Scparmy,
Thanks for taking the time post all that you have. I appreciate your efforts. But think objectively. Pretend you are me. Would what you say compel someone like me? I realize you know very little about me, but what you do know should be enough so you know the answer.
All this is very new to you. So please keep that in mind. This discussion goes back a few years. We have been over a lot, yet I still keep my views. So whatever you do to change my mind is going to have to be very compelling and consistent.
I won't play games with you when it comes to asking you to seriously take a look at my point of view.
I have studied the bible for most of my life. I have come a long way, replacing old ideas with new. I have found many mainstream ideas to be untrue despite their popularity. So I have grown very cautious of what information I will consider fact and true.
I use Open Theism as a witnessing tool to non believers and atheists. It is very effective. It explains many problems they have with Scripture. It is a great way to weed the garden before you go to plant your seeds of faith. Why? Because it makes so much sense.
What you just said is very confusing. Forgive the blunt words, but it is true. Take this for example:
"All of this is about God wanting creatures to be "willing" love Him and to love Him just enough (willigness) so that He could take care of the rest."
now contrast that to this:
"I did not choose to love Him he made me do it."
Here is what i said in context: God could have created Adam and Eve and the rest of mankind to love him, but without some way of testing the true desires of their heart, would they have loved Him in the sense i described above? No, they would have had an excuse for saying they loved Him. I did not choose to love Him he made me do it.
I was saying that if God had created them to love Him, then Adam and Eve would have been able to say that God made me love, Him I did not do it on my own. In other words, they could have blamed God. The statements are not contradictory. I might have not gotten the point across well enough.
You are saying he made you do it but he wants you to be willing? If you will something you do it because you want to not because you are made to. Non believers everywhere would wonder about this and think Christianity is not for them if you present it in such a confusing way.
This might be confusing to you, but clearly not confusing to everyone who reads it. Besides, I would never use anything outside of scripture for witnessing. And I was not witnessing to you. No one will get save by anything outside of the word of God, you know that.
You also asked "God could have created Adam and Eve and the rest of mankind to love him, but without some way of testing the true desires of their heart, would they have loved Him in the sense i described above?" But I ask what does it matter if God makes you love him in the end anyway?
I never said He makes you love Him, I said he provides all the necessary tools for you ones Salvation. A misquote on your part.
Please realize it is your ideas I am questioning, not God.
You said, "Because of that He has allowed all of human history, as terrible as it is, to occur so that you and I could be born and so that we could hear the gospel and be saved, " but you say in the end he makes us chose him, have faith, get saved, etc,. So if God was going to make all this happen anyway, what use is freewill? Why go through all this if we are being made to be what he wants? Couldn't he just do all that the first time? I think he could. If God wanted to control everything, I think he would make us all holy. But you seem to think God is controlling everything and making us all sinners.
Reread my post, i did not say God makes us do anything. And it has everything to do with freewill. God allows the ability to choose, freewill.
It just doesn't make any sense. And that is one reason I reject much of what you said. But more so, none of what you said is in scripture. I know you think it is, but I assure you that you have misunderstood it. Either someone told you how to read scripture, or you half read it, not fully grasping what was happening.
The idea that God loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for us, is not a theme in scripture? You might not agree with what i said, but the theme is prevalent is scripture.
You are unaware that there are unfulfilled prophecies. Gen 15:13 is not an example of fulfilled prophecy. Israel was not slaves/afflicted for 400 years. It was more like 250 tops. The entire time they were in Egypt was 350, tops. The whole time they were out of the promise land was 430 years. None of these agree with the "400" year prophecy.
Indeed, there is future prophecy. I have never heard the 250, 350 numbers before. The 400 and 430, if I remember correctly had to do with God saying the time of Amalakites was not yet full or something like that? But there is not inconsistency with the two dates.
You are also not sure of what the word "immutable" means. It means not changing, ever. God can't be happy one minute and sad the next if he is immutable. God can't think creation is good one minute and then evil the next if he is immutable. If God is immutable, that means either Gen 1 is wrong, or Gen 6 is wrong. Which one do you pick to be wrong? Do you think both are right? How can we be good and evil all at the same time? Is God still sorry he made man? He must be if he can never change his mind.
Obviously we will not agree when our definitions are not consistent. I hold to what i wrote in the other post.
None of your proof verses proved anything. You make the typical mistake. You see something happening one time in scripture and assume it happens all the time. You see one prophecy be fulfilled and you think they all are... so you assume God knows the future. All based on assumptions, my friend.
Because you don't want them to. They are very clear verses that speak to God's attributes.
I hope you will reconsider your views. This theology makes a great witnessing aid, and I think you're earthly ministry will benefit from it.
I doubt i will, not based on anything we've discussed. I know nothing about being an Open Theist so I wont attempt to comment on it. Any system that denies the attributes of God would never settle well with me and scripture.
Thanks for the comments.
