Which is really the most tragic story?

You really have not been reasding the cal/arm discussions here on the BB!

MANY have referred to what I have been detaing in this OP discussion!

 

I've been here a lot longer than you have, even when we had a cal vs. arm forum

Good, then it shouldn't be hard for you to quote ONE.

 

#1. You need to define what you mean by "causally determined". And tell how that is different from just "determined."

#2. The problem with your thinking is not that you don't see God accomplishing some end goal. We all agree on that. The problem with your thinking is that God has NO PURPOSE for MOST of what is happening on the way to that end goal.

Everybody I know believes that. So what?

This is clear as mud.

Is everything going according to plan or not? Did God know everything that was going to happen if he made the world the way he made it or not?

Then we have no disagreement. God is accomplishing his purpose "in... all that takes place."

Welcome to the Doctrines of Grace and Exhaustive Sovereignty.:wavey:

What was his plan concerning this girl, then?

 

The problem Skan, is that your system is no more emotionally satisfying than Calvinism on this matter.

Unless you embrace Openness, you have the exact same problem.

You have God, who knows beforehand that if he creates the world the way he intends to create it, that it will result in the damnation of billions of souls. Yet he goes right ahead and creates it that way anyway.

And your justification for the damnation of these souls that God knew would be damned before he made them?

It is this: FREE WILL IS THAT IMPORTANT IN GOD'S SCHEME THAT IT IS WORTH THE ETERNAL DAMNATION OF BILLIONS OF SOULS.

That is your system.

For what other reason do you believe that God is willing to make a world where he knows BILLIONS of souls will burn in hell forever?

 

Here is a reasonable voice on the matter.

Listen. I confess that it is a HARD, HARD fact for me to embrace that God made a world where he knew people, billions of them, would perish.

I confess that Calvinism does not scratch that itch of mine along these lines.

I want to know WHY? WHY did God do this? Calvinism can not answer that question to my emotional satisfaction.

But neither does any other system that still has God being God.

Openness theology just says God did not know. THAT IS NOT GOD!!

The Arminian has the EXACT same dilemma the Calvinist does. God willing to build a world- BY DESIGN- in which billions will perish.

So what does the Calvinist AND ARMINIAN have to do on this subject?

Trust God.

But here's the kicker. I'd rather trust God and be able to say to hurting people- God is on his throne- it's not just that HE WILL RULE IN THE END, but that he does rule NOW. And its not just that he rules overarchingly from a distance- but that he rules in every single situation of every single person every single second. He does not just set up and take down leaders by his active involvement in his creation. He actually controls the setting down and rising up of every single person every single hour of every single day. And he has a divine, holy, glorious purpose for this thing as horrible as it is. Just like he planned before he built the universe for Jesus to go to Calvary as horrible a thing as that was and yet he brought GLORIOUS and WONDROUS things out of that horrible event- JUST SO he planned this and he will bring something glorious and wondrous out of it as well.

God is too wise to be mistaken; God is to good to be unkind. If you can't see his plan; if you don't understand; if you can't trace his hand... TRUST HIS HEART!

The Arminian can only say- "This tragedy has no purpose; it serves no grand design, it was never meant to happen and God could have stopped it if he wanted to- ESPECIALLY SINCE HE HAD NO PURPOSE FOR IT- but he chose not to."

That is the dilemma we are both faced with.

 

God clearly uses secondary means to accomplish His purposes. There are several incidents of this in the Scriptures. He has used these to afflict people, and He has used these secondary means to take people out. Absalom for instance.

Those who trust Him in the midst of these means truly trust in Him. Job showed this to us.

 

We know that if God knows all and he knows the outcome of a world that he builds- we can know that God knew that if he built the world, Lucifer, the serpent, Adam and Eve just as he built them- that he knew what would happen. We can thus know that God knew billions would perish if he went ahead and built this world- and yet he went right ahead and built it anyway.


This puts the Arminian and the Calvinist in the same boat with the same problem.

There is no mystery to appeal to here.

If God is doing everything short of irresistible force to save these people he made knowing they would not be saved- he is failing miserably in all of his efforts to save them.

Only a small percentage of them are being saved despite God's BEST efforts and APPARENTLY- his best laid plans.

That is simply not God Skandelon.

And that belief of yours that, in my opinion cannot match the all-knowing, almighty God of the Bible- it STILL does not exonerate God from evil or from the damnation of billions of souls any more than Calvinism does.

Your system STILL has God making billions of people who he knew would perish if he made them like he made them in the world that he made- yet he is going right ahead and making them anyway- EXACTLY in the same way that he knew would ultimately result in their damnation.

In your system, just as much as in my system, God has a purpose. God has a purpose in making these doomed souls in your system, does he not? These souls that he KNOWS will go to hell if he makes them just the way he makes them- does he not have a purpose for going right ahead and making them any way?

Certainly he does. Do you know that purpose?

No. And you cannot explain it in your system one ounce better than we can in ours.

 

I use Augustin's "evil as privation" to support my view of God's utilizing secondary means.

But your system does not exonerate God from these things one ounce more than does ours, Skandelon.

Unless you limit God's knowledge and thus make God less than God- you CANNOT present any better defense of God concerning the origin of evil and the damnation of multitudes than we can.

Here's the fact of the matter.

The debate betwixt the two systems is not on which system exonerates God from the origin of evil- because NEITHER system does this. BOTH systems have to appeal to mystery and both systems have God building a universe in which he knows that billions will perish- yet he goes right ahead in both systems and builds it any way.

The debate betwixt our two systems is really about whether or not God is truly Sovereign at all times in all situations great and small- from the setting of kings to the car accident down the road to the sparrow that falls in a field where no one ever sees it.

And yet in your system God knew EVERY SINGLE HEINOUS CRIME that would ever come to pass before he built the world the way he built it- and he went right ahead and built it any way.

If God has no purpose for any evil then he has no purpose for MOST of what happens in our world everyday. MOST of it is a senseless tragedy that he could have stopped but chose not to.

And if he is only ruling in the good and only bringing to pass good things and all tragedies are outside his jurisdiction- then he does not rule much in this world.

Because God CANNOT murder, rape or do any moral evil because murder, rape or any evil REQUIRES bad motive or it is not murder, rape or moral evil.

What makes killing, murder? Motive.

What makes sex, rape? Motive.

What makes evil, evil? Motive.

The motive of God in tragedies, like the death of his Son, is always pure. The people responsible for the tragedies do not have pure motives. Pilate, Herod, the Pharisees and the Romans did not kill Jesus for the glory of the One True God- their motive was evil so their part in the death of Jesus was MURDER.

God the Father's part in it was NOT murder because his motive was pure and noble.

Evil cannot be made. Evil is the absence of good just as darkness is the absence of light.

 

Did God not know that she was going to perish before he made her?

 

He doesn't. This is anthropomorphic language. This is God "cooing" to us like we "coo" at little babies because they are so limited in their understanding that we have to condescend to communicate with them.

God does not ever ACTUALLY choose- it is just that there is no better way to describe what God is doing in such circumstances.

He does not ever originate a thought. It is totally illogical to purport that God is and always has been all-knowing and yet he learns thing or figures things out.

If you are going to throw logic out the door, then you reduce us to not being able to know anything.

You don't get to cherry pick when logic can be applied to God and when it cannot. You do not get to be the arbiter of that.

We must apply logic consistently to God until our ability to utilize logic is exhausted. This does not mean that the rest of God is not logical. It means that we are only able to carry logic so far. But as far as we are able to carry it- it is applicable.

Yes, this is a mystery, Skandelon, that neither you nor I, nor anyone else, perhaps, can solve. But we do not conclude from this mystery that God just must not be TRULY all knowing.

That is a terrible error.

We say, "God is all knowing and always has been and never has learned anything because he has always known all there is to know about everything that is or ever will be- how we reconcile that fact with what exist seeming to be a necessity in God's nature- we do not know. But we will not make God less than he is just because we cannot UNDERSTAND how he has always known all there is to ever know about everything."

No sir. You have God creating the same billions of damned souls and the Calvinist does. You have God having no eternal purpose, no ultimate eternal end for these people that he creates than to damn them forever.

You simply cannot get around that, Skandelon.

