Still, we are commanded to love God and our neighbor, and Paul assures us that loving our neighbor is actually how we love God. Fake it 'til you make it, perhaps (I say facetiously)? You have to admit you have a hard time loving someone that isn't loving you, right? Isn't that what you've described about your situation?
Well, the difference is I do want to know these people beyond a surface level, and I do want to love them, just just because they love Jesus but I also want to love who they are too.
But with a lack of acceptance (just tolerance) it's hard to do.
Yeah, but then if you walk away at the last minute... The problem I see with it is that they "know" they are elect, but can't know if anyone else is. If that's really true, then their assurance of their salvation is dependent on themselves, and why is that of any greater value than a works-based salvation they eschew?
Yeah it's a bit of mental gymnastics. If someone in a reformed circle turns out to have some grave sin they'd covered up revealed after they die, the rest of the reformed circles will just declare they never believed and cite 1 John.
A great question! What's the alternative? Isn't it a will that's a slave, if it isn't free? But we are slaves to Christ already, so why would eternity be worse?
And regarding a sin God hasn't foreseen, at least as a possibility, I don't think that's possible.
A Calvinist would just probably assert we don't have free will at that point and just obey His will.
Isn't God not knowing the future but reacting to our choices kind of the basis of Open Theology?
I guess for me, I think that, in some ways God changes some of the laws, in Eden for instance, man only had 1 law, and in eternity, some laws simply won't be necessary as violating them will be impossible, can't murder if nobody can die, can't lie if everyone would just know the truth anyway, can't commit adultery if there's no marriage (and ... maybe we can't commit fornication because we're anatomically barbie and ken dolls who knows, though I hope that's not how that particular problem is licked), and in some cases the sin would be unthinkable like, why would you steal if God freely gives all things (Romans 8:32, Revelation 21:7), and why would you make idols or worship idols when you have a face to face relationship with the true and living God?
Some ceremonial laws designed to separate Israel from Gentiles, already seem to have been fulfilled and done like the dietary laws.
Speaking of that no adultery thing.. that is one thing that I do wonder about and in a not good way, God first said it was not good for man to be alone, makes marriage, says whoever finds a wife finds a good thing and favor from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward, etc.. old testament always treats marriage and children a blessed thing that men should have.. then Jesus comes along and in one fell swoop seemingly God has changed His mind and now wants a bunch of single celibate people.
and I've thought, okay if it's an open theism model, that could make sense that maybe God regrets making marriage, bonding a man and woman so closely together that it competes with the relationship with God, after all, what God said to Adam as the problem was, that Adam hearkened to his wife. In other words, Adam chose to die with his wife rather than live forever without her in fellowship with God. In Genesis 6, angels who beheld God in all His glory.... chose to take human wives (which I think kind of overthrows the Calvinist idea that once you see God in all His glory you won't want anything else). However it's also a disturbing thing to consider, if God takes that away changing His mind, what else might He take away because He changes His mind?
So if Jesus is both in time and outside of time, does He see Himself as always on the cross, and always as a babe in the manger, and always in the tomb?
No, not at all, what I'm saying is that.. initially, there was the Word. the Word
was made flesh. Meaning, at some point in time, He was not flesh. However, after His ascension.. He was at the beginning of all things.... in flesh. He doesn't always exist as a baby in a manger or nailed to the cross, but He always exists in His resurrected form. That's what you see throughout the Old Testament. It's like it erased the timeline where He wasn't initially flesh.. it'll put your head in a spin to think on it too long, but Christ hasn't always been in a man's body, but simultaneously, has always eternally existed in the form of one like the Son of Man. The resurrection and ascension of Christ.. changed reality.
It's another ploy to get past the idea that God doesn't have to know everything about the future to be God. But where did we get that definition from? It's not from the pages of scripture. Scripture is clear that God learns stuff sometimes. And if there's even one, single time God learned anything, it opens the future.
It comes from the fact that He has given us prophecy, specific detailed prophecy, that has been fulfilled literally in many cases and will have future fulfillments some of the details being quite literal, and made statements like "I have declared the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10)
Personally I think God learning something new and then changing His mind as a result kind of terrifying. "This eternal life thing, kinda boring, I think I'm just going to scrap this thing and start over" God being immutable and omniscient, means He wouldn't change His mind because you change your mind when you gain new information, if God never learns new information.. well, there's no basis for change.
