Steve, thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I’ve got a bit of time before my first class today and wished to offer you my thoughts on your inquiry.
The first thing to note is that I did not put aside those, “…references that Jesus sacrifice was pre-ordained before the foundation of the world…” I discovered those references to which you are referring to have been interpreted, and thus translated, in the light of Augustine’s fatalistic ideology; an ideology that in no way resembles the ideology of the first believers, which was the ideology of Universal restoration held to for as long as Greek was the language of scripture in the minds of the first and second century Christian apologists, not Latin.
Most of us are here because we recognized that the Latin interprets into scripture an eternal and everlasting hell of conscious torment, against the Original Greek. So, likewise was Augustine’s fatalistic ideology interpreted into the Latin translation, which became the defacto translation for our English Bibles. Augustine was a profligate who later embraced Manichaeisim before he became a Christian monk, highly influential in improving the Latin translation. That, in essence, is when Christianity changed into a religion, because Augustinianisim gave support to the developing divide of the ecclessia into clergy and laity.
In short, that understanding led to me becoming an, “Open Theist,” long before I knew there was a name for what I came to understand.
Hermano’s been writing a lot about how deadly fatalism is to understanding, so there’s no need for me to add any more of my pairings of pennies to that topic.
Now, I have never implied, much less said, that, “…God had no idea what would happen.” And I’m sure you do find that statement hard to believe, even as I would.
Instead, what I have been attempting to point out is that Jehovah could not know the outcome of a choice between trust and distrust that Jehovah had set before them.
Either one of two things was going to happen. That’s it.
Thus I am wishing to communicate that Jehovah put His trust in an optimistic outcome, while being aware that an unfavorable one was just as possible.
Therefore, the only thing He didn’t know was the one thing He couldn’t know, the outcome of their temptation to distrust. They were sentient and innocent, is my contention, and so the first two would set the course for human history to unfold either one way or another.
And don’t you know Jehovah knew what He would have to do, if they failed?
And that cost Him a lot. He has sacrificed much, including having to endure feeling His own anger and remorse at the evil we do, while enduring the same heart-break we endure that come from the Pain and Suffering we create, long, long before Jesus went to the cross as a Divine Human Being to enable us all to, one-by-one, be made complete, beginning, first, with those who will choose to love and trust Him. These first ones He fore-knows because He can read our hearts. And it is these that desire to be good that He elects to receive His grace which leads to an acceptance of faith by His working all things together for the good of them - oftentimes against the actions of other’s who’s actions are from hearts that Jehovah does not favor for having to know them.
Do you understand that every evil we create by our actions, every atrocity, every heinousness, every brutality, every depravity, every immorality, every malfeasance we commit around the globe, every single day, Jehovah feels - as well as the one’s that affect us - and He cares.
Do you think you could endure that kind of intimacy with human beings?
So, “…why not just forgive them, why curse Eve, why curse the ground with thorns and thistles, why appoint Adam as our representative and in effect punish us for Adam’s transgression?”
First of all, forgiveness does not equate to immediate restoration. From a human perspective, the purpose of forgiveness is to restore a damaged relationship, but it depends on both parties to forgive, which means both parties likely contributed something to the Pain and Suffering they endured for being in a relationship. We are weak in conscience and so our relationships suffer. Therefore, the need for our forgiving one another is a direct result of the reality of who we are.
Thus I see that, from God’s perspective, forgiveness could do nothing about the reality of what they now were - human beings who knew the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, but who will now have to struggle mightily to be good. My witness to this is Jehovah’s words to Cain when Jehovah was pleased with Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s:
And Man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man with Jehovah. And she further bore his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd, but Cain was a husbandman. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to Jehovah. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat. And Jehovah looked upon Abel, and on his offering; and upon Cain, and on his offering, he did not look. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. And Jehovah said to Cain, Why art thou angry, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, will not [thy countenance] look up [with confidence]? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door; and unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.[Gen 4:1-7 DBY]
Why would Jehovah of spoken this way to Cain, encouraging Him to resist the sin of not doing well and thus endure it’s consequent feeling of anger for not being accepted by his God, if Jehovah knew, as a fact, that Cain was later going to murder his brother? Thus, this knowledge of good and evil was now permanently and irretrievably in mankind. Yet, it was not the powerful thing Jehovah intended it to be, and so, in the likeness of Cain, human beings begin their struggle between what we want and what is right to do, rather than living from the opposite effect of the fruit in them which would have been that what we want is what is right to do, an effect that would have been made possible for enduring the temptation and then eating the fruit, with Jehovah’s permission.
And is that not our restoration? Is that not the work that will be annulled in us when all that Jehovah has said is done?
This knowledge was now permanently and irretrievably in mankind, so I said.
And here’s why: some things can only be done at the very beginning, after that, whatever the outcome, there is no possibility of going back, of, “pressing the reset button,” because the reset button would be the killing of the first two - and all of us would never exist and Jehovah’s purpose in creating human beings would be thwarted, permanently.
Thus, Resurrection becomes the thing wherein He will catch the conscience of every being.
You said, “We are told we need to be more then conquerors, we need to be overcomers, we need to put on the full armour of God.”
Yes, indeed, WE are told to do this because that is relevant to the reality of who we are - people who know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil - and yet, apart from being re-sired of Jehovah (born anew), are unable to realize the ideal world such knowledge creates in us.
And that is why I say, over and over again because it’s so very true,
Be good! It is after all what you were created to be!
And what’s wrong with thinking like that?
Dennis!