Last I checked he still hadn't decided whether or not he was citing what he was citing.Originally Posted by jmdrake
More metaphysics. Frankly, it gets a bit tedious. Nothing in the bible actually means what is written, UNLESS it works within a preexisting theology. "Kill" does not mean "Kill". "Love your neighbor", does not mean "Love your neighbor". "Sell your purse and buy a sword" ACTUALLY is God's law permitting self-defense.
Or, I don't understand the time-space continuum, OR I don't know koine Greek, or Hebrew, or understand the social or historical "context" in which the bible was written, OR I am not "Elect", or have not been blessed with a visit by he Holy Ghost, or my motives/intent/heart is not pure. Yet, some are quick to say that it is the UNERRING Word of God, that early men road dinosaurs, that time has warped, or any of the myriad little snippets that make discourse of it so unrewarding.
That anyone could study the thing and come to the conclusion that torture is "sometimes" moral is repugnant...but MILLIONS have through the course of Christendom (ah....I forgot the "but they are/weren't "real" Christians; the insult must frequently hurled even among our little RPF flock).
TWO flipping commandments....and people want to argue the circumstances to obey them. Ah, but I don't understand what those commandments REALLY mean, because of, um....any of the above.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
-Albert Camus
The idea of a multiverse is fascinating. It takes the discussion to the next level of outside time. So what is the reasoning for why it is not palatable? If there is a multiverse, how could that play into dissociative disorder?
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave. - Dakota
Go Forward With Courage
When you are in doubt, be still, and wait;
when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
So long as mists envelop you, be still;
be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists
-- as it surely will.
Then act with courage.
Ponca Chief White Eagle
The verse in 2nd Peter says:
“Because of this, it is also contained in the Scripture: “Behold,” I lay in Zion” an elect, “precious Stone,” “a Corner-foundation;” “and the one believing in Him shall not be ashamed, never!” Then to you who believe belongs the preciousness. But to disobeying ones, He is the “Stone which those building rejected; this One became the Head of the Corner,” and a Stone-of-stumbling, and a Rock-of-offense” to the ones stumbling, being disobedient to the Word, to which they were also appointed. But you are “an elect race,” “a royal priesthood,” “a holy nation,” “a people for possession,” so that “you may openly speak of the virtues” of the One who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; you who then were “not a people, but now are the people” of God; “the one not pitied then but now pitied”.
1 Peter 2:6-10
So the Bible says the disobedient are appointed just as the elect are.
Also, the verse in the Psalms doesn't say that a man plans his way apart from God's decree. The entire point of the verse is that God is above all directing everything.
You're going to have to come up with a better citation than that. I don't recall either the word 'stone' nor the word 'corner' ever appearing in II Peter.
Yes sorry. I am using a new Bible app and its so hard to read. It's 1 Peter 2:6-10
Yes, and as you implied (correctly) the verse in Isaiah 46:10 does not contradict my understanding.
For one thing, my understanding of temporality vs eternality completely reconciles the biblical doctrine of predestination and the the biblical doctrine of free will. It also opens up (unfolds/unpacks) a great deal of prophecy and other passages describing the distinctions between Heaven and Earth, including eschatology. The Book of Revelation, for example, is several orders of magnitude less complicated given this understanding, however I don't think it will really "unpack" there until you have seen it's operation elsewhere in scripture.
For another thing, logically, anything other than my understanding makes God a temporal being, which thing is impossible. There are verses which do implicate my understanding as operative, but they will not 'unpack' until you already have a grip on it. All I will ask is that you keep it somewhere in the back of your mind while studying scripture in the future, even if your purpose is to disprove it, and then decide for yourself whether it clarifies or clouds the revealed Word. Once some of that has taken place, and you have had some experience applying this idea to the Scriptures, then the verses which point to the understanding will make sense, and we can treat this subject again at a future date.
