The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Open Theism and the Origin of Sin

Featured Writers Dr Thomas Talbott
#51

Hi TomT,

I am way far behind in this thread.:slight_smile:

We agree that rational agents sometimes resist God’s grace for a season. But we have some differences in biblical interpretation such as John 1:12-13.

I’ll begin with theory before I do some biblical interpretation. I suppose one way to state my view is that somebody hypothetically could continue to resist God’s grace literally forever while nobody practically will resist God’s grace literally forever. I like using the analogy of a fair coin toss. Hypothetically, an unlimited number of fair coin tosses with heads on one side and tails on the other side could always result in heads. For example, ten fair coin tosses resulting in ten heads has odds of one in a thousand; twenty fair coin tosses resulting in twenty heads has odds of one in a million; thirty fair coin tosses resulting in thirty heads has odds of one in a billion, and ad infinitum. There’s a chance of always getting heads despite the odds eventually becoming practically zero. Likewise, there’s no essential chance of endlessly flipping heads in an unlimited series of fair coin tosses.

In regards to eternity future, there’s always unlimited time regardless of how much time has already elapsed. And God will never stop to occasionally offer salvation. And I assume that nobody will literally reject endless offers of salvation from God. Likewise, anybody hypothetically can reject endless offers of salvation while nobody practically will reject endless offers of salvation.

Now I want to look at John 1:12-13 in NASB:

[12] But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
[13] who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Verse 12 talks about the human free will part of receiving the gift of relationship with God while verse 13 emphasizes that humans cannot in anyway in themselves generate this relationship with God. The context of God’s gift of salvation to humanity is clearly in the context of a conditional covenant, not an unconditional covenant such as an ancient land grant covenant. I also don’t see how you can interpret inevitable salvation from these verses. Perhaps inevitable salvation for everybody is taught elsewhere in the Bible, but not here.

Anyway, I wish to ask you a clarifying question about your belief that rational agents can temporarily resist God’s gracious love. Does this ability to temporarily resist God’s gracious love include the possibility of genuine apostasy? I ask because many Calvinists claim that there is no such thing as genuine apostasy. They believe that a genuine believer can never reject God’s gift of salvation while all of the biblical teachings about apostasy are hypothetical situations that cannot happen under any circumstances. In the case of being a Universalist, then we would believe that apostasy would last only temporarily. And this question also relates to this topic about the origin of sin. (I’m not an expert on Augustine, but I suppose he believed that a baptized believer could commit mortal sin and go to hell.)

#52

Hi TomT,

I want to tell you some more of what was on my mind while above I asked if you believe that some rational agents can temporarily decide to become apostate. For example, it’s my belief that some heavenly host never rebelled against God while other heavenly host such as the devil has rebelled against God, which is a common belief in Christian orthodoxy. And you said something along the lines that perhaps all created rational agents would eventually rebel against God. (Sorry if my summary of your statements is slightly off and please clarify anything you believe about this.) So I’m wondering if your view contradicts the common view that God’s angels have never rebelled.

Also, perhaps humans were designed in a way that their rebellion was inevitable while I also believe along with Christian orthodoxy that Genesis 1-3 and various biblical references to Genesis 1-3 teach that the first humans had an initial period of time of living in close relationship with God before a human rebellion occurred that resulted in the fallenness of humanity, regardless of the literalness or non-literalness of Genesis 1-3.

I also want to comment on Aug’s question about eternal life. Jesus in John 17:3 defines eternal life as knowing God, which I believe was the initial state of all heavenly host and the first humans. I think you suggest something else but I’m not one hundred percent sure. And I doubt that you could convince me otherwise while I would love to dialog with you on this whatever you believe about these concepts.

#53

Strangely, as I read through this 3rd page of posts, I increasingly got the feeling of the Garden and the expulsion from it as a metaphor for the birth process itself. The garden being the womb in which everything is provided and safe but no opportunity for self realisation and the expulsion as being expelled into the world kicking and screaming and having to get on with things.

#54

TomT,

Thanks for the reply. It’s a privilege. Your last post helped clarify things more.

I’m still just thinking out loud here, OK? I’m in process on a lot of this.

TomT: I think you have drawn an important distinction here. Applying a similar one to the woman who chooses to bear a child, you would no doubt say that she does so in spite of the pain, not because of it. But things get tricky, I think, when we consider certain theological contexts. Would you say that the Son of God entered this earthly realm, according to Christian theology, in spite of human sin or because of it?

