The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Universalism and Arminianism

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#21

All past events have occurred (past tense) for us. They occur (present tense) for God, and it was God’s knowledge of events and the relation of God’s knowledge of events to our freedom we were talking about. Shifting over to our knowledge of events as temporal creatures moving along in history, is changing the category of the discussion. Are we going to talk about the relation of our knowledge of events to our freedom now? Because that’s rather a different thing! – though related to how God communicates promises about the future in prophecy.

God promises to save everyone from sin whom He intends to save (as per Calv theology; and intends to save all sinners as per Arm theology; and both as per Kath theology). Thus He promises to save me from sin into being righteous, someday, somehow, within some logical constraints (I can’t be saved from uncooperation with God except by coming to cooperate with God, thus also coming to cooperate with all Persons of God including the Son – presumably there are similar logical constraints for non-trinitarian Christianities where coming to God through the Son is at least somewhat necessary for some reason).

I’m not free to avoid the logical and authoritative requirements of salvation, and I’m not free to avoid God’s effective persistence of me, no more than I’m free to have free action capability without dependence on God for that capability. If God promised or otherwise told me that He will certainly bring about various historical situations related to my salvation, or to someone else’s, I wouldn’t be free to change those contributions from God which He is setting up now and/or will set up later: my volitional capability does not trump God’s volition. That would still be true even if God didn’t tell me in advance what He and various free willed creatures will be freely doing later! – the only difference is that I wouldn’t have knowledge about what various rational act-ors will be doing eventually.

If God tells me, from seeing how He and a particular rational creature will be freely acting later, that He will save her from her sins, He’s telling me He will empower and successfully lead her to salvation from her sins. If God tells me He-and-she will be bringing her to faith in Christ by having us marry, I can either cooperate with that or not, though if I don’t then I’m the one being a rebel and sinner against God! In which case God may be revealing either that He will convince me to cooperate freely about the marriage (by such-and-such a time if He provides that information), or that He’ll get it done somehow without my consent; but a marriage, unlike salvation from sin, can be done in some (very limited) modes without free consent (though no full marriage can be built without the free consent and true love of both people).

This is aside from the question of conditionals: God warns me in advance that if I agree to cooperate with Him in truly loving a particular woman self-sacrificially, then I will suffer unimaginable pain in doing so. God also promises in advance, not conditionally on my choice or hers (though taking our eventual choices into account), that everything will work out all right in the end. If I ask Him whether that means we’ll be married, I may get a reply to the effect of “I’m not telling you that one way or another”, or I may get a direct “yes” or a direct “no”. But the promise, and the fair warning, remain in effect. (I’m speaking from personal history here, btw, though I don’t like to talk about it: “I’m asking you to do this but it’s going to hurt horribly if you do, but I promise everything will turn out all right in the end.” “Does ‘everything turning out all right’ mean we’ll be married, which happens to be what I want?” “You already know I’m not going to answer that question one way or another.” I chose to agree with the request, and have suffered the promised pain, and still do even though I can bear it better now. The promised pain came true, the other promise will also come true though I don’t know the details.)

Except there are plenty of statements from God about the future, involving rational agents who have free volition.

There is not the slightest difference from God’s temporal omnipresence, which is what I was talking about, not “someone” generically.

Since you must be including God in “anyone”, logically you’re now denying God is the independently self-existent ground of all reality, including of our natural system and its history. (Which would admittedly allow you to more consistently claim the Son is an utterly distinct god of exactly the same kind of god as the Father, but that’s a truncated Mormon polytheism.)

Of course a merely superpowerful natural creature (produced by an atheistic Nature? produced by an ultimate God you’re not actually talking about yet?), even if it could somehow (per impossibility) be omniscient about all past and present events, would only be able to make informed guesses and maybe plans about the future of natural history, like any other creature.

