1. The relationship is a genuine dialogue, not a monologue, so monism is avoided. In other words, God's character does not change, but his actions can.
2. Since God's will is not always accomplished, he is not the cause of all that happens; therefore God is not responsible for human sin. We are solely responsible.
3. The Biblical views of prayer are indeed meaningful. God is not a coercive parent manipulating us into making a request. We are free to ask and possible change God's plans, should he consider it prudent.
4. Not only are human beings free, but God is free to respond to prayer, to love in changing ways, and to experience joy and pain because he is not bound by an immutable will.
5. The prima facie meanings of the Biblical text are allowed to stand without having to measure up to the Greek philosophic standards. In other words, the Biblical text means what the earliest church fathers thought it said, instead of Augustine's modulating the characteristics of God due to the Greek thoughts of divinity.
I maintain that these five are unavailable to those of a Calvinist persuasion. What it boils down to is this - is it possible to change the will of God? Is it possible to disobey the will of God?
My answer, as I have tried to show in various previous posts, is a resounding "yes," so logically, these five points follow. If your answer is "no," then logically, these five points cannot follow - unless someone can show me how.
Five Effects of seeing God as personal rather than absolutistic
Discussion in '2000-02 Archive' started by ScottEmerson, Jun 8, 2002.
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tyndale1946 Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
It's not one or the other but a union of both... My God is personal but is also absolute in saving all his blood bought children. There is Salvation in time and eternity!... His absolutness is his saving of ALL his children yet it doesn't effect his dealing with them in a time salvation sense. How many time salvations of Gods children are in the scriptures?... To many to count!... In our daily lives?... To many to count!... Yes he is a personal Savior and and absolute God and its not one or the other but both together... Humanity and Divinity joined together and is sitting on the right hand of God making intercession for us Jesus Christ the righteous!... Brother Glen
[ June 08, 2002, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: tyndale1946 ] -
Scott, myself and others have asked on other threads for scriptural proof. Can you please provide here an explicit statement from that affirms what you've stated.
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Jeremiah 18:7-10
If at any time I declare concerning a nation or kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation of a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it.
Because I agree that Scripture shows that God works within our own choices, my premise is that God is a personal God who gives human some responsibility. the five effects I mention logically follow from that.
Is that the kind of Scriptural proof you're looking for? Or is it something else? -
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Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, "I will multiply your descendents as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever."
God's unchangeable purpose is the basis from which Moses pleads on behalf of Israel.
God threatened destruction, Moses pleads on Israel's behalf, based on God's promises to Abraham, and God doesn't destroy them. Why do you think God really intended for things to work out differently than they did? COULD things have worked out any differently than it did? Wouldn't that have necessitated God going back on His word?
This little episode illustrates perfectly what I mentioned in my previous post--God has an eternal plan, but He works it out in time through His responses to us, and our responses to Him.
As for Jeremiah 18:7-10, that simply shows that God shows mercy to nations that repent, and brings judgment to those that don't. Threatening judgment is a means by which God brings nations to repentance, or by which He seals their judgment. It doesn't have to mean that God actually changes his eternal plan, only that in time, His attitude toward a nation changes when they repent, and that His wrath remains upon them when they don't. Of course God, having perfect foreknowledge, knows from eternity which choice any individual nation will make, and knows what His final disposition of them will be, and that is all included in the plan He has for human history.
[ June 08, 2002, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: russell55 ] -
Of course, a decree ignored the teachings of the Bible where God changes His mind based upon actions of man. See the verses provided for evidence of that.
Also, if you have any Scripture to back up this idea of decree, that'd be good.
According to Biblical stories and according to the words of Christ, God allows us to have an impact on Him - an impossibility with an eternal decree. -
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What you are advocating sounds very close to the teachings of Clark Pinnock and others of the Open Theism heresy. To put it broadly, their teaching is that God is a Master Chessplayer Who reacts to what His creation does, rather than being proactive in accomplishing His will. What I read you advocating sounds like something an Open Theist would agree to. It really denigrates the character of God into something similar to the gods of Greek mythology.
One redeemed by Christ's blood,
Ken -
The teacher, having explained how it seemed as if Moses changed God's mind, said of course that wasn't the way it really was.
Your mistake, Scott, is to simply read the text and take it at face value. You're supposed to run everything through the "what is possible based on doctrine and theology" filter.
