Jay Walk
New member
Thats one question idolrulz cant and will never answer Biblically and the source of all his heretical garbage such as pelgianism, open theism, etc. His idol(standards) takes priority over scripture.
ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3
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Thats one question idolrulz cant and will never answer Biblically and the source of all his heretical garbage such as pelgianism, open theism, etc. His idol(standards) takes priority over scripture.
assuranceagent has the true Free Grace perspective. [imo]
What is being overlooked by those arguing against him is the Presence power and work of the Holy Ghost together with the gospel.
All Asia during the past 2, 000 years screams the truth that man of himself is quite incapable of apprehending the truth, Nang admits as much when she says that the sinner must first be regenerated, he must first be moved to seek that and this also is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is all assurance and I am saying.
What IS rational is to affirm that all men are sinners and this being so is subject to God's judgement...therefore oughtn't man to listen to what God's judgement in the matter is? in fact we find to our delight God's judgement in the matter is good news but the power to convince and to impart faith remains with God.
What is being overlooked by those arguing against him is the Presence power and work of the Holy Ghost together with the gospel.
All Asia during the past 2, 000 years screams the truth that man of himself is quite incapable of apprehending the truth, Nang admits as much when she says that the sinner must first be regenerated, he must first be moved to seek that and this also is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is all assurance and I am saying.
What IS rational is to affirm that all men are sinners and this being so is subject to God's judgement...therefore oughtn't man to listen to what God's judgement in the matter is? in fact we find to our delight God's judgement in the matter is good news but the power to convince and to impart faith remains with God.
Based on what he has written, I don't question that at all. But it is easy to make the mistake of conflating man's spiritual bankruptcy and rebellion against Scripture with the notion that Scripture is somehow necessarily incomprehensible or irrational to the natural man. It isn't. The natural man could comprehend it if he wanted to. But he doesn't want to, because it indicts and condemns him before a holy and just God.
Not at all. I made specific reference to that in my earlier post:
To be clear, all men can see the rationality of God and His Word -- as God has clearly revealed Himself to all men, and within them -- but they will refuse to acknowledge God and His Word as such. It's not that God's Word or God Himself are deficient in their revelation, but rather that the heart of fallen man is hardened against them. The work of the Spirit is not that of convincing fallen men to accept the irrational or non-rational, but rather to embrace the singular source of true, justified rationality, namely, God and His Word.
The natural man is of himself incapable of apprehending, as in embracing, accepting and acknowledging the truth of Scripture. But would you agree that the Scriptures would be comprehensible and rational to the natural man, were he to want to comprehend them?
But regeneration by the Holy Spirit does not make the Scriptures more comprehensible. They are already so. Regeneration bends the will of fallen man and inclines him toward desiring God's Word. And it is completely rational.
Do you believe there are things taught in God's Word that are not rational?
Hilston
I've not made an argument, I asked a question.
This answers my question, although somewhat indirectly. My response is another question...
How do you know this?
"Completely rational"? By what standard? This seems to contradict your previous answer (i.e. the unsupported assurtion that Jesus "IS not rational".
Define "completely rational".
How do you know this?
Huh?
No response to anything else is necessary. I'm not attempting to trap you, I simply asked you a foundational question. Don't assume its a leading question (although I understand why you might interpret it as such), just give me a straight answer. I'll ask it again in another way...
Would you say that the truth is rational by definition, or would you say that a truth claim can be irrational and still be true anyway?
Resting in Him,
Clete
assuranceagent
New member
Hilston, AMR, et al...
Fear not. I am not claiming that rationality in accordance with truth is unfounded or unnecessary.
More to the point (and I suspect in opposition to the path Clete intended to lay) it is my contention that a thing need not be understood via rational faculty and human reason in order to be true.
When I use the word "rational," in the sense that I have, I am speaking in terms of secular rationality. That is to say, human logic.
While I arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity through study and rational interpretation of the word, the reality behind that doctrine is nearly impossible to logically comprehend.
That makes it no less true.
Tell an atheist that a man died and rose again and they will call that position irrational because, according to their empirical logic, death simply does not return to life.
That makes it no less true.
The key to my position is in the last point that I made: that without the revelation of divine rationality and truth we, as fallen humanity, would never have reasoned out way through divinity and the doctrines of the faith.
Does that clarify?
Fear not. I am not claiming that rationality in accordance with truth is unfounded or unnecessary.
More to the point (and I suspect in opposition to the path Clete intended to lay) it is my contention that a thing need not be understood via rational faculty and human reason in order to be true.
When I use the word "rational," in the sense that I have, I am speaking in terms of secular rationality. That is to say, human logic.
While I arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity through study and rational interpretation of the word, the reality behind that doctrine is nearly impossible to logically comprehend.
That makes it no less true.
Tell an atheist that a man died and rose again and they will call that position irrational because, according to their empirical logic, death simply does not return to life.
That makes it no less true.
The key to my position is in the last point that I made: that without the revelation of divine rationality and truth we, as fallen humanity, would never have reasoned out way through divinity and the doctrines of the faith.
Does that clarify?
Ask Mr. Religion
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It does, and points to my careful use of "properly functioning reasoned minds" in my earlier post.
Whew, brother, you had me going for a bit there.AMR
God is intelligent. You underestimate this and assume He needs a crystal ball to govern. He is also omniscient (just not EDF since He chose a non-deterministic universe).
The standard is His holy character and the problem relates to evil, contrary to this character.
Theodicy, the problem of evil, is one Achille's tendon of your view.
Lon
Well-known member
This is a repeat of previous discussion. I do so in the hope that the truth expressed in the paragraph will stick.
