The Evangelical Universalist Forum

God won't violate human 'free will'

Thanks Gabe and Cindy,

Your comments have triggered some more thoughts:

  1. What happens when we start with the wrong presumption? Case in point: The Doctrine of Hell. The moment we assume that even one person will be tormented eternally in Hell, this colors our discussion of related topics. For Protestants, this led to the split between Calvinists and Arminians. The followers of Jacobus Arminius laid out five points that sought to correct errors they perceived in the 5 points of Calvinisim (TULIP).

When we lay both 5 point propositions side by side, and leave out any presumption about Hell, we find something remarkable:

It is solely due to the Doctrine of Hell that Calvinism goes off the rails between Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement. “All have sinned” places all men into the condition of Total Depravity, which both camps basically agree on. In this state, there can be nothing to distinguish between one man and another. So only God’s Unconditional Election, laid out by Paul in Romans 9, can explain why some choose to obey God while others do not.

Then the Calvinists imported their assumptions about Hell. They assumed that those who died in unbelief must necessarily go to Hell. Thus, their next logical conclusion, based on this wrong presumption, was Limited Atonement. With the logical train derailed it is not ever worth discussing the remaining points, for they all flow from this one mistake based on an unspoken presumption.

Even though the Calvinists tried to keep Free Will in its proper place in the discussion, these 5 points had the inescapable effect of elevating Predestination above Free Will throughout their theology, to the point the Free Will was eclipsed at the practical level even while being acknowledged in theory.

The Armenians smelled a rat. Something didn’t sit right with them, so they tried to lay out the process of Salvation in different terms. Not questioning the Doctrine of Hell, that nefarious presumption lurking between the U and the L, they concluded that the error was with the U. So they rejected Unconditional Election and made Point #1 that:

“Salvation (and condemnation on the day of judgment) was conditioned by the graciously-enabled faith (or unbelief) of man”

They then said that God’s Grace was available to all, but that some men could/would resist the Holy Spirit. Thus, in came their distinction between men, caused not by God’s choice (predestination) but by man’s choice (Free Will). Once again, they presumed that some men go to Hell, and thus there must be something to distinguish between two classes of men.

It is the Doctrine of Hell that creates the necessity of the two classes. And yet nothing in the Bible points to this. Paul is clear that the choice is up to God, and yet we find man continually being held accountable for choices he makes of his own Free Will. So which is it? Remove the presumption of Hell, and we can reach the same conclusion as Paul in Romans 11: Both!

The Calvinists were right about Predestination, and if anything were guilty of UNDERstating the case as they stumbled over Free Will. The Arminians were right about Free Will, and if anything were guilty of UNDERstating the case in their confusion about Predestination! While it is a paradox, they are both fully true in the absolute sense. Neither one impinges on the other in the least. And here is why:

God in fact draws ALL men to himself. That is his irrevocable choice. It cannot be resisted, by anyone. How and when and why men respond to it is up to them. They will be drawn, but not all at the same time or in the same way. They have complete Free Will to choose their own way for a time.

On another thread I agreed with C. S. Lewis’ notion that the doors of Hell are locked from the inside, and my conclusion was that even if someone did find themselves resisting God to the point of having chosen Hell of their own Free Will, upon discovering the complete horror of a place absolutely devoid of God (all Good), they would choose to leave there just as soon as they could. And they would make that choice of their own Free Will. There is no one who would choose Hell of their own Free Will. And perhaps there are some who will have to experience it before they will be convinced of the goodness of God. Hell is like a firewall, and exists philosophically for that purpose. There is no going past this point.

At the extreme of “no God”, everyone will freely choose God. Which is to say that God will irresistibly draw all men to himself. Savvy?

Predestination is a crucial doctrine, because it equalizes all men. As Paul says, it shuts us all up under sin. We all deserve Hell, since we have already chosen a form of it. When we choose to do anything our way rather than God’s we choose Hell over Heaven. Predestination says that we cannot help making the wrong choice unless God intervenes. So logically, if you truly accept predestination, and radically so, then the moment you admit that one man will make it to Heaven you have to admit that every man will make it. There is simply no basis anywhere to separate men into two distinct classes. Should you appeal to Paul in Romans 9, then you must ignore all that he says in Romans 11, which is the conclusion of the same train of thought.

