At any rate, Tom, I think that we have MUCH to be morally accountable for (as the Judgement will show us), even though, in God's wisdom, God has removed the EXISTENTIAL (not logical) possibility of eternal self-destruction.

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 3/8/2005 8:26:08 AM (GMT-6)

Hello all,

I would say that once a person reaches the age of accountability, all bets are off in regards to universalism.  I can sympathize with Meph’s search for finding such Devine love, love that it would slice through the gravest evil. But to intervene with our will, well I find the entire narrative thread of scripture to scream otherwise. Screams of protest can also be heard looking at it from a philosophical pragmatism view.

Excuse the following tongue n’ cheek response to universalism, I hope to point out (for those that have read up on this and is leaning in that direction) how silly it looks from the outside looking in.  After taking bits and pieces of the last eight pages, here is the way it all comes across to me, it goes something like this:

I love this girl but she doesn’t love me, even though I’m God’s gift to women I can’t get to first base with her (no reciprocal relationship).  Time is limited, she has only 100 coins that can be used to call other men to quench her “god shaped vacuum” for chocolate. I know deep down she has a dispositional desire and longing for me as I’m the essence of chocolate.  After 99 coins used to call other men (idolatry), she never chooses to call me (she is so dysfunctional in her self-autonomy pursuit") so I intervene and call her and say, “please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste…have some sympathy have some...”, um oops sorry wrong guy.  No, I tell her about my (omniscient) phone tap, I know of all the other 99 men she has called in search for drugs, sex and other forms of idolatry sin used to fulfill her chocolate shaped vacuum. I roll the tape of her life and convict her of the sinful life she’s lived.  She becomes increasingly depressed but I think she is irrational and I become complicit in evil by terrorizing her in hell with her sin. She doesn’t know what hell is until I get a hold of her, I swear she will take it very serious once she fully grasps the permeation, power, and abhorrence of sin. She complains, says she does not want to hear me out, but I insist, (I’m inescapable through the eons), I say it’s unconditional, she has unsurpassable worth” and it’s my job to ascribe it to her (pre-arranged marriage).  Her eyes are wide open (she feels shame), she is no longer delusional about her need to chase all over town for chocolate, she can’t bear watching the tapes of her sinful life.  She cries out for help, I tell her our love needs no public celebration, it can simply be consummated in a dark private corner of hell.  Through her desperation, she grabs a gun and attempts to commit suicide, but I wrestle it away from her. I force my love upon her; subduing her, overriding her freedom and revoking her LFW, for her own good of course (a greater good).  Being a knight in shining armor, I send a car (hearse) to rescue her; she is down to her last coin (rock bottom) and out of chocolate so she has no choice (LFW revoked - no power to the contrary) as she is escorted to my chocolate factory.  I break out my stash of the finest grade chocolate around and force feed her palate (information download, decreasing the epistemic distance). She finds this new grade of chocolate irresistible and becomes hooked on chocolate to the extent it’s habitual (the emergence of the unchangeable desire for sustained pursuit of chocolate).  Her character becomes solidified; she always comes back for more of this new chocolate, so I set her free (grant LFW and increases epistemic distance) giving her more coins so she can choose to call me and bask in my glory. 

So why are the odds so high that she will choose to call me (proclamation of Christ) in the future, hmm...because she loves me or... because I hold the remote control that keeps torturing her by re-playing the tape of her sinful life? Not to be overlooked, I’m God’s gift to women with lots of money (coins) and chocolate?  

Okay, I concede she’s using me for her own selfish self-actualization reasons. It might sound a little bit like this form of love is dysfunctional and disingenuous, but hey, she will learn to truly love me in due time. It’s not physiological manipulation, is it?   No, it’s overpowering unilateral love that will triumph over her so that she has to, sooner or later, willingly submit to me and freely enjoy the heavenly orgy.  Won't she?

Peace out,

Mark

Post Edited (sparknheart) : 3/8/2005 9:40:26 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 3/8/2005 9:49:52 AM (GMT-6)

Spark ol' buddy,

Thanks. I really enjoyed that.

Tom (earlier): For a person to enter, engage in, and enjoy a personal and loving relationship with another person, she must be free to determine for herself whether or not she enters, engages in, and enjoys such a relationship.

Mephi: I disagree with this! I had a GREAT analogy about this all typed out...but I lost it. Basically my point was this: It is possible to be effectively forced into ENTERING a relationship with someone...and, via their own personal choices, eventually DEVELOPING engagement and enjoyment of the relationship such that it becomes a LOVE relationship as opposed to some other form of relationship. Hmmm...just thought of this. I guess a possible example would be an arranged marriage where loving actions and feelings develop DURING the marriage relationship...not before. If a couple with an arranged marriage who DIDN'T love each other when they first got together GREW to love each other very deeply during the marriage relationship...would this render their marital love relationship DISINGENOUS because they didn't enter into the marriage freely?

Tom: No it wouldn’t render it disingenuous because they were still free not to choose to respond to their arranged wedding in a loving way. That is, the forced ‘ceremony’ does NOT constitute a loving personal relationship (in any way, shape, or form). It’s just being thrown into a cell block together. If someone forced into such an arrangement eventually finds their mate compatible then chooses to love them, fine. But the arrangement cannot guarantee that they’d do so. They’re free to stay in the arrangement while never actually growing to love the other person.