You can appeal to mystery all you want but the only way you can get around it, brother, is if you TOTALLY redefine OMNISCIENCE.

This is what you are attempting to do by this line of reasoning that says, "God makes choices and learns things and makes people who does not really know are going to be damned before he makes them."

There is no way that that reasoning is anything other than a total redefinition of omniscience.

Either God has always known all there is to ever know about everything or he does not.

If he does not, most of us cannot see how he could truly be God.

 

Because it is so.

God cannot "come to know" and be omniscient by any meaningful definition of the term "omniscient," Skandelon.

You have God in your system knowing beforehand all that will happen if he makes everything the way he makes it and yet he goes right ahead and makes it that way anyway which does not exonerate God from evil one ounce more than Calvinism....

or....

You have God making things not KNOWING what will come of them.

The latter is far worse, in my opinion, than the former.

You interpret it the same way.

You have God making Jack who he knows will not "choose" Him and go to hell and burn forever.

God knows if he makes the world like he is going to make it and if he makes Jack in that world at that time in those circumstances- he knows what Jack will choose to do and he knows that Jack will go to hell- and yet your system has God making Jack anyway and making the world which he knew would fall into which Jack would be born.

It is the same problem.

Or you redefine omniscience to mean that God has not always known all there is to ever know about everything to, instead, mean that- God knows a whole bunch about a lot of stuff and very little about the future.

Those are your options, Skandelon.

Your system either makes God less than what it takes to be God (not eternally all-knowing, not eternally Sovereign, etc...) or it has the EXACT same problems that Calvinism has.

He doesn't.

 

The illustration does not stretch that far. As is the case with all illustrations they are limited to a step or two concerning what they can illustrate.

All that illustration can illustrate is that God has to greatly condescend to us and use our limited terminology to explain to us what he is doing.
It has nothing to do with our ability to interpret anything. You stretch it too far.

We can understand how God comes to make a choice- he doesn't. It is very, very easy to understand that God does not have real hands, that God does not have wings like a bird and that God does not make real choices.

This is not complex at all. It is VERY, VERY easy to recognize this as anthropomorphic language.

We can also understand that if God is truly all knowing and eternal then he has always known all there is to ever know about everything.

It does not take even a semester of theology to understand that. I understood it when I was 16. Most of the people on baptistboard understand it very clearly.

God is INDEED eternally all-knowing.

Any language that seems to contradict this fact is simply, very simply, anthropomorphic.

We are not talking about determinism, Skandelon. I haven't used that word one time on this thread. You are the only one who is trying to turn this conversation about determinism. I am not arguing one iota for determinism here.

I am simply pointing out that your system, if it does not embrace Greg Boyd's openness theology, as it seems to be doing here, is no better at exonerating God from the origin of evil and the damnation of billions of souls than Calvinism is.

Both systems, except for openness theology, are terribly deficient at offering an emotionally satisfying explanation that exonerates God from the origin of evil.

Now, if you just redefine omniscience and thus, in my opinion, redefine God- then yes- God can be exonerated quite easily from the creation of evil.

The problem is that this "God" in this system is exonerated by pleading ignorance.

He just did not KNOW that if he made the world that all this mess was going to happen. This "God" seems to me to have a far more serious problem, though, than being the creator of evil. His problem is, it seems to me- incompetence.

I am able to see these truths coinciding with less tension than you are able to see, apparently.

God, as perfectly holy, does not tempt men to evil. Calvinism has no problem with that.

 

I am not talking about it "causally effecting" things. You are talking about that. I have not said a word about such a thing in this entire thread.

We are not debating how God's foreknowledge causally effects things or even whether or not it does. That has nothing to do with our exchange on this thread.

What we are debating is the fact that your system- if it does not totally redefine God's attribute of omniscience- offers no more emotionally satisfying exoneration of God from the origin of evil and the damnation of billions of souls than does Calvinism.

It literally has to redefine omniscience from meaning "God eternally knowing all there is to ever know about everything" to meaning "God knowing a whole bunch about a lot of things- except the future and the outcome of his creation- on those two things he knows very little- EXCEPT the very END- now he does know the end- but he does not know about all the billions of souls that are going to perish between the beginning and the end. If he knew something about that he would not allow it- but he just didn't know."