That Nagging Problem

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

What has Paul just been talking about before he starts the potter's account? He is talking about the hardening of Pharoah. Already, this should be a clue - when Paul then immediately talks about clay vessels, he is still talking about a hardening. I find it very difficult to believe that the use of the specific analogy of clay, following a reference to the hardening of Pharoah, is a coincidence.

Paul is comparing Israel to Pharoah. Just as God hardened Pharoah to achieve a great historical act of redemption - the deliverance of the Jews out of exile from Egypt, so God has hardened Israel in service of another great act of redemption - the deliverance of all mankind out of exile from the garden.

Why has God hardened Israel - Romans 7:13 tells us:

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

The "in order that" and the "so that" are strongly suggestive of a divine purpose. God has used the Law to draw sin together onto national Israel, and from there it will be placed on the shoulders of her representative - Jesus.

GE
A very thought provoking viewpoint, to me at first sight quite acceptable. I would only qualify, not exclusive of individual election.

By the way, I have just read the old idea about Simon of Cirene. Prof Jan du Randt - from Afirca like me - gets exited, and exclaims, "Ah, Africa is represented!" -- in the Gospel of course. But the thought came up, 'Simon of Cirene' - that's only the man's name. He obviously was of the diaspora, as today there are Simons of America in Israel. No! Simon represents the Jews in the Gospel! Just before I opened your post! I enjoyed it!

 

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

As did the Greek fatalists. The only difference I can see is in which God or gods divinely determine what will happen.

You are in no better position regarding your destiny than they were -- it is out of your hands. To say it is all in God's or gods' hands is incidental to the argument that, for you, there is nothing you can do about your "election" or your "calling."

skypair

GE
As I understand you, you hold a very bold fatalistic view, even more fatalistic than Islam. The problem with both your views is that it delivers God over to circumstance and blind and helpless tumbling through eternal space and time. For me it's impossible to think of -- for one reason only --- that God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ that He created and upholds and steers with a purpose and towards an end, which is Jesus Christ. Election to me would make not sense - not even faith-sense - were it not God does nothing except in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, towards Christ, for Christ. We, are not elected in ourselves; we are elected, but in Christ Jesus.

 

[Andre]

I ask you this, if God determines the outcomes, then has he not also determined the means to that end?

I don't buy your last statement at all, if God controls the end, then He must also control the means, whatever they may be, or else a man's will forces God to do things which He is unwilling to do.

The notion that God has to control the means in order to determine the outcomes is mistaken, I believe.

Let's say that I am playing tennis against Roger Federer. I am a terrible tennis player. Does Roger Federer completely control what I do when I play tennis against him? Of course not. I am free to do whatever I want when we play. I can choose to approach the net or stay at the baseline, etc.

Is Federer assured of victory? Yes he is. Short of him dropping dead of a heart attack or breaking both legs, he will most certainly win. So while Federer controls the outcomes, there are lots of free will decisions made by me on the road to my certain ass-whoopin' at the hands of the world's best tennis player.

The analogy is not perfect, but I think it highlights a critical conceptual point - in some systems, degrees of freedom on the part of some agents in the system cannot change the certainty of certain outcomes as willed by other, more powerful, agents in the system.

Obviously, this argument is not relevant if you happen to believe that God has a specific will in respect to every event that takes place in the Universe. But I submit that such a position will be very hard to defend scripturally. Rather, I think that that we humans, by virtue of our tendency to oversimplify, often take the path of least intellectual resistance and assume that in order to assure a certain outcome, God must pre-determine all the events in history leading up to that outcome.

I do not think that this is so, and suggest that God is sophisticated and subtle enough to ensure that His purposes are achieved in a world where human beings have a measure of free will and self-determination.

 

[Ivon Denosovich]

Resolved: Bush worse than Clinton on National Security

deleted post

wrong forum! sorry!

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Andre: I think that that we humans, by virtue of our tendency to oversimplify, often take the path of least intellectual resistance and assume that in order to assure a certain outcome, God must pre-determine all the events in history leading up to that outcome.

