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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:22 PM (GMT -6) |   | D: My view? It's worth the risk to God to get human beings who self-consciously self-give themselves to God...not just those who NATURALLY self-give themselves to God (as in the case of babies)
T: Then you have to say that infants who die and are determined into the desired relationship with God (even if they develop somewhat AFTER that fact through self-conscious choice) achieve LESS of God's intentions for human beings than do those of us who self-consciously choose to embrace the relationship in the first place. It has to be. You're admitting that there's SOMETHING that's ONLY HAD relationally through the RISK God believes is WORTH it. See? And if infants by-pass that risk, they must be by-passing the benefit as well. Otherwise God's taking risks he doesn't need to take.
Good point about abortion. My problems with abortion are based not on the claim that the preborn are 'persons' in the full sense, but that they are nevertheless the potentiality for persons, and that potentiality is valuable too, very valuable, and ought not be aborted as a rule.
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:32 PM (GMT -6) | | D: My view? It's worth the risk to God to get human beings who self-consciously self-give themselves to God...not just those who NATURALLY self-give themselves to God (as in the case of babies)
T: Then you have to say that infants who die and are determined into the desired relationship with God (even if they develop somewhat AFTER that fact through self-conscious choice) achieve LESS of God's intentions for human beings than do those of us who self-consciously choose to embrace the relationship in the first place. It has to be. You're admitting that there's SOMETHING that's ONLY HAD relationally through the RISK God believes is WORTH it. See? And if infants by-pass that risk, they must be by-passing the benefit as well. Otherwise God's taking risks he doesn't need to take.
Suffering loss...
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
"I love, therefore I am in I Am." | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:34 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff: If creation is subject to a risk factor then that risk has to include a probability of loss. The question becomes that of a qualitative loss or quantitative loss. Scripture explicitly states creation suffers both types of losses. If babies are not lost, it would logically follow that they would be subjected to a qualitative loss.
Tom: This is what I'm saying. Yes. It can't be the case that babies who die and are determined by God through whatever means into a glorified state and so by-pass the risks of this life ALSO come to fulfill the full range of God's intentions for human beings. They would have to forever experience and reflect a qualitatively less intense beauty.
Do you want to say this D? I'm not sure I do. It essentially argues that God requires freedom for love ON SOME LEVELS but not on all, and he wants to get as many as possible on that deepest level. Whatever level we achieve, given the constraints of our context (die as infant and wake up in heaven, or struggle through this life like the majority and choose God, or choose God after a few eons of hell), that's the level we REMAIN ON forever. Otherwise, the risk is unintelligible. If all, regardless of the role of self-conscious freedom exercise, eventually come into the depth and intensity of relationship and reflected love, then a God who didn't need to create anyhow and who has nothing but time on his hands, would have simply determined us all by divine fiat into that relationship and let us grow into the final, fullest expression of it. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:40 PM (GMT -6) | | See it D? If it applies to babies, then TWT1 is out as a metaphysical rule of interpersonal relationship per se (so far as human beings are concerned). Greg wouldn't go for it. And if did, he'd be inconsistent with TWT1. No doubt there. If you imagine scenarios in which TWT1 doesn't apply (and it wouldn't apply in the case of babies), then you don't hold to TWT1.
If we're saying there are levels of relationship which are QUALITATIVELY GREATER and LESSER depending on the role/level of free will exercise to establish it, THEN we're arguing something entirely different thatn TWT1. That rule is out, and another metaphysical rule governing loving relationships would be in, something more flexible that admits varying degrees of qualitative intenstity LINKED TO the degree of freedom exercise by human beings.
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:40 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Do you want to say this D? I'm not sure I do. It essentially argues that God requires freedom for love ON SOME LEVELS but not on all, and he wants to get as many as possible on that deepest level. Whatever level we achieve, given the constraints of our context (die as infant and wake up in heaven, or struggle through this life like the majority and choose God, or choose God after a few eons of hell), that's the level we REMAIN ON forever. Otherwise, the risk is unintelligible. If all, regardless of the role of self-conscious freedom exercise, eventually come into the depth and intensity of relationship and reflected love, then a God who didn't need to create anyhow and who has nothing but time on his hands, would have simply determined us all by divine fiat into that relationship and let us grow into the final, fullest expression of it.
Think "ever-reaching towards God" in infinite Life.
To me, this is functionally equivalent to someone arguing that being the greatest in Heaven (whatever that is) is "better" than being the LEAST in Heaven (whatever that is)?
