Issues of the Lack of Free Will in Republican Politics
Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole decision is of Jehovah.
Question: Of what benefit would it be NOT to have free will at all, and in particular to be aware of that reality as regards politics and forms of government?
Answer:
1. Those so aware would be unable to be manipulated into destroying themselves and would live prosperously in the midst of constant attacks by their enemies in those times allowed by God in accordance with His purposes. If politics and participation in the world of a collective of nations is like being in a knife fight, then it is a true defense to at least know there are no rules. It is easy to understand that you ought not to make rules in agreement with the enemy. It is also ( though less obviously at times ) understood that making up rules as regards the idealized fight to come with one's supporters prior to the fight is just as detrimental as making up those rules with one's enemies.
But there is more than just one's enemies and one's supporters. There is oneself.
In reality, learning karate, judo or a "fight science" of any sort is a functional self-imposed rule of "if he does this then I do that". Step outside the imagination of the combination of "fight sciences" and all one has done is actually train oneself how to lose and feel good doing it as having followed a supposed discipline for its own sake. In the war, if one is "trained" to make certain motions in the air over and over even as a "live exercise" for bruises, the mere fact it is training makes it actually learning how not to kill anyone no matter the awards on the mantel. The warriors all become expert, "highly qualified" losers.
Understanding that one does not have free will keeps one from being taught how to lose from self-imposed flattery and as sophistry of the enemy that is merely a plug and play manipulation of the LIE of free will.
Those deceived they have free will need to know how to use it for personal and societal gain. They need "holy directions". Those who hand out the "holy" as being mere men are the priest class/"fight scientists" that deceive the people and have no power minus a DECEPTION of free will the people have at all times that must be maintained at all times or the spell is broken and the people freed.
2. avoids a cycle of hopelessness that runs off of vanity that goes
a. I've got free will. i am strong and have personal power.
b. other people have free will
c. to be a good person, I can't make their free will do anything by any means
d. Therefore I am powerless because I am only one. But I definitely have free will.
..by understanding that God will act through us for the benefit of all.
3. avoids the deception of "we accidentally gave away our rights by electing bad leaders" and avoids an episode or spree of large scale treason overthrowing the country by the fight scientist, who themselves cannot be destroyed by the methods they teach the supposed "free will" of those they consider students/underlings.
Rights are understood to not exist in understanding a total lack of free will. So they can't be given away. No person can gain a tyranny over another because they each have no "x" to trade among themselves that links them to servitude among each other. Leaders cannot be given a "bag of rights" like a bag of coins or authority to give away supposed limited rights that once given away can never come again and are thought to never be able to be regained in one's own lifetime given a combination of:
a. human mortality/fleshly weakness
b. a supposed vast army that guards the treasury wherein all the theoretical "rights" are stored ( "They took 'em from us and they are in that big building in a big vault guarded by unthinking robots ( non-free will entities) who just shoot anything that moves!" ) or even worse "the Great Leader's mind swallowed them and we have to do Mystical Brain Surgery to recover them.."
c. the limited nature of the rights themselves as supposedly being manufactured from other limited resources and precious because of it; to merely re-make them would cheapen the whole concept of "precious rights" the way merely printing representations of the current definition of money cheapens its effect such that more representations of it are necessary to get the old effect.
--------------
There are many more advantages to not being deceived men have free will besides the reality we do not have free keeps us free from each other in an absolute way and thus allows true brotherhood.
Recall that Luther fully understood men did not have free will for the most part "as regards salvation" and even that small step of understanding, as God it, immediately wrought POLITICAL freedom as a mere subset of the overall Reformation. Luther himself did not intend that. But that was and to this day is the result.
Understanding you never had free will makes you realize the thing they say they got from you by whatever means they got it, that "makes them in charge" in fact does not exist. It is Almighty God who sets up one under Him to bless the people or to curse the people. There is no such thing as "God given rights" you can trade or "do" in free will. That fact keeps you free from everything and everyone except God.
