ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1

[seekinganswers]

seekinganswers,

Do you believe that God is a good God? Is the God of Scripture righteous?

I don't like this question. I know it seems like I'm trying to be difficult, but the question really does make a difference. I don't want to ask "is God a good God?" My questions about God for me are irrelevent, for it is a fact for me that my life is already grounded in God (in that God is my Creator), and questions of quality, as long as they are grounded in me, are entirely subjective. The humans in the garden after their entrance into sin saw a god who was a tyrant, for he withheld from them something that could help them become "greater" than they were. They saw god as evil (for they saw a god who might be threatened if they became "greater," so he withheld "greatness" from them in order to remain master over them through coersion from their perspective). The humans of the garden before their sin knew the God who cared for them, who withheld nothing of himself from them (even walking in their midst in the garden); they saw a god who was good. Which perception is correct? The truth is they both embody themselves according to how the humans are acting in the narrative. Both statements are true, for God is embodied to a person according to their actions. This is where a passage from 2 Samuel becomes very profound, "And the Lord has requited my merit, according to my purity in His sight. With the loyal you deal loyally; with the blameless, blamelessly. With the pure you act in purity, and with the perverse you are wily (shrewd or crafty). To humble folk you give victory, and you look with scorn on the haughty (or you lower your gaze upon those who are prideful)" (2 Samuel 22:25-28, translation from the Tanakh). God remains sovereign over all, so that no one is appart from God. And all look at God according to how they act. But this is how God reveals himself to us, "Thus said the Lord: The heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool: Where could you build a house for Me, What place could serve as my abode? All this was made by My hand, and thus it all came into being," declares the Lord. "Yet to such a one I look: to the poor and brokenhearted, who is concerned about My word. As for those who slaughter oxen and slay humans, who sacrifice sheep and immolate dogs, who present as oblation the blood of swine, who offer incense and worship false gods -- just as they have chosen their ways and take pleasure in abominations, so will I choose to mock them, to bring on them the very thing they dread. For I called and none responded, I spoke and none paid heed. They did what I deem evil and chose what I do not want" (Isaiah 66:1-6).

Goodness and evil are not categories mastered by us. They are the embodiment of action, goodness being obedience to God, and evil being disobedience (the absense of action, or at least the distortion of the action, if you will). God's goodness is not held in God's "character". Goodness flows from God, and is produced by the action of God in the Creation.

Peace,
Michael

 

[RobE]

Thanks for your patience Michael.

The intellect expresses desires. So does self-preservation, emotion, and every other internal influence. We are a constant mass of conflicting desires, which the will must sort out and decide what's going to take priority today.

Your will is your desire. This being the case by definition then, according to you, your intellect causes your will. Read back through your posts and see that you don't consider your will the same as your desire and you'll find the source of my confusion.

Originally Posted by RobE

So your will considers. It decides.....

Yes.

Doesn't your mind determine what your will is by sorting out the different desires and determining which one you are to act upon?

Your definition of WILL: Will is simply the faculity in human beings that chooses. It was created by God to make man a morally free agent, able to act free from governing law, external determism, and internal predeterminism.

Your choices are influenced by your desires(will). You do as you want and not otherwise. Are your desires 'free' or are they effects of other causes? Let's be honest. I believe in 'free' will, myself; but have to honestly ask myself if the desires(will) that I have are predicated from external or internal sources. Calvin dismissed the will as subjegated to God's decrees.

It's my wish, with your patience, to honestly discuss the problem this presents to my will being completely free. Do you have any answers for me concerning this subject other than "it must be free or we aren't responsible for our decisions/actions"? If not, I'll move on.

The specific answers I need for now:
1) How do my desires remain uncaused by internal/external stimuli?
2) How are my desires created to begin with?
3) Are my desires free or can they be freed?