TomB: I’ll want to be careful here. Cliffs on both sides! Ha.

I think Creation & Incarnation go together. Creation entailed incarnation as its central, defining event and the means by which created being could be brought into union with God. I like the Eastern Orthodox on this. But ‘sin’ and ‘evil’ aren’t entailed the same way. Evil isn’t intended by God nor does the unity between divine and created being that God creates us for require that created being first become corrupt and privated by sin “so that” it can be what it was created to be (that WOULD constitute the objectionable sort of “because of” I’m talking about). So I separate incarnation from redemption in this sense—incarnation was always an intended aspect of creation, indeed the ‘key’ to creation. But none of that stands upon ‘evil’ occurring as a kind of necessary means to get there.

Once sin and evil enter the picture, then, the incarnation takes on the added task of rescuing humanity. But that’s not (and shouldn’t be) the only framework within which we exposit the incarnation. So the path to unity with God is complicated by the need to redeem humankind. So yes, Christ dies for us “because of sin” (because sin stands in between a fallen humanity and a fulfilled humanity), but the end result (union with God) is achieved “in spite of” this detour; thus, “God achieves his creational goals in spite of having to die on our behalf because of sin…. ” I took your “because of sin” to qualify ultimate goals, thus “God achieves his creational goals because of sin,” in the sense that the ultimate goal is unachievable apart from sin/evil.

For example, we achieve a particular intimacy of relationship (say, in marriage) “in spite of” obstacles just in case the intimacy would obtain had the obstacles never occurred. Marriages that never suffer infidelity aren’t on that account less intimate than those who have weathered an infidelity. But if infidelities occur, then it becomes the case that “because of the infidelity” we have to take certain measures. So only in a proximate sense we end up having achieved personal intimacy “because of” the infidelity, not in the ultimate sense that there is no such intimacy for those who DON’T go the infidelity route. See what I’m saying? I understand you to have been arguing this latter sense of “because of,” i.e., a marriage can’t become an experience and exchange of personal intimacy UNLESS it suffers and weathers some infidelity, some deep betrayal.

[Note: But I also know that marriages that do weather storms experience their intimacy in the context of which it was achieved, so that the pain of the past occasions a continual thankfulness and gratefulness. I don’t want to exclude this. I just don’t want to say intimacy isn’t even imaginable apart from it.]

TomT: Or consider the concept of salvation from sin itself. Is not the reality and nature of sin precisely what makes salvation from sin such a great good, according to Christian theology?

TomB: This would be to view things from inside of the eventuality of what is unintended (sin). If we fast forward from creation to the emergence of sin and redemption, then yes, there’s beauty. Redemption is a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing for love to sacrifice and suffer for the lost. This just constitutes the “in spite of” aspect of love’s infinite ability to achieve its end (union with God) no matter what gets in its way. But to say sin has to get in love’s way before love can achieve its end, “so that” love can achieve its end, is a different claim.

TomT: But here is what I am wondering: Whatever our disagreements may turn out to be concerning the nature of freedom, do we not basically agree that God maintains his epistemic distance in order that the drama of human history with all of its multi-faceted human relationships, undetermined choices, chance happenings, and even divine interventions might play out in its own way, so to speak?

TomB: Certainly so, yes. I think we just differ a bit in how we understand that ‘playing out’ relevant to God’s ultimate ends for humans. I think the freedom we’re given is the metaphysical pre-requisite for our responsibly growing into intimacy with God. When we achieve God’s purposes for us, our having been ‘free’ will be a true “because of” mechanism, a non-disposable piece of the puzzle. But not so for you I think, right? You’ll want to say end-states where human beings enjoy intimacy with God which do NOT have sin and evil in their background are less beautiful than end-states where the ravages of sin and evil are part of the story.

For you:

(1) Creation —> Fall —> Redemption —> Trust/Growth —> Union/Intimacy with God

…is a more beautiful, aesthetically pleasing total state of affairs than…

(2) Creation —> Trust/Growth —> Union/Intimacy with God.

To say sin ‘shapes’ the outcome (to me) is to say that union/intimacy with God can only ultimately be had in its fullness by human beings via redemption from sin, i.e., the only human nature that can get into full intimacy with God is ‘sinful’ human nature. But Jesus was a human being who knew intimacy with God in its fullness (learned obedience through what he suffered too—all very interesting!) via (2), not (1). Shouldn’t Jesus’ humanity be as much a display of God’s original intentions for our natures even if he ends up dying to save us?

