Not at all my friend. I like you very much sobornost. At the moment I am in a public area drinking my Tim Hortons coffee, so am enjoying the conversation with the two of you. I should clarify that I do not view God as just the starting domino. I believe He is active throughout history, and in our own lives.
Puddy
John Gill (a Baptist Commentator) had this to say about that verse.
Through philosophy: not right philosophy, or true wisdom, the knowledge of God, of the things of nature, of things natural, moral, and civil; which may be attained unto by the use of reason, and light of nature. The apostle does not mean to condemn all arts and sciences, as useless and hurtful, such as natural philosophy in its various branches, ethics, logic, rhetoric… when kept within due bounds, and in their proper place and sphere; for with instances of these the Scriptures themselves abound; but he means that philosophy, or science, which is falsely so called, the false notions of philosophers; such as the eternity of matter, and of this world, the mortality of souls, the worshipping of demons and angels, &c.
George Haydock (a Catholic Commentator) said this:
This is neither to condemn in general the use of philosophy, which St. Augustine commends, and made use of, nor all traditions delivered by the apostles.
The Orthodox have always believed that Philosophy prepared the gentiles for the Gospel in much the same way the Old Testament prepared the Jews (largely because Plato or Socrates once said that if there ever was a truly righteous man the world would crucify him, and they regarded that as almost prophetic.)
Tom Talbott and William Lane Craig are both Philosophers, and Jim Coram has never hesitated to employ philosophy to support hyper-Calvanism.
**That’s interesting.
Please explain what you mean by that.**
And water on Mercury serves God’s loving purpose better than the absence of water on Mercury would because it’s discovery may have caused some Christians to lose their faith?
Thank you Dick.
Please say more.
**
Do you believe God has libertarian free will?**
Can He give this to derivative beings (or do created, derivative beings have “free will” in only a compatibilist sense)?
Does free will involve randomness (and if so, where does the randomness come from, and** how can the “dice” do anything if God takes His hands off**)?
Can you define libertarian free will (or are we using the definition of “random decision generators” that agnostic gave on another forum)?
P.S. I just posted this reply to someone on another forum.
onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7770&p=115180#p115180
Do any of you see any way the multiverse theory might be an option for a Christian Theist (or see any flaws in my logic here)?
Thanks for the info Michael.
Concerning John Gill’s comment, in fact I don’t believe philosophy is being kept “within due bounds, and in their proper place” I suspect anyone that is into philosophy will modify Paul’s words, but I personally take his warning seriously, especially because of his other statements,
“Let no one be deluding himself. If anyone among you is presuming to be wise in this eon, let him become stupid, that he may be becoming wise, for the wisdom of this world is stupidity with God”
1 Cor. 3.18-19
“And I, coming to you, brethren, came not with superiority of word or of wisdom, announcing to you the testimony of God, for I decide not to perceive anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified… and my word and my heralding were not with the persuasive words of human wisdom, but with demonstration of spirit and of power, that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” 1 Cor. 2.1-5
It seems to me on the particular issue we are discussing, that humanity will simply not let God be God. You are wondering why God put water on Mercury? Would you prefer we simply lived on a flat earth, and that the stars were really peep holes through some solid sphere?
Doesn’t God have the right to create a vast universe, with actual working laws?
Does He really have to explain Himself to you or me, and does He really lose his sovereignty, because we can’t explain why planets have certain trajectories, and some have water?
I ask you these questions honestly, and not to be impolite. I am glad we are living in a real working universe. Not some artificially, contrived, matrix.
Concerning Christians losing their faith, It simply is not God’s intention that all believe at the moment. I am very thankful God locked up Israel in unbelief. It was through their offense that salvation came to the nations. God has His reasons. There is simply no way for you and I to entirely grasp them.
Have you heard the statement “Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star?” Can you really know what actually serves a purpose and what does not serve a purpose?
“O, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How insrutable are His judgements, and untraceable His ways!” Ro. 11.33
And to put water on Mercury for no particular reason?
