God wanted man to fall

LightLoveHope · Nov 17, 2021

dóxatotheó said:
Jeez man I cant tell what your trying to achieve with this?

Can you distinguish between a planned outcome and the path by which it is achieved?
God planned for the salvation of mankind, but knew he would fall.

To gain freedom and exercise it you need to be free, separate and alone, though it leads to death.
To gain life, you need to move from separation into communion and love.

When people argue about free will, they can often get overwhelmed with the difference between things we do not choose and those we can choose. The choice can be real and open, yet the others things not so. If the choice never existed and everything is determined, then sin was planned and the elect are robots which God could have created at the beginning without the round about circus.

I had a discussion with atheists about morality and life. They hold everything is chance without meaning. But ironically everyday they live and interact with others because everything has meaning to them. We are built emotional moral creatures who love and care for those close to us.

So we are built free creatures who can choose. You cannot have a determined planned outcome in this situation. You can have reward and punishments for chosen paths, which is exactly what we have.

So this is how I answer the suggestion God planned the fall. God knew the path of the fall was the price to have a redeemed people. Another way of saying this is one consequence of creating a redeemed people is the fall. Why it needs this context is to avoid the heresy God made sinners.

Love must accept the cost of failure, to be able to obtain the prize.

dóxatotheó · Nov 17, 2021

Daniel Marsh said:
I think he allowed them to make a bad decision.

It is not his will that anyone sin.

Permissible will vs active(perfect)will my friend.

dóxatotheó · Nov 17, 2021

SuperCow said:
By choice, in order to give them free will to act. Unless you are insinuating the Bible is not logical.

God wasnt ignorant by choice he knew by his foreknowledge that they would sin.

SuperCow said:
Just following the conclusion that if God is immutable, then he is limited.

or maybe you hate the idea of the sovereignty of God.

SuperCow said:
By knowing before creating, he becomes the accessory to any crime the creation commits. There must be a point in time where God did not or more likely chose to not know in order for there to be real choice.

Whatever other confusing word-spin you choose to use doesn’t change that fact.

God knowing isnt the own acting whether you like it or not human act from their disposition not from God.

LightLoveHope said:
So this is how I answer the suggestion God planned the fall. God knew the path of the fall was the price to have a redeemed people. Another way of saying this is one consequence of creating a redeemed people is the fall. Why it needs this context is to avoid the heresy God made sinners.

thats what the thread is saying Light

LightLoveHope said:
Love must accept the cost of failure, to be able to obtain the prize.

I agree

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

eleos1954 said:
I would disagree ...

God created all His intelligent beings with freewill (including lucifer and the 1/3) .... without freewill love is not possible. God knew the risk involved .... but His creatures make their own choices. No God didn't want any of them to fall .... but knew they would CHOOSE to. All have/had choices .... and each are responsible for their choices. Unless one has choice .... there is not love nor freedom (the ability to act or change without constraint)

There is no true "free will" in scripture. That is a Greek pagan concept adopted--and adapted--by Aquinas and Augustine to counter pagan accusations that God is deterministic. "Free will" means no person's choices of moral actions are constrained or carry consequences imposed by another moral agent. That's not what scripture tells us. Scripture tells that that we only have a choice of master (which is not "free will" by anyone's definition), and that choice only by the grace of God.

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? -- Romans 6

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. -- Romans 8

Aquinas and Augustine acknowledge that "free will" as they used it was constrained to this "choice of master," but people today tend to gloss over the fact that "free will" as adapted by those men is not the same "free will" as spoken of in the secular world even now.

And if angels actually even have a "choice of masters," it's apparent that they do not have access to reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ.

God can/could zap satan at anytime .... and it's not just about us .... others in the universe besides us.

God does not have to "zap" Satan. God (that is, the person of the Son specifically) merely needs to stop willing Satan's continued existence. Satan continues to exist only because God wills it so.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. -- Colossians 1

God clearly knew what would transpire in creation before anything had been created.

For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love.
....
In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will, -- Ephesians 1

The important message Paul was trying to transmit to the Ephesians is that--unlike the pagan gods they'd worshipped before--our God is not a capricious god who acts on whim, who will love them today and turn them into a goose or a tree tomorrow, but is a God whose plan was firmly laid before creation and will not vary into eternity.

So the questions of Why did God create Lucifer? Why did God create the Tree? Why did God give that command? Why does God continue to will Satan's existence? are still questions not fully answered for us by scripture. These continue to be questions that we cover by faith that God's eternal plan is for our good, and thus is good regardless of the path it takes us through.

SuperCow · Nov 17, 2021

LightLoveHope said:
So this is how I answer the suggestion God planned the fall. God knew the path of the fall was the price to have a redeemed people. Another way of saying this is one consequence of creating a redeemed people is the fall. Why it needs this context is to avoid the heresy God made sinners.

