these discussions (I believe intentionally) with their abject stupidity they are the problem.

Suffice it to say that I appreciate the defining of terms and I promise not to be insulting unless you say something worthy of it.

Within the Calvinist understanding though, permission is a kind of a decreeing, and is what is meant it is said that God foreordained something. This is placed in contrast to when it is said that God predestined something meaning that He actively worked to bring it about. This is, strictly speaking, the line of demarcation between Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism. (Though unfortunately the latter term gets abused so frequently that its meaning often becomes sort of muddled.)

Now of course you will find Calvinists who are sloppier in their terminology and just use predestine for everything, but you can see this distinction quite clearly in more precise writings regarding Calvinist theology such as the Westminster Confession of Faith.

This is interesting. So far as I am aware the only valid distinction between the two terms might occur when someone uses the term Predestination to refer only to the act of God saving someone and uses the term ordained to refer to every action of every thing in the universe whether saved or unsaved.

Let's hear it from the horses mouth...

Here are some quotes from articles found on the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics website. (http://www.reformed.org)

"For if we believe it to be true, that God fore-knows and fore-ordains all things; that He can be neither deceived nor hindered in His Prescience and Predestination; and that nothing can take place but according to His Will, (which reason herself is compelled to confess; ) then, even according to the testimony of reason herself, there can be no "Free-will" - in man, - in angel, - or in any creature!
Hence:- If we believe that Satan is the prince of this world, ever ensnaring and fighting against the kingdom of Christ with all his powers; and that he does not let go his captives without being forced by the Divine Power of the Spirit; it is manifest, that there can be no such thing as - "Free-will!" - Luther​

"5. The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny; but it is greatly caviled at, especially by those who make prescience its cause. We, indeed, ascribe both prescience and predestination to God; but we say, that it is absurd to make the latter subordinate to the former (see chap. 22 sec. 1). When we attribute prescience to God, we mean that all things always were, and ever continue, under his eye; that to his knowledge there is no past or future, but all things are present, and indeed so present, that it is not merely the idea of them that is before him (as those objects are which we retain in our memory), but that he truly sees and contemplates them as actually under his immediate inspection. This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world, and to all creatures. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death." - John Calvin: Institutes Book III Chapter 21​

"I. God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy." - The Westminster Confession of Faith CHAPTER V​

"1. God, from all eternity, did—by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will—freely and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass." - Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 3 ​

I could go on multiplying quotes but I think this should suffice.

As I entered this with the understanding that you were arguing the Calvinist position, I will ask you point blank...

Do you or do you not believe, as the WSF directly states, that, "God, from all eternity, did—by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will—freely and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass"?

Would you acknowledge though that the possibilities are not required to exist in actual fact, only in theory? That is to say there need not be actual unjust men in order for just men to exist, only the theoretical possibility of unjust men?

Of course! God Himself serves as the prime example of this vitally important point.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Vaquero45]

No matter what view your hold to, one cannot escape the fact that God is the ultimate first cause of everything since He created everything. Using your logic, then, God caused evil, no matter what view of foreknowledge you hold. Hence, this must be flawed as God isnot the author of sin.

The flaw is in your assumption that antecedent knowing equates to proximate causing. This is not valid. What is valid is that God can allow the actions of free agents, and even orchestrate the circumstances wherein which these free agents will so act, who themselves are the proximate causes of evil, to occur for God's own morally sufficient purposes.

The 'bottom line', if you will, is are we willing to believe that God, who is in control of everything, can still hold man responsible for his own free actions? Yes, we can.

To attempt to absolve God by creating some doctrines that dilute His sovereignty, we deny His clear teachings from Scripture. Persons seem to start from the human experience instead of from the Word of God, ignoring clear revelation while exalting their own ability to find out God and determine His nature. In other words, they reason poorly, making God in the image of man.

As anyone reading Job must conclude, any attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of God's nature is absolutely hopeless. We do not elicit knowledge from God as we do from other topics of study. Furthermore, in the case of Job, no clear answers were even given to him by God to explain why he was experiencing his travails. God reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures but that is not an exhaustive revelation of His nature. God analogically conveys knowledge of Himself to man through the Scriptures—this is a knowledge which man can only accept and appropriate.

Therefore,

Do we understand how God pulls it off? No, we do not.

Do we have Scriptural warrant to deny God's sovereignty over His creation and yet He hold's man responsible? No, we do not.http://www.amazon.com/gp/associates...st have planned it, including every instance

The funny thing here is I dont see any glaring issue right off in your post to disagree with.

AMR wrote-
The flaw is in your assumption that antecedent knowing equates to proximate causing. This is not valid. What is valid is that God can allow the actions of free agents, and even orchestrate the circumstances wherein which these free agents will so act, who themselves are the proximate causes of evil, to occur for God's own morally sufficient purposes.

I especially like what you wrote here in fact. (other than the flaw in my logic part, lol, I actually agree with what you wrote) Gen15:13-14 is a prime example that ov'ers need to account for in their thought process, and when I look at cases like that, I come to the same conclusion you describe above. What may surprise you is I dont see it as a conflict with Open Theism.

I dont believe God's sovereignty is threatened by the free will he gave us any more than you would feel threatened by ants doing their thing in an ant farm sitting on the dresser in your room.