And to set earth rotating on it’s axis in a counter-clockwise direction (and Venus in a clockwise direction) for no particular reason?
**
Yes!
He has the right.
The question is how He could make these arbitrary choices if hard determinism (which is a philosophical position advocated by Jim Coram, and defended by you) is true, and if libertarian free will is the logical fallacy hard determinists like you and Jim say it is.**
Unless God has free will, I don’t see how He could choose between clockwise and counter-clockwise, and I don’t think it makes any sense to say that He chose to make earth rotate in a counter-clockwise direction because He was constrained by love.
Maybe there are times when we humans need to explain certain things to ourselves, if we want to go on believing that God (or the particular type of God we were taught to believe in) exists.
And if by the word “sovereignty” you mean to imply that He has the right to do things for no particular reason, doesn’t that imply that He has some kind of libertarian free will?
And what about the word “election”?
When the 9th chapter of Romans says that He choose Jacob over Esau when they were yet unborn, before either had done any good or evil, “that the purpose of election might stand,” doesn’t that seem to imply that He was exercising some kind of Divine libertarian free will?
I’m not saying I understand what that is (I’m hoping Dick might help me out there), but I’m saying your attacking Philosophy (after defending Jim Coram’s highly Philosophical views) doesn’t do anything to forward your argument, strengthen my faith, or answer any of the questions I’ve raised here.
In case you’ve forgotten, you entered this conversation saying
And
And then went on to say
And when observed facts fail to support your philosophy (i.e. the existence of contingency in the universe, planets that can either rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise, water where it doesn’t do anyone any harm or good), you attack philosophy.
Philosophy is nothing more or less than using the God-given faculty of reason, and Paul was being highly philosophical (in the first chapter of Romans) when he said that that which may be known of God can be known by that which He has made.
So when you attack philosophy, you’re attacking reason.
And I’ve tried to answer you honestly.
If I understand you correctly, you seem to think that the laws of this working universe are the only ones God could have chosen that would work.
There must be some unfathomable, loving cosmic significance in the sun rising in the east instead of the west, water on a lifeless planet, all the alphabets starting with the “a” sound, and the little baby who became A. E. Knoch being given the name “Adolph” (instead of the name “Albert”), right?
You seem to be arguing that all of these contingent things are necessary because you don’t believe God has free will, and Jim Coram’s philosophy doesn’t explain how He can make arbitrary choices.
And I think you’ve resorted to attacking philosophy because you can’t defend the opinions you’ve expressed here.
Hi Michael –
(No need to get annoyed with Puddy here 
– to my mind he’s only pointing out the limits of philosophy, but he’s expressed openness towards the enterprise if not taken as an absolute. God wants us to use our reason – but also to be aware of its limits 
).
The classical theologians would have answered your question about God’s freedom with the concept of aseity I think (aseity like omnipotence is an attribute of God)
Aseity has two aspects: absolute independence and self-existence. It affirms that God is uncaused, depending on no other being for the source of His existence. And it affirms that God is completely self-sufficient, having within Himself the sufficient reason for His own existence (I am who I am: Exodus 3:14).
Most theists understand all that is not God to be brought about by God, and that many (for example, St. Aquinas) argue from the non-aseity of the universe to the existence of God.
So God does have libertarian freewill in creating the universe. The creation is an expression of God’s pure gratuitousness, abundance and loving goodness. If someone, something etc had created God then God’s actions would be caused and determined in some way. However, God as creator expresses God’s self in his creation. We could argue that God’s act of creation is therefore determined by God’s qualities – but surely we must mean by freedom that an act is a genuine expression of our purposes arising from our true nature. The sort of freedom God has is not arbitrary – and the Greek Fathers argues that human beings become free in the truest sense as they act in accordance with God’s will and therefore grow from being the flawed image of God into the true likeness of God. I guess in this account being un-free means to act in arbitrary ways that do not express our true nature
Yes this is the sense in which classical theologians have talked about God’s libertarian freedom. The eternal God is completely outside of our framework of contingent existence. If there is an answer this is it – God in the act of creation is non-contingent in a way that contingent beings like you and I find it impossible to grasp – although our concepts point towards something like aseity.
