Getting to The Will of God

God, Christ, & The Holy Spirit
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Paidion
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Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by Paidion » Thu Jul 16, 2015 9:12 am

Robby, no one is replacing "ALL with SOME." What I have been saying all along is that the "all things" in the passage refers to what God is doing WITHIN His people's hearts and minds.

To interpret the "all" in the passage as "all events" and thus to affirm that God causes tortures of his peoples' children (for example) to bring about some higher good for His people, is to denigrate the character of God.

The persecution of God's people involving torture, torn apart by lions, beheadings (Paul), crucifixion (Peter) was not God's doing. In what way way do you think Paul's beheading was for his good? How does the torture and rape of a Christian's little girl work for the good of the Christian? I am appalled that you think God would bring about such atrocities—and then imagine that He did it for the good of His people. God had nothing to do with these things. Sometimes He does intervene and prevent such things for the good of His loved ones—but not very often. You ask why doesn't He do so very often? He wants to give mankind the opportunity to choose good for themselves. That's why He created them in His own image, giving them free will as He Himself has. He isn't interested in manipulating a race of robots!

I suggest you read Greg Boyd's book "Is God to blame?" Or at least check out "Melanie's Story" in the introduction.

http://www.amazon.com/Moving-Beyond-Ans ... 0830823948

If the above link doesn't work, try the following link to Amazon and then "Look Inside" the book and read the introduction.

http://www.amazon.com/Moving-Beyond-Ans ... 0830823948
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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robbyyoung
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Getting to The Will of God

Post by robbyyoung » Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:02 am

Paidion wrote:Robby, no one is replacing "ALL with SOME." What I have been saying all along is that the "all things" in the passage refers to what God is doing WITHIN His people's hearts and minds.
Well IMHO this understanding is flawed and out of context to what "things" Paul is eluding to, therefore observe the following:

Rom 8:17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

Rom 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Rom 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities:

Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Therefore Brother, I will follow Paul's understanding of what "All Things" are referring to.
Paidion wrote:To interpret the "all" in the passage as "all events" and thus to affirm that God causes tortures of his peoples' children (for example) to bring about some higher good for His people, is to denigrate the character of God.
God absolutely allows torture of His people! He chooses sometimes to stop it and sometimes to do nothing AT ALL about it. If He intervenes even once, your nonsensical free-will/robot theory, at face value, means NOTHING! If He can stop it for one, why not ALL???? The reason is because God is answerable TO NO ONE! His grace is what it is. He will have mercy on whom He wills, PERIOD! So what kind of character, in your human thinking, relieves suffering from one child and not another? You see, your reasoning is denigrating God's character, NOT MINE.

As far as Free-will is concerned, Paul wouldn't of had to suffer anything for the cause of Christ, if Christ, would have left him alone! The suffering came to Paul because of God intervening in his free-will, giving Paul a mandate or offer he couldn't refuse! Oh some will say, Paul could have refused, and I say baloney! Yeshua told Ananias that Paul was His chosen vessel, therefore, like it or not, Paul was going to be used by Yeshua and suffer for it.

God Bless.

dizerner

Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by dizerner » Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:54 am

robbyyoung wrote:So what kind of character, in your human thinking, relieves suffering from one child and not another? You see, your reasoning is denigrating God's character, NOT MINE.
It seems like far better character if one is helpless to stop something, then one who intentions the harm.
The suffering came to Paul because of God intervening in his free-will, giving Paul a mandate or offer he couldn't refuse! Oh some will say, Paul could have refused, and I say baloney! Yeshua told Ananias that Paul was His chosen vessel, therefore, like it or not, Paul was going to be used by Yeshua and suffer for it.
Paul himself continually said he could be disobedient and apostatize. Your vision of him is a fantasy, therefore.

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robbyyoung
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Getting to The Will of God

Post by robbyyoung » Thu Jul 16, 2015 4:50 pm

dizerner wrote:
robbyyoung wrote:So what kind of character, in your human thinking, relieves suffering from one child and not another? You see, your reasoning is denigrating God's character, NOT MINE.
It seems like far better character if one is helpless to stop something, then one who intentions the harm.
Hi dizerner,

So God is helpless now!? Really? :roll:

The analogy doesn't concern someone who is helpless, but rather able, and chooses NOT to relieve the suffering. Therefore, your entire comment misrepresents the point I was making. Nevertheless, God isn't answerable to anyone concerning His reasons, and therefore, His character IS NOT in question; for Paul got it right - "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor?"

