The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Is everything a reflection of God - the first Cause?

I’ll just step in between you two guys for a second, then butt out -

If you did not use the adjective ‘ontologically’ - would your opinion still hold?
Could God have created two angels, nothing else, to relieve the necessity?
I’m not being facetious, actually. I’m just very interested in your use of the word ‘necessary’ in relation to the God of the scriptures.

Is God, then, the Author of evil?
This particular statement - “which are all under God’s deterministic control or intimate foreknowledge” - may not be true necessarily (in the logical sense). I understand the parallel game of 'Do we have free will, or are we determined, or do we simply have free will enough (My choice) to serve God’s purposes, or to rebel against them? It is my belief that, as fun a game as it is, noone can win it, this side of Glory (as my father-in-law was fond of saying :smiley: ). But that is just me.

I’m sorry if I come across as ‘sniping’ - maybe that’s one reason my posts are always short, it makes me a smaller target :laughing: - I do appreciate people who are obviously working hard to make sense of a topsy-turvy world and how it relates to God. Please continue.

I am neither a determinist nor a compatibilist. I believe that normal people have libertarian free will. I also believe in the universal reconciliation of all people to God. I don’t see why this would be “impossible to predict”. It is true that free-will agents can and do change their minds. But there is also stability in free will agents, since their choices also crystallize their character.

God haters may carry their hatred throughout this short life of no more than 120 years. But God is love, and his love results in action. God will work to lead people to repentance and submission to Him in the after life, for He knows this will result in the greatest joy and mental health for everyone. Can the God-hater hold out in defiance of God’s love in his rebellion forever? Maybe he can hold out for a million years or so. But can he hold out forever? If he can, then his hate must be stronger than God’s love. This implies that he is the winner, and God the loser. I don’t think so. God will never stop loving, but eventually every hater will repent and stop hating of their own free will.

Today’s Maverick Philosopher column, dealing in part with the theology of Simone Weil and the question of Absolute Goodness relative to man’s goodness, has the following line, appropriate to this thread, I think:
“The absolute good, existing absolutely (ab solus, a se), is absolute in its existence without prejudice to its being necessarily related to us in its goodness. If God is (agapic) love, then God necessarily bestows His love on any creatures there might be. It is not necessary that there be creatures, but it is necessary that God love the creatures that there are and that they find their final good in Him.”

That is also the way I would talk about ‘necessity’ - again, in the logical sense - as it relates to God.
Does that make sense to my fellow threadees? :smiley:

edit: JP said something akin to this above:
"Except that ontologically the creation isn’t a necessary characteristic of the self-existent action of God per se. God must self-generate in order to actively self-exist; God does not have to create not-God reality in order to actively self-exist. (But God does have to treat not-God reality in certain ways, in order not to act in contravention to God’s own active self-existence. This has massive and decisive implications in favor of Christian universalism, eventually.)

Hi again Dave,

I’m not sure what you mean by your first question. What I’m saying is that IF God is at all ontologically consistent, I think that His very existence must necessarily be true to the characteristics He has. Now sure, you might decide he doesn’t need to be ontologically consistent, but I don’t think there’s much point discussing that option from a pragmatic point of view, and besides I think the Bible describes God as ontologically consistent.
IF He is true to his characteristics, we need to decide what these are. I think Scripture defines Him very specifically, and not as a blank or vague being, and not merely as ‘love’. If these descriptions were all we had for God, I can understand that there is no ontological necessity for created beings. However, I think the Bible describes God much more specifically, e.g. as soulish (with a character desiring to express itself), relational, powerful and creative, exclusively ‘good’, etc, etc (add to the list whatever you think is Scriptural). Basically the God I see in Scripture has characteristics that, if He were true to them during His existence, would ‘require’ the creation of a space-time entity which is the universe, humanity, Christ, heaven and hell, etc.
Also, I don’t see it as a necessity that needs ‘relieving’. Its a glorious drive to express Himself and be true to Himself.

Yes, I do think that God is the ‘author’ of Evil in a certain sense. The Bible says this itself (Isaiah 45:7). Obviously this doesn’t mean ‘God has evil motives’ or that ‘God is involved in creating evil outcomes, ultimately’. But this isn’t what you’re asking - even if God has good motives and ensures a good outcome, you’re main concern seems to be with God performing particular actions. The ‘evil’ you are concerned about is a quality of the action, not the consequences or the motives. And this is exactly how Isaiah is using the term ‘evil’ when he says that God does it. I also think the Bible teaches that God is the author (in a certain sense) of the unique balance of sin/faith within each individual.
I understand there are many potential ‘problems’ that people have with this, but I have yet to find one that sticks when examined closely - which is good, because I don’t like feeling uncomfortable with any of the (real) implications of my particular theology!