Free Will is an equally crucial doctrine. Without it, God is the author of Evil. He is God and “not God” at the same time. An impossibility. We MUST have Free Will, or we are here on earth suffering for no good reason. This life becomes a form of Hell, because we are powerless to change it. To stand on anything but the most radical affirmation of man’s Free Will is to deny God’s Benevolence. He can have no part in our choice to sin, and the negative consequences that naturally afflict us as a result.

So I find myself more Calvinist than the Calvinists and more Arminian than the Arminians. They are both hesitant to fully embrace the truth because they cannot give up the notion of Hell being the eternal destination for some men. The moment you accept Universal Restoration, this problem is solved and scripture no longer appears to contradict itself.

  1. Now for a presumption that I only questioned this morning, after reading your post Cindy. I believe I am safe in saying that we ALL presume that God did NOT want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. But does the story actually say this?

God told them not to eat of it, and he told them what the consequences would be. But look at God’s reaction when they do. Sure, it seems bad. But if becoming “like God” was such a bad thing, why did he not simply destroy them? What is the point of looking after a planet full of people who have irreversibly changed themselves into something they are not supposed to be?

So what if we lay aside the presumption, and consider the possibility that God actually knew they were going to eat the fruit (of course he knew) AND that he actually expected it to happen and even wanted it to happen. After all, from the story it does appear that this was the only way for man to “become like God”. What if that was God’s objective all along?

As I see things, the only way to know why Good is good (no, I did not mistype that), is to experience Evil. And the only way for us to have a personality distinct from our Creator is to have the Free Will to choose differently to him. If God is all that is Good, then we must have the ability to choose Evil, to choose “not God/not Good”.

So, as a creation of God, the only way to relate to him at a level approaching equality is to leave the nursery of Good and experience the harsh world of Evil. We get to play in that realm for as long as is necessary for us to decide that Good really is a good idea after all. When we come back to God of our own Free Will, now we are mature. We know who we are and why we believe what we believe. And we especially know why we are not missing out on anything by not doing everything God’s way. Finally we can think like God and act like God without actually being God himself.

The implication is that this is no “second best” path that we are on. The objective of life in this world is about so much more than simply living peacefully in a place where nothing ever goes wrong. That would be boring, and we seem to know this. Eve knew it. Thus the reason the serpent proved so persuasive. Far from sitting on a cloud and playing a harp, the life we are destined for is more thrilling than we can possibly imagine. Because we will have the ability to do almost anything, and without the fear of getting it wrong. But to get there God had to take us through this training ground of worldly existence. He had no other option.

He may not have been happy when they ate the fruit, but his thought might have been, “Finally! Now we can get on with the main agenda.”

  1. In digging through church doctrine and trying to understand where the biggest misunderstanding is, I ended up focusing on the Second Birth. I could read the promo material. Sound doctrine, based on the Bible that says that we are supposed to be radically changed, even to the point that we should be able to be perfect and avoid sinning in this life. These are just the words I read, both in the Bible and in the doctrines of most churches.

But it is fairly universal that this is not what we experience. Cindy has some interesting thoughts on what Paul says about the Body and the Spirit, but what stood out to me was the part that was missing, especially because thoughts about it were already swirling about in my head.

What I found inadequately explained by most churches is the doctrine of Repentance. The scriptural admonition is, “Repent and Believe the Gospel”. In modern language this is: Change your thinking, and believe the good news. My conclusion is that we have been fed a truncated version of all three elements.

Specifically, we are taught Penance, not Repentance. We are told we must be sorry for our sin.

Next we are taught to “believe in Jesus”. We must believe that we cannot fix our sin problem, and so Jesus must pay for our sins. The words “Faith” and “Belief”, when read in Bible verses, are understood to mean these limited things and almost nothing else.

This makes the Gospel only the good news that Jesus has already paid for all your sins. These cover the past. They give us NO guidance for going forward.

Absent from the teaching on how our thinking must change, and what we should believe, is HOW we can stop sinning. We are supposed to have “died to sin”, so why is that not real to us? The church simply has nothing to say in this regard. It is left to the mystical realm, where due to your acceptance of a very limited list of correct beliefs, you are now supposed to no longer sin.

