Back at School!

I'm officially back at King's as of today. I have a spacious room all to myself this year, and loving it so far. I've also met some great new people (who seem to be in awe of my guitar skills) and become reacquainted with some old friends. 

Below are a few goals I have made for myself to ensure I have a great term. 

1. To be in the Word every day (using tools like the Daily Audio Bible)
2. To not sleep through any classes
3. To attend church every Sunday
4. To always be actively reading a book for pleasure
5. To blog faithfully (I have yet to determine how frequent this will be)
6. To eat in the cafeteria at least as often as I eat alone in my room
7. To open my room door as much as possible, to allow others into my space (and hence, into my life)
8. To be intentional about being in dialogue with my professors about deadlines, projects, extensions. I struggled last year with having several major projects due at the same time as my voice jury was looming - the stress made me unable to sing properly. I'm going to avail myself of the right to request an extension whenever needed. 
9. To not be afraid to tell a professor that I will not be completing a project. Also, if it seems mathematically correct for me not to bother spending time on a project that isn't going to have much effect on my final grade for a course, I'm endeavoring to have the courage to simply say "no".

This list may lengthen, or shorten, as the term goes on. But this is at least what I'm going to be working toward. 

Which reminds me, I haven't actively read a book for pleasure yet today. I'd best do that now. 

Split Infinitives

A substitute English professor I had in my intro English class two years ago tried to convince the class that split infinitives, though not "wrong", were "stylistically unfortunate". I failed to see the need for such a bizarre distinction. Still less do I see the need to bind ourselves to a rule which creates as much confusion as it prevents. Split the infinitive if it makes sense to do so; or else don't.

Splitting Infinitives – Justin Taylor

Liberal Economic Policies and the "Broken Window" Fallacy

YouTube - The Broken Window Fallacy

How to Properly Deal with Refugees

Australia's Socialist Government has the Tamil situation figured out; why can't Canada follow suit?

YouTube - Australia lifts suspension ban

Last Day!

It's my last day working at the church office today.

I've finished my last order of service. Right now I'm waiting to hear back from our contact for the church website so I can get it officially up and running before I leave.

Sunday is my last time leading worship for this summer, then I'll be moving back to King's on Monday. Campus job and classes start on Tuesday.

Reasons I Am Now Using WinAmp

I stopped using Windows Media Player 12 because:

• I couldn't get the "find album info" option to work, 
• There was no easy way to override the album information that WMP chose for a downloaded album
• When I manually added album artwork, it frequently pasted the same picture overtop of artwork for other albums for no reason - and there was no way I could undo it

I like WinAmp because:

• it loads more quickly than either WMP or iTunes
• all your WMP library metadata (including album art, ratings, playcounts, etc.) can be imported with the press of a button - with iTunes I could transfer my music library, but I would have to re-organize it all and find all the album art all over again for my downloaded music. 
• It has a customizable interface, unlike WMP
• It is easy to update and edit album information, unlike WMP

Much the same as my journey from Internet Explorer to Firefox to Google Chrome, and from MSN Messenger to Facebook to Blogspot, I have gone from a program that I always used to a program that does the same thing better to a program that does what I really want it to do. Technology is wonderful. 

Prosecute Greenpeace - I like it!

Trespassing for dollars | Comment | Calgary Sun

Mosque at Ground Zero a Dumb Idea

Monument to jihad | Comment | Toronto Sun

The Wittenberg Door: Why We Argue – Part 2

The Wittenberg Door: Why We Argue – Part 2

Textual Harassment: Vol II

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

This has to be the favourite passage in all of the Bible for those have bad theology or live in sin. The command "judge not" is usually taken to mean "form no conclusions about the right-ness or wrong-ness of another person's beliefs/practices." It certainly is a handy verse to throw out when you feel conviction of any sort is on its way - a quick "judge not" can speedily send the attacker on a hasty retreat.

