Why did God harden pharoah's heart. Did pharoah have a free will?

createdtoworship

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Why did God harden pharoah's heart? See for many years I thought God hardened his heart simply because He is sovereign and He can do whatever He wants, without question. But it bugged me. Then as I read through exodus today, He clearly answered why He did so in a few verses:

Exodus 7:3-5 New King James Version (NKJV)
3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My [a]armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. 5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them.”

See God wanted the egyptians saved, first and foremost. In egypt they deified the flies, the frogs etc. So when their gods came after them in judgement, killing them and causing havoc. They were open to realizing that perhaps that god was not the real God. When seeing that the flies were not affecting the isreali camp, but only the egyptians, they realized it was from God. So God was evangelizing the egyptians in a language they could understand, confounding their gods, and showing the way to worship the God of the israelis. The second reason was to show His power. Verse 4, by "great Judgements." See God could have simply opened pharoah's eyes, and allowed him to see how poorly he was treating the egyptians and to have compassion on them. but they would still not be saved. God was trying to save them. Sometimes you have to reveal the poor quality of their religion to do so.

Is God hardening pharoah's heart violate the free will of man? Thus creating a bible contradiction?
God speaks that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God. Romans 8:29. So God's hardening of pharoahs heart did not violate pharoah's free will at all due to this idea of foreknowledge. See God knew pharoah would not believe in the true God according to His foreknowledge of pharoahs future, but God also knew that pharoah may have had a change of heart regarding the hebrews, and let them Go. So God had to harden his heart, in order to show the egyptians high profile supernatural events,in the harshest most high profile way as possible, for maximum damage and to basically shoot down each of the egyptian god's one by one. Most of the supernatural events, satan and the egyptian mystery religions could duplicate, but a few they could not. And even when they did duplicate it, it was smaller in size and weaker. But that just shows that satan does offer his followers power. But it does not compare the the power of a single on fire christian walking in the spirit.
 

createdtoworship

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The following article may be helpful to you on this issue~~~> Who Hardened Pharaoh's Heart?
I do like bullinger and his work on figures of speech. However I would disagree with the interpretation "God would allow pharoahs heart to be hardened." I find it funny that there is a figure of speech in the verse where God hardened pharoahs heart, but not when pharoah hardened his own heart. It can appear from the outside looking in that bullinger was just simply trying to fix a contradiction. But in the op, it is fixed actually using the Bible itself. Foreknowledge is something God has, as found in several verses, as He is omniscient. But romans 8:29 actually uses the word foreknowledge, so it's a secondary confirmation. But obviously less important as the fact that God simply knows everything, and most people even believers in other religions would not deny that fact. So if God knows everything, he obviously would know if pharoah in the future would be a believer in the Hebrew God. God knows all of our days as if they were yesterday. There is a good example of God's transcendance. See we look at time as a time line, one thing happens after another in time. Sort of like a parade, you see one float after another, until the last float, then the parade is over. But God is outside of time all together, so it would be like a helecopter flying above the parade and can see the end from the beginning. That is foreknowledge. God knew every possible path pharoah could take in life and more importantly what paths he would literally choose. God sees pharoahs death at the time of hardening his heart. Because He is outside of time. So for someone to harden a heart that will eventually harden itself, is not morally wrong. especially if you are God and you created that being. We know that pharoah did harden his own heart later, but even if he didn't that year, or in the next ten years. God knew he would harden his heart eventually. So God did it ahead of time. No biggy in my opinion. See I like bullinger, but he technically is a hyper dispensationalist. I used to love his stuff, till I seen some problems with hyper dispensationalism. Mainly that huge portions of the gospels are for the kingdom age and only to be interpreted as for christians in the millenium. The beatitudes for example. That was the last straw, I realized at that point that the dispensations had gone haywire. moderate dispensationalists like norman geisler, and charles ryrie don't believe that. At least I think ryrie doesn't. But bullinger for sure did. He was probably the most vocal hyper dispensationlist out there. I still like bullingers companion Bible, I use it as a family Bible, and I like his gospel in the stars stuff. He is still a good theologian, just a little bit extreme on the dispensation stuff. Thanks for the link. I welcome your comments, here. It's sort of a dead thread, lets get it rolling.
 
