elected4ever
New member
So you know better than God how Jesus should have been offered as a sacrifice for sin. maybe God should have ask you how He should do things.
ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
Well, it's prophesied that the heathen and the Jews would come together
to bring about his death. There are various details provided throughout the OT.
SaultoPaul..... notice your not-so-subtle change in thought just within the last few posts.
At first you said that Christ's crucifixion was a part of God perfect plan....
Which is it? Did God plan these events? Or did He simply know they were going to happen?
At first you said that Christ's crucifixion was a part of God perfect plan....
Yet now, after we discussed God not being the cause for man's sin you have moved towards the idea that God didn't plan the crucifixion, instead He simply knew in advance that the events would take place.
I would like you to carefully think about these two very different theories that you have presented as they are mutually exclusive.
Which is it? Did God plan these events? Or did He simply know they were going to happen?
Philetus
New member
AMR,
I absolutely agree that ALL actions of God are PURE! But, not all interpretations of God purity are pure. Yours for instance.
Pure conjecture! Heaven is big, hell is little? There will be no golf courses in hell because there won’t be room? I agree that Heaven will be a spacious place. No cabins, just mansions. :chuckle:
I do see how you arrive at the conclusion that the numbers in Heaven will be great. (I even enjoyed your take on the parables.) Yet you cannot assume that will constitute even a ‘majority’. You do not know the hour or the day of Christ’s return, therefore you can not assume that humanity will NOT continue in the world for thousands of years into the future. That’s a lot of multiplying and replenishing! The one commandment we seem to have no trouble fulfilling. :chuckle: The numbers reflected in the prophecies of Revelation may in fact only reflect a very small minority (FEW) of the world’s total historical (past, present, and yet to be born) population. Most important: Your view assumes the over-riding attribute of God’s love; precisely what you accuse Open Theism of.
I asked my earlier question because you seem to shift between the present and the future. The example we are to follow is not of the coming King who will Judge, but rather the example of the Suffering Servant who came and told us to love our (His?) enemies until he in fact does return. Christ didn’t come the first time to judge the world, but to save it. The very core of Christ-faith community is the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus. Through it we ‘remember’ His DEATH (not his reign) until He comes! That does not mean He is not reigning in the hearts and lives of believers in the present. It means He is reigning as a slain-lamb-standing.
The question is HOW DOES HE CONQUER … NOW (not in the future)? What is the nature of God's saving activities in reconciling the world through Jesus today? Here the cross is central and foundational to the answer: God conquers not through coercion but through Self-Sacrifice; not through limited grace or limited atonement but through LIMITED use of Unlimited Power; not by a ‘sword’ of judgment, but with a Word of invitation: "come".
Yours is not a ‘broader view of God’s gracious dealings with the sinful world’. LIMITED atonement, COMMON grace (non-saving), “discriminating and particular” is not the biblical picture of God’s dealings with humanity no matter how ‘extensive’ you think it might be. Your view is a limitation of grace. Grace is either all inclusive or it is not GRACE at all. God is not un-Christ-like. (We will just have to disagree on this. It is an impasse in our particular views. While I acknowledge you have done a fine job in stating your position, I still reject it out of hand.)
It is not redundant at all to say that ‘a restricted/restricting grace’ (as in your view) is not pure grace. Grace is either inclusive (whosoever) or it isn’t grace; it’s just decree. A discriminating and exclusionary decree at best. Saving grace is either an offer made in love that can be received or rejected or it is nothing more than covert coercion no matter how Calvinists try to frame it. Grace by its very nature is relational reciprocating love or it is reduced to a power trip that uses double talk to appear ‘gracious’. God doesn't just appear loving, God is love.
Predestinating love is (must be) discriminating, it can't risk rejection, doesn't require self-sacrifice and seeks only its own interests and than ain't Love or Grace.
But if God so loved the world and God is love, then what has God to hope for?
Philetus
No, let’s just stay with the fray and try to keep it a little shorter.
I absolutely agree that ALL actions of God are PURE! But, not all interpretations of God purity are pure. Yours for instance.
Pure conjecture! Heaven is big, hell is little? There will be no golf courses in hell because there won’t be room? I agree that Heaven will be a spacious place. No cabins, just mansions. :chuckle:
I do see how you arrive at the conclusion that the numbers in Heaven will be great. (I even enjoyed your take on the parables.) Yet you cannot assume that will constitute even a ‘majority’. You do not know the hour or the day of Christ’s return, therefore you can not assume that humanity will NOT continue in the world for thousands of years into the future. That’s a lot of multiplying and replenishing! The one commandment we seem to have no trouble fulfilling. :chuckle: The numbers reflected in the prophecies of Revelation may in fact only reflect a very small minority (FEW) of the world’s total historical (past, present, and yet to be born) population. Most important: Your view assumes the over-riding attribute of God’s love; precisely what you accuse Open Theism of.
I asked my earlier question because you seem to shift between the present and the future. The example we are to follow is not of the coming King who will Judge, but rather the example of the Suffering Servant who came and told us to love our (His?) enemies until he in fact does return. Christ didn’t come the first time to judge the world, but to save it. The very core of Christ-faith community is the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus. Through it we ‘remember’ His DEATH (not his reign) until He comes! That does not mean He is not reigning in the hearts and lives of believers in the present. It means He is reigning as a slain-lamb-standing.
The question is HOW DOES HE CONQUER … NOW (not in the future)? What is the nature of God's saving activities in reconciling the world through Jesus today? Here the cross is central and foundational to the answer: God conquers not through coercion but through Self-Sacrifice; not through limited grace or limited atonement but through LIMITED use of Unlimited Power; not by a ‘sword’ of judgment, but with a Word of invitation: "come".