However, there’s more to the story than this – because of course God enters into relationship with his creation in time (this is why the process theologians and open theists etc, are critical of over concentration on aseity in any talk about God). But that’s another post. I’m not gifted at metaphysics - this is the best I can do. I think it was Augustine who compared all of our attempts to comprehend God as like a child digging a hole on the beach and then trying to fill the hole with water – cupped handful by cupped handful.
All the best
Dick
That’s interesting.
You don’t sound like you have any problem with a compatibilist view of human free will when you say “if someone, something etc had created God then God’s actions would be caused and determined in some way,” but you allow for the existence of libertarian free will when you say “God does have libertarian freewill in creating the universe.”
I’m not sure I understand this, but you’ve given me something to think about.
Thank you.
Hey Michael
Thanks for your response. Concerning philosophy I did immediately make clear my hesitation, and even expressed some curiosity about why Jim coram was so philosophical on the topic.
In the previous article I further clarified my reservations. When I gave you my opinion earlier that I did not believe God has free will, I was simply giving my personal philosophical opinion. However, I do not see scripture really saying so one way or another. I did not mean for you or anyone else to hold this to me. I simply made an effort to approach this subject from a rational position.
Concerning your search after truth, I apologize for being a stumbling block to you. I think I will not approach this topic again from a philosophical standpoint. I was not defending Jim coram’s views, I was defending what I believe to be taught from scripture. I have never met the man, in fact I have not had fellowship with a Concordant believer in about 12 years.
I don’t understand how God could exist, I don’t understand his mind, I am not his advisor. I am thankful for his revelation in the scriptures.
I am not sure how God having a free will settles anything either. Questions concerning God will always be difficult. I also don’t feel I lost the debate with you. I hold strongly to causality, and I, based my arguments upon that.
I am well aware how philosophical and heated these debates can become. You will likely disagree with me, but I got the sense you too quickly swept some of my points under the carpet, and so in my last article to you, I got more directly to the point, probably with the sense that our debate was already nearing it’s end.
I accept that even this discussion was out of God, and so I depart it in peace.
God’s blessings upon you, Michael
Puddy
But He would have to be timeless too (omnitemporal, dipolar, or atemporal sans creation/temporal with creation), wouldn’t He?
I thank you for clarifying that.
I don’t think I did.
But let’s look at A. E. Knoch.
He used initials because his birth name was Adolph.
Given your views on causality, there’d have to be a reason for this.
If I swept anything under the carpet, maybe it was the suggestion that sometimes there are unseen reasons.
In A.E. Knoch’s case, maybe having such an infamous first name was meant to teach him humility, and maybe it did–I don’t know.
But it seems a real stretch to suggest that there could be some unseen reason for the sun rising in the east instead of the west, or all the known alphabets starting with a symbol representing the “aa,” or “ah” sound.
This is why it seems undeniable to me that some things in the universe are contingent.
I think you advanced the discussion, and I thank you.
I don’t think there’s any reason for you to leave if you have more to say
And you.
Thank you.
OK Michael –
For me the Incarnation expresses and embodies the paradoxes of whihc you speak (mroe later).
Regarding whether or not I am a compatibilist regarding human freedom – give me time. These discussions are not easy.