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Uber Genius

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So God's hardening of pharoahs heart did not violate pharoah's free will at all due to this idea of foreknowledge. See God knew pharoah would not believe in the true God according to His foreknowledge of pharoahs future, but God also knew that pharoah may have had a change of heart regarding the hebrews, and let them Go. So God had to harden his heart, in order to show the egyptians high profile supernatural events,in the harshest most high profile way as possible, for maximum damage and to basically shoot down each of the egyptian god's one by one.
I get that your explanation above tries to account for the facts, but it is not in evidence in the text. We would want the text to reveal that specifically and it doesn't seem to.

I have sovereignty over the actions of my children (from time to time), it was not due to foreknowledge but rather loving concern for both them and the people they would impact. It involved the same over-ruling aspects of their free will. Why not explain the passage in that fashion and leave foreknowledge out of it? We are free agents, God is a free agent, satan is a free agent, and God can overrule certain free agents actions and yes even prematurely harden them.

Of course for the Calvinist free agency is false. All men's actions are a function of divine decree.

I get the philosophical problem how can God eliminate someone's ability to repent without being the author of continued sin? How can God condemn marionnettes in his own divine play? But what in the text of the Exodus account point us to God's foreknowledge that Pharaoh would not respond?
 
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createdtoworship

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I get that your explanation above tries to account for the facts, but it is not in evidence in the text. We would want the text to reveal that specifically and it doesn't seem to.

I have sovereignty over the actions of my children (from time to time), it was not due to foreknowledge but rather loving concern for both them and the people they would impact. It involved the same over-ruling aspects of their free will. Why not explain the passage in that fashion and leave foreknowledge out of it? We are free agents, God is a free agent, satan is a free agent, and God can overrule certain free agents actions and yes even prematurely harden them.

Of course for the Calvinist free agency is false. All men's actions are a function of divine decree.

I get the philosophical problem how can God eliminate someone's ability to repent without being the author of continued sin? How can God condemn marionnettes in his own divine play? But what in the text of the Exodus account point us to God's foreknowledge that Pharaoh would not respond?

you are realizing that removing God's foreknowledge would mean He would no longer be omniscient, which is one the major components of being God. Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Omniscience. I do not remove it from the passage because God always had foreknowledge. It's one of His attributes. Or rather it's one of the attributes of being Omnipresent as well, because He exists in all dimensions, even those that do not have time. He is beyond time and space.
 
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Uber Genius

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you are realizing that removing God's foreknowledge would mean He would no longer be omniscient
You are misreading my comment.

The text of scripture doesn't say God hardened pharaoh's heart due to God's foreknowledge that Pharaoh would never repent.

So my specific claim was, "It is not evident in the text!"

If the text of the Exodus passage says that then provide a quote and I will stand corrected.

Of course God has foreknowledge.
Of course God is omniscient.
But it seems that if we say, "God foreknows everything, therefore every action is a necessary product of foreknowledge," then it becomes inexplicable why God doesn't intervene when Adam and Eve are tempted. He has foreknowledge and could do the opposite to Adam and Eve's hearts as he does to pharaoh's, namely soften their hearts so they would obey God and reject the temptation of the serpent.

My concern is to first understand what is the author's representation of the account, then to see if God's hardening involves a diminishment or elimination of pharaoh's free will then to determine what damage that does to any of God's attributes such as all-loving, or all-good.

If God manipulates pharaoh like a marionnette then does he do this as an exception or is this his method for election and other sovereign accomplishments?

"And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart," is explained by foreknowledge that Pharaoh was not going to repent in the OP. But think about that explanation. How do we know what Pharaoh was going to do? It is not in the text what he was thinking of doing. It is an explanation of God's reasoning from no data. Just an ad hoc explanation by the OP. In fact we could create a method of universal explanation of all God's untoward actions by giving the only plausible explanation x and saying God knew that x was going to happen so he stopped it. This is the very reason ad hoc explanations are faulty. They can't possibly be falsified.

If God creates men and women then forces them to disobey him and then punishes them then we can eliminate God being all-just, all-good, and all-loving. That is a high price to pay to keep God sovereign but many ( not all) Calvinists have gladly paid that price although not always calculating the entailments properly (or honestly).
 
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createdtoworship

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You are misreading my comment.

The text of scripture doesn't say God hardened pharaoh's heart due to God's foreknowledge that Pharaoh would never repent.

So my specific claim was, "It is not evident in the text!"