I personally think the game of free-will and determinism can be ‘won’ :slight_smile: But its certainly debated by a great number of Christians who know God much better than I do, so I try to stay humble and open about it! I don’t think God would ever expect us to stop seeking cognitive knowledge about Him merely because it is difficult or uncertain. There are, however, a great many ways we can use our efforts, and we do probably use too much energy on this particular game. What I ultimately care about is unity in the body of Christ THROUGH a diversity of doctrines, love for those struggling where we never use their ‘Free Will’ as an excuse to reduce our efforts, and an unshakeable hope for good in all things (including evil) through our sovereign God.

Absolutely, I agree with this. :smiley:

As to the rest, there’s no need to argue over speculations! I have no doubt God is greater than anything we can think.
I’ll leave it to you and JP and the others for now.

“Opposition is true friendship” - Owen Barfield :smiley:

Hey peoples!
I have been enjoying the comments, even though they are rather heavy at times lol. Great thoughts! I thought I would chip in a little here. Thanks for the chime Paidon.

I love your understanding of God in that He will never give up on people or let evil win!
My reply would be that since God knows that all people have a nature where we will eventually become subject to God’s love, then we must have that particular nature as part of our being. I cannot conceive of that nature being random (as in making random choices not related to any particular nature), nor do I like to think of that nature being random. However, as you said God’s love is stronger than hate. The quality of God’s love has a certain (not uncertain) effect that outweighs the power of hate.
Because you say that freewill works with a solidified and mouldable character, does that mean that one day we will not have free will? Our solidified characters would have taken over our ability to choose?

Jason you said:
“The problem comes from introducing a past-tense into God’s present-tense. If God is currently experiencing 2004 and 2014 (with them not being “at the same time”, by the way), God is not presently seeing 2004 in hindsight from 2014. All the history that actually happens happens, and God sees it and is present for it: God is equally present and seeing my choices now as for the choices I will make and the choices I have made.”

Thanks for the write up. It was a great read!
From the sounds of it, you don’t seem to believe in free will, as in, you believe more in free agency. So this comment may be pointless. However, even if God had no concept of past tense and was present at all times, at the same time; wouldn’t that mean that “change” could never happen?
If God is presently involved in all chronological time with no concept of past tense, then He would not be able to change anything. Change means to move from one form to the next which requires past tense. There would be no new decisions or actions from God along the chronological time scale. It is fixed. If it is fixed to God then it must be fixed to us. Though from our perceptions it feels like we choose.
Thus any “freewill” we may have is still fixed.

Cheers!

This is certainly our point of contrast, then; because I cannot logically regard God’s active self-existence to necessarily involve God’s creation of not-God entities in order to continue self-existing. Not-God reality is not God, and does not actively self-exist; there is no and cannot be ontological parity between God and not-God. (Call that shallow if you insist. :wink: I call it logical.)

Nor do I regard God in His infinite self-existence to have changed to be no longer the perfect pure self-generation of God. That God must act differently from the action of self-existence, however, must be true for not-God entities to exist; but that does not and cannot involve God self-begetting and God self-begotten (and God self-giving) ceasing instead to act in self-existence.

I do grant the most intimate possible points of connection between the self-sacrificing action of God and (not-God) Nature as an ongoing result of that self-sacrificial action – but the real distinction of a creation (by the Lamb slain at and as the foundation of the world, so to speak) means any not-God Nature (however many such systems of created existence exist) is not itself ontologically on parity with God. Similarly, an ever-increasing number of such systems can always be increasing in number, perhaps even at infinite speed, without that number ever ‘adding up to’ the infinity from which those numbers come.

What I do insist on, in regard to God’s continuing ontological self-existence, is that God shall not treat rational creatures in those Natures in any way which would run in contravention to the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons. (I don’t mean that I’m ordering God to do that, of course; only that I cannot accept an idea about God to be true that involves this, without denying orthodox trinitarian theism.) But even this does not require God to be creating not-God entities in order for God to self-exist.

I don’t think free agency at all denies, but rather affirms, at least a limited ability to choose in a way that is not determined by all incoming environmental effects. But we probably have very different ideas of what free agency per se involves, and so are inadvertently talking at cross purposes here using similar terminology. “The bottom line is that Free Agency maintains that, however difficult it is to predict or define, our decisions are entirely based upon elements of our soul and perception and context, which are all under God’s deterministic control or intimate foreknowledge, making our choices entirely malleable in a deterministic way,” doesn’t sound at all like “free agency” to me even in a limited way. “Free” “agency” == “our choices” are “entirely malleable” by, “entirely based upon”, “deterministic” influences?? That sounds like the total opposite of any even slightly real free agency.

