Post Edited (Sahid) : 7/25/2008 4:49:38 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/25/2008 6:22:07 AM (GMT-5)

It's the same argument others use regarding the future, "How can we trust God if He doesn't exhaustively know the future?"

"How can we trust God if He doesn't automatically 'love' us?"

'Love' from an automaton is a deterministic output. 

BTW, probability is an expectation based upon prior occurrences.  It is neither deterministic nor causitive.  If I examine past dealings with God, I would place a high probability that He will act similarly.  But this doesn't mean I expect that He cannot do otherwise.  He has free will, that's why He can give it to me.  You can't expect to receive freedom from a prisoner. 

Laika: They trust that their wives will love them tomorrow despite having free will. But God, they have to conceive of as an automaton that has to love them tomorrow in order to trust it.

Tom: Eau contraire mon freir! I believe in character solidification. You and Zach don’t. I believe there is reason enough in my wife’s past performance and character development to trust that she won’t—poof—stop loving me tomorrow. I admit that given certain circumstances (say, prolonged infidelity on my part, the slow demise of her spiritual life, etc.) she can develop out of that over time and ‘come to’ stop loving me, yes. That’s different. Zach and you are saying every moment of God’s existence and love are the effect of God’s libertarian choice to exist and to love irrespective of past choices to do so. No character solidification.

If you were not allowed, Laika, to take your wife’s past love and faithfulness into account AT ALL—up to present moment—you’d have absolutely no grounds for trusting or believing that she’d still love you tomorrow. But discounting past performance is exactly what Zach and you are arguing. That’s what a libertarian choice is.

Say I believe in a deterministic automaton God if you want. That’s cool. But I don’t mind asking you the same thing I asked Zach. I’d still like some account of the grounds upon which YOU trust and believe that God will love you tomorrow. What evidence or grounds do you have for it? Don’t say the Cross. That’s past performance and can tell us NOTHING about what God will or won’t do in the future. Don’t say all God’s goodness to you and the world up to the present moment. That’s all past performance. Don’t say the present witness of the Spirit in your heart. That’s only there contingently, on a moment by moment basis given libertarian divine will. It could just as likely evaporate in five minutes. There’s nothing about the character or will of God, on your view, that would be inconsistent with his deciding tomorrow to betray himself and hate you. But if that outcome is as consistent with the character and will and nature of God as is his loving you, then WHY pray tell do you believe one will be the case tomorrow and not the other? NONE of God’s past performance or present character or will or nature bears on the outcome of his LIBERTARIAN choice. And you believe God’s choice to love you as opposed to hating you is perpetually libertarian.

[This is not like the determinist’s criticism of an open theist’s so-called inability to trust God for the future. That’s a different argument altogether. That criticism regards ‘what it is we’re trusting God for’, and the determinist and open theist are trusting God ‘for different things’. But we here agree that we’re trusting that God will continue be faithful in his love of us tomorrow. What we’re debating is what the grounds are for this belief given our respective claims about the character and will of God.]

Tom

Laika: BTW, probability is an expectation based upon prior occurrences.  It is neither deterministic nor causitive. If I examine past dealings with God, I would place a high probability that He will act similarly.  But this doesn't mean I expect that He cannot do otherwise.    

Tom: Ha ha. Nice try. I wondered if you’d notice this and jump back on to try to patch the gaping hole! But not so my good man. Our expectations, to be justified, must be more than a pipe dream. To be more than just wishful thinking it has to be the case that this past performance objectively defines the scope of possibilities for the next moment. Our trust isn’t just floating in the air. It’s a trust “that God will do X.” That means something about “God” gives us reason to believe that he will love us tomorrow and will not just decide to up and betray himself. Our believe about the future, to be knowledge, or to be a justified trust, has to reflect the nature of the object our trust, not the nature of the truster. That means God’s past performance (I’m just going with your assumptions for the moment) in turn exercises some influence over the range of possible choices. So it’s just not possible, Laika, given the objective reality of your wife’s very deep love for you, that tomorrow morning without any change in contextual circumstances and factors, she can just freely decide to hate your guts. But that doesn’t make your wife an automaton in my book. It means she’s determined her character and her character in turn is determining the manner and nature of choices she can make. Sure, if circumstances change (like I said), her character can change. But her love of you is not a perpetually libertarian matter.

