Predestination or Free Will?

So now I’m a bit more confused. Does this mean people who are raped are already planned to be raped? To be honest I believe this. That God doesn’t always give individual destination. For example, all of the Jews are his choice people. That Jesus is for all individuals and that’s the individual predestination

That is a disturbing example. Another result of holding to rigid predestination is that would mean interventional prayer never helps and God never intervenes as it is already chiseled in stone. Hum.

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Both of those are in the past, and are unfair descriptions of the timeless instantaneousness of God.

His providence is miraculous in its intervention into time and space without breaking any natural laws. I like the term ‘hypernatural’ miracle as opposed to the miracles that do violate natural laws, which we know as ‘supernatural’ miracles.

My examples show how he is both sovereign over the past and at the same time, so to speak, is sovereign in my present, dynamically.

And he is already in my future. He’s not waiting for me to get there. :slightly_smiling_face:

I had a Christian friend whose office overlooked the shallow and muddy Schuylkill River in Philadelphia years ago, and one very windy day with the particular topography (above and below the water), wind speed and direction, he was excited to see the muddy bottom of the river in a trough made of water all the way across, with water on the left and on the right, upstream and downstream.

That, of course, reminded him of the Exodus and the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea. Having had more than a little experience with God’s providential timing myself, I suspect that the sea might have parted without Moses and the Israelites being there. But they were.

You’ve been using the word “dynamic.” How is there anything dynamic about a timeline that is set in stone?

Your use of ‘set in stone’, past tense, tells me that you have not been able to place yourself in my shoes in my co-instants accounts. Those were dynamic and unfolding and not static.

Here is one of the more amazing accounts. It is not the most spectacular or startling, but it does show how comprehensive is our God in the details of his care for our lives (but maybe not as much as the DNA in my kidney :slightly_smiling_face:). We need to trust him implicitly and not be afraid of anything.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R0TjAxxLlqqgPyTpm5UK2VQ3KVwIeMHP/view?usp=sharing

I was very careful to say “is set in stone.” That is present tense. But if I understand you correctly, tense is irrelevant.

“…is set in stone” means that it is something that already happened in the past and will continue into the future unchanged (as opposed to “…is being set”, which means that it is happening now). And yes, every time we use a tensed verb (there is no other kind) in this kind of conversation about God and time, predestination and free will, it needs to have a delimiter set (or removed :slightly_smiling_face:), a qualifier.

So does God change his mind? In a few passages God changed his mind on destroying Israelites

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I think that might written from a human perspective, what appears to us. Maybe I would appeal to the couple of verses that say God is inscrutable. :slightly_smiling_face:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.

Sounds like the carpenter who has to hold together the furniture he makes because he doesn’t know how to make them properly so that they stand on their own. This makes up a continuum…

  1. The dreamer who only dreams the universe and so it all only exists because his dreaming mind makes it exist and the moment he wakes up the whole thing disappears. This “god” of his own dream isn’t even confined to logical consistency because none of it is real anyway.
  2. The inept carpenter who has to hold things together after he makes them because they cannot stand on their own. Those using religion for power and sustenance love this one because they want everyone to know how dependent everyone is upon their deity for their continued existence.
  3. The true creator makes things that exist independently and work automatically according to fixed rules but his creation is not causally closed so he can continue to interact with his creation because it doesn’t have a future which is already written.
  4. The writer god who keeps editing the story he has written, going back and forth to different pages to change things until it tells the story he wants. It is hard to believe the characters in his book are any more conscious and alive than the characters in the books we write.
  5. The Deistic creator who make it all operate according to fixed rules deterministically so after setting it in motion, he can only sit back and watch it all happen.

I, of course, believe that God and the universe is described by number 3.

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It seems to me that you are denying Hebrews 1:3:

…he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Nothing can exist independently, everything is contingent upon God.

The universe is contingent upon God in all 5 cases above. God is the creator of the universe and so it would not exist without Him. The only question distinguishing these five cases is the power and ability of God for doing so.

  1. The dreamer god has no more power than any of us, because every dreamer has absolute power over his dreams.
  2. The inept carpenter is almost as pathetic as the dreamer. He doesn’t know how to create anything of real substance… or is too much of a control freak to want this… though I think the real control freaks in this case are the religious who came up with this idea.
  3. The true creator creates something not only with its own substance and existence, including those with life and free will, but creates something real enough to him personally that he wants a personal relationship with his creations.
  4. The writer god is much like the dreamer god, having just as much an obsession with control, but at least has the creative power to make a story with some independent existence.
  5. The Deist creator can at least create something real but should probably stick to machines if he doesn’t want a real relationship with others than himself.

As for Hebrews 1:3 I am reminded of Flat Earthers who quote passages about table tops and creationists who quote other passages from people who had little notion of the real nature of the universe. Just as writers of the Bible could not see the whole globe of the earth in orbit around the sun, or the billions of years in which life and the universe developed, so also they did not understand the laws of nature by which things operated. To be sure all the laws of nature are the creation and ultimately an agency of God, but they show that God has a bit more sophistication and competence than the inept carpenter.

Hebrews 1:3 He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power…

This is part of an introduction to a discussion of Christ and not an attempt to understand the nature of the existence of the universe. While in other passage I would say this is more about keeping the earth safe for the development of life and his children. In this case I would say this is more about establishing the laws of nature by which the universe exists and operates.

That didn’t sound like it was contingent. (It still doesn’t. :slightly_smiling_face:)

The words like “contingent” have precise meanings and appeals like this to equivocation is either dishonest or simple minded.

Contingent simply means that its existence or occurrence depends on the circumstances. The existence of a created universe obviously depends on the act of the creator. When we say that God is not contingent we do not simply mean that His continued existence doesn’t require anything to keep Him going but that His existence is not a matter of circumstance but something that must necessarily be the case.

But you go ahead and look up the word for yourself. And read the articles in a philosophical or theological encyclopedias like this.

Thank you so much.

The ‘circumstances’ is one circumstance, namely the existence of God. Everything other than God is continuously contingent upon his existence. That is why he is the Necessary Being.