How can there be free will in heaven?

[timothyu]

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.

Suggesting animal instinct... flesh vs spirit. Jesus was said to not have been conceived by way of animal instinct.

 

[timothyu]

A newborn baby is completely ignorant to God’s will. It knows nothing. It’s a completely blank canvas.

Yet comes with animal instincts hard wired in

 

[bbbbbbb]

Yet comes with animal instincts hard wired in

Interesting. Sin = animal instinct = iniquity. All animals are iniquitous sinners.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Non-responsive to post #292.

Those verses are not exclusive to newborns. They say that we will sin not that we had sinned immediately after birth.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Yet comes with animal instincts hard wired in

I won’t dispute that but we are judged by the sins we have committed not the ones we can potentially commit. When a newborn dies immediately after birth is it judged according to the sins it could’ve committed if it had lived long enough to commit them?

 

[timothyu]

Interesting. Sin = animal instinct = iniquity. All animals are iniquitous sinners.

But only humans know it and use it to their advantage

 

[BNR32FAN]

But only humans know it and use it to their advantage

The whole purpose of animal instinct is to provide them with the basic knowledge they need to survive and reproduce. So every animal that has natural instinct uses it to its advantage. When an animal instinctively knows to run away from a predator it’s to its advantage. When an animal knows instinctively how to hunt its prey it’s to its advantage.

 

[bbbbbbb]

But only humans know it and use it to their advantage

Is hunger an animal instinct?

 

[timothyu]

The whole purpose of animal instinct is to provide them with the basic knowledge they need to survive and reproduce. So every animal that has natural instinct uses it to its advantage. When an animal instinctively knows to run away from a predator it’s to its advantage. When an animal knows instinctively how to hunt its prey it’s to its advantage.

By using it to advantage I meant they purposely know when they take advantage of others for selfish gain.. you know stealing, adultery, murder, politics etc

 

[BNR32FAN]

By using it to advantage I meant they purposely know when they take advantage of others for selfish gain.. you know stealing, adultery, murder, politics etc

Ahh ok my mistake

 

[The Liturgist]

No one knows. There could in fact be another rebellion. If one third of the angels rebelled there's nothing stopping another third from rebelling. And it goes on and on and on.

Ecc 1:10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

What about Theosis? It is necessary so that we can experience the close proximity of God, the burning fire of His love, as love, and not as wrath, but I had the sense in reading the Orthodox literature that in the process of Theosis, wherein in our salvation we shall be made more exalted than Adam, it would likely greatly reduce the chance of one of us then going on to permanently wage war against God in the World to Come.

I also recall reading in Eastern Orthodox works of angelology that the angels have already exercised their free will one way or the other.

Also, there is one other point, but I must clarify a matter with the OP:

What is stopping another fall? Why are Christians promised ETERNAL life if God is just going to recreate everything and give us bodies like Adam and Eve had? To me it makes no sense that you can have free will over God's sovereignty because what is stopping another human being, angel, or other created being from wanting power? If our will is free in the Arminian sense, there is NOTHING stopping another fall because Adam and Eve were created perfect as well. The only reason they were allowed to sin was because God decreed it. God decrees no sin forever, than there will be no more sin forever.

By Heaven, I take it you mean the World to Come after the General Resurrection and the Last Judgement? As opposed to the place of rest and delight of our souls between the death and resurrection of our bodies?

If so, this takes us to my next point, that being at the Last Judgement, I think Christ Pantocrator would condemn those who would disrupt the peace of the righteous and the loving Eucharistic reunion between God and Man in the tranquility of the world to come.

 

[bbbbbbb]

What about Theosis? It is necessary so that we can experience the close proximity of God, the burning fire of His love, as love, and not as wrath, but I had the sense in reading the Orthodox literature that in the process of Theosis, wherein in our salvation we shall be made more exalted than Adam, it would likely greatly reduce the chance of one of us then going on to permanently wage war against God in the World to Come.

I also recall reading in Eastern Orthodox works of angelology that the angels have already exercised their free will one way or the other.

