Defining terms shortens debate: Free Will

[renniks]

Let me put it another way: "...this notion of God allowing freedom of people’s fate underneath an umbrella of predetermination of people’s fate." is a jumble of words that don't make sense. What does it mean? What is "freedom of people's fate", anyway? Can you rewrite the sentence in other words?

It means what it says. What are you confused about? It means no one has one iota of actual self-determination under determinism. God already decided for you how many times you will blink or scratch your nose today and every day. It means the only reason you sin is because God predetermined that you would and exactly what the sin would be. And so on.

 

[renniks]

Again, define "freedom" --and around we go....

Lol, for real? You don't know what "freedom" means?

"the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint."
"the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved."

No such thing as either of these definitions if everything is determined for you. Only the illusion of freedom.

 

[bling]

Okay, please allows me to present an analogy. If I were omnibenevolent and loved each and every person on the face of this earth passionately and had the power to deliver them from all misery and death, but willfully chose to do it for some of them, but not all of them, what does that make me? Am I really omnibenevolent?

Look at the father in the prodigal son story:

I feel that father is an excellent representative of an omnibenevolent being.

That father would have known what his rebellious, disobedient, hateful, disrespectful son would do with lots of money. That father being the perfect example of Love throughout the young sons life did not need to personally teach directly to the son more about Himself, but the son still needs to make the choice to be like his father or not like his father and hopefully accept his father’s Love (especially forgiveness) as pure undeserved charity. The father out of Love for the son will allow the son to come to his senses down the road and hopefully make the choice to accept his Love. The Father’s Love is not changed by the son’s actions, but will easily be seen if the son returns.

God, our Father allows mature adults to go through the same scenario, with some choosing to wimp out, give up and surrender to the father and other being macho, hanging in there, willing to pay the piper and accept the punishment they fully deserve.

Your “analogy” does not make people like God in that they have this Godly type Love, but makes them fenced in trained (programmed) robots.

 

[Mark Quayle]

It means what it says. What are you confused about? It means no one has one iota of actual self-determination under determinism. God already decided for you how many times you will blink or scratch your nose today and every day. It means the only reason you sin is because God predetermined that you would and exactly what the sin would be. And so on.

Ok, if God uses your choices as part of the means of accomplishing what he has determined, why would you have a problem with that? If God has determined every one of your sins, when and how and why you sin, that is still not the only reason you sin. You sin because you WILL to sin. Sin is against God, willful.

What use is the term, "self-determination", and why is it so important to your worldview?

 

[Mark Quayle]

Lol, for real? You don't know what "freedom" means?

"the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint."
"the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved."

No such thing as either of these definitions if everything is determined for you. Only the illusion of freedom.

If that is your definition of freedom, i.e. without ANY hindrance or restraint, yes, I agree. Nobody but God has that kind of freedom. But there are many other uses of the word freedom, where only certain hindrances and restraints don't exist --particularly, as the OP describes, freedom in Christ, the removal of slavery to sin.

 

[bling]

You said "are worshiping", in which I see you left out the "not".

I think I understand, now. But your logic is faulty. Omnibenevolent does not love what is unloveable. What ends up in the Lake of Fire is not what we see now as human and loveable. They will be stripped of all virtue, God having completely abandoned and rejected them. The empty wraith, a husk, that is left has no redeeming qualities. If it helps to understand the point, though, the Omni to which he is benevolent, does not qualify this temporal existence with the same worth as the next, in which the redeemed are placed higher than even the angels, (and conversely, most likely, I think, the lost are placed lower and more of a horror than even the demons.)

Do we not all start out the same in this what you call “An unlovable state”?

It is not: “God having completely abandoned and rejected them”, but them rejecting God’s charity/Love/mercy/grace/forgiveness.

What “redeeming qualities” did you have before God saved you?

Look at the prodigal son story and add this twist: if the prodigal son had come to his senses and been macho enough to take the punishment he fully deserved, been willing to pay the piper, not wanted to disturb his father further with his presence and not wanted to add fuel to his brother’s contempt for him and died in the pigsty, would that have meant the waiting Father did not Love Him?

 

[Mark Quayle]

Do we not all start out the same in this what you call “An unlovable state”?

It is not: “God having completely abandoned and rejected them”, but them rejecting God’s charity/Love/mercy/grace/forgiveness.

What “redeeming qualities” did you have before God saved you?

Look at the prodigal son story and add this twist: if the prodigal son had come to his senses and been macho enough to take the punishment he fully deserved, been willing to pay the piper, not wanted to disturb his father further with his presence and not wanted to add fuel to his brother’s contempt for him and died in the pigsty, would that have meant the waiting Father did not Love Him?

