Romans 5:12, 19 come to mind. See (2)
here.
I don't see anything here that says that man became sinful. I see that death spread to all men because all men sinned but I don't see anything about mankind being sinful. Sinfulness means sinning.
I can't make heads or tails of this. Care to explain?
Verse 19, which your link and many other commentaries I have read supposes to mean that sinfulness itself is transmitted from man to man, only reiterates what is said in verse 12, namely that sin entered the world through Adam and subsequent to that all men did in fact sin.
Leaving aside a moment the fact that tradition disagrees with you, why do you think infants die? If you are going to attempt to interpret verse 12 as propounding a kind of propensity or even factual description, then why do infants die? Have they sinned? How does death enter into infants?
I don't disagree with the concept of LFW. However I think it is up for grabs. For me, the mechanism by which people make decisions is less important than the fact that these decisions are open.
In fact LFW is not a mechanism, it is a logical position with respect to the will.
People are self-determined. How they are self determined is not something that can be known. Of course you can point to influences: parents influence their children enormously for instance. I am not convinced that there is some particular faculty of the mind known as 'free will'.
This seems like another strawman. Who has said that there exists a faculty of the mind known as "free will"?
It is an open question. For me the debate is not about LFW vs predestination. It is about openness versus determinism.
This makes me think you don't really understand the terms used in the debate, much less the debate itself. LFW has nothing intrinsically to do with predestination. "Openness" is a neologism that
is primarily concerned with predestination, and simply doesn't exist outside of theological circles. It is primarily a position with respect to God or ontological possibility rather than human will. Consider:
A = "Humans have free will"
B = "Determinism is true"
Libertarianism (LFW) = A and ~B
Compatibilism = A and B
Hard Determinism = ~A and B
My point, as I hope I made to an extent in my last post, is that the very question assumes that there is some objective knowledge out there to be known and therefore if God doesn't know it then he is somehow lacking or if he chooses not to know it then he is somehow morally weak.
I understand this to be the standard Open Theism position.
Knowledge is not something objective out there. It is the result of our choices to organise our environment. God can know anything he wants to know because he can choose to organise his environment in whatever way suits him.
I think you are fundamentally incorrect when you start saying things like this, and I am not even sure what school you are coming from. I have never heard of anyone holding the idea that knowledge is merely a matter of organization and the organization is merely a matter of preference (that is, I think most everyone disagrees with you on this).
Human knowledge is a relation of knower to known that exists within the subject. It is a matter of conforming one's mind to an objective reality "out there." Of course knowledge itself is not something "objective out there." It exists in minds, but the object known does exist out there. Organization is a significant part of knowledge, but it does not exhaust the nature of knowledge.
Is this theory you keep espousing, and have been espousing for years, the result of your own personal findings, or are you following some tradition? Perhaps a loose Wittgensteinianism?
Every time we make a classification (hairiness: 1.5 / 10) we are in effect relating to our environment.
Yes, and every time we move our body we also relate to our environment. :idunno:
The issue for Christian theology is what is the character of God? What classifications are important to him? These are the things that define him. It is what comes out of his mouth that make him what he is, not what goes into it. So to speak.
I am very wary of what you say here. Feel free to elaborate, for I'm not yet clear on what you mean.
What is a static relationship? Static knowledge?
See above. It is merely a term I have used to describe the kind of knowledge that most Calvinists assume to be true, namely an objective fact about something that exists independently of all other considerations. Of course, they can never tell you where that knowledge, that exists supposedly independently, is stored. Because that is the Platonic premise that underlies all Calvinist dualistic thought.
I tend to think that your terms "static relationship" and "static knowledge" are strawmen. Where has a Calvinist claimed that knowledge exists by itself? Where has anyone claimed that knowledge is an objective fact about something that exists independently of all other considerations? These descriptions are very vague, I am not even sure what you mean by them. Taken literally, all it could refer to are things that are immutable and eternal.
How is your position different from Arminianism and Catholicism?
Arminianism still assumes the universe is closed.
In what sense? How do you differentiate yourself from Arminianism? What do you mean by "closed"? IMO there is no significant difference between Arminianism and Open Theism.
The difference between that and Calvinism is the mechanism by which it is closed: Calvinism by God's complete and exhaustive control over everything; Arminianism by God's complete and exhaustive foreknowledge of everything.
Again, I'm not sure you understand the relevant positions, or else you aren't being careful enough in describing them. Arminian foreknowledge is not a "mechanism by which it is closed." It does not determine events.
It is like saying, "The difference between causing and seeing an event is the mechanism by which it is closed. Causing by making the event happen; seeing by watching the event happen. Either way the event could not have been otherwise." This is a jumble of equivocations that I don't really feel like unraveling.
My question could also be phrased this way: what is your problem with Arminianism?
In either case, there is a closed universe. Arminianism acknowledges the role of free will but that doesn't stop the world from being a closed system. This is another reason why I am not entirely convinced the idea of free will is a worthwhile concept.
You are moving too fast. Why isn't it worthwhile? Because it is compossible with "the world being a closed system?" That doesn't seem like a very good reason to me (i.e. are you begging the question?).
I hope that you properly define "closed system" and explain why it is problematic in your response. My inkling is that, insofar as we are talking about free will, the average Open Theist is merely concerned with
theological fatalism and is ignorant of the many places this question has surfaced in history.
My belief is that the universe is open.
This means that relationships are what they are, not what they are predestined to be.
I'm not sure what that means. Didn't this start when you said, "I am very exacting when it comes to arguing and logic"?
All I take from this is "Open means not predestined," which in turn means, "Not predetermined," which in turn means "Libertarianism." For example, Arminianism isn't pre-determined, so what do you have against it?
In order for them to be predestined there must needs be a blueprint for them. That blueprint is the mind of God. As far as it applies to us, God is nothing more than the sum total of all that the created universe has been, is and will be. Nothing else is relevant or communicable. This is the basic Platonic presupposition at work. The universe is simply the expression of another reality and does not have existence in itself.
I can't make heads or tails of this. (EDIT: are you claiming that predestination necessitates Occasionalism?)
In my understanding of Catholicism, the RCC sits on the fence over these issues. It says that there is both LFW and predestination. So it basically supports the Calvinistic presupposition as well as the Arminian one in a kind of paradox. (And various attempts have been made to exploit that paradox such as Molinism but none will probably ever replace the existing status quo which allows ideas to be voiced but not accepted as dogmatic.)
Close enough for our purposes. :up:
But the point is that, paradox or not, it accepts the basic Platonic concept that the universe and all its history is an expression of a higher reality.
Yes, Catholicism believes in creation.
Openness means that the universe has its own existence. Created it may be, but once created, it exists on its own.
So Openness = Deism and existential inertia? I have never heard anything of the like.
This is true love in creation and makes true relationship possible and gives true meaning and value to us as God's creatures and the world as a whole.
Wonderful. Why?
:e4e:
