Reformationist said:
I'm confused. Are you saying that this is different than man being restrained by another will or than God being restrained by another will?
Sorry. I meant that this is different than God being restrained. Man can be restrained, God cannot be restrained.
The problem I have with this interpretation of the Gospel (Word of/from God) is that it seeks to conform God's eternal plan to the choices of man. Is God nothing more than a Being that can accomplish His will despite the choices of man because He can sovereignly govern all the other things He created? And is He thus able because He exists outside of time and can govern things according to what He sees happening apart from His divine ordination?
Yes, he chooses to govern all other things, even the actions of other people, to allow for the subjective element of free will. Yes, he is outside of time and sees all choices and actions in the exact same moment, manipulating all elements (but allowing free will) to conform the end result to his plan.
Let me say that I agree with this. However, let me qualify my agreement. Man's decisions are made in accordance with his own nature and are not forced by God. However, man's free agency does not preclude the influence his fallenness has upon those choices.
But according to your position, man has no say in his nature. If Adam had a say in his nature, and he chose to reject God, then lets follow this through....
God, knowing everything outside of time, knew Adam would reject him before he even created Adam. If he did not know this, then he is not God. So if he knew this ahead of time, and he proceeded to make Adam anyway, and he knew that no other beings would be given free will after Adam, then he purposely made the universe so that some people were certain to burn in Hell. You could try to blame it on Adam's choice, but you are hurting your position in two significant ways:
1) You are accepting that God can create a being (Adam) with a totally free will, independent of God's will.
2) The ultimate responsiblity is still God's because he chose to go ahead and create Adam with full knowledge of the results.
Ok, so even with the logically inconsistent exception of Adam, God forced every other man's nature upon him. It seems like black and white logic to me. Maybe we have different ideas of free will, or logic? Or perhaps I presupposing something about God that you don't agree with? Or maybe you could explain again why God would create such a world? Some people are created to suffer forever? Ok, maybe that's fine because others are glorified forever. But the glorified people never really chose God anyway. He made his own groupies, if you will. No real gift of self there, but maybe that's ok by God? How is that scripturally supported? What glory is there in your supporting that God? Isn't your value to God equivalent to a tree? How is a tree's purpose greater than your purpose, unless God is an egomaniac, not requiring glory but praise? That sounds more like the Muslim God (no offense to my Muslim brothers, if that's not accurate).
It seems to me that you
want to believe we have true free will, but merely your desire to say you have it doesn't really make it so. Meaning if we are bound by a nature that we didn't choose, then we are never truly free. We may be free to choose Coke or Diet, but the end result of our choices remains chosen by God alone - hell or heaven. That is not real free will. So I guess I'm looking for you to put to death any claim on true free will, in that no choices I make are truly transcendent of my nature, and no final outcome is a result of any choice I make. My lot in life is decided for me, before I am born.
Let me paint a small analogous scenario to help explain how I currently see your view:
God is sitting up in Heaven and creates man in His own image and gives him the ability to freely make any and all moral choices. This ability was not lost in the Fall. The Fall merely separates man from God by a gulf too wide to traverse. Man's nature was wounded, but not to the point where he cannot, with the grace of God, overcome this wound and have faith in God. Unfortunately, this grace doesn't always produce within man this necessary faith. Sometimes that same grace is completely unable to overcome man's obstinacy. In the case of a man named Bill, this grace does woo him and he decides to be baptized. He is baptized and, thanks to the grace of God in making this baptism an acceptable sacrament, cleansed of the stain of his union with fallen Adam and dedicates his life to obedience in God. However cleansed through baptism, Bob retains the fallen nature of Adam and continues to wrestle with the urge to sin. God, being omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent (existing outside of the bounderies time), looks and sees this man called Bill (insert the name of any person ever created), that He desparately desires to be saved. Now, even though God desparately wants Bill to be saved He is going to leave this decision completely up to Bill and will not do anything to absolutely ensure that Bill is saved. Though this decision is entirely up to Bill, God is graceful and is not going to leave Bill to come to faith on his own. He'll sovereignly govern the world around Bill so as to bring Bill in contact with His Word. Again, despite how desparately God wants Bill to embrace His Truth, He will leave the decision up to Bill, even if it means that Bill rejects His Word and burns in hell. God, being an eternal Being, has resigned Himself to the fact that in many cases He has, by creating a creation that He knows will reject Him, set Himself up for disappointment. God, though desparately yearning for His reunion with Bill, would rather that this reunion be the result of Bill's freely made choice then as the result of God sovereignly changing Bill's nature so that his greatest desire is to embrace God's Truth. Now, wonderfully, in the case of Bill, God looks and sees that Bill freely chooses to embrace His Truth and puts his faith in the promises of God. God sees that Bill will persevere in his faith and become more faithful to repentence and put on godliness throughout the entirity of his life. God sees that Bill never foresakes his profession of faith, even unto death, and so God elects Bill unto salvation based on that initial choice and subsequent perseverance.
Seems like you do understand us afterall! That was a very good synopses. I added the statement in bold, not knowing if it makes any material difference. I also don't know what kind of trap you are setting, so I reserve the right to insert theology at a later point. Please, kind sir... proceed.
To step back to an earlier point...
You seemed to accept my scenario without corrections or comment. You see, I'm trying to show that God
can create truly free beings, but he chooses not to. Why? You stated earlier that he cannot allow free will because it would conflict with an omnipotent God. I think I've showed that free will and omnipotence are not mutually exclusive. It seems you agree, but please correct me since my next thought rests on this premise. So God is sending people to Hell either way (your beliefs and mine support that). The questions is, if God can create beings who
choose Hell, rather than beings who are simply sent to hell without a choice, why wouldn't he do the former?
That is, the former is logically sound based on God wanting true love, but even more assuredly logical on the simple definition of "justice". To force a potentially harmful nature upon someone because you have no choice can be just, but to force that nature on someone when you have a choice to do otherwise is unequivicably unjust. What's more, the latter, according to Predestination, acheives no material gain of any kind. God might just have well created a world of trees and accomplished the same thing. Unless you can help me see the material gain, or expose my logical flaws, I think it more than natural to choose the more mainstream view of a "free will" scenario.
-jerrod
