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Author | Topic: A Way to Think About Free Will and God: Open Theism | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
What is open theism? | GotQuestions.org
Ultimately, open theism fails in that it attempts to explain the unexplainablethe relationship between God's foreknowledge and mankind's free will. Just as extreme forms of Calvinism fail in that they make human beings nothing more than pre-programmed robots, so open theism fails in that it rejects God's true omniscience and sovereignty. God must be understood through faith, for without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6a). Open theism is, therefore, not scriptural. It is simply another way for finite man to try to understand an infinite God. Open theism should be rejected by followers of Christ. While open theism is an explanation for the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human free will, it is not the biblical explanation. Unbelievable? Is Open Theism a heresy? James White vs John Sanders | Shows | Unbelievable
John E Sanders is one among a number of evangelical theologians such as Greg Boyd who have embraced Open Theism — the view that God does not necessarily have foreknowledge of all future events and that the future is open. Many evangelicals believe Open Theism is a heresy — denying the omniscience of God and going against Biblical teaching.
James White of Alpha and Omega ministries believes Open Theism is a serious heresy and defends a Calvinist view of God’s sovereignty — that God has predestined all future events for his glory. They debate the issues.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Why is there only one way to interpret scripture? Uh, cuz normally an author is trying to convey something in particular and we call that the orthodox understanding, so other interpretations are false and we call those heresies.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Uh, cuz normally an author is trying to convey something in particular and we call that the orthodox understanding, so other interpretations are false and we call those heresies. We are the holders of the truth, the one truth, the defenders of the faith. Heretics shall be burnt at the stake lest their infidel ideas pollute the minds of our children. Thus we have spoken. And that, my dearly beloved, is how bad stuff happens. 1. Kinda sorta like creationism is a heresy according to the ToE? 2. There must be hundreds of "Christian" heresies in the world at the moment, possibly at least half of them in evidence on EvC. Where's the "bad stuff?" 3. Perhaps you are thinking of Roman Catholicism for "bad stuff" such as murdering heretics? That's just one of the many reasons the papal institution is not Christian (which doesn't mean individual Catholics aren't.)
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Tangle writes: Faith writes: Kinda sorta like creationism is a heresy according to the ToE? No, not like that. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists that believe in creation and also accept the ToE. They are not incompatible at all. Correction: For creationism read YEC. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Or heresy, which was my original point.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
There must be hundreds of "Christian" heresies in the world at the moment, possibly at least half of them in evidence on EvC. Where's the "bad stuff?" We've overcome most of them, thankfully. You'd have them back though if we allowed it. What on earth are you talking about? You seem to be majoring in non sequiturs. You'd said a lot of "bad stuff" can be found in Christianity because we dare to identify the true doctrine against the heretical? I pointed to the RC Church as the only source of "bad stuff" against "heretics" I'm aware of (heretics according to them anyway, though in reality they murdered millions of true Christians along with all sorts of others). I mentioned that there are lots of other heresies that don't do "bad stuff" and continue to go on being heretical even at EvC. But you've "overcome" them? Huh? I'd "have them back if I could?" Huh?
Perhaps you are thinking of Roman Catholicism for "bad stuff" such as murdering heretics? You bet. But also several other religions that do despiccable things even now for religious reasons - like throwing homosexuals off tall buildings and murdering people for invented blasphemies I thought we were talking about Christian heresies. How did Islam get in here?
That's just one of the many reasons the papal institution is not Christian (which doesn't mean individual Catholics aren't.) Your un-Christian prejudice is showing again. You mean my prejudice against Antichrist. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Getting accused of something that has never happened and isn't likely to happen, based only on atheist paranoia or something like that, is a pretty depressing experience.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Been reading a book I've had on my PC kindle page for quite a while, The Great Evangelical Disaster Revisited by Peter Glover and finding it to be a strong argument against all the subjectivist ideas about God that are so common at EvC.