The good news of a life free from sin is found throughout the New Testament, and even finds its way into a lot of church doctrine. And yet the church is silent on how to get there. There is no list of wrong thinking that we need to Repent of, and no list of right thinking that we are supposed to Believe. “Love your neighbor” and the like is all fairly vague stuff. It doesn’t tell us HOW to do so. It just gives us the general principle. Merely the end result of some unspecified action.

As I see it, “Repent and Believe the Gospel” is supposed to be a “How to” manual. It should be far more detailed. We should in fact find our thinking radically changed. We should be “transformed by the renewing of your minds”. This is the missing piece, without which the discussion on the Body and the Spirit cannot be completed. It is the Mind that gives effect to all that Paul is speaking about.

The picture this paints for me is one leading to a New Heaven and a New Earth. If our bodies are to be renewed, and if this earth is to be renewed ultimately, that must start somewhere. Most Christians are waiting around for God to snap his fingers and make it happen “in the twinkling of an eye”, but this is not what I read in scripture. This is a progressive thing that we have a part in, and the renewal is to start right away, with the renewing of our minds.

It is supposed to start the moment we Repent. When we misunderstand that doctrine and its full implications we sit around waiting for the finger snapping, and our debates revolve around what will happen AFTER “the last trumpet”. We love to speculate and argue about such stuff, as it requires nothing of us in the here and now. But to make a case for the impossibility of perfection in this life, one would have to first show that Repentance is not an integral part of God’s plan of Redemption.

When I look around and see that most Christians are indistinguishable in their daily lives from their non-believing colleagues - that their thinking is essentially the same, and their decisions are largely the same - I am reminded of a famous quote from G. K. Chesterton:

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Gordon, it is my contention that they have complete free will to choose their own way as long as they wish to do so. God never compels man to do something against his free will. But God always CARES for people, wanting the very best for them, and so He will never give up on anyone. That is why, ultimately, everyone will choose to submit to God, and become his servants of their own free will. Jesus draws all men to Himself, but man CAN resist that drawing. That’s why not all men have come under God’s authority. they can resist the drawing now, and they may resist it for millions of years. They will aways have complete free will to do so. But God’s drawing, God’s urging, cannot be resisted FOREVER.

Yes Paidion,

We are saying basically the same thing.

What people seem to miss is that this world is a mixture of good and evil, with no obvious connection between your beliefs and how much good and how much evil you experience.

So someone “accepts Christ” and bad stuff continues to happen to them. The atheist boldly rejects Christ, and good stuff continues to happen to them. And if you compared two people, you might objectively conclude that a particular atheist’s life was better than that of some believer.

In these circumstances, resisting the call of God is not that hard. It is easy to maintain a belief that you do not need to choose God’s way (the highest good) in order to experience good. But the fact is that the atheist still wishes to experience Good. He is not deliberately choosing what he perceives as bad for himself.

The concept of Hell takes us right to the extreme. Hell (philosophically) is a place with NO Good and ALL Evil. Purgatory would logically fit somewhere in between the balance of Good and Evil in this world and the complete absence of Good in Hell. Viewed as a sliding scale you would have to conclude that everyone would choose God’s way as they found Evil increasing around them the further away they got from God’s will.

The problem is, we don’t really know what happens after death. So most of this is just speculation. But it is very logical to say that no one would choose to remain in Hell of their own Free Will. And it is hard to picture how anyone would hold out long enough to even reach that logical extreme.

Goodness, by its very nature, draws us to itself. No one deliberately chooses Evil, ever. Others may call their choice Evil, or may warn them of negative consequences, but when they make the choice, they believe it to be the choice that is best for them. Even when they consider that it is a very bad choice, such as suicide, they still believe that it is better than any other options they have considered.

Lacking omniscience, we simply cannot tell the ultimate outcome of many of our choices. As we live and make good and bad choices, we learn. We also learn to trust others, we learn to trust God, and we learn to trust our intuition. If we take this task seriously, we learn how to make better and better choices the longer we live. Better for us. And better for others, once we reach that point in learning where we discover that what is best for others is in fact what is also best for ourselves.

