Post Edited (Exousia) : 2/2/2007 10:19:32 AM (GMT-6)

And here's something else.

John's LONGSUFFERING actually was a demonstration of GRACE to Jane.  In John's willingness to endure Jane's nonsense for all those years, he actually EMPOWERED her to be able to see what REAL LOVE was like.  And it was this vision that ENABLES Jane to see her TRUE state of affairs.  John could have just booked it and left her alone...but he didn't  He just stayed there...loving here...taking care of her from afar.  And waiting...

Grace, baby.

Post Edited (Exousia) : 2/2/2007 10:35:17 AM (GMT-6)

Laika: Tom, Reitan's shoe box analogy assumes that the "P" of TULIP is true, perserverance of the saints. 'Once saved, always saved'. That's what the glue on one side of the penny represents. Do you believe LFW is a one-way street? That after death, once people choose to obey God they can never choose to disobey God after that? That God locks them into their state of obedience?

Tom: Good point. Well, I’m not sure if Reitan would hold to the P of TULIP in all contexts. I don’t think, for example, that he denies the possibility of apostasy during this life. He might. I don’t know.

But we at least agree that LFW with respect to love becomes CFW (compatibilistic free will) in heaven. So there’s at least one context in which you and I agree believers are no long capable of self-disposing away from God although they are now free in this way.

The question is whether a plausible case can be made for a post-mortem context in which persons who choose God and turn to him thereafter enter upon the same compatibilistic state you and I (assuming I make it without having to go through hell!) enter into upon our deaths. See? I don’t know if sure-fire proofs for this are possible. I don’t see a sure-fire disproof either. I’m thinking that once the post-mortem choice for God is made, that’s it. You go home. You don’t stick around. I’m not sure on this though.

Laika: One side note, saying UR comes close to having probability of 1 is not an option. The whole definition of UR is that the probability of all being saved is 1.

Tom: I was hoping there’d be something else to call this position. So you mean I can honestly hope with a 99.99999999999999999999999999% confidence and not have to call myself a universalist? Whew, that’s great!  

One question for ya. ECT is out for you now, right? So if UR is also out (including the 99.99999% hopeful UR), then that leaves you with annihilation, right?

Pax,

Tom

Post Edited (Exousia) : 2/2/2007 11:21:43 AM (GMT-6)

Laika: I'll say that if I have LFW in heaven, it's a two way street, otherwise I don't have LFW. I really don't know what compatibilistic freedom is other than an oxymoron.

Tom: Let’s not nit-pick though. We both know that “compatibilistic freedom” is well-known and used. But if you don’t wanna use it, that’s cool. I won’t put “freedom” next to “compatabilistic.”

So you believe that the redeemed in heaven will remain eternally as free to sin and rebel against God as they or anyone else now is? There’s no eschatological closure to this? I’m saying we will not be libertarianly free with respect to love and goodness in our eternal state. We’ll be compatibilistically loving.

What do you say?

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Laika: Reitan's analogy hinges on P.

Tom: It hinges on P’s being true in a post-mortem context, not in all possible contexts. I don’t mind agreeing to this, I just don’t like calling it the P of TULIP because that suggests that a person committed to believing that people turn to God in this supposed postmortem context are committed to TULIP as a theological system now, and that doesn’t follow.

Laika Otherwise it doesn't work. Everytime you shake the box, all the pennies fly around.

Tom: But again, is there no plausible reason to suppose that the LFW that lands on a postmortem agent on head’s can, because of the portmortem context, usher the agent into the SAME compatibilism that our LFW ushers us into upon our deaths? There’s nothing about LFW per se that requires us to insist that agents be irrevocably libertarianly free. LFW, so the metaphysics goes, becomes compatibilism, but a compatibilism of OUR choosing.

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Laika: 99.99999999999999999999999% probability is LFW, not UR. UR is 1. That's it's definition.

Tom: Fine by me. So let’s not talk about UR. Forget that. It’s not possible and we’re not imagining that. Let’s talk about the view we ARE imagining. Let’s suppose that there’s a 99.999999999999999999 (to the end of the universe and back) probability that all will eventually choose God and thereupon enter into the same heavenly state you and I will be in. We won’t call this universalism. Let’s call it “hopefulism.” OK?

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Laika: ECT and UR have the same problem you pointed out to me, that God would have to sustain people in punishment for either.

Tom: The problem with ECT was never the CT. It was the E. And besides meaning “eternal,” E always meant “irrevocable.” It’s not the mere fact that God would be the one sustaining people in torment. God is able to sustain people in their just torments, and I agree that God will do so. The problem with ECT was the E part. What possible reason or justification is there for God’s holding persons in eternal IRREVOCABLE torment? That’s an entirely different animal from God’s holding persons in the just punishments that their choices on earth AND their continued choice to remain in hell warrant. In the latter God is sustaining people in the hope and 99.999999999% expectation that they will choose him eventually. That’s way different to me than traditional ECT.

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Laika: ECT - punishment for eternity, UR - punishment, potentially for an eternity, for extracting a confession of faith. Faith which isn't really faith, according to scriptural definitions.

