The Free Will Dream

bling said:

OK, I do not have a problem with God at the beginning of time knowing everything about Adam and Eve and everyone else, but that does not address my question: Did Adam and Eve prior to sinning have some limited amount of free will?




OK, I can be in agreement with this.

There were some other questions you did not address which I would at least like to have your opinion on:

1. Is it beyond God’s ability to provide humans with some small amount autonomous free will?
   
   
2. If humans really had to have a very limited amount of truly autonomous free will to fulfill some righteous objective would God have both the power and Love to provide humans with this autonomous free will?
   
   
3. Is a Love for someone made as a result of some truly free will choice with likely other alternatives, greater than the instinctive love even an animal might have for a person?
   
   
4. A nonbelieving sinner is naturally selfishly motivated, but is there anything contrary to scripture for him to make a free will choice to choose one selfish act over another selfish act?

Now I would like to address your next comment



This will take some deep thoughts so please think about my questions:

With our very limited scientific ability we have repeatedly shown over the last 100 years that time is not fixed, but relative and the Time Space Continuum can be warped (curved) by gravity for one thing, so what limit can we put on God’s ability to warp time?

We talk about God being outside of time and always existing which is need because if God just existed in time from an infinite amount of time past we would not exist, since an infinite amount of time has not pasted by yet.

It seems from scripture God exist everywhere at the same time, but if God is outside of time would that also mean God exist simultaneously throughout human time?

God at the end of time would know all human choices from the beginning of time as pure history and history cannot be changed it is set and even if God wanted to do something over again the history of the first occurrence would still exist even if only with God.

You can know some choices you made yesterday and even God cannot change them, but the fact they are historically set does not proof they were not free will choices, you could have made them and set them.

God at the end of time being outside of human time would be providing historically to Himself at the beginning of human time all human choices as pure set historic facts which cannot be changed, but again just because some choices are known historically does not mean they were not autonomous free will choices when they were made in man’s time.

Your author friend wrote his ideas which make some huge assumptions mainly assuming God is only moving along the human time line and so there is a future also for God but somehow God knows the future which does not exist?

God at the end of time knows historically you ate the apple on Aug. 14, 2019 so you cannot choose to do something different, but that is because you already chose and did what is in your time frame tomorrow’s choice and thus provided that history to Himself at the beginning of time, so God knows what you did on Aug. 14, 2019, which is will do for you.

I know God communicates with man in human understanding, so He can talk about the setting sun even though the sun does not move around the earth and literally set. So God would talk about the future, but that is because there is a future for humans. God is also here with us living through our time, but that is not the only place God can be found.

Your friend needs to think again about it.

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bling said:

You are making a lot of assumptions and have interpreted some scripture that is inconsistent with other scripture.

God does not state specifically, but the fact He is all powerful, all knowing and all Loving would suggest He could provide humans with a limited degree of free will if man needed it to fulfill some objective and I see the objective needing free will, so man would have limited free will.

Your friend you quoted was trying to say, what I have heard before and refuted, “it is impossible for God to have perfect knowledge of man’s future choices and those choices to be free will choices, logically”, but your friend is not looking at a logical alternative which allows for perfect knowledge of the future and free will with some scientific support (science showing time is relative).

Where does it state in scripture: “Man’s free will is broken and disunited by sin”?

First off: we have to define the objective, why are we here and not already in heaven, why is the earth the way it is, and why did God allow the tree of knowledge to even be in the Garden, satan to be in the Garden, the fruit to look good to eat, the tree to be unprotected, and humans to even be allowed to sin?

You have to understand the objective for humans while here on earth and realize God is doing all he can to help willing humans fulfill their objective include helping Adam and Eve:

Starting with God, God is Love (the epitome of Love), which means God is totally unselfish and is not doing stuff for His own sake, but is doing everything for the sake of man which is also God’s desire and might be referred to as His sake.

God would be doing or allowing everything to help humans who are just willing to fulfill their earthly objective.

Man’s objective is found in the God given Mission statement of: Loving God (and secondly Loving others) with all your heart, soul, mind and energy. In order to fulfill that mission man must first obtain Godly type Love which will make man like God Himself in that man will Love like God Loves.

What we can thank Adam and Eve for is showing us that what we might consider the ideal situation is a lousy situation for man to fulfill his earthly objective. Adam and Eve as our very best all human representatives did not fulfill the objective while sinless in the Garden and really could not. The situation after sinning outside the Garden did provide a way to fulfill the objective. Hopefully Adam and Eve used God’s help in allowing them to sin to go on and fulfill their objective.