If the text of the Exodus passage says that then provide a quote and I will stand corrected.



If God manipulates pharaoh like a marionnette then does he do this as an exception or is this his method for election and other sovereign accomplishments?

"And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart," is explained by foreknowledge that Pharaoh was not going to repent in the OP. But think about that explanation. How do we know what Pharaoh was going to do? It is not in the text what he was thinking of doing. It is an explanation of God's reasoning from no data. Just an ad hoc explanation by the OP. In fact we could create a method of universal explanation of all God's untoward actions by giving the only plausible explanation x and saying God knew that x was going to happen so he stopped it. This is the very reason ad hoc explanations are faulty. They can't possibly be falsified.

If God creates men and women then forces them to disobey him and then punishes them then we can eliminate God being all-just, all-good, and all-loving. That is a high price to pay to keep God sovereign but many ( not all) Calvinists have gladly paid that price although not always calculating the entailments properly (or honestly).

so your saying that your theory applies to the text more than my theory? If so please explain.

Of course God has foreknowledge.
Of course God is omniscient.
But it seems that if we say, "God foreknows everything, therefore every action is a necessary product of foreknowledge," then it becomes inexplicable why God doesn't intervene when Adam and Eve are tempted. He has foreknowledge and could do the opposite to Adam and Eve's hearts as he does to pharaoh's, namely soften their hearts so they would obey God and reject the temptation of the serpent.
the reason God didn't intevene in adam and eves situation is because by foreknowledge He knew that they would follow God and believe in Him. I fail to see the comparison with pharoah, whom God foreknew that He would never repent. And we see later on in the plagues, that pharoah hardened his own heart. He was a little too comfortable living the hardened life.

My concern is to first understand what is the author's representation of the account, then to see if God's hardening involves a diminishment or elimination of pharaoh's free will then to determine what damage that does to any of God's attributes such as all-loving, or all-good.

I answered this in my first post, with foreknowledge, free will is not violated but supported. And this is what you don't want to see. But I proved your point wrong about adam and eve, so we are back at the idea that God's foreknowledge is responsible for every action of God. Because it is part of His very nature. And if it is part of His very nature, then it would be necessarily part of every action.
 
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jayem

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See God wanted the egyptians saved, first and foremost. In egypt they deified the flies, the frogs etc. So when their gods came after them in judgement, killing them and causing havoc. They were open to realizing that perhaps that god was not the real God. When seeing that the flies were not affecting the isreali camp, but only the egyptians, they realized it was from God. So God was evangelizing the egyptians in a language they could understand, confounding their gods, and showing the way to worship the God of the israelis.

Getting in a little late here. If God was evangelizing the Egyptians, it didn't work. Ancient Egypt never adopted the Hebrew god. Their traditional religion lasted more than 3000 years. The importance of their gods changed somewhat over time. There was the pharaoh who tried to replace the pantheon with the worship of a single god (Aten, IIRC) but it wasn't popular and didn't last. I think in the later Hellenistic and early Roman times, worship of Isis and Osiris became more predominant. Christianity, of the Coptic variety, didn't take hold until the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, when Christianity became the state religion of Rome (of which Egypt was a province.) Then in the 7th century, when Islam conquered its way to dominance in the Middle East, most Egyptians became Muslims. Though there still is a Coptic Christian minority.

But if hardening Pharaoh's heart, and thereby prolonging the plagues was God's plan to convert the ancient Egyptians, it failed.
 
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createdtoworship

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Getting in a little late here. If God was evangelizing the Egyptians, it didn't work. Ancient Egypt never adopted the Hebrew god. Their traditional religion lasted more than 3000 years. The importance of their gods changed somewhat over time. There was the pharaoh who tried to replace the pantheon with the worship of a single god (Aten, IIRC) but it wasn't popular and didn't last. I think in the later Hellenistic and early Roman times, worship of Isis and Osiris became more predominant. Christianity, of the Coptic variety, didn't take hold until the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, when Christianity became the state religion of Rome (of which Egypt was a province.) Then in the 7th century, when Islam conquered its way to dominance in the Middle East, most Egyptians became Muslims. Though there still is a Coptic Christian minority.