Also, there is one other point, but I must clarify a matter with the OP:

By Heaven, I take it you mean the World to Come after the General Resurrection and the Last Judgement? As opposed to the place of rest and delight of our souls between the death and resurrection of our bodies?

If so, this takes us to my next point, that being at the Last Judgement, I think Christ Pantocrator would condemn those who would disrupt the peace of the righteous and the loving Eucharistic reunion between God and Man in the tranquility of the world to come.

I cannot imagine the eternal state of the blessed as being anything other than as you describe.

 

[BNR32FAN]

By Heaven, I take it you mean the World to Come after the General Resurrection and the Last Judgement? As opposed to the place of rest and delight of our souls between the death and resurrection of our bodies?

Are you referring to Abraham’s Bosom here? I was under the impression that Abraham’s Bosom was emptied after Christ’s crucifixion. Or at least that what I speculate.

 

[Clare73]

Those verses are not exclusive to newborns. They say that we will sin not that we had sinned immediately after birth.

We are born condemned (Romans 5:18), we are not born innocent.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Ww are born condemned (Romans 5:18), we are not born innocent.

The word “born” is nowhere in that passage nor is it in the surrounding context.

“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, (WHY? Because they had sinned) even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:18‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:12‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

I don’t see this pertaining to newborns. Nothing says that a newborn has yet committed any sin. Would you say they must repent and believe or are all newborns who die just condemned to the lake of fire automatically?

 

[The Liturgist]

Are you referring to Abraham’s Bosom here? I was under the impression that Abraham’s Bosom was emptied after Christ’s crucifixion. Or at least that what I speculate.

What was at least partially emptied after His crucifixion was the realm of the dead, which some call Hades, in what is referred to as The Harrowing of Hell in traditional Christian doctrine.

However, since that time, when we die, the Eschatology of the Orthodox churches and of traditional Protestant denominations is that our souls experience a foretaste of their disposition at the dread day of judgement, when we will be judged by Christ Pantocrator and either be admitted to the World to Come or consigned to the Lake of Fire, or perhaps the Outer Darkness, kyrie eleison.

The important thing is that soul sleep is rejected by the traditional churches, so although disembodied we remain conscious and those of us who are saved are alive with Christ in Heaven, but Heaven is not our ultimate destination, that instead being what the Jews and early Christians referred to as The World to Come, the existence of which we confess in the Nicene Creed. Whereas those who are not saved experience something like Hell before the dread Day of Judgement.

The chief distinction between Orthodox Eschatology, or at least the eschatological doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox ( @dzheremi and @Pavel Mosko might clarify if this is also an Oriental Orthodox, or at least a Coptic Orthodox doctrine), and that of traditional Protestant denominations (such as the Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Continental Reformed Calvinists, Congregationalists, Moravians, traditional Baptists, and so on) is that in Orthodoxy, the prayers of the faithful can improve conditions for the departed, and even change their outcome, in particularly when coupled with the intercessions of the saints, especially those of Our Most Glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary.

This view is also naturally at odds with Roman Catholic Eschatology, which instead has the intercessions of the saints directed at reducing the time spent by those in purgatory, although like Orthodoxy the intercessions of the Theotokos are particularly emphasized.

In the case of Anglo Catholics, the extremely high church Anglicans, whose doctrines tend to align with either the Roman Church or Orthodoxy in a pursuit of the faith of the Early Church from which both Catholicism and Orthodoxy originated, we might reasonably expect to find either perspective.

However, as shocking as the Orthodox doctrine sounds compared to the traditional Protestant doctrine I presented it with, I would submit that the two are not in fact vastly different but rather are fairly closely related, the only difference being that in traditional Protestantism the fate of the departed is sealed. This is connected to some extent with both Calvinism and the idea of Once Saved Always Saved; it is worth noting that Eastern Christians tend to be less confident in the prospects of their own salvation owing to their belief in free will, despite, ironically, there having always been some Eastern Christians who believe in apokatastasis, for example, Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and later the Assyrian Church of the East for many centuries under the influence of St. Isaac the Syrian, as reflected in the historical-theological classic, The Book of the Bee, written by Mar Solomon the Bishop of Basra.