Regarding the discovery of water on Venus etc or life on other planets not being consistent with the biblical witness and therefore being a scandal/obstacle to faith – well these things don’t cause problems for me. Neither does speculation about a multiverse alternative universe in which Jesus is incarnated but does not need to die and therefore actually does sanctify old age in his Incarnation . Jesus Christ is the Word of God for human beings – the Bible testifies to Christ the Word in human history for who the Incarnation is the ‘once for all’ event. However, the New Testament also abounds in Paul’s hymns to the Cosmic Christ and in The Prologue to the Gospel of John with concepts and imagery of the cosmic story of the Christ. Logos theology – a strong theme in the early Greek Fathers - stresses that as in the Fourth Gospel Jesus is revealed as the eternal Word of the Father begotten without origin and therefore Christ existed as the hidden power and meaning of human events before he took human flesh. With our enlarged sense of the cosmos we can infer from this that Christ exists as the hidden power and meaning of cosmic events too. I’ve no idea whether or not this means that Christ has incarnated elsewhere in the cosmos – I just rest assured that the meaning of the cosmos is ‘Jesus shaped’ and will be known as such to beings on other planets if they exist. Sydney Carter the Quaker hymn writer speculated on this theme when he wrote:
Every star shall sing a carol,
Every creature high or low.
Come and praise the King of Heaven
By whatever name you know.
Chorus
God above man below,
Holy is the name I know.
When the king of all creation,
Had a cradle on the earth.
Holy was the human body,
Holy was the human birth.
Chorus
Who can tell what other cradle?
High above the Milky Way;
Still may rock the King of Heaven,
On another Christmas day.
Chorus
Who can count how many crosses?
Still to come or long ago.
Crucify the King of Heaven,
Holy is the name I know.
Chorus
Who can tell what other body?
He will hallow for his own.
I will praise the son of Mary,
Brother of my blood and bone.
Chorus
Every star and every planet,
Every creature high and low.
Come and praise the King of Heaven,
By whatever name you know.
All the best
Dick
Thank you.
Thank you for your gracious words Michael.
I feel I don’t have anymore to contribute, but perhaps you did give my views a fair hearing.
You also have the right to hold me to my views expressed, including my statement about God not having a free will. I think it was more after the fact that I maybe wished I didn’t talk so sure on that subject. Hopefully your searching will bear much fruit for you!
All the best, my friend.
Puddy
I found this video interesting, but does the idea of you being the uncaused causer of your own actions contradict the idea of God being the only uncaused Cause?
(I think that’s the real problem I’m having in understanding this.)
closertotruth.com/video-profile/Do-Humans-Have-Free-Will-J-P-Moreland-/1165
I take some courage that these debates have been around for a long time. Chaucer has a gentle dig at them in his Nun’s Priest’s tale where the cock Chanticleer has dreamed that he will be eaten by a fox if ventures out into the yard. However his scolding wife, Dame Pertelote the hen, mocks his cowardice and puts the nightmare down to indigestion and recommends a laxative. However, as Chanticleer ventures out into the yard Reynard the Fox is indeed waiting for him and the narrator muses that –
*But what God foresees must come to pass, according to certain scholars. You may witness it from any perfect scholar that there is great difference of opinion in the schools and great disputation about this matter, and there always has been among a hundred thousand people. 3239
But I cannot sift the wheat from the chaff, as can the holy doctor Augustine or Boethius or Bishop Bradwardine; whether God’s glorious foreknowledge compels me by necessity to do a thing (by necessity I mean absolute necessity), or if I am granted free choice to do or not that same thing, though God foreknew it long before; or whether His knowing does not constrains at all except by a conditional necessity. With such matters I will not concern myself.
My tale is all about a cock, as you may hear*
Which in the original is -
*But what that God forwot mot nedes be,
After the opinioun of certeyn clerkis.
Witnesse on him, that any perfit clerk is,
That in scole is gret altercacioun
In this matere, and greet disputisoun,
And hath ben of an hundred thousand men.
But I ne can not bulte it to the bren,
As can the holy doctour Augustyn,
Or Boece, or the bishop Bradwardyn,
Whether that Goddes worthy forwiting
Streyneth me nedely for to doon a thing,
(Nedely clepe I simple necessitee);
Or elles, if free choys be graunted me
To do that same thing, or do it noght,
Though God forwoot it, er that it was wroght;
Or if his writing streyneth nevere a del
But by necessitee condicionel.
