 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > Love and Freedom in the Hereafter | Forum Quick Jump
|
 | 
Electra
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611
| Posted 9/3/2003 11:11 AM (GMT -6) |   | Iconoclast
God choosing love does NOT have a temporal beginning point because God IS love - it is part of His self-determined nature.
Electra
OK, let's bracket the question of temporal beginning point (I'm not familiar with calculus) and talk about sequence--which aspect of personhood follows from the other (note: the reason I say that the metaphor "God is a person" applies to both the realist and nominalist positions is that both nature and will are constituative of personhood). It seems like you are saying that "God choosing love" follows from the fact that "God IS love." This is what realists say (in other words, God's will flows from and reinforces God's nature, not vice versa). Nominalists would say the opposite: The fact that God IS love follows from the fact that God chooses love.
I've been thinking about your argument that being a person requires choice, because without choice, a person would be an object. Perhaps a realist would say it a little differently: choice presupposes personhood. Without personhood, choices would be completely arbitrary; sheer will is unintelligible.
The nature of human persons is unresolved, so our choices have implications for our natures--for better or worse (however, please note: our choices can never be so bad that they undo the image God has bestowed on us and the goodness he created in us; neither can our choices be so good that they undo our fallenness). But God's nature is resolved and always has been, and God's choices are always perfectly shaped by God's nature--God is love. This is one way of thinking of the afterlife--our restless and bent nature will finally be resolved (not as a cumulative result of our choices, but rather as a result of God's choice to make a way for our good-but-fallen natures to be redeemed) and we will be free to love others without fail, endlessly, and in whatever way we choose.
Electra
p.s. In order for God to be a person rather than an object, to be love, etc., God must have the option to not be a person, to be anti-love, etc. How do nominalists avoid an ontological dualism?
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing. ~ Dostoevsky | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 4:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Let me deal with Iconoclast’s stuff first.
What I’m hearing is that what we end up saying is that 1) God made the choice to love and 2) there was NO LOGICAL POINT of God’s existence prior to this point. So what I am to believe is that there was NO LOGICAL POINT of God’s existence in the absence of Creation where God’s choice had NOT been made. Honestly, Iconoclast, this is sounding non-sensical to me. We are dealing with SEQUENCE. Elektra says it great…
quote:
I've been thinking about your argument that being a person requires choice, because without choice, a person would be an object. Perhaps a realist would say it a little differently: choice presupposes personhood. Without personhood, choices would be completely arbitrary; sheer will is unintelligible.
God’s personhood and moral capability LOGICALLYANTEDATE God’s actual choice being made. This is not a temporal affair, but a logical one. So in that state of reality that LOGICALLY ANTEDATES God’s actual choice being made, God’s moral capability would be devoid of content. Your argumentation doesn’t deal adequately with this.
*********************************************
Now, John…
quote:
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.
This whole line of thinking does not seem to take into account God being a necessary, perfectly integrous being. That’s what I tried to demonstrate with the idea. God, the necessary being, ALWAYS actualizes God’s loving disposition…NECESSARILY.
*********************************
John:
quote:
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.
Ok. I hold to God always existing too. That’s not the issue. The issue is LOGICAL SEQUENCE. Like I told Iconoclast, a personal choice being made ASSUMES the existence of a person making the choice. Thus God’s primal choice to love is ANTEDATED by God’s existence. Now, here’s the thing. At this logical point of God’s existence in the absence of Creation, did God’s moral capacity have moral content? In other words, was God loving or anti-loving BEFORE God made the decision to love? If you say no, then you would be agreeing with what I’m saying. If you say yes, then I’d wonder how God’s moral capacity could have content before the PRIMAL choice between love and anti-love.
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 5:02 PM (GMT -6) | | John,
Let’s do it this way. You want to say that God has never chosen to be anti-loving THOUGH HE COULD DO SO METAPHYSICALLY. Please explain to me how a NECESSARY, omniscient, omnipotent being with a disposition towards loving can choose not to love. Show me METAPHYSICALLY how this is possible. Please make sure that you explain what a NECESSARY being is and all that.
Cool.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/3/2003 5:22 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by MephEternal
John,
Let’s do it this way. You want to say that God has never chosen to be anti-loving THOUGH HE COULD DO SO METAPHYSICALLY. Please explain to me how a NECESSARY, omniscient, omnipotent being with a disposition towards loving can choose not to love. Show me METAPHYSICALLY how this is possible. Please make sure that you explain what a NECESSARY being is and all that.