My problem is when you elide that over into the circumstances of “the best perceived option” creating the (apparent) choice of (actual) behavior. Being forced by circumstances to quit doing something that I willingly intend I would continue if I could, highlights the distinction of events involved. The core intention, even if clouded by perception, is what a person is personally responsible for, and what the person is actively choosing.

I would say instead the free will per se is the only way in which a person is actually a person and not an illusion of a person; and this active agency can only come from God (the Father of spirits). God, I agree, authoritatively chooses to let our free will exist in subjection, currently, to many non-rational and non-moral stimuli, affected by causes; but this cannot be the end or the beginning of our will. In one sense I can agree that God therefore does not choose to protect our free will in various ways (imposed death being the most obvious example); but in the only ways that can possibly have meaning, our free will is the only created thing about us which God ultimately protects, our existence as free wills being why God voluntarily self-sacrifices to create not-God reality at all.

A not-God natural system teeming with any number of impersonal not-God entities, is after all only a work of art at best. Derivatively created spirits are children, not puppets (even if we and/or our ancestors have currently tied us up in bundles of knotted strings woven from the threads of Nature, her maternal dress becoming our shroud until the time of childbirth has been entirely fulfilled.)

Yep, as your noticed afterward I said much the same thing upthread; and also in SttH (at muuuuuchhh more detailed length. :wink: )

For what it’s worth, Fe4r, I don’t agree that Free Will is any excuse for us to reduce our efforts to love those who are struggling with their lives, including with sin in their lives. On the contrary, I would say Free Will is why people exist to be loved (and to love) at all. Recognizing and acknowledging the environmental problems of a person does not require denying the ability of the person to make personally responsible choices (though a person may be crippled so far that their choices are poisoned or ineffective against their environment). Affirming personal responsibility, and helping that responsibility grow, honors the person as a person, and helps the person grow as a person.

Maturity could even be defined, I’d say, as coming to take increasing responsibility for one’s environment, and for one’s behaviors within that environment. There’s even a common scriptural phrase connected with that idea: “enjoying the allotment of the inheritance”! :slight_smile: It’s practically the whole point to the “son-placement” idea, translated in English as “adoption”, described by St. Paul.

Actually, I believe they’re basically the same thing. But i acknowledge that the active will of creatures has natural limitations, and that this will always be true even in the resurrection to eonian life however much we grow in effective capabilities within the Natures we inhabit. Right now our wills are highly hampered by natural processes and environmental effects, though different people through discipline and training can improve their capabilities of interaction with natural processes to various degrees.

Change would still happen; God would just be present at all times and would know all changes (also, I suppose, all possible changes which never happen).

I’m not sure I would say (and didn’t actually say) God has no concept of a past-tense, but His concept of it would be a concept of our concept of the natural past: He knows how we perceive the past.

(Nor, by the way, do I think God would need an Incarnation to have that knowledge, though being Incarnate would give Him a way to ‘naturally experience’ that knowledge. There is a way in which, being omnipresent and omniscient, God knows of my eating more thoroughly and intimately than I ever can, yet what He knows thus is my eating, not His eating; what He knows in the Incarnation is His eating.)

The question of God being able to change something is kind of moot, since God at all points of space-time contributes to the shape of natural history in various ways – first and perhaps foremost by providing for natural entities to do things to have a history at all, but this keeps a way open for Him to introduce effects more directly into the system, too. From His divine present He sees all effects He introduces, without which introductions natural history would have had a different shape.

It isn’t a question of it being fixed against God’s ability to choose to contribute to the shape of the history; the history exists in its shape thanks to God’s choices as well as the choices of created agents, though unlike God we move along the history contributing our choices one at a time as we go. (The Incarnate Son is a way for God to experience and contribute to history along the story as well as from above the story, too; I strongly suspect the Son also travels around history in time and space as His personal natural history, which He starts in Bethlehem, or possibly at the conception in Nazareth, goes forward! – and that this accounts for a lot of the anthropomorphisms attributed to YHWH, especially to the visible YHWH, in the OT.)

If God wants to actively contribute to histories with different shapes, He ‘simply’ makes other histories in parallel with ours, though I doubt He contributes to, or authoritatively allows, every possible actualization and so every theoretically possible history. But there may be one best-possible-history which God prefers to bring about. Or there may be any number of best-possible-histories which God brings about but which are historically quite distinct from each other: to give an example of that idea, Narnia isn’t an alternate history Earth, so something like that would be brought about (on this theory) and not Lewis’ Space Trilogy stories which feature him and other persons from our history as well as persons not found in our history.