Respectfully,
Rob Mauldin

 

[Clete]

I don't like this question. I know it seems like I'm trying to be difficult, but the question really does make a difference. I don't want to ask "is God a good God?" My questions about God for me are irrelevent, for it is a fact for me that my life is already grounded in God (in that God is my Creator), and questions of quality, as long as they are grounded in me, are entirely subjective. The humans in the garden after their entrance into sin saw a god who was a tyrant, for he withheld from them something that could help them become "greater" than they were. They saw god as evil (for they saw a god who might be threatened if they became "greater," so he withheld "greatness" from them in order to remain master over them through coersion from their perspective). The humans of the garden before their sin knew the God who cared for them, who withheld nothing of himself from them (even walking in their midst in the garden); they saw a god who was good. Which perception is correct? The truth is they both embody themselves according to how the humans are acting in the narrative. Both statements are true, for God is embodied to a person according to their actions. This is where a passage from 2 Samuel becomes very profound, "And the Lord has requited my merit, according to my purity in His sight. With the loyal you deal loyally; with the blameless, blamelessly. With the pure you act in purity, and with the perverse you are wily (shrewd or crafty). To humble folk you give victory, and you look with scorn on the haughty (or you lower your gaze upon those who are prideful)" (2 Samuel 22:25-28, translation from the Tanakh). God remains sovereign over all, so that no one is appart from God. And all look at God according to how they act. But this is how God reveals himself to us, "Thus said the Lord: The heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool: Where could you build a house for Me, What place could serve as my abode? All this was made by My hand, and thus it all came into being," declares the Lord. "Yet to such a one I look: to the poor and brokenhearted, who is concerned about My word. As for those who slaughter oxen and slay humans, who sacrifice sheep and immolate dogs, who present as oblation the blood of swine, who offer incense and worship false gods -- just as they have chosen their ways and take pleasure in abominations, so will I choose to mock them, to bring on them the very thing they dread. For I called and none responded, I spoke and none paid heed. They did what I deem evil and chose what I do not want" (Isaiah 66:1-6).

Goodness and evil are not categories mastered by us. They are the embodiment of action, goodness being obedience to God, and evil being disobedience (the absense of action, or at least the distortion of the action, if you will). God's goodness is not held in God's "character". Goodness flows from God, and is produced by the action of God in the Creation.

Peace,
Michael

Your unwillingness to answer comes as no surprise. You are not the first person I've come across to have the same difficulty and it is completely consistent with the position you have put forward. To say that God was good would directly contradict your stated position, which you could obviously see immediately. At least you're consistent.

This for me is the ultimate problem for anyone who holds to the ideas you have expressed and, as far as I am concerned, proves that you are talking out of your hat when you say things like "Bob Enyart...has lost the war." Your credibility in making such assessments crumbles to nothing when you can't even possitively affirm the goodness of God.

Leave it to a philosopher to take something so obvious and simple as the question, "Is God good?", and turn it into a question that cannot be answered with any meaning whatsoever.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[seekinganswers]

Your unwillingness to answer comes as no surprise. You are not the first person I've come across to have the same difficulty and it is completely consistent with the position you have put forward. To say that God was good would directly contradict your stated position, which you could obviously see immediately. At least you're consistent.

This for me is the ultimate problem for anyone who holds to the ideas you have expressed and, as far as I am concerned, proves that you are talking out of your hat when you say things like "Bob Enyart...has lost the war." Your credibility in making such assessments crumbles to nothing when you can't even possitively affirm the goodness of God.

Leave it to a philosopher to take something so obvious and simple as the question, "Is God good?", and turn it into a question that cannot be answered with any meaning whatsoever.

Resting in Him,
Clete

First of all I am not a philosopher. Bob's position holds much more closely to the philosophy of our age than does mine. Bob's distinction within God of "character" vs. "person" is entirely based on the philosophy of Descartes and other dualistic and individualistic thinkers of the 17th century. If you want to accuse someone of being grounded in philosophy look at Bob, for his categories are given to him by modern philosophy (and I might add are entirely based on the distinction of the spiritual from the secular which has led to the resulting fields of philosophy and theology).

My statements are ones that no philosopher would affirm, for what I am saying requires that they agree to presuppositions that Modern Philosophy would condemn. My initial presupposition is that God exists. There is a God and this God has been revealed to us as the Creator, as the Trinity witnessed in the scriptures (this is my starting point). My second presupposition is that all of the Creation consists in this God. In other words, if our God were not sustaining the world and us, the world and us would both cease to be (we would revert to utter chaos). I like what Paul has to say on the matter: "In God we live and move and have our being," and "By God and through God and to God are all things." So the life that we witness in this world only is life in as much as it is grounded in the Creator. I am no deist, who sees a God whose act of Creation sets things into motion to be upheld by certain laws that continue to function in the absence of the Creator. God is not a cause as far as I am concerned. And the Creation is not self-consistent. God is sovereign, which means God sustains our life, and if God is not sovereign over the Creation, the Creation has no life whatsoever. God is the source of life in the Creation, not the cause, and as the source of life, all life is sustained in God. If a person will not agree with these presuppositions, these givens, then they cannot agree with what I am saying.

