Post Edited (Tom) : 2/6/2009 8:16:49 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 2/7/2009 5:08:03 PM (GMT-6)

Zach: I contend that LFW means the ability to choose both X and not X. Both are possible. As soon as you eliminate 'not X', you also eliminate LFW.

Tom: I agree that LFW is the ability to choose both X and not-X. The UR I’m open to holds to both. There is never a time in hell at which the postmortem wicked are not free to reject God. ‘God’ and ‘not-God’ remain viable choices throughout. D and I have made it crystal clear many times that our ‘certainty’ regarding UR is probabilistic. If you want to call it the ‘hope’ in UR then, fine. It’s the certainty that over time, eventually, everyone will make an LFW choice for God. There’s no attempt to say when a person will choose and no attempt to draw an outside time boundary within which all choices have to be made. That’s the whole point. The libertarian nature of the choice means we have always to concede the possibility that someone will continue to renew, freely and forever, their rejection of God . Yes, that’s a possibility. That much should relieve you of the burden of having to remind me that I can’t say “will” with respect to LFW choice. I’m not advocating a version of UR that offers THAT level of certitude. OK? If you want to say this alone disallows the applicability of the name “universalism” for what I believe, fine. But I don’t know what else to call the belief that all eventually choose God.

What I am suggesting is that the probability that there will remain someone who freely and forever renews their rejection of God is so inconceivably small that we’d question the rationality of anyone who bet on it. It’s like the physicist who says (correctly by the way), that if you bounce a ball against a cement wall enough times, eventually the ball will pass through the wall. That means that there has to be a probability that the ball pass through the wall for each bounce. But if I were to throw a ball against the wall one time and claim, “The ball will not pass through the wall,” I honestly don’t think you or anyone else would object to my use of ‘will’ here, or to my confidence that the ball will bounce back to me, in spite of the fact that, in the strictest sense, it’s false to claim that the ball “will” rebound off the wall since there’s ever so infinitesimally small a probability that it’ll pass through the wall. I’m like, gimme a break.

I’m as confident that all ‘will’ eventually choose God (in spite of the possibility that not all shall do so) as I am confident that a ball thrown against a wall ‘will’ rebound (in spite of the real possibility that it’ll pass through the wall). When you plot repeated occurrences of the same free event (X or ~X) over a long enough period of time, the probability that ~X will continue to the only possibility actualized reduces so much as to ground the virtual certainty that X will eventually occur.

True, the toss of a coin (and other indeterminate events governed by physical laws) is not the same as libertarian choice. There are important differences, but none of them discount the hope, the virtual certainty, of creation eventually bowing, freely, to its creator.

Zach: I don't see the difference between the open theist's criticism of determinism and the corresponding criticism of UR.

Tom: I see the difference, and I’ve explained my version of it many times. If you can’t see the difference, hey, you just can’t see the difference. It is what it is.

Zach: Both determinism and UR are the belief that human 'choices' are determined before they are 'made'.

Tom: Nothing of the sort is true. There’s no necessary link between the two. One can believe in UR in the way I’ve described and maintain synergism throughout.

T

Zach: Two things: The difference between a coin and LFW are so different that probability is applicable to one and nonsense when applied to the other.

Tom: Probability isn’t nonsense when applied to choice. We apply it to choice all the time and find it meaningful to do so.

Zach: Second, why assume that the series of choices is infinite? Isn't the not-God choice a choice away from our only sustenance? Doesn't this mean annihilation?

Tom: I’m not convinced that choosing to cease to exist can meaningfully be called a rational choice within the horizon of any degree of epistemic disclosure. That's another debate. But in any case, it doesn't seem to me that judgment is just when it’s not tied to rational choice. I can't think of any choice (apart from a fully informed choice--for its own sake--to cease to exist) for which annihilation would be the just consequence. So no, I don’t think it’s rational to knowingly choose cessation of existence.

Zach: And further, why should we assume that the God choice terminates the series?

Tom: Because God is the telos of creation, is love, and is invariably present as love in all existent things sustaining them as the ground of their existence, include things in hell. So metaphysically speaking, it makes sense to me to believe that created entities can achieve a level of irrevocable solidification Godward (because it is within their natures to do so as creatures of God) while it’s quite impossible for them to achieve an irrevocable solidification in evil. Created being, having its existence in the ever-present creative act of infinite love, can develop ever upward, even irrevocably so, into the ground of its being. But how would it secure an irrevocable solidification away from the same? I recognize the argument from propotionality behind your view, Zach. Greg even argues it in SATPOE. But he's since abandoned it. Given the nature of the divine act that grounds a created entity's being, Godward become cannot be precluded from the realm of the possible by any creaturely act. It's tantamount to saying divine acts are self-negating, or the grounds for ultimate, metaphysical negation. I don't see it. On the contrary, a creature’s very existence constitutes the possibility of Godward becoming.

Zach: The math only works if the God choice ends the series and the not-God choice always gives rise to another opportunity.

Tom: That’s precisely what I’m arguing in the above paragraph.

Zach: We could just as easily assume otherwise on all these counts.

Tom: I’m not assuming. I’m arguing. I mean, I think there are reasons for believing annihilation can be neither the unforeseen just consequence of any finite creaturely choice nor rationally chosen for its own sake. And besides, God's the one who has to poof you out. And if his holding you in existence grounds the possibility of Godward becoming, then wouldn't a God of love go with that option? I think so.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/8/2009 11:43:42 AM (GMT-6)

Thought I would revive this thread again if not somewhat.  I finally recieved MacDonald's (and Talbott's) book in the mail.  I thought it (they) would come out on Kindle and was waiting for it (them) but finally gave in and bought the hard copies because I don't think they will be.  On my facebook page, I mentioned to Corey that I was rather confused about MacDonald's book on freewill.  What I said, was:

"Started re-reading his thoughts on libertarian freewill. Essentially, he seems to say that God is justified in over-riding your freewill given that you might do something irrational and irreparable to yourself (ie., choose hell). But if this is the case then why would God not over-ride it under normal rational circumstances? In other words, why not over-ride freewill any time to ensure that one doesn't choose hell? If hell is rehabilitative and universalism is true (given that time is on God's side), then I don't see why God wouldn't use that to ensure that one chooses him?" 

In chapter two on page 46, he disagrees with David Powys who says that universalism cannot obtain because it would violate freewill.  In response to that on page 47 MacDonald says, "And why cannot a universalist interpretation be right?  Presumably because it would 'violate freewill.'  We have seen in Chapter 1 that this is not so."  Yet in Chapter 1, as said above, he seems OK with over-riding freewill to ensure that God's purposes are fulfilled given that some would make irrational decisions and what parent wouldn't do that?  But what is over-riding freewill if not but a violation of it?

I mean, I really don't know where he stands on the freewill question.  Tommy, can you help me here?  Did I misunderstand something?  Most of his whole chapter one seems convoluted or is it just me?