The Evangelical Universalist Forum

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#41

Melchi: If what you say here is true, what is then ultimately the solid ground we can base the notion of universal salvation upon? If our will can in any way thwart God’s, then we are doomed…

Tom: Hi Mel! For those who insist that libertarian freedom is a metaphysical requirement for getting finite beings like us into loving relationships (with God and/or others), then there is no absolute guarantee that all will be saved IF by guarantee you mean a probability of ‘1’ that all will eventually choose rightly and make it. But that only spells “doom” if one supposes that the only alternative probability to 1 is 0, that is, if one supposes that we’re capable of either irrevocably solidifying into evil or choosing to irrevocably reject God. That would mean we render the probability of our saying yes to God ‘0’ and foreclose all possibility of Godward movement. Doom = 0 possibility of Godward becoming. But in denying that the probability is (strictly speaking) 1 I’m not committed to saying it’s 0. There are probabilities of lesser than 1 and greater than 0.

God is loving and patient enough pursue us as long as it takes. Technically (= mathematically, = anally!) there’s the tiniest of probabilities that a person would continue forever to renew their rejection of God, on and on and on. But the likelihood of this happening (as Reitan has showed with his shoebox analogy) is insanely minute, so minute as to render irrational any sustained consideration of it. It’s more likely that a tub of Scrabble letters tossed off the Eiffel Tower will fall to the ground below and spell out Psalm 23. There is a probability one could assign to this happening, but its smaller than we could imagine. Likewise, given God’s unfailing love + unending time + the impossibility of our irrevocably shutting the door to God, the probability that someone somewhere will persist for ever in renewing their rejection of God is so small one would be irrational to appeal to it as a basis for their despair or fear that all might not eventually make it.

I have every reason to be confident that everybody will make it and no rational basis upon which to ‘fear’ doom for anyone.

Melchi: There are certainly various considerations in how the word ‘free’ is used in different contexts. I see the word “free” as generally referring to unconstrained and uninfluenced (by such things as hardening, blindness and illusions) with respect to choices, definitionally.

Tom: Problem is nobody actually believes we ever exercise THAT kind of freedom. You can debate it and argue against it, but all your opponents would be straw men. I’ve never met anyone (certainly no libertarian) who believes such freedom exists or even makes sense for that matter.

Melchi: And I see this as pointing up the fact that there is still some level of blindness going on in the situations where there are those who turned “willfully” away, although the scripture is also clear that God hardens some (even those who have received revelation) and has mercy on some. But the choice of what and when is always ultimately God’s, not ours. “You did not choose me, I chose you.”

Tom: If you take a more Reformed or deterministic approach to Rom 9 and to the question of “hardening,” then you’re free to suppose that God can or may in the end just—poof—‘determine’ others in their choice for him. “Presto, be saved,” and there you are. Believing this means you can claim to enjoy a 100% guarantee that all WILL make it in the end. I don’t think such determination is even possible for God (given what I think salvation is), so I don’t have your option. But given the postmortem context, insisting that some measure of ‘say-so’ (i.e., some measure of libertarian free will) will continue forever to define the choice for God doesn’t leave me in despair of doom. I don’t mind 99.9999999 (and the 9’s run in 9 point font from here to the edge of the universe and back, a million times) as opposed to your 1.

But you’re right, libertarian free will regarding the choice between good and evil requires SOME measure of ignorance (epistemic distance) to exist. Both choices (for good and evil) have to be psychologically possible, and the only way I see to get that is to posit some measure of ignorance. If God were to close the epistemic gap SO much that we were left absolutely no grounds upon which we might falsely construe a reason for saying “no” to God, we’d be as incapable of saying the only kind of “yes” to God that can result in our salvation. I know no many on this board cling to LFW to the bitter end like I do, but well, God have mercy on my soul! Ha.

Blessings!

Tom

#42

By the way, “epistemic distance” (or ‘ignorance’) isn’t necessarily ‘blindness’, if you have willful or sinful ‘blindness’ in mind. Not at all. Any sentient being who’s not omniscient is “ignorant” of some things, i.e., experiences/lives with some measure of epistemic distance. That’s not evil. It’s just finitude. God’s angels are not omniscient as God is. They’re ‘ignorant’ of some things. Nothing evil about it.

Tom

#43

With all the prattle of measuring man’s “free will”, God’s omniscience is made folly. God’s omniscience leaves no room for a choice outside His.

#44

That’s hardly the case John. I don’t have any issues with divine omniscience.

