Calvinism and fatalism?

As am I ...

Calvinism is saying that, IMO. Everything is predetermined and inevitable. But we don't know what has been predetermined, so we are making legitimate choices. We are workign through the issues and options in our mind at each choice, and thus, not having God's knowledge, our choice is real.

My point in the questions on the previous page was that all sides except open theism have this problem. Even if God's omniscience is merely looking ahead to see what will happen, what he sees is inevitable. There is no real difference except the issue of who is in actual control.

 

Yes, you do. Even if God just knows something will happen--your own model for how things play out--it is certain that it will happen. But I don't think you're going to say that it's inevitable that it happen, are you?

I'm not sure exactly how it works out, either. But the angel of the Lord uses words of planning or determining for God's role (You must, God has given), and Paul uses words of real option (and real consequences) in his warning: "Unless they stay, you CANNOT be saved."

 

Paul says they could have prevented their deliverance from the storm if they had let those sailors go into the lifeboat, doesn't he?

And don't you agree that it was? Had God not planned to save all of them?

I'm not sure why you think that if, in the end, they will all certainly choose to stay, that doesn't mean the option to get into the lifeboat wasn't a real one.

Doesn't much depend on their choice? Wouldn't there be real consequences if they chose to let the sailors get into the lifeboat? Was there anything outside of their own thought processes about Paul's warning preventing them from letting the sailors get in the lifeboat? Did God force them to chose to keep the sailors on the ship?

 

As far as I understand it Natters, you are convinced that if someone chooses to do something- and it is predetermined he would choose that- his human volition is violated.

If God knows or plans for you to die on October 24th 2012, you will die on October 24th 2012. Now you may die in a car wreck caused by lack of sleep because you were up late at a church activity the prior night. It was your volition to stay up that late, then put the key in the ignition and drive- but ultimately you followed the unalterable path of God. Your death happened right on schedule- not a second too early or too late. If the future was alterable, then God's plans are not God's plan- they are our plans and God is just along for the ride. If it offends your sensibilities that God has your entire life planned out- so be it. You don't have to think about it I suppose. But either way, you have a date with destiny. Many of them in fact. Each moment of each day you are exactly where God has allowed you to be- even if you are willfully committing sins, you are were God has allowed you to be or He would have made sure to prevent it.

The ultimate consequence of believing the future is alterable is Open Theism. There's no way to get around that. But just because it is unalterable doesn't mean we know what it is or are forced into the decisions we make. God has many ways of changing the heart of man- some internal, some external.

As Larry hinted at, the difference between the decrees of God and fatalism is the word Glory. God has all things (good and evil) working together for the glory of His purpose. Fatalism is determinism minus God. Nobody is glorified if life is a chained sequence of events to an inevitable outcome ordered by nobody. But an outcome ordered by the Lord is the most glorifying outcome possible. Whether it be by the death of a saint, or the pitch a cat meows, all things are ordered to perfectly glorify God in the maximum possible way. Anything less leaves omnipotence at the door.

God bless,

Daniel Allen
www.spurgeon.us

 

Natters, you're cop-out with God's relationship to time leads me to ask you what you believe concerning perfect being theology and divine simplicity since it holds the same notion of God's atemporality. Do you care to explain the relationship between God's atemporality and the Incarnation? Furthermore, if God's relationship to time is not understandable to us, then how do you understand it?

 

It's interesting that you started this thread not to include your own beliefs but kinda silly to dodge the supposed problem that you charge Calvinists with without explaining how. You explain that your notion of God's relationship to time gets you off the hook with the whole fatalism thing, but then claim the "opposite" of understanding this relationship while using your "understanding" of it as a defense against some of these posts on this thread-baffling to say the least.

I won't post on this thread anymore here since you haven't thought about what it really means to posit that God is not "bound" by time or claim that it is an "aspect" of God's creation (I encourage you to look into perfect being theology because it also believes like you do concerning God and time, however, it leads to logical fatalism precisely because of God's immutability which extends from his atemporality and builds divine simplicity, which leads to logical fatalism because God=God's omniscience in that view-enough of that for now).

BJ

P.S. I will claim that the Incarnation goes well beyond God "acting" inside of time.

 

Natters, stay away from the time-space continuim thing...it blows Calvinism away and they can't answer it. There is no other recourse than to call you irrational or stupid, or just ignore it all together if there are other posters that will argue tit for tat (my verse against your verse) with them. They simply will not answer the questions...I tried, again and again. THEY WILL NOT ANSWER IT BECAUSE THEY CANNOT ANSWER IT...

My God foreknows not because he knows what will happen but because he is ALREADY and ALWAYS HAS BEEN T H E R E. EVERYWHERE...ALL THE TIME. That is the REAL God of the Bible!

 

I know I said I wouldn't post here, but this last post made me want to point out a few things, sorry.