I do have passages that back it up, but I also know that it is imperceptible until one has gained some experience at applying, or at least trying to apply the concept. You particularly have experience with locating passages that appear to generate a conflict between free will and predestination, and it is in those passages that this understanding shines through the most. Not just the ones that point to predestination more than free will, but also the ones that point to free will more than predestination. Apply the concept to Calvinists favorite passages, and also apply the same understanding to Arminian's favorite passages (you likely have a rolodex list of such passages on both sides of the debate) and the apparent contradictions vanish. Those passages do not reveal the understanding per se as much as they are opened up by the understanding.
After that, then passages that actually point to the understanding will begin to make sense. You have to be able to perceive it's operation before passages that point to it's operation are perceptible, and the only way to perceive it's operation is to actually look for it. So what I will ask is over the next month or two, while studying the Word, just keep the understanding I have shared (regarding God being completely outside of time such that 1855 and 2055 are both happening in the now from His eternal perspective) in your mind over the next couple months of Bible studies, and then let's talk about it again and then I will be able to treat passages that actually point to this concept.
Here is a brief sketch I just made to help illustrate:
God abides in Eternity, outside of space-time. He sees the end from the beginning. Prophecy and fulfillment happen at the same eternal moment to Him. He can 'adjust' the details of prophecy "in real time" (for lack of a better phrase) and adjust the effects of fulfillment to suit His will. Sometimes to describe prophecy and fulfillment, I use the illustration of a guitar string. God wants a certain "note" so He uses prophecy and the fulfillment of prophecy to achieve that note. Delivering the prophecy is like a finger plucking the string, and fulfilling the prophecy is like the finger pressing on the fret.
It's not one thing and then another. It's both at the same time. From the eternal realm, the prophecy and the fulfillment of prophecy are coincident. (NOT 'coincidence')
Or maybe I'm going blind. That's the second time I've done that in this thread
Gunny no, it doesn't. Because the problem between the will and predestination is not time, it is sin. There is a moral reason that man's will is not free. It is because he is fallen, dead in sin, a slave to sin, not able to will any spiritual good, and an enemy of God. There is no formulation that can break that moral chasm.
Help is all around you. You've only got to reach out and take it in the spirit in which it is offered.Or maybe I'm going blind. That's the second time I've done that in this thread
Of course there is. And God has that formulation.
And even that doesn't mean he has no free will. Man could choose, for example, which sin to indulge in or how to indulge in it.
Last edited by acptulsa; 01-28-2015 at 03:16 PM.
I recognize (at least) 7 dimensions, not 4. The space-time continuum is comprised of 4 dimensions (presuming against string theory) the top three dimensions being the dimensions of the eternal realm. If string theory is accurate, that becomes 21 dimensions, which would take far too long to explain. For the purpose of our discussion here, a non-string-theory paradigm and 7 dimensions will suffice.
I never recall having said anything like that.Note that I recall you once saying that there are infinite possible realities but God only actualized one of them.
That still only leaves the illusion of choice if you think about it. But if God actualized an infinite number of realities then there are really an infinite number of possible outcomes.
Yes, it does, and no, it's not sin. The apparent conflict between free will and predestination is an artifact of temporality. Free will is the gift of God. God does not gift people with sin.
Last edited by GunnyFreedom; 01-28-2015 at 03:03 PM.
But it doesn't say what that appointment means or when that appointment is actualized. And frankly, so far you haven't really said that either. That allows you to flow from one contradictory theory to the next without ever taking a real stand on anything.
Again you are failing to specify what you mean by what God decrees. If you are saying God decrees men can make choice A or B that's one thing. But if you are saying that God decrees that man X must make choice A and man Y must make choice B, that flatly contradicts the verse you quoted. In that case man isn't "making plans." Man is only thinking about a plan already made for him.Also, the verse in the Psalms doesn't say that a man plans his way apart from God's decree.
