It may sound like I'm suggesting a formula, but I'm not.  Not really. I'm just saying that faith is a gigantic variable in prayer...and warfare!

Eph 6:16

...in addition, take up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish ALL the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Tom,

Wow. Wieeeeerd. I just wonder why the word "freely" is even there in the first place.  I guess that's what we all wonder. Hm.

And one more thing... then under Molinism (if it were true), then "ignorance is bliss". Just imagine... I could just go to a deserted island, tell people to mail me their prayer requests but don't tell me the outcome, then I could just majorly procrastinate until I finally decide to just lay it all out in one huge chunk and feel satisfied for finally getting around to it. Would I really be taking prayer seriously then? I don't think I would (even minus the deserted island in the Bahamas with a daqueri  -that would be tough though). (I know I'm being sarcastic... but seriously this all fits into that whole paradigm)

Since becoming and Open Theist, I've taken prayer a bit more seriously (but unfortunately not as seriously as I'd like to be... Erg.)

Post Edited (TGB) : 7/13/2006 9:05:12 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 7/13/2006 8:31:01 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 7/13/2006 8:51:47 AM (GMT-5)

Interesting.....

I think you're right Tom.

selah

Post Edited (selah) : 7/14/2006 8:09:45 PM (GMT-5)

A quick look at Dan. 3.17-18. Interestingly, there’s an important “if” clause. (I’ve arranged the English words to reflect the Hebrew order to clarify a bit.”

17 “If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and out of thy hand, O king, he will deliver us. 18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

This is very different from the English translation Pentz posted. (I haven’t checked any English translations yet, just the Hebrew.) Pentz’s translation post says this:

“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

Quite different:

(A) If...God is able to deliver us from the furnace...he will deliver us.

or

(B) If...we are thrown into the furnace...God is able to save us (to which is "and he will rescue us" is added as a separate claim; but there's no "and" in the Hebrew--another reason to go with reading (A)).

My reading of the Hebrew suggests (A) is the correct reading. And that changes this passage’s contribution to our discussion, for the three Hebrews are in effect saying “If God is able to deliver us in this circumstance, he will.” Obviously they believed God to be able in the sense of having the muscle to do it. That’s not at issue here. I can’t imagine them saying, “If God is capable of saving us, he will” as if they’re predicating their “if” to divine adequacy. They must be recognizing that how much muscle God flexes may be in this instance conditioned upon factors other than God’s adequacy. I read them as saying, “If in our circumstances, given God’s knowledge of what’s best for us, and his purposes, God is able to rescue us, then he will.” It’s precisely what an open theist would expect.

Tom

Mephi: 1) The author had in mind that idea that CIRCUMSTANCES OF CREATION where the primary factor that determined whether or not God would save them…or...2) The author had in mind that idea that GOD'S WILLING was the primary factor that determined whether or not God would save them.

Tom: I think it’s more likely to be (2). But like you said, that would only be primary, and it’s not unreasonable to suppose that they had some notion of God’s willing this or that in response to (or in war with) circumstances. I say “in war with” not to suggest they had Doc’s full-blown warfare model constructed in the heads, but just that they understood good and evil to be struggling it out in their world.

Mephi: Whenever I said what I said, I took the #1 scenario. A true open view theist would realize that there are sometimes where God's willing and ACTUAL ABILITY for deliverance can be thwarted by creational factors. I cannot (just right now) see the author of the Hebrew boys passage believing this.

Tom: I hear ya. I mean, I feel the temptation to suppose that the ancients were so simple-minded they couldn’t possibly have contemplated some of the issues we do, and that they weren’t sophisticated enough to question whether or not the actualization of God’s will could ever be thwarted by creational variables. You, I take it, have the belief that they pretty much universally believed that God could actualize his will unilaterally anytime and in any circumstance he wanted without jeopardizing divine purposes. I’m far less convinced that they thought so. I wouldn’t be surprised if (a) the Bible shows some diversity (within a larger unity) of thought on this, and (b) there’s development within the canon. But I wouldn’t rule out they’re thinking God’s will could be defeated because of worldly variables.

More in a bit...

Tom

Mephi: Try telling a dyed-in-the-wool COGIC or AG preacher that it is genuinely possible for God to really want someone to be healed AND for their to be sufficient human faith applied through prayer...but for God to be UNABLE to heal still. They will look at you like you were crazy, if not sacreligious! And try to tell them that God can actually believe A is going to happen, only to find out that the much lower probabilistic B happens...such that people who were trusting God end up getting hurt (ie Doc's story about the woman marrying the lecherous missionary in "God of the Possible") They would say that you don't even serve the same God!

Tom: They probably would. Like Pinnock said, P/C’s are far more deterministic/Calvinistic in their theological foundations than we think. And they’ll respond (they already have!) to the OV out of THIS foundation rather than rethinking things in light of their experience.

