Yep.
The scripture does not say this. But he will purge the earth of evil and it will be better. John in the Revelation says a new heaven and a new earth.
If I were to become Open Theist...
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Bladerunner
Active member
not sure what scripture you were referring to? I was referring to Isaiah 11:1-10. Out of these verses, one verse explains what I stated. "And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." (Isa 11:7) Notice that the Lion will be a vegan (lol). In the beginning, all land animals were vegans. they will be again and thus Jesus will have change the earth back to her original state of being at peace with itself.
Revelation, after his return. After his rule for 1000 years with Saints. When the 12 apostles sit in judgment over the 12 tribes. The nations rise up again against him (Ezekiel 38 and Revelation 20). A large portion of the Hebrew prophecy was retold by The Lord Jesus Christ in the "New Testament". And again in Revelation.
Bladerunner
Active member
Agree....try this Nick......take a Bible and find Acts 2 (your case Acts 15 or so)then find the beginning of Rev 4. and place a finger there...The pages between your fingers represent all that is said about the Gentiles. The rest (at least 2/3 or more) is about Israel (The Jewish people, God's chosen people). Rev. is all about bring the Jews 'up against the wall'. Rem, Jesus tells us, He will not return UNTIL they cry out His name. They will not do that until 2/3 of them are dead. Only the (last) remnant seen in Rev 12 will survive to Daniel's 70th week and live as mortal during the Millennium.
Fail.
Bladerunner
Active member
I was trying to agree with Nick and show Him exactly how much they (Israel) are spoken of in the Bible. Yet, you and the others laugh and then in many cases give a one word negative judgements without explanation.WHY? It seems that unless I am on the side that is presented I am an outcast no matter what I present. Yet, I will not give up. May you have a Blessed day JudgeRightly!
Except for Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and all of Revelation. We are spoken about in Revelation, but it is about his rule from Jerusalem starting in chapter 19.
Lon
Well-known member
First Psalms, yes God loves all His creation. Didn't do biology?
Two points:
1) There was a tree, necessary for God to be in the Garden.
2) There was a prohibition to eat of it.
Yeah. It. Is. Haven't studied it enough? Most of Open Theism comes from the O.T.
The New Testament has Jesus as omniscient or incredibly convoluted scrambling by Open Theists.
Are you drawn to flowers? "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me." Granted "we love because He first loved us" but we are created, drawn to that which is beautiful, right, loving. Did He 'earn' that from you? Did you make Him work for you for it? "What do you have that you have not received, and if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not?" 1 Corinthians 4:7
I don't. I see a sense of 'self' as an individual as relational. It matters not, else 'when we were yet sinners,' Christ wouldn't have died for us'
He didn't 'earn' it so to speak, but is due our response. If He 'earned' it, He did so in spades, but it isn't the better impetus of relationship and is more of a business transaction by the intimation. Was there legal work? Yes, but I don't want to relegate all of my relationship to a demanding contract. He died. I was saved.
To whom? (are you Mid Acts btw?)
LOL, He did MAKE someone who loved Him. Genesis is an important theology book!
You missed it: I don't. I don't make claims about what God 'can' and 'cannot' know, or what 'change' means "within infinite considerations, there is no constraint, no limit but that which is temporal. Temporal and atemporal are mutually exclusive. Do I understand it all? No. Appeal to 'mystery?' To a degree, specifically because my world isn't so small that I understand infinite and how it certainly must play out in my life and logic ability.
Like Peter denying Jesus three times before a rooster crows? In Open Theism, God had to 'make it all happen' (just not part of His regular interaction according to Open Theism). Conversely, it makes most sense when Peter says "Lord you know all things" that Peter was literally remembering and grieved the third time, specifically because Jesus really does know all things: You know that I love You!
Inevitably, Open Theism postulates force the issue: that God is bound by creation. It is literally part of every Open Paradigm: That God doesn't know, therefore is a slave to creation. He isn't present, therefore is contained inside the universe somewhere else, That He isn't omnipotent, therefore is contending with forces outside of His being. It literally has God as slave/servient to us 'for relationship' reasons.
That is exactly my contention: That He is involved with and not constrained by anything in all creation. He is sovereign over all of it.