One last thought (perhaps unintelligible):

There’s a “because of” on the other side of “in spite of” (which I’m talking).
and then
There’s a “because of” on the other side of “so that” (which I think you’re talking about).

Blessings and peace on you and your family Tom. Thanks for putting up with my rantings!

TomB

#55

In other words, the ‘incarnation’ has stuff to do other than just occasion the death of Jesus for us sinners.

Tom

#56

Thanks for your latest two posts, Jim, which I found to be extremely interesting. You might be disappointed, however, that with one minor exception I found nothing in them, or at least nothing substantial, with which to disagree (hee, hee). We certainly agree that rational agents can resist God’s grace for a season, and beyond that, we also agree that it is a practical impossibility for any rational agent to resist that grace forever. Your fair coin analogy makes the point exceedingly well, I think. And, by the way, because Eric Reitan (in the philosophy department at Oklahoma State University) makes use of this same analogy, you might find some of his work worthwhile. A good place to begin would be the chapter entitled “Human Freedom and the Impossibility of Eternal Damnation” in Robin Parry and Christopher Partridge (eds.), Universal Salvation? The Current Debate (see especially pp. 136-141). In my entry on universalism in Jerry Walls (ed.), The Oxford Handbook on Eschatology, I in effect summarize his argument as follows:

Nor do I have any disagreement–contrary to your own expectation, perhaps–with your interpretation of John 1:12-13. I have never appealed to this text, for example, in support of the claim that the salvation of all sinners is inevitable. I might interpret I Corinthians 15:21-26 that way, but not John 1:12-13.

You have also made an excellent point, I think, about apostasy. For you are right: According to standard Calvinist theology, it is impossible for someone with a saving knowledge of God ever to fall away or to lose his or her salvation; and yet the Canons of Dort explicitly state that Adam had a saving knowledge of God. So if Adam did fall away from this saving knowledge of God, he would be a counterexample to the standard Calvinist claim that this is impossible.

And finally, my understanding of the first human sin is quite consistent, so far as I can tell, with the following idea: Even as a typical child already has a relationship with its parents prior to its earliest moral choices, so our first parents already had a relationship with God prior to any conscious act of rebellion. But my understanding is clearly inconsistent with the idea that Adam and Eve started out with a perfect (or even a saving) knowledge of God. For so far as I can tell, no motive for rebellion (and therefore no act of rebellion) is so much as psychologically possible outside a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misjudgment, and that is no less true of angels, I would add, than it is of human beings. So if in accordance with traditional Christian mythology there really was an angelic rebellion in heaven, then it follows, I believe, that the rebellious angels had an imperfect knowledge of God’s essential nature. If you disagree with that—and I’m not saying you do—then this would be the only exception to my initially expressed thought that we have nothing about which to disagree in your latest two posts.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

-Tom

Ante/PostMortem Repentance
#57

TomT, thank you for replying. I want to clarify that I have no disappointment with little disagreement :smiley: I honestly was unsure where you were coming from while I desired some clarification that I could understand within my system of thinking.

#58

Actually, I like that picture a lot, Jeff. Thanks.

-Tom

#59

Wow, Tom, you really outdid yourself in your latest post, which is filled with juicy ideas. Here is a sample of what I find altogether intriguing:

Not only do I agree that “Creation & Incarnation go together”; I’m inclined to think that creation is impossible apart from Incarnation. As St Paul put it, “in him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth … all things were created through him and for him.” So I too like the Eastern Orthodox emphasis here. (Incidentally, two of my sisters, my daughter, and all of their immediate families are members of an Eastern Orthodox Church.)

But I do need to clarify one point about my own view, which you describe as follows:

The problem with this picture, from my perspective, is that I no longer believe in a Fall. I do not believe, in other words, that Adam fell from a higher state to a lower one. Nor does anything in the Genesis account of creation entail, so far as I can tell, that Adam and Eve were any less likely than any other child, given the context in which they first emerged, to act in self-centered, sinful, and disobedient ways. So I would have to delete “Creation —> Fall” from (1) and replace it with something about conditions metaphysically necessary for our existence and our emergence in them. After that, I’m unsure how the contrast you have in mind might proceed.