You see, Clete, you want me to allow you to frame the discussion with regards to God, and I will not allow you to draw me into your discussion of God as grounded in the secular philosophy of our world. You claim religiosity when in fact you are rooted in the very grounding of the Modern World (you even claim that you have been given your freedom to believe by a secular institution of men [by secular I mean an institution grounded in men's observations of the world as opposed to being grounded in God]). I gave you an answer to your question before, and you continue to ignore that answer: God is not "good"; God is goodness. God is not loving; God is love.

That is my answer, and I will not allow you to turn my words in such a way as to affirm the categories that you have accepted, because you have been deceived by the philosophies of this world, by Descartes and the likes of him. The desception runs so deep that you would present Descartes' views (especially in the bifurcation of God into "person" and "character"; the abstract eternal God vs. the temporal God who acts) and would present this secular view of God as being Christian.

But I suppose you will only hear in my words as a judgment against you, and will assume that I am attacking your person as opposed to presenting you with a categorically distinct view of God, for anyone who will reject the supposedly "neutral" categories given to us by the Enlightenment is automatically labelled an intollerant bigot by our world today.

Peace,
Michael

 

[godrulz]

Will and mind work together.

 

[RobE]

Will and mind work together.

Which one works first and does it cause the other to work?

Rob

 

[godrulz]

Which one works first and does it cause the other to work?

Rob

The Bible does not artificially dissect this. They work together. The mind is instrumental in deciding between choices. No brain, no choice. They are so integrated that you are splitting hairs. Look at man as a whole person in the spiritual, personal (soul=will, intellect, emotions), and moral image of God. The real us also expresses itself through our bodies.

 

[RobE]

The Bible does not artificially dissect this. They work together. The mind is instrumental in deciding between choices. No brain, no choice. They are so integrated that you are splitting hairs. Look at man as a whole person in the spiritual, personal (soul=will, intellect, emotions), and moral image of God. The real us also expresses itself through our bodies.

What kinds of things effect/affect our soul?

Rob

 

[godrulz]

What kinds of things effect/affect our soul?

Rob

I suppose many things affect it, but they are not coercive/causative. Cause-effect is the way inanimate creation is ruled. Man is moral creation and has free moral agency. We may chose between alternatives without something back of our will making us do it. Things may influence us (the Spirit convicts and convinces and persuades/woos without causing/coercing conversion...once we yield to God, then He alone regenerates us instantaneously).

Advertizing can manipulate and influence us, even persuade us, to make a decision to buy. Other influences might make our mind pause as we see things from another perspective. The choice whether to buy or not is still a free choice no matter how little or much we are influenced.

Even the conversion of Paul involved will and belief leading up to His conviction and dramatic conversion. It was not unilaterally foisted on Him (would that be just for God to save some or a few against their wills, but not save others that He could save against their wills?). One can receive or reject Christ in response to the convicting work of the Spirit. Grace is not irresistible. In Acts, some believed, some did not believe, and others procrastinated when Paul preached the resurrection of Christ.

 

[RobE]

I suppose many things affect it, but they are not coercive/causative. Cause-effect is the way inanimate creation is ruled. Man is moral creation and has free moral agency. We may chose between alternatives without something back of our will making us do it. Things may influence us (the Spirit convicts and convinces and persuades/woos without causing/coercing conversion...once we yield to God, then He alone regenerates us instantaneously).

Like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other in cartoons.

Advertizing can manipulate and influence us, even persuade us, to make a decision to buy. Other influences might make our mind pause as we see things from another perspective. The choice whether to buy or not is still a free choice no matter how little or much we are influenced.

I think that we are easily persuaded by what our desire really is. We find things that agree with our own private 'list' of what's right. And the influences are often unbalanced. The Holy Spirit obviously works within us to align our will to His. This is the cooperative effort that works our our salvation. How this comes about has been argued and discussed for centuries, of course.