Galatians 5:1 Christ has set us free in freedom; stand fast therefore, and be not held again in a yoke of bondage. ( not run therefore or "do" therefore, but simply stand. Just stop and hear for a minute as you listen to Jesus Christ. You are not prisoners as the liars tell you that you already are. You CAN'T be made prisoners like they say you already are. parenthesis mine )
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
--
- timothy's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Conservative
Liberal
Moderate/Mixed/Non-Partisan
Non-Political/Reference
Related Sites -
Polisci Applied (Aaron)
Intrepid Liberal Journal (Intrepid Liberal)
Obsidian Wings (Bird Dog)
Open Hand/Open Eye (locutas)
Red State (Bird Dog)
Swords Crossed (brendanm98)
Wagster Speaks (Wagster)
WatchingAmerica (BlaiseP)
The Social Pathologist (TSP)
Foreign Affairs -
Abu Aardvark
'Aqoul
American Footprints
Council on Foreign Relations
CSIS
Democracy Arsenal
Intel Dump
The Fourth Rail
War and Piece
Politics -
Ace of Spades HQ
Andrew Sullivan
Balloon Juice
Belgravia Dispatch
Captain's Quarters
Crooked Timber
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical
Daily Kos
Democracy Arsenal
Eschaton
Firedoglake
Glenn Greenwald
Global Guerrillas
Hugh Hewitt
Instapundit
Jawa Report
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Liberals Against Terror
Matt Yglesias
Michael J. Totten
Michelle Malkin
Moon of Alabama
New America
OxBlog
Patterico
Political Animal
Political Wire
Publius Pundit
QandO
Reality Based Community
Talking Points Memo
The Agitator
The Belmont Club
The Corner
Truman Project
Winds of Change.net
War -
Counterterrorism Blog
Iraq the Model
Jihad Watch
Small Wars Journal Blog
Economics and Business -
Angry Bear
Brad DeLong
Daniel Drezner
Mahalanobis
Marginal Revolution
Roubini Global Economics
The Big Picture
Science and Tech -
Bad Astronomy
New Scientist
Real Climate
Science Blogs
Scientific American
The Panda's Thumb
Legal -
Balkinization
Conglomerate
Ideoblog
Jurisdynamics
Law and Letters
Overlawyered
ProfessorBainbridge
ScotusBlog
Talk Left
The Becker-Posner Blog
Volokh Conspiracy
Sports -
Baseball Crank
Baseball Musings
Baseball Reference.com
ESPN.com
NFL.com
Only Baseball Matters
The Sports Economist
Books, Film and Music -
Amazon.com
Internet Movie Database
All Music Guide
News and Aggregators -
Asia Times
Boingboing
CNN
Digg
English Russia
Fark
Los Angeles Times
Memeorandum
MSNBC
Politico
Poynteronline
Slashdot
The New York Times
The Washington Post
References -
It's rather like watching a baseball game on replay. You can pick up the newspaper and know the outcome before you watch the tape. From the eternal perspective, the outcomes are known. But from our time-based perspective, we do have free will.
The Pelagian Heresy, where man must work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, discounts the redeeming work of Christ and our dependence on him for our continued renewal of mind. There is a balance observed even by secular people, wherein all past choices affect future choices. I may have a predisposition to Liberal politics, for I believe the yardsticks for measuring society are the worst-off, and we must constantly fine-tune our system to achieve the More Perfect Union. Others may have an alternate Conservative viewpoint, where the yardsticks include a horror of change merely for change's sake.
God does not lead us about by the nose. The still small voice arises from our love for Christ, and following his example. God does not need cheerful robots, a robot cannot love him and he cannot love a robot.
Your rhetoric approaches the fatalism of Islam, I am afraid to say. We do need rights in law, for evil is what we do to each other. Morality is who we are in private, when we can get away with something. Ethics is who we are in public, our codes of conduct. Law is our best hope to achieve civil society, and we must admit not all which is immoral is illegal.
You have completely misread the message of Galatians. You do have free will.
Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
- Login or register to post comments
)that of Boethius.
But is that orthodox Christian teaching? Here, we are very strongly determinist, even among free thinkers. Perhaps one has to be a Christian to be an optimist. Excepting Christianity, all the major religions seem to be essentially pessimistic. Modern secular humanism (which we are all persuaded to adopt by intellecuals) being an offshoot of Protestantism is, similarily, optimistic and positivist.
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )is a direct product of a worship of the lie of free will as if it was truth.
The Reformation was started and maintained on the basis of an understanding by Luther and Calvin of the lack of free will of man yet the love of God toward man. I suppose that would be the optimism part of determinism in your understanding of determinism. Though I think you are really describing Marxian determinism ( a supposed automatic set of laws that arises exclusively among a population of free willed beings based expressly on the supposed fact of their free will -- the robot who doesn't know he is a robot ) and not actual Godly determinism ( Creating determinism: God creates as per His nature and has a plan that is coming to fruition yet creates through us at all times. We are not robots. We are children of God through whom He acts for the benefit of all and does divine things we would otherwise have no conception concerning. )
The false religions are pessimistic/fatalistic when they combine personal free will with other people's free will.
It is true that Protestantism has been corrupted overtly by being infiltrated with those sent to teach the lie of free will and have perpetuated those lies over many centuries.
Evil can't control other people unless you first deceive them they have free will and can "choose". After that, all it does is box all the choices so no matter what they supposed "choose" it has them. When they know they lack free will and God loves them and is taking care of them evil's lies of "choice" literally maker no sense to them and they cannot be controlled. That is the political benefit of Calvinism --it keeps a free people free --from each other, not God.
You might want to look as well at the distinction between Russian Communism and Chinese/North Korean Communism --which did NOT at all come from Protestantism but Catholicism's "free" will set up pre-split in the Roman Empire.
The Russian version is basically a positive take on the lie of free will but as if it was truth; the hope in the ability of man himself to eventually end up in a utopia defined as utopia based expressly on how it suits the present emotional response set of those supposedly involved in constructing it. ( Like Islam's version of heaven. What new birth? What new creation? "We" supposedly have to all that in the midst of scarcity that is supposedly proved by an utter lack of new creation and a sense of humor that any such thing exists as new creation in Jesus Christ..)