I do not think that this is so, and suggest that God is sophisticated and subtle enough to ensure that His purposes are achieved in a world where human beings have a measure of free will and self-determination.

HP: Now that is using your God given intellect for a useful purpose. I think you post makes sense and your illustration useful. :thumbs:

God possess as foreknowledge greater than ours, which can foreknow matters of perfect choice as well as those of necessity, and that without coercing the results. Proof of this is that God foreknows the outcome of our choices, but still is Just in ascribing praise or blame to them. If God actually determined the outcomes, blame or praise could in no way be justly predicated of that which in reality God coerced or forced the outcome.

I have one question for you though. Can you define for us what you see as ‘a measure of free will?’ To me, either your will is free or it is not. I do not understand what you mean by 'a measure of free will.'

We have to realize that no one can will that which the mind sees as a natural impossibility, but that is not a limit on free will as it is a limit on scope of our granted abilities. We also must realize that some things, being a natural impossibility, lie outside of the purview of morality, and therefore blame or praise for not being able to will things beyond our understood abilities cannot be predicated of the lack of formed intents. This leads us to the conclusion that within the realm of morality, within the realm where praise and blame can justly be predicated, freedom either has to exist or it does not. The notion of a ‘measure of free will’ to me is simply not applicable to mans moral state.

 

[Andre]

I have one question for you though. Can you define for us what you see as ‘a measure of free will?’ To me, either your will is free or it is not. I do not understand what you mean by 'a measure of free will.'

Thanks for your kind words, HP.

When I say that man has a meaure of free will, I meant to communicate my belief that our freedom to act is probably a lot more constrained than we think it is. So while I believe in the existence of free will, I think it a lot weaker than many others probably think it is. Our life circumstances have closed a number of doors to us.

Let's say that "Fred" was traumatized in his youth in a vicious dog attack (I love dogs - this is just an example). Perhaps Fred has developed a fear of dogs that simply cannot be undone - maybe the "neurons are set for good" in respect to this matter. So while Fred might develop an intellectual understanding that 99.999999% of dogs pose no threat, his reaction of fear may be unstoppable.

As you point out, one cannot will to do something that is impossible for us to do. And I think I agree with you that "within the realm of morality, freedom either has to exist or it does not". What about "hardening effects" however? Let's say that, at age 18, I freely decide to (for example) steal something from a store. If I continue to make such "bad moral choices", I can imagine that I might slowly lose my ability to choose not to steal.

On the other hand, it does seem likely that a person who has become a "hardened" sinner still knows "somewhere deep down in his/her mind" that they are doing something wrong.

So I think I agree with you on this.

 

[Dustin]

HP: Now that is using your God given intellect for a useful purpose. I think you post makes sense and your illustration useful. :thumbs:

God possess as foreknowledge greater than ours, which can foreknow matters of perfect choice as well as those of necessity, and that without coercing the results. Proof of this is that God foreknows the outcome of our choices, but still is Just in ascribing praise or blame to them. If God actually determined the outcomes, blame or praise could in no way be justly predicated of that which in reality God coerced or forced the outcome.

Yes, it could! The Bible teaches God is just in whatever he does, whether it be the salvation of the elect or the damnation of the reprobate. If it is our Creator and Redeemer who decideds such, who are we to argue? Do we have morals that God doesn't? No, we don't. God gave US a moral compass, the conscious, that is just as infected by sin as any other part of us. How can you justify judging God Himself with your own, twisted, sin-infected reasoning? Was God just in telling Israel to kill the children of thier enemies? Of course He was. God doesn't have any law to follow, God IS the law. God says what is right and what is wrong. That's how things are, and that is why so many people are disallusioned by the crap that is being thrown around as Christianity these days. They say well if God is good, then why do people starve or why do innocent babies die during birth or why doesn't God make them rich or why does anything they see as bad happen? That is just another product of thier sinful minds. They say if it is not good in my eyes, then God has to answer for it.