And, to be fair, if you are saying God changes his mind, you have to deal with the passages like:
Numb 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie,
nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Anyway, I do admit that one very thought-provoking point was made in the study that made it worth having to hear that of course it didn't mean what it said ;) - namely, that the love Moses had for the people, which led him to plead with God not to destroy them came from God in the first place.
I thought it was a great point, fwiw.
Having seen what your occupation is I'm not the least bit surprised at your perspective on God's character.
I think that we can't avoid our idea of God being somewhat subjectively based on what we most hold dear.
A pastor whose Bible study I was once in, who was training to be a counselor, said a few times that you can make a good guess at someone's theology (Calvinist, Arminian, etc) from their character. I think he is right about that. Although there always tend to be exceptions, having said that.
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I think it's also funny how you think that this idea of God is more Greek than Biblical - An examination into the "evolution" of God into what Augustine presented paints a very different picture.
God is indeed proactive - that is, anticipatory - but He is not effectual in all things. Numbers 16:20-22 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron "Separate yourselves from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once." But Moses and Aaron fell facedown and cried out, "O God, God of the spirits of all mankind, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?"
...and God changed his mind again, killing only Korah's family...
Is God one who toys with us with idle threats he has no intention of following through on or does he interact with us? -
In this passage Balak attempted to get Balaam (a “prophet-for-hire”) to prophesy what he wanted to hear (cf. 22:38–23:17). The Lord informed Balak that he, the true God, is not like a human being who can lie when it’s profitable or a mortal who will change his mind for the sake of convenience. This was a common practice for false prophets who speak on behalf of false gods. But for the first time in his life Balak (and Balaam!) confronted the real God. This God is not like a mortal who would change his mind for the reasons Balak gave him to do so.
The conclusion which the whole council of Scripture should lead us to is that God changes when it is virtuous to change, but is completely unchanging when it is virtuous not to change.
Hope that helps.
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God planned ahead of time everything. If this were true, it would be impossible to have a genuine response - it would only be as a play, reading from an already predetermined script.Click to expand...
Of course, a decree ignored the teachings of the Bible where God changes His mind based upon actions of man. See the verses provided for evidence of that.Click to expand...
As a holy God, he is angry with a holy wrath toward sin and disobedient men, expressed in Exodus 32 by His words, "let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them; and make you a great nation." This is, I believe, a true expression of what God feels like doing, and also a true expression of what He would do without Moses' intercession.
But as a longsuffering God, He changes his feelings toward His people in response to Moses' intercession on their behalf. In response to the intercession of a righteous man God's anger cools. None of this necessitates a change in purpose or plan, but it does mean that God's feeling toward us changes when our attitude toward Him changes.
Also, if you have any Scripture to back up this idea of decree, that'd be good.Click to expand...
What is the difference between first (or primary) cause and secondary cause?Click to expand...
Amos 4 tells a striking story about how God wanted Israel to return to Him, but Israel did not. Matthew 23:37 shows Christ crying out that what He wanted hasn't happened, due to people's unbelief. So does God change His will? Seems that His will can change.Click to expand...
Where do you see that God has "perfect foreknowledge" of all things? The Bible praises God for his detailed knowledge of what will happen and what he will do, but it does not teach limitless foreknowledge. Such an idea was a Greek idea, added to by Augustine - it wasn't held to by the early church fathers.Click to expand...
God could have very well continued the line through Moses, who was part of Abraham's seed.Click to expand...
God is not a God of idle threats - to do so is to speak of the character of God, which is a much worse characteristic than the idea that God works through the decisions of his children.Click to expand...
So you admit that God can work things out based upon our responses to Him.Click to expand...
You're also ignoring that God says he "intends to do it." If these are idle threats, then God lies.Click to expand...
So you agree that God changes his plans based upon what man does or does not do?Click to expand...
[ June 09, 2002, 03:12 AM: Message edited by: russell55 ] -
Originally posted by ScottEmerson:
So how would you define my character then? :cool:Click to expand...
Did that answer your question? -
Shorten it up posters. These long posts with extensive quotes are way too much. Be more succinct.
A few people here are getting very close to a dangerous (heretical??) position on the person of God, particularly with regard to his knowledge. Be careful. -
Originally posted by russell55:
I don't really understand on what basis you make this big assumption. How do you know that bringing about a predictable plan makes genuine response (or genuine emotion) impossible on God's part?Click to expand...