The question there would be whether, in short, God creates multiple Jasons in alternate universes. I can see arguments for the possibility of multiple universes without me; for multiple universes with different me’s yet similar enough to be recognizable as me though all different actual persons; and for one natural history that happens to be the only one God thought fit to create. However, I don’t have a main reason for some theologians like William Lane Craig to insist on the one-best-possible-history idea: it would seem weird on Arminian soteriology to have multiple persons existing, some saved and some damned (since if God doesn’t save everyone and doesn’t choose by election to save only some, then there would be at least some risk of multiple persons of me being perma-damned); and God electing to ensure the salvation of one version of me while damning another version of me would run against Calvinistic expectations in a different way (though a Calv might be a little more comfortable with close-parallel universes, where the same persons are always elected or not to salvation by God’s choice.) Either Calvs or Arms would I think be okay with more distinctly different natural histories being created with altogether different persons, though they might still have reasons for thinking God would only make one natural history. (WLC’s rationale for one-best-possible world is only partially soteriological, for example.)

Hi Jason, thanks for the reply.

I don’t think you or your approach is shallow LOL! I feel honoured that you’d address my arguments at all, to be honest…

I’m wondering if some of our differences are due to your progressive-logical-argument perspective (where simultaneous and ontologically integrated phenomena are dealt with separately and in sequence, because one is required to understand the other). From that perspective, yes, God’s active but isolated self-existence can be seen as occurring ‘first’ or being more ‘fundamental’ (in a logically progressive sense) than anything proceeding from this.

But it does not follow that there is no ontological necessity with subsequent phenomenon (as you yourself demonstrate). I think you’re saying that God’s active self-existence somehow ontologically entails that He act in a particular way toward non-God entities (i.e. in a way consistent with all the attributes of Himself). I agree with this. But if there can be ontological links between God’s self existence and his behavior toward non-God entities, what is so special about the act (or continuous process) of ‘creation’?

Also I’m not arguing for anything as drastic as parity, let alone parity between any being (e.g. God) and another being (e.g. non-God). I’m comparing two of God’s activities. And I’m not talking about a hypothetical as-yet undeveloped or unspecified God (a blank minimalistic God, for whom isolated eternal self-existence may well be possible without violating its nature). I’m just saying that I think there is an inseparable ontological integration between the Scriptural God’s act of self existence (which is in accordance with his specific nature), and His natural unrestricted expression of Himself (including the act of creation).

Of course the act of creation is ‘different’ in terms of description or logical progression, to the act of self-generation (i.e. they have no true ‘parity’). I’m not so radically pantheistic to want to deny this! I’m saying these two activities/processes cannot occur without each other - as if they were both ontologically necessary manifestations of an underlying process, or as if one were are description of merely one facet of the other.

Regarding ‘Free Agency’, my understanding of it is that it is a deliberate term designed to distinguish itself from Free Will, by describing what is actually Free (the agency of the person, rather than the will). In order for the agency to be truly free, every phenomenon that is derived from the soul must reflect and express that soul, meaning that technically (if everything was known, i.e. in God’s mind) the soul can be truly and accurately interpreted from the phenomena derived from it, from its ‘expressions’. This means that emotions, desires, the will, perceptions, etc, cannot have ‘random’ or unpredictable / uninterpretable factors that distort the expression of the soul (i.e. that limit the freedom of that soul’s agency). This is why Free Agency states that the will cannot be directed at anything other than whatever the soul currently perceives as the ‘best option’.

BTW, the ‘will’ in Free Agency has nothing to do with physical ability. Of course you can will something (perceive it to be the best option) that you can’t actually achieve.

Free Agency makes a point of using the word ‘freedom’, to battle the notion that we are puppets. We are our own agents with distinct characteristics, and we have freedom to actually express who we actually are in a meaningful and interpretable way in the world. The reason God can actually ‘judge’ us based on our actions, will, emotions, desires, etc, is that these really do express our souls. ‘Responsibility’ in this picture is more a statement about the actual state of our souls - if you perform an evil act or desire evil things, you are responsible because it means your soul actually has evil in it. I think God preserves our agency, by NOT arbitrarily forcing to act / will / feel / desire / perceive a certain way, but rather limiting Himself to allowing our souls to express who they actually are.

