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Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/27/2001 9:28 AM (GMT -6) |   | So here’s a Q for y’all.
I was thinking about the good Doctor’s whole free will potential theory and I was wondering if our potentials for good and evil were a fixed thing. That is to say does someone’s potential ever decrease or increase? There is that one parable which states that whoever invests what God gives them will be given more and whoever invests poorly even what they have will be taken away. It occurred to me that God might have been a bit more responsible in his risk taking adventures. Even if he couldn’t eliminate all risk he could at least minimize it while still allowing for a maximum return. Here’s how: For every choice in which the free agent chooses love they increase their potential by say 1%. With this newfound potential there is no guarantee that they will continue to use it wisely. For all God knows she might turn around and use this increased potential for evil on their next choice. But perhaps there is a greater probability given the solidifying effects of their past choices that there future ones will be good ones.
The same goes for evil choices. Those who make a choice for evil will decrease their potential slightly. This would not entail a breach of any covenant of non-interference on God’s part since they would still have free will with a certain level of potential—rather it would just decrease the scope their evil could reach if they continue to act in evil ways.
So my Q is this: Do any of you think God might have wired the world to work this way? And if not, why not? Wouldn’t this preserve everything that God needs to preserve in order to make love possible? Wouldn’t it minimize the risk of evil without sacrificing the opportunities for love? Wouldn’t a God who had the chance to create a world in this way but didn’t be an irresponsible God, or even an evil one?
What do y’all think?
Cherry blossoms
–Wislawa
GregBoyd
04/30/01 8:04 PM
RE: Corruptio Optimi Pessima
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Good question Wislawa:
The fact that it doesn't seem that a person's potential decreases with each evil choice, even the world was designed by an all wise God, suggests that your suggestion is either
a) correct, but there are other variables which hide the increase and decrease of potential you speak of...
b) your alternative is in fact unwise, for reasons perhaps at present hidden from us, or...
c) your alternative, at least as you present it, is a metaphysical impossible. If we understood accurately enough the nature of love and all that it metaphysically entails, we'd see that the potential for good must be proportionate to the potential for evil WHEN GIVEN. (This is not to rule out your other point that there may be [I think certainly are] variables that CONDITION the proportionate potential inherent in freedom.
I suspect the last alternative is the correct one.
Blooms, as you say,
Doc
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