If “God” only exists within time, then you have all your problems about divine omniscience and creaturely free will. But if “God” only exists within time, then “God” is in fact a creature, produced either by the natural system or by the real God.

Because you think time already existed within which God exists?

Then even in your idea of God, God did in fact create time (by “begetting” another creature like himself, and then by creating the first creature unlike himself) – though in your idea of God, God is still shackled within and dependent on time, instead of existing transcendent to time (the processional distance between events of a natural system). The Father and the Son both only exist as distinct entities (on this theology) within an overarching system of reality, even if the reality was originally non-temporal before the Father produced the Son like unto himself.

But on this theology you aren’t really talking about the ground of all existence yet (be that atheistic or theistic) when talking about what you’re calling “God” or “the Father”.

Or maybe you’re trying to, but are being clumsy about it and accidentally ending up with the Father and Son as creatures (of the same species, so to speak) within this overarching reality; instead of the Father(-and-the-Son?) essentially and intrinsically being this one and only overarching reality.

#22

Thanks Jason. That makes sense to me. :slight_smile:

#23

I don’t understand these words, and I ought not to understand them. They makes no sense.

They aren’t statements (in the sense of logical statements which possess truth value). Rather they are predictions. And some of God’s predictions did not become reality. For example in Jeremiah, He said (predicted) that after having done all that evil, Israel would return to Him, but she did not returen. (Jer 3:7)

What is “temporal omnipresence”? Is this your notion of God existing outside of time again? God doesn’t exist in the future any more than you or I do.

I’m not denying that at all… unless “our natural system and its history” includes that which has not yet occurred. Perhaps you suppose the latter to be “history” from God’s point of view since He supposedly “sees” all future events. God could see future events only if they are already settled. And if they are already settled, the there is no free will, not the slightest bit of it.

How in the world do you come to that conclusion? Do you think we have to believe in a God who knows the unknowable before we can avoid Mormon polytheism? The future does not yet exist. There is nothing to know!

#24

Please re-read the quotes I’ve supplied here. This is what St. Symeon the New Theologian was getting at: God sees our future actions without causing them, even as He sees our present actions without causing them.

Christ said: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” (Luke 10:13)

Since (as Luke 10:13 illustrates) God knows even things that never happened, how much easier it is for Him to know things that will happen.

I think that questions of free will and determinism are the single hardest subject in theology for the human mind to grasp. Given the existence of the Omniscient One, isn’t it to be expected that His omniscience is hard for us to intellectually grasp? Thoroughly obviating God’s knowledge of the future (such as by stating that since the future doesn’t exist, there is nothing there for anyone to know) would make God into merely the Best Guesser, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed in such a deity: “Really? You really don’t know because You can’t possibly know? And that’s the end of it? The best we can get from You is Your best guess?”

:slight_smile:

#25

Not to say exactly where I stand concerning man’s will and the sovereignty of God, because it takes too long, I would just say that theoretically I see no hindrance to universal reconciliation from an Arminian point of view because **1)**the love of God is so awesome that it will eventually win every argument and penetrate every adversary, tearing down every stronghold and fortress that exalts itself against the true knowledge of God- it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. **2)**For me UR is not a theological argument between Calvinist type models or Arminian type models- it is a stated fact of scripture, unto which all these models and theories are subject.

Col 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in **all things **He may have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

If I be lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto me.

The rain drops fall(men are born), the streams(generations) collect into tributaries(eras), the tributaries run into rivers(ages), the rivers flow into the ocean(eternity) the cycle and destination created by God with inevitable result, each in its own order, transcending our analysis of the process.

Rom 11:32 For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again?

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

All born out of the seed/core/first thought of the Logos- Christ crucified, His blood shed as a propitiation for sin.

He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

1 Cor 15:21For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in [h]Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order…28 When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

#26

Well, if you truly think you “ought not” to understand them (though how you can make that moral judgment without understanding them is I guess a mystery known only to God if to anyone), then there’s nothing more to say, since if I tried to explain (again) what I meant, you’d only refuse to try to understand on what you think are moral grounds.