This progress of learning more and more consistently to choose the Good is the same thing as being drawn closer to God, since God is the highest Good.

I think this is the crux of the matter, that Eaglesway touched on. The purpose of all is Love, but the only way for someone to really participate in Love as a person is for them to voluntarily choose it. Involuntary ‘love’ is not true Love at all.

Whatever other circumstances surround any given person, they always have the call, the tug on their heart to choose Love – to dethrone Self and its ambitions in service of others, with a genuine desire for their well-being. Whether they know all the details of this path of Love, when they set foot on it in even the smallest way, they have taken a footstep into the Way of Christ.

How could a heart that has not grown to willingly participate in Love be suddenly transformed at death into one that is a participant? How could a heart that still has not forgiven another person – even their worst enemy – that does not want reconciliation with some other people – how could that heart be suddenly free of such issues? If a magic wand is waved and the heart is changed involuntarily, that is not genuine Love, voluntarily chosen.

Where there is Love there is indeed liberty – there can be no Love without it, and no reconciliation of all things without all persons choosing Love in liberty.

Aint it wonnerful? :smiley:

I believe God is Omniscient and Omnipresent

Its actually simple not complicated.
He knows my choices before I make them, but they are free will choices which I would make or have made regardless.

In other words if I make a choice right now, it’s my choice of free will. Whether or not God knew 1st or didn’t know my choices 1st is irrelevant to my free will.

God pre-knowing my choices before my choices were made, doesn’t change the free will that God gave to us. His foreknowledge doesn’t cancel out the free will I used to make the choices.

I don’t view His Omniscience of choices and of their out comes as “destiny.” God did not cause or destined or purpose my choices. He only knew my choices.

As for the outcomes of our choices, God predestined some outcomes and altered some outcomes, but does not alter all or outcomes.
God alters consequence for 1 - His own will, and 2 - at times for us because of His kindness toward us. But even those interjections of God in time where also foreknown by God.

He also holds back some consequences like He holds back the sea. And that’s God’s Love and Mercy and His Patience.

If destiny is “predestined” then that would mean God made my choices, making my choices also predetermined as destiny. Then it wouldn’t be free will.

God HAS predestined prophesies!

He predestined some events and consequences according to His own free will to accomplish His purposes as foretold in prophesies.

Prophesies are in many cased orchestrated and predestined by God. And Prophesy can also simply be a recorded acct of future events.

Because God is Omniscient, He looked through time and decided where His prophesies accomplished His determined outcomes, throughout all the unfolding of events, down to the smallest fraction of a second.

Any alterations of events through times of prophesy fulfillment were also fully known, all things were foreknown.
Like the Crucifixion.

He chose that time to come, it was the right time, so God did it.

He predestined Judas’ betrayal. Not because God made Judas’ choice for him, but because he knew… Judas would be offered 30 pieces of silver and he would agree to betray.

So then God predestined that choice as prophesy, to occur in the day and hour according to His prophesy.

Most prophesy is God’s response to every choice ever made and every consequence that ever unfolded, past, present and future.
And He already had complete foreknowledge of all choices and events ever to be made.

Prophesy is His free will. He predestined prophesies at a designated time. And sometimes prophesies of God are simply just foreknowledge of events known from all the known choices and every action and reaction.

Prophesy is destiny.

Foreknown always! And predestined often!
Our choices, and the consequences and the events that follow are used by God.

God acts on His free will using our known choices and consequences. God’s acts on our behalf knowing His action beforehand doesn’t change God or His intervention.

Whether happy or sad consequences, He uses them all, to fulfill His will in our lives and His prophesies, and for His willed purposes throughout time.

His purposes could be as simple as feeding birds, confirming our faith, disciplining us to obedience, blessing us, and even in judgement. But Him knowing ahead of time doesn’t change anything.
Just like not knowing or knowing a movie doesn’t change the movie. The movie already happened in its entirety, but the movie is still acting out every act and scene predestined and pre-known by the producer.
The only difference is it isn’t entirely scripted because the actors are acting by ad lib choices creating the framework of every scene.