I wol not han to do of swich matere;
My tale is of a cok, as ye may here, *
All the best
Dick
I didn’t watch the video, but interesting observation and question. However, I don’t think it would be correct that we are “uncaused causes” in the same way God is, since in order for us to exist at all, even in potentiality in His mind, He must first exist.
Well, I must say, I have been rather intrigued as I’ve watched the developments on this thread (and the other related threads) over these past few days. I’ve had so many thoughts along the way, but I’ve held back from voicing them for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I’ve been struggling to keep up with the twists and turns that the conversation has been taking, and to order my thoughts accordingly. I figure that if I don’t share something soon, my mental backlog as it relates to these subjects will start to degrade to the point that I’ll never be able to get back into it.
The fact of the matter is, the more I hear from proponents on both sides of the determinism/in-determinism issue, the less simple it becomes, because both sides are making sense to me. On the one hand, I find myself agreeing with the determinists/compatabilists on the idea that indeterminacy and randomness are inherently incompatible with decision-making, since our rationality seems to be entirely undercut and made null-and-void by their inclusion in the decision-making process.
On the other hand, I also find myself agreeing with the libertarians/in-determinists on the idea that determinism, regardless of whether it be of a “hard” or “soft” variety, does tend to lead to the idea that we’re all essentially just robots without any legitimate sense of moral culpability.
Seems like this debate has been going on for a while; in fact, quite a while even before these threads were started. For the past several hundred years, this debate has been going on, with proponents on both sides remaining rather stalwart as to their positions, but neither side really answering the concerns of the other side in a manner that is agreeable. So, is this the unsolvable conundrum that so many people have painted it for being? Somehow I doubt it.
The thing is, sometimes the reason that we don’t get the right answers is because we don’t ask the right questions.
What if the reason that this “debate” has been going on for so long is because it has been framed in such a way that it is inherently unanswerable?
Imagine a guy who’s on trial for allegedly robbing a bank, and while he’s on the stand the prosecuting attorney asks him, “So, Mr. X., have you stopped robbing banks?” A simple “yes” or “no” is insufficient to answer the question if Mr. X has not, in fact, ever robbed a bank. What the question assumes as a premise is what the man is on trial for, and it’s obviously not fair to assume, from the outset, that which the trial is intended to determine through a critical examination of the evidence.
So, like I said, what if this “debate” is unanswerable because it’s been framed in an unanswerable manner? I’m going to suggest that perhaps we can frame this discussion differently, and in doing so, arrive at a conclusion that should be more agreeable to everyone. At least, that’s the idea, anyhow.
The thing is, I can’t really take credit for this one myself. I’ve been ruminating on these ideas since reading Tom Talbott’s, The Inescapable Love of God, as well as his’ contributions to the book, Universal Salvation: The Current Debate. Oh, and also, The Evangelical Universalist by a certain Gregory MacDonald. What got me to thinking about this was, I think, in the opening chapter of EU, where “Gregory” is discussing the various difficulties that arise when contemplating the various rationales that have been traditionally used to defend the ECT view of hell. In one of the footnotes of that section, he mentions that Eric Reitan, another author from the US:TCD book, believes that Tom Talbott has developed a new way to conceive of human freedom that he (Reitan) has dubbed “Rational Freedom.” I think that Reitan has written a book that further develops this as well, although I haven’t checked this out yet myself. In any case, I think I might have an idea of what he’s come up with, although since I haven’t actually read his newest book I might be wrong. I will nevertheless share what I’ve been thinking about since reading these things, in the hopes that something of worth might be communicated in the process.
So, to start with, I will note two axiomatic statements. The first is this: A rational agent cannot freely make choices related to something that they know nothing about. I think that’s a pretty straight forward statement that everyone should be able to agree with. The second statement is: a rational agent cannot freely make choices related to something that they know everything that there is to know about it. This one perhaps requires a bit of explanation. (And is likely subject to some revising.) Basically, if someone knows everything that there is to know about something, (and I do mean EVERYTHING), the possibilities for rational alternatives become nil. For example, if I know with 100% certainty that a certain action will result in my being injured, then for me to choose such an action would, in light of such knowledge, be a purely irrational action, which would mean that I’m not, in relation to such an action, a rational creature, and therefore, was not making a free choice. (I guess, now that I think about it, a third axiom to my understanding of all this is: Only rational agents are capable of making free choices. Animals that are guided by instinct and inanimate objects whose movements are governed by the “laws” of nature do not qualify as rational agents.)
