Luke, you need to give your examples a tad more thought.
-
Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!
Stop misrepresenting my view!
- Thread starter Skandelon
- Start date
- Status
So are your daliances with Omniscience. If God knew of something prior to Creation, then the thought existed prior to its conception in the mind of man or demons.
God could have made men and angels incorruptible. He didn't. God could have protected victimized infants. He didn't. He watched. He was present, and He did nothing. It is the testimony of the Scriptures that God willed evil enter the world, and that certain atrocities come to pass.
Your problem with that thought is again, the age old, carnal reponse to ideas, thoughts and purposes higher than that of which men can conceive: why doth He yet find fault?
Paul has already answered it.
quantumfaith
Active Member
And this is why we are told repeatedly in the creation narrative.
"and it was good"..."and it was very good"
Adam and Eve were created not with evil in them but rather the capability to rebel, which they obviously did. Your question "Why doth he find fault" is an utter and complete strawman argument. No one finds fault with God. We all question one another's view of the way in which God acts and interacts with his creation. Throwing bumper sticker questions like that only score points with those who view things in like manner to yourself.
glfredrick
New Member
Without capacity, there is ultimately no love, for to have love, one must have some level of choice in the matter. The Scriptures demonstrate that there IS in fact choice in the matter, both on God's part and on ours. That choice cannot DICTATE God's actions (as in my choice to believe moves God's hand to create for me new life) but it can "allow" actions in keeping with God's overall plan.
Over the centuries no one -- save for a hyper-Calvinist approach that is equally heretical with the opposite end of the continuum, the Pelagian approach -- has actually disavowed choice in humans. But at the same time, there has also been noted God's ultimate sovereignty, God's ultimate and exhaustive foreknowledge, and God's ultimate will being done on earth as it is in heaven, so our free choice does not in any way set aide God's foreordained action nor does it drive God's foreordained action, but rather, because God has ordained the action, we are free to choose it and we do. That is not deterministic, for to say such is to disavow God's revelation (it is not even a fair topic for debate on the issue for the Scriptures speak otherwise and to invent some false view of God is blasphemy) nor is it libertarian free will, for our choice is bounded by God to go thus far and no farther, and in addition, we remain culpable for ALL of our sin, whether known or not, so says God.
Over the centuries no one -- save for a hyper-Calvinist approach that is equally heretical with the opposite end of the continuum, the Pelagian approach -- has actually disavowed choice in humans. But at the same time, there has also been noted God's ultimate sovereignty, God's ultimate and exhaustive foreknowledge, and God's ultimate will being done on earth as it is in heaven, so our free choice does not in any way set aide God's foreordained action nor does it drive God's foreordained action, but rather, because God has ordained the action, we are free to choose it and we do. That is not deterministic, for to say such is to disavow God's revelation (it is not even a fair topic for debate on the issue for the Scriptures speak otherwise and to invent some false view of God is blasphemy) nor is it libertarian free will, for our choice is bounded by God to go thus far and no farther, and in addition, we remain culpable for ALL of our sin, whether known or not, so says God.
quantumfaith
Active Member
:applause::applause::applause:
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Existing prior to its conception based on foreknowledge is one thing, but most (if not all) Calvinists equate such foreknowledge with predetermination. I simply appeal to mystery of such infinite matters rather than draw conclusions that impugn the holiness of God by suggesting he must predetermine that which he foreknows. When such logic based on linear finite thinking draws unfounded conclusions it gets dangerous (i.e. 'if God knew it before he created it then he must have determined it to be.') The word 'before' is linear and may/or may not fit within the eternal as a 'cause/effect' relationship as we understand it. The fact is, scripture never draws this conclusion, so why should we?
The other stuff you wrote is just the same ol' non-sense which doesn't address our actual points of contention.
God is love, and He cannot choose to lie, and He cannot choose to deny Himself, and He cannot be corrupted. Freedom of choice (as we understand it) is not a prerequisite for love.
All things were not created for men, they were created for Christ. In other words, this universe was set in motion for one purpose only, and that was Christ's act of love on the Cross. He loves us, certainly, but not ultimately. A man may certainly love his children, but they were not the reason for which he took a woman to be his bride, and certainly, and they had no choice whatever in the matter when they were conceived.
