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To: Kolokotronis
Your comments are very nice but they do not address the issues raised by my author.

So God doesn't know our choice???? Yet He foreknows us???? Doesn't this seem the least bit odd?

670 posted on 11/19/2005 4:12:46 PM PST by HarleyD (Joh 8:36 "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.)
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To: HarleyD
He does not anticipate our choice, lest our free-will should be outraged.

How does His knowing our choice removing our free will?

I know that when my kid does something stupid, he will suffer the consequences. Knowing this, talking with him, even trying to prevent him from doing it - does that absolutely prevent his free will from doing it later?

God allows us to sin. EVEN the SAVED! Isn't this obvious?

Regards

672 posted on 11/19/2005 4:27:39 PM PST by jo kus
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To: HarleyD

" So God doesn't know our choice???? Yet He foreknows us???? Doesn't this seem the least bit odd?"

No; "anticipate" in this instance means to act upon foreknowledge, not that he doesn't "know". The problem is language and unless one can accept, because we cannot ever understand or participate in, as humans, the the ineffable essence of God but rather only experience or encounter His energies, human language will never be enough to describe God. For this reason, the apophatic theology of the Cappadocian Fathers (and to an extent the experiences of those Eastern and Western Christians who have experienced the Uncreated Light of God as at Mount Tabor)is the only theology which gives a marginally satisfactory way to look at what God is in terms of theosis, or put another way, the fulfillment of why we were created, which, in the end, is precisely what we are talking about here.

When we use anthropormorphic terminology (which is pretty much all we have) and don't accept (again, we cannot "understand") the ineffability of God, we end up with a God who, in human terms and with a human heart, "damns" and "elects". The truth of the matter is that God does not "exist" in any sense that we can understand.


674 posted on 11/19/2005 5:13:09 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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