But if hardening Pharaoh's heart, and thereby prolonging the plagues was God's plan to convert the ancient Egyptians, it failed.
it wasn't prolonging the plagues, but mainly a show of supernatural force. As it says numerous times in the text. Worshiping false gods in egypt was most likely a capital offence. So the affect of this evangelism would not be known publicly. In many middleastern countries in order to be a Christian you have to go underground for example. But your post sheds alot of light on egyptian religion. Thank you for your contribution. Besides even if evangelism didn't work. I have never seen God refuse to support evangelism just because people reject it. Even if just one egyptian believed in the hebrew God it would be worth it. Right? I mean you have an eternity we are talking about. I am sure there was more than one. In the text it seems to say that the hebrews had favor with the egyptians, and it seemed the only one hardened to the hebrew God was pharoah, even his advisers tried to reason with him. And this was done on purpose. As the OP states.
 
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Why did God harden pharoah's heart? See for many years I thought God hardened his heart simply because He is sovereign and He can do whatever He wants, without question. But it bugged me. Then as I read through exodus today, He clearly answered why He did so in a few verses:

Exodus 7:3-5 New King James Version (NKJV)
3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My [a]armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. 5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them.”

See God wanted the egyptians saved, first and foremost. In egypt they deified the flies, the frogs etc. So when their gods came after them in judgement, killing them and causing havoc. They were open to realizing that perhaps that god was not the real God. When seeing that the flies were not affecting the isreali camp, but only the egyptians, they realized it was from God. So God was evangelizing the egyptians in a language they could understand, confounding their gods, and showing the way to worship the God of the israelis. The second reason was to show His power. Verse 4, by "great Judgements." See God could have simply opened pharoah's eyes, and allowed him to see how poorly he was treating the egyptians and to have compassion on them. but they would still not be saved. God was trying to save them. Sometimes you have to reveal the poor quality of their religion to do so.

Is God hardening pharoah's heart violate the free will of man? Thus creating a bible contradiction?
God speaks that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God. Romans 8:29. So God's hardening of pharoahs heart did not violate pharoah's free will at all due to this idea of foreknowledge. See God knew pharoah would not believe in the true God according to His foreknowledge of pharoahs future, but God also knew that pharoah may have had a change of heart regarding the hebrews, and let them Go. So God had to harden his heart, in order to show the egyptians high profile supernatural events,in the harshest most high profile way as possible, for maximum damage and to basically shoot down each of the egyptian god's one by one. Most of the supernatural events, satan and the egyptian mystery religions could duplicate, but a few they could not. And even when they did duplicate it, it was smaller in size and weaker. But that just shows that satan does offer his followers power. But it does not compare the the power of a single on fire christian walking in the spirit.
Do you have any evidence of

1: Ancient egyptians of that time period worshipping frogs, flies etc.
2: Conversions of ancient egyptians to the faith of the jewish

?
 
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createdtoworship

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I'm thinking that, at this period in history, God was the god of the Israelites, and Pharaoh was just a device in the great drama of their history. Pharoah's person in-itself was a complete non-issue.
you are correct, pharoah was a tool used by God. Pharoah is what is called in the new testament a vessel for dishonor. You have vessels for honor, and vessels for dishonor.

"Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?"

romans 9:20-24
 
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durangodawood

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you are correct, pharoah was a tool used by God. Pharoah is what is called in the new testament a vessel for dishonor. You have vessels for honor, and vessels for dishonor.

"Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?"

romans 9:20-24
The problem with that is it make the Bible look more like a novel, where characters serve an authors purpose, rather than a historical document where people are presumed to be real, with their own agency.

Actually thats how I view the Bible. More like a novel.
 
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Erik Nelson

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The problem with that is it make the Bible look more like a novel, where characters serve an authors purpose, rather than a historical document where people are presumed to be real, with their own agency.

Actually thats how I view the Bible. More like a novel.
As an author writes a novel on paper. God in Heaven has written human history on Earth?
 
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createdtoworship

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The problem with that is it make the Bible look more like a novel, where characters serve an authors purpose, rather than a historical document where people are presumed to be real, with their own agency.

Actually thats how I view the Bible. More like a novel.
God in sovereign yes, but He does not infringe on a person's will. In pharoah's case God foreknew he would reject God. So God gave him His own desires. A man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires it says in james. When we pray to God to deliver us from temptation, that means many times that God will refuse our desires. Our flesh is often greater than our spirit. It's a war between the flesh and the spirit.
 
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