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Open Theism - ?? what definition for it?

Gary K

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I'm responding to what I bolded at the first of your post.. I never said I could understand God. I said just the opposite. I said it's impossible to understand God as He is infinite and all of us are finite. I enjoy discussing things with you but get things correct that I say.

Now to your last question. Because God can allow things to happen that are beyond our comprehension. You'll get the same answer to this type of question every time. It's what I believe.
 
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Gary K

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Afraid to answer? When in our conversations have I ever been afraid to answer?
Here's some scripture for you to explain away.

 
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Derf

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Here's some scripture for you to explain away.
No need to explain away. It says that God planned from the foundation of the world that everyone who believes in Christ would be holy and be blameless because we are in Christ.

The adoption part probably has ' to do with the resurrection, where we become fully and irrevocably children of God instead of children of Adam--still thinking through that part.
Romans 8:23 KJV — And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
 
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Gary K

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In other words God knew from all eternity who would be saved. God knows the future.
 
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Derf

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In other words God knew from all eternity who would be saved. God knows the future.
That's not what the passage says. It says that whoever believes in Christ was determined from the foundation of tge world to receive those things. The "us" is not aimed at specific people, but includes Paul, a Jew, and the Gentiles at Ephesus.

If that's not the case, then God was also planning for other people (those not included in "us") to be sinful (the opposite of "that we should be holy and without blame before him in love") and neither of us believes God is the author of sin.
 
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Gary K

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No, it doesn't mean that God decided who would be lost and who would be saved. It means He knew. Once again we come up on the idea that open theism limits what God can do to the limits of human knowledge. For some reason you can understand God can do all kinds of things you can't understand but when you come up to this you can't see that God can do something you can't understand. To you that is an unbreakable law. Well, according to human knowledge miracles break the unbreakable laws of physics too.
 
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Derf

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I'm saying He doesn't describe Himself the way you are describing Him. He never says, "I know everything you will ever do." It's not in the Bible. And if not, then you are inserting your own beliefs into the Bible instead of reading the Bible to find out what God wants to tell us.
 
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Gary K

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God doesn't describe Himself as infinite? No, the Bible doesn't use the word infinite but the principle the Bible tells us to use to study the Bible, when used. certainly leads us to that conclusion.

 
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Derf

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God doesn't describe Himself as infinite?
Everlasting. Almighty. Loving, patient, giving. Relational. Jealous. Not necessarily infinite.


No, the Bible doesn't use the word infinite but the principle the Bible tells us to use to study the Bible, when used. certainly leads us to that conclusion.
"Infinite" is very subjective in meaning. One can be infinitely large or infinitely small. One could be infinitely smart or infinitely dumb. If you use "infinite" along with "patience", then God never will execute justice. So in that one case (and there are others), infinite does NOT apply to God.
 
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Gary K

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Yeah, take the word right out of it's Biblical context and apply it to things never meant nor implied.
 
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Derf

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No. I'm no the one applying infinite to size, idiocy, or patience so I can find an excuse to make someone look bad.
No, you're applying it to interpretations of scripture. But if you're going to extrapolate anything to infinity, then why not everything? The reason is because you want to use it to bolster your view, but it bolsters any view you apply it to, including stupid ones.

Like this: "God is infinitely loving, therefore homosexuality, which is loving your neighbor better than heterosexuality can, is good. You just don't understand God's infinite love."
 
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Gary K

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Well, you have me there. But you yourself admit God cam do things that beak our understanding by so far what He does is incomprehensible. To me this is just another one of this things. Besides I have the word of someone I believe to be a prophet to back up my point of view. Ellen White never spraks a word in favor of anything close to open theism but speaks many times about the love of God in making us free moral agentd. It was her writings that taught me that God loved me which no one else in the world taught me. That makes a mountain impossible for you to get me across. It's a love impossible to fully understand but that I accept because I know the reality of it amd it's ability to change someone who could never accept himself as worthy of anything to someone who now sees himself as having more value than what this world can comprehend as human worth.

Several years ago I was praying because I had tears running down my face from the pain of being unable to understand why my entire family disliked me and saw me as worthless my entire life. The answer came to me like a bolt out of the blue. My old man's dad had drowned in a boating accident when he was a little kid. He and a friend of his were fishing on Lake Superior and drinking. They had both gotten so drunk they didn't see a thunderstorm coming until ir hit them. Lake Superior gets exceedingly rough in a very short time when it's windy. Before they could get to shore in the rowboat the old man's dad had gotten thrown out somehow and drowned. His buddy somehow just barely got to shore.

His buddy later married his mother. His favorite hobby was to beat up his wife when he came home drunk. I don't know how long that went on but when my old man was old enough to hunt and have his own rifle one night Grandpa cqame home drunk and figured he'd go upstairs to beat up his wife again. The oldman was standing at the top of the stairs waiting for him with his rifle. He told him his days of bearing up his wife were over and andm if he was going to come up the stairs he'd better be prepared to kill my old man. Grandpa stood there and thought about for a little bit and then turned abound and walked into the kitchen. It was the last time he ever beat up Grandma.

Fast forward a few years my parents became SDAs the year I was born. The first four or five years of my life were normal and then for some reason my old man walked away from God. When he did he grew to hate me as I had become buddies with Grandpa. He and I got along really well because Grandpa was a really nice guy. But by the time I entered grade school the old man had turned mean toward me. Really mean. I could do nothing right and he loved to mock me if I failed at anything. He was like that for decades.