We know that our souls change over time, and the phenomena derived from them also change. People grow, conversion happens, faith and sin are not static. And this reflects itself in our wills, emotions, actions, etc. But the way our souls grow is itself a phenomenon derived from that soul - some souls are harder to change in a particular way than others. So for God to preserve our Free agency, He must not only ensure that our wills / emotions / actions actually reflect our soul (rather than being forced against our wills, like puppets), but He must also ensure that the growth and development of our soul is true to itself (rather than being arbitrarily forced to have certain characteristics, so that it will will and act as God intends).

I’m getting tongue-tied :slight_smile: I’m writing this far too late at night…

Basically God has limited Himself, and does respect aspects about our humanity that make us special and responsible and meaningful agents. But this does not preclude Him perfectly designing the development of our soul to have the will / emotions / perceptions that He wants us to have, and to behave the way He wants us to behave (over time, via influences that He knows we will respond to).

I’m always interested to hear how people think Free Will is superior to this kind of Free Agency. I personally have not yet seen why it would be required for e.g. love or responsibility or ‘Image of God’, or for God to be consistent with His own character, etc. You mention several times that you do think it is required. Can you describe why?

Haven’t posted here in a while, but wanted to chime in here.

Free agency seems to me to be only compatibilism with a different name. How does it account for the existence of our seemingly brute “natures”? They either come straight from God as they are (which would make him responsible for any evil they contained) or there is some other truly independent causative power (i.e. our free wills) which have messed things up.

By they way, I would like to express again my concerns with the whole “Boethian” timeless view of God. By itself (as presented by Jason), I find the doctrine incoherent. For there must be some logical priority, even if we view time as a single “now”, among the acts of the free creatures throughout the space-time continuum. And if this is so, God cannot be interacting “simultaneously” with all those acts in such a way that violates that logical priority. The easiest way to see this error is this way. When Jesus foretells that Peter will deny him, it is asserted (on Boethius view) that he is able to foretell this, not because God has predetermined Peter’s acts, but simply because he “sees” them in his eternal now. However, the Peter that God would be seeing who is denying Christ would himself be a being who had already experienced the foretelling prophecy. In other words, before Peter is told the prophecy, he must deny Christ, but before he denies Christ, he has to have heard the prophecy. What is given with one hand on this theory is at the same time taken away with the other. The reply at this point is often - by Lewis and Boethius - that all God’s “acts” in eternity with his creation are really a single act, “incorporating” everything at once. But, even if this were so, this single act would have to uphold this logical interaction, for the temporally posterior acts of free creatures are dependent on temporally prior acts, not vice versa, and therefore what is temporally prior, even with time removed from the equation, is also logically prior. Thus, acts which occur earlier in time must be logically before acts which come later in time, and the latter are “dependent” on the former; not vice versa.

I do think there is a better view of divine atemporality, free will, and providence, which actually incorporates this Boethian view of Lewis’ with his more “open theistic” beliefs, in terms of God “risking” when he created beings with free will, the “two way traffic” of causation between God and creature and God’s impassibility (or lack thereof), and, perhaps the most enlightening metaphor he’s given us on the subject, his chess piece analogy at the end of the Great Divorce. For those interested I’ll post a short summary of that theory below from something I’ve written in the past.

"By combining various elements of CS Lewis’ views of God’s relationship to time, free will, foreknowledge and impassibility, I think I have something pretty close to a “Lewisian” response to the grounding objection in Molinism.

I have attached a diagram which explains it best, but, to put it in words, God’s knowledge is determined by the part of us which is eternal and not in time (which I labeled “soul”). There is a logical priority here which is, admittedly, only vaguely imaginable - like the eternal footprint in the sand - but I think the image does convey a positive idea. Once this “non-temporal” interaction - this “imprintation” - occurs, God’s knowledge is “affected”. This is possible only by the power of his omnipotence and act of self-abnegation which allows us creatures to be “more than receptacles”. I’m sure you know that any theory of genuine free will must allow for God in some way to be affected by his creation; I simply say that affect-ing must occur outside of and logically before time. Once this knowledge is “obtained” by God (this would be where he “learns” the counterfactuals of freedom), God can then “reveal” the soul (to him and to itself), in time, by giving it consciousness, etc, and perfecting it in whatever way he sees fit. His seeing its eternal nature, which has somehow “responded” to him outside of time, allows him to know how it would respond, were he to put it in time A under influences B. What God gains in eternity by looking at the soul is something that allows him to know how such a soul would look “unraveled”, as it were, in time. Perhaps the pictorial best explains it, however.

