- May 28, 2018
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If randomness is predictable, is it not therefore not random after all? If one can say, "That is not random, because randomness does not act that way", is one not then predicting how random behaves? Randomness seems to have taken on some sort of character, then, a personality, or direction of behavior.
It is hard for me to discuss "free will", without defining the terms being discussed. In the question of "free will" vs "predestination" (as if they were in opposition, from God's point of view) to ascribe free will to mere creatures, is to give them a whole range from actual choice to absolute sovereignty. In my spectrum, it can only mean actual choice. True choice. Choice with absolute results, even in eternity. It cannot mean choice with no input, i.e. no cause, from the Creator. God did not create randomness nor chance, logical foolishness.
Not many argue that we are not influenced from without, nor from within (at least genetically), and many who argue free will, (unbelievers, mostly), will happily admit they are thrown this way and that by their passions and desires. Why then the term, "free will"? I keep seeing this theme repeated within Christian debate. When the debate is rolling, the term becomes "choice", as if that is what is being argued. No, predestination, even absolute predestination, does not imply robotics. To my mind, to say it does is to imply that God operates within our ability to understand, or worse, that he is bound by the same principles that bind us, and must succumb to our meanings for words.
Because that is my point for this post. In the end, God must be understood to operate not only on a whole different level from us, but as a whole different kind of being from his creation. (It is HE who invented logic and reason and math. It is HE who created time, even cause-and-effect that is absolute in our economy, sequence, matter and energy, and defines spirit, love, good, and so on. It is HE who personifies existence; it gains its definition from him, he is not defined by it. He is not subject to the concepts we garner from such words).
If I say that logically, for him to foreknow is to forecause, since he is not bound by time, and so that he can (and has) spoken into existence the whole of Creation that we see as a timeline, having begun with nothing at the beginning and ending with Heaven and and Perdition, can you show otherwise? Even Jesus saying "it is finished" at the cross, and not before, does not prove me wrong there. In fact it supports the notion. We see time, but he sees edict.
He is not like us. He absolutely does predestine.
It is hard for me to discuss "free will", without defining the terms being discussed. In the question of "free will" vs "predestination" (as if they were in opposition, from God's point of view) to ascribe free will to mere creatures, is to give them a whole range from actual choice to absolute sovereignty. In my spectrum, it can only mean actual choice. True choice. Choice with absolute results, even in eternity. It cannot mean choice with no input, i.e. no cause, from the Creator. God did not create randomness nor chance, logical foolishness.
Not many argue that we are not influenced from without, nor from within (at least genetically), and many who argue free will, (unbelievers, mostly), will happily admit they are thrown this way and that by their passions and desires. Why then the term, "free will"? I keep seeing this theme repeated within Christian debate. When the debate is rolling, the term becomes "choice", as if that is what is being argued. No, predestination, even absolute predestination, does not imply robotics. To my mind, to say it does is to imply that God operates within our ability to understand, or worse, that he is bound by the same principles that bind us, and must succumb to our meanings for words.
Because that is my point for this post. In the end, God must be understood to operate not only on a whole different level from us, but as a whole different kind of being from his creation. (It is HE who invented logic and reason and math. It is HE who created time, even cause-and-effect that is absolute in our economy, sequence, matter and energy, and defines spirit, love, good, and so on. It is HE who personifies existence; it gains its definition from him, he is not defined by it. He is not subject to the concepts we garner from such words).
If I say that logically, for him to foreknow is to forecause, since he is not bound by time, and so that he can (and has) spoken into existence the whole of Creation that we see as a timeline, having begun with nothing at the beginning and ending with Heaven and and Perdition, can you show otherwise? Even Jesus saying "it is finished" at the cross, and not before, does not prove me wrong there. In fact it supports the notion. We see time, but he sees edict.
He is not like us. He absolutely does predestine.