Tom

#45

and divine omniscience has no issues with you, Tom :mrgreen:

#46

When I went through my “free will theology” phase after rejecting Calvinism (and prior to embracing universalism), I thought I was missing something whenever I would read an author give some sort of defense of libertarian freedom. For instance, in his book Most Moved Mover, Clark Pinnock says (p. 127),

“What I call ‘real freedom’ is also called libertarian or contra-causal freedom. It views a free action as one in which a person is free to perform an action or refrain from performing it and is not completely determined in the matter by prior forces - nature, nurture or even God. Libertarian freedom recognizes the power of contrary choice. One acts freely in a situation if, and only if, one could have done otherwise. Free choices are choices that are not causally determined by conditions preceding them. It is the freedom of self-determination, in which the various motives and influences informing the choice are not the sufficient cause of the choice itself. The person makes the choice in a self-determined way. A person has options and there are different factors influencing us in deciding among them but the decision one takes involves making one of the reasons one’s own, which is anything but random.”

Here we read of “contra-causal freedom” and of “choices that are not causally determined by conditions preceding them.” And then he goes on to say that such a choice is “anything but random.” However, if “random” is understood in the sense of “chance,” at least one definition I’ve found for this word sounds very much like what Pinnock is defending: “something that happens without apparent cause.” Other words that come to mind when I try to conceive of the kind of decisions of which Pinnock speaks are “arbitrary,” “capricious” and “unreasonable.” Why does a person choose one reason over another when “making one of the reasons one’s own”? According to Pinnock, the answer to this question cannot be because of any given factor or influence. If there is any “because” in the answer, it can only be, “because she chooses it.”

According to this view, two people could, hypothetically, share the same exact motives and have the same exact influences operating on them when faced with a decision, and yet they could still use their “contra-causal freedom” to make two completely different decisions. Is there any reasonable explanation that could be given for why two different decisions could be reached in this hypothetical situation? I can’t think of one.

Jerry Walls (who contributed to Universal Salvation? The Current Debate) writes in Why I Am Not A Calvinist (p. 103):

“…the common experience of deliberation assumes that our choices are undetermined. When we deliberate, we not only weigh the various factors involved, we also weight them. That is, we decide how important different considerations are in relation to one another. These factors do not have a pre-assigned weight that everyone must accept. Part of deliberation is sifting through these factors and deciding how much they matter to us. All of this assumes that it really is up to us how we will decide.”

So my question would be: why does a person weight one factor more or less than another factor when trying to reach a decision? When “sifting through the factors,” why would Walls decide that one factor means more to him than another if they have no “pre-assigned weight”? According to his view, Walls might answer, “Because I chose to weight this factor more than the others.” And if asked why he chose to weight one factor more than the others, we might then get to see what “libertarian free will” apparently boils down to: “I chose to because I chose to.”

In his book Making Sense of Your Freedom , James W. Felt writes (p. 81):

“The mind in its drive toward intelligibility asks, ‘What is the ultimate reason why this rather than that outcome has resulted?’ (Why did Lee, for instance, decide to go ahead and attack entrenched Union forces at Gettysburg?) If the act is free, then the only possible answer - admittedly still perplexing, yet perfectly adequate - is this: the sole, ultimate reason, given a variety of enabling motives, is the acting person, the agent. There is no possibility of looking farther, but then there is also no need. Given all the requisite circumstances, it is the agent who is explanation for the act and its outcome, in such a way as not to stand in need of further explanation.”

That Felt calls such an answer to the question of why decisions are made “perplexing” is a great understatement. It’s not only perplexing, it’s unintelligible and completely unreasonable. Imagine a teenager asking her mother, “Why did Dad leave you?” According to Felt, a “perfectly adequate” answer to this reasonable question would be, “Your dad. He alone is the explanation.”

What is perplexing to me is that so many intelligent people can cling so tenaciously to the idea that our choices must ultimately be arbitrary, unreasonable and without cause to have meaning or value. While for them it may seem self-evident and intuitive that they possess this libertarian, “contra-causal” freedom, I would argue that they’re simply misinterpreting what they’re experiencing, based on faulty reasoning.

#47

Yes, and this is equivalent to saying “I Am that I Am”. This is the vanity of man, a God in his own eyes.

Thanks for posting that Aaron. That message was good.

I believe Universalism above all cries out, [size=150]“Love”[/size] and [size=150]“God’s sovereignty, absolutely!”[/size]

For the life of me I cannot understand how an honest reasoner cannot see this except by a forced ignorance and or an appointed lying spirit. And I don’t mean that to demean. I truly stand in awe of this phenomenon.

