If God is not in control of everything, how can he make the promise of Eternal life? How can he go a step further than eternal life but also promise that sin itself will never happen again? Think about it, if humans had free will as it is understood today how is it that they can live forever if the requirement to be in the very presence of God is eternal sinless perfection? What is stopping another human, angel, or other potential creation of God from rebelling against God again if God is not in complete control of all things? What caused lucifer and humanity to fall? Two creations from God who by the way, were created perfect in every way and at one point in time probably thought that they would never fall. Yet, they did and they chose evil. Why? If it was not in God's will for these to happen and they all had the free will to do whatever it is that they wanted how and why did they fall? There are two arguments that i can think of that can be made to explain this conundrum.
1. Lucifer, Adam, and Eve chose to fall and God had to make a backup plan for how to redeem mankind and how to deal with Lucifers rebellion. But this argument doesn't explain how exactly God is going to keep humanity, the angels, and other creation of God from ever sinning again. It doesn't match up with the scriptures that say that God planned from before he created the world to redeem his Elect, it denies Gods omnipotence as a God that knows all and does whatever he pleases yet never sins because he is God and none are greater than him.
2. The fall was part of God's plan from the beginning and this fits in with God's complete sovereignty and this explains how he can promise that sin will never again enter the world nor will we, God's chosen children ever sin against God again. It also explains why God created lucifer and sin entered the world in the first place, another brain teaser.
The second argument seems to answer what really happened and how a fall will never happen again. Because the fall was part of God's plan and the rest of God's plan is that it will never, ever, happen again whatever God decrees it comes to pass. It argues that God knew from the very beginning and the very end of time that the fall was going to happen and that he not only let it happen, but predestined it to happen as part of his eternal and divine plan.
You show a lot of “good logic” in making your points, but start with some very questionable assumptions.
There are some excellent reasons why beings who spent time on earth will not sin in heaven and why some angels did sin in heaven:
- Satan is not there.
- The tree of knowledge is not there to tempt us.
- We are gifted with all we could want, assuming we have Godly type Love which is totally unselfish.
- The indwelling Holy Spirit which we could not see before is now very visible.
- We will be sexless, being a sexual being carries with it conflict, pride, selfishness and lots of other problems.
- We know what happened to satan, so we will not want to repeat his mistake.
- We may see the actual cleansing blood of Christ dripping from the throne.
- We will have personally experienced sin, satan, and evil, so there is no reason to return to that.
We would still have free will, so in theory we could sin, but how, why and what are we lacking?
the Adam and Eve story:
1. God’s description of A&E as being “very good” might mean and need to be as good as any being could be “made”, but are there some things that are impossible to make initially in a being? Are they perfect like Christ is perfect?
2. If Adam and Eve are incomplete from the beginning because of an impossibility, does that mean they are broken to begin with?
3. Did Adam and Eve have the same “objective” as all other humans have had since them, thus providing the reason they are even in the Garden situation? (Go beyond “glorifying God” on this question)
4. Does Adam and Eve’s sinning show they did not complete their earthly objective while in the Garden?
5. What would it take for Adam and Eve to fulfill their earthly objective and before sinning?
6. If Adam and Eve who were made as good as you can be made and raised (programmed) to adulthood by the very best parent and yet sinned in the Garden, does that not suggest the Garden situation is a lousy place (or impossible place) for humans to fulfill their earthly objective?
7. I, for one, appreciate what Adam and Eve went through in the Garden to show me and others; why the Garden situation would not be good for me or anyone else. It helps me address the question: “How could a Loving God allow this _____tragedy?” Did it also have benefit to Adam and Eve?
8. Would you prefer to be: in a situation where your eternal close relationship with God was dependent on your personal ability to obey God or in a situation where your eternal close relationship with God was dependent on your humble accepting His charity?
9. We might agree that Adam and Eve’s sins were inevitable, but were these sins also necessary?
10. Does sin have purpose in help humans fulfill the initial part of their earthly objective?
11. I know you did not address this, but why did Eve add: “neither shall you touch it”?
12. Some bring up the idea that: “with” meant Adan was beside Eve while satan talked to Eve, but is that what “with” would have to mean?
13. “with” (אָכַל) is used over 800 times in the OT, so we do not have time to go over ever one but it often (I think a majority of the times) takes on the meaning of being supportive of the other person and in contrast to being “against the person” and does not have to mean physically beside the person. Knowing that time had passed to the point Adam and Eve had developed a very close relationship might be important to understand satan’s timing and Adam’s sin. To have Adam physically standing by Eve, when we know from Paul: “Eve was being deceived and Adam was not deceived”, makes no sense. Adam would have to be an evil jerk and not have been made “very good” if he is going to let Eve commit suicide. Why would Adam “hate” God and Eve?
14. It would make more logical sense, since Adam was not deceived and Adam will be placed in charge of Eve, that Adam ate the fruit out of a love for Eve, since Adam had reached the point in their relationship of not being able to live without Eve (he was with Eve). Was Adam’s love for Eve greater than his love for God when Adam ate?