Tom: I wouldn’t use “extracting.” That word presupposes a certain view of the whole ordeal that I don’t share. For me to leave someone I love but who is in the grip of some addiction he chose to experience the painful consequences of his choices in the hope and expectation that the experience will wake him up and motivate him to come back to me—this isn’t the sort of “extracting of a confession” I think you have in mind. Extraction suggests treating people in ways they do not personally deserve in order to convince them to make some choice. That’s not what any of us has in mind though.

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Laika: Put it this way, UR posits a probability higher than you winning the powerball two times in a row. OK? If you win the powerball twice in a row, they WOULD NOT pay you the second time, in fact you'd be arrested. Why? The probability of winning the powerball twice in a row is so astronomical, they'd believe you had rigged it some way.  UR, with a probability of 1, necessitates God rigging it all, determinisitically.

When you get back, take on Ian Hacking's example about the consecutive lottery wins. I get to heaven, find out UR is true, I suspect it was rigged and we never had LFW.

Tom: What we’re imagining is not at all like winning the powerball twice, irrespective of the probabilities. You can’t say that since the probability of X is astronomically high that it’s equivalent to 2X since that probability for 2X is also “astronomically high.” What’s astronomical? Point is, X isn’t implicated in the sort of responses 2X might deserve. Arrest somebody if they win the powerball twice, not if they win it once. I'm only betting on creation all being reconciled ONCE.

Persons respond to God freely and thereupon enter heaven. That’s once. Even distributed out over the whole, over all those in hell, the probability only supposes an eventual ONE time turning of the whole (person by person) to God. That’s once. One reconciliation of all. Unless you assume that a person’s winning the powerball ONCE has by definition to be rigged, you should assume that ONE reconciliation of all things is equally rigged.

So…

Would you agree, Laika, that a tossed penny’s landing heads is indeterministic? Of course you do. You’re an indeterminist like me! There’s a 50/50 probability that it’ll turn heads. And there’s a 50/50 probability EACH TIME you toss it, right? Right.

Alright, what’s the probability of a penny’s landing heads ONCE after being tossed two times? There’s a greater probability. What about 5 tosses? Greater. 100 tosses? Higher still. What if you had all eternity to toss the coin? The probability that it would turn up heads ONE TIME is incalculably high. Dude, anybody who had the slightest doubt or expectation that heads wouldn’t ONCE turn up would be irrational, in spite of the fact that there exists a mathematical probability that expresses this possibility and brings the probability of head’s at least ONCE to less than 1.

The problem is, as you say, supposing that a penny keeps getting tossed after its turned heads once. That’s like saying persons have to continue determining their choice for God over and over and over again in hell until such a time as God takes the penny home. So as you’ve pointed out, something like P has to be true for a penny that turns heads in hell if it is to remain heads and so ground the hope for UR. But why can’t something like P obtain in some circumstance? I can think of one right now. ALL Arminian indeterminists that I know of believe P eventually obtains, they just don’t believe it obtains for the redeemed while they’re on this earth. But they do agree that eschatological salvation, finally inheriting heaven, includes shedding the capability or freedom to reject God and do evil. So P obtains finally! It IS true in at least one circumstance, and a postmortem context at that. We will SOME DAY BECOME such that our continuing in faith and love is irrevocable.

Well, once you posit P at some point the question then becomes why not for pennies that land heads? What if landing heads constitutes sufficient grounds for entrance upon that same glorified P-state that you and I will know in heaven? It IS heaven.

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Laika: Again, our differences are ignorance versus willful rebellion. Look at Satan's example, though described by God as "Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty,” Ezekial 28:12, Satan willfully rebelled against God, Isaiah 14:13-14, "I will be like the Most High God." How much epistemic distance was that?

Tom: I don’t know. But there’s good reason to believe that Satan’s choice was a rational one.

Consider, Laika. Would you not agree that my being accountable for my choices entails a certain rationality to the choices for which I’m held accountable? I mean, wouldn’t you agree that in order for us to attribute moral significance to some choice, the choice has to be rationally intentional? Is not intention a defining component of responsible choice? And is not reason or rationality a defining component of intention? I think so.

For LFW to exist there needs to be a context that’s clear enough on the one hand and ambiguous enough on the other to make intending the right as well as intending the wrong both rational options. That’s all epistemic distance is. It’s not “God’s epistemic distance from us,” it’s our limited (not eradicated) perspective (epistemic stances) and fallible capacities processing the possible explanations of our context, and all of this coupled with the embodied and habituated drives that influence choice.

In other wrods, to be free to choose to love or not to love, we need to be capable of intending to love and not to love. And to be capable of intending to love and not to love, we must be capable of perceiving a reason to love and a reason not to love. But to be capable of perceiving a reason not to love is to experience epistemic distance. That’s all it is. Any being that chooses wrongly and is responsible for it has to have been able to have reasonably intended to so choose and to have reasonably intended not to so choose. For LFW to obtain we have to be placed in a context that provides sufficient clarity about the truth AND sufficient ambiguity about the truth. We can be neither overwhelmed so as to make everything obvious nor so deprived of information as to absolve us of responsibility.