I don't think I should have to give a list of accounts concerning how God "intentionally" inflicted suffering/harm or even terror on His chosen ones, whether through obedience, disobedience, or any other reason known to God, but I will give two notable references; Yeshua and Jonah!

So dizerner, you say God's character is tarnished because He inflicted, INTENTIONAL, suffering/harm on Paul, via, "The Thorn In The Flesh". Well since when did you or anyone else, for that matter, been God's counselor?
dizerner wrote:
robbyyoung wrote:The suffering came to Paul because of God intervening in his free-will, giving Paul a mandate or offer he couldn't refuse! Oh some will say, Paul could have refused, and I say baloney! Yeshua told Ananias that Paul was His chosen vessel, therefore, like it or not, Paul was going to be used by Yeshua and suffer for it.
Paul himself continually said he could be disobedient and apostatize. Your vision of him is a fantasy, therefore.
Paul not only could be disobedient, he was disobedient! What Paul said about himself DOES NOT nullify Romans 11:29 "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." For indeed Luke recorded in Acts 21:4, that Paul did disobey the Holy Spirit, and this disobedience caused him his life! For Paul knew that trouble lay ahead of him back in Chapter 20, vs. 22. And The Holy Spirit informed him NOT TO GO, as told in Acts 21:4.

Paul was a chosen vessel and his disobedience didn't change one thing in regards to God's purpose in him. All the Apostles were most likely disobedient to The Spirit often, just like any other believer. Just because every instance isn't recorded for us, doesn't make it any less plausible. I'm not in a fantasy world concerning Paul, dizerner, but thanks anyway for the loving comment. ;)

God Bless.

dizerner

Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by dizerner » Fri Jul 17, 2015 6:38 am

robbyyoung wrote:So God is helpless now!? Really? :roll: =
Is God powerful enough to put something beyond his control? This is the power that Calvinists and Divine determinists deny God. I call Calvinism a man-made doctrine, for this very reason, they define sovereignty as putting limits on God, and what God's sovereignty can mean. God is sovereign enough that in some respects he can relinquish this sovereignty—or he is not really sovereign. So Calvinism is putting a man-made box on God, a logical limitation of his man-made thinking. Scripture however does not put this limitation on God or this definition of sovereignty. Because if “the Lord does whatever he pleases in heaven or earth” means what it says, something the Lord might please to do is to make something in his image and beyond his control—if that is what pleases the Lord to do in heaven and earth, he can do it. You can't assume that by that definition, determinism is his only option or implicit, or you are limiting the Holy One of Israel.

Thus God has created free autonomy in his creation. This autonomy is the explanation in the Arminian view for the existence of evil and suffering. Thus logically and necessarily things would have to be able to happen that God does not desire nor want nor even come to his heart or mind. That's foundational. Because otherwise you are moving evil back into the heart of God, as I have written many, many times. Thus making God some kind of yin-yang figure, in whom there is a darkness and shadow of turning—for even the devils and demons don't contradict God's will, they're not truly God's enemies, they don't truly harm God's creation—for God himself is the one decreeing, deciding, planning, purposing, intentioning, enacting, accomplishing and upholding all the evil and all the harm and the suffering and all the pain and all the sin. Biblically, this cannot be.

So we have to separate evil from God really, truly and essentially. After all, there is no indication in Scripture that God wants people to disobey him, that God wants people to sin. This will create a schizophrenic God, this will create a God who hides his real motives, and thus is not honest and open, a God we cannot trust, a trickster God, a deceiving God, not just a mysterious God, but a God who really and truly says one thing—but means another. This is not the picture of God that we have in Scripture.

So can an almighty and omnipotent being be helpless? The question is of course fraught with difficulty. However, we would have to say that, if God so desired, in a certain matter, to be helpless, he could be helpless, because he has the power to do that, to put something beyond his determination and beyond his control, and this is why true freedom is created, and there is true creaturely libertarian free autonomy in the decision of God's creation to rebel against God. We have this for both Adam and Eve and Satan. God made Adam very good, and very good things do not do evil things. Satan was blameless in all his ways on the holy mountain of God, until iniquity was found in him. Not until God put iniquity in him, not until God put iniquity in Adam and Eve, not until God decreed iniquity in Satan and Adam, not until God planned, initiated, forced and enacted and made absolutely certain that Adam and Satan produced evil and rebellion, thus necessarily by persisting in being rebellious bringing in suffering, harm and evil into all of creation.