Many Christians have actually bought into the lie that they aren't supposed to make any kind of judgments about other people. It's a seductive lie, because it sounds as if it comes straight from the lips of Jesus. But it is truly a lie - Christians are to judge.

The modern interpretation of the words "judge not," essentially assumes that Jesus said nothing important after the first two words of verse 1. It might reference more of the passage, but it isn't really necessary, because the conclusion depends on reading only the first two words. If we would stop and ponder the phrase "that you be not judged," we might ask ourselves: is Jesus teaching that if we do not judge others that God will not judge us?

Of course He isn't! We know from the testimony of Jesus Himself that everyone will be judged, in such verses as John 12:48; we also read it in the testimony of the apostles in Acts 10:42. Jesus' second coming will be one of judgement. He will judge each and every person who has ever lived. So Jesus' statement simply cannot mean that God will refrain from judging us if we refrain from judging others - we know we will be judged when Jesus comes again, whether we ourselves judge others or not. This underscores an important point: there is a difference between saying what the Bible says and meaning what the Bible means. You can quote Scripture perfectly and still not have the Bible on your side if you refuse to interpret it properly.

But I digress. I think the key phrase in interpreting the passage is verse 2: "For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." The issue Jesus addresses is not whether one should make judgments at all; the issue is the standard used to judge. Jesus does not command us to not judge at all, but to judge with the same standard for everyone, ourselves included. 


This becomes clearer still in verse 5: "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." Notice three things:

1. Hypocrisy is the issue, not judgment. The issue is whether we judge others more harshly than we are willing to judge ourselves.
2. Jesus is focusing on the standard by which we judge. Our natural inclination is to judge everything in our brother's eye as being a log, and everything in ours as a mere speck. But Jesus reverses this and says, "you have a double standard - you judge others harshly when they have specks, but all the while you do not acknowledge your own logs. Again, hypocrisy is what He condemns, not judging. 
3. Notice that Jesus, in an imperative tense no less, says we should first remove the log from our eye and then take out the speck from our brother's eye. Taking specks out of our brother's eye is a good thing; judging others is a good and a necessary thing. The issue is not whether we should do it; the issue is how we do it. 

We can say that it is a necessary thing because of what follows in verse 6:

Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. (Matt. 7:6)

Who is a dog? Who is a pig? What are the holy things that we shouldn't give to these people? Judgments, one and all.

It is also helpful to look at the same statement as it's recorded in Luke's gospel:

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you. (Luke 6:37-38)

Look at the parallelism used, especially in regards to "forgive, and you will be forgiven," which I wrote about here. Notice: we are each of us going to be judged, regardless of whether we have judged others; we will be condemned on the basis of rejecting the gospel, not on the basis of condemning others; we will be forgiven on the basis of believing the gospel, not on the basis of our forgiveness. The point is, "with the measure you use it will be measured back to you." Jesus is talking about what standard we use.

Coming back to the common misinterpretation, it should be obvious that the use of Matthew 7:1 to teach that a Christian cannot hold anyone else up to a standard is simply false; it ignores both the immediate context and the rest of the testimony of Scripture.

The question is therefore not, "am I judging such-and-such a person?", but  "by what standard am I judging this person?" In judging our brother (and ourselves) we must appeal to the only trustworthy standard - the Word of God. It is when we hold others to a standard higher than that of the Bible that we become guilty of judging others.

So, I won't tell you not to judge me. I will tell you to judge me only by the words of Scripture. As David said in 1 Chronicles 21:13: "Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man." 

The Most Neglected Commandment in All of the Bible

2 Corinthians 13:5:

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.

Should Christians Argue?

The Wittenberg Door: Why We Argue - Part 1

Sola Scriptura Interpres!

Scripture never contradicts itself.

I continually learn this in my own experience: when I begin to meditate on the meaning of a particular passage, it reminds me of another passage; as I put the two together, another passage springs to mind. All the truths of Scripture weave together in a consistent, coherent whole.

Case in point, the post I just wrote on forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer was supposed to be short. But as I wrote I was reminded me of verses which led me to a deeper understanding, which then brought up a different passage which led to still deeper understanding, which led to more verses....

