Is there really a conflict between Freedom and Sovereignty, if rightly defined?

[DrJamesAch]

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God knew Adam would sin? Really? How then is God not the author of sin."

Thereby you have unabashedly denied the omniscience of God.

First, I will show you yet ANOTHER contradiction within your Creeds and Confessions:

Westminster Confession 1646, Sec III

"I. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."

Another preemptive clause that contradicts the explicit implications of His foreknowledge as previously stated just one clause prior to the highlighted portion. Again, this is why Calvinists can't separate the distinctions between God's KNOWING and God's DOING because the Confession obfuscates the issue. When will the Calvinist GET that KNOWLEDGE IS NOT A FORCE it means TO KNOW and KNOW is all that KNOW means.

If God was the author of sin, then why can't He look at it?

" Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" Habakkuk 1:13

James 1:13 "God can not be tempted with evil, NEITHER TEMPTETH HE ANY MAN"

1 Cor 14:33, "For God IS NOT the author of confusion".

"And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." Jeremiah 32:35

Romans 5 says "for as BY one man's sin" not "for as by God's eternal decree sin came into the world". Romans 5 says "by ONE MAN'S DISOBEDIENCE" not "for by God's eternal authorship of sin" did death pass upon all for that ALL (not GOD) have sinned.

And this thing you keep getting hung up on about "God knowing is not God determining," is arguing a strawman

.

NO, it's not a straw man because these are the implications and conclusions that Calvinism has drawn based upon philosophical speculations that are not supported in Scripture. They have defined definitions that defy the commons terms ascribed to knowledge, foreknowledge, decrees, free will and destiny. They have made the knowledge of God the active force in determining and controlling whatever IS and whatever comes to pass when the very first book of the Bible says that's NOT how God brought the world into existence. The world did not come into existence based upon God foreknowing that it would, it came into existence because "GOD SAID" so.

No one is asserting that- at least I am not. But, just for the record, I do BELIEVE that- it's just that that is not the point I am making.

I am saying that God knew every minute detail of every milisecond of the entire future before he built the universe. I am saying he knew precisely what every subatomic particle would EVER DO before he CREATED subatomic particles.

Therefore, this is the universe God INTENDED- because he knew PRECISELY what it would be BEFORE he built it- and if he wanted it otherwise, he could have built it otherwise.

That is not confusing knowledge and ordination- it is showing that they are inextricably linked.

Either this is the universe God intended to exist in June of 2013 or God did not know all things when he built the universe

And you are right that God knew and does know the future but you are equating what He knows with what He does. You are making God a slave to His foreknowledge which gives foreknowledge an elevated deified status above God.

 

[jonathanD]

1) God has exhaustive foreknowledge, meaning He knows the future exhaustively.

2) Knowing the future fixes the future, thus the description of the doctrine as exhaustive determinism, God predestines whatsoever comes to pass.

3) God predestines and thus causes, using primary, secondary or whatever causes our each and every sin.

4) God is the author of sin, and therefore to punish us for what He caused demonstrates His glory.

Calvinism 101

Van,

Can you explain, in your view, how exhaustive foreknowledge and libertarian freedom can coexist?

What is quoted above is your response to my first question. Notice, there is no answer there. Notice also that there is no question in your post. My post that is quoted is a direct question to you.

My point? You shucked and jived first. Your critiques fall flat when you are guilty of what you accuse others of doing.

 

[Luke2427]

Don't you mean: "To choose freely means to choose what God determined that you would want?" Your statement above is meaningless in a deterministic world view because there is NO distinction between what the man wants and what God wants.

There is a distinction. It has to do with immediate vs ultimate.

A murderer wants to die.
A jury also wants the murderer to die.

The murderer wants to die because he got caught and cannot kill people any longer.
The jury wants the murderer to die because justice calls for his death.

They want the same thing for very different reasons.

This is a distinction.

God wants evil to exist though he hates evil just like I want the gym to exist though I hate going to the gym.

It serves a good purpose.

 

[Skandelon]

Can you explain, in your view, how exhaustive foreknowledge and libertarian freedom can coexist?

I and others have offered several responses to this above...

Can you explain how exhaustive foreknowledge and divine freedom or even divine election can coexist?