It is then when they realize that God is not how they think He should be, they want no part of HIm, and are content to hate the true God as revealed in the Scriptures and continue to make thier own god in thier minds, a god that suits thier sinful desires. Even that is determined by God.



If someone is unjust, God, on the count of Christ, declares them just. If we are sinful, if our best works are filthy rags (i.e. used tampons, literally) in God's sight, how can we by our "free will" just decide to do good? THAT is the beauty of the Gospel. THAT is mercy. THAT is grace. The fact is that God has already done this, before any of us were born, God made a way to justfy those who are unjust. He determined the ends and the means beforehand, apart from any of our say.

So what is there to complain about or debate?

Soli Deo GLoria,
Dustin

 

[Andre]

So what is there to complain about or debate?

Plenty - namely the very idea that God elects some to salvation and some to damnation. I think that NT Wright makes a very compelling and detailed argument that in Romans 9, Paul is not addressing matters of individual election. You have stated that you "disagree" with this. Fine. But I think that argument is compelling (as do others such as GE).

I have read a number of arguments that show that "Calvinist" readings of texts like John 6 and Ephesians 1 are simply not the correct interpretation. These matters are what is at issue.

Besides, I think that the whole argument that "God is just in whatever He does" is probably incorrectly articulated. When you post that, I hear you saying something like this:

"By virtue of His being the creator of the Universe and being all-powerful, God can do anythings He wants to do and whatever that is will be 'just'"

when I suspect that the reality is something like this:

"God's actions may at first appear unjust, but in hindsight, we always discern the justice in them"

I want to highlight an important difference in these 2 views. In the second, we do indeed "recognize" the justice of God - we have a faculty that discerns justice - we are not simply saying that God is just simply by virtue of being powerful.

In a similar way, I think HP's argument is very powerful: if God determines everything that happens, it is conceptually inccoherent to even conceive of human beings as separate entities onto which judgements of blame and praise can be attributed. In such a world we are really just pawns of God and are no more "blameable" than our fingers are distinctly blameable from our minds if and when we use our fingers to shoplift.

I do not mind stating that, apart from what I see as shaky scriptural support, the "Calvinist" take on the way God works in the world seems profoundly absurd and non-sensical - doing extreme violence to our deeply held intuitions about notions of justice and personal responsibility. We would never dream of structuring a society based on such principles, yet they persist in the theology of some.

And to anticipate the objection that I am using "human wisdom" to 'judge' God I will say that it is one thing to accept that God is mysterious and His wisdom is often hard to discern. It is quite another to take the mystery away and make clear claims about God that are so non-sensical to us (e.g. that He pre-destines some to an eternity of torment) that they cannot be useful knowledge for us.

And this issue of having "useful" knowledge should not be ignored. I suggest that while we utter the words "God is just to pre-destine someone to eternal torment", we really do that through gritted teeth. Propositions such as this are so deeply counter-intuitive to us that they really can do nothing practical to advance our kingdom-building in the world. They become abstract propostions, so highly at odds with our deeply held intuition that they become essentially unusable by us.

 

[skypair]

But, from a Christian perspective (i.e. true perspective) we know that God, as defined in the Bible, created and controls everything.

Created - yes. Controls - no. Man, and before him Satan, were created with independent volitions/wills. If we agree with you, then we would always be "slaves" to God and never to another will like Satan or self.

So no --- it is patently obvious that God does not "control" our wills nor Satan's will. And as He doesn't control my will, He doesn't control my sin -- which is exactly what the Bible says God never does or causes.

I ask you this, if God determines the outcomes, then has he not also determined the means to that end?

No -- the thing that He has in advantage instead is foreknowledge. And the one thing He can control --- and He controls to the extent as He reveals His will to them --- is BELIEVERS.

So in the case of Moses and Pharoah, God couldn't make Pharoah let his people go without sending Moses time and again to his presence. In every case, Pharoah could have obeyed and the outcome would have been without dire consequences that Pharoah instead suffered by disobedience. So for Pharoah, it's obey or not, God's end/will is accomplished EITHER WAY.

