bound said:
Grace and Peace Everyone,
This has been a very interesting thread. As one who looks at Free-Will (Free-Choice) as our chief attribute with which we share in God's likeness I am not in agreement with the thrust of those whom take God's foreknowledge as something 'in time' because God is not 'in time' but exists 'outside of time' and thus He is in a state of an 'eternal now' which does not allow Him to exercise any tyranny over His Creation.
My criticism of Calvinistic views of Predestination is in the assumption that God and His Foreknowledge is something which is 'apart of time' and thus Creation which it is not.
Peace.
Welcome to the thread and thanks for your input. Let me say that God is transcendent over creation. I am not aware of anyone who is a reformed theologian that wants to limit God to time and space. I have avoided engaging that notion because it is a metaphysical argument that is extra-biblical. When you are losing an argument you often will change the subject. The women at the well comes to mind. Let me put it to you like this: either God is the originator of life or he is a viewer of life. The attempt that has been made to place God outside of the determinative effects of this world is what I refer to as a passive aggressive argument. You seem to want to attribute to God the act of creating without giving him the responsibility of what ensues. What humors me is that those of you who think that God is outside of time think that removes him from the initial act of creation. Let's suppose that God is outside of time and can see the beginning from the end and they are one and the same. That is not what we are arguing here. You want to make it out like God is watch an ant farm and has total access to viewing the front back top and bottom. Well, how did the ant farm get there to begin with. While God may be outside of time, creation is not. The created order had a beginning and it can be attributed to God. Just like a golf ball comes into contact with a club, and at that point of contact the club gives the ball all the information it will need in order to take flight. So when God created the world he determined its outcome by initiating the creation. Within that system there is allocation for the free moral agency. But you as a human do not have perfect freedom. Can you decide not to sin anymore? The way we resolve most of the discussion surrounding Calvinism goes back to the condition of man. Anyone on this board who thinks that you just need to believe and does not allow for will of God in salvation, basically attributes to man a power he simply does not have. That is why Eph. 2:8,9 makes it plain that salvation is not of yourself. With predestination that is the case, but with freewill theology man just simply needs to make his mind up to be a better person and he will change. Read Romans 7:7-25 and tell if you think that is the case:
7:7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead.
9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