How does God originate a thought? If he always knew what he would think how did a thought ever come to be? What about God's choice to save you? How did that choice ever come to pass since it was always known (in the linear way your logic imposes on this subject)?

Did God have to choose to create and save you? If so, why? Does He need you? Is He not self-sufficient? Why is election or divine choice even taught in scripture if no choice was ever actually made, but everything just eternally existed as is it is, predetermined in the eternal mind of God? Why doesn't scripture simply say that God eternally knew that he would create and save certain men? Why speak of choosing them as if their were other possibilities, after all that is what the word election/choice implies, is it not? Is the bible misleading to suggest divine choice?

You have some explaining to do....

 

[quantumfaith]

Not to cast dirt on a surely respected physicist, but the article does not:

1. Approach the physical world from a theistic stand point (or at least it is not stated).
2. Fails to call attention to continued human discovery in science (we do not know all that we can know. Ergo we lack perfect knowledge).

I think the latter point is more important than the former. If we understood science perfectly than we may be able to see order or planning that are shrouded in our imperfect observations.

1. Physicists rarely (even those of faith) overly "engage" the metaphysical, natural scientists typically stay within boundaries of measurement, unless they are quite comfortable in the philosophical realm. I don't "have a problem" with intellectual ideas from a purely rational perspective.

2. I think (just my observation) that most scientists except it as a "given" that knowledge is never complete, and future investigations, ideas and discoveries will either enhance current understanding or perhaps send things in an entirely different direction

 

[Luke2427]

I and others have offered several responses to this above...

Can you explain how exhaustive foreknowledge and divine freedom or even divine election can coexist?

How does God originate a thought? If he always knew what he would think how did a thought ever come to be? What about God's choice to save you? How did that choice ever come to pass since it was always known (in the linear way your logic imposes on this subject)?

And those responses have been shown to be inadequate by several others.

God does not originate a thought. Has it never occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?

Now lets dosy doe about anthropomorphisms.

 

[DrJamesAch]

There is a distinction. It has to do with immediate vs ultimate.

A murderer wants to die.
A jury also wants the murderer to die.

The murderer wants to die because he got caught and cannot kill people any longer.
The jury wants the murderer to die because justice calls for his death.

They want the same thing for very different reasons.

This is a distinction.

God wants evil to exist though he hates evil just like I want the gym to exist though I hate going to the gym.

It serves a good purpose.

If God WANTS evil to exist, then why is He planning on destroying it? That is a blasphemous statement that defies the very nature of the love of God. Justice punishes evil because being good by nature demands that it can not equally coexist with evil and demonstrate what God desires. God explicitly says that He does not desire the death of the wicked. Ezek 18:23. What He punishes does not mean that's what He WANTS. God is NOT WILLING that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9)

And again, how can you be the author of something you can't see? Notice in Genesis everything that God created is followed with "and God SAW that it was good" but notice what is missing from the creation account. God SEEING the creation of evil, God even MENTIONING the creation of sin. God said clearly that He can not look at sin. Hab 1:13. There is nothing in the Bible that shows that God used Braille to write the first 10 commandments, or that that He wears glasses because something is wrong with his vision. If God thinks evil is good, then why would Isaiah 5:20 say woe to those who call evil good and good evil? This makes it clear that evil is not a good thing. God works against evil, but does so IN SPITE of the presence of evil, not BECAUSE OF it.

If God "wants evil to exist", then why did Jeremiah write that "And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin."

God made it clear that He DID NOT cause Judah to sin. Yet if evil is God's desire, and God determines ALL THINGS then it should have logically followed that God in fact WANTED Judah to sin, and DESIRED that those children passed through the fire, and yet the exact opposite is stated in Jeremiah. If God WANTED evil, then He'd be a hypocrite for establishing punishments for things that He WANTED MEN TO DO.

 

[DrJamesAch]

I and others have offered several responses to this above...

Can you explain how exhaustive foreknowledge and divine freedom or even divine election can coexist?

How does God originate a thought? If he always knew what he would think how did a thought ever come to be? What about God's choice to save you? How did that choice ever come to pass since it was always known (in the linear way your logic imposes on this subject)?