Saying "God is above all directing everything" is not the same as saying "God plans every single action." Again I'm not disagreeing that God limits man's choices. God limited Hitler's choice, Napoleon's choice and Stalin's choice. God did not let their plans come to fruition. But did God make the plans? The Bible doesn't say that.The entire point of the verse is that God is above all directing everything.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
No Gunny, the problem is sin, not time. It is the will that is the issue.
There is no verse in the Bible that says free will is a gift of God. It's not there. The Bible says that man's heart is a slave to sin, and dead in trespasses.
Okay. Then maybe we are saying the same thing.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
The Bible says that Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and they were not slaves to sin until Adam sinned. The only way Adam could sin is if either Adam was a flawed creation or if Adam was created with freewill.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
How does that contradict anything that I've ever said? I'm not the one constraining God to being within time, such that He has to write about stuff before it (temporally) happens. I'm the one saying that our concept of time is completely irrelevant to the activity of God. It is my paradigm that asserts that the sacrifice took place before the world was made, nit that it was foreseen and written about. That's all stuff you added artificially to my words to try and make sense of what I am saying.
If you like, but you are still seeing only half the story, which is why you keep trying to stuff me into 4 dimensions which thing I have openly rejected from the beginning. You keep asserting that I am saying the exact opposite of what I am actually saying, which can only be a perception thing.Now put whatever interpretation that you wish, but my use of the if/then statement fits squarely with the atemporal description of Christ's sacrifice. Mountain meet molehill.
No Sola, free will and predestination ONLY contradict when perceived from within the temporal realm. They coexist perfectly from the eternal perspective. No amount of your insistence that this understanding is sin, will change that.
Lol! Yep. Fwiw, I think you get it better than many. Of course, I get ritually taken to task by others who say I have no claim to Love. The elect nonsense is petty imo, but when one bypasses the starting point of love and sprints towards the finish line of proclaiming themselves elect and others damned for their pleasure, well, I get royally aggravated because I have seen the damage of those who wouldn't touch a Bible again thanks to this particular belief. (Then I chastise myself for my short temper on this subject)
I'd say there aren't circumstances where one ignores those two, ever, and it is right. People are fallible though. I am always critiquing myself. It's too easy to go autopilot and come up with excuses later to soothe the conscience. Trust me, I know this all too well about myself.
The Bible was a massive source of frustration for me, I thought, years ago. Then I realized it wasn't the Bible but contradictory people who wanted to tell me my faith. Even people I will agree with on most issues get annoyed with me because they want me to conform to their system. The Bible is a guidebook but my faith, well I had to let go of other's ideas to figure out where I fit in and how I relate to the universe. If I am being told to do something that conflicts with either of the two commandments, for me it is automatically discarded. Sometimes you have to put effort to figuring out how the situation can be reasoned to conform to such. In the end, imo, what matters is the tracks we leave. My faith is what keeps me going in hopefully a positive direction.
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave. - Dakota
Go Forward With Courage
When you are in doubt, be still, and wait;
when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
So long as mists envelop you, be still;
be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists
-- as it surely will.
Then act with courage.
Ponca Chief White Eagle
With respect to free will, we are absolutely saying the same thing. It's my exposition of predestination that you are having a rough time with. I believe in BOTH. I believe that my understanding of ontological reality reconciles the two concepts completely. Sola is rejecting that idea out of hand because of a distaste for the idea of free will, such that he thinks I am justifying sin by explaining it. He is so married to the idea of the concept of free will being sinful, that any theological construction which reconciles predestination and free will must necessarily be sinful. You have been putting me in a similar box to Sola because my support for his style of predestination makes it hard for you to understand how I could logically accept free will.
What does the pre-fall condition of man's will have to do with man's will post-fall?
