Jason: But if as I believe, God knew Adam and Eve were going to sin before they sinned…

Tom: Jason, most open theists believe God knew Adam and Eve would sin. Human sin was an eventuality. There are some disagreements here among open theists, but belief that God foreknew human sin is not incompatible with the open view. It all depends on what realities ground the eventuality.

Jason: …then it makes sense that Adam and Eve's sin was necessary for the manifestation of Jesus Christ.

Tom: Think about what you’re saying, Jason. Sin is necessary for the incarnation?

Jason: This is in harmony with the New Testament Scriptures that affirm that Jesus Christ was foreordained to be the sacrifice for sin before the world was created.

Tom: Another great aspect to discuss, but not impossible for open theists to affirm.

Well, I’m done here I think. You all carry on. My point’s made. Jason’s got a lot that bothers him about providence and evil, none of it that has anything to do with the open view.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 6/8/2006 9:38:08 AM (GMT-5)

Jason: I'm making these conclusions based on the open view of God…

Tom: But your understanding of the open view is inaccurate. You keep ascribing to open theists positions with regard to providence and evil that are not essential to the view.

Jason: …using my logic and common sense. Why would God allow sin when he could have stopped it just as he stopped Pharaoh from disobeying him.

Tom: Where’s the logic you claim to be depending upon? As I’ve tried to point out to you, there’s nothing about logic or common sense that establishes the entailment you’re claiming here. That is, there’s no rule of logic which itself tells us that since God kicked the furniture over in Egypt and got Pharaoh to release Israel, God must have been able to flex the same amount of muscle, intervene miraculously, and compel Adam and Eve to behave rightly. You’re arguing like this:

Premise 1: God wanted Pharaoh to make choice A in situation C.

Premise 2: God acted miraculously and pressured Pharaoh in situation C into making choice A.

Premise 3: God wanted Adam and Eve not to make sinful choice D in situation E.

Conclusion: Therefore, God could have acted miraculously in situation E to pressure Adam and Eve into not making sinful choice D.

That’s all the argument you’ve offered from the get go. Nothing else at all. You just take it as common sense, as self-evident, that the conclusion here follows logically from the premises 1 through 3. But it simply doesn’t, Jason. You’re just mistaken. For this to be a valid argument, everything—all the contextual factors, purposes, wills, objectives, possible consequences, etc., an infinite array of issues—about situations C and E have to be identical. C would have to be logically equivalent to E. But besides there being no possible way YOU could know this, there’s every reason to believe they are not identical, that no two situations are exactly the same. So God doesn’t always flex the SAME amount of muscle in every situation. But he does always do all he can given his purposes for creating and given all the contextual factors that define this situation over that situation, to obtain his purposes, to maximize good and minimize evil in the world, and to glorify Christ and bring all creation to the full recognition and experience of Christ. Is that not enough for you?

And love doesn’t have to be the ONLY thing God is up to. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be the MAIN thing God is after, in order for creation to be necessarily free and indeterminate in some respects, and in order for creational contexts and relational factors to vary widely, so that it’s actually appropriate on some occasions for God to kick butt and on other occasion for him not to kick butt. All that has to be true is that love is PART of what God is after with respect to divine-human relations. If only that much is true (and we have EVERY reason to suppose it is), then we can expect God's involvement in the world to manifest different levels of muscle flexing, pressure, and the miraculous. God always does what's right and most wise, given his purposes. But what's right and most wise will not, indeed cannot (given our world), always look the same. This is your problem. You insist that what is right and wisest to do in different situations must always look exactly the same. So you just reason, "Hey, look at all God did to get Pharaoh to comply! He turned Egypt upside down. If he can do THAT in Egypt, then surely God could have done AS MUCH in Eden to get Adam and Eve to comply." You haven't offered an argument for justifying the move you make with the words, "then surely God could have...." It just doesn't follow logically that God could have done in Eden all he did in Egypt and remain faithful to one and the same purpose for creating.

You seem to have a view of God's power and divine providence that's behind this assumption you're making. Care to examine what that might be? 