It's all eternal openness towards and responsiveness to God in ever-moving rest.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:43 PM (GMT -6) | | D: As long as we understand that LOSS is part of the risk...and sometimes less than ideal ( "missing the mark" ) situations obtain, for reason that we cannot understand. Right? Otherwise, why would we terminate ANY life at ALL for ANY reason?
T: Absolutely. If the doctor tells me "It's your baby or your wife, whom do want us to save," I'm saying, "Save my wife." Sorry. God have mercy on me if that's a sinful attitude. If my daughter is a minor and becomes pregnant by rape, I don't know what I'd do. If I knew that the baby was severly deformed, again, I'm just being honest, I'd have to hear from God. I know saying this means I'll never be hired by James Dobson. I'm fine with that.
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:51 PM (GMT -6) | | D: Think "ever-reaching towards God" in infinite Life. It's all eternal openness towards and responsiveness to God in ever-moving rest.
T: Origen and Greg of Nyssa. Exactly. And in my view this is a reason to reject the qualitative approach which supposes a qualitative loss of experience on the part of infants (and even those in hell who are redeemed, assuming UR). See this?
Look D, it's simple: IF all of us--regardless of the presence or absence of self-conscious choice employed to believe and follow God--end up experiencing and reflecting the same intensity of relational beauty, even if realized at different stages but eventually realized by all as all eternally reach and actualize this beauty into infinity...AND IF it's the case that human beings can be brougt into this without having to risk evil and hell (supposing this to be the case with infants), THEN...
...tell me you see the problem.
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 12:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Mark: Please don’t plagiarize, Jeff didn’t write it, you're quoting me.
Tom: Thought it was Jeff.
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D: Basically...if you are "saved" and in relational union with Divine Presence (and the ever-moving rest in that), does it REALLY matter HOW MUCH you "lost" or "rewarded" with respect to creaturely self-consciousness? I'm talking from the perspective of the "saved"...
Tom: I’m trying to understand which side you’re coming down on. Here you’re admitting varying degrees of reward and loss. Fine. But you also appealed to the notion of “eternally reaching/becoming into God.” Now that made me think you expect ALL of us to constantly and steadily move upward and onward in ‘becoming’. SO: What of those ‘losses’ and ‘rewards’? Do the losses abide eternally? That’s my question. If so, then TWT1 is out the window as a rule governing ALL human becoming and freedom is only required for those higher levels of experience (since infants come to experience SOME level of salvation apart from the freedom required by TWT1).
So where are you?
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 1:01 PM (GMT -6) | | D: Basically...if you are "saved" and in relational union with Divine Presence (and the ever-moving rest in that), does it REALLY matter HOW MUCH you "lost" or "rewarded" with respect to creaturely self-consciousness?
T: It absolutely matters. Don't you see that? It obviously matters enough to God that he'd risk the emergence of evil and the suffering of so many in hell...to achieve what, D? To achieve what level of intimacy and conscious perception/enjoyment of beauty (on our part)? If you don't think it matters at all, then what must you think of God's risking so much for the difference?
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 1:11 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: Look D, it's simple: IF all of us--regardless of the presence or absence of self-conscious choice employed to believe and follow God--end up experiencing and reflecting the same intensity of relational beauty, even if realized at different stages but eventually realized by all as all eternally reach and actualize this beauty into infinity...AND IF it's the case that human beings can be brougt into this without having to risk evil and hell (supposing this to be the case with infants), THEN...
D: ...God is God and he can do what he chooses with his Creation? Did I get that right?
T: No.
D: Let me try again... How about..."then God values the human "struggle" for self-possession through self-conscious self-giving, as seen in the life of Jesus...and it was 'worth the risk' to him."
T: Doesn't work. What does it MEAN to say GOD VALUES the struggle of human beings who self-possess freely MORE THAN the experience of infants who don't struggle for such possession but who are determined by divine fiat into loving relationship with God IF it's the case that BOTH come to experience and reflect the same intensity of beauty? If God's risking for the greater value of freely disposed human becoming, then obviously what's valued is what that human being experiences and reflects of God. But that's just to say that there's an abiding qualitative difference of experienced and reflected beauty which God values and for which he risks so much. The added quality of experience is WORTH the risk.
BUT if you take a view of eternity which essentially dissovles this abiding qualitative difference, then the value you suppose God to have risked so much turns out to be vacuous and the risk irresponsible (as far as theologizing goes).
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 11/11/2008 1:13 PM (GMT -6) | | D: Um...I'm thinking he paid for the risk at the Cross. So there's really no issue. Should I try to "judge God" as not doing the right thing otherwise?
What was the "restoration level" of the Prodigal?
T: Forget it. Never mind. If you don't see it, you don't see it. That's cool.
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