stephan huller

I was reading Bonwetsch's German translation of Methodius and I was struggling with the concept of Free Will (not in the least because I don't believe in it; I think Free Will is just another word for egoism, vanity etc). That not withstanding I was thinking about what Christianity would be like without the concept of Free Will. Is it possible? I think Marcionitism to some degree may have been developed around these principles. As Moll notes the Marcionite myth understands that the Old Testament God created man as a compulsive transgressor, gave him the Law which he was too feeble to obey, and now judges him for his transgressions. According to this conception then the judgment upon Adam in Paradise is taken away. Again according to the Marcionites Adam failed because he was made of an inferior substance = matter which equals evil. This low estimation of matter ultimately derives from Plato. One does not encounter the 'problem of free-will' in the Greek philosophers as we are familiar with it. I am not sure either Plato or Aristotle even mention the concept of will let alone free will. The emphasis on the idea that humans could have chosen differently is entirely Jewish. But does Christian salvation necessarily depend on the idea of Free Will?

Iskander

What does 'freewill' mean to a Christian?

Chili

I think it does for 2 reason. First, Christians only think that they have free will, as they must, regardless of how much they are enslaved to the concept sin as temple servants. And second, in the salvation they find in Jesus that they freely chose to sooth their pain while flipping pages at the rich man's table, on which they stand tall come hell or high water while discarding their own intimacy with God, 'there' as strangers in exile.

Iskander

Are you claiming to have understood this question?

Chili

Just slinging mud for the time being, but I understand the Greek concept of 'look-alikes' where in the 'height of their being' as artist, including historian, lyricist or sophist they remain impostors still, that here now includes Christian as well [in their own righteousness proclaimed].

Their advantage in this is that as look-alike they transcend [common] human understanding wherein they worship the idol they see to so make it an 'idol of the marketplace,' with a degree of attraction in it to make it human by nature as an achievement for them, that nevertheless is human in origin and remains without substance to sustain.

So I added the Marcionite idea of Adamic with substance to Plato's transcending of human qualities, in the plural still in that for the Greeks every ambition can be elevated to as an art of its own to make the market place real.

The difference that set the 'Christian' apart to equal Plato's 'sophist' by transcending human righteousness as 'an end in itself' is that both are still human in origin and therefore is without substance that according to Plato must be reduced to 'mere sophist' and 'mere Christian' before a 're-emergence' can come about, and that is not possible for them because they both are at the bottom of their long "chain of division" which is the height of perversion to him and so are really standing on the rock they are trying to life as look-alikes there.

In this height they are the same with Marcionite Chritians who finally proclaim that our Adamic nature must fail because Adam was made with inferior substance that makes him not redeemable on that basis:
The error here is to add substance to Adam as second nature to man [in the image of God as Lord God himself] that so becomes like the same rock they are trying to lift now as a deprivation of the privation they see, simply because as artist they are usurpers in the role-play they see (to leave them an apostle short of who they really are as Lord God on their own).

Sheshbazzar

Depends on what Christian you ask.

But if you ask 'Paul';
Esau had NO choice. Pharaoh had NO choice. Predestined, and 'prepared for', we really have NO choice about anything.

Biblegod in control from the beginning. MAKES every person be and perform exactly as He wills them to be and perform, mere puppets on strings, everyone doing exactly what Biblegod has plotted out for them.

A mortal man cannot resist the 'WILL' nor the machinations of an omniscient and omnipotent God.

You will be exactly what He chooses to make you be.

You will do exactly what He chooses to make you to do. You do not have any other 'choice'.

There is no freedom of will in 'Paul's' theology.

If you 'choose' to believe in Biblegod it is only because from the beginning Biblegod HIMSELF, made that choice and that decision for you.

You cannot 'choose' anything, or do anything, that God has not predestined you to 'choose' or do.
If you decide right now to jump up and grab a beer from the fridge, scratch your ass, or fart, God planned it, and God chose to make you do it. Your 'choice' has no part in the matter.

But weird enough, although you are a fucked up and defective product in his view, thinking thoughts and doing things he hates, because he has chosen to make you do them, somehow it becomes your fault. :constern02:
Biblegod is an insane and defective God fashioned by idiot men.



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Iskander

Very good, It could have been written by a scholar

Chili

It is just a rant that I know and should write it more careful, maybe, but I can never get 'bite' around here when I claim that the human condition was created to exist in the imagination only = without substance to make fantasy possible in Gen 3. It so is created but not formed that so is phantom instead of being iconic as per Aristotle's stand in the rout, Posterior Analytics, 100a12 ff. From this follows that it can never grasp 'primary matters' and hence the re-emergence is needed to receive them first-hand and add them later by induction from the '[great] beyond.

Chili

Nice conclusion you made , but no sigar my dear friend.

You are correct all the way, simply because we are divided on our own mind between the TOL and the TOK. And then if you go to Gen.3:6 the woman who presides over the TOL saw that the TOK was good for gaining the goodies in life and 'activated' the second nature in the TOK by placing the first 'dam' before man and so this second nature became known as Adam beside her as outside of Eden or TOL.

So now Adam is generic to man known as human wherein they are not man proper as outsider to man. That so became known as Original sin wherein we now are the rational animal man as a condition of being, much like red hair except that the color red is also an illusion pertaining only to the human condition that itself is an illusion to see the color read, in the same way as we can see death in this temporal condition of being and are thus not eternal as man.

Then go to Gen.3:15 to see why and how we are fully predestined as if we float our life-house-boat on her river as per Gen.2:11-13, with 14 being the 'river of life' we sojourn on our own no longer as human to get back to Eden again = is without religion and therefore also without sin.

Cheerful Charlie

The Greeks most certainly argued about fatalism and determinism. See Aristotle "on Interpretation" the Sea Battle and Epicurus, invoked random swerves of atoms to eliminate strict determinism, which are directly related to free will. Aristotle atgued against fate, the Sea Battle is not predestined, determined, we have free will. the Stoics debated this stuff but little Stoic materials have been perserved.

From Augustine on free will was denigrated. Augustine wrote on the issue for some 30 years, "On Free Will" and in his "Retractions" gave up on free will. Sparked by his debates with the Pelagians. In the end he declared in the matter, "God's Grace" (Predestination) won out, which line of reasoning was followed by Luther and Calvin.
Luther's 'Bondage of the Will" is online and worth reading.

Today the issue is divided between anti-free will theologies (Lutherism, Calvanism) and pro-free will theologists (semi-pelagians - Arminians) Catholics and Methodists et al.


Cheerful Charlie