Riverrat just more or less bragged about how he doesn't get his ideas about God from the church, Phat says something similar about the Bible: he has his own version of subjectivism though he answers Riverrat that he isn't completely in line with what he'd said. GDR's views are unfolding more and more lately as a clearcut heresy of some sort, sort of reminiscent of Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame I think, though I'm not exactly sure how to label it. Now we've got Percy describing his own belief in God as something that's just in him, that he can't defend objectively, it's just there. And Stile just joined the lineup with a thread proposal about a totally subjective approach to believing in God or not believing according to what feels right or something like that. Who am I forgetting? All of these listed object to making the Bible the foundation of their belief, aggressively attacking it in some cases. Here God spent millennia inspiring His prophets to give us the truth about Himself and you all ignore it and tear it to shreds. What is the point in having any belief in God at all if you're going to ignore the only source of objective knowledge about Him? Or make up your own interpretations and reject the accumulated wisdom of the Church on what it means?Never mind, I don't want to hear another bunch of nonsense in answer to this question. I've spent my whole Christian life trying to understand the Bible as the foundation of solid traditional Christian faith, through as many preachers and teachers as I've been able to read over the years, including all the Catechisms and Confessions which aim to condense its truths for us. Why anyone would trust in their own judgment instead of making this sort of effort is beyond me. Truly building your house on the sand it seems to me. Glover's book mentions Open Theism as a heresy along these subjectivist heretical lines, though "mystical" is his favorite category for these things. His book is presented as a revisiting of the famous book by Francis Schaeffer written back in the 80s, The Great Evangelical Disaster which similarly identified the errors the Church was falling into in his day as "super-spiritual" or mystical. His focus seems to have been mostly on the Charismatic Movement which made personal experience more important than the Bible, which is basically what all these subjectivist movements have in common. Schaeffer identified the watershed between true believers and heretics as those for whom the Bible is foundational and those for whom it isn't, and Glover follows the same way of dividing the orthodox from the heresies. Glover's book is a strong argument for traditional Bible-believing Christianity against all this subjectivism, which he sees as the cause of the weakness of the Church these days, due partly to God's judgment on us for embracing these heresies and abandoning His word. I recommend the book to all you subjectivists. (It's only a few bucks but you can only get it for Kindle at Amazon. If you don't have a Kindle you can start a Kindle Cloud Reader page at Amazon, which is what I have. Means you can only read it when you're at the PC.) Anyway, again, Open Theism denies the scripture too, it's just another subjectivist anti-Bible deception. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
As I already pointed out, the only examples you have or ever can or will have of your claim that the idea of heresy always leads to "bad stuff" is Islam and Roman Catholicism. Not sure since when Romanism has been called "fundamentalism" though.
abe(Oh, and this Stephen Fry is a complete idiot). Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
When you focus on personal experience instead of orthodox teachings, you no longer have any excuse of "trying to understand the mysteries of the Lord" or "attempting to find what Christ really wants." All you have is personal responsibility. Lots and lots of personal responsibility and no excuses of any kind. Most people do try to shy away from such things, it's easier that way. I guess you have no idea whatever how bizarrely wrongheaded this notion is. Since I'm on a public computer and have to leave pretty soon I'm not going to try to explain this now, maybe tomorrow. Or maybe not.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
How many examples do you require? Let me know when you're approaching fifty million which was the tally of Bible Christians killed by Rome over six centuries. The examples you give don't include numbers, for some reason, and were very short-lived as it was soon recognized that it is a violation of Christian faith. Islam has murdered untold numbers, I don't think anyone knows. Mohammed himself wiped out a whole Jewish town. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Islam has murdered untold numbers, I don't think anyone knows. Mohammed himself wiped out a whole Jewish town. Thank you, that's exactly my point. As soon as religious fundamentalists get in charge they start crying heresy and killing people. No. The difference is in the ideology itself. Islam preaches killing "infidels" and taking over the world. The Roman Church was not following the Bible but in fact prohibiting people from reading it in their own language during the years they were murdering everybody, and they themselves were teaching pagan superstitions and a distorted understanding of the Bible. That is why the Reformation was needed. So it was not Biblical Christianity that murdered heretics, it was pagan Romanism that murdered heretics and when Protestantism came along and founded itself on the Bible it had an ideology that is strongly against murdering heretics or anybody. That some incidents persisted is just the exception that proves the rule because they were very few and quickly stopped because it was recognized how wrong it is. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
That's a lie, and all you've done is assert it. I answered your one puny false example. Give us some evidence for your false accusation.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Sorry if I've misread something but I don't want to review it all right now. What I remember is that you cited instances of murders of heretics by Islam and Roman Catholicism, plus a mention of some Puritans doing the same without giving any numbers, which I'm sure are minuscule and very short lived. That's all i remember from you, sorry if I missed something. I don't recall adding anything, just agreeing with the Islamic and Catholic examples.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Thus what your side is essentially saying is that the Bible is the beginning and ending of truth--period ... Yes, that is it, the Bible is our only source of truth about God.
So first of all, what is a biblically informed mind? Pretty simple, Phat: it's a mind pretty well informed of what the Bible says, and I'd add also informed about how the best theologians down the centuries have interpreted it, so as to avoid the wild surmises people come up with on their own, which is in abundant evidence at EvC -- five totally different subjective ideas about God from the five people who happened to describe their views recently. And of course a biblicall informed mind also means a mind that believes what the Bible says as carefully learned through many teachers.
Does it mean that God Himself speaks to you through the Word and gives you infallible wisdom and truth? Seriously? It means that it contains God's infallible wisdom and truth and we do well to try to learn it. And yes believers do often experience God's speaking to us through it, but I don't want to emphasize that in this context because the way you put it is a bit odd or at least I'm not sure what you mean.