I have not (and did not intend to) established the notion, "unloveable state" as applicable to any one person or class of people. I just offered it as an example of how omnibenevolence does not logically have to apply to absolutely all. But to your question, I would say "unloveable" should be the least of anyone's worries. Yes, for what it is worth, God does not love everyone the same, and yes, we all start out as slaves to sin.

I meant no implication that I had any redeeming qualities before salvation. But there is the fact of humanity, and being made in the image of God, and God's common grace of restraint from allowing anyone to go as far as they would into sin and its effects. There is the obvious also, intelligence, instinctive desire for good, such as love for offspring, concern for others, joy at expressions of truth, art, etc. Once dead, the condemned have that restraint removed, and anything about them that would commend them to anyone else is gone.

You offer a non-thing to speculate about. Furthermore, you have not defined degrees or absoluteness nor even simple definitions concerning the Father's love in the story. But again, to answer your question, note that the person in the story is the man's son --not a mere acquaintance.

 

[bling]

It is not a power --i.e. like the notion of God having the power to make a stone too big for him to pick up, it is a self-contradictory item. You want first cause status to be limited. First Cause is causeless, not a little bit causeless.

Science does not address a causeless first cause, that is for the theologians.

As soon as you interject “God” into causing anything, you have a multitude of causes (everything God interjects in man’s time) as a first cause for what happened and it is not just one cause in this universe. God is the first causer (himself not having a cause) for tons of unrelated causes. To add humans with a God given ability to be first causes for themselves to change is not “adding” that much.

I am not saying anything like “a little bit causeless”, but the one autonomous free will choice is totally caused by the individual, with the causeless God providing that causeless ability of individuals to cause just A or B to happen.

 

[renniks]

Ok, if God uses your choices as part of the means of accomplishing what he has determined, why would you have a problem with that? If God has determined every one of your sins, when and how and why you sin, that is still not the only reason you sin. You sin because you WILL to sin. Sin is against God, willful.

What use is the term, "self-determination", and why is it so important to your worldview?

(Buzzer sounds) "Wrong, mister Quayle, under your own theology, God does not use your choices, he predetermines what those choices will be. So, saying he uses them is like saying he uses what he has caused to do what he wants. You are just a puppet on a string. And as for saying it's not the only reason you sin...puleese! If I am all-powerful and I predetermine what you will do, the only reason you are doing it is because I decided you would. Saying that I will to sin is absurd. I have no will to do anything under Calvinism! Don't you understand that bondage of the will means just that? This is where Calvinists constantly contradict themselves and try to have their cake and eat it too.

And self determinism is important because, without it, God is a monster, punishing us for what he caused us to do.
"Do not commit Adultery, Mr. Quayle.!" " Oh, BTW, I decided before creation to irresistably cause you to commit adultery even though I commanded you not to, but you are still to blame!"

 

[renniks]

If that is your definition of freedom, i.e. without ANY hindrance or restraint, yes, I agree. Nobody but God has that kind of freedom. But there are many other uses of the word freedom, where only certain hindrances and restraints don't exist --particularly, as the OP describes, freedom in Christ, the removal of slavery to sin.

The problem there is that Calvnists take both forms of slavery far too literally. They claim a sinner is a slave to sin in the way a skeleton is a dead man. So, as a slave to Christ, that would mean one could not possibly sin, which just isn't the case. So, why would I believe slavery to sin means I can not choose to hear God and resist sin? If I can't choose to hear the Spirit, I could never be saved, BTW.
What Calvnism proposes isn't freedom it's trading one form of slaver for another. But, you'll say, slavery to Christ is a good thing. Yes it is, but only if its offered to all. Otherwise, why would I be picked? I'm not special.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Of course God does not blindly elect folks! I never said he did. Of course he has his reasons. How does that then logically imply that there's something wrong with what you characterize as "limitation of the concept to that of God's choice"? To my thinking it affirms the fact that God's choice is supreme.

However, you also are quite convinced, it seems to me, that some possible conditions posited by those in opposing camps are completely anathema and that your God could not have included these in His rationale for election. The best that you can say is that God has reasons, but we definitely know what His reasons are not, but not what they actually are.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Science does not address a causeless first cause, that is for the theologians.

As soon as you interject “God” into causing anything, you have a multitude of causes (everything God interjects in man’s time) as a first cause for what happened and it is not just one cause in this universe. God is the first causer (himself not having a cause) for tons of unrelated causes. To add humans with a God given ability to be first causes for themselves to change is not “adding” that much.