Think about this when you come to thanking Adam and Eve for going through all they went through:

Would you prefer to be in a place where your eternal close relationship with God was dependent on your personal ability to obey God’s commands forever or in a place where your eternal close relationship with God is dependent on your just accepting God’s charity?

Again the objective is not to never ever sin, but to obtain Godly type Love is the first of man’s objective.

There are just something even an all-powerful Creator cannot do (there are things impossible to do), the big inability for us is create humans with instinctive Godly type Love, since Godly type Love is not instinctive. Godly type love has to be the result of a free will decision by the being, to make it the person’s Love apart from God. In other words: If the Love was in a human from the human’s creation it would be a robotic type love and not a Godly type Love. Also if God “forces” this Love on a person (Kind a like a shotgun wedding) it would not be “loving” on God’s part and the love forced on the person would not be Godly type love. This Love has to be the result of a free will moral choice with real alternatives (for humans those alternatives include the perceived pleasures of sin for a season.)


This Love is way beyond anything humans could develop, obtain, learn, earn, pay back or even deserve, so it must be the result of a gift that is accepted or rejected (a free will choice).

This “Love” is much more than just an emotional feeling; it is God Himself (God is Love). If you see this Love you see God.

All mature adults do stuff that hurts others (this is called sin) these transgressions weigh on them burden them to the point the individual seeks relief (at least early on before they allow their hearts to be hardened). Lots of “alternatives” can be tried for relief, but the only true relief comes from God with forgiveness (this forgiveness is pure charity [grace/mercy/Love]). The correct humble acceptance of this Forgiveness (Charity) automatically will result in Love (we are taught by Jesus and our own experience “…he that is forgiven much will Love much…”). Sin is thus made hugely significant, so there will be an unbelievable huge debt to be forgiven of and thus result in an unbelievable huge “Love” (Godly type Love).

Quit blaming Adam and Eve, you are accountable.

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FineLinen said:

Dear Bling: I do not know what part of ou hekon is evading your grasp, but "the blame" as you put it, goes far beyond A. & E. to our God who has seen fit to hupotasso His creation to futility. That subjection, my friend, for which He takes COMPLETE responsibility! And with that responsibility He takes control of the final outcome>>>>>

The whole of created life shall be delivered/set free.

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FineLinen said:

Dear Bling: I do not know what part of ou hekon is evading your grasp, but "the blame" as you put it, goes far beyond A. & E. to our God who has seen fit to hupotasso His creation to futility. That subjection, my friend, for which He takes COMPLETE responsibility! And with that responsibility He takes control of the final outcome>>>>>

The whole of created life shall be delivered/set free.

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bling said:

Blaming God does take us off the hook.

Making us all puppets in God’s show, means we have no objective and are no better than a tree on the stage of life, why would God want or need puppets in heaven?

As you said: "Unbelieving sinners" as a result are incarcerated in the prison house of unbelief. Can he do "stuff" to bring glory to God? I think not, the only stuff worthy of we sinners is…

Will since we were all sinners at one time and most remain unbelieving sinners, as you say: not bringing glory to God, I would say if God is “responsible”, He is doing a louse job of it. This is not the God I worship.

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bling said:

If God is responsible for everything that is happening and as you say lots of stuff is not bringing Him glory, but is shameful, than God is doing a lousy job of it, how can you look around and say this is the best that God could do and be happy about it?

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bling said:

Why would God need a full waste basket of zero glory?

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grafted branch said:

I looked at the video which implies that God doesn’t “force” his will on anyone. I have been thinking about this and would like to ask a question; can Satan “force” his will?

In order to have a completely free will neither God nor Satan can “force” their will on someone.

2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.​

I would say, in regards to free will, that if someone is unsaved then prior to any decision he may make, he believed not.

James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.​

Someone could suggest that people have the ability to resist the devil prior to actually making the choice to believe in God or not. However that would seem to indicate that there are 3 masters: God, the devil, and mankind. Matthew 6:24 says no man can serve two masters….ye cannot serve God and mammon. I can’t find anywhere in the scriptures that would give an indication that there are more than 2 masters. So I maintain that there are only 2 groups of people, those that believe and those that believe not.

Since the god of this world does have an effect on the minds of those that believe not, no one had an unadulterated mind in the first place and therefore couldn’t have made a free will choice.

So my question for you, or anyone else reading this post, does Satan “force” his will on unbelievers?

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John Helpher said:

It sounds like an awful lot of airyfairy headtripping to say that you don't think you're responsible for the choices you make. Can you just leave off the "dear so and so" and the flowery fluff language and say clearly and plainly if you think humans are responsible for the choices they make?

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