God is love. He is Lover, the Beloved and the Spirit of love, and demonstration of the love between the Persons in the godhead is worked out in this world.
And, it should be pointed out, that we, as partakers of the divine nature, cannot be corrupted. We cannot leave Him.
But . . . my post is simply directed to point out that Scandal does not escape the difficulties from which he is so desperately fleeing in his activity on this board. If he had foreknowledge of the rape of a child, and it was in his power to prevent it, was present and observed it, yet did nothing, then can he say he has no culpability in the that child's victimization?
That's all I was saying.
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
I acknowledge the difficulty of God not preventing heinous crimes, but to pretend that difficulty is somehow equal to the difficulty of a deterministic system that has God originating and predetermining the intent of the criminal and the act itself is absurd. I know, I know, you bath that difficulty in 'second causes' and long politically correct explanations, but the end is the same...God is causally determining evil intent and action.
When you leave no room for autonomous choices, intents and actions you leave God as the only chooser, intender and actor and thus create HUGE divine culpability issues that scripture's revelation NEVER affords. The fact is, that scripture explains His motive and plans for giving over this fallen world to the rule of the evil one; it never explains His motive and plans for predetermining it all Himself. You mistake scriptures teaching on the former to support you assumptions of the latter.
No more absurd than equating stealing bread and murdering one's brother, but to transgress in one point of the law is to transgress the whole law.
You are still left with a God who is less than just, from your point of view.
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Both of which fall short of God's Holy nature, proving that he wouldn't even tempt men to do it...much less causally determine it to happen.
Where does my point of view define foreknowing but not preventing evil less than just? It doesn't. My point of view (God foreknows somethings and predetermines others) rejects your point of view (foreknowledge = predetermination), period.
quantumfaith
Active Member
Let's talk of the murder of Christ. Was it God's will that His Son be murdered by the Jews?
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Yes, it was God's will to sacrifice 'HIMSELF' in order to provide redemption for the entire human race. Equating His work to arrange the circumstances (i.e. hardening Israel etc) to effectually bring about his gracious redemptive plan with your speculations that he causally determines every heinous crime of man is utterly absurd and biblically unfounded.
Plus, God's work to judicially hardened Israel is tantamount to a police officer hiding his presences to ensure a speeder keeps speeding. It's not as if God MADE them sin. He simply hid the truth from them so that they would do what their rebellious hearts already wanted to do. God has a way of using circumstances (storm/big fish for example), emotions (like envy) and other such means to ensure certain aspects of his sovereign purpose are CERTAINLY carried out, but the uniqueness of those events is what makes them uniquely divine. To suggest EVERY event is likewise determined only undermines the uniqueness and supernatural component of God's active role in these special circumstances throughout history.
Did God predetermine that His Son would die at the hands of the Jews?
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Yes.
Does that prove God likewise predetermined Jeff Dahmer to do his crimes?
NO.
Plus, I don't believe God predetermined the crucifixion in the way you probably do (i.e. casually predetermining each individual nature so they could not have done otherwise etc). But instead, by more 'normative' means, like Jesus speaking in parables to prevent the Jewish leaders from repenting...and making provoking statements such as "drink my blood and eat my flesh" without giving much explanation and telling his followers to keep quite about miracles because it wasn't the right time, etc.
quantumfaith
Active Member
:thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:
When did God predetermine that His Son would be murdered by the Jews?
So, you see where this is going. You can't escape your notion of culpability. God created this world for the purpose of the Fall and Christ's murder.
psalms109:31
Active Member
When you see rebelling angels , men, and Adam and men going against the Law of God His commandment, by God revealing Himself through what He has made it seems to me that God will not create a being without being a free agent.
If His will was to create a being without being a free agent angels would never of rebelled.
Ezekiel 28:
14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
If His will was to create a being without being a free agent angels would never of rebelled.
Ezekiel 28:
14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
Last edited by a moderator:
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Why don't you ask the Infralapsarian Calvinists, Sublapsarian Calvinists and Postlapsarian Calvinists to tell you what they think the infinite TIMELESS creator determined PRIOR to determining what he determined. But be sure they explain to you how it is that an omniscient being who knew his determinations prior to determining them came to make that determination. :tonofbricks:
I'll stick with Romans 11:33-36.
Chicken. You know where this is heading and you have no answer. :type:
- Status