The Chinese take is basically a negative view: the "free" will of Man has to be restrained or it will result in ruin as anarchy --and then how will we all get to Utopia? What new birth?
The Russian model doesn't like that it has to kill people to get to the goal of making those who are left happy. The Chinese model doesn't care. The results are the same.
To say Protestantism made secular humanism is an outrageous lie as trying to find a scapegoat for the failure of the lie of free will to deliver on its promises. Tantalus indeed. And you don't have free will and didn't as you wrote it.
2Thess 2:7-12 For the mystery of lawlessness already works; only there is he who restrains now until he be gone, and then the lawless one shall be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the breath of his mouth, and shall annul by the appearing of his coming; whose coming is according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness to them that perish, because they have not received the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason God sends to them a working of error, that they should believe what is false, that all might be judged who have not believed the truth, but have found pleasure in unrighteousness.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )was derived, as I understand it, from Augustine. My understanding is that the Catholic Church no longer holds on to Augustine's definition of predestination - and in fact, in the form as it was held by Jansenius - actually regards it as heretical.
While I am not a Marxist, I doubt whether any of the positions you describe could be found in Marx - Marx specifically was opposed to the the social utopianism of his day (of Saint-Simon, for example). And as for the concept of secular humanism deriving from Christian ethics without Christian eschatology - this view is not specifically mine but is generally accepted among social philosophers from Max Weber downwards. Whether this concept is a lie or not is not something that I am competent to judge, but it certainly is not an illogical point of view.
Regarding the philosophical content of Russian or Chinese communism, I am not certain that there is a received body of text that is followed any longer - certainly not in China where pragmatism (an American philosophy) seems to generally reign.
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )you have a complete page of writing which is basically summed in "the truth is we have no free will and can do nothing without grace" --but it is imprudent to admit so for the ..rest of our will/hopes-of-emotional-opportunity-later.
So you have an admittance to the truth with a simultaneous "admittance" to the supposed equivalent and even supposed greater power of evil against the truth.
I will diligently warn you as Christ does it through me, the same ploy was tried by the Pharisees...
John 11:48 If we let him thus alone, all will believe on him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.
..as believing more in the power of evil than God. Be wary that you, with your supposed freedom, do not crucify Jesus Christ again to yourselves as opposed to being crucified with Him.
It is a lie that evil is greater than God --even though God has to a certain extent given the earth over to the evil man to bring about His determined end and to usher in a new heaven and new earth.
And what will you say to Christ on His throne? "I had free will so that means I did it all on purpose. So What?" He speaks to you now so that you will not condemn yourself as your best honesty and only common sense, quite beside buying to yourselves political tyranny.
As to Calvin and Luther getting some inheritance from Augustine, are we to believe that God did not give them Himself simply because God Spoke some of Himself as actual truth through Augustine? And yet Augustine greatly erred in his study of language; while seeking to make a distinction between the Logos and 'other speech' he effectively covered over any distinction whatever as supposedly welding them together as one monolithic speech. Thus God laid the foundation of both Luther and Calvin's inheritance of light while anti-Christ in the same brother that is Augustine laid their confounding of the distinction between God as Creating Speech and anti-Christ as non-creating speech.
You can't stay in the camp as you suppose and change it from the inside. We must all go outside the gate --and live here. There is food, water and shelter everywhere.
Hebrews 13:12-14 Wherefore also Jesus, that he might sanctify the people by his own blood, suffered without the gate: therefore let us go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach: for we have not here an abiding city, but we seek the coming one.
You are riding for a brand already dissentigrating because of its rejection of truth. If it were not it would not be saying:
"Ignatius placed himself under the orders of the Roman Pontiff “in order to not err in via Domini” (Const 605) in the distribution of his religious throughout the world and to be present wherever the needs of the Church were greater.
Times have changed and the Church must today confront new and urgent necessities, I will mention one, which in my judgment is urgent today and is at the same time complex and I propose it for your consideration. It is the need to present to the faithful and to the world the authentic truth revealed in Scripture and Tradition. The doctrinal diversity of those who at all levels, by vocation and mission are called to announce the Kingdom of truth and love, disorients the faithful and leads to a relativism without limits. There is one truth, even though it can always be more deeply known. "
Satan always thinks God is a heretic, because God isn't worried about the "free" will of a group of people who in their own eyes see themselves as megalith against which none can contend, even as they purchase lies to themselves simply to prove they have "free" will over and over.
Hebrews 13:6 So that, taking courage, we may say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid: what will man do unto me?
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )mmghosh! I wanted to point that out as well but it's Saturday!
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )I would advise against taking such a hard-line stance. It was revealed a few weeks ago that a majority of Forvm regulars, atheists, deists and agnostics all, have been educated in private...egads...Catholic schools, especially during their...uhm...formative years (So many in fact, it's actually kinda' scary). Having been thus indoctrinated at such an early age in the "One True Faith" we invariably find ourselves retreating to our "default" position whenever any johnny-come-lately's, such as Luther and Calvin or their offshoots, wag their fingers and tell us we've got it all wrong and that their version (and only their version) of reality is true, that is-"yawn...been there before, done that! Took the ride and bought the T-shirt. Send us a postcard and we'll talk when you return to the real world". . It's regrettable but probably better than the somewhat antiquated default hard line position of declaring one a heretic and burning them at the stake. Wouldn't you agree?
