My simple proof that God's Will is not always performed

John Mullally said:

Fatalists (and some theologies) make arguments that X happened because it was God's Will - or Y did not happen because it was not God's will. But that is a poor argument.

1. The vanilla statement "God's Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven" is itself God's Will because Jesus would not command us to pray something that is not God's Will.
   
2. God's Will is not being done on Earth as it is in Heaven. There is no poverty, sickness, or sin in Heaven.
3. Therefore, some other factors are in play that are blocking God's Will from being done here on Earth.

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My simple proof that God's Will is always performed:

Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called according to his purpose.

John Mullally said:

Fatalists (and some theologies) make arguments that X happened because it was God's Will - or Y did not happen because it was not God's will. But that is a poor argument.

1. The vanilla statement "God's Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven" is itself God's Will because Jesus would not command us to pray something that is not God's Will. Notice that "be" indicates the present tense.
   
2. God's Will is not being done on Earth as it is in Heaven. There is no poverty, sickness, or sin in Heaven.
3. Therefore, some other factors are in play that are blocking God's Will from being done here on Earth.

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"Blocking"? There is nothing that can stop God's will from being done. You appear to be conflating God's will with God's command. God has 2 kinds of "will", according to Reformed Theology. There is what God decrees, which is not the same as what God commands.

A simple way to look at it is to say that God wills: 1 What SHALL be; 2. What SHOULD be.

John Mullally said:

If Jesus has assigned his disciples to preach the Gospel under His authority (which is total), then you cannot say He does not need their co-operation. Why did Jesus pour over 3 years of His life on earth into the disciples?

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You have perhaps unwittingly proven the OP wrong.

"Want" and "Need" are incomplete words when used concerning the Almighty. According to your reasoning, it could also be said that he needed Satan to rebel. Yes it was God's plan for Satan to rebel, and for Adam and Eve to sin, and for the disciples to preach, but to say he needed them to do so introduces a similar [false] thought I have heard more than once -- that if believers don't obey, God's cannot accomplish his will.

I agree that God has no plan B -- that is to say that if he has planned something according to his eternal decree, it will indeed and precisely in every detail be accomplished, including the exact means by which he planned for it to be accomplished. Therefore (and thus), even my own disobedience falls precisely where he wills. This does NOT (as I have heard argued) mean that I am obeying when I sin, nor that Satan was obeying when he rebelled.

So can my disobedience be said to be against his will? Yes, it is against his command, but not against his eternal plan.

disciple Clint said:

"The fact that God is sovereign essentially means that He has the power, wisdom, and authority to do anything He chooses within His creation. Whether or not He actually exerts that level of control in any given circumstance is actually a completely different question. Often, the concept of divine sovereignty is oversimplified. We tend to assume that, if God is not directly, overtly, purposefully driving some event, then He is somehow not sovereign. The cartoon version of sovereignty depicts a God who must do anything that He can do, or else He is not truly sovereign. God has the ability to do anything, to take action and intervene in any situation, but He often chooses to act indirectly or to allow certain things for reasons of His own. His will is furthered in any case. God’s “sovereignty” means that He is absolute in authority and unrestricted in His supremacy. Everything that happens is, at the very least, the result of God’s permissive will. This holds true even if certain specific things are not what He would prefer. The right of God to allow mankind’s free choices is just as necessary for true sovereignty as His ability to enact His will, wherever and however He chooses."
What does it mean that God is sovereign? | GotQuestions.org

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Your reply was not overt in the claim but seems to imply that God depends on or allows one or two things that are logical impossibilities. If God backs off and "allows" anything uncontrolled to happen, then either chance determines what happens, and/or there are little sovereigns running about the earth, uncaused "first causes" controlling their own destinies.

Chance can logically determine nothing -- it is self-contradictory to say it can. And logically, there can be only one first cause.

Christians like to suppose, (though most don't really even think about it), that they decide quite independently from God's control. Yet most people, believers and non-believers admit to the law of causality (that all effects are caused), and that their decisions are based on or influenced by many factors. Well, logically then, if First Cause (God) is, (whether through a long chain of cause and effect or by direct action, "intervention", Christians like to say), what is really the difference? God causes, either way.

John Mullally said:

You have not pointed out a flaw in my logic.

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My first sentence points it out. Your logic assumes God's will is of only one kind. You imply that God's will is not always done (referring to God's command, I assume), while positing that those who claim God's will is always done are thus proven wrong -- (you are here failing to admit that they might be referring to a completely different thing --God's decree)

John Mullally said:

There is much more to God's WIll than this point.

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How so?

John Mullally said:

No argument that Romans 8:28 is God's Will and will be performed. However, this fact does not impact the truth that I wrote in my opening post.