In the Bible,  with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, God truly has given us everything we need for life and godliness.

Forgive as Christ Forgave You

Pray then like this...."forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors"....For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. - Matthew 6:9-15

This thought came out of the discussion from our church's College and Career group on Saturday night.

On the face of it, it almost seems as if Jesus is teaching work-salvation: if you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven. As that is inconsistent with the rest of scripture, we must look to a different interpretation. I think what Jesus is really getting at is this: how you forgive others shows what you believe about how God has forgiven you. The point is not that God forgiveness is contingent on our forgiving others, but that those who have truly been forgiven cannot help for forgive others. As Colossians 3:13 says, we forgive others, just as Christ forgave us. First, God forgives us; after that, we forgive others to the same degree.

I wrote last night about the meaning of the phrase "love your neighbour as yourself" - we are to love others in the same manner that we love ourselves. Notice the parallel construction in the verses above: "Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors." We are to pray to God that He would forgive us in the same manner that we have forgiven others.

How radical is that? How frightening is that? To ask God to forgive our sins in the exact same way that we forgive other people. That's how forgiving we should be. But I think the formula is really meant to work in reverse - when we realize that this is how we should pray, we will realize that the degree to which we forgive others should be the same degree to which we ourselves have been forgiven.

This brings up the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-34. Peter asks how often he should forgive his brother if he keeps repeating the same sin. Jesus says, there is no limit. Then he gives the parable; one servant after being forgiven a debt worth 10,000 talents. The footnotes in the ESV Bible say that a "talent" is worth 20 years' wages for a labourer. You do the math - this is a huge debt, one the servant could never hope to repay. After being forgiven this massive debt, the servant goes out and beats up a servant of his own over a matter of a hundred denarii (a hundred day's wages). A big debt, but nothing compared to what he had just been forgiven. This is what it is like when a believer does not forgive. It's a heinous crime. When we truly understand how big a debt we have been forgiven, we cannot help to forgive.

So, when Jesus says "if you do not forgive others, the Father will not forgive you," I think the point is not that if we don't forgive others then God will withdraw his forgiveness from us; nor is it that we must forgive to secure God's forgiveness. If either of those were true, who could be saved? The point is that this is how a believer acts and prays. A person who has been forgiven will forgive others; a person who does not forgive shows that they were never forgiven by God in the first place. Because, in a sense, it's just a math problem - if God has so freely forgiven the 10,000 talent debt that my sin incurred against Him, it only makes sense that I would forgive even a hundred denarii debt against me. A hundred denarii may be a big debt; but compared to 10,000 talents, it is nothing. It is simply a matter of perspective. Someone who understands their own sinfulness has the right perspective.

Believers forgive. It's just what they do. They have no problem praying, "Lord, forgive me just like I forgive others", because they forgive others to the same degree that they have already been forgiven.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. (Col. 3:13)

Textual Harassment: Vol I

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. - Matthew 22:39 

One time, the man leading worship at the church we were attending said, in an aside comment: "The Bible says that I should love my neighbour as myself. So if I don't love myself, I can't really love my neighbour!"

In a culture where self-esteem is the highest virtue, perhaps its no shock that people would try to use even the words of the Lord Jesus to convince people that what they need more than anything is to feel good about themselves. While this is on some level to be expected from the secular culture, it is sad when Christian leaders buy into it.

Notice, when Jesus commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves, he is not saying that we need to love ourselves; He is assuming we already do. The question He addresses is not, "how much should I love myself?", but "how much should I love others?" And the answer He gives is "as yourself" - that is, we should love others to the same degree that we already love ourselves.

It is not necessary to insist that we love ourselves before we love our neighbour, for we are by nature self-interested. We want our own way; we demand our rights; we fight for what will bring us the most benefit. And it is to that degree that Jesus calls us to love others. We should demand their rights with the same intensity as our own; we should fight for their benefit with the same violence that we fight for our own.

