/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>705333

God gave us free will. Since he's omniscient, he knows what we're going to do with our free will even before we exercise it. Foreknowledge of our free will decisions != we are predestined robots wound up by him and set loose. He utilizes His foreknowledge of our free will to order and shape the world according to his grand design and plan. It's that simple.

>>705336

Interesting you say that since the scriptures say this:

<Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

Acts 4:27-28

>>705375

>Free will is jewish

Then why do people go to hell then.

>>705379

Polarity is necessary for existence, and anything unique from God has to be imperfect by nature, some more than others.

>>705381

If no one has free will, then that means that at the end of the day that my actions are meaningless, to imply that there is no free will implies there's only one afterlife.

>>705333

If someone travels forward in time and learns what a person will do in the future and then travels back in time does that person not have free will?

Free will is simply the ability to choose, men have the ability to choose, thus they have free will

>>705370

>They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

Yes, Jesus' crucifixion was literally eons in the making. He knew how Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Pharaisees and Judas would exercise their free will in advance, and utilized their actions towards his ultimate goal.

What?

>>705387

>If no one has free will, then that means that at the end of the day that my actions are meaningless

Why? If you make a sandwich but your actions are predetermined is the sandwich not the result of your actions? I think you give your delusion more credit than it deserves.

>>705388

>men have the ability to choose,

This is common knowledge, not worth debating

>thus they have free will

Free will is associated with non-determinism now just like how now the word gay is associated with homos even though it used to mean happy.

>>705388

>If someone travels forward in time and learns what a person will do in the future and then travels back in time does that person not have free will?

With time travel it could still be argued that you're simply looking at snap-shots from different times in a freely chosen life.

The ability to forecast somebody's decisions based on *indirect* factors does more to destroy the possibility of free will. Ie. being able to forecast the future based only on knowing the present.

>>705393

If I kill a man, did God cause me to kill the man?

>>705413

If it happened it was part of God’s plan but your actions are still a reflection on you as a person.

>>705415

>If it happened it was part of God’s plan

Exactly, all our actions were planned out. We can only perform the actions God has chosen for us. Where is the room for free will in this? Where is the justification for punishment?

The system makes more sense without these things and trying to cram them in just makes it incomprehensible.

>>705333

>How does one believe in the possibility of omniscience while simultaneously believing in free will?

Easy. Just because God knows what you're going to pick does not mean He is forcing you to pick.

personally I believe that after creating us and guiding us through the period in which the bible took place, he trusted us enough to work with the devices that he gave us. We an autonomous people, but we were created and influenced in our path by god.

>>705333

I see it like this

God knows all possible outcomes and all possible paths we may take with our free will,but he lets us choose whichever path we see fit for ourselves.

>Watch a great football game

>Record it

>Friend didn't see the game

>He comes over to watch it

>Partway through I nudge him

>"That guy is about to score."

>Player scores exactly as I said

>Friend is flabbergasted

>"You made that touchdown happen!"

>Turns out my friend is retarded

>>705333

>omniscience

Is God omniscient in that he knows all current and past events and can reasonably predict the future, or is he omniscient in that he perfectly knows the future as well? The latter is much, much more difficult than the former. If the former is true, divine intervention is necessary to fulfill prophesies. If the latter is true divine intervention isn't necessary, but possible inasmuch as intentionally creating a faulty machine only so you can repair it in predetermined time and manner is reasonable even to God's logic.

I don't think God knows the future perfectly, and this is the reason we are created: Tto find it out, or it least to find out who goes to heaven and who doesn't.

Also, I must unfortunately sage because of tradthots.

That I know for a fact that every week there will be yet another retard who ask the same question over and over again does not cause his retardation.

It is written (Sirach 15:14): "God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel"; and the gloss adds: "That is of his free-will."

I answer that, Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. In order to make this evident, we must observe that some things act without judgment; as a stone moves downwards; and in like manner all things which lack knowledge. And some act from judgment, but not a free judgment; as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will.

>>705441

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:9

>>705415

>it was part of God's plan

That's not how it works, if it's part of God's plan then my actions are guilt free because God caused me to do it.

No, Free Will does exist.

>>705723

In this theoretical case, "God's Plan" means God knew you were going to kill a man, and works with it towards the greater good in spite of said evil. Sort've like how John Walsh was inspired to start "America's Most Wanted" in the aftermath of the abduction and murder of his son. God knew that the murderer of Adam Walsh was going to abduct and murder Adam, and used this event as a catalyst to spur John Walsh to apply his wealth and success towards pursuing justice for others.

In the Bible, for instance, the minor prophet, Habakkuk, in the eponymous book in the Bible, has to come to terms with the fact that God is going to utilize the Babylonians to punish Israel and Judah for their continual sinning, though the Babylonians are arguably worse, in terms of sinning and evil, than the Israelites. God's Plan is to punish Israel and Judah. He makes use of the free will evil of the Babylonians to do this. In the long run, the Israelites are restored from exile after their punishment, and in the longer run, Babylon (as an icon of sinful rebellious man) will fall (i.e. Revelations.)

>>705740

My actions were planned out before hand, then the idea of sin cannot exist because I am only doing what God planned.

>>705746

> I am only doing what God planned.

Yeah, but you still suck. Pichu in Melee was part of Sakurai’s plan.

>>705751

I suck but that's only because my free will that caused myself to be in a pit. I don't go around blaming others for the problem of my own.

>>705567

>open theism? On my /christian/?

>>705758

God gave us free will. If I am in a pit, it was either due to loads of factors and variables.

>>705764

You have a will but you’re not magically above the conditions that formed it.

Middle knowledge.

>>705441

>We can only perform the actions God has chosen for us.