The point here is that we must respect everyone's beliefs. You can no more prove the validity of your world view above all others than I can prove mine above yours. Our default position must be one of mutual respect.
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )If you perceive that I have used my free will improperly you would not be alone. That is the natural state of all men toward each other.
If you perceive I overstep the unspoken ( or spoken ) emotional rules that are taken to be a meta of their own as being the sole guard rails to stay-on-topic and not fall off the edge of the discussion, my only objection is that you have to live in the whole of reality and survive somehow --even outside those rails. You can't really sew up certain portions of reality or cause them to stop while you hope that portion you are dealing with now enables you to deal with the rest that is already marching toward you.
In my eagerness to prevent a disaster of zombies walking into a voting booth chanting "we have free will... and we must vote for those we despise and that will destroy us because to do otherwise is to waste our free will" I have pushed. Yes.
I am not anti-Catholic or anti-Hindu or anti-Islamic as speaking of souls and real human beings. I am against the lie of free will even in its Protestant dress as those who know me will attest. I am not at all merely engaging in the evil of "My Mom and Pop and tradition is better than yours simply because it is mine".
But note those who say they are ideals of tolerance and then cannot tolerate anything that actually causes them to think outside the box those who would destroy them seek to instill as their only eyes.
I want you to understand something it took years for God to give me. I want you to have it in a micro-second. Have I erred in forgetting we can't give God to whoever we want? Or could it be I haven't? For God is His Word that is Truth.
and has Said:
1John 5:14-17 And this is the boldness which we have towards him, that if we ask him anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him. If any one see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life, for those that do not sin unto death. There is a sin to death: I do not say of that that he should make a request. Every unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin not to death.
Is that outside the bounds of truth?
1John 5:19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the wicked one .
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )because (in your way of thinking) I cannot come to understand anything, either God has arranged things so I will understand or he hasn't, but no amount of effort on my part will make a difference. In fact, if I do expend effort it's because God has already determined that I will, it's not my effort at all. In fact , there really is no "I", that's just an illusion.
This is just a rabbit-hole I don't feel like exploring (or rather, God has decided that I won't be exploring).
--I blame it all on the Internet
- Login or register to post comments
| parent ). . .if it was true it would make for a rather catchy sig line for anyone inclined to use it*:
[Name here], designated instrument of God's predestined plan
* Anyone who sees a resemblance between this and Mac's current sig line is being rather observant.
--- Login or register to post comments
| parent )the opposite of Flip Wilson's old catchphrase the Devil made me do it.
--I blame it all on the Internet
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )This whole thing is startin' to remind me of SCTV's "Nostradomus: The Know It All" skit!
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )you have to deny that God IS His Word. You have to say that there is functionally only one big meta-speech that can create nothing by being Spoken and that God Himself is forced to use that speech to communicate with Man.
But God Says differently.
God Says He IS His Word, not that He "uses language". To wit:
John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
The Fall of man was the entrance into this world of non-creating speech. From the very beginning it sought to make of God's Word nonsense if it was anything more than non-creating speech could handle and as such always mysteriously powerless to effect the obedience it supposedly will-neutrally demanded. It brought up Galatians through you. It brought up a non-written command to Eve as a temptation to first and foremost have the power to interpret God's Word other than being God Himself but as a supposed will-neutral set of instructions to be interpreted at will for personal benefit per the situation:
Genesis 3:1-5 And the serpent was more crafty than any animal of the field which Jehovah Elohim had made. And it said to the woman, Is it even so, that God has said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said to the woman, Ye will not certainly die; but God knows that in the day ye eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as God, knowing good and evil.
How would you distinguish the speech of the serpent and the Logos? At all?
If you cannot, then you cannot understand this:
those go to prison and totally believe they have free will are indeed double prisoners. They see limitation everywhere and limitation is literally "done to them" to keep uppermost in their mind the limitations: the commissary has limited goods to buy, they have limited opportunity to earn the money, the money itself is part of a foundation of meta-scarcity of its own. They are MADE to desire more than they can obtain and have the "freedom" to attain it limited.
Those whom God blesses and newly creates come to know they are just getting free room and board. What good is a prisoner that is so stupid as to be unteachable that he is a prisoner to a society that put him in prison for supposedly using his free will incorrectly and he knows there is no free will? That guy isn't a prisoner any more. He's dangerous to the overall lie that keeps the society prisoner.
Be dangerous.
2 Corinthians 11:3,4 But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craft, so your thoughts should be corrupted from simplicity as to the Christ. For if indeed he that comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or ye get a different Spirit, which ye have not got, or a different glad tidings, which ye have not received, ye might well bear with it .
Are you saying there is not even the pretense of another Jesus? Another Spirit? A fake logos that just happens to coincide with the limitations and common sense of the serpent? Nothing to look out for that you may be fallen in yourself?
