> General Discussions
Commen Logic vs. "Free Will"
sj:
Yesterday I was searching through the email section looking for some of Ray's responses to the issue of free will and I came across what I felt was an extraordinary answer. Here is Ray's response with some underlining to add emphasis on what stood out to me.
Dear ________:
If God knows that I MUST make a certain choice ten years from now, then it is foolish to suggest that my choice is, nonetheless, FREE to not be made. You can suggest all kinds of silly unscriptural things like "God lives in the past, present, future," and therefor can see things before they happen. Listen.....are you LISTENING? If a choice is truly FREE, that it is free to be this way or that way, and there is nothing that will cause or effect it to be this way or that way except this spooky phantom thing called "free" will, then the choice CANNOT BE KNOWN BEFORE IT IS MADE. End of argument.You may have to meditate on that one for a few seconds (or years), but it is true--a choice that is not in some way CAUSED TO HAPPEN, cannot be known BEFORE it happens, or it simply is not free.
God be with you,
Ray
For the last several months I have been meeting with a friend for a midweek lunch to discuss some of the new things I am learning out of the scriptures... a few months ago the conversation drifted to man's "free will" vs. God's soveriegnty... now it seems that this is the main topic of all of our conversations. It never seems to matter how much scripture we look through, He just can't bring himself to consider that his fate after this life is not his own decision.
I realize totally that their is nothing I can say to him to change his mind... It will happen in God's timing, but Ray's response helped me to logically think through this issue.
If God, in His omnipetence, knows without a doubt what you or I will do tomorrow... when tomorrow comes do we truly have a choice in the matter? No! It's already been decided.... the more and more I meditate on this subject the more and more I become thankful that I do not have a free will, I fear if it were left up to me... I truly would be unredeemable. Praise God for His grace in helping us to learn righteousness... in His time!
God's Peace.
Josh
Sorin:
Josh,
Just because God knows what tomorrow will bring, and everything we will do tomorrow, or even 50 years from now, does not necessarily mean or prove that man does not have a free will. It just means God is all knowing, since eternity has no begining and no end, and God is eternal, He is outside of our time, He can be both in the past, in the present and in the future at the same time. That's how He knows what we will do tomorrow, but those choices could have been freely made. Just because we can't choose differently at any given moment in the future other then what God knows we will choose, does not mean something had to cause that choice, God just foresaw, and foreknew what we will choose because He is also ahead of that decision, that's like past to Him. So that's how He knows what we will choose before we ever choose Something. Causation doesn't have to have anything to do with God's foreknowledge. Unless you want to suggest that God is stuck here in the present with us, and the only way He can possibly know what we will choose in the future is to cause us to choose a certain way. That's what I was trying to say. Does this make sense to you?
Take care,
Sorin
eggi:
God being a passive observer "from eternity" does not comply with "working all things after the counsel of His own will".
In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: (Eph 1:11 KJV)
Another translation:
[...] in Him in Whom our lot was cast also, being designated beforehand according to the purpose of the One Who is operating all in accord with the counsel of His will, (Eph 1:11 CLV)
Again "predetermined", not "foreseen":
For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done (Act 4:28 KJV)
It was determined before, and it is an active operation as it is carried out.
sj:
Sorin,
Let me first say that I respect your opinion because I have read many of your posts and have many times related to where you are at in you faith journey, but here I must say we are going to have to disagree.
Is not God's foreknowledge a direct result of His sovereign choices...? Are not all of God's characteristics founded in His sovereignty?
I do agree with you that God exists limitlessly... therefore He is not under the constraints of any created thing, specifically "time"... yet WE ARE MOST DEFINITELY CONSTRAINED TO TIME in this age.
Think about it...
If God, whose existence is unconstrained by time, knows WITH 100% CERTAINTY what we, who are constrained by time, will have for lunch tomorrow.... tomorrow we will have a choice, but the decision has already been "caused", by God's soveriegn design, in advance, for God knows with 100% certainity what will happen in our tomorrow while we are still living in our today.
God's Peace.
Josh
rocky:
--- Quote from: swivel on January 17, 2007, 11:45:20 AM ---Sorin,
Let me first say that I respect your opinion because I have read many of your posts and have many times related to where you are at in you faith journey, but here I must say we are going to have to disagree.
Is not God's foreknowledge a direct result of His sovereign choices...? Are not all of God's characteristics founded in His sovereignty?
I do agree with you that God exists limitlessly... therefore He is not under the constraints of any created thing, specifically "time"... yet WE ARE MOST DEFINITELY CONSTRAINED TO TIME in this age.
Think about it...
If God, whose existence is unconstrained by time, knows WITH 100% CERTAINTY what we, who are constrained by time, will have for lunch tomorrow.... tomorrow we will have a choice, but the decision has already been "caused", by God's soveriegn design, in advance, for God knows with 100% certainity what will happen in our tomorrow while we are still living in our today.
God's Peace.
Josh
--- End quote ---
Just like Peter, who was sure he would never deny the Lord, was going to do it anyway, because God planned it that way. So he had a choice from his perspective, but his choice was already determined.
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