The most radical part of this statement of Christ is that, most of the time, when we fight and make demands on behalf of others, we will be fighting and making demands of ourselves. Like the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 2:3, "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves."; and in 1 Corinthians 10:24, "Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbour." Rather than having an intense focus on seeking our own good, we should take that same intensity but re-focus it, toward seeking the good of our neighbour.

You might be asking, "So, does Jesus want me to love myself?" The answer is no. He wants us to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23). Even as Peter denied Christ, refusing to admit that he had even been introduced to Him, so we should act as if we had never been introduced to our own self-interest; even as Peter refused to associate himself with Christ, we must refuse to associate we our own interests. We must refuse to love ourselves, choosing instead to love God and to love others.

I think Jesus Himself wants us to understand these as being mutually exclusive: we cannot love God or others if we still love ourselves: 

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. - Matthew 6:24

And why is the love of money so seductive? Is it not because it helps us get what we want? The love of money is the ultimate self-interest, the ultimate loving of ourselves. Perhaps that is why Jesus says it is hard for those who love riches to enter the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:23-24): if you love yourself that much, it is that much harder to deny yourself and love others.

In order to love others, we don't need to love ourselves - we need to hate ourselves. We cannot love two masters.

Textual Harassment: Everyday Exegetical Errors

I'm going to start a series of posts dealing with some common misinterpretations of Scripture. Specifically, misinterpretations which:

• are used frequently among Christians (though some will be more common than others)
• usually involve a total denial of the context of the passage in question, or
• involve a twisting of the passage in question to accomplish a goal different than the original goal of the passage

Why bother with this? Two reasons:

1. If the Bible is important to us, then we should not handle it carelessly. 
2. How we speak everyday may be the greatest indicator of what our theology really is.

Some of the topics which I intend to cover (off the top of my head, in no particular order):

• "Judge not" 
• "God is Love" 
• "For I know the plans I have for you"
• "Where two or three are gathered in my Name"
• 1 Corinthians 13 wrongfully applied to God's Love
• "Salt and Light" 
• "Inasmuch as you've done it to the least of my brothers" 
• "Love your neighbour as yourself" 
• "Thou shalt not kill" 

And so forth. 

Hopefully this will provoke some discussion on these topics, and help bring our language (mine included) closer in line with God's Word. 

Whom Did Christ Die For? (The Question Arminians Can't Answer)

Click to Enlarge

Taken from the Calvinistic Cartoons Blog.

A Debate Over Free-Will, Part 4

Originally Posted by Jesus.Is.The.Gospel.  You see free-will does not blow down God's sovereignty at all because he knew it was going to happen all along and it was already planned from eternity past. Everything was planned out and decreed by God from eternity past and it came into action after God started creating everything. You see God is so sovereign that if he didn't want any of it to happen the way it happened then he just didn't have to create anything. Everything happened because God wanted it to happen that way even if the choices that these biengs made by thier will were free because even thier free wills and choices were seen in eternity past in God's mind and these free choices went along with God's ultimate plan and decree which was to glorify Christ on the cross and in the resurrection from the dead. So you see every sin that mankind commits are already planned out and decreed by God from eternity past but the sin commited is of itself from the freedom of the will of the creation. So every sin commited goes perfectly with God's plan and purpose even if they are done with a free-will because God knew all that was going to happen from beginning to end before he even began to create the heavens and the earth. Just put it this way, if God didn't want it to happen then it woudn't have ever been created or else it would have thwarted God's plans and purposes. The reason lucipher was created was because he fitted into God's purposes, the reason mankind was created was because they fitted into God's purposes even if both creations have a free-will, every decision they make was already forseen by God and carefully planned out in such a way that no free-willed decision can thwart God's purposes.

"Free-will does not blow down God's sovereignty at all because he knew it was going to happen all along and it was already planned from eternity past." - Amen! to both of those statements: God does know what is going to happen, and what will happen is planned from eternity past. Now, the question is, which of these statements is contingent upon the other? Does God know because he plans, or does He plan because he knows? 

