My favourite question to the broken, homeless, helplessly unhelpable addicts I meet every week who blame themselves for their situation is ‘Did you choose your parents?’.
Predetermined is not the same thing as foreknowledge.
Just because someone already knows the choices you make does not mean you lost options. If means you have free will, and you make your choices, and he already knows what you’ll choose.
Same way prophecy worked. Prophecy was not God forcing people, but already knowing what choices would be made and foretelling them.
Now you don’t have yo agree but you can’t replace my words to make a point pretending it’s my point.
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Conversations like these inevitably include the question of freedom. What is it to say that a human being is free? Clearly we are constrained in many ways - our physical prowess, our mental capabilities, our need for food, and so on.
When we expand our discussion to somehow judge why God created us and the universe to be what it is, we often mean (or at least imply) that God should have done a better job. But can we say what would be better? We often mean by better, to remove some constraint; at other times we may mean we would like greater power, or perfect health, and so on. However, I have not come across any argument that provides a coherent view of what a human being should be to satisfy us (and for all things to be good), and get God of the hook, so to speak - so that we can overlook God’s mistakes when He created everything (?!).
I often go back to Genesis where God created a male and female and placed them in a perfect setting where they were supplied with everything they needed and could possibly want. All they had to do was be satisfied with perfection and not be tempted to understand the complex existence off good and evil.
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That’s because He’s seen it all before for eternity and knows how it goes and it goes concurrently for all possible states down to death. It doesn’t matter. It’s all to be transcended.
How can God know something that does not exist? How can God know what I am going to do next week before I have done it? Let’s just say that God can see that I will come down with COVID 19 next week. I don’t want to come down with COVID 19 and I hope God does not want me to either. However if God knows that it will happen then it will happen, right. If God know that it might happen, then there is still the possibility that it might not happen, right?
By saying that God knows everything in advance you are limiting God’s freedom to change history more than you are the freedom of humanity to make decisions. We will always have the freedom to make decisions. Do not limit God’s ability to input into those decisions by saying God knows what will be true before it is true.
Does God needs to know everything in advance to do the work of God? No! or to satisfy our definition of omniscient? Yes.
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That’s a fine false dichotomy. He neither knows nor works.
If God already knows that it will happen, will something else happen? No. Which is how prophecy works. God foretelling a future event before it has occurred because he knows the choices they will make on by their own choice.
It’s also why God knew the day, but Jesus did not.
Not your God maybe. But I have no interest in the holo-novel author god who is incapable or unwilling to create children with authentic free will and lives of their own. I prefer the God described in the Bible who choosing love and freedom over power and control was devastated by His children’s choice of evil and death over goodness and life – made sorry that He had created us. That is a God who can and did take the risk of creating children who make their own choices. I don’t need to believe in a god of power and control because like the God who discarded these as nothing to become a human being and live among us, I value love and freedom more – willing to live by faith rather than the delusions of control, guarantees, and entitlements.
And I certainly do not believe in the god enslaved to human theology for making religion into their tool of power and control. Naturally they fashion their god into the image of their own values and priorities, where power and control is the most important thing. Indeed they worship power and control. I do not.
This isn’t about the nature of God but the nature of the universe and the future. Of course the nature of the universe tells us something about the character and values of the creator. Saying that God knows everything does not erase the very different question about what there is to be known. So you cannot railroad us into accepting your belief about the nature of the universe and thus your belief in a God who values only power and control, just by saying that God is omniscient and knows everything. Yes God is omniscient and knows everything. Doesn’t mean the future is already written. We are conscious and alive because it is not written and thus is only knowable as possibilities according to the choices of God and man.
Incorrect. When we choose to be the slaves of sin then we choose to be manipulated. Better to be manipulated by a God for our own best interest rather than by evil people and the random chances of nature. Besides, the goal of God’s manipulation is to liberate us from sin and restore our free will.
Indeed! The God who knows the future is incompatible with theism, where God has an interactive relationship with us. Absolute foreknowledge only works with Deism, because God can only influence the outcome of events IF He sees the future as a superposition of many possibilities which at the very least depend on His own choices. But once that is settled then the question becomes whether He is the only one to make any decisions? Allowing us some of the decisions means the future superposition of possibilities He sees branches not only according to His own choices but also according to our choices.