Are you saying that God begat us by His Word AND that that Word is the same as the speech of demons? If not then what is the distinction?
James 1:18 According to His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we should be a certain first-fruits of *his* creatures.
-----------------
and this:
"Your rhetoric approaches the fatalism of Islam, I am afraid to say. We do need rights in law, for evil is what we do to each other. Morality is who we are in private, when we can get away with something. Ethics is who we are in public, our codes of conduct. Law is our best hope to achieve civil society, and we must admit not all which is immoral is illegal."
is simply a reversal for its own sake that has the appearance in favor of having free will. In truth it is the free willer who is fatalistic while he is vain to be hopeless. In Christ there is new creation and plenty. In non-creating common sense which seems on its surface to allow for free will there is only scarcity and in particular scarcity of power among a supposed population of free willed beings. The free will of other people seems to prohibit the rewards that individual free will promises as the potential of political freedoms. So it becomes a mere vain circle of "I've got free will. They do too. Therefore I can do nothing." while those who know there is no free will are used of God in ways that makes them appear to be supermen in the eyes of those with a lens on total reality of free will.
Temporal law is necessary expressly because everyone is born believing in their own free will as being Fallen ( encapsulated in non-creating speech and its common sense ) and must be restrained. It is not the case that older people do less evil as some rule of experience as should be the case if we had free will and God were using some "holy, will-neutral info" to "teach us".
It is the case that as the elect are born again by the word of God they sin less and evil is done less. Yet as a total population of a mixture of those who are not born again, those who are, those who will be and those who will never be, a common set of laws is necessary but only in that very particular situation. Merely having laws in no way proves free will or that minus the laws, those born again can't "do" civilization. It is the mixture of pagans, the spirit that is the corruption of all flesh, and new creatures in Jesus Christ being in corrupt flesh that necessitates laws. Even then, less laws are necessary the more actually Christian ( as compared to Christian in name only) the populace and the more laws and enforcement are necessary the more people are deceived they have free will.
James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, beguiling yourselves.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )I would not offend you for all the world, but you have fallen into a grievous state of philosophical contradiction.
In 2 Timothy 2:17 we read: For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.
I am a Christian, but I am also a man given to science and logic. I find no contradiction between the truths of science and the Bible. If I would be known for one attribute only, it would be the spirit of inquiry, where truth is forged out on the anvil of debate. I do not have all the answers, and anyone who claims to have such answers is engaged in a hubristic exercise and in spiritual matters, heresy.
O Logos, the Word of God, was given flesh in Jesus Christ. All this business about Creative and Non-Creative Speech is extra-biblical, and is patently heresy of the worst sort. The fall of man into sin was a consequence of man’s will to become as gods, knowing good and evil, if we are to take the account in Genesis seriously.
The speech of the serpent, like every persuasive argument, appeals to the listener’s own prejudices, wishes and inner motivations. The forgiveness extended to us in Jesus Christ extends to all, and does not guarantee free room and board. We must take up the cross and follow Christ. We are not condemned for our sins, but for our willful perpetuation of the word of the Serpent in our lives: we continue in our attempt to be God. Knowing evil, we continue in it. Those who would blame God for all the evil in the world must first think rationally: evil is what we do to each other. Every rational man knows this to be true, even if he does not accept the tenets of Christianity. Any other explanation of evil leads to heresies of duality.
I do not understand this sort of religious sophistry. You clearly have deep-seated issues with causality, space-time and the logical outworking of the universe. I have no argument with other religions or atheists or even other Christians. While logic must be suspended somewhat to accept the tenets of faith, these beliefs need not demanded of others.
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Paul writes
And so we are free of the law, but without free will? And if we are sons, when do we inherit the Kingdom? And then do we have free will? As I read it the point of Paul's letter is that to cling to the law rather than Christ's love is to turn aside from Christ and return to slavery. It's a kind of Pauline antinomianism vs. the Judaizing heresy.
Sorry for getting hung up on the theology but I'm still sorely confused about the free will thing -- it seems to me there's plenty of room for independent choices in Paul's thinking. In fact, the whole purpose of writing an exhortation in the first place is to exhort people to make the *right* choices. And how is it possible to err if one cannot choose?
Is it that we must make choices, but our choices are not of our own will? How could this knowledge possibly help us make choices? It's a bit like saying "gravity pulls us all down whether we want it or not." That may be true but I'll still never play ball like Michael Jordan.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
- Login or register to post comments
)because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. It is the same thing to be bound in chains, if that's the way you see it, out of the area in which the falling rocks are killing people and to simply stand out of the way as God does it through you. You are still free from the effects of BREAKING the law because Christ has fulfilled th4e law on your behalf. There are no effects, per se for keeping the law. The law was/is to hold sin to account.
Substitutionary atonement cannot be separated from the issue of NOT having free will. If you want to see it in that light, God took away your freedom to act in your own behalf by causing the acts He performed through Jesus Christ to be accounted to you --and tells you to understand those acts performed by Jesus Christ on your behalf are just as effective as if you had done them yourself and in fact could not even have known you needed to do minus His actions besides not being able to do to perfection. You can't have ACTUAL substitutionary atonement AND your free will. Just as the cross was necessary, so are other issues in the whole of life that you live now and will live in eternity.