Bless everyone of you as you fulfill your preordained roles perfectly,

John

#48

I’m going to second John’s thanks for that post, Aaron. Great job.

I sometimes have difficulty expressing what I mean by certain things, and I think you’ve summed up my position rather nicely (and better than I did).

#49

I guess I’m not as comfortable as you are in leaving it to what amounts to chance and probabilities…

Well, as I think Aaron’s post above nicely demonstrates, that statement does not appear to be true.
And there is a definition of free will out there (not necessarily libertarian) that requires that level of freedom for it actually to be considered free. Look up the words free and freewill in various dictionaries. You will find that there are definitions that maintain that to call something “free”, it must actually be free in every sense.

People may not believe that we ever exercise that kind of freedom, but that’s what their arguments logically amount to.

Ah, but you see, I’m not free… :mrgreen: I’m determined to ‘suppose’ what I see by what I actually see there… :sunglasses:

Part of my whole thing is that I don’t really see our real choice as between good and evil. Good and Evil both come from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We are stuck ‘choosing’ between good and evil, because we’re still eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. True freedom is being given the ability (and it must be given) to eat from the Tree of Life instead.
As far as I’m concerned, as long as we’re choosing between good and evil, we’re still in a very significant level of ignorance.

As to saying the kind of yes to God that can result in our salvation, I don’t believe we can personally contribute anything to our salvation other than walking/ living out what we have already been provided. In other words, saying yes to God does not precipitate our salvation; only His action in our life can do that.

#50

From Bob Wilson: Aaron, I’m not ready to declare that there can be no way to affirm some meaningful sense of human “freedom.” But if anyone asks me to explain a “free-will” where we have the power of ‘contrary-choice,’ I too am grateful to you for quotes and and an eloquent account of why it seems incoherently irrational to me also, and a huge mystery at best. It may be that this reasoning agreed with my UCLA psychology training, which was centered in Skinner’s rat labs, rather than in humanistic psychology. Thus when the philosophy dept. sometimes assumed the essence of humaness was freedom, my mind reverted to the dramatic cause and effect data of the rat lab.

#51

Wonderfully put! We’re all looking through a veil. To compensate for the that partial blindness we look to all sorts of things - experiences for the exuberant, dogma for the religious, teachers and theologians for the students - but in the end it’s trading our ignorance for another. All of this boils down to faith - what we believe at a given moment. Something spectacular must happen at the resurrection to correct all this faulty sight. We shall see Him as He is - I’m expecting to have have my breath taken away and all arguments as well. ‘His action in our life’ doesn’t hold a candle to what is coming as far as ‘actions’ go. The resurrection is the big one.

It should be apparent that our level of ignorance is impossible to gauge because we ARE ignorant. And while it is true that we have the advantage as Christians, what we may have guessed of having known, may turn out to be less than 1% - and there are hints that that is so. Knowing God is about epiphanies not lectures.

#52

… salvation; only His action in our life can do that. ~ Melchizedek

Knowing God is about epiphanies not lectures. ~ RanRan

A hearty “Amen!” to that

#53

John: I believe Universalism above all cries out, “Love” and “God’s sovereignty, absolutely!” For the life of me I cannot understand how an honest reasoner cannot see this except by a forced ignorance and or an appointed lying spirit.

Tom: Dude, if anyone is ignorant of what you think is the right view on divine sovereignty, given your view their ignorance is the inevitable and unavoidable result of all antecedent states. Given your determinism, just what is it you’re astounded at? Per your view, John, reasoning has little to do with what we end up believing, since ‘reasoning’ itself doesn’t really share in determining beliefs in the sense required to justify our being astounded at what anybody believes. Everything that occurs follows in the great causal chain from preceding states of affairs.

I too see the grace and presence of God in all human beings. It’s overwhelming. I too am confident all will be reconciled to God. I too ground my confidence in the sovereign love and wisdom of God at work in all things, the inviolable logoi of created beings.

And when it comes to freedom, well, I share your astonishment. I’m as unable to understand how anybody cannot see that we are indeed libertarianly free as you are unable to see differently than you do.

Melchi: There are certainly various considerations in how the word ‘free’ is used in different contexts. I see the word “free” as generally referring to unconstrained and uninfluenced (by such things as hardening, blindness and illusions) with respect to choices, definitionally.

Tom: See it as you will. But you have to engage the actual beliefs and positions of other people regardless of what you prefer to see “true freedom” as. Problem is nobody actually believes we ever absolutely uninfluenced and unconditioned in the exercise of our wills.

Melchi: Well, as I think Aaron’s post above nicely demonstrates, that statement does not appear to be true.