Love must accept the cost of failure, to be able to obtain the prize.

If there is no fall of man, then there is no need for redemption. They are already immortal. Only after they chose sin is redemption needed to save mankind. That is why in the Bible, there are no prophecies before the fall, because they were not needed until God's original plan was rejected. Once that happened we have Genesis 3:14-19, which combines the punishment with the first symbolic prophecy of the messiah with three other prophecies of punishment. (For Adam, Eve and the serpent)

SuperCow · Nov 17, 2021

dóxatotheó said:
God wasnt ignorant by choice he knew by his foreknowledge that they would sin.

God can choose to be anything he wants to be if he is truly unlimited, so I'm not sure why you would insult him by calling him ignorant. If I'm sitting in my house and want to know what the weather is outside, I'll look out the window. If I don't care to know, I won't. I can see it any time, but I may not consider it part of my plan to know.

dóxatotheó said:
or maybe you hate the idea of the sovereignty of God.

I am fine with the sovereignty of God. Being limited is what results from your line of reasoning. Saying he is unlimited, but itemizing a limitation is not logical. I'm not in agreement with @RDKirk but at least his position is consistent.

dóxatotheó said:
God knowing isnt the own acting whether you like it or not human act from their disposition not from God.

Did God create their disposition or not? If yes, then he is responsible for their disposition. If not, does he know their disposition? Did he know what their disposition would be before he created them? If so, then it's the same thing.

renniks · Nov 17, 2021

dóxatotheó said:
If he did he would have stop the outcome as God hates sin and dont want his children to experience death

So, again, if you come to that conclusion you have to apply it to all sin, which leads to determinism.
Doesn't God hate all sin? Yet he allows it. Doesn't mean he wants it. He said it grieves him.

LightLoveHope · Nov 17, 2021

SuperCow said:
If there is no fall of man, then there is no need for redemption. They are already immortal. Only after they chose sin is redemption needed to save mankind. That is why in the Bible, there are no prophecies before the fall, because they were not needed until God's original plan was rejected. Once that happened we have Genesis 3:14-19, which combines the punishment with the first symbolic prophecy of the messiah with three other prophecies of punishment. (For Adam, Eve and the serpent)

In my discussion on the subject of the fall one thing has become clear. Adam and Eve were not free thinking people like we are. The choice before them was to open the door to choice and die, or stay in the situation they found themselves with the Father.

After man fell, God declare
"The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever" Gen 3:22

God uses the term "one of us" referring to the trinity.
The key criteria was to stop man becoming eternal.

So this creates two different points. Adam and Eve were not yet eternal or had eaten from the tree of life. Their mortality existed from the beginning. So death was not introduced by the fall, rather eternal continuation of life has not yet be applied.

Now God knew this series of events was always going to take place. The serpent put it well, once you are changed you will not die. Now the death was talking about physical death and spiritual death. The serpents lie was knowledge would conquer the physical consequences of death, and ignored it would destroy the relationship with the very source of life itself, God. And this is our common experience. Wherever we are somewhere else must be much better, because those people over there appear to have something we have not got. Jesus is all about seeing the blessing it what is all about us, and sharing love within this. If Adam and Eve had had this, things might have gone very differently.

Another theme is communion with the Lord, which John the Baptist had from conception. God values the choice to turn from sin and walk in His ways, accepting his forgiveness through the cross and planting love in our lives. It seems this would have been impossible without the fall, so Adams mistake was needed to create the resolution God intended.

eleos1954 · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
There is no true "free will" in scripture. That is a Greek pagan concept adopted--and adapted--by Aquinas and Augustine to counter pagan accusations that God is deterministic. "Free will" means no person's choices of moral actions are constrained or carry consequences imposed by another moral agent. That's not what scripture tells us. Scripture tells that that we only have a choice of master (which is not "free will" by anyone's definition), and that choice only by the grace of God.

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? -- Romans 6

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. -- Romans 8

Aquinas and Augustine acknowledge that "free will" as they used it was constrained to this "choice of master," but people today tend to gloss over the fact that "free will" as adapted by those men is not the same "free will" as spoken of in the secular world even now.

And if angels actually even have a "choice of masters," it's apparent that they do not have access to reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ.

God does not have to "zap" Satan. God (that is, the person of the Son specifically) merely needs to stop willing Satan's continued existence. Satan continues to exist only because God wills it so.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. -- Colossians 1

God clearly knew what would transpire in creation before anything had been created.

