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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 12/9/2003 4:29 AM (GMT -6) |   | quote:
Originally posted by SIM
It's hard for us humans to take. Why did God punish the Israelites so fiercely for what we see as so "little"? Like the poor prophet in 1 Kings 13:24. He had prophecied God's word to a cruel, murderous king, and just because he made a small detour for food, out of God's spoken command, God orchestrates a lion to kill him. My first response to that is, "How cruel that You would kill Your own prophet, after he had risked his life prophecying Your words to an evil king?"
Why would this bother you if you believe that God ordains EVERY instance of evil? -->
quote:
Both Calvinism AND open view theism would justify the times when God ordains evil by saying it’s part of a greater good that we may OR MAY NOT be able to comprehend. The MAIN difference between open view theism and Calvinism then would be in how often this is the case. Whereas Calvinism would say that it takes place for EVERY instance of evil, open view theism would not.
God ordained the disobedience and then punished it. If you believe that, why does it bother you?
And if it does bother you, that's a good start. When a erroneous concept of God gives up queasy feelings in our stomach and violates our innate sense of justice, maybe that erroneous concept of God should be examined. And abandoned.
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/22/2005 11:47 AM (GMT -6) | | We're goin' old school. I found this and I never finished it...let's do it...
Back to the Problem of Peter
Sum up...
Doc tries to solve the "Peter denying Jesus" thing with self-solidification. Saying that Peter solidified himself in such a way that he WOULD deny Jesus if placed in certain positions. Look at how he says this...I have amended his "contestant" theme to bring out the salient points...
Jesus foreknew what Peter would do because Peters present circumstances, including especially Peter's character, rendered it certain.
Now, if Peter's character was such that he'd deny Christ, why did he repent later?
This is exactly WHY Jesus gave him the prediction. This wasn't just a crystal ball deal... he had a purpose. To humble Peter, teach him the true meaning of leadership and love, break his false ideas, etc... God knew what Peter's character was, and what it would take to change it.
But how did Jesus know he'd deny him exactly three times? And what about the noisy chicken?
God wanted to (not coincidently) later reiterate 3 times the true meaning of leadership -- its about love (see Jn 21). Getting three people to notice Peter would of course be no problem, since these were pretty public people. God may have had to prevent others from noticing him...which presumably wouldn't be that hard to do. As far as the chicken, they always make noise at sunrise. But if God had to poke him, I suspect the sovereign God of the universe was capable of that.
But isn't God manipulating people (and a chicken) in doing this? Doesn't this make God a conspirator in Peter's evil?
God didn't put the character IN Peter or the others. He just may have steered how they play it out, and he did so for Peter's, and the Church's, own good. He wanted to expose Peter to himself. I don't see that that makes him a conspirator in Peter's evil. He IS guilty of poking the chicken however.
_________________________________
Important things to note:
1) According to this, it is possible for character solidification to be CHANGED.
2) God maniputed Peter and his circumstances such that the denials WOULD happen.
3) God did it for the "greater good" reason of showing Peter his character, and CHANGING said character.
4) What exonerates God from being a conspirator for Peter's denials is the fact that Peter is the one who made his character the way it was. God was just using that character and prodding it, via his manipulation of the other people.
Fine. Let's just go with that for now. What Paul Helseth located as a problem was the FACT of Peter's repentence and subsequent witness of Christ. He says...
"Boyd’s comments on character solidification in this quotation are vague. When he says, “solidified to the extent that,” does that mean “irreversibly” established and “permanently” or “unalterably” aquired? Or does he really mean something less than “irreversibly” established and “permanently” or “unalterably” aquired? If “solidified to the extent that” really means something less than really “solid,” then how are we to avoid the conclusion that we are all compatibilistically free, even with regard to those character traits that have yet to be “permanently” fixed or settled? Are not all of our character traits solidified to one extent or another? What, then, does it really mean to say that a character trait is solidified “to the extent that” it serves as a legitimate candidate for compatibilistic exploitation, particularly when that character trait changes when it is manipulated compatibilistically?
