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To: OrthodoxPresbyterian
It seems to me that your interpretation of absolute predestination is correct. If God knows the future then the future is fixed. You'll get no argument from me. I would even go so far as to state that God has foreordained everything that has happened or will happen. But the question is whether or not that makes God the "cause" of all that happens. If so, then you must admit that God is the cause of all evil in the universe as much as he is the cause of all good.

How do you get around this problem? Or do you just accept it as a fact?

61 posted on 08/07/2002 8:37:41 PM PDT by P-Marlowe
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To: P-Marlowe
It seems to me that your interpretation of absolute predestination is correct. If God knows the future then the future is fixed. You'll get no argument from me. I would even go so far as to state that God has foreordained everything that has happened or will happen.

Let's make certain that you do have my understanding of absolute predestination down correctly.

God not only "knows the future" of this timestream, He has omnitemporally foreknown all possible timestreams (an infinite number), each with different foreknown Ends (i.e., "Sodom repents" vs. "Sodom does not repent"), and God has specifically chosen to create THIS Creation/timestream (in which Sodom did not repent) rather than a differing foreknown Creation/timestream with different Ends (such as one in which Sodom would have repented).

True?? No argument??

If we can agree on that, I'll proceed to the issues of Theodicy.

70 posted on 08/07/2002 9:21:39 PM PDT by OrthodoxPresbyterian
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To: P-Marlowe
If God knows the future then the future is fixed.

It would be fixed even if there were no God, or if God did not know it. The future is fixed for the same reason the past is, and it has nothing to do with what anyone knows, not even God.

Consider this. Many believe because the future is fixed, man cannot really be a volitional creature. But no one doubts that the past is fixed, that it is what it will always be and and always was. (How could it ever have been anything else?) We believe God has volition and had it in what is the past to us. But the past is fixed. Therefore, the "fixedness" of the past or future has nothing to do with volition, or what Cavlinists sometimes mean by "free will."

The future is fixed as much for God as it is for us.

Hank

101 posted on 08/08/2002 4:18:27 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
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