It's not as if you are being asked to give up something voluntarily ( at all, much less..) in the area of politics that would supposedly allow you to reap benefits in other areas. Those other areas no matter what they may appear to be are the same lie applied to YOU as a lens on total reality. That lens functions as a kind of "independent proof generator" everywhere it sees that says you have free will when it is not so anywhere.
There is always a background of objection about being a robot if there is no free will. But I know you are not a robot. I know I am not a robot. I know we recognize each other as at least non-robots. So the whole "that would make us robots" analogy doesn't work to BE robots. And there is no free will.
Basically saying that God's acts of speech don't make sense if there is no free will is an appeal to a supposed universal of a non-creating, will-neutral speech in total reality no matter some distinctions in Russian or English or Arabic, etc. It is the assumption that no such thing exists as Creating Speech and no truth exists except what is to be found within the common sense that relies on the limitations of non-creating speech. You do not realize that the understanding you have as "how to read Paul" is based on lies over which wars were fought and for the most part God caused the truth to seem to lose. The whole "Bible as literature" movement is an absolute denial of the distinction between God as Creating Word and non-creating speech as a whole.
Creating Determinism is God re-creating you and more through you while He does so in periods that can effectively be described as "you didn't know anything about it", "you understood it after it happened" and "you watched Him do it through you.." interspersed throughout your life and not necessarily in that order all the time. He creates via His acts of speech. To go into the Bible and say "See there? God's acts of speech don't make sense unless I have free will" is to imply God is not His Word but "uses" the same speech in which lies are spoken daily in the falsely idealized to be the only speech in total reality as one big meta-speech that is supposedly will-neutral.
The more you look at "do i have free will" as God leads you the more you see the proofs of free will given to you all depend on you idealizing yourself as living in a total environment that at least permits free will to exist. In reality, that environment doesn't exist at all.
The blessing of knowing you have no free will for political purposes is that you know you can't give away your political freedom in that it does not rest with you; it is in God's hands. So when they come to you and say "YOU said we could have authority over you." as lumping you with those deceived they actually, in free will, gave some other human being power over themselves per section of life, you already know they are lying and you are not a slave. The only question then becomes to you "What is God going to do through you to stop them from enslaving others and to free those already enslaved?" and you know from the start the thing He won't do through you is appeal to some idealized power they falsely imagine themselves to have.
The blessing of Jesus Christ extends in every way to all of every day life in the here and now and are not at all some esoteric malarky talking heads of academia love to dispute for their own pride.
The lie of free will is a slave mentality that is vain to be hopeless. It is given to slaves to keep them quiet.
Look out.
I'm trying to stay political here because that is the season and danger the people are in NOW. We can have a full blown discussion on free will and the lack thereof and the evidences, proofs and presuppositions if you want complete with genuine Biblical proofs in you. But simply realize what the elite Fight Scientists are trying to do to you politically in guise of flattering you with worthless awards. You are living an actual life in the midst of their pretensions of what you are as a total creature.
Jeremiah 10:23 I know, Jehovah, that the way of man is not his own; it is not in a man that walketh to direct his steps.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )You seem to underestimate God.
You assume you are doing the opposite, by giving additional layers of complexity to the concepts of Grace, but in doing so it appears to me that you are actually laying down the foundations of a complex form of slavery, or a great cosmic game of Sims. A situation that would eventually bore a mere mortal and leave them ultimately unsatisfied; why should we assume then, that this would satisfy God? If God wanted slaves, he would quite obviously have them.
Free will is a gift.
Like all fine gifts, it is one enjoyed not only by the recipient, but by the giver as well.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )but if you read Job for example, the very things you are saying in favor of God are nothing more than the pretense that God is no more than a man and ought to recognize such flatteries as "Gosh. I really praise you for giving me free will" as well intendedness and as such is forced to accept it as truth.
Read the three friends of Job and Elihu and all you get is the standard common sense defense of those who know only non-creating speech genuinely thinking to honor God.
For instance, Eliphaz the Temanite says of Job's premise that he had done nothing wrong and God was bringing evil on him for no reason that had to do with personal righteousness ( which is a bizarre statement to those who are supposedly held in line by the fear of the lake of fire. That God would arbitrarily do something to them unconnected with their notion of staying out of His way via free will is frightening to them):
Job 15:4,5 Yea, thou makest piety of none effect, and restrainest meditation before *God. For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou hast chosen the tongue of the crafty.
Modern free will based preachers say EXACTLY what Eliaphaz was saying; if there is no free will, then the whole scare tactic of hell is for nothing.
But the lake of fire was never a scare tactic. There is no choice. They are going around in their own circular arguments justifiying one with another.
God tells Eliaphaz and his two friends that they have erred and spoken against Him --and this after they genuinely intended to speak in His favor with their best honesty.