In effect, what Paul caught was the fact that, when Doc answered this question, he basically said it was possible for someone to be IRREVERSIBLY solidified towards a certain action...for a SHORT duration of time!! Paul then asks the natural question: Well, if being compatibilistically free via self-solidification can look like this, who the hell AIN'T compatibilistically in some way? We could say that literally for EVERY thing we do. There are some SERIOUS problems that come from this:
1) This very notion of character solidification becomes vacuous and contradicts the essence of what it means to say that someone is IRREVERSIBLY solidified. Taken to what Doc says about Peter, he wants to suggest that Peter was IRREVERSIBLY solidified such that before his third denial, given the circumstances, it was CERTAIN that he would have denied Jesus. But that solidification could be (and was) changed. What this means is that character solidification could never ON PRINCIPLE be said to be an eternally enduring affair...simply by nature of being character solidification. Just to push the reducio ad absurdum, it would be genuinely possible for my character to be solidified such that if someone were to offer me and apple juice in the NEXT 2 MINUTES, it would be certain I would accept...but not beyond the 2 minutes. Is this what we think about when we say "character solidification"
2) If God can use this type of compatibilistic freedom ala self-solidification...and it can be as brief as MINUTES, then there would be pretty much NOTHING of our behaviors that God COULDN'T manipulate. God could manipulate ANY aspect of our self-chosen, "self-solidified" habits (positive OR negative) for his purposes. This would posit a SIGNIFICANT issue for theodicy.
In positing a so-called solution to the Peter issue, Doc has raised serious considerations that strike to the heart of theodicy. To demonstrate...
It can be said that God, for greater good reasons that we CANNOT know, may have taken a German officer who had solidified his character in such a way that if he were to see a pretty little Jewish girl with beautiful eyes, that it would be CERTAIN that he would take a knife and dig them out. So, God then orchestrates things such that a little girl named Zosia gets pushed directly in the line of sight of this German officer. As expected, the officer ends up digging her eyes out. And God's greater good purpose that we cannot know (perhaps the revulsion some other German officers that lead them to renounce Nazism, etc.), God orchestrated the killing of Zosia. God is NOT to be held responsible for this because 1) God did it for a greater good purpose that only God knows and 2) God didn't determine the character of the German officer.
Y'all cool with this? Better be. Cause it's allowable in the warfare worldview. Check this whole thread...again, it's great! Here's something that Alan Rhoda said on this thread...
With respect to (a) and (b), there is an important ethical principle called the "Principle of Double Effect". What the principle says is that an action that results in some evil can still be morally justified if (i) it is the optimum means to accomplish some greater good, and (ii) it is done for the sake of that greater good. It seems plausible to me to suppose that whenever God exploits the self-solidified characters of his creatures in a manner that results in something evil that these two conditions are fulfilled.
With respect to (c), I think God as the Creator has rights over his creatures that his creatures do not have over each other. While it would almost certainly be wrong for me to, say, direct a homicidal maniac into the path of a little child, I don't think it is necessarily wrong for God to do so.He gave us life, so he has the right to take, even if he does so through the instrumentality of an self-solidified agent. He also gave us freedom, so he has the right to limit or remove it as it suits his purposes
and...
As far as Doc's proposed divine covenant of non-inference is concerned, I think it is basically correct, though I would condition it by saying that God will not override or remove creaturely freedom unless it is the optimum means of avoiding an evil that would be greater than the evil of lost freedom. In other words, God won't override our freedom unless he has sufficiently good reasons to do so. And it seems plausible to me that God might sometimes have sufficiently good reasons.
Just to remind y'all...just in case you forgot.
Insofar as the warfare/open worldview allows for these things to occur within it, it IS a "greater good" theodicy, just like Calvinism and has the SAME ISSUES with respect to particular evils
Think about it. Given this, can one completely rule out that God didn't use Zosia as a "rook sacrificed for the queen"? Can one completely rule out that Sept. 11th wasn't this case? The tsunami??