However, Geoffrey (and St. Simeon, and Boethius for that matter) and I, aren’t saying God only sees one particular moment of present time and no other moments in time. We’re saying all moments of our history, past and present and future from our perspective, are present to God. (Though in the Incarnation He relates to them as past, present, and future, too, like we do.)

So it isn’t very fair to treat us as though we’re saying God only sees one moment of time (and so therefore God cannot see any other moments, past or future). We’ve been very consistent about saying God sees all moments presently.

#27

As I see it, God exists in the present just as we do. But unlike us, He has a perfect memory of all past events. So He has complete knowledge of all past and present events. He also has complete knowledge of all people, knowing the thoughts and intents of their hearts. For that reason, He is in a MUCH better position to predict what people will choose than we finite mortals—since we know people only in part, and a very small part at that. Thus most of God’s predictions have become reality, but not all. On some occasions (recorded in the Old Testament), God expected something to happen, but it didn’t.

Here is an example of how limited our knowledge of others is. My first wife died in 1997. I had lived with her nearly 35 years, and I thought I knew her very well. But it was only shortly before her death that I understood that the extent of her love for me was far greater than I had imagined. I was overwhelmed. This is a wonderful story in itself!

#28

I have a bad habit of not always reading the whole thread because I like to focus on one question and answer it the way I see it.

Recently while out evangelizing II ran into an agnostic and she said she liked humility and asking questions. So I told her Christ is the preeminent example of humility in the world.

I also told her we only question to receive an answer. That even scientists ask questions for answers and results. She was using questioning to stay uncommitted to Christ but that is precisely who we are going to for answers.

We are actually conforming to a Person when we conform to Christ. I looked into Reformed versus Arminian a while back and I do love Wesley but I think the Arminians missed or under emphasized the key point.

The key point is we are conforming to who we think a person is. All the key actions in the salvation process are initiated by God not us. We respond to His invitations and initiations. He opens our minds, He gives repentance, He corrects us, He restores us, He feeds us, He forgives us, He trains us in righteousness, etc.

So the Arminians have the primacy backwards…It is so important that we know that God is the most prominent actor in the work of salvation. He performs it. We receive it thankfully and ultimately I want Him to be in control because He is better than me, He’s more able than me and He will do all things for my good.

What Arminianism misses is our need to make an Absolute Surrender to God. We need to do that because then we are granting God full access to our lives.

Google Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray and read it…It is about 3 or 4 pages long and explains it. Arminianism glosses over it but it is a critical act in people’s spiritual development.

I love the universalists because in my opinion we are the biggest lovers just like God is but we still need to make a full surrender to God because then we can follow Him better.

#29

James 1:19 says, Remember this, my dear friends! Everyone must be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry.
Doesn’t that mean quick to read threads and slow to post? You are posting over 20 a day on average or 7300 a year. What would the board
look like after a year of this?

I have no authority to reprove you like this. I’m a new boy on the board and a very fallible one at that. Anyone can check that
by looking at my intro or prayer request in the members’ area.

May God really bless you,
Nick Hawthorn

#30

The problem I have with the idea that God doesn’t know the future is the man Jesus Christ. If we are to believe that Jesus Christ was truly a man and experienced the same trials, yet without sin then we have dilemma… One can say “Well, it wasn’t possible for him to sin” to that I say “Then he wasn’t like us at all” and if you say “Well, he could have sinned” then to that I say “Then how could God have declared via prophecy that Jesus Christ would complete his mission?” just can’t imagine that God would declare something that might fail and if Jesus could not have failed, then I really can’t believe the book of Hebrews.

#31

I’m just glad it was spelled right.

Arminian.