It seems that you believe the second of those two statements, that God's planning of a thing is contingent upon his foreknowledge of it. I take this from a number of statements you make, most notably when you sum up by saying, "put it this way, if God didn't want it to happen then it woudn't have ever been created or else it would have thwarted God's plans and purposes." The problem with this is that it takes free-will out of the realm of God's sovereignty. What you are saying is that God has two options:  

1) to let those with free-will act as they wish and work out His plan around what they choose, or

2) to not create at all. 

Now, it seems apparent to me that this choice is a denial of God's providence and decrees. It makes man's will capable of frustrating God's will. But in case that remains unclear to anyone else, let me develop it more fully. 

When you talk of God's planning in this way, you are excluding the choices which come from free-will. That is, God looked into the future (I know this phrase is not very accurate, I use it simply for convenience), saw what would come of free-will, and then set to work out His plan around the results of free-will. But this assumes that what comes from free-will must be, and God cannot, or will not, touch it. So God's sovereignty works around free-will, but cannot work on free-will itself. 

According to this line of reasoning, what comes from free-will pre-exists the decree of God. It should not require any further explanation to show that this makes the free-will of man the determinative factor in what the plan of God is! God makes His plans only after He foreknows what humans will do. You yourself said that "the reason mankind was created was because they fitted into God's purposes [it sounds as if man had to exist in a certain form and God had to make sure man "fit" the plan]even if both creations have a free-will [i.e. God could not make any binding decree on the free-will of man], every decision they make was already forseen[i.e. not determined] by God and carefully planned out [i.e. but not in a determinative fashion] in such a way that no free-willed decision can thwart God's purposes [i.e. God must carefully plan, otherwise man's free-will could thwart His plan]." It must be this way in your line of thinking, because you have already said that God Himself does not decree in a determinative way. But, you say "everything was planned out and decreed by God from eternity past." If it was planned, that is the same as saying it was determined; and if it was determined, someone determined it, that is, someone must have given a determinative decree that a thing should come to pass. Who? If not God, then you must mean man's will. 

It might be tempting at this point for you to mention that God exists out of time, so to say that man's will pre-exists God's decrees is inaccurate, for God does not experience the passing of time as we do. Yet, this is simply a dodge. For in the Scriptures, when the decrees of God are mentioned, it is always with the language of time; for example, Isaiah 46:9-11: 

"I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it."

It may certainly be true that God simply uses the language of linear time to allow us to understand in our human weakness. But even then, we must concede that we aremeant to understand God's decrees as pre-existing and being independent of any action of human will. How can man's will be determinative, when it hadn't yet been created? And it was created only because of the decree of God, so how can the will of man, which only exists through God's sovereignty, somehow become utterly independent of God's sovereignty?

Now, you have made clear your motivation for maintaining that there is some kind of freedom in the will - you are concerned that we must maintain our assertion of human responsibility. I am with you on that point. But I think you have gone too far in trying to carve out a place for the human will in which God's sovereignty cannot touch it or influence or affect it in any determinative way. In so doing, you have (unwittingly, I am sure, and with good intentions) made the will into an idol, indeed something which can, in your own words, thwart the purposes of God. This is why I cannot accept any kind of "freedom" in the will, because it inevitably leads to man's will and not God's being the determinative factor in the world. 

In summary, there is only one free-will in the universe - God the Father Almighty. Our wills cannot do anything outside of what He has decreed we do. It is blasphemous and unbiblical to suggest otherwise.

