ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
I agree that faith in Christ is essential. But, my faith in Christ did not justify me. The faith (and work) of Christ justified me. By faith, he willingly died for my sins believing the scriptures that the Father would raise him from the dead for my justification.
Ok Lighthouse, let me try again.
God has free will, but God has perfect integrity, perfect attributes, a perfect nature, is eternal, sovereign, and infinite. Although we have free will, the rest of us is “in His image”, or just a shadow of who God is, and we have a sin nature to boot.
Although God has free will, God for example cannot hate. God “is” love; therefore God cannot go against His perfect attribute of love by hating. Because we have free will, we can hate. We can hate because we don’t have the perfect attribute of love.
We can have false gods, but God cannot. We can tell a lie, but God cannot lie. In other words, God’s free will is actually diminished due to His perfect attributes.
It’s mind boggling to me how open theists try to knock God down to a level of their own. You guys actually believe there are things God does not know.
When my daughter was three, she was playing with some friends out back. They all came running in the house and said there was a monster behind the shed. I said “let’s go and see the monster”. So we walked to the shed, and looked behind it, and of course there was nothing there.
“….and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them”
This is the same thing as me saying "let's go see the monster"
Again, it is preposterous that you guys really believe God didn’t already know what Adam had named the animals.
When God said "Adam where art thou” it is the same thing as a parent saying "junior where are you", when the parent can see guilty little junior hiding under the bed. God knew where Adam was, nobody can hide from God. You guys really think God didn’t know where Adam was.
Lighthouse, since you are not married and don’t have kids, I think not being a parent diminishes our ability to understand that God deals with us as His children.
If the above is too simple, then try to understand that God uses anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms so that we can understand His infinite character with our finite little minds.
This assumes that hate is the opposite of love, which is entirely untrue. Apathy is the opposite of love, so God cannot be apathetic.
And still, this does not answer the question.
Is my will diminished by the fact that it is impossible, even if I were to surgically change myself into a woman, that I could never get pregnant and have children?
You're the one who says God is not as free as we are, and we're knocking God down?
And you have yet to answer my question.
First off, the usages of "see" are not the same in these two examples. Secondly, Adam had not yet named the Animals, so your tense is off.
Once Adam named the animals, of course God knew their names.:dunce::duh:
Nope. Wrong again. It is certainly possible that God chose to not know where Adam and Eve were, but it is not necessarily true. This is one instance where most OVers I know don't lean one way or the other on the issue. And any who do say that God did know where Adam was. So this example is useless to you.
Do what?
You do realize that I was once a child, don't you? And I certainly know how my parents dealt with me. I also have two younger brothers whom I helped take care of growing up. And I have babysat for friends and family. I know how adults deal with children in authoritative roles.
If such is true, then how do you explain that people came to understand that God was not being literal? I mean, if that can be understood now, why not when the events took place?
And, still, you have not answered my question.
I can explain something to you, but I cannot make you understand something.
However, I will continue my attempt to expliain.
I'm not asking for an explanation. I'm asking for an answer to my question.
How does God's grace and man's free will disprove the open view?
You are correct; apathy or indifference is the opposite of love not hate. I never said hate was the opposite of love, I said God cannot hate because He is love.
For example; if you hate your ex-girlfriend, it means you still love here. So the hate is really manifested from the hurt love. Only when there is total indifference towards here, is the love for her gone.
If someone rapes and murders your little sister, you may hate that person. The hate will last until you have indifference towards that person. (The indifference in all likelihood will only happen with forgiveness.)
In both these cases apathy or indifference is the opposite of love and hate. However, God cannot hate either way. God does not get His feelings hurt, God does not get disappointed, God does not get sad. God does not get jealous.
The faith of Christ was for Him to obey the Father and die for us, true.
When talking about reconciliation, the condition of salvation is faith in or trust upon Christ and His finished work.
Semantics? Precision?
Christ is the grounds of our salvation and faith (Godward); Repentant faith is the condition of salvation and is manward (involves our will and mind in response to Him).
Selfishness, not hate or apathy, is the opposite of love (probably more than one right answer).
Nothing but baseless assertions with which you blatantly argue against in the same post.:doh:
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
Scenario 1: I go to a car lot, weigh the pros and cons between two vehicles, and choose one.
Scenario 2: (God knows what I will do...I have no idea what he knows). I go to a car lot, weigh the pros and cons between two vehicles, and choose the same one.
According to open theism, I was free in scenario 1 but not free in scenario 2?
Scenario 2: (God knows what I will do...I have no idea what he knows). I go to a car lot, weigh the pros and cons between two vehicles, and choose the same one.
According to open theism, I was free in scenario 1 but not free in scenario 2?
Pam Baldwin
New member
:nono:
Love is the opposite of hate.
Apathy is the absence or suppression of emotion,passion or excitement.....so wouldn't the opposite be:
Excitement, passion and emotion about something??
Your example of how a person hates until they don't care, so the opposite of love is hate is wrong.