It isn't 'performing' but Object of the performing. Do you love your wife just because she 'does something for you?' What about in old age when she is paraplegic for example? Love is a commitment, it is executed in actions, but those actions aren't the thing. The being behind the actions is the thing. What about my step-father with dementia? He didn't reciprocate, was he loved to the end? Yes he was. In my estimation, this rips apart the postulation that love must be two-way. 1 John 4:10 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 Corinthians 4:7
I require nothing. He requires of Himself, being the loving One, lest "I saved my own self and turned to Jesus."
You missed it: There is 'infinite' new things you and I can learn. Open Theism has God 'learning' as a fellow student rather than the Master and source of all things.
See, this is my problem with Open Theism: They think God must be 'like them.' They cannot conceive of a God who doesn't learn, nor are they able to see the difference between something 'new' to them, vs "nothing new under the sun" to God.
You 'intimate' that God is learning. Searching isn't 'learning new things.' It is rather interaction you are seeing in Psalm 139:1 - that 'we' have to see how God sees us. Do you agree with most theologians: "God knows you better than you know yourself"?
He was acquiescing but then immediately discussing why it was 'wrong.'
And conditions. God 'could' have said: "I would have driven out all nations before you, but your ancestors aren't going to do their part."
Teachable moments are not about just giving information, but giving it in a way that makes people learn.
Yes! I see it plainly! I've said this before: The vast difference between Open Theism and the rest of Christendom isn't that we don't see anthropomorphism in the Bible, but rather which passages we are willing to see as anthropomorphic. In Open Theism, "Adam where art thout?" is literal, not anthropomorphic, while Jesus telling Peter that he would deny three times, is seen as a good guess as well as "Lord you know all things" as the response, being anthropomorphic. The difference? Who and what we are willing to say "Didn't mean that literally."
"Adam where art thou?" and "Bad grapes? I didn't expect that!" do way less scriptural damage understood anthropomorphically than questioning Jesus and Peter, imho.
My first place is to go to the word 'repent.' It is an English word and while consistent with translation, isn't the only meaning by any necessity for translating. The word means 'to sigh.' That doesn't mean repent, nor changed His mind, at all. IOW, not only do Open Theists reverse what we see as anthropomorphic in scriptures, they also take English words and compound theology off of English approximations of clearer Hebrew and Greek words.
Now certainly I've heard professors in line with Ware, and even seen that God was going to set up a king that would rule the people who 'they' wanted as opposed to what God wanted. He told Samuel: "They aren't rejecting you (as prophet against having any king but God), as much as they are rejecting me. In that sense, I don't have a particular problem with what Dr. Bruce Ware is saying.
Not if you can look it up. If I tell you, for example: the word means 'to sigh" and not 'repent' you can easily look that up.
Right, but without giving them the tools. Rather, if one is better studied than you, you'd do well to listen. In my case, I'm not huge on end times prophecy. I do read it, much of it is still settling, however. I don't have any expertise in this particular.
Rather 'when' did He know is what I was getting at. I was looking not at Attah, but Naw.
See just above
In a sense, yep. You can get the main gist, but when you are scrutinizing the text, you'd be handicapped if you do not use a concordance. Afterall, this is exactly the problem between Open Theists and the rest of Theism, right?
See above: You were a little rash and missed the point. So you are correct, it does show one of us is paying better attention and will likely do better on the test, no?
Just ensure you understand that there are two words in Hebrew "Now" (naw) and "know" (attah). I was saying rather look at 'now' for understanding rather than "attah." My point: simply "I know" rather than "NOW I know! I didn't before, but "NOW" I do! Yes I do!" That is how Open Theists read it. It goes back to Ware's video: He said God certainly knew Abraham's heart from the very beginning of God choosing Him as well as telling Him from the very beginning that God was going to make Him into a great nation. It was all about Abraham's faith in what God said. That is the huge thrust of all things "Abraham."
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Nobody responded so I'll add on. Why would you take a passage literally when it's clearly meant to be symbolic or rhetorical? When you're captured by your ideology or in this case, theology. But why would you BASE your theology on such a misreading?
That's largely because of poor education. I mean you don't really know how to read and interpret—it's why only well-educated folks enjoy and appreciate "literature". Literature isn't comic books or crude jokes, literature is subtil and nuanced, there's deeper meaning than the brute surface presentation of the words. You're SUPPOSED to understand that, so it goes without saying. Unfortunately that it does go without saying, iow because it's not said outright, those of us poor uneducated folks can often miss the point.
