Mephi: At the rock-bottom experience, the sentient creature comes to a complete awareness that a loving relationship with God is the ONLY WAY to fulfill their heart's deepest dispositional reality...AND has a complete reframe about what is real...They could, and probably would, be pursuing a loving relationship with God for PURELY SELFISH REASONS. But that's ok.

Tom: Mephi, please tell me you see a problem here. Please say you see that “completely understanding that a loving relationship with God is the only way to fulfill one’s deepest dispositional reality” is incompatible with “pursuing a loving relationship with God for PURELY selfish reasons.”

Mephi: God will TAKE that! The MOVEMENT towards God will start regardless. As the sentient beings experience MORE and MORE of God's love as SOURCE and not as THREAT…

Tom: How effective is a revelation that emerges in an unchanging desire to pursue a loving relationship with God on the grounds that the agent has “complete awareness that such a relationship is the only way to fulfill their heart’s deepest dispositional reality” IF that revelation leaves one with an understanding of God and self that amounts to desiring that relationship for PURELY selfish reasons? I mean, how is it possible to truly comprehend what is in one's best interest, to desire it as God designed, but then choose it for purely selfish reasons?

Mephi: This is why the increase of epistemic distance happens IMMEDIATELY after Step 5, so as not to effectively determine ALL of the acts of the sentient being.

Tom: It doesn’t matter if distance is increased immediately after Step 5. The damage is done in Step 5! That’s where the agent is unconditionally positioned by means of an “unchangeable desire to pursue a relationship with God” to eventually choose that relationship. Expand the epistemic distance all you want after such an operation. It’s the operation that determines the ultimate outcome.

Mephi: If God DIDN'T increase epistemic distance, sentient creature would be essentially given a IRRESISTABLE ROAD MAP that would exhaustively define a sentient creature's actions unto solidification with God.

Tom: Big deal. To determine WHETHER OR NOT an agent chooses God AT ALL but not to determine when or what route the agent takes is, like, so what? It’s nice for God to give the agent that freedom, but he removes it precisely where it counts, in determining WHETHER the agent chooses God or not.

Mephi: God doesn't want this. All he wanted to do was to ELIMINATE all of the false ideas. After this, the sentient being is on it's own, with freedom to ACT.

Tom: But the state of affairs brought about by eliminating all the false ideas DETERMINES ‘whether or not’ the agent chooses God. You have to admit this, for THIS state of affairs is precisely what grounds your confidence in universalism (viz., that all will eventually choose God).

Mephi: Step 5 (the emergence of the unchangable desire) is rational, yet UNFREE...however...any and all choices made by the sentient creature as the sentient creature attempts to live ACCORDING TO that unchangable desire are LIBERTARIANLY FREE!

Tom: This is incoherent given OTHER things you’ve said. You also add that free will is finite. It HAS TO HAS TO HAS TO move toward solidification. A post-rock-bottom agent could no more stop the eventual movement to solidification that she could stop the tide. And solidification can only run in one of two directions: toward God in favor of love OR away from God in favor of independence. But, Mephi, not only have you removed the latter option from the agent’s hardwiring (leaving the agent only ONE genuine option toward which his freedom, like the tide, MUST solidify itself), but you also now have that agent “unchangingly desiring solidification in favor of God.” So the agent is not only hardwired to exhaust what finite freedom they have in favor of God, but they know this about themselves and WANT IT! So saying all the agent’s choices are “libertarian” after Step 5 simply falls on deaf ears. I can’t believe you understand what this means. If all the choices post Step 5 are libertarian, then the agent can genuinely (metaphysically, historically, REALLY, hardwiredly!) choose against God with every choice. But you’ve declared this option IRRATIONAL! Come on man!

Mephi: This is why I believe that it would be INEVITABLE that any being that experiences Step 5 will eventually end up solidified to God.

Tom: It’s why I can’t understand you’re confidence.

---------------------------------------------------- 

JEE: Love that is "selfish" is not "agape" love (see 1 Cor. 13). Benevolence is, by definition, unselfish. This is a crucially important distinction.

Tom: In fairness to Mephi, I don’t think it needs to be the case that we love “perfectly” when we first choose God and so are “saved.” I’m sure there some tainted, less than agape-like motivation in even our first choice to turn to God. But against Mephi, neither are our initial choices “purely” selfish. Assuming the choice is a moral one, wouldn’t it’s being nothing but selfish make it a sinful choice? Sure we’re acting in our “self-interest” when we cry out to God. That’s not “selfish.” So I’m kinda lost on what Mephi might mean by claiming rock-bottomers who have “complete awareness” that loving God is where their “deepest dispositional desires are fulfilled” can then RATIONALLY make the choice for God for purely selfish reasons.  

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/24/2005 1:57:09 PM (GMT-6)

John: Just a quick response and I have to go, but are you saying that Jesus really should have said, the IMpure in heart shall see God? that half-hearted repentance is enough? that it is acceptable to love God less than ourselves?

Tom: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Eh, huh?  

John: I'm not denying that we all have to GROW in our love and understanding of what that love means. However, it seems clear from scripture that just because someone cries "Lord, lord," doesn't mean they truly are KNOWN by God (as in a loving relationship with Him--Matt. 7:21-23). If we aren't giving God ALL of our heart when we come to Him for salvation, can we biblically say that we truly are saved?

Tom: Well, I wasn’t suggesting that repentance can be less than sincere or complete. For sure. My point to you was that nobody loves perfectly when they first come to Christ. Nobody lives perfect “agape” from the get go. Does this mean they're not saved? No. Such perfect love is what we’re saved to grow into. It can’t be where we start. If that’s where the room is for us to “grow,” as you say, then yeah, that’s it.

My point to Mephi was that the CHOICE (which is all I’m interested in right now and not the whole track of sanctification we go through) to turn to Christ, to cry out to God, can’t be for “purely selfish” reasons as he says is probably the case with all first choices to move toward God post rock-bottom, especially if rock-bottomers have what we don’t have (a conscious unchanging desire to be in a love relationship with God). How is choosing out of such a desire compatible with choosing for purely selfish reasons?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/24/2005 4:20:13 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 2/24/2005 5:50:05 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Selah) : 2/25/2005 8:08:34 AM (GMT-6)

How many candles was that?

 

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Post Edited (Laika) : 2/27/2005 7:29:05 PM (GMT-6)

 Meph,

I am not trying to be facetious here, I have been thinking of how this would work out if I were deciding whether or not to follow Christ, so bear with me please.

 If I were to believe universalism,  why wouldn't I then want to just basically get to hell quick?  That seems like the fastest road to getting free of all the dysfunctional deceipt that is clouding my vision?   I mean, it sounds like, the faster I TRY to utterly destroy myself the sooner God is revealed in the moment of total clarity, where I am stripped of all things that keep me from seeing that I truly need him in everything--and the sooner I can in truth see ALL of my dysfunction, (which I don't know about you but for me doing it with Christ now in this world seems like somewhat of a challenge), and start to realize, with more clarity than is possible here and now, that love relationship that I need.

From an Anselmian point of view, would the notion of a God who saves all be the highest conception of benevolent deity?  Has any theologian/philosopher ever argued that?

Yo Mephi-

Yeah, I read ch. 7. Made a few notes. Wanna read it through again and then we'll talk about it. I'm out the door right now though.

Mad love,

Tom