This idea is based off Lewis in the Great Divorce and his chess piece analogy. You will notice there that he has an “eternal nature” standing outside the board (which is time), and the board itself is that nature “dileneated” in time. This idea, combined with what he says in Letters to Malcolm about there being a “two-way traffic” of causation between creator and created presents the possibility of our eternal souls “causing” God’s knowledge of free counterfactuals outside of time and “before” we have been put in time. Finally, we “come to know ourselves” in time, as our consciousness of our own choices comes to us moment by moment (Screwtape.) As he indicates in the Great Divorce, our eternal souls can be viewed as making a sort of “single” choice or giving a “single” expression by eternally exercising our freedom in a certain way. This expression can be “broken up” in time.

I’m not convinced Lewis actually pictured or encountered the grounding objection, but synthesizing his views allows us to see a possible solution.

Thomas Flint called this view a kind of combination of open theism in eternity and determinism in time. That is a helpful way of thinking, I believe, so long as one remembers it doesn’t exactly capture it."


Nice to have your view Chris :slight_smile: I found it very interesting.

From what I understand, it’s very similar to my current view, but with the introduction of ‘open theism’ within eternity (which God then responds to in his eternal determinism, which then plays out in time). My current view does not have this self-determining aspect to the soul - the diversity and characteristics that exist which God responds to, are themselves determined by God (meaning, yes God is responsible in a certain sense for sin within us). The introduction of this eternal limited self-determining ‘open theism’, which influences but by no means negates God’s determinism, can fit quite well with Scripture and universalism. I’ll have to think about it a bit more. My initial gut instinct (obviously a very reliable guide LOL) is that Scripture and logical coherence favour absolute determinism more than this hybrid… But I’m intrigued.

Interesting critique of Boethian timelessness from a pure foreknowledge perspective. I’m not sure its enough to totally discredit it, but I’d like to hear a defence of the idea’s coherence in the face of this challenge. Any form of determinism (with or without eternal self-determinism) easily solves the problem - because it naturally assumes that God has a logical progression that He then expresses in temporal consciousness. God doesn’t have a bunch of space-time slices that mash into an unintelligible shape, but rather arrange themselves to form a beautiful 4D image. The arrangement (logical / temporal progression) is an essential part of God’s determinism.

I think the concept of God’s ‘responsibility’ for evil, is an important thing to grapple with. Why is it that Christians feel they have to get God off the hook for being intimately involved in creating what we call ‘evil’? I have yet to hear a reason that sticks under scrutiny. Would be keen to hear your thoughts.

Is God on the hook? I have yet to hear a reason to think so, that sticks under scrutiny. :wink:
If He is on the hook, responsible for evil, then I can think of a greater God.
That is, if we are using the words ‘responsible’ and ‘evil’ and ‘greater’ and ‘God’ univocally.

The weakest rebuttal to the statement that “I do not believe that God is responsible for evil” would be: “I cannot think of any way in which He CANNOT be responsible for Evil”. As if our inability to think a thing binds God. Of course, that cuts both ways, which I think shows the paucity of our philosophy rather than saying something meaningful about God.

As has been said somewhere, or should have been : we put Descartes before the horse. :laughing:

Hi Jason, thanks for your reply. Personally I don’t see a difference between whether God sees the past or we see the past. My point is is that if there is any existence of a past then that history is fixed, as well as the involvement of a hypertemporal God. God cannot see all of history at the same time and still claim that it can be changed. If he sees the “last event” then the previous events which **caused or created the last event **must have a real existence. If God wanted to change history, then it would be impossible for him to change it because it has already happened, especially with Him being hypertemporal. He could as you mentioned, have “created” and be involved with other parallel realities, however those realities are fixed also, because he would be aware of the last event of those too. Also, it is unlikely that God would create one reality and THEN decide that He wants a different one. That would be adding a past tense to Gods hypertemporalism. All existing realities must have existed from the moment God became “present” which has been for all time (IMO). If there is no past with God then there cannot be any change. Because God cannot see a result and then change his mind, because that result has already happened by God being present at the last event.

In the end I am not sure how multiverses can allow freewill. It just extends the same problems. God would be either picking one and destroying the others or letting them all exist. If God only picks the outcomes he wants and destroys all the realities where I choose something different from what he wants, then how is that freewill? If God allows all these multi realities to exist then how or why on earth would I choose any different? If there was the same or parallel me in alternative realities ultimately choosing different paths then I want to know what made me choose a different path? was it randomness? was it a change of circumstances?
It comes back to the same issue - Freewill can’t be explained.

Cheers

I think we complicate the concept too much. “Freewill” is but the ability to choose. We all know we have it, since we continue to choose throughout each day, every day.

If, in the past, I made choice X under circumstances C, then if I could have chosen not-X under the same circumstances, I have freewill. A determinist or a compatabilist affirms that I could not have chosen not-X under the same circumstance. Determinists and compatablists have freewill themselves, and yet deny that freewill exists. It is this, perhaps, which cannot be explained.