Even the conversion of Paul involved will and belief leading up to His conviction and dramatic conversion. It was not unilaterally foisted on Him (would that be just for God to save some or a few against their wills, but not save others that He could save against their wills?). One can receive or reject Christ in response to the convicting work of the Spirit. Grace is not irresistible. In Acts, some believed, some did not believe, and others procrastinated when Paul preached the resurrection of Christ.

However, in the case of Paul, you see that God chose to exert more influence in Paul's life than in most of us. Why is this? Would Paul have believed otherwise? This leads us back to the issue of what is 'sufficient' where Grace is concerned. Would most agnostics be converted if they went through Paul's ordeal? Or was Paul just an exceptionally 'hard' case?

As you know, I agree with you and Augustine, in asserting that Grace is not irresistible; but unlike you I acknowledge that our coming to faith is an act of Grace in itself.

Thanks for your Honesty,
Rob

 

[Lighthouse]

My sins were not nailed to the cross. They were not in existence in the first century anymore than I was. This is popular evangelist preaching, but it is not biblical. My Savior was nailed on the cross. He was a substitute for the penalty of sin. He did not literally have every past, present, and future sin dumped on Him (the Bible does not record heaps of adultery, lying, stealing, idolatry, etc. covering His body or bursting His insides...sins involve choice...they are not literal 'things' that can be nailed to wood!).

His death deals with governmental issues making it possible for past, present, future sin to be forgiven. It is not forgiven before it happens or before one exists or all men would be unconditionally saved from birth to death.

Sin is not a substance. It is a wrong moral choice or lawlessness.

See what I mean.

There is no hope for you godrulz.

 

[Clete]

First of all I am not a philosopher.

Don't be silly. Of course you are. All Christians are philosophers, or should be. I was using the stereotype to convey a point which I thought was clear.

Bob's position holds much more closely to the philosophy of our age than does mine. Bob's distinction within God of "character" vs. "person" is entirely based on the philosophy of Descartes and other dualistic and individualistic thinkers of the 17th century.

Bob calles Descartes an idiot in the same post (perhaps even the portion I quoted) in which he presents an iron clad case for how we can know objectively that God is good.

If you want to accuse someone of being grounded in philosophy look at Bob, for his categories are given to him by modern philosophy (and I might add are entirely based on the distinction of the spiritual from the secular which has led to the resulting fields of philosophy and theology).

If you weren't a philosopher you could not have written this or the previous sentence, nor any of your last several posts for that matter. You have philosophy dripping from every pore of your body. Do yourself a favor and don't deny the obvious, okay? (Being a philosopher isn't a bad thing in and of itself, by the way.)

My statements are ones that no philosopher would affirm, for what I am saying requires that they agree to presuppositions that Modern Philosophy would condemn.

You do not have to be in agreement with anyone to be a philosopher, Michael. In fact, disagreeing with virtually everyone is a common hallmark of most of the good ones.

My initial presupposition is that God exists. There is a God and this God has been revealed to us as the Creator, as the Trinity witnessed in the scriptures (this is my starting point). My second presupposition is that all of the Creation consists in this God. In other words, if our God were not sustaining the world and us, the world and us would both cease to be (we would revert to utter chaos). I like what Paul has to say on the matter: "In God we live and move and have our being," and "By God and through God and to God are all things." So the life that we witness in this world only is life in as much as it is grounded in the Creator. I am no deist, who sees a God whose act of Creation sets things into motion to be upheld by certain laws that continue to function in the absence of the Creator. God is not a cause as far as I am concerned. And the Creation is not self-consistent. God is sovereign, which means God sustains our life, and if God is not sovereign over the Creation, the Creation has no life whatsoever. God is the source of life in the Creation, not the cause, and as the source of life, all life is sustained in God. If a person will not agree with these presuppositions, these givens, then they cannot agree with what I am saying.

Van Till himself couldn't have said it any better. You are without question a Christian philosopher, complete with a vocabulary that is loaded with meaning that no one but those familiar with philosophy would have the slightest clue is indended by the words you've just said.

You see, Clete,

Oh, yes! I see quite clearly.

...you want me to allow you to frame the discussion with regards to God, and I will not allow you to draw me into your discussion of God as grounded in the secular philosophy of our world.