When I was in my mid twenties he had his own business in northwestern Montana thinning lodge pole pine and turning them into fence posts. He asked me to come work for him and because I had become a Christian and left my drug addiction behind I went and worked for him. I had never worked in the woods before so I wass really green in all aspects of the job. He had three guys working for . $him when I got there. He paid them $8, $9, and $10 an hour. He hired me at $7/hour. Within 3 weeks all of those guys were gone and I was the only one left working. In a less than a month we were putting out double the amount of fence posts a day as the 4 of them had. I woked for fe4ew more weeks and since I hadn't gotten a raise asked for $1/hour. I happened to do it just as we were leaving the job site. It absolutely enraged my old man. He started throwing back hand punches at me across my little brother. I caught time and I guess it surprised him how strong I was as after a half dozen attempts tp jot me he stopped. He told me I had no need for money.

I worked for him until October and there was another even bigger blow up. We would take turns feeding the post peeler as it took one of use to feed and one of us to tail the machine. I was feeding the machine that Friday and I fed a trotal of 4 posts into the machine small end first rather than large end first. When the old man fed the machine he'd feed a half dozen to 10 an afternoon in backwards. From the first one I had fed in backwards he was screaming at me and shaking his fist atr me. His face was beet red and all the veins in his head and neck were sticking out. He was so mad he was close to having a stroke.

We were running between 4 and 5 hundred posts a day so me error rate was pretty low as it took both strength and speed yo feed and tail that machine as the posts were anywhere from 3 to 8 inches in diameter and it wasn't always immediately obvious which end was larger until they were actually being peeled. After the fourth one I turned around and his rage at it finally crossed a line with me and a deep red haze fell over my eyes. I wanted to kill him so bad I could taste it after all those years of physical and mental abuse.

However the HS was able to get through to me not to attack him as one of us would never have left there alive. I threw down my gloves, took off my leather apron, and turned around and walked out of the woods without looking back. That was the last time we spoke for years. We never did talk about that day/.
\
I wrote him a letter later and told him I wanted to love and respect him but could not unless we talked things out. He wrote back and said he wasn't going to because if you stir up a manure pile it stinks. He didn't care about my needs in the least.

He died when I was in my thirties from a genetic disease that causes the blood to clot. I was told by a couple of church elders who were at the hospital after he died that he had been calling for me up until the moment he died but I didn't believe them I told them that he'd never wanted to talk to me in my life so I didn't believe their story.

I didn't believe the story until God revealed to me why he had hated me the way he did. He was such a powerful personality that the rest of the family went along with him. The only one still alive is my older brother who attempted to murder me when I was in the 8th grade.

That afternoon God revealed to me why my old man had hated me my life made sense for the first time. It was like my entire life was laid out like a jigsaw puzzle on a card table and it was shaken and all the pieces fell into place and I was able to make real friends for the first time in my life. Here I was in my mid 60s and I'd never had a real friend. Lots of acquaintances, but no friends because if you have no self respect it's impossible to get closer to snyone as you're afraid if they really tro know you they won't like you.

Now I look at things a lot differently. I thank God for what I went through because it taught me so much about the power of sin and even more about the power of God to heal. He would have healed me sooner if I'd I had only asked but I hadn't had the faith to ask. Jesus told us that it will be done to us according to our faith when He healed the two blind beggars. He also told us we recieve not because we ask not and that when we do we ask for the wrong things as we ask for temporal things rather than spiritual things.

Maybe now you can understand why I immediately defend the character of God any time I perceive His character as being under attack. The devil has been doing that since he fell in heaven. And why you'll never convince me open theism is true.
 
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Derf

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Here's something from Ellen White about the foreknowledge of God:
"That God knows all things is plainly set forth in the Scripture. Not only does he know the things that are past, but he sees the future as well. “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” Acts 15:18. “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought afar off.” Psalm 139:1, 2. Thus God can tell what people even yet unborn will do and say."

 He conclusion doesn't follow from the evidence she provides.
In the first passage, it is talking of God's works, not anyone else's. In the second, it says God searched the person in order to know him and his thoughts.

 If God is searching the person, then the person exists before God can know his thoughts.

White is not in bad company with her conclusion, just like most Calvinists and Arminians, but those verses do not support her conclusion.

(Thanks for sharing your testimony, but I can't see how it helps your view any.)
 
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Gary K

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Do you have a reference for your quote?
 
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Gary K

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I don't see that this helps you. How does God know all our thoughts before we think them? And how does God know who will be saved and who will be lost from the foundation of the world?


I like it that you're reading Ellen White. I didn't know this compilation existed and I've been reading her writings for decades. You keep it up and you will see a picture of the love of God you can find nowhere else than in the Bible. I know of no other single human being who has so clearly expressed the love of God
 
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Derf

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I don't see that this helps you. How does God know all our thoughts before we think them?
Where does it say that He does? This: "thou understandest my thought afar off"? Are you suggesting "afar off" means "before I think them"? Why would it mean that?
And how does God know who will be saved and who will be lost from the foundation of the world?
The bible never says that He does. Never.
Maybe. But I think you're too enamored to see her flaws. Be careful not to put your spiritual leader on too high a pedestal, or it will result in your not being able to discern truth from falsehood, like Islam, or Mormonism.
 
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Gary K

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I guess you've never read parts of Revelation as it says exactly that.


So God has known from the foundation of the world who would be saved and who wouldn't be saved.
Psa 139:16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

Jer 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Jer 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
 
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