Now, if I’m right about these things, then that means that free choices can only be made concerning a given subject, X, by rational agents that have somewhere between 0% and 100% of the possible knowledge on said given subject, X. Luckily for us, that’s where we as humans reside for pretty much all of our lives on pretty much most, if not all, subjects.
Now then, it’s my guess that the relative amount of freedom that we have as it pertains to a given subject can be modeled by a standard bell curve. When a person is born, they have minimal knowledge of the world that they’ve been born into. (Arguably there’s quite a bit of innate/instinctive knowledge that babies have, but that’s still pretty basic and perfunctory in character.) We are born, however, with a sensory apparatus that takes in information about the world around us automatically, as well as a cognitive apparatus that automatically seeks to synthesize and make sense of the information that it’s presented with. So learning is a more-or-less unavoidable part of living. That being said, insofar as our individual apparatuses are different in terms of their overall abilities and effectiveness, and since we all have unique upbringings in varying environments, the content and character of our learning is going to be very different from person to person.
So, starting with a relatively low amount of information about the world at birth, we begin to grow, and in the process, we learn about the world, gaining information as we go. As our information (and consequently, our knowledge) grows, so also does our freedom to make choices about the world in which we live.
Now, as it relates to individual subjects, our freedom to make choices in reference to said subjects can grow up to a point, but eventually we reach that point where more information actually starts to limit and restrict our freedom. For example, if I am considering investing in the stock market, I will necessarily start with so little information about the process that I really can’t do anything without first learning more about it. And, as I learn more and more, I will be exposed to more and more options for my investing consideration. Eventually, however, as I continue to learn, I will eventually come to learn which investments are better than others, and my options pool will actually start to get smaller.
So, this comprises the nucleus of my idea concerning the nature of human freedom. (So far, anyway.) I’m gonna be honest, I haven’t thought this thing through fully yet, so there’s a great deal of stuff that could be expanded upon, as well as revised and changed, etc. etc. In fact, this whole thing might just be a big waste of time. Be that as it may, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I figure there might be something to all of this, so I thought I’d share it with everyone here. So go ahead, run with it for a bit, ask lots of questions, let me know what you think. I hope that, somehow, there’s something in here that’s useful for someone.
Thank you PrototypeAnthroUnit.
I’ve got to think about what you’ve written here, but my first reaction is that you sound like a compatibilist.
And if a rational agent cannot freely make choices related to something that they know everything about, it would seem that God couldn’t freely make a rational choice between equally good alternatives that He knew everything about (like whether to set the earth rotating on it’s axis in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction; whether to give orientals the black hair He’s given them, or brown, red, or gold hair instead; whether to give Caucasians all those hair colors (as He has), or only one; whether the first Egyptian hieroglyphic a gifted Phoenecian considered when creating their Alphabet should represent an ox, and start that an “ah” sound (and all other alphabets should follow suite), or not.
Doesn’t God (at least) have to have libertarian free will to explain such things?
I just started reading this, it appears to have been written by Prof. Talbott, and it looks very interesting (and highly relevant here.)
The title is “C.C. Lewis Problem of Pain, by Thomas Talbott.”
I’d be very interested in any of your thoughts on it.
I’ve read that essay several times and think it does a very nice job of summing up many great points like the free will defense, why free will is important, and how we can know God - i.e. what level we can be said to communicate with and understand him and his actions.
I actually find myself in most philosophical agreement with Mr. Talbott, out of the few Christian philosophers who are also universalists.
Do you have any specific questions or observations yourself you’d like to talk about?