No Gunny. You are the one that has artificially added something. You're claiming, for no reason that I can ascertain, that my use of the word "then" actually means something when it doesn't. However you interpret the verse "Jesus the lamb slain from the foundation of the world" to mean, when that happened it's possible that Jesus' sacrifice was "properly allocated." If you think "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" means that's when the prophecy was made, then attach the then to that then. If you believe it means "Since God exists outside of time Jesus was actually slain prior to the creation of the world and man just experienced that within man's concept of time" then attach the then to that then. This really is a non issue.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
Gunny said man was given the gift of freewill. Do you agree with that or not? It's funny that when you are faced with a fact that shatters your belief system you always follow up with "What does X have to do with it?" Prior to the fall God knew man was going to fall right? If that God's prior knowledge means no freewill then that's true even before the fall.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
Not really. From any particular multiverse things would indeed appear to be predestined done to every single act. And my theory is that certain things are totally scripted. Again, God would not allow Herod to kill baby Jesus in any universe.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
Where in the Bible does it say that the Fruit of the Tree of Life turned Adam and Eve into something other than what God created? Or did that somehow make God more, or less, omnipotent?
So are you saying there is no difference between man's will before and after the fall? Not even Pelagius said that!
Did that rather amazing fruit alter God's creation, or did it alter God?
If man was only a slave to sin after eating the fruit, what made Adam and Eve disobey God and eat it?
Last edited by acptulsa; 01-28-2015 at 03:31 PM.
I don't think it's a problem for science at all. In fact I'm finding all sorts of science articles investigating the idea of what the multiverse means for freewill versus determinism. The scientific community uses "determinism" instead of "predestination" because determinism doesn't imply a supernatural being, but those who believe in determinism and those who believe in predestination are otherwise arguing the same thing. Everything that will happen was predetermined eons ago and is unfolding exactly as it always would happen either by the had of God or by the laws of physics. The idea of the multiverse and quantum mechanics introduces the possibility that choices actually mean something to that matrix.
See: http://www.axonnsays.com/2014/10/fre...tum-paradoxes/
I think the problem many have with this is that they feel beholden to theological ideas from hundreds of years ago when the multiverse wasn't even being thought about, at least not by most people, and once having "locked in" or theory A, B or C, adherents to said theory are afraid of the implications of being possibly wrong.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
I never said there was no difference between man's will before or after the fall and you know that or you should know that. I'm saying that if God's foreknowledge meant that man doesn't have freewill then man never had freewill. Are you saying that God didn't have foreknowledge before the fall?
Last edited by jmdrake; 01-28-2015 at 03:35 PM.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
I haven't mentioned that in like 2 pages. You said you didn't believe either statement anyway so I deemed the whole discussion of it irrelevant. You made two statements that said two different things. You do not recognize that they were different. I disbelieve the first, I believe the second. You do not believe either one because you believe they are the same. I shrugged my shoulders and dropped that subject long ago. If you want to I can go back and re-quote both statements and diagram bothe statements to show how and why they are syntactically different, but since you disbelieve both statements I really don't see the point.
Neither really captures my understanding very well. My position is that time is wholly irrelevant to the operation of God, it is only relevant to us, temporal beings. God could have looked set Himself at the beginning and looked at the end of the universe and decided He didn't want it to end that way, so He then chose to accomplish the sacrifice to make a different end, and this would still have been done before the foundation of the world, because He was sitting at the beginning of the timeline when He decided that was how He was going to fix it. It was the sacrifice of Yeshua which redeemed David the King, Abraham, Moses, Seth, and Adam. I'm pretty sure you agree with that. I honestly don't understand why you keep bringing up the stuff that we actually agree on and saying that we don't.However you interpret the verse "Jesus the lamb slain from the foundation of the world" to mean, when that happened it's possible that Jesus' sacrifice was "properly allocated." If you think "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" means that's when the prophecy was made, then attach the then to that then. If you believe it means "Since God exists outside of time Jesus was actually slain prior to the creation of the world and man just experienced that within man's concept of time" then attach the then to that then. This really is a non issue.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Connect With Us