But earlier you said, Although it is still within the construct of your building and you know the parameters, you don't know how a person will choose. As the are free to choose between the two.
Now you seem to contradict yourself.
No this is not condratiction, as I have stated once before: foreknowledge is not the same as pre ordination. This is where election doctrine is confused.
Just because God knows something before it happens does not mean he choose it to happen that way. Adam and Eve made the choice
God Knew how they would choose because He is omniscient.
I debate atheists all the time who use this as a reason to despise God, it does no good when electionists affirm their position.
This is my response to them when they bring it up:
Man did not exist then God made him. If this is the case then
God must have decided to make him.
Would this decision of God not be considered
'conception' ? This is an important point.
God decided to make man!
Yes but he speaks of evil here as a condition mankind is in, not implying they choose to be this way. Moreover this Love of children is the Word of God not an act of discretion.
Love is not just a mushy feeling or a spiritual reality, it is also an act of volition "God loves those who love His son"
I am not familiar with election doctrines. There is a difference between foreknowledge and pre ordination. However they both exist in scripture.
This is what we are working out right now. Election doctrines in effect deny Gods ability to make 'decisions' and have 'conceptions' of thought. These lead to his foreknowledge.
"Thou shalt not" means to me, "This is not an option", particularly because this is given by God the Creator of all things, the God of Life. As I said, disobeying God is not a freewill, it is pride and it is death. How you can count "thou shalt not" as meaning it's up to your discretion only proves the point of this thread, that freewill religion is the man of sin and that this freewill presented as an absolute is a deception.
without a 'thou shalt not' there is
no option of disobedience, if your interpretation was correct then the statement God would have made is: "
thou can't"
obviously
they could because
they did
God
created the option this is plain, to say Satan created something is a violation of scripture, Satan creates nothing he only twists and destroys.
God put the tree in the garden, He never stopped Eve or Adam either directly or indirectly.
All Satan did was alert Eve to the
fact that
she could actually eat from the tree and that it was possible to disobey, the option was always there albeit not in thier minds but it was there for Satan to expose none the less.
Paul is not saying we have freewills. He is saying there is a power called sin keeping his will from being free. For He says the flesh has it's own will contrary to the Spirit of God and keeping him from being able to serve Him. This is why we need Christ.
I was not referring to freewill, I was referring to the fact that there was a 'command' given in the garden. without this command Adam and Eve would not have known what disobedience was. Following yet?
without the command there would have been
no option of disobedience. God is not a human who fell fowl of some sort of crafty trickery of the devil who managed to chump him out and wreck His creation by outsmarting Him!
God put the option in play, not Satan.
You are confusing choice with faith. You are essentially saying there would be no light without darkness. This is what Satan teaches; that without the right to disobey God we are not free in our wills to serve Him willingly. He teaches obedience must come by our volition and approval so as not to be forced and be our own masters. This is how he subtly justifies rebellion. This is the same lie sold to us in the garden through which we were deceived. Satan despises servitude under the Godhead and so portrays God as a self serving tyrant, when the all knowing God is in fact benevolent. And if we had seen through the serpents subtle innuendo, we would have never considered disobedience to Him who only had our best interests in mind. There need not be disobedience for obedience to occur. Just Trust. Just Faith. Hence righteousness is by grace through faith.
No this is not what I am saying at all. In the beginning God said "let there be light" He separated the light from the darkness and said "It is Good"
Adam and Eve had the ultimate options available to them in the garden, one of them would have lead to life. Obedience would have resulted in them eventually eating of the tree of life.
Both Light and darkness, good and evil are creations of God.
I don't advocate a right to disobey, this is a fact due to the fall all men are under disobedience that is the nature of man, I advocate the options that are available withinh these parameters, one of them is to acknowledge that fact that we are sinners
What I am saying is that God has given man 'options' He has done so within the parameters of the creation. It was evident from the beginning.
He is acredited with decieving the whole world. I notice you skip this very relevant point. For if we were not deceived we would not need the Truth, we would already have it; and this Truth is to trust God, and the deception is to not trust God or that we don't need Him.
He did it by instigating disobedience in the garden.