Please tell me how a necessitated action is truly free.
I. God's natural attributes are omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, which are necessary for Him to be God.
II. God's moral attributes are all modifications of benevolent love, which are necessary conditions of virtue.
God's MORAL freedom pertains to category II above. An analogy would be that a human person has intellect, will, and emotions (which make up one's moral agency and nature) as well as a physical body (which makes up one's physical nature).
When Jesus said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," he himself was at that point voluntarily self-limited to not possess the NATURAL attributes of God. (Christ was not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent during His incarnation). So of course Matt. 5:48 could not have meant "be perfect in the sense of have God's natural attributes." The context of that verse reveals that Jesus was referring to God's MORAL attribute of loving his enemies, and that it was something Christ's human hearers were expected to live up to.
To sin, God would simply choose to violate the universal law of benevolence. We can rest assured that this would never happen, for God's word is clear that He cannot even be TEMPTED with sin (I believe this is because of his omniscience and perfect wisdom, with which he could quite easily see right through any temptation).
Again, we are talking about things that would never happen, due to God's perfect character (note--not "nature"), but were God to sin, it would by definition cause his own death and the consequent annihilation of the entire universe.
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 5:56 PM (GMT -6) | | John:
quote:
Please tell me how a necessitated action is truly free.
If you mean “free” as in the ability to do otherwise, it’s not. And that’s my point. The necessary being, God, who always actualizes God’s disposition towards loving continually is NOT free to NOT love.
****************************
John, now you said that you had no problem saying that God has a DISPOSITION (or inclination) to be loving. Fine. But you are also saying that it was POSSIBLE for God to choose NOT to actualize that disposition…even though God WOULD NOT fail would actualize that disposition by force of will. I’m trying to understand how saying that is possible without saying that it was metaphysically possible for a NECESSARY, omniscient, omnipresent being to CONTRADICT it’s disposition. This is an abject metaphysical impossibility. So, I still don’t see how you are avoiding this.
***************************************
Iconoclast:
quote:
Yes. But the existence of a person making the choice ASSUMES the birth and some level of maturity of the person. You are simply ascribing the logic of contingent people to God. And since I contend that God was not born but always existed I can equally as well deny that making the choice for God assumes His prior existence. I assert that there is NO logical progression like a human has for an eternal being but rather that all these aspects ARE the ground of His being. If Self-determination is NOT more fundamental than existence then God cannot be God.
Oh, no, you don’t! We don’t have to talk about ORIGINATION of personhood to deal with personhood antedating choice! Don’t even go there.  It’s common sense, Iconoclast. A personal choice REQUIRES the existence of a PERSON to make that choice. We’re not talking origins or “maturity” We are saying that God ALWAYS WAS. Period. My point doesn’t deal with that. My point is saying that there was a state of reality in the absence of Creation such that the personal God had NOT made this nature-enhancing decision to love. In this state, God’s moral capacity was devoid of content. And there was a state of reality in the absence of Creation LOGICALLY FOLLOWING that state of reality such that the personal God HAD made this nature-enhancing decision to love. In this state, God’s moral capacity HAD moral content: loving.
This AIN’T hard, yo.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 6:03 PM (GMT -6) | | John:
quote:
I don't see how your point about God's existence being antecedent to his choice really does anything but question how God could have always existed. Other than simply admitting your view requires one to believe that God has not always existed (and thus is not truly God, for someone or something would have had to create him if this were so), I don't see how else your argument can stand.
HUGELY missing my point.
I am NOT saying that God hasn’t always existed. GET this! What I am saying is that there is LOGICAL SEQUENCE when talking about decisions that God makes. Given decision A made by God, (whatever A is), in the state of reality in the absence of Creation…
there is a state of reality in the absence of Creation LOGICALLY PRIOR to decision A being made, sequentially speaking…
and…
a state of reality in the absence of Creation LOGICALLY FOLLOWING decision A being made, sequentially speaking.
That’s all I’m saying. I’m not denying the eternal existence of God.
So, what I’m saying is that in the state of reality in the absence of Creation LOGICALLY PRIOR to God’s decision to love, sequentially speaking, God’s moral capacity was DEVOID of moral content because the decision had not YET been made by God.
