Then you must believe that man's rebellion against God is not really a "rebellion," but something God determined must happen. It was then God's decision, right?
No, man's rebellion was a real rebellion, AND God determined it must happen. God could have prevented it in any number of ways, but did not. That says it was part of His plan. However, this doesn't relieve the participants from their culpability. God did not zap them with sin, forcing them to commit it. He left them by themselves, knowing what would happen.
A price for what? What did man do that God didn't want or allow him to do? Did man's rebellion change anything God did not choreograph from before all ages? Where is the crime?
Man did nothing God didn't allow him to do. So what? Is the only way for a price to be required if man managed to surprise God somehow? All of God's creation is His to do with as He pleases. He has chosen to allow all of us to commit crime. That is part of His plan. Where is His duty to prevent it? When He chose to allow crime, along with that came a demand for a price for that crime. That is, if any are to be saved. It's a package deal that God fully thought through before He instituted it. The argument you appear to be making is that under our view, God isn't being "fair". The last thing in the world I want from God is "fair".
It's like asking that you to pay a penalty for getting sick.
No, all sin is through free will choice. We are still responsible regardless of whether choosing not to sin was an option. God doesn't owe us that option. We follow our nature, unless it is changed by God.
And what was God supposedly so 'angry' about? He didn't know that we would turn out to be a rotten bunch? Why was He 'offended?'
I'm not sure if you are referring to something specific. If not, then sin in general is what makes God angry and offended. He has the power to eliminate sin, so as to never be angry, but He chose not to do that.
No, all sin is through free will choice. We are still responsible regardless of whether choosing not to sin was an option.
Isn't it contradictory to say you have a choice if you can't choose it?
If you (being, for the sake of argument, a hetero-male-human type personnel) treat women like pleasure machines, one day you will wake up surrounded by machines, and long for human company. (I don't know about you all, but I look on Hugh Hefner and weep in grief and horror -- I'm serious.)
If you think money is the only important thing one day you will wake up surrounded by assets and commodities you own, when what humans need and long for is to be owned by the one who made us.
If you envy your brethren, one day everyone less well off than you will be a threat, and everyone more successful than you will be an insult, when what we all long for is friends for whose losses we can grieve and in whose joys we can rejoice.
And so on. The wrath of God is not in God as such, but in the essence of not loving God. The wrath of God is merely the manifestation of what our sins really are.
The Dawg is silent.
One of my favorite passages in the Hobbit is, "Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck just for your sole benefit?".
Just suppose all of what has been planned and purposed for us is part of a larger drama being played out cosmicly beyond our time and space and we are a part of it and maybe even the central part. Suppose that real life experience of Job was already played out with Adam and Eve and Satan had his audience with God just as He did over Job, however God had already planned the satisfaction for sin that Lucifer could never pay for his own sin. Remember Lucifer's sin was he wanted to be on a par with God and he was judged for it and lost his place, access and ultimately his freedom. He can't create but he tries to do the next best thing and that is to co-opt God's creation; turn it to himself away from God. His problem being that when man succombed to his temptation, instead of turning to Satan away from God, man turned to himself and made of himself a god. Thus his futile battle over the minds and hearts of God's elect. That our salvation is not only a display of God's justice in paying the penalty for our sin but a grand display of His grace and mercy to us and an exhibition of His triumph over Satan and his followers.
Amen. And the reason for all of creation is to bring glory to His name. Our salvation is "sweet savour" to God.
For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ." -- 2 Corinthians 2:14-17"Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.
Let me get this straight: God writes the script and says "Man must rebel against me. The only reason he shall rebel again me is that I say it must happen.
Oh, the rebellion was real, but is was God's will, according to you, that man commit the first sin. And, although you try clumsily to introduce 'free will' so that man can be blamed for his disobedience, at the same time you state that God's will cannot be opposed. So, in truth, man did not have a choice, but was predestined to rebel.
Then, if I am reading your theology correctly, man was trapped from the get-go to fall into the pit of sin created by God.
Man did nothing God didn't allow him to do
No, FK, I believe you are tripping over your own theology. In the first paragraph you said it had to be. You didn't say, God allowed it, so it was a tossup. In your book, there is no choice. God didn't leave it up to us to decide.
Which is it: did God predetermine everything, including our choices, or not? If God predetermined our choices, then He is the author of them and we are simply the vessels who must obey.
If you must obey, you have no choice. If you obey God's will, regardless what your choice is, and you must, how is that a sin?
No, all sin is through free will choice
Tripping...
We follow our nature, unless it is changed by God
And I though you said we follow what God says we must do. Which is it, FK?
If not, then sin in general is what makes God angry and offended
Why? From what you are telling me sin is something that had to happen because God says so. If our rebellion and fall is the result of something God said must happen, knew it would happen, made sure it happens, then why is He 'offended?' I hope you realize you didn't answer my question.