So what to do, in order to avoid stepping into this theological trap, in where you BASE your theology on a misreading, and then through confirmation bias (see above), because you're captured by your ideology or in this case theology, you interpret it literally instead of rhetorically (rhetoric is a genre of literature), but this interpretation is actually ground zero for your theology. Your theology will not stand if you read this passage rhetorically. So what to do?
You need a bearing or a North star or some other external and objective thing to secure yourself and your mind against this potential pitfall we all have as poor uneducated folks. Trailer park folks all have some sort of myth they hold onto even in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary, there's some known and studied psychological effect which says that when we're proven to be wrong, we actually do double down on what we wrongly believe, rather than capitulate and relent and repent. It's like, if you REALLY want to harden someone into their error—then prove to them that they're wrong. It works 999 times out of a thousand.
If proving them wrong doesn't work, if proving them wrong in fact generates the opposite effect, and hardens them in their error, then what to do?
Lon
Well-known member
I believe it all boils down to 'how we perceive love' (see my conversation with Derf above). Does God have to 'perform' to be loved? Derf says 'yes.' I say "NO!" (emphatically). Love is the impetus behind the action: "God is love." He doesn't have to 'do' anything to be loved, He is loved simply because He is what it (love) is. It makes no sense to have a loving God without 'loving' being our reaction to Him. It makes no sense for me to have married, if I didn't find her already beautiful, already an object of affection. The actions rather follow nature. I don't 'love because I choose to love.' I rather love because I am made to love. Free will theism (at least in extremes) and Open Theism are very much caught up in "I choose--God risks." Open Theism exists because at the core, are these ideas that figurative language is the genuine of relationship, even as much as they see action/performing as the genuine of what love is. Romans 1:25
"God is love" is a metaphor (being) not an expression of action (doing). One of the first threads I followed on TOL had to do with the Columbine shooting. The Open View comfort given to parents was "God didn't know it was going to happen. It therefore isn't God's fault."
The odd thing, is that it removes God more completely with a 'hands off' theology "God doesn't know!, doesn't know us that well, had no idea bad grapes were coming." Instead of making Him 'more relational' (Open), it makes Him distant. While I think the first men of Open Theism might have been trying to cope with pain, C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain) had already well-addressed, these men pushed too hard in a bad direction. If Greeks gave us 'poor theology' as Open View intimates, Sanders and Boyd, men, certainly influenced a whole movement of people away from understanding scripture simile, metaphor, and translation language. My heart hurts for anybody that thinks God is distant. I've made no bones about my childhood atrocity: God was there! I begged Him to get me out of that situation, and He did, but it took a long time, 14 years, an eternity to a child. I had read Paul's epistle in 2 Corinthians 12:8 with patient expectation in my own circumstance. I didn't understand the abuse, but understood God's ways and thoughts were very much higher than mine. It was a child-like faith.
I've used the analogy: trying to explain Algebra to one taking basic math. I also believe it partly due to good-hearted translators, not doing quite an adequate enough job from Hebrew and Greek to English.
It stands, it just means, for Open Theism, God has no omni anything. It doesn't make logical sense. If God is the Creator of everything, then He as the only (omni) God, literally has to be all the power there is, all the places there are, all the knowledge that 'can' exist.
More than that, we have to have the Light, the Love, the Truth, the Way. He alone, is the goal of all knowledge.
In this light, it is important that we consider even our difference between Catholic and Protestant. It is important to consider another's position. I do not at all believe the earth is flat. I have sympathy for one I cannot convince, but I've seen the curvature of the earth from a plane. What do they lose for ignorance? Therefore, major on majors, and minor on minors. Is there something lost when Omni is dismissed? I think so. Do they trust God to answer prayer? Yes. I'm not certain that Open Theism keeps one from trusting God, but if, as above, Love the subject is mistaken for loving action, the verb, then I think it misses a lot in actual relationship. God is worthy to be praised, not because He 'does' praiseworthy things, but because He Himself is praiseworthy. Of course what He does is praiseworthy too. Romans 1:25 warns of worshipping the action,product, against the Creator Himself. Even if subtle, this is a great danger of Open Theism.
For me: Try to do a better job and contend for the Faith and then keep in mind 2 Timothy 2:25
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