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Iconoclast
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 9/2/2003 5:04 PM (GMT -6) |   | MephEternal
Here’s the thing at the end of the day, though:
In order to FULLY POWER the free will argument, one MUST have a nominalistic take on God’s love. Sure, you can just assert the free will argument ad hoc, but it would not have any “bite” that would deal with the main theodicy problem at hand. Only by positing the nominalist view can one truly say UNQUALIFIABLY that love must be chosen and that love requires freedom?
Realists cannot do this…not consistently, anyway.
Iconoclast
In my view nominalism and realism are simply not powerful enough concepts to deal with what it means for an eternal being to have "eternally chosen" something. To apply these concepts to what it means for God to exist is like taking Quantum Physics and Relativity Theory and trying to apply them to the very first instant of the Big Bang. Both of these theoretical frameworks simply break down before 10 to the -43 seconds after the Big Bang. To understand what happened before this point requires much more powerful theoretical frameworks that we have not yet discovered (although it seems like we are getting closer!)
To argue that love does not necessarily need to be chosen based on trying to understand what it means for God to have always existed and to have always chosen love is extremely speculative at best. What we do know is that in our experience and in our core understanding of what it means to be a person love must be chosen else it is not love. Yes, we can argue this idea of character solidification but for humans it does not remove the necessity of love being chosen through choosing this loving character.
We have a solid experiential concept and understanding that love must be chosen else it is not love. We have zero experiential concepts or understanding of what it means for an eternal being who is the very ground of our existence to have chosen or not chosen love. Based on this how can we even begin to conclude that love does not necessarily need to be chosen?
If love is not chosen by God then I have no concept of what it means for God to love me. If I truly believed that God HAS to love me then how is this different than a robot "loving" me?
The one clear understanding I DO have of God choosing to love me is Jesus choosing to die on the cross for me. I do not believe that this was some mechanical pre-determined action on God's part. I believe it was a true free-will choice. Jesus did not HAVE to die on the cross for me. He chose to. Thus, God chooses to love me.
God did not HAVE to choose to create me in the first place. This was a free-will choice that convinces me that God chooses to love me.
If God did not choose to do any of this then why should I feel that God loves me?
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/2/2003 10:56 PM (GMT -6) | | The Nail in the Coffin for Nominalists and Semi-Nominalists
Realists, like Doc and me, say that God had a DISPOSITION (or INCLINATION) TOWARDS LOVING in God’s essential existence that God NEVER FAILS to actualize. This whole process emerges as God having a “loving nature.” God never fails to actualize this disposition towards loving because of the combination of God’s omniscience and omnipotence (Two attributes of God that are also a part of God’s essential existence). Through God’s omniscience, God is fully aware of all aspects of Godself, including this disposition within Godself. Through God’s omnipotence, God has the power to fully actualize this disposition towards loving as all times. God’s continual actualization of God’s disposition towards loving is GOD’S LOVING NATURE. This process can be considered INHERENT to God because all of the aspects involved in this self-actualization process are aspects of God’s essential existence, without which God would not be God.
How this works out is that God, BY NATURE, cannot choose NOT to love.
Now for you guys that want to OPPOSE this…
I submit that there are only TWO WAYS that wannabe nominalists can oppose this line of argumentation:
1) They can say that God can actually go AGAINST God’s disposition towards loving, meaning that God could actually go against God’s OWN INTERNAL MOTIVATION and INCLINATION to love. For them to do this, they must effectively argue that an omniscient, omnipotent being would desire to fundamentally CONTRADICT itself, such that essential inner dissonance (rather than perfect integrity, which God is said to possess) is the result.
or…
2) They can say that God actually had NO disposition towards loving or anti-love, meaning that God had moral capacity but devoid of any actual content previous to an act of will by God! That God was a morally blank slate that God fills with a disposition at the moment of decision.
In my opinion, the 2nd option is way more defensible than the 1st. Rather than positing that the omniscient, omnipotent God would opt for denying Godself (which would also violate Scripture [2 Tim 2:13]), one can more easily say that God is completely self-determining in that God paints on God’s own morally blank canvas. But let’s understand that implications of what this idea holds…for the TRIUNE God of Christianity. Remember. We are NOT just dealing with a monad, but the God in Three Persons of Christian faith! So, we would have to attribute this “moral blank slateness” to ALL the member of the Triune Godhead. So, how would it look to posit that, at some logical point in God’s existence in the absence of Creation, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were MORALLY BLANK with respect to one another? Would this not DENY the idea of “perichoresis” that the Church has, by and large, held to with respect to the Trinity? Undoubtedly! To say that at ANY logical point in God’s existence in the absence of Creation that the 3 members of the Trinity were functionally INDIFFERENT to one another would be blasphemous.