Tom: No, Aaron didn’t demonstrate that anybody actually believes we are ever uninfluenced and absolutely unconditioned in the exercise of our wills. I saw Aaron ‘wondering’ and ‘questioning’ and ‘asking’, but I saw no demonstration of the incoherence of LFW. No libertarian thinks that libertarian free will means exercise one’s will in ways that are absolutely uninfluenced by anything at all.

Melchi: And there is a definition of free will out there (not necessarily libertarian) that requires that level of freedom for it actually to be considered free. Look up the words free and freewill in various dictionaries.

Tom: Save me the trouble. Provide me a couple names—theologians, philosophers, sociologist, anybody who believes such a notion of freedom. I’ll join you in arguing against them. That’s just the point here. It contributes nothing to my points or positions to argue that some belief I don’t hold to is false.

Melchi: You will find that there are definitions that maintain that to call something “free”, it must actually be free in every sense. People may not believe that we ever exercise that kind of freedom, but that’s what their arguments logically amount to.

Tom: Libertarian views on free will don’t logically entail a commitment to an absolute, unrestrained, unconditioned and uninfluenced exercise of the will. That’s just not the case my friend. There’s a huge literature on it and no way to drag it all in here, but Aaron will need to do much better if he wants to “demonstrate” that libertarian freewill is incoherent OR that it logically entails a commitment to absolutely uninfluenced and unconditioned volition, as you say.

Merry Christmas boys! Don’t spike the eggnog.

Tom

#54

To get back to the point of the thread…my interest was just clarifying what beliefs are motivating Greg Boyd’s position on UR and annihilationism. If LFW is false, then much of Greg’s beliefs (and mine) will crumble. If in the end that occurs, I’ll crumble along with my views into the gracious embrace of Christ in whom I trust. If LFW turns out to be true, then much of what you determinists believe in will crumble and you’ll no doubt fall as safely into the arms of Christ.

So what profit is there in our attempts to persuade each other to change his view of freedom? Let’s go love people and demonstrate not this or that version of free will, but the love of Christ for hurting people. When we know enough to really perceive the truth about all this, we won’t care who was right or wrong.

Rock on,
Tom

#55

‘For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.’

Asking (or demanding) to be annihilated after being resurrected may seem like a fine display of freedom but it is asking for the impossible. We cannot die again. The choice of being no more (suicide) is gone with our second birth (which we did not choose - any more than we chose to be born in the first place.)

The resurrected are immortal in every sense of the word. What has been ‘annihilated’ is the choice of death over abundant (real) life. Boyd’s speculation cannot exist in the new creation. If, after being resurrected, we can die again - then so can Christ. I don’t feel the need to go there just to entertain wild speculation on the ‘rights’ of the ‘free’.

“Everyone will be salted with fire.” There’s no choice in that either. Let God be God as He turns our hearts around. ‘Better’ sinners expecting worse sinners to desire suicide lacks confidence in the love of God. Hypocrisy is most certainly dross.

#56

I hope someday the truth of all this we be as unquestionably clear to me as it is to you RanRan. Until then, thanks for your prayers.

TGB

#57

What’s unclear about it? There’s no more death - it’s been destroyed. Boyd’s proposition that some sinners, after grasping that truth (and much more), would prefer suicide is silly. One, it’s impossible - they’re immortal! Two, they will be drawn to God, not death (which doesn’t exist anyhow). They will confess Christ as their Lord - that is irrevocable. So this ‘desire for suicide’ amongst the resurrected idea of Boyd is ludicrous - besides being dank and dark. So start with what cannot be revoked (even by Boyd) and work your way backwards and forwards from there. (How do all men get to that point of confession? And where would that lead?) Life.

That’s not to say that some men haven’t preferred annihilation in THIS life and thought they would get it in death. But, as it turns out, not so.

I doubt if all this could ever be ‘unquestionably clear’ via free/determined surmising - it’s the wrong place to start. You’re free to ignore that advice. :wink:

#58

Hi Tom,

That’s true!

But that’s the thing, Tom…it seems that a belief in LFW at least partly contributes to some people’s (such as Greg Boyd) being unable to embrace UR. And if we’re as potentially unpredictable as the LFW view seems to demand that we be (see my thoughts below), then there does seem to be some uncertainty involved as to whether we will, in fact, “fall safely into the arms of Christ” - or, at the very least, it’s uncertain as to whether some may or may not have to endure long ages of suffering for no other reason than because their LFW causes them to keep coming up “heads” instead of “tails” (to borrow Reitan’s penny analogy). But I just don’t read in Scripture where one’s final state is said to hinge on the whimsy of one’s will. And it seems to me that the LFW view only serves to undermine one’s confidence in God’s ability to achieve his redemptive purposes for all people (which is what annihilation would amount to - a failure on God’s part to save those he loves).