Did God have to choose to create and save you? If so, why? Does He need you? Is He not self-sufficient? Why is election or divine choice even taught in scripture if no choice was ever actually made, but everything just eternally existed as is it is, predetermined in the eternal mind of God? Why doesn't scripture simply say that God eternally knew that he would create and save certain men? Why speak of choosing them as if their were other possibilities, after all that is what the word election/choice implies, is it not? Is the bible misleading to suggest divine choice?

You have some explaining to do....

Although Javert answered him on this, it was an unnecessary response. Accurate, but not necessary because as I explained to Jon, it is based on the loaded question fallacy. Free will is not dependent on exhaustive foreknowledge and thus there is no need to explain it. The question could likewise be reversed for Jonathon, explain why free will is necessarily contingent upon God's foreknowledge. That can not be answered without presupposing that exhaustive foreknowledge is an independent force that offers a definition of knowledge that makes knowledge a functional power instead of being simply descriptive of what God knows. This in turn makes God a slave to His to His foreknowledge and turns knowledge into it's own deity with the ability to create and dictate.

 

[DrJamesAch]

And another thing to add to my previous comment to Luke, if God WANTED evil, why would Paul write , "Fathers PROVOKE NOT YOUR CHILDREN TO WRATH" in Ephesians 6:4? You mean it's OK for God to provoke men to wrath, but God doesn't want the same example from His own actions? Yet if God wants evil, then why wouldn't He WANT fathers to provoke their children to wrath?

 

[Benjamin]

Do you believe in free will?

Some physicists and neuroscientists believe in the opposite proposition: determinism. The mathematics of quantum mechanics have a say in this argument: Determinism is impossible unless you are willing to make an even greater philosophical sacrifice.

...

We must either give up determinism or give up the existence of an objective reality explained by science and measurable by humans with instruments.

Absolutely, I look at it in terms of the sacrifices one must make not only from a philosophical but this going hand in hand with my theological viewpoint, regarding the reasoning for truth about such things as origin of evil, judgment and truth in the Words concerning the calling of God to come to Him.

I'm glad these guys see it my way. :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Van]

What is quoted above is your response to my first question. Notice, there is no answer there. Notice also that there is no question in your post. My post that is quoted is a direct question to you.

My point? You shucked and jived first. Your critiques fall flat when you are guilty of what you accuse others of doing.

And the failure to answer the question continues, you did not answer my question so it is ok not to answer yours, i.e. two wrongs make a right.

Rather than respond to my post, you asked a question to evade the position presented. Shuck and jive from the get go.

Calling all Calvinists, calling all Calvinists, can you answer this question: If God's exhaustive foreknowledge fixes the future such that God predestines whatsoever comes to pass, including our sins, why is God not the author of sin?

 

[Van]

1) God has exhaustive foreknowledge, meaning He knows the future exhaustively.

2) Knowing the future fixes the future, thus the description of the doctrine as exhaustive determinism, God predestines whatsoever comes to pass.

3) God predestines and thus causes, using primary, secondary or whatever causes our each and every sin.

4) God is the author of sin, and therefore to punish us for what He caused demonstrates His glory.

Calvinism 101

 

[jonathanD]

Haha! Yeah, I get it. It's okay for you to call out others for doing exactly what you did first. Thanks for your input.

 

[Skandelon]

And those responses have been shown to be inadequate by several others.

God does not originate a thought. Has it never occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?

Now lets dosy doe about anthropomorphisms.

Do you mean where I quote scripture verbatim and you deny it by labeling it anthropomorphic and dismissing it? That's always fun.

NOT!

 

[jonathanD]

If God's exhaustive foreknowledge fixes the future such that God predestines whatsoever comes to pass, including our sins, why is God not the author of sin?

Here's one Calvinists answer: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-author-story-model

The whole series is worth reading, but he does most of the explaining in this post.

I would like to point out that I never claimed that God's exhaustive foreknowledge is what fixed the future. The future, however, is fixed (even most baptist traditionalists affirm that). The question is whether or not that fixed future is compatible with libertarian freedom. Greg Boyd said no.

 

[Skandelon]

Here's one Calvinists answer: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-author-story-model
.

Let me summarize. He claims God doesn't 'commit or approve of the sin' which he himself 'brings about for his own good purposes.'

 

[Skandelon]

God does actively "harden" men...however the way the non-Calvinists explains this it is much less difficult to swallow, that the view of the deterministic Calvinist.

