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Featured The ROSE Acronym

Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by humblethinker, Jul 23, 2012.

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  1. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

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    Jesus did not know everything and He is God.
     
  2. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    he was god Incarnated upon the earth, where He set aside the use of his divine attributes such as all knowing, being all places etc...

    That is why he did not know time of his returning back then, as he chose to live as a man, in wisdom and understanding....

    Now ascended, he once again has his full glory restored, and again is all powerful/all knowing etc!
     
  3. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

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    So if God knows the future does He make (predestine) everything to happen (good and evil) or does He look down through history to know it?
     
  4. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    Depends!

    Hyper cals see it as God determinging EVERYTHING that happens directly...

    Moderates like myself would see it as the Lord does determine some things, permits others to happen, but in all things, He remains Sovereign, he is in sovereign control, and causes all things to work together according to his Plans and purposes..

    example...

    Some might say the Joker Killer was doing it becaused god deternined, caused him to do that

    My take is that God knew he was going to do that, and already had determined what would be the result of what he chose to do!
     
  5. humblethinker

    humblethinker Active Member

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    Not correct. Please take the time to educate yourself. I am willing to help if you are interested. Open Theists believe that God knows everything, that he is 'omniscient'. A difference is that Cals believe that God cannot know anything as a possibility, I believe that if something is a possibility then he knows it as such. So, if I were to speak ignorantly of your theology as you do Open Theism, I would be able to say, "Your view of God is so small that there are things he doesn't know and therefore he is not God! My God knows more that your God!". This of course is ridiculous, which is why I don't claim it, unlike many Cals do against Open Theism.

    Yeshua, do you think that you could make the case for Open Theism if you wanted to convince me that you actually understood it? I feel like I could present a case for Calvinism, Simple Foreknowledge, Molinism and Open Theism as a proponent of each such that true proponents of those views would say that my explanation was fair and accurate. The comments I read from you (and several others here) seem to indicate that you have some basic misunderstandings about Open Theism. Basically, the claims of Open Theism are being judged with the premises of Calvinism (or whatever the opposing views premises are). This is no way to argue and influence. It is much better to debate against premises first.

    We can all agree that God is great, good, love, holy, our Father, creator, triune, 'Omniscient', 'Omnipotent', etc. So, we agree largely on what Kind of God he is. Where we disagree is in the answer to the question, "What kind of world has He created?" Many people get these questions confused when they argue their case.
     
  6. quantumfaith

    quantumfaith Active Member

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    :applause::applause::applause:
     
  7. psalms109:31

    psalms109:31 Active Member

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    John 15:15

    15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.


    The soul and flesh of Jesus was 100% man the son of man. The new man without sin. The Holy Spirit within Jesus is 100% God.

    God does not need to learn anything the soul and flesh of Jesus did.

    What separates God from man is sin and Jesus never sinned. In the end after His glorification and He lived His life on earth without sin and we know only God is good.


    Hebrews 5:
    7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

    Jude 1 :
    A Call to Persevere

    17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

    20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

    22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.[The Greek manuscripts of these verses vary at several points.]
     
    #27 psalms109:31, Jul 25, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 25, 2012
  8. AresMan

    AresMan Active Member
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    The world that He wanted to create such that would glorify Himself in His justice, righteousness, mercy, and grace.
     
  9. AresMan

    AresMan Active Member
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    Open theism speaks to the very ontology of God, which is an important part of the Christian faith. The problem is that it tries to define God's actual fullness in terms and limitations of how man experiences the world and relates himself to each other and God. It is a form of theological existentialism.
     
  10. Van

    Van Well-Known Member
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    Reply to OP

    The ROSE addresses the actions and attributes supposedly by the God of the Bible, Yahweh. Lets see if it is well grounded in scripture.

    RESPONSIBILITY - people makes choices influenced by their life experiences but not compelled by their depravity or past choices. This view rejects exhaustive determinism where either God has predestined the future, or by other indirect means has precluded people from seeking God and trusting in Christ such that God would credit their faith as righteousness.