I am not saying anything like “a little bit causeless”, but the one autonomous free will choice is totally caused by the individual, with the causeless God providing that causeless ability of individuals to cause just A or B to happen.

Of course there are many causes. God uses every single one of them, as a matter of fact. But to say that there are a multitude of causes as a first cause, is nonsense.

Science will be logical enough to admit, IF there is a first cause, it is by definition causeless. BTW, First Cause is as much a philosophical question as theological. But like everything else, theological truth and scientific truth and logic do not conflict. Science and philosophy agree to the logical necessity of the law of causation. Therefore, first cause, or infinite regression of causes. They will argue out the yingyang that first cause need not be God. But any good scientist, atheist or otherwise, will admit, even claim, that IF God is First Cause, then our decisions are caused by God.

Nobody has been able to do more than to assert that there can be more than one first cause. I have yet to see anything even near proof. And no matter the degree one wishes to to ascribe to autonomy, that is still what it requires --no cause, in one way or another. We are not autonomous. Our choices are real, and willed, but autonomous --no.

 

[Mark Quayle]

(Buzzer sounds) "Wrong, mister Quayle, under your own theology, God does not use your choices, he predetermines what those choices will be. So, saying he uses them is like saying he uses what he has caused to do what he wants. You are just a puppet on a string. And as for saying it's not the only reason you sin...puleese! If I am all-powerful and I predetermine what you will do, the only reason you are doing it is because I decided you would. Saying that I will to sin is absurd. I have no will to do anything under Calvinism! Don't you understand that bondage of the will means just that? This is where Calvinists constantly contradict themselves and try to have their cake and eat it too.

And self determinism is important because, without it, God is a monster, punishing us for what he caused us to do.
"Do not commit Adultery, Mr. Quayle.!" " Oh, BTW, I decided before creation to irresistably cause you to commit adultery even though I commanded you not to, but you are still to blame!"

Ha ha. clever. No, Mister Renniks, my own theology claims God uses means to accomplish what he has predetermined. One of those means is our choices, which yes, are predetermined. Nevertheless, they are our willed choices, and in turn they also cause further effects.

Self-will is not the same thing as self-determination. But it is blamable.

"I commanded you to not commit adultery, but you willed to do so, and did so against my command, and so you are to blame for disobeying my command, and yes you did so according to my plan for the ages, set in place from the beginning."

 

[Mark Quayle]

The problem there is that Calvnists take both forms of slavery far too literally. They claim a sinner is a slave to sin in the way a skeleton is a dead man. So, as a slave to Christ, that would mean one could not possibly sin, which just isn't the case. So, why would I believe slavery to sin means I can not choose to hear God and resist sin? If I can't choose to hear the Spirit, I could never be saved, BTW.
What Calvnism proposes isn't freedom it's trading one form of slaver for another. But, you'll say, slavery to Christ is a good thing. Yes it is, but only if its offered to all. Otherwise, why would I be picked? I'm not special.

Answer that question first: Why would you be picked? You are right you are nothing special in and of yourself. God gave us the answer in Scripture as to why. Because he is making you into that particular member of the body of Christ that nobody else can be. There is no plan B.

Notice that any inability on God's part, whether he decided to be unable or not, or if he stands back to allow little semi-autonomous humans to be self-determining, admits to either (or both) that chance determines effects, or that some people are somehow better than others --the former illogical and the latter unbiblical.

 

[Mark Quayle]

However, you also are quite convinced, it seems to me, that some possible conditions posited by those in opposing camps are completely anathema and that your God could not have included these in His rationale for election. The best that you can say is that God has reasons, but we definitely know what His reasons are not, but not what they actually are.

We know enough. He has told us about the dwelling place of God, the body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the sons of God to be revealed, the restoration of all things to himself. But we didn't even need to know or understand that, to know and understand that God is doing it all FOR HIS OWN SAKE, and by his own counsel. And that is more than enough.

I have heard much speculation as to what God's reasons are not, and worse, conclusions drawn on faulty concepts or presumptions, eg, that humans are complete beings in and of themselves, capable of dealing with God on their own terms, whom God must respect as what they are.

 

[bbbbbbb]

We know enough. He has told us about the dwelling place of God, the body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the sons of God to be revealed, the restoration of all things to himself. But we didn't even need to know or understand that, to know and understand that God is doing it all FOR HIS OWN SAKE, and by his own counsel. And that is more than enough.

I have heard much speculation as to what God's reasons are not, and worse, conclusions drawn on faulty concepts or presumptions, eg, that humans are complete beings in and of themselves, capable of dealing with God on their own terms, whom God must respect as what they are.

Thank you for affirming my post that you definitely know what God's reasons are not, but do not know at all what God's reasons actually are.

