Liam, Liam, Liam, your opinion is more equal. No! Hang on. Less. Less equal. Less modal, less average, therefore more exceptional, in a good way.
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I donât believe that. If that were possible then it only makes sense that God would do it that way from the beginning. I think this is too black and white a picture. I do think things could be better. But so there is no suffering? Impossible. Suffering it is a part of life. That is more a perk of atheism â no suffering because life ends and thus no more suffering. No sin? Depends on how you define it. With my definition as self-destructive habits then yes â no more self destructive habits.
Only needs a way for us to recognize self-destructive behavior immediately so we stop it before it becomes habitual.
Incorrect. This is a misconception. The ability to choose evil is only a small side-effect of having free will. Its primary application are the choices between the infinite possibilities of goodness.
Jesus came to set us free â that means more free will. Sin destroys free will. So the elimination of sin is more free will not less.
Where there is no ability to choose what is wrong there is no learning and where there is no learning there is no life. So I certainly do not agree that the promise is a future without the ability to choose what is wrong. If you donât want the challenge of life, then the oblivion of the atheists is better than an existence empty of life, whether it is some blissed out state like a drug high or not.
Frankly I think that all this comes from the use of religion as a tool of manipulation where heaven and hell are are promised rewards and punishment to make you do what you are told. But I donât think that is correct. Nor do I think Christianity is a get out of jail free card. I donât think the consequences of your actions can be escaped either way, and heaven or hell is the choice between fighting your self-destructive habits or not.
do you believe in the resurrection of the dead? As far as I know, belief in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is an important part of Christianity.
I do not call God, Jesus, and Paul liars.
Paul 1 Corinthians 15 - the physical/bodily resurrection not to physical/natural bodies but to spiritual bodies.
Jesus Luke 9:60 Let the dead bury their own dead.
God Genesis 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.â
Adam and Eve died a spiritual death on the day they ate of the fruit. It is the spirit that requires resurrection. The physical body dies according to the laws of nature God created, because without physical death there is no physical life. And so Paul explains the resurrection is a bodily resurrection to a spiritual body â no corpses rising out of graves or ripping atoms from puppies and babies, because that is not what they are made of.
Hamlet Act IV scene 3The moral of his rambling is that, because a man may fish with a worm that has eaten the body of a king, and afterwards eat the fish he has caught, that man has, in essence, devoured a king.
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I think from my perspective if our will is ultimately at the mercy of our knowledge, desires, motivations, etc. then I struggle to see how our will is free now, let alone in the New Creation. Perhaps Iâm misunderstanding you?
Are you therefore saying it is hypothetically possible for a second human rebellion against God where sin reenters the frame in the New Creation/Heaven?
Absolutely!
Yeeahhhhh. No one is going to see that as itâs never going to happen. Itâs metaphoric, apocalyptic, fantasy, Second Temple Judaism stuff. If transcendence happens, it happens all the time, all over the infinity of supernature on nature. The incarnation continues in us. Up to us. We are the second coming.
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so you donât believe that Jesus is resurrected and think that death is the end?
How does that follow?
The definition of free will becomes important here, as you wrote earlier (âWhat do we mean by free will?â).
It seems that our answers would differ a bit.
I do not think that we are absolutely free to choose whatever we like, not now or in future. At a particular moment, our freedom is restricted to choosing between two or few alternatives. After we choose something, that limits the set of choices we have in the future. For me, free will is a chain of small decisions - a path rather than an absolutely free choice at a particular moment.
That is an interesting question. I do not have a solid answer to that question. My thinking leans towards the possibility that we simply want to do the will of God, instead of being some kind of robots without free will.
The presence of God, the work of Holy Spirit within us, will affect our decisions so there remains the question of how independent our decisions will be, even if we have some amount of free will.
My thinking is affected by my background. I am not a Calvinist, I do not think that there is strict predestination without our choices playing a role in the decision.
Much depends on how we interpret the words âFor those whom He foreknewâ in Romans 8. My interpretation of these words is that God knows our future and the (potential?) path of our decisions from the moment we are born. Based on this foreknowing, God chooses to save those who will seek God and His will. We cannot be saved without the work of the Holy Spirit but that does not mean that our will does not affect the choice.
That my guy is called predestination .Simple as that.So you basically contradicted everything youve said before about free well.