In any event, I reject, no less than you do, the idea that God is the cause of sin, as you know; I thus see sin and error as obstacles that God must overcome in the process whereby he creates additional Sons and Daughters to love. So let’s step back for a moment and return to that point of agreement in an effort to discover where, if any, a point of disagreement may begin to emerge. According to traditional Protestant theology, all the descendants of Adam, with the one exception of Jesus Christ, are already sinners, already “dead” in their “trespasses and sins,” from the very beginning of their moral consciousness (see Ephesians 2:1). With the one exception of Jesus Christ, in other words, there are no sinless human beings. Do you accept that traditional doctrine, as I presume you do? If not, then I would be most interested in where (and how) you might depart from it; and if you do accept it, as I presume you do, then I am wondering how you would explain this near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin. If God is not the cause of sin, then why does it inevitably turn out that we are all sinners? Why are there no sinless people walking around? The Augustinians would explain this by appealing to an inherited sinful nature that removes our freedom not to sin. But could you perhaps explain how you understand this matter?

Thanks again for your many contributions to this thread.

-Tom

#60

Don’t worry, Jim. I never seriously thought that you wanted a disagreement. Nor did I have any doubt that you were honestly seeking clarification. So thanks again for your query.

-Tom

#61

TomT-

It seems we’re ending up having more in common. Incarnation from the get-go! Love it. We might be kindred spirits after all. ;o)

I get what you mean by saying you no longer believe in a Fall (“falling from a higher state to a lower one”). And I want to agree that Adam wasn’t existing in some perfect state of bliss prior to sinning. But still it seems to me that if we’re going to agree that God doesn’t cause sin/evil and that he ultimately “overcomes” it, that humanity’s becoming evil is at least a kind of “detour” or “setback,” whatever we need to call it to describe something’s having occurred which now needs to be OVERcome, otherwise, what’s “overcome” really mean? It would seem things are just going according to plan and there’s really nothing to overcome, unless the so-called overcoming of sin IS the plan, which seems to be at the heart of our disagreement. Is ‘sin’ part of ‘the plan’? Maybe the answer is a sense in which it is and a sense in which it isn’t.

TomT: I thus see sin and error as obstacles that God must overcome in the process whereby he creates additional Sons and Daughters to love.

TomB: I like the sound of that!

TomT: So let’s step back for a moment and return to that point of agreement in an effort to discover where, if any, a point of disagreement may begin to emerge. According to traditional Protestant theology, all the descendants of Adam, with the one exception of Jesus Christ, are already sinners, already “dead” in their “trespasses and sins,” from the very beginning of their moral consciousness (see Ephesians 2:1). With the one exception of Jesus Christ, in other words, there are no sinless human beings. Do you accept that traditional doctrine, as I presume you do?

TomB: Yeah, I accept that Jesus is the only sinless human.

TomT: Then I am wondering how you would explain this near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin. If God is not the cause of sin, then why does it inevitably turn out that we are all sinners? Why are there no sinless people walking around? The Augustinians would explain this by appealing to an inherited sinful nature that removes our freedom not to sin.

TomB: Explain it all? I’ll try. Yeah, um, one second, eh, lemme grab my notes here, um. I had those answers written down somewhere. Let’s see now. Well eh… :unamused:

But let me quickly say that if you take the Augustinian route, then you are saying there’s a fundamental difference of ‘nature’ between Adam/Eve prior to their choosing evil and all other human beings who are born with an inherited sin nature and you’re accounting for the universality of sin on the basis of the latter. But you’ve already argued that you’re sure Adam was “as likely” to sin as we are. So why do we need an inherited sin nature? (Or aren’t you asking about this because it’s your view?) If Adam (or anyone else in his position) was as likely to sin as we Augustinianly stained sinners are likely to sin, then all we need is “finiteness” and “epistemic distance” to account for sin’s universality. So, bye-bye Augustine.

Having said that, I think we do start out with several strikes against us, in a ‘less than optimal’ context. I think the Garden represents a kind of ‘optimal context’ where all the contributing factors and influences (internal and external) are arranged for optimal success. And we don’t have THAT now. We’re now born into a context wherein all the contributing factors are less than optimal. But as far as our ‘natures’ are concerned, why can’t we just be what Adam was ‘naturally’? Well, the answer to that is usually, “So you think human beings can make it to heaven on their own, without God? You think we don’t need Jesus? You Pelagian!” We want to make sure nobody makes it through life successfully and messes up our atonement theories, so we make ‘em all sinners from the womb. I’m less and less convinced by this, i.e., that it’s needed or helpful.