Jason: Why would God allow the Holocause if he could have stopped it. Why the World Wars. Why does God show his face when he wants to make a name for himself in Egypt but throughout the thousands of years of human suffering and despair, he does nothing. And you say God considered our sin an acceptable risk...well if that's the case, how do you explain Jesus pleading with God to get out of the suffering and death brought about by that acceptable risk?

Tom: I explain Christ’s request as evidence of his humanity and as evidence of a far more dynamic timetable and divine-human relationship that you apparently are prepared to concede.

Why does God allow evil? Gratuitous evil? My best guess is something along the lines of what C. S. Lewis argued. Creation, including the exercise of human will, has to be left indeterminate, free, to some extent for the divine-world relationship to have the integrity God desires it to have and for God to get ultimately what he wants. Were God to ‘manhandle’ every occasion of suffering or evil to coerce it into conformity to his will, God would also rule out the very possibility of creation’s becoming the sort of loving, worshipful thing he purposed it to be (with Christ at the center, as you point out!). Now, obviously God is able at times to wield quite a bit of power (like in Egypt). Other times he doesn’t (or isn’t able to) flex that much muscle. It seems far better to me to account for this by positing a conflicted and complex CREATION with which a loving holy God must deal rather than to posit a conflicted and complex GOD. In other words, let’s assume God is like Christ. Let’s let that be our default setting shall we? Let’s assume we understand more about GOD than we do about CREATION. That’s my point. There’s enough we DON’T know about creation and enough we DO know about God to warrant the conclusion that God did do what he could do in Eden given his purposes and the variables defining Eden, to secure our choosing rightly and creation’s being good and not evil.

If that doesn’t do it for ya, fine. But it is a consistent view that’s compatible with Scripture.

Jason: I would think Jesus would go to the cross saying to himself 'Hey I let this happen by not doing anything in Eden, might as well pay the consequences' but no...he pleads to get out of it. I say again that for Jesus to plead to get out of going to cross for something he could have prevented - as he prevented Pharaoh from disobeying him- makes Jesus look like a fool.

Tom: Then you’ll have to worship a fool, Jason, or concede that your assumptions about what God should have been capable of doing in Eden is a false one, that creation is dynamic and free and that this means the right and most wise thing for God to do will NOT always look the same in every situation. That's your problem. I’ve shown your reasoning to be invalid. You haven’t proven that since God kicked the furniture over in Egypt to get what he wanted God must have been able but unwilling to kick the furniture over in Eden. If you give up this faulty reasoning you may be free to consider other options.

Personally, I think that as the time drew near Jesus longed for there to be some OTHER way to accomplish God’s purposes and that this longing is evidence of Jesus real humanity. After all, the human in Jesus had to choose the cross (whatever else might have been true about the incarnate Christ). I can’t claim to stand inside of Jesus at the time and observe him from the inside out to know that “this” was the human in him and “that” was the divine, but it seems to me that your view of the Gethsemane prayer ignores the dynamic of the human in Jesus. You just have this actively omniscient being, Christ, wanting to avoid the cross and then you try to square this with your false belief that God was able but unwilling to do more to avoid sin in Eden. I can understand why you’re confused and frustrated.

I don’t think you’ll find real solutions by just tweaking this or that part of a fundamentally flawed worldview, Jason. You may need to make major adjustments in your worldview. How hungry for truth are you?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 6/8/2006 2:39:54 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jasonlevene) : 6/8/2006 3:49:23 PM (GMT-5)

Jason: Well there, I don't think anything more needs to be said on this matter. I ask why God would let ADam and Eve sin and yet compel Pharaoh to obey with miracle muscle and you say...he wasn't able to.