Now...what helps deal with all of this?
How about my version of....
U N I V E R S A L I S M !
If you haven't considered universalism...HEAVILY think about it, 'kay? 
Just bringing up old stuff
"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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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 3/6/2005 2:30 PM (GMT -6) | |
Just a side bar question for the Eternal One. Meph Man is dealing with the question of God being ultimately responsible for evil. This is one of his main things. Always been. OK. Cool. I have to agree with ya Meph Man. Parameters and all that stuff. It’s all God’s fault, right? I mean, ultimately. You are strongly reacting against Greg’s theodicy on this.
Also, another point is, is that God RESPONDS to his creatures. Chess analogy. God is “in a bind” and so he responds by “sacrificing the rook” because he is playing within the rules of the game or he responds unilaterally (also, in some cases, the rook is sacrificed). Either way, God is doing what God can and sees the bigger picture and does it because God has “greater good purposes.”
But this has been the question that has not been settled for me for some time now. In this thread, to argue that Christ predicted with exact precision the denial of Christ, Christ had to have what? Exhausitive definite foreknowledge, right? Taking for granted, the “certainty” that Christ had, is, according to Meph Man NOT because of character solidification because as Meph Man has argued, Greg wants to say that Peter was solidified (meaning unchangeable) while at the same time saying that he wasn’t TOTALLY solidified. If that is the case, then God is responsible for Peter acting the way he did. Pyromanic example. So Meph Man says, that he thinks this undermines the WHOLE openness program. Yet, Meph Man says that he is an open theist on the “Process theism or openness theism” thread.
Question for ya Meph Man, how do you say that you are openness while at the same time affirming EDF? Jesus KNEW and predicted (had foresight into the future) and compatiblisitically exploited the Peter situation, not because of character solidification, because you can’t count on that. But because of EDF? Are you saying that Christ did not foreknow but was simply “exploiting” the situation?
Tommaaaay! This is what I was getting at when I was asking you online about the EDF paper you, Greg and Alan wrote. The Peter event seems to really undermine your paper. Yet at the same time, one can’t claim EDF and openness at the same time. Am I missing something here?
Brandon
"Theology is doxology"--John G. Stackhouse quoting J.I. Packer in "Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method" | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/6/2005 2:51 PM (GMT -6) | | Brandon:
Question for ya Meph Man, how do you say that you are openness while at the same time affirming EDF? Jesus KNEW and predicted (had foresight into the future) and compatiblisitically exploited the Peter situation, not because of character solidification, because you can’t count on that. But because of EDF? Are you saying that Christ did not foreknow but was simply “exploiting” the situation?
Kinda. This is what I meant. A considerable amount of the openness agenda is dealing with God NOT being DIRECTLY responsible for events of evil or suffering, for WHATEVER reason. The closest that people try to come is Doc's "sacrificing the rook for the queen" idea. THIS is the idea what I think the Peter thing deconstructs. Barring EDF, it has to AT LEAST be said that God micromanaged and ORCHESTRATED Peter into situations where Peter denied Jesus...if not wholesale employed used compatiblistic activity with Peter. If this happened, then God is ultimately responsible for Peter's sinful act. Just call the spade a spade. This would be one of those "sacrificing the rook (orchestrating Peter's sin) for the queen (Peter's eventual reconfirmation)" events!
In short, God, given infinite intelligence, always knew this possibility could occur...and micromanaged things such that it WOULD occur. I'm an open theist METAPHYSICALLY...and that only.
Does this help?
"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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BBBCanada
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 3/6/2005 3:46 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Ummm...yeah...that's cool...I'll be back with some more of my questions later. Thanks Meph Man! Hey, check it. You becoming mo' da man dees days.
Look at dem eye's on dat puppy. The way they stare at you.