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So, do you ignore the matter of God's will being of two different sorts, or do you ignore the law of causality? Logically, all things are caused, except for First Cause.

It is absurd to claim that anything can happen (such as choices) that are uncaused, God himself, being the only Uncaused.

It is also absurd to claim that anything First Cause (Omnipotence) has decreed can be thwarted ("blocked"). You are confusing the two uses of ?will of God".

John Mullally said:

I have based my entire argument on a very elementary verse on God's Will that 99% of Christians know. And then you say that my claim "seems to imply that God depends on or allows one or two things that are logical impossibilities". I think I am triggering cognitive dissidence in a number of people who don't understand the Word of God.

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Leaving aside the fact that it is dangerous to base one's philosophy or logic on only one verse (a process that necessarily induces eisegesis). What are you calling cognitive dissonance? You are ignoring the rest of what I wrote, ignoring the fact that you are criticizing theology that is simply logical --that God controls all things-- and ignoring the simple statement that disobedience or other interruption to God's command is not at all blocking his decree.

You have yet to show where they are wrong (since you conflate the "two wills of God" in your argument, and have yet to present a cohesive rebuttal to my statements.

John Mullally said:

Do you realize that nothing that you have said here is scripture.

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They are good philosophical points that Scripture bears out. The fact God talks in scripture in human terminology doesn't mean that these points are illegitimate. Can you explain what "wants" and "needs" mean when applied to the Almightly?

John Mullally said:

Need another verse: "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance". If it helps you can think of what I am calling as God's Will in my opening post as being "God's Perfect Will".

As to your statement that "God controls all things" - where is that scripture - that's your main problem. If that is perfectly true at this time then how could Satan tempt Jesus with earthly kingdoms during his early ministry and why did Jesus called him the "God of this World"?

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How does Jesus' temptation imply any lack of control on God's part? See Job, how God restrains Satan, and even incites him to do his worst. See Ahab, how God incites the demon to put a lie in the mouth of Ahab's prophets. Or if your argument is that Satan, being the God of this World and having earthly kingdoms to offer, is sovereign over all things under his influence, he most certainly is not, in spite of his own measure of control. God controls Satan like a dog on a leash. Satan is only a tool in God's control. Or if your argument is that it would not truly be a temptation to Jesus who is Lord over all, "we do not at present see all things under his feet", though he is indeed Lord of All. Right now, we see through a veil, darkly. Time is pervasive in our world, not God's. Jesus was also bound by time, and by logical sequence of cause and effect. He would rather not have to die for our sins "Yet, not my will, but Yours".

To your thinking, God does not control all things, in spite of verses like, "...predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Eph 1:11

Borrowed from John Piper *and there are many verses like this Prov 16:33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Human beings decide all kinds of ways to make a decision. They try rolling dice, and they draw lots, and they put out pieces of cloth on the ground — whatever. The point here is whatever means they use, it’s going to be God’s will in the end. Every decision is from the Lord.

The king's heart is like a watercourse in the hand of the Lord. He directs it wherever he pleases. Prov 21:1

“I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.” Jer 10:23

If you wanted to find them you could find many, many more verses to make my point. Apparently it is only a problem for you.

John Mullally said:

I am constantly fed "God is Sovereign" and "God is in Control", but I never hear a scripture for those statements. You termed them as theology. You can substitute Theology for tradition below to better understand the problem:

Mark 7:9 All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. 10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ 11But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban”—’ (that is, a gift to God), 12then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, 13making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

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I was brought up in what is considered mainline Christianity, or even perhaps what is commonly called Fundamentalist Christianity, which is very Arminian in philosophy and doctrine.

I came to realize that God does as he pleases and owes us nothing, even that his command does not imply our ability to obey, and that according to the Gospel, Salvation --indeed all good-- is entirely the work of God; this through many tears and sorrows and frustrations and caricatures made of my repentances. I only much later came to find out that my firm belief had become essentially what is called Reformed Theology. I didn't make it up, but found it in Scripture and through hard experience I would wish on nobody.

It is by no means tradition to me. I still disagree with others who hail from Reformed Theology for what I find unbiblical or illogical.

John Mullally said:

Need another verse: "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance". If it helps you can think of what I am calling as God's Will in my opening post as being "God's Perfect Will".

As to your statement that "God controls all things" - where is that scripture - that's your main problem. If that is perfectly true at this time then how could Satan tempt Jesus with earthly kingdoms during his early ministry and why did Jesus called him the "God of this World"?

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By the way, the context of your example verse in 1 Peter 3 has to do with "you" --those addressed in the opening verses, the believers. It is them with whom God is patient, not wanting any to perish.