Mephi: We are morally responsibility for EACH and EVERY CHOICE that we make, it's eternal effects upon ourselves, Creation, and God's aesthetic appreciation of both. Every moment that we act or incline ourselves towards love (or do not do so) is something we are morally responsible and ACCOUNTABLE for.

Tom: I don’t see how you can believe this. Your rock bottom experience amounts to a denial of it, for there God ‘unilaterally’ inclines our disposition to wanting a relationship with God (or wanting to want to want to want such a relationship, as much as you want to qualify it—it’s the same thing, a unilaterally established causal chain). How are the rock-bottomers ‘morally responsible’ for this desire or inclination if it follows necessarily from unilateral divine action?

Mephi: I don't think that this should be minimized. I would agree that, given universalistic presuppositions, we are NOT morally responsible for the facticity of our eventual solidification towards God. But I honestly don't see how this removes the personality of the developed relationship between the post-rock-bottomer and God.

Tom: Heavens to Murgatroyd! Oh my stars and garters! We can be morally responsible for choices without being responsible for their “facticity”? Suffering succotash! This is a flat out denial of LFW Bro. What are you thinking?

Libertarian free will is self-determining free will. To “determine” a choice is to be responsible for rendering the choice a “fact.” The facticity is the one thing we’ve GOT to be morally responsible for. We don’t have to be exclusively responsible for it (if it’s a choice for a personal relationship of love with another, then we CAN’T be exclusively responsible for the OTHER person’s part) but we have to be exclusively responsible for determining our part. There has to be some NECESSARY part to rendering “factual” the love relationship which we alone determine. That’s TWT1.

Why not be a theological determinist and affirm compatibilisitc freedom then? Compatibilists make the same point you make when they claim that the determined person still has a personality; they still reason, feel, and engage their will. This sounds like the Mephi of older days when you were arguing FOR compatibilism. My head is reeling Bro. Stop the merrr-go-round! I’m dizzy.

Mephi: This is, I feel, like me saying that any personal, loving relationships that develop within pre-arranged marriages are NOT genuine by definition because the parties didn't freely enter the relationship and they didn't ultimately control whether or not they would remain in the relationship.

Tom: This is easy. The ‘relationship’ that results from two people being forced into “marriage” is NOT the same ‘relationship’ AT ALL as that which is created by their later choice to love. Two different relationships. I’m not saying that the later choice to love does not result in a genuinely loving and personal relationship because they were forced into a “marriage” they didn’t choose. I’m saying that being forced into a “marriage” you didn’t choose is no guarantee that you’ll end up choosing to love your partner. This is so very obviously the case. What makes the later love relationship GENUINE is the CHOICE to begin to love. And nobody, not even God, can arrange you into such a choice. Being forced into a “marriage” relationship on the other hand only presents the partners with having to choose to love THAT particular partner or not. You want to take out the “or not” and that’s not something the analogy would allow.

Mephi: This, to me, seems more like Western individualism on a rampage than a fundamental metaphysical truth. It seems obviouls that they would not be "responsible" for the entrance of the relationship or there remaining in the relationship...but would be IMMENSELY "responsible" for what they made of their marriage through their daily decisions. And this ain't nothing to sneeze at.

Tom: I totally agree. But you’re assuming the “forced arrangement” brought about by some legal ceremony the State performs necessarily turns into a loving relationship and that just ain’t so. Unfortunately many couples choose NOT to make a personal and loving relationship our of their legal arrangement.

Mephi: In a situation where 1) entrance into the relationship and 2) failure to remain in the relationship are not within the responsible power of a person (ala arranged marriage ASSUMING no suicide, thankyouverymuchATW), development of personal, loving relationality is still possible within the relationship itself. What this means is that loving, personal relationality does NOT require freedom on EVERY POSSIBLE LEVEL to be genuine.

Tom: But, Mephi, where it does require freedom is enough to render universalism other than a justifiably dogmatic claim. What I think you’re missing is a) the “relationship” into which a forced marriage places two people is NOT one and the same “relationship” as that into which they enter by choice at a later time (if they enter at all), nor does the latter relationship follow necessarily (in any sense of “necessity”) from the former; and b) the inability to exit the first “relationship” (for whatever reason—by law or mechanical implant in the brain), does not amount to securing the inevitable choice to love. It just doesn’t. There’s nothing “Western” or “outrageously individualistic” about it.

So, I agree that loving and personal relationality does not require freedom on every possible level. We don’t have to be free to determine the other person, or to change our physical appearance, or to do a hundred other things perhaps. But it requires that we be free on at least ONE level, namely, that level of reason and volition where we responsibly and intelligently choose to determine ourselves with respect to love, where WE play our necessary and irreducibly free part in rendering “factual” the love relationship.

Mephi (to spark): Soooo...the best possible option is for God to so value our freedom…

Tom: Not freedom! Stop it! It’s not freedom that God values. It’s LOVE! It's the metaphysics OF LOVE, not the metaphysics OF FREEDOM that this is all about. We run all the risks entailed in having children NOT because we value freedom. To hell with that! I sure as heck ain't having kids for freedom’s sake. We do it because we deem LOVE worth the risk, not freedom.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/8/2005 12:54:19 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 3/8/2005 1:14:46 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/8/2005 4:31:40 PM (GMT-6)