God changes something in response to the actions of man, but I don't think it's His eternal plan that is changing. In our idiom, "changing one's mind" always means changing what you planned to do, but does the word "repent" used in the OT necessarily mean that? I believe in many of these cases, it is God's attitude or emotions that change. [/quote[
Then we have to decide what God's eternal plan is. One of his plans is to have a chosen group - in the OT it was the Jews, in the NT, it's the church. In the same way that Jews had to choose to follow God to become part of the chosen people, so it seems that we have to choose to be part of the church.
The word for repent means, "to be sorry, console oneself, repent, regret, comfort, be comforted," and is used by both men for repentance as well as God.
You would agree that God at least changes his emotions and attitude though, and that's good. We're making progress on coming to a resolution!
As a holy God, he is angry with a holy wrath toward sin and disobedient men, expressed in Exodus 32 by His words, "let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them; and make you a great nation." This is, I believe, a true expression of what God feels like doing, and also a true expression of what He would do without Moses' intercession.Click to expand...
But as a longsuffering God, He changes his feelings toward His people in response to Moses' intercession on their behalf. In response to the intercession of a righteous man God's anger cools. None of this necessitates a change in purpose or plan, but it does mean that God's feeling toward us changes when our attitude toward Him changes.Click to expand...
Well, I am using "decree" simply to mean that God has a plan for human history that He is bring about. I stand by the Ephesians verse that says God "works all things according to the counsel of His will"? God has a "counsel of His will", a purposeful plan (and I have a hard time looking at the words behind this phrase and seeing it as anything but a "purposeful plan"), and He is working everything out according to that plan.Click to expand...
A first cause is what sets the whole ball of wax in motion. The first cause sets the secondary causes in motion, which in turn cause more causes, and on and on and on.....Click to expand...
God is not a passionless God. He grieves over sinful people. He will not be gleefully throwing people in hell. But why does that mean it isn't His plan to do so? Did God enjoy sending His Son to die? Don't you think sending Christ to die truly grieved Him, and yet we know that it was God's plan to do so before the foundation of the world. Just because there is one sense in which God doesn't desire something doesn't mean it isn't his plan to bring it about.Click to expand...
Where does the Bible ever suggest that there is anything that God doesn't know? If God doesn't have complete foreknowledge then there are things that God learns as they happen. If that is true, then there are some things God is just making educated predictions about, and if that's true, then it follows that there is a real possibility that one of God's educated predictions could be wrong. And if that is a possibility, then you have a God who is able to make mistakes, who is able to think an untrue thought. The logical outworkings of a statement like this is pure heresy.This is a slippery slope argument, and a logical fallacy. God still is able to work within people to come about with His desired plans, which is where the fault in your argument lies. God isn't passive, but actively working in the life of people. Jeremiah 3:7 and Ezekial 12:3 tend to show that God is dealing with the "will they?" or "won't they?" This is also a great deal of conditional responses with God, "If they do this, i will..." and "if they do that, I will..." In fact, reading the OT prophecies carefuly shows a WhOLE lot of such conditional prophecies.
Could He have? Jacob had already made His prophetic blessings to his sons including this one to Judah, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet..." Could God really have acted in a way that made those prophesies impossible to bring about? If God had wiped out the Israelites and made a new people descended from Moses,wouldn't this blessing would have been made void, along with the ones to the other sons of Jacob (Except, of course, the one to Levi.)?Click to expand...
Of course not. If Moses had not interceded then God would have destroyed Israel. But God at least knew Moses would intercede, and more likely caused Moses to intercede, so that God could respond to Moses's intercession by showing mercy to His people.Click to expand...
Nope. God doesn't change His plan based upon our responses. Our responses are part of His plan. But He also genuinely responds to us and what we do.Click to expand...
Of course He intends to do it....IF THEY DON"T REPENT. But He certainly at least knows before he even pronounces His judgment whether they will repent or not. Knowing (or even planning) whether they will repent doesn't make His threat an idle one. If He made the threat intending not to carry it our REGARDLESS of what a nation did, THEN it would be an idle threat.Click to expand...
Nope. I said God changes His attitude or disposition toward them in response to what men do, not his plans,Click to expand...Click to expand...Click to expand...Click to expand... -
Scott,
Thank you for your response. I think, however, that you have misunderstood some of what I wrote (Sorry for being unclear!), so I would like to address those misunderstandings first.
First of all, I think you misunderstood the exact presupposition in your argument that I asked you to defend. Here it is:
God planned ahead of time everything. If this were true, it would be impossible to have a genuine response - it would only be as a play, reading from an already predetermined script.Click to expand...