For Introverts, Being Alone Just Feels Good

Introverted Church: A Matter of Motivation Redux

A Debate Over Free-Will, Part 3

The second part of my response to the free-will argument:

It also may be that satan himself asked God permission to tempt adam and eve to eat the fruit because of the way they had been created and the way he had been created. They were created without the knowledge of good and evil but satan had to be created with the knowledge of good and evil or else there would be no more logical explanation for his sin. Since he was created this way then God's justice would demand that satan be given a chance to tempt Adam and Eve to test thier obedience since they had not known sin because they had no knowledge of good or evil but satan did know right and wrong from the beginning of his creation but the problem rests in that he submitted to the evil side of his knowledge and iniquity was found in him. Now what happens to man is that after he eats of the fruit of the tree, he is seperated from God and this seperation makes him evil in nature and spiritually dead because God said that he would surely die.

First, you spend a lot of time expounding on the idea that Satan must have had a knowledge of good and evil. Now, that is speculation on your part, and as there is no Scripture which talks of the angels possessing or not possessing a knowledge of good and evil, I cannot refute that point.

I do, however, find it interesting to theorize as to why you find it necessary to appeal to Satan's supposed knowledge of good and evil in your defense of free-will. I'd welcome your explanation, but in lieu of that, I'll try to explain it for myself. In my estimation, your rationale runs thus:

a) In order for Satan to fall into sin, he must be held morally responsible for his actions.
b) In order for the will to be morally responsible for its choice, the will must have sufficient knowledge of all the alternatives from which it is to choose
c) Without the "knowledge of good and evil" which is mentioned in Genesis 3, the will does not have all the knowledge it needs to make a choice between good and evil for which it can be held morally responsible
d) Therefore, Satan must have a knowledge of good and evil mentioned in Genesis 3.

Now, I think there is an assumption inherent in this reasoning which doesn't have sufficient scriptural evidence: Point b) makes the assumption that the will must have complete knowledge of alternatives. I take this to mean that it must make a fully informed decision based on its own rationale, and not under compulsion of any kind from any outside entity. Now, I think this is guilty of the logical fallacy of begging the question; that is, one must accept your conclusion (that free-will exists) before one can accept the argument (that only a will which makes a fully informed decision can be morally culpable). It is easy to see why someone who already accepts free-will would think that moral responsibility requires full knowledge, yet it is not readily apparent why that Scripture or logic demands that we accept this. 

In fact, I think it is better to reject the assumption that moral responsibility demands a fully-informed choice without compulsion, for two reasons. First, scripture says that Eve was deceived by the serpent (i.e. her choice was not fully informed) and yet she sinned. So sin preceded knowledge of good and evil. Second, the command to not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was based on two things: the authority of God, who gave the command, and the threat of punishment if they disobeyed. God, in this sense, was imposing his will on their will. They did not have the "knowledge of good and evil" yet (and it is difficult to say of what this consists, certainly too difficult to justify basing an argument on it), they had only the knowledge of authority and punishment. In this sense, their wills were under compulsion from an entity outside themselves. Yet, they are still morally culpable. 

Now, when you say that God's Justice demands that Satan, having knowledge of good and evil, tempt Adam and Eve, who lacked such knowledge, I think the error of this becomes more apparent still. On what basis can you say that God must allow someone with the knowledge of good and evil to tempt us? We have already seen how the necessity of knowledge for making moral choice is simply an assumption that you are making. But now, you go farther still to say that God must give you what you only assume you must have.

You say that Justice demands that Adam and Eve be tested. I understand that to mean that Justice demands that God allow Satan to tempt Adam and Eve in order to test their free will, to see whether they would freely choose Him. I don't think that is the most biblical way to think, because it once again assumes that man's will is the determinative force. If God's will is the determinative force, and I think it is biblical to think so, then man's original sin was part of the original plan and decree of God. God decreed determinatively from eternity past that man would fall into sin. Certainly man is morally culpable for his free choice to sin. But to say that he was being tested implies that God did not know the result, or that the result was determined not by God, but by man's response to the testing. 

So, it is not that justice demands that God test our free will. It is that God had ordained that man would fall in order that God would show His glory to the world through his redemptive plan. Do not be too quick to demand that God must give you free will and give you a complete knowledge of the alternatives - it was God's plan that humans fall into sin. As we have seen before, God is not the source or author of sin, but he does determine that it should be.