Job 42:7-9 And it came to pass after Jehovah had spoken these words to Job, that Jehovah said to Eliphaz the Temanite, Mine anger is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken rightly of me, like my servant Job. And now, take for yourselves seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, for ye have not spoken of me rightly, like my servant Job. Then Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, went and did according as Jehovah had said unto them; and Jehovah accepted Job.
Job had warned them previously:
Job 13:6-12 Hear now my defence, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips. Will ye speak unrighteously for God? and for him speak deceit? Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God? Will it be well if he should search you out? or as one mocketh at a man, will ye mock at him? He will certainly reprove you, if ye do secretly accept persons. Shall not his excellency terrify you? and his dread fall upon you? Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, your bulwarks are bulwarks of mire.
Looking at what Job said --and God approved of-- is not good news to the lie of free will:
Job 12:16-25 With him is strength and effectual knowledge; the deceived and the deceiver are his. He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and judges maketh he fools; He weakeneth the government of kings, and bindeth their loins with a fetter; He leadeth priests away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty; He depriveth of speech the trusty, and taketh away the judgment of the elders; He poureth contempt upon nobles, and slackeneth the girdle of the mighty; He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out into light the shadow of death; He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them; he spreadeth out the nations, and bringeth them in; He taketh away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a pathless waste. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunkard.
and
Job 9:30,31 If I washed myself with snow-water, and cleansed my hands in purity, Then wouldest thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes would abhor me.
Job and his friends present a picture of those who see total reality in terms of their own righteousness or lack thereof. They see life as getting to a point of being up-armored enough to go through the rest unhurt and unstoppable simply to see all of it and be a part of all of it beyond any purposes of God for the whole of which they play a part beyond issues of righteosuness.
Saying you have free will reduces God to having to trick you
to help Him out with His total plan and is not praise at all. Lack of free will plainly makes God God AND loving those whom are His so much as to not take chances on their safety.
What has your supposed free will to do with:
Isaiah 43:3,4 For I am Jehovah thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee; and I will give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.
Where does Eygpt, Seba and Ethiopia fit in with your personal power?
We cannot enter into things we know nothing about with no power to effect personal safety even if we did and then worry only about personal power and say that is honoring God.
Luke 7:31-35 To whom therefore shall I liken the men of this generation, and to whom are they like? They are like children sitting in the market-place, and calling one to another and saying, We have piped to you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. For John the baptist has come neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, He has a demon. The Son of man has come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold an eater and wine-drinker, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners; and wisdom has been justified of all her children.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )But, it strikes me that you're the one confining God into the "man box".
Your examples above, tend to conflate the consequences of free will, with free will itself. The 'no man is an island' cliché is operative here. We are not solely influenced by our own free will, but also by the confluence of acts of free will by others throughout history.
And using Job, an allegory some could argue is entirely dedicated to the concept of free will, is quite unconvincing. Yes, Job's friends were clueless, just like the rest of us. That however, is not the sole point of Job.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Lack of free will is applied to political reality as it is now in the initial post.
I started out with an application of the truth as freeing those deceived they had free will from a functional trap to enslave them politically, but which has turned into a discussion of the truth itself. Yes, I was discussing the consequences of being deceived one has free will and have tried to stay somewhat in that discussion.
The discussion is now turning into a more overt: "Do we have free will, yes or no?"
Job is a classic case of those genuinely deceived they had free will and so "Job did too" as heaping their common sense and outlook on Job as an example of a population of those deceived they have free will speaking against one whom they thought had free will and had merely used it improperly. The whole of the book is a witness to Job's innocence as regards God's law ( even God said Job was perfect ) and yet the evil came anyway. To those deceived they had free will, that literally can't be. In their mind, IF they do "a" THEN God has do "b". But in reality that isn't so.
Yes Job is about more than that as well.
Once more as dealing directly with a population/group of those deceived they have free will:
That cycle, as depending on a population of free will beings goes, from each individual's perspective:
1. I've got free will / personal power
2. But other people do too because they are human beings
3. Because they have more as a collective than I and I cannot overpower them as a collective ( or because to be a good person is by definition is not to manipulate other people's free will ) I am powerless.
..and that is pretty much the whole of the private attention span from a political perspective in a population under siege from crime, treason, enemies, sickness, etc..
minus the deception of free will, they simply wait on God, exactly as God has Said, to deliver them.
Psalm 44:2,3 Thou, by thy hand, didst dispossess the nations, but them thou didst plant; thou didst afflict the peoples, but them didst thou cause to spread out. For not by their own sword did they take possession of the land, neither did their own arm save them; but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst delight in them.
You should not think at all that you have to stop having free will while everybody else keeps theirs. They don't have it either. But the deception that they do is why it is common for each individual to feel personally powerless.
Look around at who is defending free will from a pop theological perspective and you are literally looking at the guards in the towers overlooking the prison, indoctrinating the prisoners to keep them prisoners and as playing one off against another to keep them busy. The lie of free will is a spiritual gulag with consequences.
