If that is the answer, than why doesn't God's infinite sacrifice work for everyone? If God desires that all men be saved, and if Christ died for the sin of the WORLD, then there must be another factor involved in determining who goes to heaven/hell - a factor that God allows to exist. This, we call free will of men. It is a secondary cause - as only God can be the first mover. But since God has given His creation the ability to utilize rational thought and make free will decisions, God necessarily allows man to exist in a world that is not perfect, one that "defies" God's Will that all men be saved. THIS is God's choice, a graduated order of creation.
I don't think Christ went through the whole ordeal for no reason, except that it was absolutely necessary to save us. What other reason could there be for Him to go through the worst thing we could imagine?
For love. God wasn't required to do any such thing as die. He could have merely came down, waved His hand, and said "all men are forgiven". WHY does God "have" to die?? Who is forcing God to die on the cross but love?
And yes, I am saying that God not only ordains that sin happen, but also that it was His will that sin exist on this earth.
Strictly speaking, I disagree. It is God's will that man be free - THIS is God's will. He didn't give us Commandments for the express purpose of their being broken and disobeyed! God's strict will is that men OBEY Him and turn to Him - but their is a caveat - man must do it freely (of course, God guides us, but not force us). It is NOT God's "Will" that sin exists - He makes goodness come from it, but it is illogical that God desires sin to exist for its own sake. It is a side effect of man's free will.
I believe God is sovereign and in full control, and I cannot make sense of any idea that God's sovereignty is satisfied by God partially releasing His control to humans.
God doesn't give up control because we have free will! He already knows how we will act in every situation - thus, He is not surprised or taken aback by anything we do. To believe that God releases control is to place God into time, awaiting humans to make decisions, or forcing them to make the decisions He wants them to make! Why would God have to "force" anything, since He sees what we will do already.
Calvinists believe that man has free will
That's rhetoric. A Calvinist does not believe in freedom of choice. An unregenerated man can ONLY choose evil, while the regenerated man can ONLY choose good, according to Harley. This is not free will, this is a bound will. In any case, both men above can do good or evil in a given situation - that much should be readily apparent in real life.
I recognize that you said that man's free will does not impede God, but then you also say that God's plan takes into account man's actions. You further say that God foresaw what we would do to Christ, but, in effect, fortunately, God loved us anyway.
That is my belief - that God sees our free will decisions and responses to His initiatives.
First, that God did not take into account our decisions in the making of His plan. Second, that God did. Wouldn't you agree that these would be two mutually exclusive plans, i.e., that both cannot possibly be true? We don't make decisions like God does, so they have to be different, right? That's why I keep hopping on my hobby horse that God isn't dependent on man, even partially, for His plan. If God uses our decisions, THEN NECESSARILY, He planned differently than He otherwise would have.
For the most part, it appears that the two concepts are mutually exclusive. But God's foreknowledge of our actions doesn't make God dependent on man - He is able to plan accordingly, simultaneously, to enable man to make what is a free will choice for him, done the way God desires. Remember, God doesn't work on a linear time line. Everything is done in one moment for Him. At the same time, He sees what we will do in a given situation - while HE provides the impetus and circumstances that will enable us to CHOOSE what He desires in a given situation. Thus, He is not dependent on our actions.
We both agree that God created satan, that satan is evil, but God is not the author of evil, right?
God did not create an evil being. Remember in Genesis, after God had completed creation, He said it was "very good". We presume that the angels had not yet fallen. It was their free will choice to NOT follow God - which God foresaw but not desire or ordain. IF God created an evil being, then God IS the author of evil, correct?
God has no duty to the universe to stop satan's evil, even though He could stop it at any time with a snap of His fingers.
It is His will that evil exists, despite that He did not create it or desires its existence. God is pure holiness. He does not desire the existence of evil - accept in that it enable man to retain free will. If evil was not possible because God did away with it, then man would not have free will - without free will, there is no love.
In God's plan He withholds or withdraws grace from some and then they are left only to their sin nature, meaning they will sin. God ordained that, but He did not author the sin itself. That was done by man, even if he had no independent ability to avoid it.
God withholds grace not knowing what a man will do with grace given Him makes God just? Is God randomly choosing the elect? And while you say that God ordained evil - and claim that God did not author sin - I find as completely contradictory. When someone ordains something, they are creating it, authoring it. The moment you say "God ordained sin", you are saying that God authored sin. You can't have it both ways. Either God does NOT ordain sin, man does, or God DOES ordain sin, and He is responsible for man's sinning.