So... God being sovereign leaves some area in which he can relinquish or delegate his sovereignty if he so pleases—otherwise you are exalting your man-made ideas and man-made logic and man-made desires and putting and forcing them into Scripture. God is all-powerful, and for that very reason, there is some instances in which he can if he so desires, make himself helpless; because nothing is beyond his ability, there is nothing he cannot do. There cannot be true love, there cannot be true autonomy, there cannot be a true separate decision, there cannot be a true likeness or image of God, unless God lets go of something in his creation.

You could argue, that if God can do a logical impossibility, then we couldn't even discuss or argue about what he could or could not do, and in that sense I do agree; and you could argue that God creating something that freely chose him apart from God's control is a logical impossibility, but God could still do it, and I would agree with that. However, that point is not contradictory to the point that I previously made, that if God so wanted to be helpless in regard to some situation he could do it. There's no indication in all of Scripture that God wanted sin to exist or evil. The only places were it says God created darkness or God created evil or God created some unpleasant situation, was a result of sin and a result of judgment. That is all stems back, not to God's decree, but to creation's free autonomous response to God, which created the world in which we live, in which God is not entirely in control—indeed this world is said to be under the power of Satan.

dizerner

Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by dizerner » Fri Jul 17, 2015 7:05 am

robbyyoung wrote:Romans 11:29 "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."
This does not mean that God's elect cannot rebel against him and forfeit their election. It means that God's promises to his former elect will be fulfilled—that is what God doesn't change his mind about. Obviously in the OT God repents concerning many callings and gifts to people, this is just apparent. Israel indeed was said to have a noble purpose and called to be a light to the world. God begged and pleaded with his people not to disobey him, and he did not ask obedience then thereafter force them to disobey by his decree. This is simply misinterpreting what Romans 11:29 means.
robbyyoung wrote:All the Apostles were most likely disobedient to The Spirit often, just like any other believer.
Of course the Apostles could disobey in smaller matters, we are not talking about smaller matters, we are talking about being disobedient to the heavenly vision, being disobedient to and apostatizing from the faith altogether, which Paul describes as in one example a shipwreck.
robbyyoung wrote:that Paul did disobey the Holy Spirit, and this disobedience caused him his life!
I don't know where you are getting this whole idea that Paul's disobedience to the Holy Spirit cost him his life, you seem to be making it up out of thin air. There is no direct causal indication that any disobedience in Paul's life caused his martyrdom, in fact there is direct evidence to the contrary, that Paul said he didn't know what he would decide to do, either remain with the Christians or depart and be with the Lord, strongly indicated Paul had a choice, which would mean the Lord actually asked Paul which he would desire.
robbyyoung wrote:I'm not in a fantasy world concerning Paul, dizerner, but thanks anyway for the loving comment. ;)
Your logic about Paul is in a fantasy world because of the Scriptural evidence. Now you can say that's not a loving comment, but then you're going to have to say that love is just telling you what you want to hear. However Paul himself says “speaking the truth in love,” so how can I not speak the truth? There's numerous Scriptural evidence that Paul himself clearly thought and taught that he himself had the free autonomous decision to remain steadfast in the faith or depart from it. No outside force was forcing Paul's decision, there is no indication of that, none.
robbyyoung wrote:So dizerner, you say God's character is tarnished because He inflicted, INTENTIONAL, suffering/harm on Paul
Also I was not saying all harm was not caused by God, you inferred that. In fact I only made one simple logical statement and you inferred a whole lot of things, although I don't mind. I do think that martyrdom plays a significant role in God's redemptive economy, and I do think Scripture is clear, that for God's glory and for our honor, God can within the framework of a sin-ridden world not entirely under his control, plan for our martyrdom. In fact, I believe there is a coming persecution of Christians in which many more will be martyred and many more will fall away from the faith due to a lack of preparation and buying oil.

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Homer
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Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by Homer » Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:00 pm

God is all-powerful, and for that very reason, there is some instances in which he can if he so desires, make himself helpless; because nothing is beyond his ability, there is nothing he cannot do.
This is hard for me to grasp. If you think of God existing in a place where He is completely sovereign and then being able to place a person beyond some sort of barrier into another domain where the person is beyond God's control that would appear to mean God is no longer all-powerful. And given the number of free-will creatures, God would seem almost powerless over man.

Another thing; if the problem of evil is said to be solved by assigning it to free-will, how are events caused by inanimate objects to be explained such as a rock falling and crushing a child? That is a natural event that is part of the problem of pain. Did God know the rock was going to fall and choose not to intervene?

