K

Sabine Grant:

Do you believe that God knows our choices before we make them?

Do you believe that God knew the choices we would make before he created us?

Do you believe that God was forced to create us the way He did, or was He free to use His creativity?


Now if you believe that God chose to create us the way we are knowing full well what choices we would make, then how is that any different from predestination? If God knew before creating me that I would write this post, and He chose to proceed with my creation without changing the design, then He did indeed predestine me to write this post. There is nothing I could have done differently to avoid writing it. Only God could have changed the outcome by creating me with a different design. God is the only one with free will in this scenario. The free will comes at design time.

Sabine Grant

Actualy Opera Nut I am challenging Jean Calvin's theology. Maybe a bit of reading of the Westminster Confession of Faith would help you grasp the nuances between what I propose in this thread and Calvinism.

Sabine Grant

It still does not respond to what I asked you..... where did I say that I believe that we are free to " fool God".?

Again I am willing to discuss on what I state not thoughts you so desire to attribute to me. ( but thoughts that may be what you will to interpret). You tend to ask many questions but not be willing to answer mine. Same occurence in the thread on " mother slaying children" where I have asked you to give specific definitions and you still ignore. If that is a pattern you continue to exhibit in communicating with me, understand that eventualy you will loose my interest. Monologues do not particularly attract me.

Sabine Grant

Bonsoir K..... I thought I had already presented my beliefs on those matters in all my previous posts..... I will clarify.

Yes I believe God is aware of the content of our minds and has the ability to discern what our choices will be.

If you are referring to the choice of accepting Christ or rejecting Christ , I believe God has the knowledge of whom will and whom will not.

I cannot concieve the Creator to be " forced" to create us . As far as His Creativity I have no doubt as I contemplate all that is and exists ( or at least known to mankind) that He used a great deal of creativity!

As to how I do not consider foreknowledge on His part to be predestination which infers that God controls our choices from birth to death, I will refer you to my previous posts.

You are implying in your illustration that God is the dictator of your thoughts behind your post. On that reasoning... if He were... no telling what your thoughts might be 20 years from now......

I am wondering if the word predestination is defined in this thread in accordance with calvinist theology. How many of you have studied the document I quoted earlier which contains the essence of calvinism?

BadBadBad

I responded to your question asking for verses. I ask a question in return, and you immediately responded with this question rather than answering mine. You still haven't answered my question. Now you're going to say the conversation is stopped because I won't answer yours?

Fine then. I assert based upon what many many christians have said here and elsewhere that the Bible says you are predestined to damnation and dishonour with your heart hardened against God by God just like is says in Romans 9 and still have room for free will to believe in God. Lay out your thoughts and opinions on my assertion. Show me how predestination as laid out in the verses I've given leaves room for Free Will.




You tend to never answer any questions, but lock up the conversation bickering over semantics.

Did you come to talk about this thread or did you want to talk about this other thread? Let's get the facts straight. I was the first one in that thread to ask questions. "Are the Baptists part of modern christianity? " And "What better way to commnicate them than to explode as voices in your head? " You haven't answered those, and I'm still waiting. Also, although I didn't answer you're question, I explained over and over that I thought the question was irrelevant. Therefore, the discussion wasn't a monologue except the part where you refused to discuss the relevance of the question and continued to try to stop the discussion by continually repeating it. So until you answer all my questions, don't complain that I don't answer yours.

BadBadBad

Here you go again Sabine. You answered the first three questions, but not the fourth.

"Now if you believe that God chose to create us the way we are knowing full well what choices we would make, then how is that any different from predestination? If God knew before creating me that I would write this post, and He chose to proceed with my creation without changing the design, then He did indeed predestine me to write this post. "

You tiptoed around it. You referred to previous posts. You danced around the semantics of what is predestination, but you never answered the question. Then you asked a question of your own. Sounds familiar.

This is the crux of the matter. Omniscience implies a single timeline into the future. If there is only one possible future just like there is only one past, how can we deviate from that?

K

Sabine Grant:

It sounds like we are using two different definitions of "predestination". I'm not particularly interested in what Calvinism has to say about predestination. My only point is that if God designed each of us knowing exactly how we would make each choice, then we are predestined to behave in exactly that manner. Maybe an example will make things more clear.

Let's say I write a program that will always choose the lower number when presented with two. I may not be involved with each decision the program makes, but because of my choices at design time, the program is predestined to always pick the smaller of two numbers.

If God designed us, knowing exactly what we would do in every situation we would ever be in, and followed through creating us using that design, then we have no more free will than the program described above. We and the program have been forced through the choices of our designers to behave the way we do.

Nowhere357

The Christians may not believe in predestination, but many of them still claim that god is omniscient. So the "balled up" part is due not to belief in predestination, it is due to the logical nonsense that unfallible knowledge of the future does not preclude free will.

If the future is known without fail, then we have no free will.
We have free will.
Therefore the future is not known. God is not omniscient.

AJ113

That's rich. How many of my own questions have you answered in this thread?

Sabine Grant

Brettc...... As much as I am willing and enjoying K's communication I must tell you that yours is not welcome anylonger especialy as you continue to take issues including interfering with what K asked me. I think it is time for me to move on from that type of communication.