    Matthew 13:1-26 teaches people do seek God and trust in Christ, and some of these are chosen, i.e. the fourth soil. It also teaches some, the first soil, have been hardened such that they are unable to seek God and trust in Christ.

    God does not punish the child for the sins of the father, so it seems unbiblical to say God would cause (exhaustive determinism)people to sin, directly or indirectly, and then punish them for the sins of the Father.

    But because God does punish people for their sinful choices, it follows that people are able to choose to sin less and at times to even seek God and trust fully in Christ. Therefore our choices affect the outcome of our lives, thus the future is not fixed exhaustively. So the ROSE is consistent with limited open theism.

    OPENNESS - the future is not exhaustively fixed. Some circumstances in the future are fixed, i.e. what God has predestined including His prophecies, but other circumstances are not fixed, thus people can make choices rather non-choices (where they "choose" the only outcome possible).
    This is consistent with God predestining some things, and God declaring the end from the beginning.

    God does know our hearts, and thus can say with certainly what we would choose or do given a circumstance. Thus He says if folks in another town had seen His miracles, they would have repented. But this capability does not require that God always searches our hearts, God can choose instead to test us to determine what choice we will make, like He did with Abraham and Issac.

    SOVEREIGNTY
    - God causes or allows whatsoever comes to pass. Thus God predetermined the future which He has chosen to cause and allows people to make UN-predetermined choices within the limits He allows. Thus we make (autonomous) plans but God directs our feet.

    Sovereignty is not a code word for exhaustive determinism.

    EMOTION - God exhibits the three characteristics of Personhood, intellect, will and emotion. God is love, God is angry, God is grieved, and God is jealous. But God is also perfect, flawless and does not make mistakes. He is saddened by the mistakes (sins) people make, but allowing us to make mistakes that grieve Him does not equate with Him making mistakes.

    Bottom line, if we strip away some of the inferences contained in the OP, it is biblical right down to the sweet smell of Truth.
     
    #30 Van, Jul 25, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 25, 2012
  11. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    Do you believe that jesus was fully God and fully man? NOT that the Holy Spirit in Him was God, but that he was God Himself in his OWN nature?
     
  12. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    can you prove from the scriptures that Time has always existed, or that it is somehow tied up in/with the nature of god?

    can you show us where the bible mentions possibilities, that the Lord was not sure/certain of any outcomes?

    that God somehow remains sovereign and all knowing, yet limited in foreknowledge and his awareness?

    might not be the brightest bulb here, but i was in special honors and took standardized IQ test, and was at 140....
     
  13. psalms109:31

    psalms109:31 Active Member

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    Jesus is fully God because He did not sin and only God is good. The whole being of Jesus is one with God. Jesus is also fully man and is the mediator between man and God.
     
  14. humblethinker

    humblethinker Active Member

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    i believe i can come close at least... I think the onus is first on those claiming that time did not exist. I will have to reply later though (i think I started a thread about that but can't recall which one it was... anyway, continuing...)

    Yes. I would like to clarify the question, or maybe reframe it if you don't mind. It is Open Theism's claim that all possibilities are known and have always been known to God. So, nothing catches God off-guard or unprepared and neither does anything surprise God as though he could be blind-sided by something. However, unlike in closed theism, God can appreciate an event that was once improbable but is now certain. In Closed theism God can not appreciate such an event because they don't exist.

    There are numerous passages that demonstrates this explanation. They are very obvious, however, our 'theology' will not allow us to take God to mean what He says with His own mouth nor what the scripture says. I will let you think about what they may be and will reply with passages later. (sorry, at work now)
    Again, i would like to reframe the question and premises. Since God is sovereign over His sovereignty, then He will always be sovereign. God knows all things. If He has created a world in which there are possibilities then He will surely know them and know them as such. What then is there that He doesn't know or foreknow? He doesn't know that a possibility is a certainty any more than he knows that a bachelor is married or that squares are circles. He also knows what He has determined, and they, of course, are certainties. Since things that he predetermines have not happened yet then He foreknows that He will accomplish that to which He now knows he has committed himself.