So, Iconoclast and John Earp, what will you argue in order to preserve God’s genuine ability to choose between love and anti-love? Will you take horn #1 (deny God’s fundamental self-integrity) or horn #2 (propose moral blankness at the expense of the perichoretic Trinitarian idea)? I assure you that they are equally sharp and will impale you on impact. 
Dear reader, if this argumentation is convincing, then hopefully you willl see that God CANNOT choose NOT to love. And that nominalists are in a world of trouble. Doc, you can do the honors of telling this to Modes. 
PS: For Iconoclast. If you want to ask "How did the disposition get there? Who put it there?", you may as well ask the question "Where did God come from?" The answer to both is the same. They've ALWAYS been there. Period.
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/2/2003 11:07 PM (GMT -6) | | Tying all this back to BJS’s question
I don’t want this thread to get lost in what I’ve been trying to do. I’m hoping to give a cumulative argument in this thread that shows that genuine love does not NECESSARILY require freedom…which implicitly defeats the free will argument. Though I wanted to do this partially by dismantling Tatian’s indirect contribution to TWT 1, my MAIN argumentation is the fact that God’s love doesn’t require freedom to be genuine! My argumentation against Tatian's thing hopefully shows that the whole "necessary/contingent" dichotomy can NOT effectively be used by realists like Doc to exempt God from the "love requires freedom" idea that often gets postulated. Then my argumentation for realism hopefully shows how God loves BY NATURE, not by merely act of will. I feel that the combination of these two things gives sufficient warrant to show that free will isn’t metaphysically necessary, ultimately speaking. Love can exist without freedom to NOT love. Not only in God-God relations, but also in God-world relations.
Thus, the only true explanation for the existence of free will is the WILL OF GOD, not the nature of love.
Peace,
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Iconoclast
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| Posted 9/3/2003 2:37 AM (GMT -6) | | MephEternal
How this works out is that God, BY NATURE, cannot choose NOT to love.
Iconoclast
Yes. You keep asserting this and I do not disagree with it as stated. I simply further assert that BY NATURE God determined this aspect of His nature by choosing it.
I simply posit that there is a deeper NATURE to God and that is His ability to self-determine His nature. I then say that God self-determined Himself to have a loving nature by choosing it. Thus God chooses to love and CAN NOT / WILL NOT choose NOT to love BECAUSE He has ALREADY chosen this "nature". Notice in this framework "CAN NOT AND WILL NOT" really have the same meaning because they are based NOT on some fundamental metaphysical truth but rather based on something that to us has all the metaphysical entailments but ALSO has all the entailments of CHOICE.
We can then say that "eternal choice" or God's "chosen nature" is such that it has BOTH the entailments of metaphysical truth AND choice.
I am justified in positing this deeper NATURE to God in this particular argument because you seem to agree that it is just fine to posit BY NATURE sorts of things to God since you are doing this yourself.
I assert that my suggestion is more plausible than yours for the following reasons:
1. It does not destroy the common understanding of the very meaning of the term love for us as yours does. Specifically that love must be chosen else it is not love.
2. The very phrase "God is love" is clearly meant to give us more understanding about God in light of our common understanding about what love is and what it entails - specifically, that it must be chosen.
3. I am NOT using a nominalist argument here. I am using an "embodied realist" argument. "Love" as a concept has meaning to us humans because of our experience with one another. We ALL agree that this concept entails choice. We ALL agree that to take away choice from this concept is to render it into a DIFFERENT concept - which means a DIFFERENT experience. To say that God does not CHOOSE to love destroys the meaning of the concept "love" because it destroys our experience of His "love."
Meph, your whole argument to me is like taking the equation
1+1 = 2
manipulating each side and proving that 2 does not equal 2.
You are basically saying that "God's love" does not equal "love as humans know it". You seem to get here because you take "love as humans know it" you then apply "God IS love" to it, which to you means that since God IS something (X) that the something (X) CANNOT be chosen and thus turn around and apply that logic to LOVE rather than trying to synthesize these two seemingly contradictory meanings. Now, what plausible reason do you posit for doing this? Why is this the right way to understand what it means for God to BE something that MUST BE CHOSEN? Why do you place more precedent on conditioning the well-known meaning of love in this phrase rather than conditioning the totally unknown meaning of God BEING something that must be chosen? And how can you argue that THIS isn't exactly what the author is trying to get at? Why do you think it is plausible that the author is trying tell us that love doesn't REALLY have to be chosen rather than trying to tell us something more meaningful about how God's loving nature is really "eternally chosen love"?