Now, I could use any decision as an example, but since the apostle Paul’s conversion has already entered into this discussion, I’ll use his as an example. We all agree that, as a result of Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he became a changed man. Instead of continuing in hard-hearted rebellion against Christ, he became joyfully submitted to him. Now, according to the LFW view, if Paul’s decision to submit to Christ was “free,” then it would mean that he could have chosen otherwise (as quoted before, Pinnock states that “libertarian freedom recognizes the power of contrary choice. One acts freely in a situation if, and only if, one could have done otherwise.”). This means that, in an identical state of affairs and with all things being equal (i.e., with the same motives, reasons, influences, etc., being present), a different outcome could have resulted. My question is, how would a proponent of LFW explain and account for such a change in outcomes? If nothing new enters into the equation prior to Paul’s decision, how would this theoretical change in outcomes not be completely arbitrary and random? I realize this is not something you’ve never heard before, but I’d really like to know how you go about tackling what appears to me to be a glaring and insurmountable problem with LFW.

I agree that demonstrating the love of Christ to hurting people is more important than discussing the validity of LFW, and that it should be our first priority as believers. But I also don’t see such discussions as being necessarily fruitless or trivial, or as counterproductive to our being faithful and compassionate disciples of Christ - and I’ve read enough discussions about LFW and similar topics in which you have participated (I’m thinking of Greg Boyd’s old forum) to know that you don’t think so, either - or at least, you didn’t at the time! :slight_smile:

#59

First off, Merry Christimas, I whipping up a batch of Beef Bourguignon for tomorrow’s dinner - so far so good.

Discussions of the autonomy of will are always fruitless. The deeper the discussions go the more convoluted and esoteric the language becomes and, if it’s in a theological discussion, the more scripture must be bent to accommodate a particular finding. Which means the Gospel suffers, which in turn causes discipleship to suffer as one takes off on a tangent of the Gospel which is another. And if discipleship is not about delivering the correct message of Christianity (the Gospel) then what is discipleship about? Walking old ladies across the street? The Boy Scouts figured that one out! Discipleship is about the message we spread. The good news. The TRUE Gospel.

I’ve debated Calvinists for years. I’ve debated so called “Armenians”, Catholics and my fellow Lutherans and a friend who is Greek Orthodox (he taught me the most by way of debate) goofy preterists (I refuse to call them ‘full’) Gnostics, New-agers and downright Idiots. So I know the argument you’re defending as useful and as worthwhile time spent. I would engage in it, but it’s so BORING. But to your premise that it is worthwhile, it’s only useful in this regard: you come out the other side and agree with Paul that some discussions ARE fruitless. That revelation will come if you’re being honest.

I believed the Gospel the moment I heard those words “Jesus loves me” it never occurred to me that adults would exclude my friends.

Here’s my real beef. The Gospel is not a treatise for debate - it stands on it’s own as the Word of God - the essential message to mankind. Perhaps hinted at as milk and developed as meat in the minds of believers - but it is universal in it’s message - everyone will bow, confess, worship and call Christ their Savior. Everyone. Everyone is in Christ as they were in Adam. Relegating these facts, and many, many more, as objects of debate (when they are so clearly stated) is the sign of person still caught between faith and doubt - a disciple in waiting. i.e. A non-disciple for the time being as it pertains to the Gospel. At my age, I’ve seen enough to know ambivalence when I see it. You’re on sidelines enjoying the real fight, while enjoying the safety of being above it all - what entitlement! You’re so special, so unbloodied on Mount Olympus with the other gods and philosophers!

As our Lord said, let your yes be yes. Choose up sides like a man, Aaron. Meanwhile, you’re like Tom waiting for the jury to chime in on this or that particular ‘theory’ before believing it. Good luck. Determine what the Gospel is and stand by it. God hates a coward.

Anyway, I love you guys. Don’t take it personal. Respond, but thoughtfully. Back to cooking Christmas dinner…

#60

Aaron, let me ask a very simple question. Do you believe in a necessary God-world relationship? That is, do you take, say, the Process view that God has always been in relationship to Creation (that God’s relating to some creation is a necessary feature of God’s existence)? Or do you take the traditional Christian view that God created the world ex nihilo (or something along those lines, so that (a) the universe came into being (it’s not eternal as is God), and (b) the universe comes into being by the choice/command of God?

Tom