Who said anything about secular philosophy? You're the one citing Descartes, Plato, and who knows who else, not me. I simply asked whether you thought God is righteous. Which was a question that followed logically from your comments.

You claim religiosity when in fact you are rooted in the very grounding of the Modern World (you even claim that you have been given your freedom to believe by a secular institution of men [by secular I mean an institution grounded in men's observations of the world as opposed to being grounded in God]). I gave you an answer to your question before, and you continue to ignore that answer: God is not "good"; God is goodness. God is not loving; God is love.

Right! And this comment makes you a kook! I didn't ignore anything. I read every word and the tactic I chose to use in order to demonstrate that you are neck deep in lunatic philosophy was to simply ask you a point blank question that is utterly intuitive to every single person on the planet who calls themselves a Christian and who hasn't spent too much time with their heads burried in something other than the Bible.

That is my answer, and I will not allow you to turn my words in such a way as to affirm the categories that you have accepted, because you have been deceived by the philosophies of this world, by Descartes and the likes of him.

Would it surprise you to know that I have never knowingly read a single word of Decartes' and don't have the slightest idea what he taught aside from what you have told me? You have spent lots more time studying Descartes than I have. And I have no intention of twisting your words. In fact, letting someone's own words do the arguing for me is one of my favorite things to do!
Further, where's all the hostiliy coming from? I've been nothing but respectful and substantively on point in response to your own words.

The desception runs so deep that you would present Descartes' views (especially in the bifurcation of God into "person" and "character"; the abstract eternal God vs. the temporal God who acts) and would present this secular view of God as being Christian.

:chuckle:
You're so funny! I don't even know what this gibberish means!

But I suppose you will only hear in my words as a judgment against you, and will assume that I am attacking your person as opposed to presenting you with a categorically distinct view of God, for anyone who will reject the supposedly "neutral" categories given to us by the Enlightenment is automatically labelled an intollerant bigot by our world today.

Look, you are your own worst enemy. I have no need to attack you at all. I think you're a kookoo head because you think you've really got it figured out but are possitively unwilling to acknowledge that God is good, in spite of the Bible's having done so repeatedly (see below). What more needs to be said in opposition to your view? As right as it is, in many respects, you've taken it way past what is wise or even reasonable.

Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.

Ezra 9:15 O LORD God of Israel, You are righteous, for we are left as a remnant, as it is this day. Here we are before You, in our guilt, though no one can stand before You because of this!

Job 4:17 Can a mortal be more righteous than God?Can a man be more pure than his Maker?

Psalm 7:9 Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,But establish the just; For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds.

Psalm 35:24 Vindicate me, O LORD my God, according to Your righteousness;And let them not rejoice over me.

Psalm 50:6 Let the heavens declare His righteousness,For God Himself is Judge. Selah

Psalm 51:14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.

Psalm 65:5 By awesome deeds in righteousness You will answer us,O God of our salvation, You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth, And of the far-off seas;

Psalm 71:16 I will go in the strength of the Lord GOD;I will make mention of Your righteousness, of Yours only.

Psalm 71:19 Also Your righteousness, O God, is very high,You who have done great things; O God, who is like You?

Psalm 116:5 Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;Yes, our God is merciful.

Proverbs 21:12 The righteous God wisely considers the house of the wicked, Overthrowing the wicked for their wickedness.

Isaiah 5:16 But the LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, And God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness. (i.e. God is holy BECAUSE He is righeous!)

Isaiah 41:10 Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’

Daniel 9:14 Therefore the LORD has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the LORD our God is righteous in all the works which He does, though we have not obeyed His voice.

Romans 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference;

Romans 3:25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,

Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

2 Thessalonians 1:4 so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, 5 which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also suffer; 6 since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you

Revelation 16:7 And I heard another from the altar saying, “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”​

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[godrulz]

See what I mean.

There is no hope for you godrulz.

Do you really think that a prominent Christian leader's adultery was nailed to the cross? What did this adultery look like hanging there? I am suggesting that the phrase should not be taken with a wooden literalism. Sin is not a visible 'thing' that exists before it is committed. Future sins do not exist until the choice is made. Our sins were not sitting in a pile before the earth was created. This does not mean that there is not provision for past, present, and future sins.