What I’d like to say is that being dependent upon grace just IS OUR NATURE. We don’t come to need grace and help only AFTER we’re sinners. So nobody gets to heaven without needing God and embracing the grace of God whether or not they’ve actually sinned. This was in fact the case even of the “pre-Fall” Adam and would have continued to be the case of all subsequent generations supposing there was no eventuation of sin. And the embodiment of that grace was always to be the Incarnate Son, the object of our trust and faith, again, even in an imagined state of our never having sinned. Pelagius got a bad rap in some ways I think.

We get socialized and end up individuating with respect to our surroundings. It can’t be otherwise. So it’s bound to go awry if those surroundings are fallen and broken, even more so than when those surroundings aren’t bent or broken (assuming they weren’t in the Garden prior to sinful choices). Isn’t that enough? Do we need to implicate human ‘nature’ in the womb? Again, I think the Eastern Orthodox have the better share of the truth on this.

And let’s remember too the ‘ecstatic’ or irreducibly ‘social’ character of individual personal becoming. Personhood is what we’re designed for, and personhood is a creative, intersubjective achievement. God intended the necessary truth about him and us be mediated through human community. There is no other way to grow ‘persons’ out of finite rational creatures. We learn it from our parents and families. No one of us was meant to come into the fullness of the persons God created us to be apart from others playing their part. We tend to ‘individualize’ this whole issue far too much. But if we recognize the communal/social aspects of individual personhood, then that will (as it does for me) tip the scales in favor of ‘nurture’ over ‘nature’ being the real culprit in universal sinfulness.

Lastly, consider our basic instinct to survive, to secure our own well-being. We’re pain averse and pleasure seeking. Nothing fallen or sinful about that per se. This just is the stuff of finite creatureliness, the context in which responsible self-determination and character development has to take place. Now if our identities get socialized and individualized within sinful contexts like today (i.e., where all the social structures and relations that are the “givens” in which children end up defining themselves are fallen/broken), then that pretty much guarantees the universality of sin. We don’t need an inherited sinful nature to know human beings will all eventually screw up.

TomB

#62

Good thoughts, all. I’ve read through this last page with a good deal of interest. I’m wondering if perhaps the question of the ‘necessity’ of sin/ evil isn’t partly a matter of perspective. Is sin/ evil in some sense necessary to experience, say, salvation and redemption from our perspective, while at the same time we could say that it may not have been a necessary ingredient to our development (theoretically, at least) from God’s perspective?
What came to mind for me was the passage in Isaiah where God explicitly states that he creates evil (Heb.: Ra). One would assume I suppose, that if that is true in the sense that I think it is, that He would have some necessary purpose in doing so?

I have heard it suggested before that if we had no experience of sin or evil, then we would have absolutely no framework with which to reference the goodness of God in all the forms that takes. In other words, we would have no frame of reference or appreciation for what light is, without the knowledge of darkness. Not that darkness is an independent thing; it is a function of the presence of light (which is necessary for shadow to exist, for example). So perhaps in some sense we could say that sin and evil are necessary to God’s ultimate purposes with respect to something along these lines?

#63

Melch

I have seen commentary on that passage that suggests that the word translated ‘evil’ might be better translated ‘calamity’ so that it refers to misfortune rather than premeditated bad perpetrated by one human on another. Of course that is just off the top of my (admittedly thinning) head with no references for you to follow-up.

#64

Hi, Jeff.
Yes, I’ve heard/ read that argument as well. The word there translated as “evil” is the Hebrew word “Ra”, IIRC. The most common meaning of this word is bad or evil. One could certainly make a contextual case for the different translation, as calamity is also in the list of possible definitions for that word, but is down the list a bit. Partly because of other supporting passages that I can’t seem to recall at the moment, I’ve personally found the argument for the “calamity” translation there somewhat unconvincing.

#65

Well, Tom, after reading your latest post in this thread–which was fun to read, by the way–I’m still wondering where in the he … oops, where in the world a fundamental disagreement lies between us. But perhaps the above quotation will lead us to a minor disagreement of some kind or another.