Yours is not a ‘broader view of God’s gracious dealings with the sinful world’. LIMITED atonement, COMMON grace (non-saving), “discriminating and particular” is not the biblical picture of God’s dealings with humanity no matter how ‘extensive’ you think it might be. Your view is a limitation of grace. Grace is either all inclusive or it is not GRACE at all. God is not un-Christ-like. (We will just have to disagree on this. It is an impasse in our particular views. While I acknowledge you have done a fine job in stating your position, I still reject it out of hand.)
It is not redundant at all to say that ‘a restricted/restricting grace’ (as in your view) is not pure grace. Grace is either inclusive (whosoever) or it isn’t grace; it’s just decree. A discriminating and exclusionary decree at best. Saving grace is either an offer made in love that can be received or rejected or it is nothing more than covert coercion no matter how Calvinists try to frame it. Grace by its very nature is relational reciprocating love or it is reduced to a power trip that uses double talk to appear ‘gracious’. God doesn't just appear loving, God is love.
Clearly you do. Is it clear to you yet, I don't?
Predestinating love is (must be) discriminating, it can't risk rejection, doesn't require self-sacrifice and seeks only its own interests and than ain't Love or Grace.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
God is patient, God is kind, God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud, God is not rude, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs, God rejoices not in evil but with the truth, God protects, trusts, perseveres. But if God so loved the world and God is love, then what has God to hope for?
Philetus
No, let’s just stay with the fray and try to keep it a little shorter.
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
When I say according to God's plan, I mean according to Prophecy, according to what is written. In that sense, the crucifixion was in his plan. However, that does not mean he forced anyone to kill his Son.
I've said before, I cannot comprehend how God can know the future perfectly and
write it in his Book, yet give mankind a complete free-will to do as they wish and have it all come to pass anyway...but, I believe he does.
God can bring to pass events as He sees fit and God can use events to His benefit as He sees fit.
But not all prophecies come to pass. And because of that fact we can know beyond any doubt that God does not see all of the future in advance nor does He plan all of the future in advance.
Note the following....
Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites:
Without fail!!!!
Yet.... did God bring this to pass?
You don't have any choice but to do so Lonster! That's the whole point.
The two camps (Calvinists and Open Theists) both have their proof texts. Each take their own proof texts literally and insist that the other's proof texts are figurative. They cannot both be literal or else the Bible contradicts itself thus one must choose which is figurative and which is not. The choice you make as to which is which will be based entirely upon which attributes of God you place precedence on over the other. There is no avoiding it. You can there insisting that you cannot place any of God's attributes over and above another until you're blue in the face and the fact will remain that you do exactly that as does God Himself. The only question that remains is whether you will choose the same as God has or not; will your hermeneutics be Biblically based or will they not or based on your allegiance to pagan Greek philosophical thought and the traditions of men?
Resting in Him,
Clete
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
I don't think that is prophecy...sounds more like a promise based on condition.
Philetus
New member
OK. Prophecy is promise and/or warning. So, God didn't do what he most surely promised?
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
That's essentially what all prophecy is!
However, setting that aside for a moment you say.... "...sounds more like a promise based on condition."
What do you mean by that?
If the future is settled in advance (either through God's ordination or through God's foreknowledge) how could such a thing as a "condition" exist?
Nang
TOL Subscriber
I disagree.
Not all of national Israel was of the elect and spiritual seed of Abraham. Isaac inherited everlasting life; Ishmael did not. The Jewish nation, as a whole, was cast off by God, and only a remnant with her received the promises of God, according to election. (See Romans 9:11)
Same with the N.T. church. Within the visible church bodies, there is a mix of regenerated believers, unsaved persons, and reprobate hypocrites. The entire N.T. church is not elect of God. Only a remnant within are genuine Christians.
Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .I know that old "Greek" arguement. But if salvation is a gift of the grace of God, and that salvation comes by faith, not by works, then faith is included in the gift. Just as repentance is also "granted by God." (II Tim. 2:25, Acts 5:31, 11:18)
One big pretty package. Freely given from God.
You assume faith is innate to sinful man; that faith inherently abides within all. This is not so, and is, in fact, the great contrast taught in the Bible between the two Adams. The first Adam was faithless, and all his descendents are born without faith in God. Only in the last Adam, Jesus Christ, who is the author and finisher of faith (Heb. 12:2), is faith found. And only His spiritual offspring evidence the faith of Jesus Christ. Just as they are saved by His righteousness and not their own, so are they given the grace and capacity (new hearts, minds, and wills) to live by His faith, and not their own.
It was never the will of God to save all men, universally. Never.
If God "wants to", God does. That is the very definition of God. The Self-Existent Sovereign Being whose will and purposes are always achieved; which the puny wills of men and angels cannot thwart.
"And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" Daniel 4:35
Nang
themuzicman
Well-known member
But they weren't all driven out before Israel.
Muz
Muz
Nang
TOL Subscriber
Constant resorting to ad hominem and abusive language is indicative of a theological loser.
patman
Active member
No I am not
The abomination is probably a sacrifice of a pig in the temple in place of the lambs. Or something like this.
I am trying to point our your confusion about the rebuilding of the temple occurring before the abomination. Yes the temple is to be rebuilt, but that already happened 400 years before the 70th week. It wasn't supposed to rebuilt a 2nd time for the abomination to occure, it was the first rebuilding Daniel refers to.
Nang
TOL Subscriber
Does national Israel exist today?
Nang
TOL Subscriber
What is your Scriptural basis for asking?
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