#32

Foreknowledge, predestination, mystery. :astonished:)

#33

A bit of a blast from the past but I would like to offer two cents here… I think I sympathise with Paidion. Although I am by no means an Open Theist. I tried to mentally explore how a Hyper Temporal God could still allow Libertarian Freewill, but I cannot resolve the two. Paidion has a point that if God knows the future, or I could even say in Jason or Geoffrey’s case that God is involved in the future at the same time as the past (Hyper Temporalism); then the present and future is sealed. It is sealed because any action in the future means that the action is taking place in a situation where past events have already occurred… in order to provide context for the action.

To be short, I think Libertarian Freewill can be believed in conjunction with Universalism, but I don’t see how it logically can. Hey, no veiw is completely logical… we just have to choose the one most relevant to us or with the least holes :slight_smile:

Going by the idea of cause and effect, I see that certain events have certain outcomes. I don’t think that quantum physics can be worth going into because that just takes uncertainty v certainty to a different level, but essentially the same discussion.

If “God saving” is the Cause and “all people” is the Effect, and I believe in this cause and effect that it will happen, then there is no room at all for the effect to have variance. If I believe that all people WILL be saved, then I must believe that there is no chance of this not happening. If there is no chance of this not happening, then there must be no Libertarian Freewill that could potentially jeopardise that cause and effect statement “God will save all people”.

Again, I assume Jason and Geoffrey say they get around this by establishing a type of Hyper Temporalism where God is involved in all moments both past, present and future at the same time. But it doesn’t seem possible to me. If I am typing on the computer now, someone would have had to make the computer in the past for me to type on. If God is in the future having saved everyone, then there must have been an established process before that, which involved people being in sin and coming into salvation (Even if God is still involved in that past).

But anyway. That is my two cents. I write about it here in more detail:
Scriptural support for determinism - thebenevolenthecklers.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/arminianisms-scriptural-and.html
Freewill problems - thebenevolenthecklers.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/freewill-arminianisms-philosophical.html

#34

So you are a Compatibilist-Universalist. Have you read “The Inescapable Love of God”? Thomas Talbott makes some good points on how all people can finally be saved in a libertarian perspective.

#35

Wow - not sure how I missed the whole God and time debate.

Efrisad, may I offer you another alternative to the ones lain down above?

Scripture speaks of things happening ‘before the foundation of the world’ and ‘before the world began’. I want to submit that when the New Testament uses these phrases it does so literally. That is, I think that our spirit pre-existed the creation of our physical bodies and this physical world. It is possible that in this initial phase of being, we were granted an absolutely libertarian power to ‘act’ or ‘choose’, and that this choice, once made, is what determined all our future becoming. This choice also functioned as the basis for God’s decree and foreknowledge. Lastly, since all choices have some good in them (i.e. since no choice can really be absolutely evil), then no choice in that initial phase of being would result in ultimate damnation or annihilation. In other words they would all eventually ‘result in’ the perfection, or ultimate salvation, of the chooser.

Before you throw this theory out, consider its positives:

i) it shows how God can have foreknowledge of our future free choices
ii) it shows how God can predestine the physical creation to adapt to all the free choices he knows creatures will make in various circumstances
iii) it shows how no free being could resist God forever
iv) it makes sense of Scriptural passages that speak of a pre-mortal state of being
v) it protects God from the charge of creating evil
vi) it entails none of the problems of Calvinism, Arminianism, Open Theism, or the Boethian view of Divine Timelessness/existing in an eternal now composed of an infinite sum of temporal nows.

I’ve got a post on this over in the philosophy board, if you’re interested.

#36

Hi Daniel,

I appreciated your post, and I appreciate your thought. I would like to comment on the following paragraph:

God is the cause of all people, but He is not the cause of anyone’s choices. We all have the ability to choose, and that very ability is what I believe to be libertarian freewill.