I certainly agree that we “start out with several strikes against us”–perhaps even three of them! But if, as you suggest, “the Garden represents a kind of ‘optimal context,’” how, exactly, are we to cash that out? Would you do so in terms of the likelihood of someone succumbing to temptation and sinning? According to Augustine, Adam was free to sin and free not to sin, but his descendants were no longer free not to sin. So would you at least want to say something like this: Given the “optimal context” in which he emerged, Adam had a better chance at a sinless life than the rest of us do? For my own part, I see nothing in the Genesis account that would lead me to that conclusion. For nothing there suggests to me that Adam saw things any more clearly than a typical toddler does, or that he had a better understanding of the nature of evil and its destructive consequences than we do, or that his temptation to disobey was any weaker than that of other children.

Or consider this. According to the story in Genesis, Adam had to contend with the wiles of the serpent or, as most would have it, the devil himself–hardly a good influence. Does it not seem as if the crafty serpent, with all of its subtlety, might have had a more profound influence upon Adam and Eve than even a dysfunctional family might have on a child? As for a set of loving parents, I know that my own parents protected me from a host of bad influences and would have kept me as far away from the serpent as they could! I also strongly suspect that, for Adam no less than for the rest of us, a context of great physical comfort with an absence of physical challenges would tend to make sin and error more likely rather than less likely.

According to St. Paul, moreover, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust”; Paul then went on to write: “As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust (I Cor. 15:47-48). To me, at least, this suggests that, according to Paul, Adam came into being with the same dispositions and moral propensities and with the same moral weaknesses as any other child. We are all (including Adam, Eve, and all of their merely human descendants) of the dust; that is, we all emerge and begin making choices in the same context of moral ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion. So does this lead us to a possible area of disagreement?

One final point. I previously wrote: “I am wondering how you would explain this near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin. If God is not the cause of sin, then why does it inevitably turn out that we are all sinners? Why are there no sinless people walking around?” What I was getting at here was the issue of freewill. If we are genuinely free not to sin (in part because God is not the cause of our sinning), then why is it that, according to Christian theology, we are already dead in trespasses and sin from the very beginning of our moral consciousness? Believe me, I do not raise this question in an effort to trip you up. For the question poses just as great a difficulty for me as it does for anyone else.

Anyway, thanks for your latest contribution.

-Tom

#66

Dr. Tom-

I remember back in 2000 Greg Boyd started a discussion website about open theism (and other things). What I thought was so fantastic was that somebody as busy and obviously important as that would take time to make himself available to average Joes like me. I have that same great feeling about how gracious you’ve been to make yourself available this like. Thanks again.

DrT: But if, as you suggest, “the Garden represents a kind of ‘optimal context,’” how, exactly, are we to cash that out? Would you do so in terms of the likelihood of someone succumbing to temptation and sinning?

Tom: I suppose I don’t mean much more than that God doesn’t trash the place first and then hand it over to Adam. He really does give something wonderful and blessed to us—to work with and make something of. There wasn’t a corrupt society waiting to receive them and pervert them at first chance. I guess I’m more interested in emphasizing the ‘goodness’ of creation and the love behind God’s motivation and intentions. That’s a constant, yes. Still the case for every new life that arrives. But the world into which we’re today born is SO jacked up.

But I don’t suppose that really matters if, as you and I agree, sin was virtually inevitable. And as you say, there may be little difference between an Adam in an optimal context but who is personally targeted by Satan but has no fallen context to deal with and somebody born today in a fallen context who is not so targeted but who’s targeting systemic evil. When you crunch the numbers, there’s no real difference.

DrT: To me, at least, this suggests that, according to Paul, Adam came into being with the same dispositions and moral propensities and with the same moral weaknesses as any other child. We are all (including Adam, Eve, and all of their merely human descendants) of the dust; that is, we all emerge and begin making choices in the same context of moral ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion. So does this lead us to a possible area of disagreement?

Tom: Perhaps not. But I’d like to try to say that it’s not Adam who had the same propensities and dispositions as we do, but we who have the same propensities and dispositions as he did. I’d like to keep that arrangement if I could. He came first and we follow. We conform (or not) to his example.