He doesnt change our choices because free will makes choices our own.

I try to look at the free will and determinism as a both/and matter. In theology, this is usually called providence, as opposed to either arbitrary and intruding fate or blind chance. A couple days ago, I saw a podcast where someone was asking on a catholic talk show about God sending people to hell. This host used the analogy of people who do not seek help, or reject help offered to them. Frankly, this is the only way that Hell has ever made sense to me. What I find on this argument is this stubborness in Christedom to admit that the popular way of having seen things is wrong. Because I had read many works of good theology, like the C.S. Lewis style, and everything seems like this Universalism should be accepted. The belief in Providence is well accepted, and have affirmed that God predestines all things, while also affirming man has a free will. But according to the arguments God is too much of a gentleman to save some obstinant from making change. But many theologians tell of their stories about how God never leaves someone alone, and pursues them until they join. That was C.S. Lewis story. I have heard the references about how Jesus was rejected in the New Testament as proof that God is helpless to save those stubborn sinners from their supposed choice to bondage to sin. But the reason as I best understand it is Jesus is not going to violate anothers freedom to be healed, like the nanny state would do. So naturally we can assume that Jesus can heal the stubborn without violating their free will. The best example I can think of Jesus healing the stubborn pharisee Paul. Yet the more I try to understand the reason people assume that sinners choose sin over God are silly. The biggest reason I have found is that many have idea’s of God as nothing more than a projection of their own religious upbringing, like a church that tries to make its members conform to their ideologies. This is not to say that transformation is unnecessary, but transformation is often seen as throwing away everything you ever knew about yourself, and change in accord to the religious system. I have wondered if this is also a refusal for Christians to accept that they dont know everything, and if someone cant see things their way, it does not mean they’re wrong.

It is true that God’s knowledge doesn’t affect our free will.
However, no one can know in advance what a free-will agent will choose.
Suppose you knew (in the absolute sense of “know”) that I would eat a mince tart at 4 P.M. tomorrow.
If it were possible for you to know that, then it would be a fact right now that I will eat a mince tart at 4 P.M. tomorrow. So is there any way that I will be able to refrain from eating a mince tart at 4 P.M. tomorrow? I don’t see how, since it is already a fact. Where is my free will?

Rather than say that I am not free to refrain from eating a mince tart at 4 P.M. tomorrow, I would prefer to state the obvious. I do have the free will to refrain, but you (or anyone else) cannot know that I will eat a mince tart at 4 P.M. tomorrow. No one, not even God knows in advance what a free will agent will choose! Oh, you can predict what I will choose to do based on your past observation of my actions, but you cannot KNOW. When my oldest son was 3 years old, I would have said, "I know that if I say to James, “Jamie, come here,” he will come. I would have said that based on the fact that he had always come in the past when I said those words. But actually I didn’t know he would come the next time. He might have chosen not to do so.

Please don’t jump to the conclusion that I don’t believe that God is omniscient. He IS omniscient.
He knows everything that is possible to know! But knowing in advance what a free-will agent will choose is not possible.

To say that I don’t believe God is omniscient, is analogous to my saying that you don’t believe that He is omnipotent because you don’t believe He can create a stone so large that He can’t lift it! For if He could create such a stone, there would be something He can’t do, namely lift such a stone.

So yes, God is omniscient! But He can’t know in advance what a free-will agent will choose.

Here is a Biblical example of God thinking His people would do a certain thing but they didn’t do it!

The LORD said to me in the days of King Josiah: "Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore?
And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return…(Jeremiah 3:6,7)

If God had known in advance that Israel would not return to Him, He would not have thought that she would return.

Our Father in heaven is welcomed to 'violate; my free will at any time. He only acts for the good, so any way he can seduce my will, draw it on, coerce it even - it’s fine with me. I’ll end up happier because of it.

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Your claims about omniscience and free will expressed here are, at best, arguable, and at worst, untrue, as was discussed with you earlier in a long series of posts based on a logical analysis of this issue.

Here is a Biblical example of God thinking His people would do a certain thing but they didn’t do it!

The LORD said to me in the days of King Josiah: "Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore?
And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return…(Jeremiah 3:6,7)

If God had known in advance that Israel would not return to Him, He would not have thought that she would return.

