Do You Believe In Fate?

[renniks]

WHY would I want people to not be responsible for evil?

Well, your belief makes it impossible for anyone to be responsible for evil except God.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Only, logically, in your system, God chose those sins for that person. So God is actually the only one sinning.

That's a huge skip in reasoning. You jumped a step (to put it nicely). HOW does God choosing what sin and all the particulars for how it happened, mean that God is the only one sinning. Did we not already agree the person willfully chose to sin?

 

[Mark Quayle]

Well, your belief makes it impossible for anyone to be responsible for evil except God.

Your term, 'responsible', here, seems deliberately vague. You still have not demonstrated how if one willfully chooses to sin, it is not them sinning. They are completely responsible.

 

[renniks]

That's a huge skip in reasoning. You jumped a step (to put it nicely). HOW does God choosing what sin and all the particulars for how it happened, mean that God is the only one sinning. Did we not already agree the person willfully chose to sin?

Lol, which God also chooses in your system. God chooses to cause that person to willfully sin.
What did I skip?
Calvinism: "Oh God uses secondary causes!"
So what? He also causes all secondary causes in your system.

 

[renniks]

Your term, 'responsible', here, seems deliberately vague. You still have not demonstrated how if one willfully chooses to sin, it is not them sinning. They are completely responsible.

I just did. You can not say God causes everything and then turn around and say we willfully choose anything. It's already chosen for us.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Lol, which God also chooses in your system. God chooses to cause that person to willfully sin.
What did I skip?
Calvinism: "Oh God uses secondary causes!"
So what? He also causes all secondary causes in your system.

Agreed that God causes them to sin. Even in your system, which admits that they do sin, and that God knew they would, and yet he made them anyway, God thereby still causes them to sin. Show me how I'm wrong, without referring to self-contradictory 'causation by chance'.

 

[Sunshinee777]

Romans 8:27-30
27And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. 28And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 29For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to beconformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

We have purpose. Holy Calling.

We are:
-predestinated
-called
-justified
-glorified

Amen and Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

[Mark Quayle]

I just did. You can not say God causes everything and then turn around and say we willfully choose anything. It's already chosen for us.

Sure I can. If it is already chosen for us, and we willfully choose to step right in line with that choice, WE STILL CHOSE. Satan does the same. Are you going to say he didn't know if Lucifer would do what he did, when he made Lucifer anyway?

How can you know God, yet categorically deny his infinitely higher position on the matter of blame, sin, choice, and (your favorite) 'responsibility', or, come to think of it, on any matter? God is not subject to sin. He can cause anything at all to happen that he chooses to, and not sin in doing so. He is not 'responsible' to live up to our assessments or claims of fact.

You cannot see this temporary existence and reality as being of a whole different kind, from the life to come, WITH him? He operates from that economy, we from this one.

 

[renniks]

Agreed that God causes them to sin. Even in your system, which admits that they do sin, and that God knew they would, and yet he made them anyway, God thereby still causes them to sin. Show me how I'm wrong, without referring to self-contradictory 'causation by chance'.

No, because allowing is not causing. BIG difference between me allowing my kid to do the wrong thing and giving him no other options.

 

[renniks]

How can you know God, yet categorically deny his infinitely higher position on the matter of blame, sin, choice, and (your favorite) 'responsibility', or, come to think of it, on any matter? God is not subject to sin. He can cause anything at all to happen that he chooses to

Not if he's the God of the Bible.... with no darkness at all in him.
God the ultimate cause of every sin, cannot be the perfectly holy, spotless lamb.

 

[Mark Quayle]

No, because allowing is not causing. BIG difference between me allowing my kid to do the wrong thing and giving him no other options.

You miss my point. I said:
Mark Quayle said: ↑
...Even in your system, which admits that they do sin, and that God knew they would, and yet he made them anyway, God thereby still causes them to sin. Show me how I'm wrong, without referring to self-contradictory 'causation by chance'.

That is causation, either way you look at it. If God did make them, knowing what was going to happen, he put in place what it would take for what was going to happen. He even did this from multiple points: He made Lucifer, Adam and Eve, set the trees in the garden, etc etc etc. Thus, he caused.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Not if he's the God of the Bible.... with no darkness at all in him.
God the ultimate cause of every sin, cannot be the perfectly holy, spotless lamb.

Reformed Theology does not teach God is the "ultimate cause of every sin", whatever that means. It teaches each sinner does his own sinning. God didn't even tempt him to do so. And God is the cause of whatever exists.