Now, you also speculate that Satan asked God's permission to tempt Adam and Eve. Now, doesn't this demonstrate that Satan's will was not truly free? He willed to tempt, yet His will was powerless to accomplish what he had purposed, unless God allowed Him to. That is, the freedom you say the will enjoys is not inherent; God hadn't given Satan standing permission to do what he wanted, the fact that he had freedom to make a choicedidn't give him the freedom to carry out that choice, he needed the special permission of God. So, Satan's will was limited by God's will.

More thoughts later.

A Debate Over Free-Will, Part 2

Here is the first part of my response to the free-will argument:

Thanks for taking the time to explain your beliefs fully, and I apologize that it has taken me so long to respond.  

You started off by saying:

Quote:

We cannot understand when, where and why the first sin was commited but logically it had to be because of a certain kind of freedom in the will of the bieng that comitted it or else you will have to be like the gnostics that believed that God was both good and evil and you will also have to blot out many scriptures that say that God tempts noone and that God is light and in him there is no darkness.

You give two evidences for free-will:

1) If God decrees evil, there must be both good and evil in God, and that is gnosticism, and 

2) If God decrees evil, there must be both good and evil in God, and that is contradictory to the scriptures.  

So your argument here hinges on the point that for God to decree evil, than God necessarily must be evil. In your subsequent response to Objective Truth, you say 

Quote:

Now getting to your belief that God decrees everything to happen i agree with that depending on what kind of decree you are talking about because i believe he decrees it but it is not a determinitive decree.

So, it seems your thinking goes this way:   

a) God decreeing determinatively that evil be is the same as God committing the evil.  

b) God cannot commit evil 

c) Therefore, God cannot decree determinatively 

And furthermore,  

d) If God does not decree determinatively, then the only explanation for the existence of evil is that man has free-will and can choose evil  

e) God does not decree determinatively 

f) Therefore, man has free-will 

You will quickly see that this whole line of reasoning will collapse if it can be shown that God decrees in a determinative way without being guilty of the sins he decrees (that is, if a) is disproved. Without a), conclusion c) cannot be reached, and without conclusion c) the conclusion that free-will exists cannot be reached). So I will attempt to do that very thing.  

I think you are incorrect to assume that God determining that sin will come to pass is the same as God being the tempter or even the one who commits the sin. The simplest answer to this is that God determines not only the end, but also the means to the end. So, in the case of humans committing sin, you are not incorrect in saying that it was the will of man which brought it about; but that is not a complete answer, for God Himself is the one who decreed that the person would freely (that is, under no compulsion) choose to sin. God did not sin, nor tempt to sin, but He did decree that a human would choose sin, and so in this way He decreed sin. As Genesis 50:20 and Psalm 105:17 say regarding the story of Joseph: 

Quote:

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. He had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.

God purposed Joseph's slavery in the same way Joseph's brothers purposed it; God was not responding to foreknowledge of what Joseph's brothers would do, His will was active in the same fashion that Joseph's brothers' wills were active; God had planned even their actionsbeforehand in the same way the brothers had planned them beforehand. So we see that God actively willed the end (sending Joseph to Egypt) but also the means (the sinful actions of his brothers). 

Again the word of God says in Proverbs 16:9

Quote:

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

And again in Jeremiah 10:23:

Quote:

I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.

Man plans where he want to go, but it is God who has planned out his steps. 

It is on this basis that we can say that God decrees what man will choose beforehand. The purposes of the heart of man and the ability to carry them out are not in man's control, but in God's. A man can will nothing, nor can he accomplish anything outside of the determinative decree of God. 

So, in what sense are we "free"? We are free in that we freely choose - we make choices and those choices have real results. Yet, at the same time, our choices could not have been other than what they were, because God had planned the purposes of our hearts and even our very steps, as Proverbs and Jeremiah tell us. Your view is that man's will is determinative, and God's decrees are contingent (that is, they happen only as a result of foreknowledge of what man's will chooses); I think the opposite is true: God's decrees are determinative, and man's will is contingent (that is, man's choices happen only as a result of God's decrees). 