"All at once" is also a time restriction so there is a problem with your logical conclusion points.
Time is created: When God acts, time starts. He is in control of it, it is not in control of Him. This is logical and obvious.
Time (sequential measurement) isn't possible unless God makes it so. God is not bound to the rules of the universe, the rules of the universe are entirely reliant on God Who created everything. Time is a measurement of physical properties. Without the physical, there is nothing to measure.
Read my sig: God says He cannot be measured.
patman
Active member
Hi Lon :cheers:
I know there is a kind of time that measures physical elements, but there is also time in the spiritual realm.
One example would be "When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour." - Rev 8:1
I think the most accurate description of time is the measurement of events. Events can be physical or spiritual.
While we can't measure God, we can measure events.
If you agree that time can operate regardless of the physical realm's existence, then the next question is "Is God's time in sync with ours?"
Do you agree that time always exists, that it's just a measurement of events - be they heavenly or earthly events? If you do, do you think the heavenly events sync up with our own?
*
Hi Hils, my ability to get online at pres is limited.
"The natural man recieveth not the things of God, indeed he cannot, they are spiritually discerned"
We is at different poles on this one, I do however believe that God is able to make unregenerated man to understand.
I fully acknowledge that personal testimony is of limited value in any debate but I do well remember how hard I used to look at "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever" demanding it to explain itself. But the morning I was saved God quickened that scripture to my soul and I was all alive with the understanding...so simple too
Christ is not a religion, He is not to be approached by ceremonies or ritual or liturgies, burning candles etc. If we are to recieve from Him we must come to Him as they came in the bible...cry out to Him as they cried out, trust His word as they did.
I hold that this revelational process is neccesary to everyone. I have witnessed the same in others when preaching and seen the same [almost ecstatic] agony of stretching out trying to grasp a simple truth.
It simply IS irrational to believe in the virgin birth...people only believe it because they are taught it from childhood as with all those great bible truths. John Wesley was in mental assent to all bible truths as an Anglican priest but he could by no means comprehend the new birth until he had failed miserably and was desperate.
There is no conradiction in my position, to the man unregenerated scripture is locked unless God opens the ear of understanding.
To the regenerated soul scripture makes perfect sense. But even when we are born again we do not apprehend bible truths with our fleshly minds...this is just the problem, people study and swot and slave over their creeds and doctrinal and theological tomes, God may indeed be merciful in using those things but God's truths are apprehended in the soul.
Paul says the natural man recieveth not the things of God...they are foolishness to him. To the Jew the [message of] cross is a stumbling block to the greek foolishness that is how I know Christ and His message is set to stumble the wisdom of man.
Isn't this shown to be false by scripture? Of coruse. Faith comes by hearing and believing. Jesus said when he is raised up, he would draw all unto himself. This is why you are to shake the dust from sandals and leave. A throw away insult I might add. They do know the truth, but reject him.
That isn't true either. We don't have to apprehend, it just believe it. We have the mind of Christ, and we know who else does by what they say. It is what comes out of their mouth that defiles them.
Right. That is why he would draw all unto himself. Because we don't seek after him.
Lon
Well-known member
Er, is heaven created? You only changed the goal-post here, the discussion isn't distracted by it, thus, I assert once again that time is God-created. He directs time, it does not direct Him.
Time is sequence, this before that. There is absolutely no problem with the logical conclusion that, if God is timeless/nonsequential and active, he does everything all at once in an eternal never ending moment--eternal now.
As you should know, only Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" is truely timeless because he is "not active"--he is immovable, he did not create the world, he is only the cause of it's movement/activity. The Biblical God moves, the creation of the world is movement by God.
Time is not a thing outside of God that controls him anymore than love and morality are things outside of God that controls him. Nor is time a created thing anymore than than love or morality are. Time is freedom for God to do what he wants when he wants.
Freedom/time, love, and morality are intrinsic within the Trinity.
--Dave
Isaiah 46:9 remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,' 11 calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.
God states here that he has a future of "things not yet done".
The Day of judgment has not yet come for us or for God--open theism.
--Dave
Lon
Well-known member
Hi Patman,Heaven is spiritual, not physical, correct? Yet there is time there. Explain how please
Well, yes, I understand I said time measures the physical. I acquiesce that it can also measure another kind of place, but that place is also a created existence. God has no creation date. He is already outside of your construct, thus, yet again, I assert that time is subject to God, God is not subject to it. This, imho and estimation, is a no-brainer: It is not possible that God is subject to our same constraints when one accepts implicitly that God has no beginning. "No beginning" immediately falls outside of sequential constructs and its constrained logic. To assert otherwise is to completely ignore and defy one's own logical admission. It makes you argue only with yourself. The rest of us automatically don't get it because we acquiesce God is wholly apart from the sequential construct.
-Lon
Lon
Well-known member
You make a continued mistake here as well, Dave. We have never said God does not act within our temporal existence but essentially what you are missing is similar to this: It is like saying if God builds a house, He must do it exactly the way we do it because the laws of nature would apply equally to Him. In other words, He'd have to saw trees, manufacture sheet rock, go to Home Depot to get sinks and tubs, etc. I cannot fathom that you cannot understand that God acts within our created parameters yet can easily do it His own way. It just doesn't make sense that you'd assert God, who has no beginning, must have a beginning in order to exist. Essentially, that is what you are demanding of God to say He is as constrained as we are by the universe. He created the universe with all its laws and properties, it did not create Him. Again, subjecting God to His creation, whether you realize it or not, makes Him the creation rather than the creator. Imo, this is a fatal logical flaw of Open Theism.