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 6:07 AM (GMT -6) | | Iconoclast:
quote:
I simply posit that there is a deeper NATURE to God and that is His ability to self-determine His nature. I then say that God self-determined Himself to have a loving nature by choosing it. Thus God chooses to love and CAN NOT / WILL NOT choose NOT to love BECAUSE He has ALREADY chosen this "nature".
I said, as one of the arguments against my position:
quote:
]They can say that God actually had NO disposition towards loving or anti-love, meaning that God had moral capacity but devoid of any actual content previous to an act of will by God! That God was a morally blank slate that God fills with a disposition at the moment of decision.
and...
quote:
In my opinion, the 2nd option is way more defensible than the 1st. Rather than positing that the omniscient, omnipotent God would opt for denying Godself (which would also violate Scripture [2 Tim 2:13]), one can more easily say that God is completely self-determining in that God paints on God’s own morally blank canvas.
There is no difference between what you’ve said above and what I’ve already said. You are saying that logically PRIOR to God having a loving nature, God made the conscious choice to bring this to be…and this became part of his nature. Logically prior to this choice being made, God’s moral capacity was devoid of moral content.
God’s nature was neither loving nor anti-loving. But then, God’s “eternal choice” to love BECOMES God’s chosen loving nature. SAME THING that I’ve already said, you semi-nominalist,you! You do see this, right??
And in this you face the PROBLEMS that I’ve already highlighted with that position.
This argument was CAREFULLY CRAFTED, such that your essential argument, Iconoclast, DOES fit in it.
******************************
Iconoclast:
quote:
You are basically saying that "God's love" does not equal "love as humans know it". You seem to get here because you take "love as humans know it" you then apply "God IS love" to it, which to you means that since God IS something (X) that the something (X) CANNOT be chosen and thus turn around and apply that logic to LOVE rather than trying to synthesize these two seemingly contradictory meanings. Now, what plausible reason do you posit for doing this?
I’m saying that taking the metaphysical idea that love REQUIRES freedom, when applied to God, causes SERIOUS issues. Now either we are going to condition our understanding of love based upon what we believe about God…OR…we are going to condition our understanding of God based on our understanding of love. You seem ready to do the latter, while I believe in doing the former.
**********************
Allow me to highlight how my argument affects YOUR idea, Iconoclast. Bottom line: The idea of positing the “moral blank slateness” (which your idea logically entails) of the TRIUNE God at some logical point in God’s existence in the absence of Creatoin negates the biblically justified and historically validated idea of ETERNAL PERICHORESIS of the persons of the Trinity "from before the foundations of the world". You can’t get away from that.
Got it sewed up like Betsy Ross,
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Iconoclast:
quote:
You are basically saying that "God's love" does not equal "love as humans know it".
MOST DEFINITELY. God’s experience of love does not equal the experience of love as humans NOW know it. In that all humans, currently, perceive themselves are being able to choose between love and anti-love. But if the Scriptures are correct, there WILL BE a state of human existence where ALL will be love…and the possibility for anti-love will be done away with. We cannot define “love” exhaustively by our PRESENT human experience of love…because it is not the TOTAL human experience of love! Someday, human beings will experience genuine love relationship with God that is DEVOID of the freedom to choose anti-love. This must be taken into account.
So, I am asking us to BROADEN our perspectives on HUMAN REFLECTION upon love based upon the ESCHATOLOGICAL nature of our existence. As the Scriptures say…
1 John 3:2
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Amen and amen. Heh.
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:21 AM (GMT -6) | | | So, Brandon, BJS. What do you guys think of all this? | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:32 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by MephEternal
Realists, like Doc and me, say that God had a DISPOSITION (or INCLINATION) TOWARDS LOVING in God’s essential existence that God NEVER FAILS to actualize. This whole process emerges as God having a “loving nature.” God never fails to actualize this disposition towards loving because of the combination of God’s omniscience and omnipotence (Two attributes of God that are also a part of God’s essential existence). Through God’s omniscience, God is fully aware of all aspects of Godself, including this disposition within Godself. Through God’s omnipotence, God has the power to fully actualize this disposition towards loving as all times. God’s continual actualization of God’s disposition towards loving is GOD’S LOVING NATURE. This process can be considered INHERENT to God because all of the aspects involved in this self-actualization process are aspects of God’s essential existence, without which God would not be God.
Hi Meph,
I have no problem using the term, "nature" if the above is what you mean by it. I have no problem affirming that God has a disposition to be loving.