Each sinner behaves according to his nature. If the flesh is his nature, he wills to sin. He did not choose to be born with the sinful nature of "The Flesh", yet from there he constantly wills against God. He constantly chooses to behave according to the flesh.

 

[renniks]

You miss my point. I said:
Mark Quayle said: ↑
...Even in your system, which admits that they do sin, and that God knew they would, and yet he made them anyway, God thereby still causes them to sin. Show me how I'm wrong, without referring to self-contradictory 'causation by chance'.

That is causation, either way you look at it. If God did make them, knowing what was going to happen, he put in place what it would take for what was going to happen. He even did this from multiple points: He made Lucifer, Adam and Eve, set the trees in the garden, etc etc etc. Thus, he caused.

Lol, no, that's like saying setting a stage up controls what the actors will say and do. Knowledge isn't causing. God can know things he doesn't cause.

 

[renniks]

Reformed Theology does not teach God is the "ultimate cause of every sin", whatever that means. It teaches each sinner does his own sinning. God didn't even tempt him to do so. And God is the cause of whatever exists.

How can you write this without seeing you just contradicted yourself?
No one does his own sinning if God makes him do it! That's like saying I built a robot and programmed it to sin, but it's the robot's doing. Obviously it's actually God's doing.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Lol, no, that's like saying setting a stage up controls what the actors will say and do. Knowledge isn't causing. God can know things he doesn't cause.

If you know John Wilkes Booth will shoot Lincoln on that stage, but you set it up anyway, you are part of the causation.

But ignoring that obvious fact, your idea that God only set up part of what causes, denies him being First Cause. EVERYTHING is caused, "downhill" from first cause. Or you admit to causation by chance.

 

[Mark Quayle]

How can you write this without seeing you just contradicted yourself?
No one does his own sinning if God makes him do it! That's like saying I built a robot and programmed it to sin, but it's the robot's doing. Obviously it's actually God's doing.

Oh, boy! You put God on our level, as though he was one of us.

Let me try one last time, to cut this down to barest facts. You do choose to sin, when you sin, no? God, knowing you would sin —in fact, knowing in each detail what sin you would sin— did create you anyway, and created all other things bearing on your decision, no?

I have yet to hear you tell me how chance causes anything.

 

[jamiec]

God is not a man on a larger scale than us. God is Unique, Incomparable, Unlike anything in creation. Created beings can resemble God, in some (faint & limited) ways - but the converse is not true: God does not resemble any creature. To say that God is Holy, is a different way of saying that. The Infinite Holiness of God is His "set-apartness", His "separation" from all created things, which without God's creation, & maintaining, & sovereign rule over them, would be nothing.

God is "one of us" only in the derived sense that God the Eternal Word of the Father has, in an act of boundless Divine freedom, "condescended" to our creaturely nothingness, so as to become "God with us" by His Incarnation. The Incarnation does not affect or change God, but is a Divine means by which God the Word, through Whom were created all things visible and invisible, becomes a member of the human race, in a fully human manner, "sin alone excepted". It is God's way of "writing Himself into" His own made-up story.

 

[renniks]

Oh, boy! You put God on our level, as though he was one of us.

Let me try one last time, to cut this down to barest facts. You do choose to sin, when you sin, no? God, knowing you would sin —in fact, knowing in each detail what sin you would sin— did create you anyway, and created all other things bearing on your decision, no?

I have yet to hear you tell me how chance causes anything.

When I sin it's all me. Not God causing it in any way.
God can allow as much randomness in the world as he chooses BTW. He doesn't have to move all the pieces. And quantum physics confirms that the laws of science aren't what we thought. Things actually change depending on whether a person is viewing them. We are causes.

 

[Mark Quayle]

When I sin it's all me. Not God causing it in any way.
God can allow as much randomness in the world as he chooses BTW. He doesn't have to move all the pieces. And quantum physics confirms that the laws of science aren't what we thought. Things actually change depending on whether a person is viewing them. We are causes.

You are half right. When you sin it is indeed all you.

And, btw, I have said many times, we are also causes. I don't know of any effects that are not also in their turn, causes. But we are not little first causes. Logic demands all things are caused, except first cause, so yeah, directly or indirectly, God moves all the pieces. It is fantasy to put ourselves on his level.

 

[renniks]

You are half right. When you sin it is indeed all you

Only you have said the opposite many times. You cannot have it both ways.