Please tell me that this clarifies things. I don't think I'm being that unclear. Perhaps I am.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 6:12 PM (GMT -6) | | Here it is in a simple statement:
There was a state of reality in the absence of Creation such that God's decision to love (and instantiation of a loving nature) was NOT in existence...while God has ALWAYS been in existence.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/3/2003 6:36 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by MephEternal
John:
quote:
Please tell me how a necessitated action is truly free.
quote:
If you mean “free” as in the ability to do otherwise, it’s not. And that’s my point. The necessary being, God, who always actualizes God’s disposition towards loving continually is NOT free to NOT love.
Well then I obviously disagree with your definition of moral freedom. And that's okay with me.
****************************
quote:
John, now you said that you had no problem saying that God has a DISPOSITION (or inclination) to be loving. Fine. But you are also saying that it was POSSIBLE for God to choose NOT to actualize that disposition…even though God WOULD NOT fail would actualize that disposition by force of will.
Moral agents (of which God is one) have the inherent ability to act contrary to their disposition.
quote:
I’m trying to understand how saying that is possible without saying that it was metaphysically possible for a NECESSARY, omniscient, omnipresent being to CONTRADICT it’s disposition. This is an abject metaphysical impossibility. So, I still don’t see how you are avoiding this.
You seem to continue to confuse the natural/necessary with the moral/contingent. This very distinction, that God exerts both a physical government of the physical universe (governed by physical law) as well as a moral government of the moral universe (made up of all moral agents--God, angels, demons, Satan, and humans), that is (governed by MORAL law), is crucial in distinguishing truly libertarian moral responsibility from deterministic, necessitated, mechanistic "free" will.
The physical universe is governed by means of physical law (by physical coercion), while the moral universe is governed by means of moral law (by use of moral persuasion). The two must be kept distinct, or else all morality is confused. This is the primary and most important distinction between classic Calvinism and New School Calvinism (or Moral Gov't Theology).
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 6:40 PM (GMT -6) | | John:
quote:
The Father loved the Son before creation. I would go so far as to say that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all abode in love from all eternity. There simply never has been a time when this was not true.
GREAT! What I’m hearing you want to say is this…
All of the members of the Trinity has ALWAYS chosen to love one another.
I would agree with this. Now, where we are disagreeing, as I see it, is WHY all of the members of the Trinity have always chosen to love. Whereas I am saying that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ALWAYS actualize the disposition to love necessarily, because of the Triune God’s essential existence…YOU are saying that they have just always chosen to love each other AS ACTS OF WILL, even though they could do otherwise.
quote:
Moral agents (of which God is one) have the inherent ability to act contrary to their disposition.
But here’s the problem, John. It makes no sense to me to say that the necessary being, God, has the ABILITY to fail to actualize God’s disposition towards love. It’s an absolute absurdity. This would be God indulging in complete self-contradiction on an essential level. But in order to use the “could, but wouldn’t not” lingo here, that’s exactly what you must say.
This is literally saying that God, knowing God’s own disposition towards love, possessing the ample power to always actualize it, and being a God of perfect integrity with Godself, would have the ability to choose to act against that disposition…causing essential dissonance with Godself. This would functionally be God DENYING Godself on the deepest level. To posit this for the necessary being is inconceivable.
Do you see my utter confusion?
| | Back to Top | | |
|
John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/3/2003 6:53 PM (GMT -6) | | The only passage in the Bible where it is stated that "God is love," as we all probably are aware, is 1 John 4. I have chosen to cut and paste the passage in order to demonstrate that in this passage the apostle is definitely not referring to God's nature, but to God's action. Please note the love-in-action phrases which saturate this passage, and please also note the complete absence in the context of any phrases which refer to the ontological basis of God:
1 John 4:7 ¶ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son {to be} the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son {to be} the Savior of the world.
15 ¶ Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.
1 John 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the {child} born of Him.
2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
Clearly, the passage was not originally intending to speak at all about God's essence or nature, but rather speaks of God's moral disposition, and the consequent obligation that we as Christians ought to love as God loves. Does it not seem quite forced to deduce from this passage that "love" is something God is "made up of"? To the contrary, the Bible everywhere affirms that God is Spirit. It seems to me that "Spirit" is God's nature.
It seems at best highly doubtful to base one's doctrine of the ontological status of God on this passage, when the passage itself clearly is referring to morality, not ontology.
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
|
John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/3/2003 7:07 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
This is literally saying that God, knowing God’s own disposition towards love, possessing the ample power to always actualize it, and being a God of perfect integrity with Godself, would have the ability to choose to act against that disposition…causing essential dissonance with Godself. This would functionally be God DENYING Godself on the deepest level. To posit this for the necessary being is inconceivable.