Brandon
"Theology is doxology"--John G. Stackhouse quoting J.I. Packer in "Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method" | | Back to Top | | |
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 6/23/2005 2:39 PM (GMT -6) | | |
First, the problem in part isn't about what Peter would ever or would never do. The problem is over what is possible or impossible for Peter to do.
Second, on Boyd's reading it becomes hard to see how this isn't something very much like a Frankfurt counter-example. If you are going to accept those then you have bought the compatibilist farm.
Third, I am at a loss as to why anyone would think that given LWF that one’s nature would ensure or guarantee how one acts. This smacks of compatibilism. Moreover, natures don't act, persons do. It seems there is some conflation between persons and natures going on here. Perhaps serious reflection on the Trinity and Incarnation might help us out here. What is more, dispositions, reasons, desires, etc. don't determine an agent's acts.
Fourth, if God knows at some prior time what Peter will do, then it is true AT THE PRIOR TIME that Peter does the act at some later time. This is so because knowledge implies truth. If I know of significant evils coming down the temporal pike, don’t I bear some measure of responsibility to stop them? Wouldn’t I be responsible if instead I not only didn’t try to stop them but set up the conditions in which I *knew* such evils would take place. If that is true for moi, why isn’t it true for God?
Fifth, regardless if God is morally blameworthy or praiseworthy in Boyd’s Frankfurt like case, it is hard to see how Peter could be. The extent that an agent is the source of an act, to that extent they seem plausibly responsible for that act, all other things being equal and other conditions for responsibility being fulfilled. Since God is at least a contributing causal agent in this model, Peter’s responsibility is mitigated.
Sixth, I can’t see why one would see “solidification” as something that is a done deal this side of heaven. And solidification in order to be compatible with LWF can’t be construed in terms of natures but persons. If LWF is part of the image of God, it becomes difficult to see how we would be licensed to think of persons ever giving up their free will by becoming “solidified” unless of course the image of God is capable of being destroyed by us, in which case we seem to be back on our way to Calvinism. Part of what bothers people about determinism is the threat of loosing personhood. If God “locks” into being solidified a certain way in terms of our nature, then it seems that we cease to be persons and become conduits of some other agent’s will. If God can “lock” people in place at the level of their nature ensuring their acts, then I can’t see why he can’t do this for everyone from the get-go.
Seventh, the idea that God uses people who have solidified themselves into a compatibilist freedom turns on the idea that God requires such things to accomplish specific ends. This implies that the Good requires evil to manifest itself. This is the idea that the “greater good” line of thinking exploits. Without this assumption though, God’s using such fixed creatures seems entirely unmotivated. If it is legitimate for God to act this way in these cases and such agents are responsible, why can’t he just start the whole world that way and ensure its complete goodness? The question just points to the fact that the system is still compatibilist at rock bottom.
8th the mere use of evil acts by God to greater goods does not imply the necessity of using those things to achieve greater goods. If the possibility of evils acts is necessary, it is not necessary in order for God to bring about his purposes on pain of dualism. Moreover, the “greater good” line of thinking is essentially neo-platonic. For Plotinus for example, evil in itself has no value but it contributes to the goodness of the whole. The same neo-platonic idea can be found in Origen, Augustine and all the way op through the Latin theological tradition.
9th To say that God’s permission of evil conditions God’s permitting evil, while externalizing the cause of evil is just to make evil an eternal potentiality necessarily connected to the possibility of manifesting moral goodness. This is just another form of dualism. What Calvinism strengthens, the Open view weakens and vice versa it seems. But both seem to be a subtle kind of dualism with greater degrees of being aside to the respective parts of the system depending on where you land on the spectrum.
10th To deny that OT is employs a greater good line of thinking because OT is really concerned about freedom is just to admit that it still employs a greater good line of thinking since free will is the greater good that legitimates the occurrence of evil acts. You have simply moved the problem, rather than solved it.