    This is why the Open Theist says that the future is partly open and partly settled. This, they believe, best describes the world that God has created.

    I hope you took my last post to mean what I intended. I did not intend to convey that you were not intelligent. Even bright people need to be educated and informed and it is the brighter ones who can do so on their own (but boy can that be expensive!).

    Peace.
     
  15. Van

    Van Well-Known Member
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    I think scripture teaches God created physical time when He created the universe comprised of the earth, the moon, the Sun, the stars and everything else. But scripture does not address "spiritual time" except to relate separate actions of God taking place sequentially in eternity.

    Were we chosen in Him before He was foreknown as the Lamb of God?
    Did God love the Son before He chose Him to be His Lamb?
    Did the Son share God's glory before He was chosen.

    We can draw the conclusion that God loved the Son always, as part of their triune nature, and likewise assume the Son always shared the glory of God. However, we must decide logically, that the Son was chosen/appointed to be the Lamb/Messiah/Christ in eternity as a sequential action. To be "chosen" means before the action, un-chosen, after the action, chosen. Since this occurred in eternity, scripture teaches logically that "spiritual time" exists to the extent actions occurred rather than always were. Next we were chosen, I believe corporately, in Him before the foundation of the world. Again, logically, we would be chosen so a "time" existed when we had not been chosen, and then we were chosen. So we have these two actions in eternity that teach to some extent, "spiritual time" where sequence is given by the action of choice.
     
  16. humblethinker

    humblethinker Active Member

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    I like that... deliberation and choice before the creation. I can now add that to events of love and glory that happened before "the beginning" of the universe. I don't have a problem with calling it 'spiritual time' since it is still 'time' of some sort, whereas 'timelessness' or 'eternal now' is no time at all. Thanks!
     
  17. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    Just curious...

    What is wrong with closed theism, or perhaps better to ask...

    What does it matter if either closed/open?

    And if the Lord has already dtermined all that will come to pass, or else foreknows all that will come to pass, how can it still be open to Him?
     
  18. humblethinker

    humblethinker Active Member

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    You touch on another idea I've been chewing on: How much does it really matter that we hold these different views? I am willing to receive them in relationship as a brother in Christ and worship and serve with them. I also would not hesitate to be their friend. I will save the rest for the new thread on this topic.

    What I see that is 'wrong' with closed theism is that the philosophy of it requires a God that does not have a genuine relationship of reciprocity with his creatures and imo, renders all the interactions of God shown in the Bible as exceptions to the rule of what God is really like.

    Your last question is a good one and I agree with your implication. The classical Arminian, imo, can still say that God does take some risk (risk of rejection, hurt, loss, disapointment, grief). Yet, in their view, the future never could have been different than the way it finally becomes and therefore, the future is 'closed'.
     
  19. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    thing is that God can handle the implications that would arise from Him being absolute sovereign, and yet he can still interact 'freely' with His creation, but we as finite minds cannot!

    Also, it seems that some in Open theism see us saying God has predestined all things that happen, but also that he determined all things that happened..

    Does not have to be both!

    We state that He exists outside time/Spece/matter/Energy his creation, but that he interacts with it also...

    And that from beginning of the Universe, unto new heavens and earth, eternal state, he knows already, right now what will happen..

    From our point of view, make our decisions and choices "freely", but the Lord already knew beforehand what would bedone, just some he directly caused, others allowed...
     
  20. Van

    Van Well-Known Member
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    What? More irrational gobbledegook. God predestines all things yet this does not determine all things. I kid you not, that was the assertion.

    What is wrong with closed theism, it is unbiblical. Jesus said things happen by chance. We make choices which requires that either outcome is possible. Otherwise we would be making non-choices. Exhaustive determinism is false doctrine and rests upon revising the meaning of words to mean the opposite, i.e choice means non-choice.

    If God is not the author of sin, then He did not predestine the sinful choice. This is not rocket science.
     
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