This common sense, biblical view means that there is no hope for me?

Jesus, not acts that do not exist or no longer exist, was nailed to the cross. The Savior is why we have forgiveness, not nailing a nothing to a piece of wood. Perhaps you should be more precise in your terminology lest it be misunderstood.

 

[Lighthouse]

Do you really think that a prominent Christian leader's adultery was nailed to the cross? What did this adultery look like hanging there? I am suggesting that the phrase should not be taken with a wooden literalism. Sin is not a visible 'thing' that exists before it is committed. Future sins do not exist until the choice is made. Our sins were not sitting in a pile before the earth was created. This does not mean that there is not provision for past, present, and future sins.

This common sense, biblical view means that there is no hope for me?

Jesus, not acts that do not exist or no longer exist, was nailed to the cross. The Savior is why we have forgiveness, not nailing a nothing to a piece of wood. Perhaps you should be more precise in your terminology lest it be misunderstood.

See, you don't get it.

 

[godrulz]

See, you don't get it.

I don't get what you are not getting. Help me, wise one?

I do not think most people literally believe that murder is an object that can be nailed to a cross. Jesus was a substitute for the penalty of sin. He was not a pin cushion to pin billions of 'sins' onto in order to have the sinner not carry them somewhere in their bodies.

The issues of redemption are not physical sin packages, are they?

 

[seekinganswers]

Ok Clete,

You asked me the question, is God good? I answered you with, "God is not good; God is goodness." You thought it was just a bunch of philosophical psychobabel, and yet when the scriptures say, "God is love" you don't accuse John of being a philosophical nut, though his statement is just as cryptic as the one I gave you. There are many ways in the Greek can say god is "loving," and yet John chose this enigmatic phrase to express the relationship of God and love. And it is grounded in John's understanding of God as the Creator.

So, if you think my language is too lofty, than how about I try to make an analogy (though all I can think of is a sports analogy, and I hate sports analogies, but you have forced my hand). Now these analogies might be just as successful as my first attempt, but I'll try anyway. Let me ask you something, was Wilt Chamberlain a "good" player of the game of basketball? Of course no one who knows anything about basketball is going to argue against you if you say yes to that statement, but they might get on your case if that's all you can say about Chamberlain. You see, Chamberlain was not just good, he defined what was good in the game of basketball. Not only was he skilled, he defined what skill was in his day. Not only did he acheive the greatest records of any in his time, but he blew all others out of the water so that it could be said that Chamberlain was in a league of his own. In this sense Chamberlain wasn't just a good player, he was the player of the game, and all who came after Chamberlain would be in his shadow.

Now I want to stress that this example is an analogy, not an exact image of God and goodness, but though it has numerous limitations it might just serve to illustrate my point. It's all well and good that you can say, "God is good," but if that's all you have to say about the matter, you don't know anything about the goodness of God. God's not just the best of the best, God's out of our league. You see, God is the Creator, and as the Creator God acts out true goodness. He doesn't just have a standard that he lives by. There is no standard for God. God is the standard of goodness!! Without God there is no good, just as without Chamberlain there is no basketball, or without Baby Ruth there is no baseball. God doesn't live by a standard of goodness, goodness is produced as God moves. For God is the very good that we seek, he's not just the pathway to it.

If you or Bob can listen to Zakath and allow him to say what he says that if God is the standard of goodness then any act can be made good, you are just as backwards as he is. For Zakath assumes that the actions we engage in are the first things (because he can observe them, and he assumes that he is "neutral" in his observation). Zakath's just plain wrong, for the actions we observe are not the starting point for us, but the act of God in the Creation is, God himself is the source. But Bob comes along and takes on the very assumption of Zakath, that the observable actions are first, so that we have a standard of goodness before we have God, once again. So there is a realm of infinite possibility before we have God, and God can decide to go one route or the other. And Bob tries to justify God by saying that God has set limits on himself, so the eternal standard becomes something that is set by God, and yet God is also eternal, and so if the standard is set eternally, how can God who is also eternal set it, and we are just in a quandary as we go back and forth (and Zakath will be more than eager to bring us into this quandary with him).