Jarhed, how does holding a position that one cannot explain blow anyone away?

If God has already and always been there everywhere all the time (a temporal concept by the way), then the events of the world are fixed because in God's reality they are always happening and can never change. If you're right, then time is just an illusion that tricks men into thinking that events have temporal succession when in "reality" they do not and every event statically happens in front of God. Thus, what I do next year is always part of God's reality and it is fixed-how can eternity be changed? Christ may have died 2,000 years ago to man, but in God's reality He is both Incarnate and not Incarnate. He is both resurrected and not resurrected. See how this position just makes no sense and does not help you one bit with the freedom/foreknowledge debate.

Besides, on what Scriptural basis do you make your claim that the real God of the Bible has this relationship to time like you say? I've never seen any passages to back up this claim. The notion comes from neo-platonism, of which Augustine (among other Church Fathers) was happy to include when discussing the Trinity.

In my discussion the inability to answer questions has not come from me because I can explain my view and I do not have to hide behind word games about time.

In a nutshell, man's free will is perfectly viable in a compatibilistic sense with God sovereignly decreeing the events of the world, which does not equal fatalism because God does not equal logical forces but is a personal, active, loving God.

BJ

 

You are equating unalterable with fatalism. That is the problem. when you overcome that misunderstanding, your confusing with the OP will dissapear.

Unalterable= fixed outcome with or without God
Fatalism= fixed outcome without God
Predestination= fixed outcome with God

 

Tell Pharoah "I AM" hath sent me. I AM THAT I AM. The same yesterday, today, and forever.

What did Abraham know about God...that he was able to quicken the dead AND that he could call those things which are not (future, in the dispensation of time (EPH 1), as though they were (past tense...in the dispensation of time). He can do that because he is THERE all the TIME, because he is not bound by the dispensation of time.

Predestination and foreknowledge and the way they are presented in scripture show that SOVERIEGNTY, which is not "CONTROL" as the Calvinist claims, but in fact DOMINION, and the free-will of man are NOT opposing concepts. God created man with a free will and still maintains dominion over his creation. But, I digress, Eph.1:1-14 is clear that God was able to ELECT me before the foundation of the world "after that ye believed" because he is NOT BOUND by TIME. READ IT, don't read what Calvin says about verse 4...read the whole context! This is acts 13:48 explained (along with all the other jerked out of context verses which "prove" the Calvinistic view of Soveriegnty).

In short, the entire Bible, as well as the laws of physics, with regard to omnipresence, PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that the God of the Bible just IS (I AM)...where? There. When? All the time.

It wasn't explained, I never said it couldn't be. It is quite simple, really, and the bible is quite clear. A day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day...its all the same to him. He IS (present tense) the Alpha (beginning), He IS (present tense) the OMEGA (the end). RIGHT NOW.

When you understand that God does not live in the "dispensation of time"...then you can understand what FOREKNOWLEDGE, ELECTION, and PREDESTINATION really mean...they are not MAN's terms, and cannot be regarded as existing in the realm of time. They are God's terms, and HE built the machine in which they exist.

 

It doesn't matter whether I like a term or not. If it doesn't fit in the circumstance, why use it? I'm not a fatalist because I believe in God. It's simple. If you have a problem with unalterable futures, we'll talk about that. Bit it's misleading to say 'Calvinism and fatalism?' in the title if Calvinists are not fatalists.

Define 'come solely from me' and I'll have an answer for you. If you mean the desire to sin- well that came from either the world, the flesh or the devil. If you are talking about the physical capacity to sin (such as breath and mobility) we're talking about God. If you are saying that you can blame sin on God because your life is predetermined, you also might want to think again. Just because the train takes you to His final destination doesn't mean you can't be held accountable for what you do on it.

God bless.

Dan

 

Aha! I think I see where some of the miscommunication is. Natters is equating determinism with fatalism, and technically, they are different things.

Fatalists views human choice and action as pointless, because what is going to happen is going to happen whether they act or not.

Determinists accept that what happens in the future is certain, but they also accept that human actions are factors that will cause the future to take the shape that it will. So even though the shape of the future is already determined, and those human actions that shape the future are also themselves determined; if those human actions had been different, the future would also be different. If someone considers the shape of the future to be dependent on specific human choices and actions--even though they view those human choices and actions as also determined--then it's not fatalism.

So a determinist believes that what humans do really matters and fatalists don't. Calvinists are determinists, but they aren't fatalists. Unless someone thinks the exact shape of the future remains open, then they are--at least in some sense--a determinist.

Hypercalvinists, BTW, tend to be more fatalistic.

And the big problem open theists have with God knowing the future is that if right now, God knows for sure what I'll be doing tomorrow, then the shape of my tomorrow is already--as I sit here--certain. That--at least according to an open theist (and others as well)--is a form of determinism.