Contrary to the opinion of some, âthe resurrection of the deadâ is not contingent on âthe Second Coming of Jesus Christâ. If the former is not contingent on the latter, then âthe resurrection of the deadâ occurs regardless whether or not and when âthe Second Comingâ occurs.
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Although non-probative, Martin Lutherâs distinction appeals to me, to wit:
- Heidelberg Disputation, 1518. Thesis 28.
- The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.
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The reason for that is the range of freedom available to us is the human kind. Our range of freedom is not God like but weâre not zombies, puppets or cogs in a machine. Desires, motivations -and we could probably throw in the particulars of our upbringing- are some of the parameters which define us as individuals and allow for variability. Depending how well our consignment of givens is working out for us, I can imagine our level of contentment probably affects the perception of how free we are. If weâre miserable, who would choose that?
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I would expect that to go the other way. The one time I was depressed i would have given anything to get my normal affect back but could not find any way to make that happen. It is part of what makes God belief comprehensible to me. In a purely rational way I donât think it my makes any sense. But it does give you insight into just how much is a gift and just how insufficient we can be in our own powers.
Indeed, but first, IMO, itâs essential to clarify whether one is talking about free will in this world or in the world to come, i.e. after death in this world. In this world, I say with Luther, the will is âin bondageâ; in the world to come, the will may be âfreedâ or not, on a case-by-case basis. [I say that because I believe that âa freed will will not rebelâ, and in and through the Resurrected Lord Jesus, one can be freed.]
In this world, ⌠Iâm inclined to believe that personal decisions are subject to Catastrophe Theory principles, according to whichâif I understand them correctlyâgiven two or more possible directions to go or choices to be made, if all choices are equally weighted, no movement occurs, no choice is made. Only when a possible direction or choice is weighted more than another, will movement toward that direction or choice be made. Here again I quote Lutherâs words: âThe love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.â
Paraphrasing anotherâs words: Who intentionally chooses a less pleasing path or makes a less pleasing choice?
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A couple of C.S. Lewis quotes come to mind:
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
If I am content in and with this world, should I perhaps be asking myself âAm I content with too little?â
And none of the above means that we cannot enjoy the good things we have been given here! It also doesnât mean that God doesnât give his children trials to test and strengthen them.
Do we mean different things with the word âpredestinationâ? It seems so.
In this context, the essential question is âdoes our will or choices affect the decision that God decides to save or not save us?â. Some say that they do not play a role - God predestined us to be the children of God or the children of this world (/Satan), independent of anything we wish, choose or do.
I do not think in this way. I think that God knows us and our (potential?) future even before we are born. Based on this foreknowing, he chooses those who will be saved. âUs and our (potential?) futureâ includes our hopes, choices and our attitude towards God and our neighbors - what do we want and choose.
Iâm curious what people here think of âOpen Theismââthe idea that the nature of the future is openânot entirely settled (outcomes are at least partly contingent on the decisions of free-will actors (humans, angels and God), and that this is how God experiences the future, as a set of possibilities. He does not know exactly how the future will unfold until it happens. The view is not considered heretical because God is still omniscient in this model, it is just that he knows the future as the complete range of (unsettled) possibilities that (libertarian) free-will actors may take. Like an infallible chess-master, God knows the total range of possibilities the other players âmightâ do and has a plan of how he may react in each case to achieve his purpose, but he does not know the precise moves of the other actors to whom he has granted true freedom. Personally, I am not a Calvinist, do not believe in predestination, and this view holds appeal for me although it is unsettling for some.
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I am an open theist. Perhaps it is a natural position for quantum physicists like John Polkinghorne and myself to take. We know how things can be in a superposition of states before we measure which of those states it is in, and being in such a superposition of states has measurable consequences. This by itself makes the future consists of a superposition of possible measurements, so it only makes sense that the future in general exists in such a superposition of possibilities.
It also doesnât mean that God cannot know which possible future will happen, but like in quantum physics doing so creates that future. Knowledge and power are thus two sides of the same coin. And omniscience doesnât mean God has no choice but to know whatever you say any more than omnipotence means God has no choice to do whatever you say. God can choose not to do or not to know (when the future is undecided), and this is how God gives us free will.
And when it comes to those enslaved to sin, there is no such free will â no superposition of possibilities, and God can know what they will do without making them do anything.
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