General Question about various beliefs held by various people

[dizerner]

We never stop trying to put God in a box of our own making.

It can be a comforting thought that God just can't help some things, and a way to relieve the tension of his feeling culpable.

[dwight92070]

If we didn't trust in or rely on our natural mind, we could not function at all. Even when someone says that we cannot trust in or rely on our natural mind, they had to trust in their natural mind, to even come to that conclusion! Every time we drive a car, we must rely on and trust in our brain, or we could get killed.To rely on the Holy Spirit does not mean that we don't use our brains that God gave us. We are told to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and MIND. Everything Jesus said made sense and can be understood with our brain. Of course, it is because we are using our brains, that we sometimes come to different interpretations of what He said. Paul, too, spoke about some things that Peter said were "hard to understand", but even his epistles require our brain to understand.

We live in a body that has a brain. It's impossible to NOT use or to NOT trust in our brain or we would die. But once we come to a certain understanding, or conclusion, or we say, "I have now figured that out", we must submit that to the Holy Spirit for Him to either affirm or reject, or give us further revelation, etc. This, I believe, is walking by the Spirit. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean not on your own understanding."

What did Jesus say when He was filled with and led by the Holy Spirit, when Satan tempted Him? He said, "It is written" three times, once for each temptation. He resisted Satan by quoting the "letter of the law". So when we are filled with and led by the Spirit, He will inevitably lead us back to the written letters of the Bible, which we are to come to an understanding of, and obey by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we must use our brain to understand Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 3:6 - "... for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." My understanding of that is that Paul, in context, is speaking here about the Old Covenant (the letter) vs. the New Covenant (the Spirit). When we read the Old Covenant, especially it's laws and commandments, we realize that we have violated them, or sinned against God, so we die spiritually. But when we commit our lives to Jesus, Who brought the New Covenant and is our new Lord, we become born again, and have passed from death to life.

[dwight92070]

Correction in the last sentence of my first paragraph. It was Peter who spoke of some of Paul's word, where there were some things hard to understand, not the other way around.

[njd83]

Hey Homer

Its not that God cannot accurately predict what a person or dog would do, as I subscribe to the idea that he has complete omniscient knowledge of the present and past which gives him the ability to have predictive power beyond anything we've ever known.

And I don't know for sure that God does not have complete exhaustive foreknowledge of the future.

Its just that it very much seems to be weird and contradictory. It also seems to not flow from the texts that describe God speaking through the prophets. Boyd would say it would be ingenuine of God to speak to people the way he does in the prophets, and yet already know the future completely. Dizerner does not like the use of the word ingenuine, but I understand what Boyd is getting at. Maybe there's a better word to describe the disconnect between God having complete foreknowledge yet dealing with humans seemingly like he did not know.

I would also not see it as me putting God in a box, but that God put himself in a box in the creation of human agents with free will in his image and likeness. Creating free will was his own free will decision, which had the effect of limiting himself in the process. It would not seem to be too "free" to God if he already knew everything we would every do. I would assert that God's intentions was not to create robots which he already knew everything future about, but to create children who have the actual free choice to choose him and love him. As well as choose to reject him.

If God has free will, if God can change his mind and relent or repent, then we who are in his image also have the ability to change our mind and relent and repent. But to do something completely free, but yet God knows what we are already going to do in every circumstance... seems contradictory. How can you foreknow something that is completely freely done? What kind of free will is that anyway?

[njd83]

We never stop trying to put God in a box of our own making.

It can be a comforting thought that God just can't help some things, and a way to relieve the tension of his feeling culpable.

Again, its not that God CAN'T help some things, he totally has the power to do anything. But in his creating free will he has chosen to limited himself in order to allow free will to have its course. But, for example, if "other" free wills choose to pray and seek, God can use those free wills who are choosing "God's will be done" in order to combat the other free wills who are choosing "The Devil's Will Be Done". That makes complete sense to me of a spiritual warfare. An actual real Spiritual Warfare of real free wills, fighting against the Will of God, which God has to morally allow the creatures he has made to have a time of using their will, and the consequences, one way or another, before judgement.

Please don't pigeon hole and strawman me.

Look at Daniel praying and fasting, and the resistance the angel had in getting to him for 21 days. Could God not have come earlier?

Its a real world.

[njd83]

Dizerner:

About PST, remember I have not stated any beliefs about this topic, before you assume I believe one way or another. I do not even know the details of what it would mean to believe it or not believe it. I'm not exactly sure what it means, I'm not sure how much I care, because like I said I was turned off by theology and theologians, who have largely different takes on the texts, so I was not interested in the high academic language of Jesus dying for the sins of the world. I just read the texts and that's it. Theology seemed to take the simplicity of the texts away. Never liked that. And now reading a 2 volume 40 hours audio book on the history of the church... wow... could not believe what happened in the first 400 or 700 years. Heresies, Christian's in political power killing pagans and destroying temples, corruption in the leadership, wars. Dang. What happened?

[dizerner]

Dizerner:

About PST, remember I have not stated any beliefs about this topic, before you assume I believe one way or another. I do not even know the details of what it would mean to believe it or not believe it. I'm not exactly sure what it means, I'm not sure how much I care, because like I said I was turned off by theology and theologians, who have largely different takes on the texts, so I was not interested in the high academic language of Jesus dying for the sins of the world. I just read the texts and that's it. Theology seemed to take the simplicity of the texts away. Never liked that. And now reading a 2 volume 40 hours audio book on the history of the church... wow... could not believe what happened in the first 400 or 700 years. Heresies, Christian's in political power killing pagans and destroying temples, corruption in the leadership, wars. Dang. What happened?

I hope you know I wasn't assuming you believed one way or the other, just stating how important I think the doctrine is.

One can state any belief more or less simply; we can state PSA as "Jesus took the punishment of God's wrath that you deserved for your sin."

The devil has been active in the church for sure, and honestly I'm not even sure where we can define the borders of Christ's real church.

The real Christians are not those with big theologies and big buildings, but many probably have no historical record at all.

[dizerner]

So we must use our brain to understand Paul's words

Thanks for jumping in, dwight, I respect a man convinced of his opinion.

Even using my natural brain—whatever its capabilities are only God knows—I can understand it has real and severe limitations. And also, the Bible talks about the spirit and heart and things like revelation and inspiration.

Jesus did "open their minds" to understand the Scripture, so our minds interface with spiritual truths in some regard. But there are supernatural parts of us beyond the mind, the soul and spirit, that have their own processing.

The natural man does not understand the things of God for they are spiritually discerned—one would assume if intellect were in fact the means to knowing God better, the smarter the person the more they would know God.

So I just can't accept that premise as Biblical, that our intellectual abilities are the appointed faculty for knowing spiritual things. Personally, I became extremely intellectually oriented, and had to become child-like in many ways to find the simplicity of trust and fellowship once again.

God bless you, though, no hard feelings.

[dizerner]

Please don't pigeon hole and strawman me

Please don't assume I intend to.

If you say what appear to me to be logically contradictory things, and I point that out, I'm not misrepresenting your position.

[njd83]

Funny how a recent sermon by Greg was so on topic to this thread:

WHEN PRAYER GOES “UNANSWERED”
SUNDAY JANUARY 9, 2022 • GREG BOYD
https://whchurch.org/sermon/when-prayer ... nanswered/

But this topic is huge. For a lot of people. Probably the most difficult part of the intellectual side of coming to faith. Experiencing the presence of God in church obviously helps the most though.

Complete and Exhaustive Foreknowledge is a huge stumbling block for me, and many others.