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robbyyoung
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Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by robbyyoung » Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:23 pm

dizerner wrote:God is sovereign enough that in some respects he can relinquish this sovereignty—or he is not really sovereign.


Hi dizerner, this is a contradiction! Neither God or His Christ can deny themselves. God DOESN'T relinquish His absolute rule under any circumstance. To say that He does is utter folly and not well thought out. His sovereignty is in perfect harmony with "the council of His own will". Mankind and The Principalities in heavenly places 'freedom of choice' works within the sphere of God's will, without Him contradicting or denying Himself. I'm sure we can agree that the power of choice doesn't threaten or weaken God's position or sovereignty to judge wisely in the suffering of Believers.

The context of my remarks, concerning 'God being helpless', was specific to acts of suffering/harm to Believers in which God clearly shows He can intervene to stop it, if He chooses to do so - verses - the times He chooses not to. Point being, God is not helpless to intervene, resulting in non-action, but rather sovereign after the council of His own will, and His character is not in question regarding action or inaction. I'm sure someone appreciates your Calvin concerns, but it has nothing to do with me or my remarks. Again, God is not helpless to intervene in human suffering and to suggest that He is, is folly. God being "helpless" in contradicting Himself or denying Himself is not what we were talking about. I think you're guilty of hi-jacking the conversation to toot your own horn. Either stay in the context of the conversation or start your own thread to prop up and bloviate your own pet projects.

I'm very busy. So when I have time, I will respond to anything relevant to the context of my remarks.

God Bless.

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Paidion
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Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by Paidion » Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:45 pm

Homer wrote:Another thing; if the problem of evil is said to be solved by assigning it to free-will, how are events caused by inanimate objects to be explained such as a rock falling and crushing a child? That is a natural event that is part of the problem of pain.
Yes Homer, that is correct. The free-will solution applies only to the evil acts of mankind and not to natural disasters. Natural disaster is quite another matter. In my opinion, natural disasters—earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, land slides, animals killing people (and each other), microbes invading people and animals, mosquitoes biting and sucking the blood of people and animals (and many others), have all resulted from the Fall. It wasn't only Adam and Eve who fell from the grace of God, but all nature fell with them. For example, Genesis states that God created PLANTS or herbs for food for people and "beasts." But after the Fall, some animals began to devour flesh, and evolve (or "develop" if you prefer) the teeth and claws suitable for doing so. I still recall the time I postulated that mosquitoes (a creation of God), prior to the Fall sucked the juices of plants in order to develop and produce their young. Just a few weeks later, I read of an experiment in which mosquitoes were isolated in such a way that plants were available to them but not animals. In this environment, they sucked the juices of plants and produced their offspring just as well! I felt that that experiment supported my postulate.

Nevertheless, I don't think the problem of evil has been fully solved. Free will and the Fall explain a lot, but I'm not sure that they explain all.

Dizerner, I really appreciated your first post on July 17. It was well thought out and expressed.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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robbyyoung
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Re: Getting to The Will of God

Post by robbyyoung » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:47 pm

dizerner wrote:
robbyyoung wrote:that Paul did disobey the Holy Spirit, and this disobedience caused him his life!
I don't know where you are getting this whole idea that Paul's disobedience to the Holy Spirit cost him his life, you seem to be making it up out of thin air. There is no direct causal indication that any disobedience in Paul's life caused his martyrdom, in fact there is direct evidence to the contrary, that Paul said he didn't know what he would decide to do, either remain with the Christians or depart and be with the Lord, strongly indicated Paul had a choice, which would mean the Lord actually asked Paul which he would desire.
robbyyoung wrote:I'm not in a fantasy world concerning Paul, dizerner, but thanks anyway for the loving comment. ;)
Your logic about Paul is in a fantasy world because of the Scriptural evidence.


Hi dizerner, I should have said "may have caused him his life". Scriptural evidence is their for all to see; The Holy Spirit was clear concerning what Paul was not to do. For circumstances may have been different if He had heeded the warning of The Holy Spirit not to go to Jerusalem. You say there is direct evidence that Paul had a choice, well he did until He met up with the Brethren later and was told by The Holy Spirit not to go. Well, he went anyway and His circumstances, most likely, changed for disobeying God's instructions, hence I say, 'may have caused him his life'. But of course your hostlilty typically renders ridiculous comments, such as, making things up out of thin air, when it's entirely reasonable to explore the option. But I'm sure you never explore options over the evidence and then accuse yourself of your own hostile rhetoric. Oh I know, its just me :lol:

That's all I have time for now, but I'll chisel away at your remarks as time permits.

God Bless.

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