Satan has the power of death or rather had it until Jesus defeated him at the cross. He, as a liar and obscurer of light, is the founder of the kingdom of darkness and is presently still commanding those who are his subjects under the deception they are the loyal servants of God according to their delusion of piety through volition. God is the God of the living and there is no darkness in Him. Just because I can step on a bug or not step on a bug doesn't mean I have the power of life and death, only death. Consequently neither do we have the ability to disobey God and live. So let me put it this way to you. "Thou shalt not" is not an option if you want to live.
Death is part of the creation. Satan is the ruler of this world, he is not the founder of any kingdom he is a usurper! The usurper of the creation. God made everything.
I know this is how you see it and I understand your reasoning. It is purely subjective however. My point is that God's mercy is not our choice but our hope. For this we must trust in His benevolence not our volition.
Forever one can say I chose this or that never acknowledging the powers of light and dark at work within one's soul.
Acknowledging the powers of light and dark within ones soul is a choice!
Yes there are decisions involved, indeed this is my point. Particularly regarding mercy and understanding, the weightier matters of the law. For one who condemns according to their strict adherence to freewill are not inclined towards mercy or understanding. However those who see the bigger picture that acknowledges that men have been deceived are equipped with mercy and understanding. They are prepared to return good for evil and pray for their enemies. They undersatand the motivation behind the cross and are also moved to forgive.
Men have only been deceived so far! The overall inclination is toward evil but the conscience and the law are clear indicators that somethings are clearly a matter of choice.
We must not judge others soley on the basis of the fact that they are sinners, but as Jesus turned over the money changers in the temple with rage, there clearly is such a thing as an informed choice, be it good or be it evil!
This does not negate the fact that there is deception by powers in high places.
Yes, so they say being unaware they are deceived, therefore manipulated in their deception.
To a certain point, yes we both agree that if someone has full revelation of the truth he will turn to God and be healed.
But there is a reason why they '
need' to believe in something. Everyone does, they have simply decided to believe in evolution, not God or Buddah or hare krishna or allah, but 'no God'
This is where they are
lying and they have a
mark upon their conscience!
Well here's where we have our tit for tat. The word free is a relative term. Morally speaking good and evil are relative to God and define the degree of freedom pertinent to the term. You don't apply this limiting the parameters of your definition to an amoral view. Whereas this is my only concern on this thread. That we acknowledge moral and immoral impetus.
I doubt these theologians invented good and evil.
Here I feel you must either choose between whether they know it to be true or they have options on what is true. Otherwise it appears hypocritical. For the walk away from sin is a process at work in us through the Holy Spirit. Not everybody leaves sin right off the bat. I havn't sold all my possesions and given them to the poor, but even one act of charity covers a multitude of sins.
They know it to be true, the joy in their hearts confirms it.
The options are not deciding what or not is true but in how they are going to respond!
"some fall away because of persecution"
"some chase after the lusts of the worldly pleasures"
These are bad choices my friend choices made in the light of the knowledge that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth and leads unto salvation.
"the young ruler walked away with a heavy heart for he was extremely rich"
This guy was facing a big choice, Jesus hadn't told him to give away a tenth or half or 80% He said 'the lot'!
No one knows how that young guy got on but he had a big choice in front of him.
There are men who are shot in wars for being a coward when in fact they had no desire to kill another man. What better case can be made against freewill defined as an absolute. Yes under the pretext of a freewill believed to be absolute, men have killed other men thinking they were cowards and killed each other both thinking they were serving the greater good. The moral standard is perverted in direction by such a deception. Jesus was crucified because of this. For scripture shows the Jews chose in their deception to free Barrabas over Jesus. A hero of the revolution was worth more than the Prince of Peace.
This is in regards to the law of mankind (the moral law), the knowledge of good and evil. There is knowledge at work in all men, they
know the difference between good and evil!
My desire here is not to contest we have a volition for indeed we do, but rather to make clear we must volunteer ourselves as servants to some higher power, and that some of us are blind to who we volunteer to serve and why, even because we are blind to our blindness in assuming the will is free as an absolute.
So why are we arguing these points? This sound eerily like what I have been stating that man has options within the parameters of his existence, be that fallen or regenerated.
Will is not free as an absolute, I can demonstrate this clearly in 30 seconds to 4 minutes.
It goes like this:
If you have the power to deny the will of God you will be able to demonstrate it right now.
Hold your breath and stop yourself breathing right now just by using your will against God's and nothing else.
You cant, God wills you breath, you breath!
That's it in a nutshell.