Psalm 40:17 But I am afflicted and needy: the Lord thinketh upon me. Thou art my help and my deliverer: my God, make no delay.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )The problem is I won't go there. It just doesn't add up. For instance, quoting scripture to make your case, in and of itself, undermines your case. I know that would strike you as completely counterintuitive, so forgive me for stating that it way. However, Calvinism has always struck me as depending on building a complex interpretation of scripture to arrive at a conclusion that, if looked at in perspective, makes scripture itself moot.
After all, who needs a roadmap if there are no junctions in the road?
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )It is one thing to say you have a position and can defend it.
It is another to have the truth and even other people say there is no point in attacking it.
All I'm saying is that you have that same kind of unassailable freedom in Jesus Christ --even politically. Don't listen when they say "but we've got no choice!" after they all said previously you had free will.
God can speak the blessing He gave Aaron to give to Israel even through a priesthood of Melchizedek.
Numbers 6:24-27 Jehovah bless thee, and keep thee; Jehovah make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; Jehovah lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Oh, never mind.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Just so you know someone noticed what you're doing.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Timothy is on to something when it comes to phony choices presented to us by politics and economics. Politics isn't just the art of the possible, it's the art of carefully circumscribing the possible within a haze of responsibility, allowing some to define good outcomes as theirs while sticking others with the bad. Meanwhile none of them have much of any effect on the outside world.
Anyhow, Timothy's my first real encounter with philosophical Calvinism, and I'm hoping to finally understand it's doctrines. So far, Timothy reminds me of Heidegger's almost hopelessly circular notion of us all being "thrown into time" but distinct as creatures in that we're interested in "being" itself, and drawn toward understanding "being" itself by back-interpreting ourselves in our historical moment. Or as a friend in grad school used to put it, "That's Mr. Dasein to you."
Anyhow, I'd say that free will is more of a mixed blessing than a gift. Many people seem all too eager to unload it on someone else.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )another critique:
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/calvinism.html#Introduction
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )...rather than mixed blessings.
Spoiled children throw away perfectly useful gifts and toys all the time. Others turn the boxes themselves into kingdoms.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )when they were offered the chance to rebuild their nation. But perhaps they will. After all, one can hardly decide which was the present that the Americans brought and which the box.
But a good point, nevertheless.
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )a present, which is nice, especially when they make something out of the box far cooler than what came out of the box. But you also give them, you know, the world, life, doom, breath, opportunity. And you're never sure how that's going to turn out.
But be all that as it may, you described my theology to a T.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )I think this is where he's coming from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
But where it's going to go...well...If we only have one choice and we're not allowed to disagree then I'm not sure if the discussion can go any further. (shrug)
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )is a figment of free will.
What you will see is that no matter where it ends up, your speech won't be satisfied if all you know is non-creation and scarcity. There will be a perpetual scarcity of satisfaction.
But you ought not to think I am here to keep you quiet.
As for the new definition of money, from a free will perspective, I had wanted your speech to make sense of a new money. Realizing that you are not your speech any more than money is a necessity of life.
What I wanted was free will's version of a new money. What I got was the assumption the new money would be entirely Calvinistic and you had to know where I was coming from to make Calvinistic money.
Just come up with a new money based on free will. Look at what money does, where it goes, what its doing, what its causing. I literally cannot do that AND know there is no free will. And there is a great advantage to having a free will version of new money that has to struggle with a non-free will money as one monolithic composite of total money. It makes money weak in the eyes of the people and that is to their advantage morally.
I suppose you to see this has been done before in history. I don't know who did it or why, but it is obvious it happened.
Interestingly, Tantalus in Lydia ( as the supposed Father of Lydia) seems to be the current favorite of historians as to who invented coin money. Then they attribute his wealth to some local mines.
I find that a bit thin. First there had to be the spirit of money already there to make anyone work in a mine or even make other people work in a mine.
The Greeks version of Tantalus and what happened to him is worthy of investigation. He supposedly "also" stole ambrosia from the "gods" and gave it to men. He tried to mix creation with non-creation, what works as immortality with what works as mortality in a legitimate, permanent way ( not what we're doing here.. we're de-legitimizing money to a great extent to limit its power and that as God does it through us .. ) and thus yoked the people to something that promised them satisfaction as a supposed divine dictate and yet is never able to deliver it. We're here to break that yoke as God does it through us.
From wikipedia:
"Tantalus' punishment, now proverbial for temptation without satisfaction ("tantalising"[11]), was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. Over his head towers a threatening stone, like that of Sisyphus.[12]"
----------------
I'm not trying to keep you a free willer to study you in situ. I used to be one myself. I know all about it. I'm just saying as long as you are one, let's work together to break a very old yoke. I know that God has to work through both of us. He has done so in the past and benefited all. You think you have to do it independently.
Okay. You work from your end. God through me will work through mine. What's wrong with that?
Proverbs 22:16-21 He that oppresseth the poor, it is to enrich him; he that giveth to the rich, bringeth only to want. Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thy heart unto my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee: they shall be together fitted on thy lips. That thy confidence may be in Jehovah, I have made them known to thee this day, even to thee. Have not I written to thee excellent things, in counsels and knowledge, that I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest carry back words of truth to them that send thee?
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
- Login or register to post comments
| parent )