Tom

So, if a "rock" is granted LFW would the rock then possess the ability to change itself into a good natured loving apple tree, or for that matter a (very firm) queen size bed?

I don’t even know which thread I’m in any more!

Laika: Now everything you said about my wife, say about God.

Tom: So you do believe in character solidification? You earlier said you did but then came back and said, “Naw, not really, I don’t know what that even means.”

But for the sake of argument I’ll assume you do believe it, and I’ll apply to God what I said about your wife (though in my mind there have to be some obvious differences). You spoke of “the power of habit, character, and developing nature.” Fine.

So, if your wife’s loving you over the course of a few decades can so shape her character as to make it increasingly less likely that she’ll just up and decide one day to hate your guts and slash and abuse her children, imagine how formed her character will be after a lifetime of faithful loving. How formed would a character be which had loved unfailingly for an eternity? If we go with your rejection of an original necessity that guarantees God loves and just go with the solidifying effects of character formation over time, how solidified do you think God is? And if we add to this the fact that God perfectly perceives all reality and values, etc., I can’t see any grounds for maintaining a real, genuine, existentially viable freedom to ‘sin’ in God.

So the question is just how “powerful” is this development of character or habit of which you speak. If 40 years can get Mother Theresa to near irrevocable humility and love for others, how far do you think eternity has gotten God? How really 'libertarian' would he be by this time? Not very I don't imagine. And would it even be rational to suppose that God’s deciding to betray himself and hate you tomorrow is really possible? If you find it meaningful to maintain some REAL sense in which this is possible TOMORROW so that you can remain secure in the fact that God ‘loves’ you at all, OK. I’m not gonna fight you for that. I’m just saying I don’t find it at all meaningful to posit any real possibility for God’s betraying himself and freely choosing to hate you. Saying God is ‘capable’ of that—given character solidification over time—isn’t at all meaningful to me.

Zach is more consistent in denying character development or the influence of the past upon God's present choices. The continuation of God's love for us is, so far as I understand Zach, a completely libertarian choice.

T

POW: Will you with me also say that it [our love of God] is “conditional” on the created potentiality in us to “...imitate, resemble, and participate in...” divine love?

Tom: Sure, our loving God is (logically) conditional upon the created potentialities give to us by God. That goes without saying. If we don’t exist, we can’t love God. So our loving God is conditional upon our existence. And if we exist but don’t have the created capacities and potentialities to love God we can’t love God. So our loving God is (logically) conditional upon having such capacities. Yes.

These aren’t my question. When I say our love of God is ‘conditional’ I mean there’s an 'existential' reason (or reasons) which motivates our love for God (contra D) and those reasons are not IN US. They are instead the worth, beauty, and grace of God. In short, GOD is the reason why God is loved. The motivation and reason are in God. We love him, the Scriptures say, because he first loved us (grace), not for no reason at all, just because (D).

Tom

Jeff: For how do you compel a free act? By motivating with consequences. There is no other way I can conceive of that a free act can be compelled/forced and STILL be free. The act can still be freely refused, but only at the cost of the consequences that were "compelling" the person to choose to DO the action.

Mark: While I appreciate the motivational benefits of consequences, for example tribunal law might rest on the consequences of a caveman getting his teeth knocked out.  However, I think to truly be free is to be in Christ and to act without it hinging on consequences, e.g. God.   

Jeff, how do you work unconditional love, or a gratuitous act, into your view of Consequentialism?

Tom, looks like what "goes without saying" and "isn't your question" wasn't what I actually said anyways. :(  created potentialities are like the knockout holes in your computer into which you can put another hard-drive. You seem to think I said something like "the potentiality of being created/existing. See the difference.

Btw, I don't find "goes without saying" to be helpful for me in conversation. (Its a stopper.) And it was not your question this time, it was mine.

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/25/2008 3:10:34 PM (GMT-5)