Do you see my utter confusion?
Yes, and I also see why you are confused. Given your presupposition that God's essence is love, you are bound to find my view quite confusing. I have tried to make it clear that I deny that God's essence or nature is love, and that God's natural attributes (or, nature) should be confused with God's MORAL attributes (love).
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/3/2003 9:47 PM (GMT -6) | | John:
quote:
Given your presupposition that God's essence is love, you are bound to find my view quite confusing. I have tried to make it clear that I deny that God's essence or nature is love, and that God's natural attributes (or, nature) should be confused with God's MORAL attributes (love).
It’s not a presupposition as I’ve argued it. It flows from these things…
--God being a necessary being
--God having a loving disposition
--God being omnipotent
--God being omniscient
Actually, your view would seem to work out the same. You said:
quote:
As to WHY the members of the Trinity have always chosen to love, I would submit for your approval that this is because they, knowing that which is the highest good of all (benevolence), have always chosen such. To love is the wisest of all possible choices.
The question gets asked: Could the omniscient, all-wise Triune God, who always knows the “highest good” (via God’s omniscience), FAIL to choose that highest good? More poignantly, could the omniscient, omnipotent God who has a disposition towards this “highest good” (which you’ve said God does possess) have the genuine ability FAIL to actualize that “highest good”? It would seem that you would have to say YES, God COULD (though God would not) fail to actualize that “highest good” By what means you can say this POSSIBILITY exists is beyond me. The all-wise God would CEASE being the all-wise God, by definition. And if the all-wise God is a necessary being, now stuff REALLY gets messed up.
Oh, well.
Again, this is not be mere presupposition, but by thinking about attributes of God's essential existence and HOW they interact to form God's "loving nature"
I guess we'll just be at an impasse here.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/4/2003 4:58 AM (GMT -6) | | Hmm…
Ok. I’m really trying to be open here. I mean, the lateral thinking being used here is hellified. But it’s still straight nonsense to me. Straight up. Someone show me how it makes sense to say:
1) There is NO POSSIBLE state of reality in the absence of Creation in which God existed where his “primal decision” to love had NOT been made. In other words, that there was NO POSSIBLE state of reality in the absence of Creation LOGICALLY PRIOR to God making the primal decision, sequentially speaking. Iconoclast want to say just this, but ON WHAT BASIS can he say this? Surely, not on any logical grounds. Just as he can assert ONE state of reality as being the “limit”, I can assert ANOTHER one logically prior to that, sequentially speaking, one logically prior to God making the “primal decision” to love. He has absolutely NO reasonable grounds to say that it’s not possible.
2) A necessary God, who by definition CANNOT be other than what God is according to God’s essential existence, can have
--a disposition (inclination) towards loving,
--completely knowledge of self and of the “highest good” of loving,
--all the power necessary to always actualize the disposition…
…and STILL make the choice to NOT actualize the disposition continually?
For God to do this, God would be:
--denying Godself on an essential level, which is SCRIPTURALLY and PHILOSOPHICALLY impossible.
--KNOWINGLY operating by less than the “highest good”
But John is asking us to believe that these things ARE POSSIBLE for a necessary, omniscient, omnipotent, fully integrous God who does possess a loving disposition.
The only way that I see that someone could continue to assert what you guys are is NOT on logical grounds, but on EXISTENTIAL grounds of not denying the axiom that “love requires freedom” Freedom MUST be chosen…so tweak everything else to make it so. It’s almost like square circles to me for real! You can do what some other people do and JUST ASSERT IT dogmatically (I don’t mean this is a pejorative sense. I mean hold this belief strictly using some sort of religious dogmatics) Cool. But I don’t see any logical way for you guys to hold this belief.
What the heck am I not seeing?? Brett, maybe YOU can explain.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 9/4/2003 5:13 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by John Earp
And what you would have us to believe, Meph, is that God is not eternal, for you require him to be "in sequence" for him to choose to love. Therefore it is your own presupposition that requires your conclusion; i.e., for God to freely choose love he necessarily must have at some time been a moral blank slate.
Or, you seem to me to be saying that God's love is a necessitated "thing" of some kind that is back of his ability to choose, causing Him to choose love.
I don't know how you can avoid a mechanistic, automated view of God's love (and hence, all morality in all moral agents).