So, let’s take you comment: “If…epistemic distance…is the reason for our rebellion, then God is responsible for our rebellion as He could decrease that epistemic distance at any time, with Paul on the road to Damascus as an example. But if our willful choices are the reason for our rebellion, God is not responsible, we are.”

But, Laika, epistemic distance isn’t total ignorance. It’s also partial and sufficient clarity. That means there’s as much clarity as is needed to make rightly choosing possible (which in turn makes us, not God, responsible for choosing wrongly) and enough ambiguity to make choosing wrongly rationally plausible to our own minds, otherwise we could not reasonably intend the wrong (which we have to do if we're responsible for our choice). Both CLARITY and AMBIGUITY are necessary. That’s the nature of LFW. God is only responsible for our choosing wrongly if our choosing wrongly was unavoidable given the epistemic distance. But that wouldn’t be epistemic DISTANCE. That would be epistemic CLOSURE (in falsehood). Epistemic DISTANCE places us as far from and close to finding plausible, reasonable explanations for rightly choosing as it does for wrongly choosing. It doesn’t prejudice us toward one any more than the other, so far as our capacities are concerned.

Yes, God knocked Paul off his horse on the way to Damascus. Now we’re into an entirely different conversation about SOVEREIGNTY and the “why” and “how” of creational variables that determine the contexts in which God knocks Paul off his horse (on the one hand) and in which God looks passionately and unsuccessfully for an intercessor for Israel so that he doesn’t have to judge their butts into the ground (on the other hand). Why didn’t God knock the entire nation of their horse if he REALLY didn’t want to judge them? Why did God limit his relationship to Israel THEN to the willingness of people willing to pray but intervene so miraculously into Paul’s life?

I don’t know. But whatever the reasons, it’s clearly not the case that God can just kick the furniture over any time he wants regardless of the contextual variables. How involved God gets is PART of the context that defines epistemic distance and makes LFW…and love…possible. And we know very little of the contextual variables.

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Laika: Anytime God wants to 'flip' me, He just has to get in my face and I'll 'flip' automatically, right?

Tom: Not at all. I don’t think so. It’s obvious that God does not equally “get in the face” of all those he wishes would choose him (and that’s everybody, right?). At the same time, God gets into the faces of a lot of people who flip God off and walk away. So not only does God not always get in our face to motivate us, but even when he does get in our face, it doesn’t always work.

Laika: So why isn't He doing it this side of death?

Tom: OK, the shoe box and pennies is just an analogy. It’s not a detailed map of the afterlife. I don’t think “flipping the box” in the analogy amounts to God exercising a kind of hands-on torture chamber where God pokes us and if we don’t repent God doesn’t something else to “flip” us, say, turn the heat up, and on and on through eternity until we cry “Uncle!” All “flipping the box” points to is the continued sufferings of persons in hell and their sufficient conscious and rational perception of their surroundings. God’s not poking them. He LEAVES them, or ABANDONS them, (as I imagine it) to feel or experience the natural consequences of their choices. So “flipping the box” isn’t God “getting in peoples faces” as much as it is God leaves us to face ourselves, the truth about ourselves. The box just IS hell. We’re consciously suffering, recalling our history, regretting our stupidity, and watching all the lies we told ourselves to justify our choices slowly melt into the sand, leaving us parched and thirsty. This is NOT Grabe Prison or “extracting” information by torturing the innocent. It’s the just and natural consequences of our choices.

It can’t be wrong for God to leave us to experience the just and natural consequences of our sin. With that I think you’ll agree. What I am struggling to find is some good reason for concluding that it would be wrong for God under any circumstance to save us from this (provided the metaphysical requirements of such salvation--LFW--holds). So this brings up the questions of (a) whether such persons retain the capacities (rational, emotional, volitional) they would need to intentionally choose God, and (b) whether hell would be the sort of context in which such persons could exercise those capacities in a libertarian manner. I’m guessing the same rules that constrain LFW in this life (epistemic distance, that is, sufficient clarity to make choosing rightly rational as well as sufficient ambiguity to make continuing to reject God rational) hold in the afterlife. I would only add that hell is the eschatological wrath of God, however purgative it might be. It is not JUST a continuation of what we now face. If it shares with this world the necessary components of LFW, it’s also sufficiently different to justify calling it the eschatological wrath of God and to justify concluding that there is an eternal loss to the persons who find God this way.

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Well, I’m off to admit myself into the hospital. I’m in for five days beginning tonight. Pray for me if God brings it to your mind. I’m not sick or anything. I’ve volunteered to be the testing ground for a new drug that’s being developed for heart patients. Pray that I come home safely next Wednesday.

I’ll be online checking it.

Pax,

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/2/2007 6:41:21 PM (GMT-6)

Gregory MacDonald, according to what I've read you say, doesn't hold to LFW.  Are there ANY UR that do, whose arguments I should look at?  I've seen some of Talbott's and they aren't very convincing.  Craig goes after his arguments with his middle knowlege which doesn't impress me either.  Reitan is a compatibilist with his deterministic glue on one side of the pennies.   Any free will universalists out there?