So God chooses us to sin? I should just not feel bad about sinning because that was part of God's plan?

>>707982

This seems to be the most common reaction to the lack of free will, but who are you to think that you are above the consequences of your actions, preordained or not? If it was God's plan for you to get drunk and live hedonistically, you still have to suffer the chlamydia and hangovers. Why would that not extend to hell? Just because we are all characters in a divine narrative does not mean we are exempt from the parts we play. We have free will insofar as the immediate moment, society doesn't work if we don't think we're free to chose what happens in our lives, but to assume God is so small as to not know exactly every outcome from the moment he breathed creation is to worship a small god. God might know who goes where, but he also knows they chose to be where they end up. The whole of creation's sole purpose is to bring Him glory, who are we in our finite, blind, broken human reasoning to pretend like we can do anything God does not have full foreknowledge of and has given his own personal consent to happen?

Anything less than omnipotence and omnipresence is heresy.

>>705333

In God, everything is possible. That the scariest and the greatest thing about Him.

>>714729

There is no "lack of free will", God, the Creator of all things, is not subjected to Creation. The Lord already knows the out-come, but it is the out-come of the soul as it reaches its end. Christ judges us for our actions, He does not have us pre-judged while we live.

Jesus even called judas "Friend", even before the betrayal, never forget.

>>705375

He saId free will is believed by jews not that it is jewish in origin.

>>714770

Not prejudged, but is pre-knowing free will?

I guess to put it simply, is there any other way things would have played out, or does everything play out exactly as it should?

There's arguments for multiverse, but personally I believe that opens up too much heresy and Unitarian style thinking, considering were that true everyone would go to both heaven and hell somehow. I believe everything happens the one way it was meant to, and since there is no other way, free will is little more than a construct to process the direction humans go as individuals.

>>714777

> is there any other way things would have played out, or does everything play out exactly as it should?

It's not "playing out as it should", it's playing out as it will.

>I believe everything happens the one way it was meant to, and since there is no other way, free will is little more than a construct to process the direction humans go as individuals.

Free will is the only method whereby that souls can be said to freely choose between good and evil with nothing else, except the Grace of God.

Throw out Free Will, you throw out Grace and you throw out a perfect God, for if God only accepts those He had pre-made perfect, then who can be said to be in Hell of their own volition?

I believe Determinism is little more than a construct for protestants to process the direction humans go without the true teachings.

>>714780

Divine should, not human should

And God does not make people pre-perfect. He creates them, puts them in the environment, and knows exactly how that environment has been shaped, has impacted all others, and by extension will place that person in the end. He intervenes where prudent to carry out his will, but ultimately everything goes as He intends. That does not absolve anyone of their actions, because we operate in a world that instinctually assumes free will, but in the context of an omnipotent creator, it makes very little sense.

In our ordinary everyday sense of free will, we don't assume that being able to correctly predict someone's actions means they don't have it. It's not any different when the one able to correctly predict someone's actions is God.

Materialist determinism is incompatible with free will, but that's because of the particular way in which actions can be predicted. You don't need to look at reasons to make the prediction in that case, only physical causes. God knows what we'll do because He knows the reasons we take into account and knows us more intimately than our closest friends, not because we're machines that He set in motion.

>>714785

Yes, but I believe our everyday concept of free will to be a construct to facilitate people behaving as if it were an absolute, metaphysically I don't think there is such thing. I don't believe in more timelines than ours, I've never read anything to suggest that is the case, so everything in the universe must play out its one time as intended. Even though we operate and make decisions under the assumption of free will, I don't think we have it if we were never going to make another choice other than the one we made.

>>714782

Research Divine Simplicity: the calvinist viewpoint is essentially a conditional sort of Deism, with God pre-programming Grace into the whole clock of reality and time.

God is not subjected to Time, God is not "responding" to things happening in creation.

God, the Father, is not merely an ultimate powerful being, He is Being, with an uppercase B.

>>714784

Amusing, but still incorrect. God isn't some big guy watching little guys on a screen.

>>705333

>free will can only be free without cause or restraint

that sounds terrifying

>>705333

>>705402

The problems with your argument is that 1.God does not derive his knowledge of our choices from other knowledge. But his all knowledge of his creation is a prior necessary for his act of creation.

2. Our freedom of will operates within boundaries. We are offered the choice of heaven and hell we do not have the freedom to choose some other option like reincarnation. Likewise in our day to day lives our options are constrained, I do not have the freedom to grow wings and start flying for example, though I do have the freedom to choose whether or not I'm going to masturbate to hentai. A creature who has studied me carefully may even be able to gauge the probability of such an action, however this does not change the fact that I possess a freedom of will.

>>705370

>Haha you believe theres a trend, well look at this deviation from the trend that doesn't disprove the normativeness of the trend

>>705333

God made us who we are. Our will is a product of who we are. We have OUR OWN will, but it’s inherently deterministic because of God’s omnipotent nature. Think of it like a small circle within a bigger circle. We are put here for a purpose to fulfill a fraction of God’s much larger plan.

>>714729

I wonder why God has ordained that so many should believe and cling to this idea of free will, or why he has given Man the illusion of choice for that matter.

It doesn't really matter. If I am a hero, may I play the role well. And if I am a villain, the same. Let "my" piety bring him glory. Let "my" transgression bring him glory.

>>705333

>How does one believe in the possibility of omniscience while simultaneously believing in free will?

You don't. It doesn't exist. People are lying to you. You don't have non-deterministic free will. You have rational thinking. That's probably what was meant by free will before the modern heresy.

>>726670

>That pic

Without even delving into how heretical it is how can you possibly believe that without going completely insane? If Satan is the material world and the imagination then your mind and body are Satan and the only thing that is actually you is your consciousness.