The thing that settles this debate for me is that God is in God's time. I.e., God does things in sequence. He never destroys a city before it is built. The new heavens and new earth come AFTER the first heavens and earth are 1. created, 2. destroyed. At some point He decided to create man, but if He always knew He would create man, then 1. man (and you and I) is immortal, at least in God's thoughts, and therefore God was required to create him (and you and me) at the right "time" in eternity. So if we read God's word, it tells us about God's sequential actions, which means there is something like "time" in heaven.
There is sequence, and simultaneously, at least for God, who is truly eternal, there is no beginning or end, and in some cases, things that have not yet happened, have already happened according to God. Such as in the old testament, there are people God considers blameless, who do things that you'd think well that's sin, how are they blameless?
Because when Jesus atones for their sin and their faith is in their coming redeemer, like Job, to God, they overcame their sin even before they committed it.
You and I? We're already considered victors over our sin, even if from our point of view, we still struggle with it. We already won, and that is an encouraging thought.
Now we're not going to be outside of time the same way God is I don't think for us, we'll still always have sequential time, and we'll have had a beginning, it's just a beginning that stretches on forever.. now that'll make our current reckoning of time ultimately useless, just as years seem to become shorter and shorter periods of time as you get older, if you live forever, centuries will seem like blinks of the eye. So time will have different meaning, but time will still "pass". Depending on how literal that whole "no night" and "no sun" parts are in describing the New Earth anyway. I suppose if there was no day and night cycle time wouldn't really seem to "pass" but things would still sequentially happen in order.
Augustine struggled with this. He decided that in order for God to create anything, He would have to do it in an instant. So the creation narrative, in Augustine's mind, was not actually reporting on what happened, because God can't do anything in sequence, since He's outside of time. He also said that when God spoke to Jesus after His baptism (and other times), He had to have an angel do it for Him, because He can't string words together--they all occur at the same time for Him. This is ludicrous, of course, that God is so impotent in His omnipotence--and the bible (God's inspired word, remember) doesn't present God that way. It's probably left over from Greek influence (that's where Augustine got it).
Yeah I don't hold with a lot of Augustinian Doctrine there's a lot of Greek Philosophy influence, so I kind of avoid it.
Yeah, I've been there. But there is no middle ground. If God knows the future absolutely, then He knows it in one of two ways:
1. He causes it (Calvinism, and we are robots programmed by God)
2. He avails Himself of the knowledge of it from some other source (Arminianism, and we are robots programmed by someone other than God)
One of these has to be true in the settled views, because we aren't around when God knows what we are going to do, therefore we can't be the determiners of our own actions, even.
And since we reject (I hope you do, anyway) that we are robots and that our lives are meaningless, it drives us to a third option, which I think is open theism.
Where did you get your definition of sovereignty from? Probably a Calvinist, who defines it so that God is weak and incapable if He doesn't plan everything out ahead of time. I don't buy it.
Again, they were trying to make sense of God from an unsupported starting point--that God, to be God, has to already know everything, including what He, Himeself, is going to do in the future. It makes even God out to be a robot of His own programming. And when it's time for Him to act, He dutifully performs the function He is destined to perform.
I think you kinda misunderstand Arminianism, like while Calvinists disagree with Arminians, they won't declare Arminianism heresy the way they do open theism, and the reason why is, Arminians still have a sovereign omniscient God, where Open Theists have a God that doesn't know the future and relies on our choices to make His own.
It's not an outside source that gives God the knowledge of the future, it's God knowing in Himself, and I would hypothesize that it has to do with God's eternality, being able to see the future, and past as if it was always the present, that whole "outside of time" angle.
It doesn't make God a robot nor you, because God knows the outcome of your choice, He still (most of the times anyway... sometimes He does "block" certain choices) lets you make that choice and live with the consequences. Christians do fall into sin. But the fact that He does sometimes close a door or block a situation that would lead to a sin also shows He knew the outcome of that chain of events had He let it happen.