AMR wrote-
The 'bottom line', if you will, is are we willing to believe that God, who is in control of everything, can still hold man responsible for his own free actions? Yes, we can.

Here might be a disagreement, let me run this by you.
Does God control every choice a "free agent" makes? I cannot see how one does not cancel out the other. I totally agree that God manipulates situations and uses evil men to carry out a purpose clearly in the Bible. (blessing Israel made Egypt rise against them and enslave them, just as He told Abraham it would happen)

Clete's post #6670 ( I think, may have to edit that #) is a great explanation of the stolen concept fallacy which forces me to logically conclude God allows man real free will, and therefore cannot logically know the entire future from the foundation of the world. (thus Open Theism) I do believe He has an overall plan for the universe and will see it thru by whatever means necessary. Im not one that insists God NEVER manipulates our will. Some Open Theists seem to go that far, and that is a topic I'd like to discuss "in-house" more myself. Either to correct myself, or to clear it up.

Thanks, good post.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Here might be a disagreement, let me run this by you.
Does God control every choice a "free agent" makes? I cannot see how one does not cancel out the other. I totally agree that God manipulates situations and uses evil men to carry out a purpose clearly in the Bible. (blessing Israel made Egypt rise against them and enslave them, just as He told Abraham it would happen)

Vaquero45,

If by "control" you mean that God does violence to the will of the person, then, no, God does not "control every choice". God does and will use the person's context (environment, proclivities, etc.) to place before the person a set of circumstances within which the person will not act contrary to the way God has chosen a course of action.

Can God create genuinely free creatures yet render certain all things that are to come to pass, including the free decisions and actions of those creatures? To unlock the problem we must distinguish between rendering something certain and rendering something necessary.

1. Rendering something certain is a matter of God’s decision that something will occur.
xxxxx1A. God’s creature will not (i.e., a creature could, but won’t) act in a way contrary to the course of action God has chosen.

2. Rendering something necessary is a matter of God’s decreeing that it must occur.
xxxxx2A. God’s creature cannot act in a way contrary to what God has chosen.

This view is known as compatibilistic freedom: the view that free will and determinism coexist. They are compatible because free will is the ability to choose differently if one were differently disposed according to the physical factors of determinism. In other words, I am free in performing an action if I could have done otherwise, but this latter proposition is to be understood as I would have done otherwise if I had chosen. So I could have done otherwise even if determinism is true.

To the compatibilist, free choice is defined as the ability to choose according to our greatest inclinations at the moment of our so choosing as long as we are consciously unconstrained by external forces at the moment of that said choice. It should also be noted that compatibilists do not claim that all human actions are genuinely free in this sense. For example, if someone is forced at gun point to steal a car, that action is not free.”

Compatibilists choose according to what most appeals to them when they choose. But they are not fully in control of the appeal of each choice before them. Decisions are in large measure influenced by personal characteristics, likes, dislikes, parents, environment, etc. In other words there are limitations on who a person is and what the person desires and wills. Thus, the person’s freedom is exercised within these limitations. Here the question arises, “Who set up these factors?”. The proper answer is “God did.”

Thus, as a compatibilist, I am free to choose among various options. But my choice will be influenced by who I am. My freedom must be understood as my ability to choose among options in light of who I am. And who I am is a result of God’s decision and activity. God is in control of all the circumstances (likes, dislikes, parents, environment, etc.) that bear on my situation in life. God may bring to bear (or permit to be brought to bear) factors that will make a particular option appealing, even powerfully appealing, to me.

According to the compatibilist perspective, God’s creatures can do what they want, but what they want is determined by God in advance because God is working within the person to direct choices according to His eternal plan. A person who enjoys compatibilistic freedom does not suffer divine compulsion to act in a manner contrary to his desires. This is the compatibilist or soft-determinist view, which argues that genuine human freedom and moral responsibility are in fact compatible with divine determinism.

Per this understanding, human actions are free if a person is acting voluntarily, according to his or her desires. God can sovereignly determine these free decisions so long as the causal forces He utilizes are non-constraining and do not force the person to choose or act against his or her will. In other words, God actively, decisively, and non-coercively shapes human desires, and then the individual freely chooses to act according to those desires.

 

[godrulz]

Does not compute, says the robot.

Does God set up the circumstances and give the desires for those who commit heinous evil so they can freely choose to do the evil? Huh?

 

[Lon]

Does not compute, says the robot.

Does God set up the circumstances and give the desires for those who commit heinous evil so they can freely choose to do the evil? Huh?

Your typical shallow response. Stop this please.

Ask more clarifying questions as needed, but don't just jump to prejudism: "All Calvinist doctrine is..." "Compatible doesn't..."

I found AMR's treatise to be substantial for conversation, not rhetoric.

Your scenario would be the 'abuse' of that freedom, as OV would also state.
That is the definition of sin, as I perceive it.

*****************************************************
btw, I agree with your discussion concerning inspiration/revelation, but disagree as to a blanket statement as such, for all of Ecclesiastes. I find much truth in that book from the perspective it is written. Again, I believe his assessment that living life without God to be vanity is true.

This too is hasty rhetoric imo