Tom: I said “God is able at times to wield much power and at other times he doesn’t OR isn’t able to….” By “able” and “not able” I mean that exercise of power relevant to God’s purposes and all the creational variables he sovereignly put in place when he creation and to which he is committed. I’m not talking about sheer muscle, sheer brute force, which is all you can think about. Sure, God’s got the muscle to wipe Adam and Eve off the planet and start over again. But he’s not able to do that AND pursue particular purposes for creation. God’s relationship to creation and the conditions under which he established it all have integrity to it, Jason. That means God can’t just toss creation (or the conditions and variables under which creation works) aside and uphold the integrity of his purposes for it. But apparently for you the exercise of divine power is never relevant to anything. In your view, however much power God has, he can bring to bear upon creation without consequence to any purpose he has for creation until it conforms to his will. This is just nothing close to being a right or helpful view of power. And I can’t think of a weaker way for God to relate to the world.

Jason: Now we're stepping into unchartered territory. Weird territory. Because now we have to ask the question as to why God wasn't able to throw some muscle around in Eden.

Tom: It’s unchartered territory for you. But we’ve been kicking it around here for a few years.

Jason: Was he too tired after creating the universe? Was he distracted? What prevented the 'Almighty' God from doing what he did in Egypt from doing it in Eden...

Tom: Wisdom is born in the asking of questions! Of course, you’re entirely missing the point and misconstruing my language, but you’re asking questions. I doubt the absence of Egypt-type miracles in Eden is due to God’s being tired or distracted. Is there nothing else, something good and right, that you can think of which might explain why God would not rip Eden apart to compel Adam and Eve’s right behavior? Might there be something God wanted from Adam and Eve, from creation itself, which required God’s doing as much as he did in Eden but no more? Ask that question for a few years without feeling like you’ve got to have a final answer right now. Just live for a while in the asking of it.

Jason: Tom it's simple math...

Tom: It’s never simple math.

Jason: …for God to stand by and do nothing while letting Adam and Eve sin yet he raises heaven and earth in Egypt makes God responsible not just for sin itself, but for putting Jesus on the cross.

Tom: Jason, Jason, Jason. God love ya bro. Look, it’s not simple math, or logic, or common sense. It’s just something you keep repeating without any substantiating argument. You can keep claiming it all you want, but eventually you’ll run into people who will insist you actually make an argument, with premises and a conclusion, and not just pontificate. Unpack your reasoning. Lay it out there, and don’t just claim this or that is “simple math.” Tell me WHY God must do in Eden all that he did in Egypt. Just because he has the muscle to do so? Is the mere possession of power, ability and sheer brute force all that God considers when determining how best to relate to the world in this or that situation? Is there no possible scenaio you can think of that would explain why a loving, holy, all-knowing God would not do in Eden what he did in Egypt?

Maybe you’re used to getting by on other sites with just repeatedly insisting that your claim is true, but here you have to actually argue you’re point; you have to either paint or get off the ladder. Now, I’ve laid your premises out and commented on them. There is no rule of logic, no simple math as you claim, which shows us that since God turned the world upside down in Egypt, God’s got to turn it upside down everywhere all the time. If you’re going to just repeat this over and over and claim that plain logic and simple math substantiate you, then perhaps you’d be happier elsewhere. As for me, I’m going to keep asking for an A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T from you (as opposed to mere claims of truth) until you give me one or you go away. Offer a substantive argument, with premises and conclusion, or move on.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 6/9/2006 8:40:44 AM (GMT-5)

Jason:  Well what was it Tom?  Why would God stop a stream [stopping Pharaoh] and then let a flood rush right on by [letting Adam and Eve sin]?  What logical explanation can you offer for God doing such a thing and then crying about it in Gethsemane when it comes time to pay the price?  The answer is simple to me.  God is no fool.  He wouldn't let Adam and Eve sin, raise heaven and earth to free a bunch of Israelites and then cry about the price he had to pay for letting Adam and Eve sin.

Tom: You either have an argument to offer or you don't. Claiming that since you can't think of any other explanation than the one you have isn't an argument. Look, it's your thread and YOUR claim is on the table. Defend it with an actual argument or remove it from discussion. What's it gonna be?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 6/9/2006 10:21:42 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (John N. Darby) : 6/11/2006 5:33:22 PM (GMT-5)