"Free Will" an oxymoron?

[Drotar]

Hmm... David wrote in Psalms that in the depths of Sheol, still God was there. God in hell... I'm going to have trouble with that one. Take no offense.

I always thought that hell was the literal absence of God. Being eternally separated from Him. And that heaven was to literally live forever in His presence.

Oh man, "I can only imagine"! Magnificent song! ...But... he's not Calvinist so I don't listen to his songs anymore...

just kidding.



Yeah, it's great. I wish I could sing. Anywho, I was just curious what you thought- if hell was literally fire and brimstone and if heaven was literally streets of gold. Are they just metaphors- the closest thing we can relate them to? You yourself said that you can't relate to what hell is like. Do you think fire and brimstone was visual imagery so we could get the idea? True dat, it is still somewhat in my roots, but that's something I think makes more sense. And now that I believe in the five points, it all makes so much MORE sense. What with Satan being a literal utterly depraved being, and hell being us only being able to freely choose evil. And heaven being us only able to freely choose good. Since the evil and good influences are isolated, wherever someone is will dictate how they may act. I was just wondering what you thought of the afterlife. TTYL Jesus loves you!

 

[Reformationist]

We can't always choose what it is we desire*, but we can manage those desires in a christian way.
*Some are inborn, some are acquired before defenses form.

We may not always be able to choose what we desire but we will always desire what we choose.

There needs to be a qualifier put on this. We can most certainly desire something we may never have the opportunity to make a choice about. That's has nothing to do with free will. However, we can never choose contrary to our greatest desire at the time we make the choice.

I may desire to be a rock star but I lack the talent to do so, no matter how strong my desire may be. On the other hand, if I choose to sin at that moment you can be assured that I had a greater desire to sin than to obey.

God bless

 

[Reformationist]

Hmm... David wrote in Psalms that in the depths of Sheol, still God was there. God in hell... I'm going to have trouble with that one. Take no offense.

LOL! I know what you mean. Some parts of the Gospel are definitely not easy to come to grips with.

Anywho, I was just curious what you thought- if hell was literally fire and brimstone and if heaven was literally streets of gold. Are they just metaphors- the closest thing we can relate them to? You yourself said that you can't relate to what hell is like. Do you think fire and brimstone was visual imagery so we could get the idea?

I honestly couldn't say. I've never studied it enough to form an opinion.

What with Satan being a literal utterly depraved being, and hell being us only being able to freely choose evil.

How is "us only being able to freely choose evil" different than man in his unregenerate state?

I was just wondering what you thought of the afterlife. TTYL Jesus loves you!

Well, I think it's a complicated theological subject that I know very little about.

God bless

 

[Drotar]

It's no different. The difference is that hell is the absence of common grace AND regenerative grace. That's what I meant by if God were to take His hands off this very earth, it would become, literally, hell. I dunno...

 

[Reformationist]

It's no different. The difference is that hell is the absence of common grace AND regenerative grace. That's what I meant by if God were to take His hands off this very earth, it would become, literally, hell. I dunno...

Okay. I see what you're saying.

Take care and God bless,
Don

 

[Ken]

It seems to me that Elder Mike is only talking about how one subjectively experiences space, time and choices, and is not really speaking to the issue of the will itself......

so whether or not we subjectively know the future does not really impact the question we ask relating to the objective question of whether or not our will is free in the sense that Luther (and most of the Reformers) claimed it to be, namely, that it is in bondage to our nature, as Reformationist noted....

the most that we can conclude from Mike's post is that our choices seem free (in the libertarian sense?) to us because we do not know the future.... however it is objectively true that God knows the future exhaustively, and knows what we will do tomorrow down to the smallest detail, say for instance that we choose to do X..... since this is the case that we will really in fact do "X", (also keeping in mind that God's knowledge cannot be mistaken), how then can we be free, since it is absolutely certain from all eternity that we will do X?

getting to the best explanation of how this can be is to firstly not assume the Libertarian view of freedom, and then judge all other views as faulty due to their simply not matching up to the Libertarian view (its easy to see the circularity if you think about in these terms), the same thing happens to KJV Only people who start with the KJV and then judge all other bibles according to the KJV itself, but this is to a priori assume the KJV is in fact the standard we must start with, the very thing that they should be setting out to prove...

so we must look to the Bible and allow God's word to shape our definition of the will, and the extent (or lack) of its freedom....

blessings