But on the healing thing, Mephi, think about this. There's a general sense in which we can say God “wills” everyone to be healed. He wants peoples’ bodies to be ‘occasions’ where importance is perfected and the goodness and glory of God are celebrated, right? That’s God’s “will” for our bodies. But there’s another sense in which what God “wills” for a person’s sick body is necessarily conditioned by the person’s circumstances, God’s plan to use their healing or their sickness, etc. When you say God can "really will” their healing, which do you have in mind? When I use it, I'm describing what God wills to accomplish AFTER all the creational variables are taken into consideration. You seem to be using it to describe what God wills to accomplish BEFORE all the variables are taken into consideration. But from my point of view there's little point in describing what God "wills" BEFORE any of the varialbes are taken into consideration (except to demonstrate God's CHARACTER--which I'm assuming as an established thing). So I could argue, for example, that where God’s willing in the first sense is met with sufficient faith, healing IS guaranteed. For God not to heal in such cases God had some REASON not to do so, which simply means he didn't "will to heal." But where God wills in the latter sense, it isn’t guaranteed. When I say, "God wills my healing," I would normally mean something like “God has taken all the variable into consideration and has chosen to heal me,” in which case it’s gonna happen. But we can never know the variables. So I’d be inclined to say we can never know if God “wills” our healing. Does this make any sense?

Mephi: In other words, it was believed that the devil could ONLY do what God allowed him to do. In other words, there was NO FRAMEWORK to understand the devil actually thwarting God in any real sense. They seem to rely heavily on the Job story and on the texts where God sends "evil spirits" to do things for this perspective. To tell these people that God can ACTUALLY LOSE battles against Satan...even if there is sufficient faith and prayer present?

Tom: They’d freak out, yeah.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 7/15/2006 10:13:22 AM (GMT-5)

Consider this Mephi. Think of two things:

A) The determination of God’s will

and

B) The actualization of God’s will

(A) describes how it is God forms his will, what influences and factors figure into God’s coming to desire this or that in a particular circumstance. It’s a given that God always desires and therefore seeks to actualize the greatest perfection of importance (to use Whitehead’s word for “goodness”) in the world. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the determination of what particular course of action God will settle on in securing that end. OK? Now, I want to say that the determination of God’s will may or may not be conditioned upon factors/variables outside of God. Sometimes God’s will is determined by God alone, like the creation of the universe. The actualizing of that state of affairs isn’t conditioned by wills or non-God factors. But other times (so we’re assuming) God will is determined by other factors. What’s most loving to do in fallen and conflicted world, for example, will not always look the same, and just which course of action God settles upon as most consistent with his purposes will be, in part, determined by the cooperation and/or opposition on the part of other wills along with other creational variables.

Hanging onto that for a moment, then…

(B) describes how it is that God’s will, once determined, engages all non-God variables that either support or oppose the actualizing of God’s will.

Both aspects, both (A) and (B), can include non-God variables.

Some examples.

(1) The creation of the universe. It seems (from a non-process point of view at least) that no non-God factors were part of the determining or the actualizing of God’s will to create.

(2) The salvation of a person. Most of us would agree that the determination of God’s will regarding the destiny of any particular person is determined by God alone (i.e., his loving character). God wills the salvation of Fred (who is now unsaved, OK?). But the actualization of God’s desires in this instance is conditioned also upon Fred’s will. But it seems to be that Fred’s willingness (repentance, etc.) is the only creational variable upon which the actualization of God’s will depends. Should Fred repent and call out to God for forgiveness, God has constructed the universe in such a way that no non-Fred creational variables (demons, other people, natural evils, etc.) may prevent the actualization of Fred’s salvation. God “will” bring the society of actual occasions which we call ‘Fred’ into that state of enjoyment of beauty which we call ‘savlation’. The outcome in THIS instance at least is guaranteed.

(3) Physical healing. I don’t want to say that physical healing is like the salvation of a person (i.e., they're both are guaranteed via the same variables). That’s what some want to do. They presume to know God’s will in every instance of physical sickness (i.e., it is God’s will to heal) and they insist that they only other variable that affects the actualization of God’s will is faith (and the absence of sin in the sick one, etc.). But their point is that once the “human posture” is where is should be with respect to “faith,” the outcome is guaranteed, as guaranteed as is salvation where the human posture is where it should be with respect to faith. I disagree that the actualization of God’s will with respect to physical healing is only ever conditioned upon the “human” element. It might be the case that where human faith is all is needs to be, that God's will in the matter takes other variables into consideration (like the effect which a struggle with sickness might have in the person's like; for example, Paul's thorne in the flesh).

More later,

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 7/15/2006 10:18:52 PM (GMT-5)