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Unspun, you have taken self-will to be a gift of God to be treasured and defended. You see Christ as the most willful being in the New Testament and Paul as the second most willful. In each of these instances, you treasure their ability to choose - the having of a will - above the choice they made.

Nope.

Betty, certainly there can be no obedience without willfulness just like there can be no good without evil. Hate exists so that we can know love. Fear exists so that we can know courage. Evil exists so that we can know good. Willfulness exists so that we can obey. But none of this means that hate, fear, evil, willfulness are therefore to be treasured and should be continued in the presence of God.

I must say I just don't agree with this and it does have to me, the appearance of dualism, sweet A-G. God is preternatural, apriori and does not need anti-God in order to be fully experienced as God. The same, for his qualities. The same for how he may be perceived, by one created to be in communion with him.

Satan's grave error was not willfulness (if "willfulness" means having the full faculties of one's will). His error was pride, egocentrism. He turned his will against God and toward his own nature. Silly guy.

Adam and Eve would have been better off being more wilfull in obeying God than in disobeying God, simply enough.

Unspun, we are in hopeless disagreement on this one. I am not the captain of my ship and the master of my destiny. I choose not to be willful, rather I choose to submit altogether to God’s will. The joy of wallowing in His being is beyond words and I couldn’t be happier in this life. But if you’d rather have a spiritual relationship where you retain your identity, your will, and dance – that is your choice. Each disciple had a different personality and the churches in Revelation had different personalities. I expect to see y'all in heaven also!

I want to be fully overwhelmed by God, inside and out. Intermingled even, as He would allow, in His glory. I just know what he's given me. I think you've said in a very recent post that God is not someone who gives then takes back. Dear Theophilla, I will try to explicate within the next day or two, and perhaps present some consequences. I do think that we have a disagreement on the definition of terms, but with all cherishing and respect, I believe I do not take the simple truth of "will" to mean something it wasn't intended to mean (vainglory of any kind). Please don't let me get hung up on the words "relation" and "dance;" I also very much mean communion.

Thank you so much for your post, unspun! I do look forward to your explication and am glad to see that at least some of our disagreement is in word usage.

This is another one of those things where we will probably end up in disagreement due to our understanding of origins. Mine is somewhat unique but is based on the Word, Jewish tradition and science. I described it at length in the post linked above at 213, but that which bears on the “dualism” issue is as follows.

One of the words used to describe God at creation is Ayn Sof which roughly translated from Hebrew means infinite and nothing. The scientific term for this state at the beginning, is singularity - in which there are no physical laws, no space, no time, no particles, no geometry, no energy, nothing – and yet everything. It has a parallel in math as well, the number zero – nothing can be divided by it, anything multiplied by it is it, it is in between all positive and negative numbers. Infinite and not at the same time.

I pondered on this state at length and deduced that God must have wanted to reveal Himself and thus there was a beginning. Notably, the inflationary theory underlines the first three words of the Bible (“in the beginning”) – until then the mindset was a steady state universe.

Then I pondered how God would go about revealing Himself. I deduced He would create beings who could think to whom He would reveal Himself and would commune. I further deduced how He would go about communicating Himself to these beings, i.e. that He is good and truth and so forth.

These attributes would have no meaning in any language unless they were set in contrast to what they are not. (How would you know if you are happy if you have never been sad?) Thus, I pondered that He would create good and evil, love and hate, et al so that a language could be formed, the Word.

I then pondered He would communicate His will to the thinking beings so they would know Him. I also pondered that, for the words to have meaning, He would give them numerous manifestations of all these contrasts – space/time, geometry, particles, energy, matter, creatures.

One of the ideas of the Jewish Kabbalah that rings true to my spirit is that the Scriptures are another name for God, i.e. it reveals who He is. So I see all of creation – spiritual and material – and the Word as God revealing Himself.

Enter Satan, beautiful and thinking being as he is, decided he ought to exalted. He became “aware” of his beauty and self and thus was at odds with God’s will for him.

Likewise, Adam and Eve became “aware” of themselves and sought to be more by gaining the knowledge of good and evil. And likewise, they were at odds with God’s will for them.

Unspun, when it is all said and done I see us restored to what was intended at the beginning, we will be the thinking beings to whom God reveals Himself and with whom He communes. His will is what matters over all else. The Lord’s Prayer reveals as much, the meaning of life and the purpose of our existence:

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as [it is] in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

IMHO, every believer ought to meditate deeply, every day, on the Lord’s Prayer – phrase by phrase and word by word. Our place is sandwiched between God’s purpose and His dominion.