The Relationship between God and Man

Helen, nor can you have something foreknown to occur (making it definite to occur) and then call it a free choice. Yet that is what you believe the Bible says.

Your philosophical argument fails because the exact same argument can be made against your view. We believe the Bible says both that and the other.

 

Good point, CB. The free choices of all are foreknown by God and therefore determined, because they cannot be other than what God already knows they will be. The only way to consistently hold to a position like Helen's is to deny God's foreknowledge, which makes Acts 4:27-28 even more interesting. The best God could do then is to stack the deck in His favor and then hope that if He sent His son that someone would take the bait and crucify Him, and then if someone did that He had to hope that He could convince someone to believe and be saved. And they call us pessimists, LOL.

 

I hate to bring up Romans 9 again, but....

Romans 9:17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth."

Now, if this is where Paul stopped, you could probably make your statement that God just knew what Pharaoh was going to do and just completed what Pharaoh started. Although, I would still say this verse is pretty clear that God raised Pharaoh up for the purpose of showing His power in him. Now, how could God have showed his power if Pharaoh had just "chosen right?"

More importantly, Paul goes onto verse 18, which begins with a VERY important word - "therefore." This tells us that this is Paul's conclusion to what he has been arguing.

Romans 9:18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

Now, if Paul believed as you do, he would have said, "Therefore Pharaoh deserved to be hardened because he made his bed so he has to lie in it." Instead the subject he brings up is God's sovereignty, which, amazingly enough, is the subject we keep bringing up.

Not only that, but in the original story in Exodus 4, before Moses even goes back to Egypt and confronts Pharaoh, God says to him this:

Exodus 4:21 And the LORD said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Notice, the initiation of hardening is God's, not Pharaoh's. Did Pharaoh harden his heart? Yes. But wait, there's more...

Exodus 7:1-4 So the LORD said to Moses: "See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. 2 "You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land. 3 "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 "But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.

This is before the first plague. Notice that God says He will harden Pharaoh's heart and then Pharaoh will not heed Moses. Why will Pharaoh not heed Moses? Is it because he, of his own free-will, decides that he doesn't want to? Undoubtably, the answer is yes. (I know you're surprised to hear me say that). BUT (just so I don't disappoint you), the driving reason BEHIND his free-will decision is God. Notice what the verse says: "But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt." God's purpose was to harden Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh would make a free-will decision not to listen so that God could lay His hand on Egypt.

Does it make sense to the human mind? No. Does it make sense to God? It must, because it's in His Word that way.

 

Not to make this a mutual admiration society, but the only logical position to take from Helen's standpoint is Open Theism. I don't believe Helen will ever go there because she believes the Bible too much. But, logically, for man to really have a free will, God must not really be omniscient.

The future must be unknown. Or, as Open Theists say, God knows as much of the future as is possible to know. Because man has a free will, the full range of possibilities of his choices is known to God, but the choice he is going to take remains unknown. This is not Helen's view, I am sure, but it is the logical conclusion of her view.

 

What you see as logic is based on human conditions. God knew but did not force the choices of anyone. Even Jesus said, "Not my will, but Thine be done." Every one of us has the option of saying that.....or not.

 

Of course we have that option. Nobody has said otherwise. God has foreordained that we would each have that option, and He has foreordained which option each of us would choose in each circumstance.

 

Genesis 6


"5": And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

"6": And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

This one always bothered me!

 

Brother Bob, in the Alexandrian LXX, Gen. 6:6-8 reads
"And the Lord God, having seen that the wicked actions of men were multiplied upon the earth, and that everyone in his heart was intently brooding over evil continually, then God laid it to heart that he had made man upon the earth, and he pondered deeply. And God said, I will blot out man whom I have made from the face of the earth, even man with cattle, and reptiles with flying creatures of the sky, for I am grieved that I have made them."

Since we read in Revelation that Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, we know God knew this would happen. Nevertheless, perhaps we can wrap our minds around it a little when we have a sick parent whom we know is going to die soon. We are braced for the death, but still weep at the funeral and feel sad. If the parent is saved, we know that he or she will be in heaven and is having no more pain or anything like that. But still we weep at the pain of death and parting itself, even though we know it would happen, does happen, will happen.

In the opposite way, we can plan for a birth, know if it will be a boy or girl, name the child, and still be totally overcome with feelings when we hold that little one for the first time!

I don't know if it was like that, since God isn't man (now that's a unique thought!), but it is one way that I try to wrap my mind around that puzzling section of Genesis 6.

 

Helen, nor can you have something foreknown to occur (making it definite to occur) and then call it a free choice. Yet that is what you believe the Bible says.

Your philosophical argument fails because the exact same argument can be made against your view. We believe the Bible says both that and the other. </font>[/QUOTE]You're wrong. I know when my wife's alarm clock goes off she will get up and take a shower. Have I decided that for her...or is this information based on foreknowledge? Do I violate her free will, or remove it because I know this will take place?

 

This kind of response always surprises me. You write as if God is just really, really good at predicting what we will do. Does God know the future the same way you know the future? There is always a chance that you might be wrong and that your wife may surprise you. Nothing will ever surprise God. Your wife will do exactly what God knows she will do, and from that aspect all of her future actions are already determined.

 

This kind of response always surprises me. You write as if God is just really, really good at predicting what we will do. Does God know the future the same way you know the future? There is always a chance that you might be wrong and that your wife may surprise you. Nothing will ever surprise God. Your wife will do exactly what God knows she will do, and from that aspect all of her future actions are already determined. </font>[/QUOTE]I used a finite analogy that proved what you said wrong. God doesn't "predict" anything, we can predict...and be wrong. God has perfect foreknowledge, and still gives man free will, contrary to what you say here...

 

Whatever, God CREATED time. He is OUTSIDE of it. So He sees all of it at once.

And He still has given us free choice within time.

Just because you don't understand that doesn't mean it isn't true! And the choices are not of one thing or only one possibility due to our natures (which is not choice). They are real choices which, we, living in time, have.

God, being outside of time, knows.

The incredible thing about the Incarnation (or one of them) was that God Himself entered time and made Himself subject to it for 33 years.

 

It is impossible to use the finite to prove anything about the infinite. (And it was not I who said that there.)

 

It is impossible to use the finite to prove anything about the infinite. (And it was not I who said that there.)

Then stop trying.

 

Helen, you know what? I agree with everything you said there. That just makes me wonder why you think this is supposed to disprove what I believe.

It is you who rejects the idea that a choice can be both free and foreordained, in spite of what the Bible says, simply because you do not understand how it can be true.

 

Because you are mangling the meaning of words.

Foreordained means DECIDED ahead of time. If something is decided ahead of time for another person, then that other person has zero, nada, none, no free choice about it.

 

We begin in School, 1+1+1=3

Then scripture comes along and says, 1+1+1=1

Yeah, but as my husband points out,
1 x 1 x 1 = 1