God created man in his own image — with freewill. So God is not responsible for man’s evil choices. One could say that He is responsible for creating man with freewill. True, but that does not make Him the author of evil.

I happen to agree wholeheartedly with you on that, Paidion, but I know that there are some that will call it a non-sequitur.
Your choice of words is very good : He is not the Author of evil.

It’s quite refreshing to see someone so comfortable with this topic and so easily able to understand the implications of the view I laid out. You’ve explained my position very nicely, I believe, even adding some helpful phrases I’d not thought of (“eternal self-determining”).

As far as your commitment to absolute, “God-only” determinism - I disbelieve in this. I think if we say God has determined absolutely everything, that means he’s determined evil. And, unless we’re going to say there is really no such thing as evil in the world, that would mean that God has himself done these evil things. Ergo, God would be evil.

That is the main critique, but several others are there as well. It would make unintelligible, to me, the whole concept of guilt. If I’m only doing an action because I have been preprogrammed to do so, I don’t see how I can be morally responsible - anymore than the bullet would be responsible for the murder rather than the man who shot it. Of course, one could say that since we’re humans, we exhibit a particular feature of consciousness - namely, intentionality - that a bullet cannot have. But I just don’t see how this helps. For if we could program another person, say, to determinately have a certain state of consciousness - if, for instance, I could give someone a pill that made them want to commit murder - I would still be ultimately responsible for the evil done. Absolute determinism also seems to me to posit an incoherence or irreconcilable division in the divine will. If God has indeed determined my sins, how could he sincerely at the same time command I refrain from doing them? I only will to do them because he has so determined me; yet, at the same time he evidently wills I not do them. This presents to me an impossible state of affairs: God simultaneously willing two opposite things. Or another problem with absolute determinism. If we suppose God has created evils so that other goods exist which would otherwise be impossible (e.g. God creates wars so that the virtue of courage can be displayed), this has grave implications concerning God’s perfect goodness, “in whom there is no darkness at all.” It would make goodness as such somehow needing or dependent on evil for the maximization of itself. But this is not my experience or intuition of perfect goodness. When I am enjoying something good, evil as such is nowhere to be found in my mind. Indeed, insofar as it is in my mind, it lessens my experience of goodness. To suppose good needs evil would be equivalent to supposing a marriage needed adultery for it to be best, or that in order to enjoy a beautiful face, one must see many ugly ones. But this, I believe, would make God metaphysically dependent on evil. He would somehow “need” or “desire” it in his inner most being; and this would make him less than perfectly good. Do we really think that every evil in this world somehow makes it better? Would it really have been better for the little girl to have been raped than not? And this leads me to my final criticism. If all evil is justified because it leads to a greater good, it no longer becomes evil. Indeed, to NOT do said “evil” would in fact be evil, since the greater good which necessarily comes from it would never obtain. So if this were true, it would destroy our notions of good and evil altogether and would make making ethical judgments impossible. I can’t imagine anyone would actually find such a view livable.

Just some thoughts! I had a discussion a few years back with an old member of this forum who believed in absolute determinism, and his justification of the existence of evil was that it somehow glorified God’s goodness in an otherwise impossible way. My rebuttal to him was that, if this was so, if, that is, God could not make as good a universe with less evil, he therefore needed evil and was metaphysically dependent on it. And that, to me, is rather more like dualism than classical Christianity. The God of Christianity seems to me to be perfectly, wholly good. He “runs” on goodness alone because that is what he is. There is nothing in him that “requires” evil. His fire is kept alive by pure, whole wood; not refuse.

Hi Chris, thanks for your contributions!

I understand the difficulties you raise in regards to the necessary acceptance of God creating evil within determinism. However, there is also a necessary acceptance of God becoming the author of evil under Freewill. The fact is, God may not have determined in a strict sense a young girl to be raped, but He certainly let it happen. He not only let it happen, He directly planted evil Freewill creatures in a position where that rape was most likely to happen! To then say that God doesn’t have responsibility would be absurd. God in the narrative of Freewill becomes this powerless Being who subjects himself to evil and can only create something good after the chaos has already happened… that he allowed to happen.

Being a determinist like Fe4r (I know him rather well :smiley:), I am sure that Fe4r would reply regarding responsibility, that evil is in the intent and not the action. That is, God intends good from every given situation which then justifies the “evil” acts used within the process. From our perspective, how we judge what is moral is a little different, because we cannot use evil means to justify a good outcome, because we do not know all factors involved.