DrT: One final point. I previously wrote: “I am wondering how you would explain this near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin. If God is not the cause of sin, then why does it inevitably turn out that we are all sinners? Why are there no sinless people walking around?” What I was getting at here was the issue of freewill. If we are genuinely free not to sin (in part because God is not the cause of our sinning), then why is it that, according to Christian theology, we are already dead in trespasses and sin from the very beginning of our moral consciousness?

Tom: I don’t think we are already spiritually dead in sin from the beginning of our moral consciousness, unless you mean to say that once we’re able to make moral judgments we very quickly thereafter commit sin. Sin presupposes the capacity to make moral judgments, so that capacity can’t itself be sinful, nor can sin be co-terminous with the coming to be of moral consciousness itself. We may universally screw up upon becoming morally conscious, but surely the two are distinct.

Perhaps through time the two balance out: Where human population is extremely small and societal-systemic sinfulness minimal, Satan can focus his personal efforts on the few, as you say. So we have little chance of making it through successfully. With an exploding population, what tends to guarantee universal sinfulness is the societal-systemic influence as that rises and becomes more pervasive as Satan and his minions have fewer resources to personally (as it were) go around offering fruit to every individual. At first Satan’s going door to door so to speak. But once he ruins enough homes, perverted people pass on the sickness without help from anybody.

But either way it’s ‘nurture’. With the Eastern Orthodox, I’d like to affirm the basic goodness of the nature we’re ‘given’ by God. What I mean is, I don’t want to ‘fault’ what God gives us ‘naturally’ speaking. Even if the epistemic distance and freedom necessary to personal becoming makes sin virtually inevitable; it’s also what makes our loving God and others possible.

I do believe though that there are a great many individuals who through the exercise of virtue have become free from sin in this life, having solidified sufficiently in grace. I think this happens far more than we think. There’s no reason to assume that we cannot and do not in fact become thus perfected in this life. Mother Teresa comes to mind. I’m not in a position to say she in fact was living free from actual sin, but I can easily imagine it.

TomT

#67

Tom, again, thank you for your reply. I want to clarify that I believe that all created beings always had and always will have “an imperfect knowledge of God’s essential nature” because only an omniscient agent could have a perfect knowledge of God. Likewise, by my definition of perfect knowledge, I don’t believe the first humans ever had a perfect knowledge of God. And I also believe that the first believers did not initially need saving so I also believe that there was no “saving knowledge” at the origin of humanity. And as a believer in theistic evolution, I believe that the first humans were conceived in the womb of pithecanthropines while I know nothing about the dynamics of the human spirit and faith in the womb. However, I believe God manifested in an theophany and revealed himself and his covenant of grace to the first humans. And the first humans initially accepted God’s covenant of grace, but eventually rejected the covenant, not that I believe in a literal Tree of the Personal Knowledge of Good and Evil.

#68

For years I have believed that it is impossible for anyone, even God who is omniscient, to know the unknowable. I didn’t realize until relatively recently that I was an “open theist” all of those years.

Open Theists believe in the Omniscience of God

It is commonly assumed among those who do not understand Open Theism, that its proponents do not believe in God’s omniscience. This is a mistake assumption. Open theists, like nearly all other Christians do believe in the omniscience of God.

Disagreement with Calvinists, Arminians, and Molinists does not concern the scope of God’s knowledge, but rather the content of reality. Most or all open theists, including myself, do not believe that sentences about future freely-chosen actions have present truth value. Rather sentences about future freely-chosen actions either express intention or prediction. For example, if I say, “I will go to the city tomorrow” I am not making a statement which is either true or false; I am expressing my intention to go to the city tomorrow. If I say, “In the next Canadian election, the Conservatives will win with a majority”, I am not making a statement which is either true or false. I am making a prediction.

In formal logic, all statements do have truth value, and the law of the excluded middle requires all statements to be either true or false. If we accept this description of statements, then open theists must exclude sentences about future freely-chosen acts from the category of “statements”. Perhaps they can be better classified as “meta-statements.”

It seems obvious that if meta-statements about future actions of a person have truth value now, then the person does not have free will. For example, if it is now true that Joe will raise his hand tomorrow morning, then Joe cannot refrain from raising his hand tomorrow morning. For, if he refrains from raising his hand tomorrow morning then it is not now true that he will raise his hand tomorrow morning. Similarly, if it is now false that Joe will raise his hand tomorrow morning, then he cannot raise his hand at that time. Thus, in either case, there is something Joe cannot do, and so he not have the freedom to choose. Thus there is a logical contradiction between sentences about future actions of people having present truth value, and freedom of choice. This argument logically extends to all other meta-statements about future actions of people, for other meta-statements are not of a different order, and thus cannot be excluded.