I can honestly say that (from experience), you may hate after love, but the apathy comes from dealing with the thing (person), accepting it for what it is and then dismissing it. Actually a pretty healthy thing to do....IMO
You assert that God can have certain "feelings", but not hate....as if hate in and of itself is a "bad" thing. Yet, we are told that God hates :
Prov 6: 16 These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
.... Shouldn't it read that God feels apathy towards these things....??
In the (famous) chapter 9 of Romans, shouldn't it read that God loved Jacob but felt apathy towards Esau?
There is no record of God being apathetic- which totally makes sense if you think about it......( I am not saying that you claimed that)
Yup.
You don't have to know you're not free in order to not be free.
But the issue of freedom stems not from God's knowledge, but how that knowledge was available to Him.
Love and hate are passionate things. Both of them. And emotional. Apathy is the absence of passion/emotion.
In Calvinistic determinism, God knows because He makes it happen.
In Arminianism, the choice is free and God knows through simple foreknowledge/prescience of the future. This is problematic, an assumption, but not defensible in the end. I see your point and always felt the choice was still free despite God knowing. Clete and others are more dogmatic that it is not free, so they can better defend that view.
In Open Theism, if the choice is contingent and free, there must be uncertainty since you may or may not choose each car in the end. So, to retain genuine freedom, exhaustive definite foreknowledge becomes impossible, even for an omniscient God. Keep free will and deny SFK, or deny free will and keep determinism and EDF. You cannot have free will and EDF (the proof of this is out there, but beyond the scope of this post).
The other option is Molinism, but that is also indefensible, confusing, and really a soft determinism. It fails to distinguish would or would not happen from might or might not happen (counterfactuals of freedom, etc.).
In your SFK view, neither man or God could choose any different than the future shows. It is saying the future is settled somehow and known as such despite the choices not actually existing. If God is not making our choices and settling them in advance, how does He know them as actual vs possible trillions of years ago?
So, SFK does not really try to explain how God knows the future, but just assumes it. Bringing in 'eternal now' concepts/timelessness becomes necessary, but still does not really deal with the underlying problem. As well, if eternal now is wrong (and it is), then that prop is taken away.
So, rather than assume a traditional position uncritically, one should wrestle with the biblical and philosophical evidence to make sure we are on track. Modal logic, etc. is helpful, but the face value reading of Scripture that shows God experiencing endless duration and not knowing the unsettled future as settled is the strength of OT.
I am still waiting for an explanation of the logic and mechanism of SFK. It is simply assumed, not defended (since you cannot). It starts with an idea of how God should be (Platonic perfectionism) rather than let the revelation speak for itself as to what God is really like.
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
Was the decision making process any different between scenario 1 and scenario 2?
No, it was not, so you have a point. In scenario 2, you beg the question by assuming God knows as a certainty which one you will choose. Your e.g. is proximal (you are alive to choose and God is watching your process), not remote (trillions of years ago before you were born when there was no object of knowledge for God to see or know). If your choice is free, God would not know in eternity past what you will choose (or even that you will exist; your parents did not have to marry and have you). If this was settled in the past, then your choice would not be different than it was or God's EDF would be wrong. In this sense, you are having a fixed future that cannot be changed, so this is why Clete is arguing you are not free. Maybe I am on to something with your good question. It is more a matter of EDF being incompatible with free will, than your choices not being free in real time if God somehow knows them. You are back to needing 'eternal now', etc. and failing to see the logic of a choice actually needing to have been made for it to be known (except in determinism where something outside of you makes the choice...one of my OT books does a better job of answering your question in a satisfactory manner with more logic details...you will have to do more homework if you hope to persuade us).
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
No, I'm not trying to persuade you. I just don't understand how God's knowledge had an impact on scenario 2. I still had the ability to choose either vehicle... unless, in scenario 2, a mysterious force overwhelmed my brain and overrode my will.
God takes into account our inherent limitations and basic ignorance. He graciously describes Himself as having human feelings, human passions, human thoughts, human anatomy, and even human sins in order to communicate things to us for which otherwise we would have no way to understand.
Of course, God possesses none of these characteristics; He uses them as teaching aids, known as anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms. Both categories are figures of speech, not descriptions of God’s true nature or essence.
God does not hate, even though the Bible declares that “You hate all who do iniquity.” (Psalms 5:5). Nor is He jealous, in spite of (Deut 29: 19-20) “jealousy will burn against that man” who turns away from the Lord. For the “eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous . . . but the face of the Lord is against those that do evil” (1Pet 3:12), true functions of God are described, He indeed blesses the mature believer and disciplines the carnal believer, but God is an immaterial, Spiritual Being; He has no eyes or face.
The Word of God uses such imagery primarily to dramatize the Gospel to unbelievers and to make basic Truths vividly clear to immature believers. As we become aware of anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms and of how they are used, our ability to understand the Scriptures greatly increases.
Pam Baldwin
New member
Yes, exactly.....:thumb:
Pam Baldwin
New member
My point all along has been that God cannot hate becasue God "is" love.