Most recently, there has a emerged a vocal Universalist minority in the Eastern Orthodox Church led by the noted intellectual and anti-Dawkins apologist Dr. David Bentley Hart, author of The Atheist Delusion and also the translator of a new edition of the New Testament which I rather like, as it seeks to preserve the unique literary style and idiosyncrasies of the different evangelists and apostles. However, this movement has been exceedingly controversial and to my knowledge has not been endorsed by a single bishop, and indeed is at risk of being suppressed if it becomes much more prominent, because what it espouses was rejected by the Fifth Ecumenical Council.

 

[Clare73]

The word “born” is nowhere in that passage nor is it in the surrounding context.
“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, (WHY? Because they had sinned) even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:18‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:12‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

Okay, now what about

"sin (the cause of death, Romans 6:23) is not taken into account when there is no law. . .nevertheless, before the law was given. . .death reigned over those (from Adam to Moses) who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam" (Romans 5:13-14).

When you explain Romans 5:12-15 in consistency with itself (no contradictions of itself), being true to its words, and in agreement with the rest of the NT,
you will have your demonstration that the sin/guilt of Adam is imputed at birth to all those born of (the first) Adam (we were made sinners, Romans 5:19),
making sinful Adam the pattern (Romans 5:14) of the righteous Christ (the second Adam),
whose righteousness is imputed at re-birth to all those born of Christ (we were made righteous, Romans 5:19).

And you will see these contrasting imputations of sin and righteousness paralleled in Romans 5:18-19, where we are made sinners, and we are made righteous, through no deeds of our own.

I don’t see this pertaining to newborns. Nothing says that a newborn has yet committed any sin. Would you say they must repent and believe or are all newborns who die just condemned to the lake of fire automatically?

 

[BNR32FAN]

What was at least partially emptied after His crucifixion was the realm of the dead, which some call Hades, in what is referred to as The Harrowing of Hell in traditional Christian doctrine.

I’m unfamiliar with this doctrine. Where does it originate from? My hypothesis is that Abraham’s Bosom was emptied at Christ’s crucifixion but those in Hades remain there until Romans 20 takes place when death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. What is the evidence that suggests that Hades was partially emptied?

 

[Jamdoc]

By using it to advantage I meant they purposely know when they take advantage of others for selfish gain.. you know stealing, adultery, murder, politics etc

animals do some of those things.
God does not hold them accountable for them because they know no better.
Cuckoos will discard another bird's eggs and substitute their own, brood parasitism. Male Lions will kill the cubs of a previous male in a pride when they take over, infanticide.
Dolphins will get high on puffer fish venom, and Elephants will eat rotten fruit intentionally to get drunk on the fermentation, drug use.

Animals are capable of much of the same evil we are, they just have no concept that it's evil.
We do.
That's the main difference.
We know more, therefore, we're held accountable for what we know.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Okay, now what about

"sin (the cause of death, Romans 6:23) is not taken into account when there is no law. . .nevertheless, before the law was given. . .death reigned over those (from Adam to Moses) who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam" (Romans 5:13-14).

When you explain Romans 5:12-15 in consistency with itself (no contradictions of itself), being true to its words, and in agreement with the rest of the NT,
you will have your demonstration that the sin/guilt of Adam is imputed at birth to all those born of (the first) Adam (we were made sinners, Romans 5:19),
making sinful Adam the pattern (Romans 5:14) of the righteous Christ (the second Adam),
whose righteousness is imputed at re-birth to all those born of Christ (we were made righteous, Romans 5:19).

And you will see these contrasting imputations of sin and righteousness paralleled in Romans 5:18-19, where we are made sinners, and we are made righteous, through no deeds of our own.

“The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.”
‭‭Ezekiel‬ ‭18:20‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

We do not inherit the guilt of Adam’s sin we inherited his sinful nature. A baby has to have the opportunity and the ability to sin before it can actually commit a sin. It’s not condemned as soon as it is formed in the womb nor is it condemned as soon as it exits the womb. It’s not capable of committing sin yet.