11th If character solidification can be changed, why can’t it be changed in heaven? And wouldn’t this then necessarily connect the possibility of evil, once again, to Goodness, specifically in that freedom is a good? If character solidification can become irreversible, then isn’t this just to subsume agency/personhood to the category of nature/necessity? If so, where’s LFW and why couldn’t we have just started there in the first place?
12th Running to universalism just makes explicit what was implicitly present across all systems on the table here, namely that the Many are inevitably assumed to the One, one way or another. All of these systems are just different versions of that thesis. Can we say Plotinus? Origen?
Round and round we go. 
God never ceases from good works because he never began them. www.energeticprocession.com
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Paul M. Blackmore
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 53
| Posted 6/23/2005 9:09 PM (GMT -6) | | |
God is truth. The unfallen creation expressed every truth of a universe, where light had not yet been eternally separated from darkness.
The unfallen world had rapicious "hachet fish" discreetly plying their trade in the darkest ocean depth; while at the same time bunnies, butterflies and benevolent "behemoths" browsed the beauties of Eden.
Creation was an ingenious tapestry of every imaginable exercise of desire or want. Each piece of the puzzle miraculously sewn together into an interdependent, resplendent tapestry of all that was possible and true. Nothing was left out. All the "sons of God", of all dispositions, found pleasure within this tapestry of God's creation.
God made room for all when He made the world, and the knowledge of "good and evil" was ever present with God as He planted the tree which could impart this knowedge, into the garden of Eden. The burden of this knowledge was forbidden to Adam. It would cause Adam to die.
To forever rid One's mind of such knowledge would require God to separate forever, light from the darkness. The place of light would be called heaven. The place of darkness would be called hell. God ordained that His only begotton Son would die, before ever He made "the heavens and the earth and all that in them is". God will no longer have the knowledge of "evil" in heaven, and neither will we. That's one reason why heaven will be so great.
Back to Peter.
Jesus knows Peter is filled with Peter.
Satan knows it too.
Satan want's to prove Peter to be a fraud and lobbys God for permission to sift Peter like wheat. God wanting to teach Peter a lesson for good, uses Satan to lance the "prideful boil" festering in Peter's heart. Sin in the "heart" is just as evil as sin in the "headlines".(a la sermon on the mount) Allowing Satan to lance Peter's festering "boil", does not create any new sin. Rather, the sin is exposed and then cured.
How does this action besmirch the character of God in any manner whatsoever?
Giving permission to Satan or to any of the forces of darkness to exercise their particular sway over men and women who have chosen badly in life, is a matter of justice with God. Men who have chosen evil and resisted God's correction when it was offered, enter the ranks of those learning things the hard and bitter way.
God will school nations with war if He must, and so He has done, so He is doing, and so He will continue to do into the forseeable future. In all these things God is just and beyond reproach of any kind.
" 1 Timothy 1:20Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."
People handed over to Satan, can hardly be said to be operating in some sort of fuzzy LFW condition, that God cannot set boundaries or constraints upon. God gives permission to Satan to cause the puss to flow at certain times untill God makes His point clear, and accomplishes his good purpose(s), whatever those good purpose(s) might be.
Satan can alway be counted upon to act consistently in God's reckoning of things. Peter under such influence, becomes just as predictiable. Poke the rooster at just the right moment, and the prophecy is made good.
There is no problem here that reflects poorly upon God's character. None whatsoever. God is truthful and has acknowledged the existence of evil from the very beginning, albeit in the most discrete and delicate of manner.
When "darkness" sought to usurp the light at the time of the fall, then SIN was invented. God at the price of the life of His own dear Son, erradicates all sin at the end of the day, and gains an eternity for Himself and for those who choose to follow His Son; where the "former things will not even be remembered".
No more night. No more sea. No more hatchet fish!  No more raging against a God who is only good, kind and just; and who patiently endures the insult of all those who would impugn and malign Him.
Blessings in Christ
Paul M. Blackmore
Psalms 119
96I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.
97O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Post Edited (Paul M. Blackmore) : 6/23/2005 9:17:25 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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