In my view judicial hardening is simply hiding or confusing the revelation of truth which could otherwise lead to repentance. So God is not said to have caused or inticed anyone...he simply lets them continue down their already self hardened path and makes sure no revelation convinces them to repent prior to His great purpose being served.

Let's look at another analogy. Suppose my 3 year old daughter was told that she is not to take cookies from the cookie jar. In another room, out of sight, I see into the kitchen that my daughter is looking at the cookie jar. She looks around the room to see if anyone is watching. As a parent, I can tell what she is thinking...she is about to steal a cookie and she knows she isn't supposed to.

Now, as a parent I could step into the room so that she sees me prior to her committing this sin. Upon seeing me she would forego her evil plot and give up the idea of getting the cookie...at least until the next time she was alone. However, suppose I decide to not step into the room. I remain out of sight to allow her to be tempted and then pouce into action to catch her with her hand in the cookie jar.

Now, by not stepping in at the moment I saw she was being tempted did I cause the temptation? No. I allowed it to continue, but I didn't cause it. I could have ended it my simply showing myself, but I didn't. This is like hardening. By simply hiding the truth (i.e. that I was present and watching) I allowed my daughter to sin. I'm I in any way culpable for that sin? No. I merely allowed it though I could have stopped it.

Could God have stepped into the 1st century and clearly shown Himself in Christ to make all the Jews of that time believe Him? Of course. He could have done a "Damascus road experience" with all the Jews if He wanted to. He didn't. Instead we see Christ telling his disciples to keep things quite until the right time. We see him hiding the truth in parables. WHY? If men are born deaf, blind and dumb to the truth why would he need to do this??? He did it because he didn't want them to come to repentance YET! He had a bigger redemtive purpose to accomplish through them first.


KEY POINT: Don't allow the context of that judicial hardening of the Jews cloud your view of men's inherent nature. Men are very much capable of hearing, seeing and repenting when confronted by the powerful gospel truth if they have not been judicially blinded to that truth.

 

[Van]

Finally an attempted answer.

Here's one Calvinists answer: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-author-story-model

The whole series is worth reading, but he does most of the explaining in this post.

I would like to point out that I never claimed that God's exhaustive foreknowledge is what fixed the future. The future, however, is fixed (even most baptist traditionalists affirm that). The question is whether or not that fixed future is compatible with libertarian freedom. Greg Boyd said no.

Basically it says God causes us to sin, but because He is God He cannot be "blamed" for the sin He causes. Irrational nonsense.

Calvinism claims God's exhaustive foreknowledge fixes the future. Some say the fixing preceded the foreknowledge, and others the foreknowledge preceded the fix, but no matter, once you get to creation, the future is fixed. So a bunny trail into the catacombs of epistemology.

Simply put God causes or allows whatsoever comes to pass, therefore He does not cause us to sin, which means God is not the author of sin. We make plans, autonomous choices. But our leash only goes as far as God allows. Pretty simple really.

Thus there is no conflict between Sovereignty defined as God causing or allowing whatsoever comes to pass, an idea contained in the WCF. His knowledge of the future somehow does not fix it, i.e. He did not decree what He foreknow, therefore God is not the author of sin.

The Calvinism answer simply is untenable.

 

[Luke2427]

If God WANTS evil to exist, then why is He planning on destroying it? .

Because he did not wish for it to exist FOREVER obviously.

Without sin there is no grace.

There is no receiving of praises by the Lamb of God from a multitude of the redeemed which no man can number for dying for sinners.

Ephesians tells us WHY he built this universe... that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us.

 

[Skandelon]

Because he did not wish for it to exist FOREVER obviously.

Without sin there is no grace.

There is no receiving of praises by the Lamb of God from a multitude of the redeemed which no man can number for dying for sinners.

Ephesians tells us WHY he built this universe... that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us.

All these things explain why God might permit man's dominion over the earth, their free will, and their sinful rebellion, but it fails to answer why this would be necessary in a deterministic world where God apparently dictates what men desire, believe and choose.

It doesn't explain why God wouldn't merely irresistibly manipulate every man to think or believe what he wanted them to think or believe, since he apparently does that anyway? The whole existance of sin, hell, eternal punishment and like seems inconsequential as means to accomplish what God is apparently already accomplishing through inward irresistible manipulations.