In regards to gnosticism, in my (rudimentary) research it seems that gnosticism teaches that all physical matter is evil, and therefore that theone who created physical matteris evil. It is only a very limited segment of gnostics which believed that the Creator-God was both good and evil - for the most part gnosticism teaches that God is evil because he created evil physical matter. Calvinism knows nothing of the Platonic dualism (not to mention the polytheism) on which this conception of god is based, nor of the notion that God is the author of evil because he determined that evil should be, as we have seen.

There is more to say (I have only responded to very first paragraph!), but this is lengthy enough already. I'll post more thoughts later.

A Debate Over Free-Will, Part 1

I'm involved in an interesting debate over "free-will" with a guy on an online doctrinal forum. (This is the same guy I made reference to here). I asked him to give his rationale for why he believes that free-will is the best way of understanding the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. Responding to him has become a lengthier project than I first thought, but it has been interesting. Let me share his argument here, and I'll post my responses to it later:

Ok, let me start by God's grace like this;

We cannot understand when, where and why the first sin was commited but logically it had to be because of a certain kind of freedom in the will of the bieng that comitted it or else you will have to be like the gnostics that believed that God was both good and evil and you will also have to blot out many scriptures that say that God tempts noone and that God is light and in him there is no darkness.

It may be that God gave these angelic biengs from the beginning a knowledge of good and evil without having to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil like adam and eve, therefore having a knowledge of doing wrong and right from the beginning of thier existence.

It also may be that satan himself asked God permission to tempt adam and eve to eat the fruit because of the way they had been created and the way he had been created. They were created without the knowledge of good and evil but satan had to be created with the knowledge of good and evil or else there would be no more logical explanation for his sin.

Since he was created this way then God's justice would demand that satan be given a chance to tempt Adam and Eve to test thier obedience since they had not known sin because they had no knowledge of good or evil but satan did know right and wrong from the beginning of his creation but the problem rests in that he submitted to the evil side of his knowledge and iniquity was found in him.

Now what happens to man is that after he eats of the fruit of the tree, he is seperated from God and this seperation makes him evil in nature and spiritually dead because God said that he would surely die.

Since satan is called the father of all lies then this would have to mean that he was created with a knowledge of good and evil from the beginning knowing what was right and wrong but you see this is where this free-will thing comes in right here. He chose to follow the evil that he knew instead of following the good that he knew and yet God knew he would do this before he made him because this was all part of God's plan to glorify Christ in the end.

You see free-will does not blow down God's sovereignty at all because he knew it was going to happen all along and it was already planned from eternity past. Everything was planned out and decreed by God from eternity past and it came into action after God started creating everything.

You see God is so sovereign that if he didn't want any of it to happen the way it happened then he just didn't have to create anything. Everything happened because God wanted it to happen that way even if the choices that these biengs made by thier will were free because even thier free wills and choices were seen in eternity past in God's mind and these free choices went along with God's ultimate plan and decree which was to glorify Christ on the cross and in the resurrection from the dead.

So you see every sin that mankind commits are already planned out and decreed by God from eternity past but the sin commited is of itself from the freedom of the will of the creation. So every sin commited goes perfectly with God's plan and purpose even if they are done with a free-will because God knew all that was going to happen from beginning to end before he even began to create the heavens and the earth.

Just put it this way, if God didn't want it to happen then it woudn't have ever been created or else it would have thwarted God's plans and purposes. The reason lucipher was created was because he fitted into God's purposes, the reason mankind was created was because they fitted into God's purposes even if both creations have a free-will, every decision they make was already forseen by God and carefully planned out in such a way that no free-willed decision can thwart God's purposes.

I can write down more but it's kind of late and this is all that i can come up with for now, I'll be happy to see your response, maybe we can both work this out to a better knowledge of God's soveriegnty and creation's responsibility.