Perhaps a human example would be a classic "entrapment" scenario, whereby an undercover cop poses as a bum in the alley and leaves a $50 bill laying on his chest. He appears to be sleeping. When someone comes along and tries to steal it, who "caused" the crime? In this loose analogy, the cop was "ordaining", but the thief was the author of the sin (evil). Of course God's powers erase all doubt of the outcome.
Who caused the crime? The man stealing the money. No one "forced" the man to take it, no matter the circumstance of "entrapment". The cop was NOT ordaining anything, he ALLOWED it. There is a difference between actively creating something or forcing something or necessitating something, AND allowing it. NO ONE forced that man to take the money off the man's chest! Thus, with God. NO ONE forces man to sin - we do it ourselves. Thus, God does NOT ordain sin or necessitates it. To say this would to make God the author of sin.
But you tell me that God takes into account man's actions. If God actually plans differently than He otherwise would have, because of man, then that necessitates a change based on foreknowledge.
That is all speculation, I suppose. Who can say what sort of options move around in the mind of God or how He plans things such as that? We can say, though, that God foresees what we will do at the same time as He "plans", since there is no past or future with God.
This foreknowledge of man necessitates that God do something He would not have done but for the foreknowledge
Is God's will bound by His foreknowledge???
As for the football game, YES, you would have caused the outcome of the game by knowing the score, IF you made the game, AND you owned the game, AND you made and owned all the players of the game, AND YOU WERE IN ABSOLUTE AND FULL CONTROL OF EVERY ASPECT OF THAT GAME from before the sport itself was even invented. :)
God has given man the ability of being secondary causes. Yes, God gave us the ability to sit in a chair, but does that mean we cannot cause ourselves to sit down? God gave all mobile creatures the ability of self-motion. God keeps us in existence and has given us particular powers and abilities which do NOT imply that God is not necessary. We are created this way to further glorify God. When a man chooses to walk, He is doing God's will by fulfilling the use of his legs. When man does a morally good deed, He is fulfilling his purpose, to come into a loving relationship with the Father through love.
When God withdraws or withholds, He knows there is only one result that is possible. Left to our own devices, there is only wickedness.
And why would God withhold grace from us, knowing full well we need it to be saved - UNLESS we reject it? To say God purposely withholds grace from an unelect people who might have followed Him otherwise makes God a just God? That is the thinking of Jonah and his attitude towards the Ninevites...God does not withhold Himself from anyone whom He foresees would come to repentance due to His graces given them. He is a just and merciful God who deeply desires our love.
God uses, or "ordains" that wickedness, with full knowledge of the result.
REPEAT after me: "God allows", "God allows". Foreseeing is not causing something. To ordain is to cause wickedness. I don't recognize God being the cause of evil as a Christian teaching.
If God ALWAYS just leaves us alone when we rebel, as you seem to suggest in saying there is no connection to God's ordaining, then how do you explain that all the evil prophesied in the Bible just happened to come true?
God naturally saw that man would sin by following his own will, rather than God's will. God foresaw that man would turn away, despite God's trying to grace man.
If I'm reading you right, then this supports my concern from earlier, that you believe that God looked down the corridor, saw whatever evil man decided to commit, and then fashioned history around that. That is not the kind of free will I believe in.
God sees man's evil AND fashions history in that one moment of eternity. There is no order of action in God. It all occurs at once.
Does God ordain anything?
Yes, God ordains His elect. I personally believe that God foresees who will respond to His gifts at the same time that He ordains them - but this is a type of Molinism that is acceptable within Catholic theology. Regardless of HOW God decides, He certainly DOES predestine the elect and ordains that they be saved without losing any. Sadly for us, we don't know who is on that list right now!!
The idea that God wished to delegate some of that control, on purpose, to creatures as sinful as us makes me think He really isn't in control.
Who named the animals in the Garden? Who was given the command to be fruitful and multiply (to create)? Who was made in the image and likeness of God? Yes, God is in control in that He has already seen our choice.
Without God being in full control, man would have destroyed himself in his own wickedness.
Men DO destroy themselves as a result of their wickedness, spiritually speaking. When God does not abide in man, He is spiritually dead, but this doesn't mean that the man is beyond any possibility of doing a morally good deed. We should distinguish between doing a good deed and doing a pleasing deed in God's eyes. Only one with faith can do the latter. That person is spiritually alive, the former is spiritually dead. The spiritual definitions of death, though, do not necessarily transfer over to the physical world. Yes, God is in control because He has seen the end of the world already. We have to realize that God's foresight is accurate and it is simulataneous in that there is no past or future with God.