15. Are we trying to “restore” man to the type of imperfect relationship Adam and Eve had in the Garden prior to sinning?
16. Christ tells us he wants us to be one with the Father as He is one with the Father, so was that the type relations Adam and Eve had in the Garden with God?
17. Can we have an even closer relationship with God while here on earth than we have with our spouse?
19. Is free will needed to allow the person also to obtain “Godly type Love”, so even if a person chose to Love others with a Godly type Love they could not without first obtaining Godly type Love, as a Gift from God, but how do they get that Love?
20. Can a human instinctively be given, develop, learn, earn, or payback the gift of Godly type Love?
There is a lot to be learned from the Garden story and a lot of miss information being passed around
Lots of things are predestined by God since that is what He will do and sometimes when He will do it.
If God’s omnipresence includes not only man’s present time, but also man’s past and man’s future time, then God is outside of time.
God expressing himself anthropomorphically to humans, since God would use our understanding of time in communicating with us. We know the results of God’s miracles but not how the miracle was done. God would not have to talk about the relativity of time or his existence outside of our time and would keep it simple and with excellent communication, talk about time from a human perspective. Time in heaven might also have their own time separate from man’s time.
If you know today historically a free will choice, I made yesterday, that choice cannot be changed, since history cannot be changed even by God (it happened). The fact you historically know a free will choice does not mean it was not a free will choice.
If God is outside of human time then God at the end of time knows perfectly historically (history cannot be changed) every autonomous free will choice man and/or satan made at any and all times. God at the end of time would be able to send that information to Himself at the beginning of time before there was a our known universe.
If God at the end of time knows what Adam and Eve did in the Garden, He can provide that to Himself before Adam and Eve were created, so God knows exactly what Adam and Eve are “going to do”, since they have “already done it” (God is in both places at the same “human” time).
It is difficult to think about what it is like to be outside of time and existing throughout time.
My theory would have this:
- God perfectly knows all human future from some beginning point or before time began.
- God knows all possible scenarios for the future that would result from His actions and man’s autonomous free will choices.
- God has predestined in detail most of what man will experience, but this predestined set up scenario by God is to assure every mature adult has a truly independent autonomous free will choice to accept or reject His pure charity as charity, which is the individual’s choice.
- God predestining the scenarios of man to make this free will choice would be limited to the point an individual could still chose to accept and not harden his/her heart to the point there is nothing more God could do to help that individual.
- God knows perfectly from the beginning of time what choice every mature adult or spiritual being made throughout history from God’s presence throughout time, but God did not make the choice for the person or spiritual being.
- God predestined “before” anything was decided to be made that those humans who accepted His charity He would save.
Issues:
- There is no scripture suggesting: God choice of a person’s life scenarios is the determining factor in who is saved and lost.
- There is nothing that proves God exists today in the future, past and present (that God is not limited by time).
- The idea of God setting up very specific scenarios so each mature adult will only choose one predetermined choice to accept or reject God’s charity, means the choice is not a free will choice made by the individual, but only gives the appearance of being a free will choice since due to the scenario God setup the person cannot chose to do something other than what God has set him up to choose. The deciding factor on the choice is God’s chosen scenario and not man’s free will choice, so that is not a free will choice .
- God setting up scenarios for each mature adult to accept or reject His charity in the form of forgiveness, allows the person to truly have a Godly type Love since we are taught by Christ: “… he that is forgiven much Loves much…” So being forgiven (which includes accepting that forgiveness) of an unbelievable huge debt will automatically result in an unbelievable huge Love. The person has to make a truly free will choice to humbly accept God’s forgiveness and that will allow the Love to be truly his Love which will result in him Loving God.
- With other theories, God chose not to set it up for all humans to choose to accept His charity and be saved, so those lost would be God’s fault. This is not like God and Christ at all.
- While under my theory; God is doing (setting it up) to provide the very best opportunity for each lost mature adult to be saved if they are willing. The person who rejects God’s charity is not wanting Godly type love and does not like Godly type Love, so they would be unhappy in heaven where there is only Godly type Love. God wants them to go to heaven, but not if it will make them unhappy, so He allows them to choose, but it is not in the form of choosing between heaven and hell, but between accepting His Love (charity) or not His Love (Not charity).
Time is totally “relative” for God and for the last 100 years now, time has been shown to be relative and nothing has even gone against the Theory of Relativity.
Think for a moment about this: If you got an actual video recording of a free will choice a man in China made one hours from now, that choice is set in history, so he cannot make any other choice, yet does that mean the choice will not be a free will choice? You cannot get in touch with him to change anything in the next hour. What you have is the history of his choice ahead of time and history does not keep the choice from being a free will choice.
The idea of a “Block Universe” is held by many non-Christian scientist, since it would explain a lot.