The same so-called truth that leads you to make 30,000 posts arguing YEC without evidence, rejecting most evidence from a world of established scientists, and ranting out your "objective truth" like Isaiah hmself? Look around at your audience. They have not been swayed by anything you have said, but they have noted the character whom you are and have become. What is this snark-fest you've been engaging in for a while now? The personal attacks are off the wall, Phat, I'm not attacking you as far as I know. Where is all this hostility coming from? My 30000 posts are not all about YEC issues, far from it, and the ones that are about YEC issues are evidenced, yes I give plenty of evidence for all my claims about geological and biological phenomena. I don't argue from the Bible in those discussions, though occasionally somebody pushes me to claim the Bible as my ultimate source, which it is. But the arguments I make are not Bible-based but based on observations of the geological and biological phenomena. I have the impression you haven't read much of them and don't know what you are talking about but you seem to hate me enough not to care what you are saying.
So what is the character of this God whom you worship? I would have thought I'd been pretty clear about that by now. Not sure this is the time to try to spell it out for you again.
You would claim only that the Bible alone describes Gods character. Yes I would.
Unlike me, you would not even attempt to describe this character whom allegedly gives you a biblically-informed mind...you would simply find His character within the scriptures in order to defend it. Seems to me I've often "attempted to describe the God of the Bible" but if I haven't I suppose I should do it more. Except for the hateful tone I guess I agree with the rest of what you are saying but I'm not sure. Yes, God is revealed to us only in His word. Yes. However, scripture does say He is also revealed in Nature, the same God with the same attributes of course which most of us aren't really able to recognize. "In order to defend it?" What on earth does that mean? He reveals Himself to us in the scriptures, Phat, what are you going on about? You seem to be angry about something, scathingly scornful, but why?
In fact, you would never even question what you believe or if your mind is not also deceived based on your belief that a biblically informed mind can never be wrong. Excuse me? I wouldn't question that God has given us all we need to know about Him in the scriptures, but that isn't the same thing as never questioning what I myself believe about it, since I can misread it or misinterpret it just as anyone else can. That's why I read a lot of preaching and theology, to minimize that risk. And I very often learn something new too, a new angle on a familiar passage for instance, some new information about the cultural or historical context, a deeper interpretation of a spiritual truth, there's always something new to be learned. I try not to depend on my own personal take on things, I try to present the traditional Christian beliefs objectively. The Westminster Confession of Faith is a good condensation of those beliefs if you want a reference to an objective source.
I used to believe what Schaffer and Glover write about. In fact, my beliefs were more in line with yours..(despite you thinking I know nothing about true biblical teaching, I know the whole basic belief and argument in support of it) But I can't agree with the reasoning. I simply have no evidence of that, Phat. You've never shown any real understanding of Biblical truth or any real interest in it. You've always seemed to lean to arguments against it. But what does "can't agree with the reasoning" mean? The reasoning is simple: there is no other source of knowledge of God than the written Word of God. Arguing with it will only remove you from the only source we have. Oh that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of things in it we don't understand and have questions about, but it means we don't dispute that the truth is there and the failure to grasp it is our own.
Here God spent millennia inspiring His prophets to give us the truth about Himself and you all ignore it and tear it to shreds. What is the point in having any belief in God at all if you're going to ignore the only source of objective knowledge about Him? How is it that an omnipotent all-wise Creator of all seen and unseen limits Himself to depending on humans to state His case for Him? OK now you are just going to try to undermine everything I've said with irrelevant questions. If you think your own subjective impressions of God are better than the written Word He's given us then believe your impressions. There are lots of answers to your question but I don't think it deserves those answers at the moment. You are clearly just in a mood to find fault.
And then likely foreknows that humans will argue with each other on the interpretation of His "objective" knowledge? More of same. Believe what you like, Phat.
One difference between you and I is that you trust your sources without hesitation because you believe that they all have biblically informed minds. Where do you get such an idea? I make judgments all the time about whether a particular source supports a biblical worldview or not, and I note places where I think a source errs. The more I've read the more I'm able to make such judgments.
One reason why I dont trust you is because though I trust God, and largely (though not blindly) trust the Bible. I dont trust that only some humans are biblically informed. That's another nearly incomprehensible statement, Phat. I'm not trying to set myself up as some kind of special representative of the biblical informed, I'm simply trying to BE biblically informed and present that point of view as well as I can. I'd refer you to Glover or Schaeffer or the Westminster Confession of Faith rather than to myself. But I have a pretty good ability to recognize sources that have the same biblially informed point of view, as do Glover and the great Francis Schaeffer. As I said, believe whatever you want about all that, at some point it's clearly futile to try to talk to you about these things. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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