You see, when you look at God and try to parse God into parts (i.e. into the God who acts vs. the "nature" or "character" of God) you have given foundation for this quandary. And what you don't realize is that the foundation for your desire to split God into parts are the theoretical notions of Descartes, who would say that the mind (the nature of man) is more real than his actions. It is not until we reach Descartes that human beings become dual Creatures in and of themselves (having both a mortal physical aspect with an eternal "soulish" aspect, which are always in tenstion with one another). You see, in the scriptures you will never find the language of body and "soul" as such, but you will find the language of nephesh (the Hebrew word that unifies the life that God gives to humanity with the flesh that has been formed) or you have psyche (once again a word that means life, and it is a life united to the flesh). Humans are wholistic beings in the scriptures whose will is ever tied to the actions, and whose actions are united to the will.

God is whole as well, not a God of parts with multiply personalities. God doesn't have a "character" that is seperate from the way in which God acts, and God's actions are what define God's "character." It just seems so ironic to me that instead of looking to Christ (who is the union of the will of God with action and the union of the will of man with obedience to God) we will look to our own selves (as we understand ourselves) and project that understanding of ourselves onto God and think this is somehow the same as Christ. Instead of looking to the incarnation we will conceive of a disembodied God who is understood through his abstract "character" rather than through his actions in the Creation, in Christ.

And you called me a "kookoo head"?

Peace,
Michael

 

[Nahsil]

I don't believe in open theism as defined here. I believe that God knows all things past, present, and future. I believe that he knows at what precise time I will wake up tomorrow, and when I will be called for jury duty, and how many times I've lusted after german chocolate.

However, I have a hard time accepting the fact that God created the universe with full knowledge that a beefy porportion of humanity will burn in hell. If God is good and does not rejoice in suffering, why oh why would he create a universe that would ultimately result in eternal torment for so many?

Wouldn't it be wise to just forego the entire ordeal and not create humanity?

 

[godrulz]

I don't believe in open theism as defined here. I believe that God knows all things past, present, and future. I believe that he knows at what precise time I will wake up tomorrow, and when I will be called for jury duty, and how many times I've lusted after german chocolate.

However, I have a hard time accepting the fact that God created the universe with full knowledge that a beefy porportion of humanity will burn in hell. If God is good and does not rejoice in suffering, why oh why would he create a universe that would ultimately result in eternal torment for so many?

Wouldn't it be wise to just forego the entire ordeal and not create humanity?

God knows all things knowable. The future is not the same as the present or fixed past. He correctly knows it as possible/probable, not certain/actual.

Do you not have freedom to sleep in or wake one minute after expected? Why or how would God know the precise moment you would wake up tomorrow from trillions of years before you even existed, let alone wake up?

Hell was intended for Satan/demons. It was not intended for man. It was not a foregone conclusion at creation that so many would rebel against God's loving rulership.

God deemed it wiser and worth the risk to create rather than not create. He desired reciprocal love relationships. This introduced an element of risk and possible rejection of His love since freedom is needed for relationships. Creating deterministic robots who could not love was also not as wise, good, loving as creating free moral agents.

 

[Nahsil]

God knows all things knowable. The future is not the same as the present or fixed past. He correctly knows it as possible/probable, not certain/actual.

Do you not have freedom to sleep in or wake one minute after expected? Why or how would God know the precise moment you would wake up tomorrow from trillions of years before you even existed, let alone wake up?

Hell was intended for Satan/demons. It was not intended for man. It was not a foregone conclusion at creation that so many would rebel against God's loving rulership.

God deemed it wiser and worth the risk to create rather than not create. He desired reciprocal love relationships. This introduced an element of risk and possible rejection of His love since freedom is needed for relationships. Creating deterministic robots who could not love was also not as wise, good, loving as creating free moral agents.

Just because God knows what I'm going to do, doesn't mean I have no say in the matter. If I have a baseball in my hand and I have to choose where to throw it: first base or third base, he knows which I will choose. He doesn't DICTATE where the ball will go, he only knows which direction I will ultimately settle on.

An elaboration on this can be found at http://www.carm.org/open/God_know.htm

 

[seekinganswers]

God knows all things knowable. The future is not the same as the present or fixed past. He correctly knows it as possible/probable, not certain/actual.

