Hello GordonSlocum,
In my opinion there are only two possible ways and one has to be wrong. While I feel extremely strong and secure with my view. I am not the average non-Calvinist. I know what I believe and I work at defending it. I am but a sinner saved by God's Grace. My heart is humbled and my spirit bows low before my Heavenly Father. I am overwhelmed at His love for me, and for all lost peoples.
Indeed. Those that try to have a middle ground, are just using a logic in their haed that does not work out when you place it down on paper. There is only one that is controling salvation. It must be man or God.
(1) In my thinking I try to imagine God in eternity past. There God is - no time - no created matter. That alone I don't understand.
Agreed.
(2) If you take knowledge and remove it form God all the power, will, or any other attribute is worthless. Power without direction is nothing, will can not exist apart from (a) knowledge and (b) power.
I would not call it "nothing". Power without knowledge exist even in man. Place a 15 year old that has never drove, behind a wheel of a souped-up red sports car. Yet he does not KNOW the full power that rest in his foot. A child playing with a gun, would not know the power that rest in that trigger. The teen was still a person. The child was still a person.
God could still be God, not knowing does not remove His Godhead. Fore...God could still control man at the moment He sees man do something. Like God could have seen Adam reach for the apple and God could have just at that moment for the 1st time learned about Adams wanting to sin and stopped it. Now this is not the picture we find in the Bible, but God could exist and Be a all POWERFUL being controling the world without knowing all things. In fact this is a view of Open-theist that is growing in the free-will camp. God is only a reacter in this view. Though this is a wrong view of God, God is still in control.
This is just to show where your logic falls short. Knowing is not what makes God a God. His power and control is what makes God, the one and only God. Lets remove His power and will to control and see what happens.
Lets say....God wants to place the Devil in hell. But the devil does not want to go there. With no power from God, how will God do this? God could KNOW He wants to do this for 1000s years, and still with no power what can God do about it? What rules over all and makes God who He is, would be Gods controling power.
(3) Knowledge and power are necessary if will is to be possible. A God who has knowledge and power but no will to do it renders both useless.
This again is not true. In a Open-theist model God can shape on a event only bases. I do not hold to Open-theist model, but this is to show that God would not be useless if this were to true.
(4) I see God as having Absolute knowledge and we call it foreknowledge, foresight, prescience because we live in time and space. Our choices are limited by time, space, and our physical makeup.
Absolute Knowledge...Yes. God Knows for God is in full control. God decrees it to happen and therefore knows it will happen. Our choice in time space and matter has nothing to do with it other then to let us know when it happened.
(5) Picture God now in eternity with no time and matter - before the creation as we understand it. God has this Absolute knowledge. He knows every possible and actual thing that could and will exist. Nothing escapes God. We have statements of this here and there in the Scripture. Here is one - John 6:64 "But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, ............." 6:65 "..... For this reason I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."
Indeed. Its not hard to see that if God has a plan, God also has the power to see this plan come about.
(6) Two quick points against Calvinism here before we move toward answering the question on Grace. One the word know is used here to point out the lost. It is a knowing of a fact. All relationships are personal, this is personal knowledge of a fact that Jesus knew what His relationship was from eternity concerning those who are lost. Foreknowledge here is the key. All who are given to Christ by the Father are foreknown and this is how the Father gives to Jesus.
I fail to see any point for or against Calvinism.
(7) Now, picture God thinking a thought. "I think I will create a universe, which will include on planet with all types of life and one type in our image.
(8) Did God know He would think this thought before He did? Yes. Was there ever a time when He did not know what He would do and who would believe? No. It is impossible for God not to know in all of eternity that He would create. But for us to understand this we do so from our reference point for in all reality we can not fully comprehend God in Eternity and His Absolute Knowledge. We can only try to explain it.
I still see no problem. However....as seen before on other threads, If you play this model out all the way, and you make Gods Foreknowledge the driving force, this will trun in to hyper-Calvinism. We are not robots and God is not powerless. This model removes Gods Power and turns man into a robot in the mind of Gods foreknowledge.
(9) But form our reason and understanding we know that before anything can exist there must be a thought, development of the thought that leads to a plan and then the resources to put the plan into action.
Before you can have a thought, you must have the power to have a thought.
There is no way around this. Remove Gods love...and you still have a god. Remove God as judge...and you still have a god. Remove Gods knowledge and you still have a god. But you can never remove Gods Absolute controling power, for then God would not be God.
(10) Scripture tells us that Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world. We are told that as a saved person we are in Christ. That puts us saved in eternity past from the standpoint of the Absolute knowledge of God - we call it foreknowledge, foresight, prescience.
Lets see if I got this right. We are saved before we are born...based on Gods absolute knowledge. Others are lost before they are born...based on Gods absolute knowledge. The saved cannot be anything but saved, or God realy did not see the end. The lost can never be saved, for then God would have not seen the end.
Yep...This is Hyper-Calvinisim 101 The only thing that changes...H-C places God in control. You place "mans will" in control and God powerless to do anything about it.
(11) God saw and knew Adam would sin before He sinned. If God did not know this then why was Christ crucified before the foundation of the world? This one point is so strong in support of the Foreknowledge / free will view that Calvinism is left wanting in all categories.
How does this hurt Calvinism?
This was Gods plan.
(12) If God can state emphatically about the Son, and dealings with man He can also do the same with a depraved man. Depravity is not cessation it is separation. If we press the issue of Calvinist' view of depravity by which they say God has to regenerate the soul, bring it back to life, then there is a major catastrophic problem. To kill dead the soul in this fashion is to eliminate the image of God in a man. It is one of the most illogical views one could think of. It just will not work in any sound theology. So God sees all real, or actual decisions and knows all possibilities should a decision have been different.
Let me ask you...
What do you do with the passages that show God killing man?
(13) God has a plan and in this plan man has free will. God coordinates His plan by using the free choices of man both saved and lost. We are totally responsible for our choices. God sees, and knows all we think, and do.
ooops. We just changed driving forces. Does God plan, or Does God act out what He saw? You cannot have both.
END PART ONE....