I have already given a couple of examples from life, the planned wedding and playing a musical piece, that I think might indicate that this assumption is not necessarily true.
You have given the example of reading a play from a predetermined script. I think, if you want to use a play as an example, a better example would be an author who thinks of a story in his head, and then writes it down as a play. Both things need to be creative acts, since I think that is more like what God does. In eternity He decides what is going to happen in the history of creation, and then, moment by moment, he creates that plan within the reality of time.
Another example might be someone who draws plans for a house, and then builds the house as he planned it. Isn't there still genuine pleasure and joy in the second act, even though it was planned in the first? (Actually, I can tell you from experience that there is a lot more genuine pleasure in planning a house and building it according to plan than there is in wingin' it ;) ...and the place looks a whole lot better, too. )
Anyway, what I am trying to show is why I don't necessarily agree with the presupposition in the quote above, and why I think that doing something that has been previously planned does not necessitate doing it by rote, expecially if what has been planned is a creative act.
Okay, on to the next thing that might have been a wee bit confusing....
God has a plan - I'll agree with that. An eternal decree means something different to those who ascribe to Calvin's theology. I'll agree with your definition here.Click to expand...
Then we need to define "plans" as opposed to attitude or disposition. If God is indeed changeable, why are only his plans immune from such a change?Click to expand...
Maybe, since the quote is there anyway, I'll comment a bit on why I believe God's plans are immune from change. For one thing, if God has a plan (Plan A) and He changes it, either the new way of doing things (Plan B) is better than His original plan, or worse. If Plan B is a better plan, then there is a problem with a perfect God, who doesn't make mistakes, choosing plan A in the first place, when a better plan existed. If Plan B is worse, then the problem is the same. God is, with Plan B, choosing to do things in a way that is less than the best way, an impossibility for a perfect God.
That's all I have time for tonight, but I do want to move on at some point to the rest of your posts.
[ June 11, 2002, 02:08 AM: Message edited by: russell55 ] -
Where is the evidence God knew Moses would intercede? Even more evidence is needed to show that God "caused" Moses' intercession!Click to expand...
"Present your case", says the Lord. "Bring forth you strong arguments," says the King of Jacob. "Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; As for the former event, declare what they were, That we may consider them, And know their outcome; Or announce to us what is coming. Declare the things that are going to come afterward, That we may know that you are gods."
God himself sees the ability to know what is going to happen as necessary to divinity. According to Him, it is impossible to be God and not have knowledge of what is to come. A god without foreknowledge is no god at all.
And what about Psalm 139?
Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all.
I put this one here because I think it speaks directly to the Exodus 32 incident. This verse show that God knew beforehand that Moses would intercede for the Israelites. God intended to destroy the Israelites if Moses didn't intercede, but He also knew, by virtue of His knowledge of what Moses would say before he said it, that Moses not interceding was an impossibility.
God says, "Let me alone, so that My anger may burn against them.....", but He knows from the start that Moses won't let Him alone.
Another verse from Psalm 139:
Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in thy book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.
Before I am born, the days of my life are all written in God's book, days that are fashioned (or shaped like a potter shapes clay--David was mixing metaphors, I guess) by God himself. Every day of every single person's life is shaped by God before he or she is born, and it is all written down in God's book.
This is why I say that God at least knew that Moses would intervene, because Moses's intervention was already written in God's book, so to speak. But more than that, because God was the one who fashioned that day in Moses's life, that intervention, at least at some level, was caused by God.
Furthermore, if God had books written on every Israelite, could He have destroyed them on that day in Ex 32, if that was not what was written in His book before they were born?
Actually, I think Moses's intervention is caused in a very direct way by God, because it was a righteous act--a good thing--and God is the direct source of every good act. "Only God is good", and so all of our goodness is derived goodness--goodness derived from Him, the source of all righteousness.
[ June 13, 2002, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: russell55 ] -
Baptist Believer Well-Known MemberSite SupporterOriginally posted by Pastor Larry:
A few people here are getting very close to a dangerous (heretical??) position on the person of God, particularly with regard to his knowledge. Be careful.Click to expand... -
Originally posted by Baptist Believer:
Is that a warning to us as a Moderator or as a brother in Christ? I'm new here an wondering if people get banished or threads shut down if the moderator decides the thread has slipped into heresy... :confused:Click to expand...
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