For one to know that a statement is true, it is a necessary condition that the statement is, in fact, true. For example, I may claim that I know that my wife is now at home. However, if you prove to me that she is not at home, then I will no longer claim that I know that she is at home. I can only say that I thought I knew. Similarly, If one knows that a statement is false, then the statement is, necessarily, false. No one can know the truth value of a “statement” which is neither true nor false (hereafter called “meta-statement”. Meta-statements have no truth value. So there is nothing to know!

The statement that my wife is now at home does have a truth value. It is either true or false. Thus it is possible to know that my wife is at home ---- or that she is not at home. However, the meta-statement that my wife will use the internet tomorrow does not have a truth value. It is not actually a statement about what will absolutely occur. It is a prediction. It may be a very good prediction (based on her past actions, or knowing her character). But my wife may not use the internet tomorrow. She may choose to do something else instead. Whether or not my wife will use the internet tomorrow cannot be known.

Other “statements” about freely-chosen future actions may express intentions. I may say, “I am going to town tomorrow.” This meta-statement will become a statement with truth value when I have made my choice.

When God makes statements about future actions of people, He is not making an absolute statement about what necessarily must occur. Rather He is making a prediction of what will probably occur. His prediction is based on all the information He possesses concerning the people involved and the related circumstances (and that is exhaustive information). Thus God’s predictions are much more likely to come true than predictions made by anyone else. For everyone else’s knowledge of the people involved and the related circumstances is limited. However, regardless of whether the relevant knowledge is exhaustive or limited, the people about whom the prediction is made may choose to do otherwise, and so the prediction will not be actualized. Here is one record in which God thought something would happen, and the opposite occurred.

"I thought, ‘After she [Israel] has done all these things she will return to Me’; but she did not return … Jeremiah 3:10 NASB

I know the King James and related versions (Douay, JB2000, KJ21, NKJV, RWebster) translate “Return to me” as if it were a command, but the imperative mode is used neither in the Hebrew nor in the Septuagint.

Other translations have either “I thought (or “said”) ‘… she will return to me’…” or “I thought (or “said”) ‘…she would return to me’…” These translations include ASV, Darby, ESV, JPS (Jewish Publication Society), NASB, NIV, RSV, NRSV. However, whether God thought it or said it, it didn’t happen. It’s not that God was “wrong”. Doubtless He made the best prediction possible, based on His exhaustive knowledge of the situation. But the free will choices of the Hebrews resulted in an outcome different from that which God had predicted.

It would seem that I am what may be called an “ultra open theist”. Personally, I see the denotation of “meta-statement” as extending to all statements about future events, not merely those about freely-chosen future actions, the reason being that free agents may intervene in events, or God may intervene or God may change His mind. Even astronomical events which seem to be totally predictable and inevitable, may not occur if God should intervene, or if man should intervene (by way of gigantic nuclear explosions, for example).

However, God makes some statements about His future intentions about which He states that He will not change His mind. Such statements, and only such statements, would seem to be exceptions to my suggestion that all statements about future events are really “meta-statements” with no truth value.

To affirm that God knows the logically unknowable, that is, that He knows the truth value of meta-statements which have no truth value, is inherently self-contradictory. Thus, saying that God does not know people’s future choices no more sets limits on God’s omniscience than to affirm that God cannot create a stone so large that He can’t lift it, sets limits on His omnipotence.

However, God does know everyone’s present intentions, and those intentions are likely to lead to future actions which God often predicts.

#69

Hi Paidion!

Is this a piece you wrote on open theism previously, P? Or just this particular post?

Tom

#70

Hi Paidion!

Nice to read your post.

It’s really hard to quantify the opinions of open theists regarding their semantics (whether they embrace bivalence, excluded middle, etc.). Many DO reject these as you say. But my hunch is that most do not. Most adopt the position that bivalence holds universally (as well as excluded middle), but that the scope of propositions describing the future be extended from ‘will’ and ‘will not’ (both of which are false just in case the event described is ‘open’) to include ‘might and might not’. (Check out Alan Rhoda’s papers online, especially this one: alanrhoda.net/papers/opentheism.pdf).

Blessings,
Tom