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Asher
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 8/31/2009 11:38 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hey everyone,
How about this as an easy to get and accept explanation to non-open theists of the open view...
I was listening to some lectures today about literary theory and came up with this idea...
God as the Author of creation writes the text. Man, being both objective (some of his attributes set, or entextualized if you will) and subjective ( a reader of the text). But, God has not written the usual straightforward linear novel.
Now here is where my childhood love of science fiction gives the needed twist...
Are you familiar with "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels?
From wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebook
"Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks first published by Bantam Books from 1979-1998 and currently being re-published by Chooseco. Each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions in response to the plot and its outcome. Choose Your Own Adventure was one of the most popular children's series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling over 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998, and translated into at least 38 languages.
After an introduction to the story, the reader is asked to determine the protagonist's next course of action. For instance, the first decision offered in The Cave of Time is:
If you decide to start back home, turn to page 4.
If you decide to wait, turn to page 5.
After the reader makes a choice, the plot branches out and unfolds, leading to more decisions and eventually multiple possible endings."
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God has written a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel...on a grand scale!
At each nexus of decision point...we are given the choice to choose, not one or two options, but we are literally given the option of actualizing any one of EVERY POSSIBLE OPTION. God as the Author grounds EVERY POSSIBLE choice that can be made. We as entextualized characters via our objective side inhabit the story. We as "floating above the text" in our subjective side are readers of the text who make the choices for our characters. And there is a feedback loop so that each part of us in-forms the other.
We never make a choice that catches God unawares...because He grounds EVERY POSSIBLE CHOICE! However, even He does not know beforehand which of the multiple options we will choose. Because we choose, you could say that we are also authors.
God is the "Author" as the ground of all. We are "authors" as we actualize one of multiple options.
We are "readers" of the text, but are only privy to that part of the text where our subplot is happening. But God is the grand "Reader" of the ENTIRE text. We are in the image of God as author and reader!
Whatcha think!
Rob | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/1/2009 8:35 AM (GMT -6) | | A great analogy. Yep. Greg's used it a lot too. It works well I think.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 9/1/2009 3:44 PM (GMT -6) | | I would only say that the one characteristic to be careful about with regard to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" ending is that those endings are already prepared by the Author; there is simply more than one ending that we get to choose from, not create, which is something almost of a neo-Molinism.
The endings we get to choose from, however, are both unknown (because they haven't been chosen yet) AND created at the time we choose to make them. They are not prepared in advance, as are the "If you decide to start back home, turn to page 4. If you decide to wait, turn to page 5" options.
What still stands as truth, though, is "We never make a choice that catches God unawares...because He grounds EVERY POSSIBLE CHOICE! However, even He does not know beforehand which of the multiple options we will choose. Because we choose, you could say that we are also authors."
In context, then, to a vast amount of known possibilities OF which we may choose is the creation or outworking of possibilities FROM which we may choose. The former, I believe, more accurately reflects the Open View. I think the subtle but clear distinction between these two characteristics of possibilities is important to note.
Starkman | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2009 3:59 PM (GMT -6) | | Thought:
Conscience (IMO, the Voice of God echoing in the human "heart" ) limits possible choices at every "nexus of decision point". That's why continual, conscious decision to follow one's conscience, which always aligns with God's Will, is paradoxically FREEDOM from the anxiety of freedom that Kierkegaard talks about.
Look at Jesus. A VERY HUMAN Jesus...who only did what he saw His Father doing. Jesus was doing...but only within the possibilities aligned with the Father's Will, empowered by the Holy Spirit. In Gethsemane, he was FREE to choose to die or not to die. Both of those possibilities were legitimately there for Jesus. But, IMO, Jesus FOLLOWED HIS CONSCIENCE in his self-understanding as Messiah and what the Father WANTED from the Messiah, meaning sacrifice unto death. And he made the painful choice...
"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."
Jesus used his human freedom to freely choose to die for us according to the Father's Will...because he followed his theocentric conscience in the choice. Make sense? 
Keeping the Choose Your Own Adventure motif...
For the "Christified Christian" who lives in the Vision of God, the only possible options that we CHOOSE to consider are those that participate with God's Will and Working, thereby we operate in, by, and with God's Spirit in those divine possibilities.
Deified person turns to page 354...and there are 16 choices. Let's say that only 9 are in line with God's will in general. Let's say that there are only 5 of those that are in line with God's particular plan for your existence. The conscience (which is familiar with both God and the human "heart") constrains the choices, but such that good results and further future openness of possibility will follow...according to divine intention and glorification.
And THAT's freedom from anxiety inherent in one's freedom to choose. One no longer needs to fear about making the wrong decision when one has one "mind in the heart" at all times, for one is always "controlled" and "lead" by the Christ Himself in, by, and with His Spirit.
Feel me?
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 9/1/2009 5:04:07 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2009 4:17 PM (GMT -6) | | "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."
Abiding in Christ's Love, that is being continually indwelt by Divine Presence (the Father's love for Christ, Christ Himself via the Holy Spirit [John 17:26] ), has the function of Wisdom's "guiding constraint" of all a believer's choices...and the exercise of their freedom in choosing.
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 9/1/2009 5:05:01 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2009 4:31 PM (GMT -6) | | I'll give you an example.
There are many video games out now where you really do effect various elements of the game by one's moral stance. For example, in the Fable series...one can choose to be a good or bad person, evolving either into a utter demon or a virtuous saint. In a Stars Wars series, one can choose the path of the Light Side, becoming Master Jedi...or the path of the Darkside, becoming the new Emperor of the Sith. In this latest game, Infamous, same thing. You can either be a hero to save the city or destroy it with your own hands.
Ok.
If the Lord Jesus were to be here on earth right now playing one of these video games...could you EVER see him taking glee in being an imagined Diablo...or the new Palpatine...or a walking dynamo taking out lives indiscriminately blowing up every building in sight? Could you see Jesus saying "HELL, YEAH!! Did you see how I blew that $ucker's head off? Fragomatic, baby!!)
Could you see that?
Now sure, Jesus has the ability to do this. Nothing restraining him from doing so. In all the games, he could go either way.
But...
you can't see it happening, can you?
Can you see Jesus playing "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" or Mortal Kombat...and loving every drop of blood spilt? Hmmm...nope? So...I would say that Jesus's choices would be CONSTRAINED by his conscience, which would of course keep the Great Commandments and God's Presence as supremely important. If you had him play Grand Theft Auto, he'd probably end up doing something like this with it...
What was part of the "conscience building" process for Jesus? Psalm 119.
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 9/1/2009 5:06:57 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2009 4:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Random.
I saw this, and thought of Scripture. At about 1:00 of the commercial, you'll see what I mean...
"Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
I couldn't help thinking about how true this is, all the angelic prepwork for our salvations...and how often we see each other as "ordinarily" as the dude did the Coke coming out the machine. Yeah...
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2009 5:14 PM (GMT -6) | | "Conscience"
"The Way of Conscience" (Check out both parts.)
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... | | Back to Top | | |
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