For me, responsibility means a way of defining where change needs to happen rather than an arbitrary punitive judgement for those who commit crimes. Those who commit crimes, do so for a reason and hence why I believe in a rehabilitation rather than punitive judgement. I believe that God created each and every one of us with fixed natures which is a base that make us who we are. Some of us are harder than others but God wants to use a process where we all eventually can come to Him and subject ourselves and ultimately value His ways. This process creates a necessary demonstration of anti evil and a necessary moulding of the expressions of our natures through experience.
Kind of like - Without John Newton experiencing the slave trade we would never have “Amazing Grace”. John Newton is responsible for what he did in that it was his nature that allowed him to make those decisions. However, God knows him better and then directs him towards the potential that his nature is able to be. This process although terrible in many ways, proclaims a triumph of good over evil.

Paidion
What I meant earlier when I said that Freewill cannot be explained I meant that no one can tell me why I choose God over my neighbour. If I have option A or B before me and I am not pushed towards one or the other, then I suppose this is the closest explanation of a truly free will. However, with this complete freedom of choice, how could I ever chose A or B? I would merely be rolling a dice as to which one I would go with. In fact I could not even choose A or B because I have an equal desire to choose both which then cancels each other out. This makes it impossible to make a choice.
Unless we believe that effects can have no causes. Though, I am not quite that bold :smiley:

I don’t have time to re-read my comment through and edit it, so I hope it makes some sense lol.

Appreciate all your comments; I’ve struggled with the issue(s) for years; it’s a tough nut to crack.

However, I will reiterate my contention, that because we have two opposing answers, it does not follow that either is correct, or that we must dialectically ‘split the difference’ to get to the ‘truth’ of the matter.

In other words, it could be the fact that God is unapproachable Light, that there are no shadows in Him, that He will never lie nor commit sin, nor be the Author of evil; and that the answer to the intolerable intellectual questions that we are so concerned about, and rightly so, is simply beyond our ken.

Am I satisfied with that? No. But I am much less satisfied with speculative answers (and yeah, I’ve speculated my butt off on this :smiley: ) that impute, to the Maker of the Universe and Lord of all things, any taint of imperfection, let alone imputation of evil.

No. You can be “pushed” toward either one, and still choose the other.

No. Non-determinism is not tantamount to randomness. When you make a choice, you yourself are the cause of your action.

There is always a basis for choice. At a Dairy Queen, I have an equal desire for a chocolate milkshake, and a butterfinger blizzard. I don’t say, “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.” Rather I do some consideration. I’ll choose the milkshake to go, since I don’t have much time, and the blizzard tomorrow. My lack of time doesn’t cause me to choose the milkshake. I could have chosen the blizzard instead and taken the extra time instead of completing the task I intended to do.

YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF YOUR ACTIONS NOT THE CIRCUMSTANCES. THE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE INFLUENCES BUT NOT CAUSES. Even if a thief holds a gun to your head and demands your money, this doesn’t cause you to hand over your money. You could choose not to do so, even if you are fully aware of the possible consequences.

“Every effect has a cause” is a tautology — like saying, “What will be will be.” The very word “effect” refers to that which was caused. Tautologies have no practical meaning. However, “Every event has a cause” DOES have practical meaning. I will even concede that to be true. But many times the cause of an event is not another event. The cause of many events can be traced to freewill agents themselves.

I don’t think this follows. God may permit evil and still not actually be its author. On my view, all evil is permitted only because his free created creatures require it to reach perfection. What free creatures do is not something God has causal power over. That’s something he’s “given up” by limiting his omnipotence and granting them freedom. Insofar as their choices are evil, they are true “obstacles” God must work around. What it takes to actually get them to reach perfection themselves may require all sorts of ways of dealing with them that are, to God, less than ideal but, due to their freedom, necessary. This is quite different from your view, which actually destroys the notion of “permission” altogether.

As for your other comments, it seems to me they all rely on the idea that God must have evil in order to maximize his own goodness. I don’t believe God is metaphysically dependent on evil in such a way.

Regarding free will and it amounting to “effects without causes”. I have little to add to what Paidion said, but I’ll say this. What you say is only true if you assume a deterministic interpretation of reality. Of course, if you believe determinism to be true, you can always go back to a given choice and say that the motives actually cause, rather than only influence, the choice. But I see no reason to believe that the only sort of interactive nexus that exists in reality is a deterministic one. I experience my own freedom all the time every day. That is enough justification for its existence, since that experience is just as strong as any sense experience or empirical judgment. Not to mention that if I didn’t believe in it, I’d have to believe God caused all the evil and sin in the world himself.