Regards
Such is the nature of election. If God had wanted to elect everyone, He would have. We agree that He didn't elect everyone. I say, therefore, God could not have wanted all men to be saved, or else He is a weak God. In a similar way, if God allows men to snatch themselves out of His hand, then God wasn't strong enough to accomplish what He wanted in terms of the most important thing to humans. It seems that your side believes that to God, it is much more important that man be free to kill himself than it is for His children to be saved.
In the way you seem to be speaking of it, the extra factor (man's free will) is actually the deciding factor in salvation. Man decides his own destiny using his free will. Our disagreement is that I do not believe man has "enough" goodness on his own to make the right decision, you apparently do. You can say that God gives all the help you want, but under your theology, man still makes the final decision. Free will, in the way you are using the term, cannot be free if God controls.
[On why Christ would go to the cross if it was unnecessary:] For love. God wasn't required to do any such thing as die. He could have merely came down, waved His hand, and said "all men are forgiven". WHY does God "have" to die?? Who is forcing God to die on the cross but love?
That is my point, God COULD have waived His hand IF it would have worked, but He didn't. How in the world does it show love to us for Him to die if it wasn't necessary? And the quote you must be thinking of does not apply. If I said to my wife "I love you honey, I'm doing this for you", and then jumped off a building, would that really be showing love for my wife? That is what you seem to be asking me to believe Jesus did. If Jesus didn't HAVE to die to save us, then He committed blind suicide. I conclude that Christ gave His life FOR us because it was the only way.
He didn't give us Commandments for the express purpose of their being broken and disobeyed!
Well. maybe not the expressed purpose, but I would still say it was one purpose of them. I'll borrow one of your own types of arguments and ask why would God give a set of Commandments He knew no one could keep to His standards? A major reason must have been to show us this was not the way to heaven.
It is NOT God's "Will" that sin exists - He makes goodness come from it, but it is illogical that God desires sin to exist for its own sake. It is a side effect of man's free will.
No one said God wills that sin exist for its own sake or for no reason, but since there is a reason, I still say God wills it. It is immaterial if it is categorized as a side effect of men or not, it exists, God is in full control, so He willed it.
To believe that God releases control is to place God into time, awaiting humans to make decisions, or forcing them to make the decisions He wants them to make!
But you have already said that God uses His foreknowledge of man's decisions to make some of His decisions. That is releasing control. If God sees that a man will choose 'A', then God will choose 'B'. If God really was in control, He would choose 'B' independently and then make sure that 'A' would make the corresponding "choice".
FK: "Calvinists believe that man has free will."
That's rhetoric. A Calvinist does not believe in freedom of choice. An unregenerated man can ONLY choose evil, while the regenerated man can ONLY choose good, according to Harley. This is not free will, this is a bound will.
From Harley's description and my agreement, it is clear that we see the concept of free will very differently from you. That is true. However, while we would say that an unregenerated man cannot choose good in God's eyes, NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE on our side has ever said that a regenerated man can only choose good. A nickel says that Harley and I together can put up two good examples why that is impossible. :)
But look at our differences on the issue of freedom of choice. We would say that on the side of "good" choices, that man does not have the capability to make them independently of God. Your side disagrees, and says that man IS "good" enough to make good choices, with help BUT STILL, independently of God (wounded vs. total depravity). Where is each side placing its faith concerning salvation? In the case of "bad" choices, I would imagine that both sides are very close.
But God's foreknowledge of our actions doesn't make God dependent on man - He is able to plan accordingly, simultaneously, to enable man to make what is a free will choice for him, done the way God desires.
I don't see how that can be. The second you say "plan accordingly", whether outside of time or not, that means God is dependent because God's plan would have been different BUT FOR man's decisions. The only way out would be to say that God's plan is not implemented in full because man's decisions necessarily deviate from what God would have planned had He been in control. (You said that God only gives us the tools to do what He wants, but of course, that doesn't always work out, so therefore the plan God would have made without man's input is thwarted.)
It was their [fallen angels] free will choice to NOT follow God - which God foresaw but not desire or ordain. IF God created an evil being, then God IS the author of evil, correct?