What about Judas, he betrayed Christ into the hands of the Jews, so that the Scriptures would be fufilled. It was written, then it was carried out, all in God's control.

"Have I not chosen you and one of you is the devil?" God foreknew what Judas would do and chose him for that reason. Nathaniel (John 1:50) would obviously have been a poor choice (though a good disciple), right? But God had to pick one who was a "social climber," and self-serving man. Do you see how foreknowledge allows God to "manage" His plan without taking the decisions out of our hands?

He was soveriegnly in control in all phases.

Yes, and if the Jews had accepted Christ on Palm Sunday, God would still have "managed" His plan --- except we might have the tribulation, Israel's 70th week, behind us already! Can you imagine that? There's buzz on another thread that there is only 1 passage where it says Christ's kingdom is 1000 years long. One of the reasons 1000 was not mentioned with Messsiah's kingdom in the OT is that it might have lasted 3000 years if they had accepted Him!!

The Romans, by themselves, might have crucified Him and, in 7 years, Christ return! Judas might have become AC in that time having betrayed Jesus to Rome and not to the Pharisees.

Yours (and most people's problems) with sovereignty and control is that they think the way it happened was the ONLY option God had to fulfill His will. You're thinking too small, Dustin!

... or else a man's will forces God to do things which He is unwilling to do.

In fact, man does force God to do things He does not will to do -- He wills that ALL come to repentance. Do you believe that? Hell was created for Satan and his demons, NOT for man. Did God create man in order to wipe him out in a flood? Did God warn Nineveh in order to save one generation and destroy their children? Did God found this nation in order to see us fall into what we see today, Rev 18:1-4?? I am sure it would keep your dogma intact to believe these but the Bible says otherwise.

skypair

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Andre: As you point out, one cannot will to do something that is impossible for us to do. And I think I agree with you that "within the realm of morality, freedom either has to exist or it does not". What about "hardening effects" however? Let's say that, at age 18, I freely decide to (for example) steal something from a store. If I continue to make such "bad moral choices", I can imagine that I might slowly lose my ability to choose not to steal.

HP: You raise a good point. It is beyond obvious that some do reach a point in which moral decisions cannot be properly made. Some have never even reached the age of accountability, being born mentally deficient. We would pity such in that case, not punish them. They would only be responsible up until the point where freedom ceases. They indeed would be held accountable to God for formed intents which would have rendered them in the a-moral condition they might end up in. For instance, one may be totally competent and choose to drink alcohol. They may drink so much that they honestly are no more to be considered in a state of moral agency, but they still would be accountable for choosing to take that path. They might not be judged criminally responsible for the acts they did in a totally inebriated state, but they certainly would be held liable again for choosing to drink as they did.

In far too many cases, some may be judged as mentally incompetent that actuality are not, but rather have simply developed an ability to act ‘as if though’ they have no conscience. There is a case of a very well known powerful liberal Senator in the State of OK that was a legislator for far too many years. Now that he is retired and being charged with corruption in office, he is being judged by one judge, mentally incompetent to stand trial. I for one think he is as incompetent as a fox. Who knows the actual state of his mind at this time. He will still have a judgment to come that the Perfect Judge of the Universe will pass a just sentence upon him for his actions regardless of what any earthly judge does.

Andre: On the other hand, it does seem likely that a person who has become a "hardened" sinner still knows "somewhere deep down in his/her mind" that they are doing something wrong.

HP: I for one think that this is the most likely case of many. It is not that they have no conscience or ability to understand right from wrong, but rather it is that they have found a way to act ‘as if though’ they have not one.

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Andre: Propositions such as this are so deeply counter-intuitive to us that they really can do nothing practical to advance our kingdom-building in the world. They become abstract propositions, so highly at odds with our deeply held intuition that they become essentially unusable by us.

HP: A hearty Amen!:thumbs: Not only unusable, but utterly absurd in light of GOD-GIVEN intuitive wisdom that enable us to intuit ideas such as justice.