As to "possibilities" I have also tried to make it clear that for God these are logical possibilities, NOT moral ones. The Scripture also says God cannot lie, and this expresses a MORAL truth, not a logical one. So I don't see, from my POV, how expressing a logical possibility (that would in fact never happen as it is a moral impossibility) is by definition illogical.
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/4/2003 5:19 AM (GMT -6) | |
John:
quote:
And what you would have us to believe, Meph, is that God is not eternal, for you require him to be "in sequence" for him to choose to love. Therefore it is your own presupposition that requires your conclusion; i.e., for God to freely choose love he necessarily must have at some time been a moral blank slate.
John, I’ve said a number of times…and I will restate. I believe that God IS eternal. I do. Meaning that there was NO state of reality that has or will EVER EXIST such that God was not. I believe that God is eternal.
The eternality of God is not the issue. We are talking about LOGICAL, SEQUENTIAL states of reality in God’s eternal existence. That’s the difference. We cannot speak in terms of time when speaking about God in the absence of Creation. We can only talk about LOGICAL SEQUENCE. Because in talking about sequence, we doesn’t NEED the idea of “time” for our discussion to be coherent, necessarily. At least this is what William Lane Craig says.
Notice how I keep saying stuff like: "state of reality in the absence of Creation"? THAT's why.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/4/2003 5:33 AM (GMT -6) | | The Problem of Person and Principle
The modified Euthypho dillemma: Does God choose the good because it’s good…or is the Good such because God chooses it?
The problem has always been this: Is God’s personality SUBJECTED UNDER the priniciple of goodness or love…or does God’s personal choice DETERMINE what goodness or love is?
What is largely being said here (as I see it) is that God, being all-knowing, KNOWS that love is the best thing to do…and knowing this, God always chooses to do it. Clearly what this does is place the category “love” OUTSIDE of God. God ACKNOWLEDGES the beauty and life found in love and CHOOSES to align Godself with that principle of love. In this way, the personhood of God is subjected under the principle though not DIRECTLY IDENTIFIED with it.
In this context, there is no meaningful way to say that God IS love. The most that we can say is that God is ALWAYS loving.
What I think changes this is to say that God possesses a disposition towards love that is inherent to God. This disposition is an INTEGRAL PART of who God is. In the process by which this disposition is continually actualized, God’s PERSONHOOD is evident. God CHOOSES things that line up with his loving nature.
How this works out is: God chooses to love because God, in some real sense, IS love. Love finds it’s ground in PERSON. And that person is God. God is the only person from whom there IS no principle/person dichotomy.
What keeps getting said, WRONGLY, I BELIEVE, is that to say that God loves necessarily depersonalizes the love that God shows. This is just as absurd to me as saying that my being human necessarily depersonalizes any manifestion of my humanity. I am a PERSON who is a HUMAN who EXPRESSES my humanness in novel ways.
But I see the problem. People so associate personality with FREEDOM that to say that any personal action can exist without freedom seems incoherent. And the reason why is because ALL the intutions that we have as human beings tell us that freedom is essential to making personal choice.
HOWEVER…
this whole idea negates that possibility that human beings HAVE NOT YET had complete human experience! We are eschatological beings! We cannot sit here, in our PRE-Consummation states, and base all of our ideas on our PRESENT intuitions about life. There will come a time when we will be RADICALLY transformed. And it is very possible that we WILL learn what it’s like to love without possibility of choosing anti-love. To narrow our intutions to JUST this present human existence is NOT GOOD for the Christian! To me, this is like an American who has never left Nebraska who says “THIS is what human life is like” and EPITOMIZES the midwestern American style of life as the standard, because that’s ALL they’ve experienced. They are wrong because they have NOT experience human life in all of it’s various cultural expressions. And there views of what life is is based on their IGNORANCE of any other possible ways of living in the world. [Digression: Do you know that there are actually some people who don't believe that racism exists anymore? Know why? Because some of those people have NO CONTEXT in which to experience it! So, when someone comes from OUTSIDE their context and says "Hey, racism does exist", they are like "That's not true." Same pattern as above] It’s the same thing, y’all. For Christians who really do believe that we will have QUALITATIVELY new experience as human beings after the Consummation, it is foolishness to say UNQUALIFIABLY that love must be chosen, merely BASED on our PRESENT experience as human beings! I truly believe that if we broaden our perspectives eschatologically, that we would NOT have such a problem understanding that love does not necessarily require freedom.
"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
| | Back to Top | | |
| 400 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 4:56 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|