I depends on how you define fair. If by fair you mean that God is just in all His dealings with man, then I suppose that definition will suffice.
Now be careful, don’t hurt your argument by admitting to the divine attribute of Truth in all His dealing with man, it may lead to confession of a genuine offer of grace being made with all men next, and that is extremely self-defeating to the determinist doctrine.
But is that the normative understanding of fair? I do not think so. Fair gives the impression of equity.
Ah, here we go, I knew that "But" was coming…
On the contrary a normal understanding of “
fair” would include “
impartiality” and in the subject at hand this relates to divine judgment being "
just" in relation to God being a God of Love, Mercy, Truth and a genuine offer of grace gifted by the means of “true” availability. All this logically has to be based on Him giving His creatures the volition that would assign responsibility for their actions during judgment. To deny that is to deny He is Truth.
Does God owe one person the same as another?
Owe??? God is Truth, it has nothing to do with the strawman fallacious attempt that would suggest "owing", what it has to do with is His Being and Nature,
all His ways, including “judgment” being in "Truth".
Is God under compulsion, as a fair God,…
That is like asking does God have to have truth to be a God of Truth? Or can’t God make 2+2=5…or how about make a rock so big that even He can’t lift it?
…to ensure that every person is exposed to the Gospel at least once in their life? If we answer "yes" to that question then is it fair that person A hears the Gospel message fifty times but person B only hears it once? Is that how we are to understand God?
You are simply striving to develop ways of disagreement with that all God’s ways are judgment and just in "truth" concerning
all His creatures in all His creation. Are you suggesting it is necessary that we understand God through a Determinist’ view of pre-selected partiality rather than understanding that He can give sufficient light to all His creatures on which He bases His judgment in an impartial way?
You are reading into Deu. 32:4 what is not there.
Even in English grammar since when is truth synonymous with fair unless the object is fair itself? You are trying to find fairness in the text when the larger context is one of guilt and judgment.
I’m sorry, but it is you reading your doctrine into that clear scripture. You are demonstrating a mere desperate attempt of trying separate truth away from coming to a conclusion (divine judgment), which would include all the divine attributes of Love, Mercy and Justice, and your question amounts to, “Does fairness have to be based in truth?” That is like asking can’t T+F=T? The answer is NO, BTW.
Look the two verses after the one you quoted:
Deuteronomy 32:5-6 5 "They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are not His children, because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation. 6 "Do you thus repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is not He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you."
Moses is writing to the nation of Israel. Should God be fair here and act according to their folly? No. The LORD displayed mercy to Israel, a mercy flowing from His grace; a mercy that Israel did not deserve.
Deuteronomy 32:7-13 7 "Remember the days of old, Consider the years of all generations. Ask your father, and he will inform you, Your elders, and they will tell you. 8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel. 9 "For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. 10 "He found him in a desert land, And in the howling waste of a wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the pupil of His eye. 11 "Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, That hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on His pinions. 12 "The LORD alone guided him, And there was no foreign god with him. 13 "He made him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field; And He made him suck honey from the rock, And oil from the flinty rock,"
If God was fair He would have condemned Israel in Deut. 32; pay them back for all their unfaithfulness towards Him.
As per Deut 32:4: All of God’s ways are judgment in truth and He is Merciful as well as Just. The fact that God displays mercy does not equate to that one must sacrifice the Divine attribute of Truth in judgment. Your argument remains centered on trying to rest on that premise while you try to read the doctrine of Determinism into the associations between all His ways being judgment/truth/just and are still attempting to remove the central aspect of “Truth” from the equation.
All of us need to thankful that God is not fair. We should be glad that He has not paid us back for all our sin. Instead of fairness we receive mercy and grace.
That is man’s idea of justice and fairness but God’s way includes an offer of mercy and grace in His judgment with a condition of a true response, ...whether or not some men would like to consider that condition fair or not. Hmmm?
We need to be thankful that in His Merciful Love He gave a
genuine offer of Grace to whosoever will believe in love of the truth that He brought into the world, namely the Light, Jesus Christ, whom He sacrificed to fulfill a promise of an offer of redemption for all in the world He lovingly created…and that He did this in Truth.
It is Not
instead of fairness, that argument amounts to an attempt to use ambiguous semantics of redefining the meaning of “fair” to support determinism by separating fairness from the aspects of truth
in regards to divine judgment to fit that doctrine (That is the point of reference concerning the meaning of “fair” coinciding with “truth” which you are trying to separate).
We need to accept ALL divine attributes being in Truth; one being that His offer is given in “truth” and this comes with a condition of requiring a “true” response. We need to be thankful that He is Truth in all His ways and be grateful that we have the volition to respond to Christ’ drawing of all men unto Him through His Word. It is “true” that from the beginning that God, in His Great Love, that He Divinely designed a world in which He thought it Just to provide a means of a “true” offer of mercy by divine grace through “true” faith which is given in “love of the truth” for all His creatures, whosoever will believe.
True faith requires a true response. We should be thankful that His justice is based on “truth” in His judgment and should understand that He knows our hearts, whether or not we are “truly” responding in love of
all that is “True” of Him and we should NOT be trying to rest on an
excuse of inability and claiming that fairness can only come through not having a “real” (true) choice in the matter of a true response. How does such a belief of the Determinist
not equate to the message being a mere illusion, a lie? The doctrine of determinism must attempt to toss out the value of truth (that has been shown to be abundantly clear by your arguments) and in the process Determinism unavoidably becomes a fatalistic theology at its roots.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
(Rom 1:20)
