- May 28, 2018
- 13,090
- 5,666
- 68
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Reformed
- Marital Status
- Widowed
you're saying that we're not robots but pawns. How do bishops fit into this?
Chuckle...
I agree that we choose according to what we most want. Where we differ, if I understand you correctly, is that you are saying that God determines what those wants or desires are whereas I believe we can reflect on what it is we really want and our desires change accordingly. E.g. we can reassess why we smoke and if we decided we'd be happier not smoking any more, our desire for smoking will go (albeit that we'd have a period of physical withdrawal to go through)
Not that you are misquoting me, but just to be clear: I'm not saying that God directly causes all things, i.e. I'm saying he uses means to accomplish his ends. Thus, while we reflect and assess and judge for ourselves and decide and manipulate and discipline ourselves etc etc, and subsequently, we choose, there is no escape from the fact that we do so according to our preferences and mindset and environment and so on. Cause-and-effect says the whole business is caused, regardless. There is a reason why we think what we do, why we want what we want, why our mind works the way it does, why we value what we do, and so in the end, why we choose what we do.
Frankly, to me, that is all self-evident.
Undeterminable only because we don't know all the variables and principles that cause them. Nevertheless, even then, one cannot quite say that the way it decays is uncaused. Therefore, whatever happened, way back when, eventually, through the long years of cause-and-effect, resulted in what we have now.Modern physics would disagree with that,
e.g. we know what the half-life of uranium is so if we have a lump of uranium we'd know how long it would take for half its atoms to decay but there is no way of predicting for an individual atom when it will decay - that is undeterminable even in principle.
God's and man's will worked together as one in Jesus but I don't think in anyone else..
You are referring here to co-operation, as though God's plan does not always work out, without our willful co-operation. I'm not even saying that God's plan works out in spite of our rebellion, but as a result of both rebellion and obedience. I can well imagine this is what makes Satan the most angry and frustrated: that whatever he does fits God's plan perfectly, though Satan's every intention is to prohibit God from accomplishing what he set out to do. Satan plays his part, but it is everything BUT obedience.
The notion I heard so often in my earlier years, that God cannot do this or that without my obedience, to me now is bunk. God can do whatever he chooses to do.
Upvote
0