For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love.
....
In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will, -- Ephesians 1

The important message Paul was trying to transmit to the Ephesians is that--unlike the pagan gods they'd worshipped before--our God is not a capricious god who acts on whim, who will love them today and turn them into a goose or a tree tomorrow, but is a God whose plan was firmly laid before creation and will not vary into eternity.

So the questions of Why did God create Lucifer? Why did God create the Tree? Why did God give that command? Why does God continue to will Satan's existence? are still questions not fully answered for us by scripture. These continue to be questions that we cover by faith that God's eternal plan is for our good, and thus is good regardless of the path it takes us through.

Love my friend .... can't have true love (others before self) without choice .... else it's not love .... and God IS love. His will is and always has been and will always be to put others before self .... but all have choice in the matter.

LightLoveHope · Nov 17, 2021

To add to intention or design, Judas. Without Judas would Jesus have died?
The pharisees would have found another way, but Judas demonstrated you can be so close to the truth and Jesus himself, and not see it, in your heart.

Judas also demonstrates its a choice, when truth is there to go with ones own ambitions and aspirations over that which is of God.

I think these are all pictures of how we are as a people faced with the Lord, and what is the blessed way to respond, and what is the way that leads to death.

One commentator put it that Judas wanted to make money to sell Jesus out, but thought Jesus would act or talk his way out of it, like he had many times before. Judas had no clue he was part of story of sin being forgiven and resolved, and that his betrayal made his whole life meaningless.

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

eleos1954 said:
Love my friend .... can't have true love (others before self) without choice .... else it's not love .... and God IS love. His will is and always has been and will always be to put others before self .... but all have choice in the matter.

But what did I say? "Scripture tells that that we only have a choice of master (which is not "free will" by anyone's definition), and that choice only by the grace of God."

If ye love me, keep my commandments. -- John 14

Loving God is defined by scripture as obedience to Him as our Master. There is no separation in those concepts: Love of God is acceptance of Him as our Master.

Scripture tells us that we were never free, but always slaves to a cruel master who was leading us to our destruction. But God has given us a way to choose a good master leading us to eternal life.

Bruce Leiter · Nov 17, 2021

dóxatotheó said:
As we know God was very must aware of Adam and Eves existence before they existence. He also knew that they would disobey him, How do we know that? The answer is, is God is infinite in knowledge so we understand that he allowed Adam and Eve to sin for a bigger picture. Whats the bigger picture Theosis!!!!! Adam and Eve were corruptible but perfect(sinless) before they fall from Gods Grace, so The Son came as a servant to make us as him not corruptible, all this to make us perfect as him. Is why God didnt want to change the outcome of Adam and Eve fall.

There is a big difference between God "allowing" or "causing" Adam and Eve's fall. As with all sin and its consequences, God permits it in order to call humans to repent. As a result, his knowledge of all events does not make him responsible, which is what your post seems to imply.

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

Bruce Leiter said:
There is a big difference between God "allowing" or "causing" Adam and Eve's fall. As with all sin and its consequences, God permits it in order to call humans to repent. As a result, his knowledge of all events does not make him responsible, which is what your post seems to imply.

Prime mover.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. -- Colossians 1

LightLoveHope · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
There is no true "free will" in scripture. That is a Greek pagan concept adopted--and adapted--by Aquinas and Augustine to counter pagan accusations that God is deterministic. "Free will" means no person's choices of moral actions are constrained or carry consequences imposed by another moral agent. That's not what scripture tells us. Scripture tells that that we only have a choice of master (which is not "free will" by anyone's definition), and that choice only by the grace of God.

This is a very definitive position, assuming your use of the words "free will" correspond with others. Free will in our social human sense is the ability to assess a situation, objectify it ie stand back from it, and choose a response.

Our whole life experience is we have to learn so much to actually cope because there is so much to understand to exercise this free will. Free will is so common, and people do the wrong things, we have to put up big signs on roads to say stop.

Free will in terms of why we do things, the core deciding factor in our lives is often confused and miss-guided. One of the problems of mental illness is the emotional feelings do not match with life experience and destroy the ability of an individual to make choices or make sense of the world.

Jesus says simply He is the light. Following Him will remove the darkness and start to make sense of everything else. In this sense without Jesus, you are in darkness and cannot see or work things out and are lost. Only if you see the light and begin to make sense of our existence, then you have free will to make a difference. To believers who know the light, warnings are given that sowing to darkness or sin, will destroy them, lead to death. In that sense it is only they who have free will.

Could Judas or Pontius Pilate have behaved differently? I think not.

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

LightLoveHope said:
This is a very definitive position, assuming your use of the words "free will" correspond with others. Free will in our social human sense is the ability to assess a situation, objectify it ie stand back from it, and choose a response.

Free will is a philosophical term that has a definition in philosophy, and has that definition for 2500 years.