 

[renniks]

Ha ha. clever. No, Mister Renniks, my own theology claims God uses means to accomplish what he has predetermined. One of those means is our choices, which yes, are predetermined. Nevertheless, they are our willed choices, and in turn they also cause further effects.

Self-will is not the same thing as self-determination. But it is blamable.

"I commanded you to not commit adultery, but you willed to do so, and did so against my command, and so you are to blame for disobeying my command, and yes you did so according to my plan for the ages, set in place from the beginning."

All I can do is slap my forehead and shake my head. If you can not see the blatant contradictions, I guess you get what you deserve.

My willed choice? Willed by who? I have no autonomous will, remember? They don't cause diddly, because God already pre set all the causes and all the effects.

I can not do anything against God's command unless his previous will causes me to do it. You make God a liar while says he doesn't want us to sin. That's not the God of scripture. It's a pagan god of fatalism.

 

[renniks]

Notice that any inability on God's part, whether he decided to be unable or not, or if he stands back to allow little semi-autonomous humans to be self-determining, admits to either (or both) that chance determines effects, or that some people are somehow better than others --the former illogical and the latter unbiblical.

No, no, and no!
Chance isn't the same as choice. Scripture says we can humble ourselves. You are just creating problems that don't exist. And even more so by claiming God picks some. Why? Because some are better than others? Or by chance. Maybe he spins a bottle?

 

[Mark Quayle]

Thank you for affirming my post that you definitely know what God's reasons are not, but do not know at all what God's reasons actually are.

Wow. Not that I know all about either one, and nobody does --we wouldn't even understand the words-- but like I said, we know enough. "At all"?

You have to make up something the Bible does not say, to promote any degree of autonomy. But predestination is a constant theme, by name, and by synonymous words, throughout the Bible. Choice is not synonymous with Free Will, neither is ability to decide, neither is responsibility for one's decisions. What else you got?

Do you have

No, no, and no!
Chance isn't the same as choice. Scripture says we can humble ourselves. You are just creating problems that don't exist. And even more so by claiming God picks some. Why? Because some are better than others? Or by chance. Maybe he spins a bottle?

I didn't say chance is the same as choice. It's almost like you didn't read what I said. I will try to say again, what your theology implies: In your worldview of self-determination, you depend either on chance or on the virtue of some over others, to come up with the result that some choose him and others don't. Of course we choose. It is you that depends on chance for that choice --not me.

You, sir, are creating problems that don't exist, not only in your theology, but in your critique of my posts. Are you going to claim, contrary to Scripture, that God does not pick some? I've already told you the reason he does --it is for his own purposes, and no, he does not pick them on their merits, as I have said repeatedly here, he picks them for their particular use in this life, and for the life to come. And no, "pick" is not particularly an apt word for what he does. He does not pick them from some pool of possibles. He predestines them from the foundation of the earth. He makes them for his purposes.

Why do you insist on promoting their status --because that is the only way you can see it fair to punish them for their sin? Your whole notion of fairness is askew. It is decidedly NOT fair what he does; it would be fair for him to punish us all for our sins. Instead he has been unfair, and laid the penalty of some on his Son. Who are you to say it is unfair for him to punish the rest?

 

[Mark Quayle]

All I can do is slap my forehead and shake my head. If you can not see the blatant contradictions, I guess you get what you deserve.

My willed choice? Willed by who? I have no autonomous will, remember? They don't cause diddly, because God already pre set all the causes and all the effects.

I can not do anything against God's command unless his previous will causes me to do it. You make God a liar while says he doesn't want us to sin. That's not the God of scripture. It's a pagan god of fatalism.

Slap on, and enjoy it!

Your choices are willed by YOU. You don't need an autonomous will to have a will set against God. You don't need an autonomous will to have a will to reject God, nor is your will capable of accepting God, unless God changes your will. Autonomy doesn't even enter the picture.

God does not "want" us to sin? What does that even mean, when referring to the Almighty, who has everything. He does not hope we sin, he does not command us to sin, he does not himself tempt anyone. You promote a notion of a god who is like us, flying by the seat of his pants to fix the problems he did not mean for us to make!

Read 1 Kings 22, or 2 Chronicles 18, about the lying spirit God entices and even commands to deceive Ahab. Do you really think God leaves it up to chance or the power of man's autonomy what happens, how, and why?

Your notion that God causing all things whatsoever come to pass means that man's choice is not real is bogus. As a matter of fact, our choices, though responsible, are of no integrity until God gives us freedom in Christ, and even then, the only reason is God in us is also causing us both to will, and to do of his good pleasure (Philippians 2).