Posted on 12/19/2005 7:19:55 AM PST by laney
you can say what you want. That does not make it true.
I can tell you that tomorrow morning, my wife will wake up, make herself a cup of tea and do the crossword puzzle and then the jumble in the morning paper. Does that mean she doesn't have the choice to have a cup of coffee, or do the jumble before the crossword? No, it just means I know her pretty well. God doesn't just know us pretty well, God knows everything about us.
So much talk so little scripture.
ASV Romans 3:10as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one;11There is none that understandeth,There is none that seeketh after God;
When all else fails, read the instructions (CCEL > Bibles and Commentaries)
If I truly wanted to be cruel I would have demanded you state your reasons for declaring the scroll a "spurious, forged document" a claim based in no rational basis presented.
Sorry for the delayed response, something came up.
I believe God made physicals laws as He did, so that stuff will work in a way that we can understand them. These concepts that we talk about here, are not the same. I think you can easily have contradictions, when talking about spiritual/metaphysical things.
As an example; many say that God loves us, but others ask, if so, why do we have sickness, death and catastrophes. The general answer I see, is that this is just one of God's mysteries. I believe this is a contradiction. Many also chalk up as a mystery, when we have wars, or horrible accidents happen to good people, again, to me, this is contradictory. So, I believe we can have contradictions, as we understand them, when talking about God.
I have no way of proving or dis-proving anything, when talking about God, the metaphysical, things like that.
As I have said many times before, if I wake up tomorrow, believing differently, then fine. Until then, I can only believe as I do, which I think, is the way God made me.
Since I believe that there is only one God, I can't qualify God, as the God of the bible, or the God of anything in particular. I just believe in one God, creator of all.
We disagree fundamentally, in that I do not believe we have fallen from anything. I believe we are just as God wants us to be, otherwise, I couldn't believe that He has a plan for us.
I believe that is what God does, that is why I do not believe we truly have free-will. Everything is done for His purpose/plan.
I agree, God made many of us, with different beliefs. Since God is infinite in His knowledge and power, I believe that all true beliefs are correct.
Exactly, and He created us, knowing all this. That is why I do not believe we truly have free-will. Besides, until someone creates a time machine, we will never know if we could have made a different decision...we may think it, but we will not know it.
How about, instead of thinking of the apparent conflict in terms of "either, or" we look at it in terms of "both, and"?
IOW, consider how it may be that the issue is not "either predestination or free will", but "both predestination and free will". This shift in thinking clarifies the puzzle immediately: we truly are free to decide on our own, but G_d has known from before the beginning who we would be, what our proclivities would be, what our thoughts would be; He has know all along exactly what we, in our exercise of free will, would decide. In that environment -- with that detailed and perfect knowledge -- He could easily plan inerrantly based upon the free choices men would make throughout history.
This is the same kind of knowing that you may have of an Earthly friend whom you may know well enough to inerrantly forecast their choice of Apple Pie over Pumpkin, just that it's Divine orders of magnitude more intricate.
So, predestination and free will are not in conflict, but are simply descriptions of human decision-making from two different perspectives: G_d's and ours.
Now, let me throw a spanner into the works and point out that this really just amounts to predestination once-removed. Since, we are all G_d's workmanship, the components of our personalities and desires that drive us to certain choices are, themselves, built into us by His own hand. He truly is the potter and we are clay in His hands. Some vessels He will craft for noble purposes, some for ignoble, and yet others for destruction. See how Jesus, himself, speaks of Judas:
12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.So, then, we do have free will, just not in an unlimited sense. We have it to the degree that G_d has designed the order of the Unvierse to allow it. Beyond that, His will is both the beginning and the end of the matter and all we, who number among His creations, have no standing to say other than "Amen." As it is written:
John 17:12
22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.
Isaiah 45: 22 & 23
If free-will is constrained, as you say, by what God has designed for us, then I just can't see it as true free-will, which is pretty much what I've been saying all along. We just think we have free-will, but God really has determined what we will do, and what will happen, by allowing us to be born, knowing we will do, as He knows we will.
I agree. The only other "out" is the "G_d-out-of-time" model, in which G_d is not a participant on the chronology of Creation. In that model, such temporal concepts as "past" and "future" have no real meaning; everything is, instead, "now". That really takes it beyond the actualy horizon of the human mental capability; forcing a paradox that is so immeasurably complex that we simply connot grasp it. But this is the only context in which the "both, and" concept is truly "both, and". Otherwise, it is as I described, and we are completely subject to G_d's sovereignty down to the nth degree.
I conclude this for myself, and commend it to you as a worthwhile view: Insofar as it is within what I perceive to be my own power to decide, I have determined to believe G_d. If it turns out that I really had no choice, I'll be the more humbled that I was created to be among them that believed, If it turns out that I truly did choose of my own accord, I will have chosen aright.
"why do you believe as you do?"
Actually, I don't have to believe, any more than you have to rely on belief as the only evidence that your keyboard exists.
I disbelieved for decades. Proof was supplied. Now, I simply know, just as you know that the streets you walk and the food you eat are real.
"Part of what is so horrible about the Nazi's wasn't just that they did terrible things, but that they were so logical about it."
G. K. Chesterton has some valuable things to say about that, in Orthodoxy, as I recall. Well worth a read, especially as it's on line.
"It does mean however that man's reason will never lead him to God."
Oh, I don't know about that. There are people whose reason played a large role in their rejection of agnosticism.
" Indeed this find should excite everyone save those who have an agenda when it comes to suppressing knowledge."
Would you be exited if the original manuscript of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were found, in the author's own hand?
Would you be rushing to read it?
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