It's this kind of rhetoric that just makes me sick. Godrulz, are you even aware of what kind of language of "knowledge" the scriptures use? Because for God to know something is quite distinct from what us Modernists seem to think we know about knowledge (at least in how we have conceived knowledge in our "Enlightened" day and age). You see, knowledge for us has been relegated to the empirical realm by the Enlightenment, which makes knowledge out to be nothing more than a passive observation of the world around us. So knowledge becomes a passive receiving in which we take the external and internalize it. This is science without Heisenberg. This is the idea that we can simply observe the reality around us and internalize it without affecting what we observe. It's this claim to neutral (passive) observation which I absolutely detest, because of its insidious nature. We claim that we are neutral in our observation when in fact we are quite active. We claim to be neutral in our knowing when in fact knowledge has become much more than a passive receiving of external things and is much more an active process by which we manipulate the world around us for our purposes. Knowledge in our world is not passive, and the scriptures are very certain that knowledge in their own world is not passive (for knowledge as "facts" is entirely absent in the language of the scriptures, but wisdom is right at home, and wisdom assumes a knowledge that is active, but it is an active knowledge that has been formed rightly).

Knowledge in the scriptures is always an active movement, and the question is whether our actions in knowledge are formed properly in God or whether they are malformed by the world. The first instance where the term knowledge occurs in the scriptures is when the man "knows his woman." If this is any clue to us in how the early Hebrews understood knowledge, than we would see just how absurd a statement like "God knows all things knowable" is. Adam didn't sit back and take notes on his wife. He didn't get all the "facts." He knew Eve because he tried to possess her (through sexual intercouse). Knowledge is more an action, in the Hebrew (and in the Greek for that matter), than it is a noun. Knowledge is not "facts" in the scriptures, it is an entire ordering for the world around us and how we engage with that world (and it certainly doesn't pretend that the Creation is an "other" from which the preson is distinct).

It's hilarious to hear you talk about your hatred for Plato because of how much you are at home in his very philosophy of the world. You say something like "God knows all things knowable" yet the fact that this statement makes its bed with Plato and the ancient Greeks is lost on you. You think that because you didn't learn about Plato or that you rejected have publically repudiated his ideas that you are now somehow immune to his influence. Might I suggest that it is going to take more of a route of repentance from Plato to purge yourself of him than simply a public renouncement.

You see, Plato conceived of the world as a dicotomy between the realm of the ideas (forms I think is his term) and the world of the practical and physical (i.e. the living out of those ideas). The forms are eternally held in the heavens, immutable yet most "real". And the world is an imperfect reflection of those forms, by which the world has participated in the form, but has become mutable and therefore temporal and less real. This is an idea of Plato that I absolutely detest. It is the language that will be used by Descartes and other pre-modern philosophers to create a dicotomy for both God and for humanity as well. It leads to the language of an eternal "soulish" quality of humanity (or mind depending on the philosopher) that is placed in direct contrast to the physical manifestation of the soul, so that the soul becomes more real than the actual person that we see living and breathing with flesh and blood. Eternity is turned into a static realm and temporality is the realm of activity.

But you see, in the God of the scriptures this idea is blown appart. There is not a dicotomy of reality placed along the lines of eternity and temporality. The dicotomy is between the Creation and the Creator. And in the Creator, through eternity, is the activity of the Trinity, a particular manifestation of reality that is eternal. God is not static for us Christians; God is eternally active. So activity cannot be relegated to the realm of temporality for the Christians, for activity in God is eternal (without beginning or end).

Now concerning knowledge, to say that God only "knows what is knowable" is to assume that knowledge is an eternally static reality that stands both inside and outside of God, and thus leaves a portion of knowledge which God then observes passively as it unfolds. This is absolutely bogus. God doesn't sit back and watch the show (God is no deist). God is actively involved in the Creation, so that God brings about what he knows; he doesn't just let it happen to him. Your statement is very backwards; God doesn't "know all that is knowable." The statement should rather be, "All that is known finds its grounding in God." There is nothing knowable that is outside of God, for "in God we live and move and have our being," and again "by God and through God and to God are all things." If there is anything that stands outside of God then such a statement which Paul gives would be rendered utterly meaningless. All that stands outside of God, for the Jews and the Christians alike, is the tohu vavohu (i.e. the void).

You are much more indebted to Plato and his idealogy than you even know, Godrulz, and probably much more so than you really want to be.

Peace,
Michael