made most sense to me as a computer scientist that all of reality is one big program
That was how you became an atheist naturalist? How?
well i considered myself a christian still, but metaphysically my beliefs were indifferent from atheistic naturalism
EVERY Christian theologian that acknowledges God’s omnipotence recognizes two kinds of will in God: one explicit one where he lays out his intended will (instructions, commands, intentions, desires), and one wherein he allows things to happen in the world, for whatever reason, that are “against his will.”
Take any murder that happened in the world yesterday… was it “God’s will” that it happen?
In one sense of God’s “will”, clearly not. There is even a commandment prohibiting it. Very obviously, murder is “against the will of God”.
In another sense, God for whatever reason “willed” not to interfere, “chose” not to intervene, “decided” to allow other free agents, and forces of nature to take their course uninterrupted. He could have stopped that murder from happening, but he “willed” not to stop it, although he had the power to stop it. Thus in another sense, it indeed happened “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”
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that’s a different sense than calvin meant
he thought God actively wills everything, including all the bad stuff that is against His will
I am sure we all disagree with this, so none of us are Calvin’s kind of Calvinist
what I see in this thread is people labeling beliefs as Calvinist which are not actually what Calvin wrote
If God is omnitemporal (as I think he is), there is no conflict. The conflict only arises in our minds because we are compelled to use time-based, tensed language. Jesus said “…before Abraham was born, I AM!” That is not good (time-based) grammar.
There is no conflict with omniscence, but there is conflict between libertarian free will and the idea that God determines every choice we make, which I take to be Calvin’s position.
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i certainly don’t disagree with him in that… neither did the framers of the Westminster confession, nor any of those numerous churches or other institutions that use it as their statement of faith. the statement of those writers of that confession I at least agree with most wholeheartedly…
God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
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That means God doesn’t directly will the choice of individuals. Sounds like a Molinism formulation, which is compatible with libertarian free will.
I think you missed my point, which was about God’s omnitemporality, not his omniscience.
I doubt you’d find that given the rest of the context if the statement of beliefs…
Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.
That would be inconsistent with libertarian free will. In the LFW case, God decrees multiple possibilities, but the actuality is dependent upon man’s choice, which God does not decree.
Within the LFW perspective, there are particular events that occur and are not particularly decreed by God. Their particular occurrence is wholely dependent upon the choice of man.
Thus, there are some things that God has not decreed, contrary to the Westminster confession.
I think this is the perspective of Aquinas, who states:
Therefore to some effects He has attached necessary causes, that cannot fail; but to others defectible and contingent causes, from which arise contingent effects. Hence it is not because the proximate causes are contingent that the effects willed by God happen contingently, but because God prepared contingent causes for them, it being His will that they should happen contingently.
From what I’ve read in articles, Duns Scotus is even clearer on the independence of man’s free will from God’s will.
God’s omnitemporality is what eliminates the conflict between omniscience and free will. If God was temporal, then His perfect foreknowledge would eliminate free will.
However, even with omnitemporality, there is a conflict between God decreeing every single particular event that ever happens and man’s free will, since some of those events will be the particular choices that man makes. If each particular choice is decreed by God, then the choice cannot be said to be ultimately the product of man’s free will. Libertarian free will states that all our choices ultimately originate from our own will, nothing else.
Was anyone’s libertarian free will compromised in the several providential timings and placings in Maggie’s sequence? Were those events planned, decreed to happen? Would any of the several individuals involved complain that their free will had been suspended, not to mention the myriad of individuals involved in the necessary precursor events (analogous to the butterfly in China)?
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I don’t disagree God can divinely ordain all things to bring us to faith. But the ultimate choice is still our own in the lfw view. I don’t think that contradicts your story.
But there are plenty of places that indicate otherwise, as well. “We were dead…” The dead cannot enliven themselves nor the spiritually blind heal themselves. Ephesians 1:4-6 and 11-12, are just a couple among many others.
There is an apparent paradox between his providential will and our free will that we cannot get our heads around, nor need we. We can accept it and delight in it, and when it comes to election, we can only be beyond grateful and utterly humbled by it. Some of God’s providences are even fun, but there is no explaining how he did it. @Klax’s simplism and dismissal doesn’t cut it. By his accounting, George Müller and Rich Stearns* were insufficiently educated, as well as Maggie.
*(They have been mentioned here before.)
Yes, God is the first mover in salvation, and we cannot free ourselves. Traditional Christians are not Pelagians. But still Aquinas and others affirm our libertarian free response. Calvin and Luther affirm the opposite, there is no possibility humans can choose otherwise. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the traditional libertarian free will position, and the reformation Luther and Calvin view. Luther had a big debate with Erasmus on this issue.
I affirm both? The Bible teaches both. Incompatibility is only in our inability. We are incapable of getting our heads around how the omnitemporal God relates to us in time.
How is that possible? To be a Christian atheist? I mean I all but am, but not metaphysically.