To use that example to support one’s stance on omniscience is suspect. That alternative of the verses, though common, is not consistently found in different Bible versions. For example, another common alternative of Jeremiah 3:7 shows God to be commanding Israel to return to Him. And as we know, commandments can be and are disobeyed, without any reflection on God’s omniscience being compromised. Following are some examples of this alternative of Jeremiah 3:7, found in at least 10 Bible versions.

And I said after she had committed all these acts of fornication, Turn again to me. Yet she returned not. And faithless Juda saw her faithlessness.” (Septuagint)

And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.” (New King James Version)

And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto Me. But she returned not. And her treacherous achot Yehudah saw it [i.e., saw Israel’s refusal to renounce fertility cult idolatry].” (Orthodox Jewish Bible)

I like to watch Perry Mason and i may have seen every episode so i know what is going to happen but that doesn’t mean Perry didn’t have free will at that point in time in history. If God is outside of time , since time is within the created universe and therefore a creation of God, then God can look down at us and know the future yet for us within our knowledge base we do have free will.

To watch a video or movie of a past event of what someone has done, is quite different from knowing what someone will do in the future.

I can make no logical sense out of the concept of “being outside of time.”
“Time” is not an entity. “Time” is the measure of the temporal “distance” between events.

Again, the way most translations render it, does NOT “compromise” God’s omniscience. As I stated, God is omniscient, knowing everything that is possible to know. Do you think God’s omnipotence is compromised, if one states that God CANNOT create a stone so large that He can’t lift it?

If the translations you provided are so clearly correct, why do you suppose the vast majority of translations render the verse as I quoted it?

I have many translations in my Online Bible Program.
The versions in which it is translated as I quote it are: ESV, ASV, BBE, CevAus, Darby, HCSV, LEB, NAS, NASB, NHEB, NIV, RSV, and NRSV.

The versions in which it is translated as a command (Return to me) are: AV, Douay, JB2013, NKJV, YLT, TR Classic.

Well, that’s right, if you believe God’s omniscience does not include knowing what a free-willed choice would be. But that’s a big IF and not something I’m willing to accept.

Yes, and knowing everything that is possible to know includes knowing what a person freely chooses. That is logically possible for an omniscient being, as was laboriously discussed some months ago.

But it’s not the vast majority.

And I did not say the translations I provided are so clearly correct. I simply said their existence raises questions about your using these Jeremiah verses to support your view of God’s omniscience.

I have many translations in my Online Bible Program.
The versions in which it is translated as I quote it are: ESV, ASV, BBE, CevAus, Darby, HCSV, LEB, NAS, NASB, NHEB, NIV, RSV, and NRSV.

The versions in which it is translated as a command (Return to me) are: AV, Douay, JB2013, NKJV, YLT, TR Classic.

Well, my source shows the versions in which it is translated as a command to be these ten Bible versions: Septuagint, New King James, Third Millennium, Webster, Orthodox Jewish, Douay-Rheims Catholic, Jubilee Bible 2000, King James, Wycliffe, and Young’s Literal Translation.

That puts the numbers close enough to raise doubts about deciding this issue on the basis of numbers.

This is indeed the case. The I said in the Heb & Gk is both imperative and vocative which is more forceful than the more passive I thought. In fact both Heb & Gk use the same word in God’s declarative command in creation, i.e., “And God said…” etc.

Interesting. One wonders why some translators of this verse ended up with the wimpy “And I thought, ‘after she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return. . . .”

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And you know that how? From experience or from guessing? We don’t know , we only have opinions which you have every right to express but it is an opinion.

Well ,time is a statistical measurement of the amount of units between two or more events so in other words it is a mathematical calculation and so time is part of certain laws established by God. Therefore “time” is part of the created universe and God being the Creator is apart or “outside” of his creation and therefore God is outside of time.

Maybe the key word is “temporal” which is part of the order in which our universe works, but God being eternal is beyond or outside of the temporal even if we can’t make sense of this.

I think that it’d be more accurate to say that you argued it was logically possible to know things as yet undecided, but that others like Paidion and I found your persuasion unconvincing.