It's in this Internet age that everyone has settled on Humpty Dumpty logic:

"There’s glory for you!"
"I don’t know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don’t-–till I tell you. I meant, 'There’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But 'glory' doesn’t mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things–-that’s all."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master–-that’s all."

The end result of Humpty Dumpty's logic, however, is the corruption of language to the point that it's just meaningless gibberish.

eleos1954 · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
But what did I say? "Scripture tells that that we only have a choice of master (which is not "free will" by anyone's definition), and that choice only by the grace of God."

If ye love me, keep my commandments. -- John 14

Loving God is defined by scripture as obedience to Him as our Master. There is no separation in those concepts: Love of God is acceptance of Him as our Master.

Scripture tells us that we were never free, but always slaves to a cruel master who was leading us to our destruction. But God has given us a way to choose a good master leading us to eternal life.

RDKirk said:
But God has given us a way to choose a good master leading us to eternal life.

choice .... free agents ... choose God who IS love .... or not. We choose to be indentured servants unto the Lord (because He is good) .... we can also choose not to. We keep the commandments out of love and for no other reasons.

LightLoveHope · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
Free will is a philosophical term that has a definition in philosophy, and has that definition for 2500 years.

So your definition of free will is different to mine.
And philosophy is the discipline of existence models which vary a lot. After talking to muslims I realised their view of how everything in our lives is ok, the only problem is behaviour, gives totally different ideas to have an age of responsibility for behaviour after which we are responsible for our sins.

My point is simply all those commenting on this thread may be talking about a different meaning of free will than yourself, so therefore have different conclusions.

I have tried to define my use of the word free will as opposed to determinism.
I suspect almost all mamals exercise free will, except there reference points are very limited and often black and white. Some animals clearly are driven by genetic differences they are born with that drive their decisions. Once one accepts this aspect of life, to which we also participate in, where do our choices become free will or are just predetermined?

RDKirk · Nov 17, 2021

LightLoveHope said:
So your definition of free will is different to mine.

Your definition is yours. My definition is the one that has existed for 2500 years and is still being used by secular philosophers.

That is, btw, why very few secular philosophers even believe in "free will" today. Almost all believe in some form of determinism ("free will" is an absolute term...it either exists or it doesn't. It doesn't exist in degrees). Only Christians natter about "free will," even though scripture itself argues against the proposition.

TedT · Nov 17, 2021

dóxatotheó said:
Permissible will vs active(perfect)will my friend.

The idea of HIS permissive will contradicts the idea that HE wanted and therefore caused people to sin.

GOD's creation ends with HIS heavenly marriage to HIS people. For this marriage to be real, HIS proposal for marriage to us had to be accepted by us freely without coercion. If no one could choose to say no and repudiate HIM as a good husband and so became evil, there is no freedom in the decision to accept HIS proposal, only coercion by constraint.

HE did not want anyone to choose to be evil. HE didn't need anyone to choose to be evil but HE had to allow anyone who wanted to repudiate HIM as a false god and a liar to do so and thus become eternally evil.

Love and marriage cannot be forced by anything at all and still be considered to be real. GOD did not want a Borg like Stepford wife.

LightLoveHope · Nov 17, 2021

RDKirk said:
Free will is a philosophical term that has a definition in philosophy, and has that definition for 2500 years.

It's in this Internet age that everyone has settled on Humpty Dumpty logic:

"There’s glory for you!"
"I don’t know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don’t-–till I tell you. I meant, 'There’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But 'glory' doesn’t mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things–-that’s all."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master–-that’s all."

The end result of Humpty Dumpty's logic, however, is the corruption of language to the point that it's just meaningless gibberish.

I understand your view as you are expressing. The only problem is language is always a compromise of individual use. A word is a summary of an idea, used in a particular cultural context. These change in cultures and timeframes. Dictionaries fail if they use language in a sense it is frozen, and only has this defined meaning.

A lot of people claim atheists do not have faith or philosophy. But they do, because everyone has a world model and view of life, whether just emotional or worked out in concepts.

Modern medical neurologists claim nothing we do is chosen but actually only appears so to us, because they look at how the brain creates actions and expressions. Now such arguments are not talking about free will in a philosophical way but actually biological.

I realised in these models one issue was a thought that leads to expression, biologically you may not be able to understand or know its origins or trigger, but it does not mean it is deterministic.

So unfortunately philosophers in Greece did not know about the origins of a thought and its biological source or otherwise, so their definition of free will will probably address a different aspect of the subject.

To resolve these kind of problems in discussion I like people to expand on the idea they are discussing. I have talked to people who know the labels and the words but only as a phrase find this impossible. But until they can discover this for themselves, the conversation becomes very limited. God bless you

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