Of course you can reduce God to a holo-novel author where He just decides how the whole story goes from beginning to end. But there is no reason whatsoever to think the characters in a novel are alive or conscious even if you write the story so that they talk like are. After all you can make any computer program say it is alive and conscious, but is that all it really means – just words? And that certainly doesn’t describe a real relationship.
You might want to work on this part a little because it is a little unclear. I am not sure what you are trying say by this.
Here are an assortment of verses from various genres and books within the Bible in which I base my belief that God knows everything including the future in addition to prophecy.
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God cannot know what doesn’t exist. And there are no, as in zero, prophecies in the OT. Very few in the N. A few verses in Mark 13, possibly, by Jesus. Any more?
God is omnitemporal and knows everything that has existed, is existing and will exist, as well as everything that has happened, is happening and will happen.
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Does this mean you believe God predestined us to disagree, despite Jesus praying that we might have unity?
God controls fate. Your fate is known by God . Hense faith is predestined. Simple.
God knows which one will go to hell and which one wont.
People are predestined to a path in life no matter their choises. In the end they will end up in the same path no matter their desicions
Dont you agree?
The idea that God controls fate resulting in our disagreement, while Jesus prays that we will have unity is not well described by the word “simple.”
Contradictory seems a better word.
John 17:20-23
New Revised Standard Version
20 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,[a] so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
You havent provided a counter argument yet though. You may disagree all you want but this holds true. God knows the fate of everyone. Whatever choise you make youll end up in the same path. If you are predestined to hell whatever choise youll make either “good” or “bad” according to you of course ,youll end up in hell. Harsh reality but it is what it is. Unless you are a universalist which then i guess the discussion ends here because its a whole other topic
As for a counter argument, consider:
9 The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.
If God does not want any to perish, and if God controls our fate and we have no choice in the matter, then how can anyone be predestined to hell?
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I liked the verse. It gives hope.
Thats one of the many contradictions found in the gospel. For me predestination is a must since there is a God. The gospel writers just want to put forth hope for tge reader and they do great when in reality its not that simple
What did it mean when Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven, so go and sin no more.”
Did it mean…
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You have no free will so you sinned because I predestined you to sin and now I predestine you not to sin so you will not sin anymore.
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It is all your choice, so you are free to sin or not to sin as you choose.
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I give you an indulgence for your sins, so even though I tell you not to sin and you will not be able to do that, it does not matter because I give you a free pass for all your sins and you will not be punished for them.
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You have been a slave to sin but now I set you free so make the choice for life and do not sin any more.
I have to say that 1 sounds the most absurd and unlikely. Are we to believe that everyone Jesus said this to became someone without sin like Jesus? As I understood it, nobody can say they are without sin, and this remains true to this day.
The second is a great deal more believable but there are cases such as substance abuse where it is obvious that free will is nonexistent. And the Bible says that people become slaves to sin which hardly sounds like they are free.
Number 3 sounds like a spot on explanation for all the evil done by Christians in human history, full of entitlement to take whatever and kill whomever they choose without any consequences. So I have little doubt that Christians have thought this way and so I have little blame for the atheists who have decided that Christianity is one of the greatest evils in the world because of this.
But I am not an atheist because I think that 4 is the correct understanding. None can say they are without sin. But they and Christians in particular are without excuse. Slavery to sin is something people have chosen and Christians who have been set free have gone back to their sin like a dog to their vomit – just as the Bible says.
To be sure these are not the only alternatives… we could combine the ideas of some like perhaps this alternative…
3b. I must tell you not to sin even though I know you will not be able to do that. You will just have to keep begging for my forgiveness and I will only give it to you if you give my name as a password and recite the correct theology.
But I cannot consider any variations like this with Jesus either telling us to do something we cannot do, or giving people a special magical pass on their sins for whatever reason, to be any less contemptable. If that is what Christianity was about then I would join the atheists in condemning it as completely evil. I am a Christian because I do not agree with such an understanding of it. Rather than being about indulgences and free passes so we can dodge divine punishment for sin, it is about liberating us from sin itself (restoring our free will) and not just the escaping consequences. Because the problem isn’t God not tolerating sin and never was – it was always sin itself which was the problem, destructive of our free will and everything else that is good within us.
…is a time-bound word. God is not bound by time.
Can he interfere with time? As long as he can my point is still valid