God created an angel, knowing full well this angel would later become satan. If God did not desire or ordain this, then why did He do it? The millisecond after satan became satan, God could have crushed him like a bug, but He didn't. Why not, if He did not desire or ordain satan's existence? To answer your question, it depends on what you mean by "evil being". If you mean a being equivalent to satan in his present state, then I would agree. However, if evil is the absence of God, then all of us are born in that state, and God creates all of us, so ...
It is His will that evil exists, despite that He did not create it or desires its existence. God is pure holiness. He does not desire the existence of evil - accept in that it enable man to retain free will.
Jo Kus from above - "It is NOT God's "Will" that sin exists ..." Well, does God desire the existence of evil or not? Your view here is rather encompassing. :) Another issue I see cropping up is that we see the concept of "ordaining" differently. I would say that all that God wills, He ordains. Do you disagree?
TBC ...
God withholds grace not knowing what a man will do with grace given Him makes God just? Is God randomly choosing the elect?
I'm sorry, I don't understand your first question or how it comes from what I said. God does nothing randomly.
When someone ordains something, they are creating it, authoring it. The moment you say "God ordained sin", you are saying that God authored sin. You can't have it both ways. Either God does NOT ordain sin, man does, or God DOES ordain sin, and He is responsible for man's sinning.
OOPS, I should have stuck this part in with the other post, sorry. Surrounding the crucifixion was a multitude of sins. If God ordained none of them, then man was in control? Is this right? Now I may see why you cannot believe that the crucifixion was necessarily the only way. Since man was in control, God looked down the corridor, saw that man would crucify the Son, and ordered His plan accordingly. What would have happened had God seen that man would not have crucified Jesus? God would have been forced to come up with another method of salvation. Therefore, you're saying that with man in control, the crucifixion must not have been the only way.
FK: "If God actually plans differently than He otherwise would have, because of man, then that necessitates a change based on foreknowledge."
That is all speculation, I suppose. Who can say what sort of options move around in the mind of God or how He plans things such as that?
I know we touch on this in the other post, but I would say we can know that the plans would be different because our ways are not God's ways.
Is God's will bound by His foreknowledge???
Saying that everything happens simultaneously renders such a good question moot, and you know I don't like that. :) My answer would be that God's foreknowledge is bound by His will. To me, it seems that the only way we can possibly understand this is to say that God willed first. His foreknowledge is the box score of His will. This can only be true if God is truly in control. If, OTOH, God molds His will around the decisions of men, then God's will would be bound by His foreknowledge. Of course I hold to the former.
And why would God withhold grace from us, knowing full well we need it to be saved - UNLESS we reject it? To say God purposely withholds grace from an unelect people who might have followed Him otherwise makes God a just God?
God withholds from whom He will withhold. His will alone determines who gets grace and who does not. He is the potter. That He withholds from anyone does make Him a just God. I don't understand your speculation on who "would have" come to God with grace. There must be a certain level of grace whereby everyone would come to God, right? But God doesn't give that to everyone, so in that sense He withholds from everyone who doesn't make it.
God does not withhold Himself from anyone whom He foresees would come to repentance due to His graces given them. He is a just and merciful God who deeply desires our love.
Here is another example of God's dependence on man. God foresees man's exercise of his free will, and then God is bound not to withhold. Under your view, man steers God's will.
Yes, God ordains His elect. ... Regardless of HOW God decides, He certainly DOES predestine the elect and ordains that they be saved without losing any.
OK, great! I did think you believed in single predestination.
Sadly for us, we don't know who is on that list right now!!
God never said I couldn't repeat this, so, He actually gave me a redacted version of the list! I could show it to you if you want. :)
Who named the animals in the Garden? Who was given the command to be fruitful and multiply (to create)? Who was made in the image and likeness of God? Yes, God is in control in that He has already seen our choice.
Since it happened before the fall, God named the animals through Adam. God creates all people through their parents. I don't think God is in control because He knows our choices, He is in control because He does the work that is good. Earlier, you used the example of a football game when you argued that knowing the outcome would NOT mean that the person was in control of the outcome of the game.
When God does not abide in man, He is spiritually dead, but this doesn't mean that the man is beyond any possibility of doing a morally good deed. We should distinguish between doing a good deed and doing a pleasing deed in God's eyes.
Good idea. If you make that distinction, then we probably agree on this. The question I would have surrounds "morally". Is there such a thing as "man's morality" vs. "God's morality"?