I simply don't think the term, "nature" is helpful when referring to God's MORAL attributes. From my view (Moral Government Theology), a clear distinction is always made between that which is natural and that which is moral. For example, all humans are by nature physically homo sapiens, but not all humans are morally good. Their goodness or wickedness is defined by their intentions and choices. And morality/goodness/love in God is the same thing as it is in humans; though it may differ in degree it cannot differ in kind. A "nature," as I understand it, really deals more with one's necessary self, as opposed to one's actions.
quote:
I submit that there are only TWO WAYS that wannabe nominalists can oppose this line of argumentation:
1) They can say that God can actually go AGAINST God’s disposition towards loving, meaning that God could actually go against God’s OWN INTERNAL MOTIVATION and INCLINATION to love. For them to do this, they must effectively argue that an omniscient, omnipotent being would desire to fundamentally CONTRADICT itself, such that essential inner dissonance (rather than perfect integrity, which God is said to possess) is the result.
No, actually what I have tried to make plain about my view is that God cannot go against his disposition to love morally speaking. I affirm God has true freedom, and that God has ALWAYS and will ALWAYS choose righteously (which is the same thing as lovingly).
quote:
or…
2) They can say that God actually had NO disposition towards loving or anti-love, meaning that God had moral capacity but devoid of any actual content previous to an act of will by God! That God was a morally blank slate that God fills with a disposition at the moment of decision.
This I have also repeatedly denied. I have repeatedly said that God has ALWAYS chosen to love, and always will. Therefore, it does not follow from my view that God was EVER a "moral blank slate." Your attempt to box my position in my your own presuppositions is patently disingenuous. Just because you think there are only two options to my position does not make it so. You have obviously read your own presuppositions into my statements. The three articles I posted above more than adequately explain my point of view on this subject.
If you refuse to acknowledge my actual statements, and instead purport to know what I believe regardless of what I actually say, I really don't see the point in continuing this "discussion."
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Wait a sec, John.
My argument is saying that AT NO POINT in God’s existence was God ABLE TO choose between love and anti-love. All of my argumentation leads to this end. I thought that this is what you’ve been trying to deny. I thought that you have been saying that God loves BY CHOICE and NOT by any type of "nature"
So, what exactly ARE you saying?
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Iconoclast
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Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:40 AM (GMT -6) | | MephEternal
The idea of positing the “moral blank slateness” (which your idea logically entails) of the TRIUNE God at some logical point in God’s existence in the absence of Creatoin negates the biblically justified and historically validated idea of ETERNAL PERICHORESIS of the persons of the Trinity "from before the foundations of the world". You can’t get away from that.
Iconoclast
Yes I can. I can indeed get away from that. Your idea of "moral blank slateness" is based on the presupposition that CHOOSING requires "some logical point in God's existence" whereby there is a PREVIOUS state where the something in question is NOT chosen. I deny this logic. Your logic is based on the concept of a finite timeline. But eternity past is an infinite timeline.
I deny this because I can simply state a rigorous definition of a logical point in time where God chose to love but where there is also NO prior point where God did not love.
So, when did God choose to love? God chose to love at the logical point just before eternity past.
Thus, God did indeed choose to love AND there is no logical point BEFORE God chose to love.
Have you ever studied calculus? Calculus deals with infinities by talking about "limits". A line may never actually touch an asymptote but since it gets ever and ever closer out to infinity we can talk meaningfully about its "limit" - or the theoretical value it is approaching. Thus, the value, for all intents and purposes IS the limit yet it never does ACTUALLY reach this limit. Or, even though the value never really reaches the limit it is absolutely equivalent to the limit.
In the same way we can say that the logical point in time that God chose to love is the limit of eternity past. Again, I think this clearly demonstrates that there is NO prior point BEFORE God chose to love whereby God's nature was a "blank moral slate."
God's nature is self-determined (chosen) to be loving and ALWAYS has been. There is no need to posit some requirement that God WAS a blank moral slate BEFORE He self-determined Himself to be loving. And seriously, doesn't it HAVE to be this way? Otherwise we can always go behind God's existence to a deeper existence.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/3/2003 8:46 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by MephEternal
Wait a sec, John.
My argument is saying that AT NO POINT in God’s existence was God ABLE TO choose between love and anti-love.
In your view, at what point did God begin to exist? 
In my view, God has always existed (is eternal in the sense of "there never was a time when He was not"), and in all of his existence (which has been from all eternity) He has never chosen other than to be loving (though he logically/metaphysically could have).
As I hold to God always existing and never "coming into" existence, and in all of his existence never choosing other than to love, your "moral blank slate" argument does not seem to me to be a convincing argument against my view.
quote:
All of my argumentation leads to this end. I thought that this is what you’ve been trying to deny. I thought that you have been saying that God loves BY CHOICE and NOT by any type of "nature"
So, what exactly ARE you saying?
To my mind, the concept of "nature" implies God having no free choice.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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