I agree that all people will submit to the authority of God or “be saved”, and I believe it will be of their own free will. There is no chance of this not happening—not because of limitations on man’s will, but on the fact of an everlasting future. If you throw ten dice in the air, there’s not much chance of them all turning up as sixes. The chance, in fact is 1 out of 6 exponent 10 (which is a very large number indeed!) If one continues to throw the dice for a year or ten years or even a hundred years or more, there is a chance that not all dice will turn up sixes. But what if you toss the dice FOREVER? Is there any chance that the dice will NEVER turn up all sixes?

I think this is analagous to the matter at hand concerning the reconciliation of all people to God. God never gives up on anyone. He will continue to work with the rebels, and do whatever it takes to induce them to turn to Him in repentance. It may be that He will even use the fully mature sons of God in this work. Sooner or later, EVERY individual OF HIS OWN FREE WILL will come to God!

#37

Great posts and thoughts guys, I really enjoy reading them ay!

efrisad - Yeah I suppose you could call me a Compatibolist-Universalist. I like what Einstein and Schopenhauer said “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” Free Will for me is redefined as Free Agency.

Chrisguy90 - Very interesting and thought provoking idea. It sounds like you are saying that all of history has already been decided and it is really a “theatrical play” where God is outworking what people have already Freely decided before the world began. I agree that this is a workable view in many ways, but I still struggle to comprehend the concept of Libertarian Freewill when compared to Causal Determinism.

Paidion - I also think that your view can work rather well if likened to rolling dice. Essentially this is what I believe any concept of Libertarian Freewill boils down to. Libertarian Freewill has no character or grounding by which choices are made, if the choices are truly free. I assume in this view Paidion that people “lose” their Freewill once they are God’s. If not I suppose they could just as easily be randomly rolled out of his “Grace”. I personally like to think that when people do choose God, it is more than the result of a throw of the dice but because God is actually changing and moulding their character to be more like Him.

#38

I am not sure that any Libertarian Freewill view absolves God of creating evil. Even if God may not directly cause evil, He still causes it to happen by creating situations where it is inevitable that it will happen. Evil is not isolated to one person experiencing their own evil. People do evil to one another, even to children. God’s “allowance” for evil through giving man Freewill as an attempt to get away from responsibility, is likened to throwing a child into a pool of sharks and then blaming the sharks for the evil they commit against the child…

In Arminianism, God doesn’t really have control over evil as far as utilizing it for good somehow. There seem to be a lot of “accidents” that God causes. In Calvinism, God does have control, but doesn’t have much hope for everyone. However, in a Compatibilist Universalist framework, evil at least is for the purpose of a greater good, even if that greater good cannot be understood in its actual moment (I concede).

#39

Daniel, if you think I was comparing free will to the “random” rolling of dice, you didn’t get my point at all.

Unless people have the ability to choose, then God is the author of evil, the cause of every rape, torture, and cruelty that takes place constantly, night and day.

If people’s choices originate with people and not with God, then God is not responsible for those choices. Stating that God is the creator of mankind won’t do in trying to pass the responsibility over to God. It’s like saying that your wife and you produced a baby, and though you brought him up right, you are responsible for the fact that he committed a murder later on in life. After all, you produced him!

#40

I agree with Paidion here. If compatibilism is true, it’s just another way of saying that God has determined everything. You can say that people are responsible because they have particular intentions and ‘do what they want to do’, but at the back of it all God has simply determined these intentions and ‘want tos’. If there is no ‘place’ for creaturely causation independent of God, then God is ultimately the cause of all that happens - evil included.

I want to do justice to both compatibilist and libertarian notions of freedom. I well understand the major point of compatibilism: namely, that we do not choose our states of intention; we just find ourselves already in them. But I also see the point of libertarianism: unless we are the ultimate cause of our acts, we cannot be responsible for them. But how can you cause an intention that you do not choose? I would submit that a theory of pre-existence, which posits an initial, unconditioned act makes the most sense of all these facts. We are still the ‘cause’ of our intentions, even though we do not ‘choose’ those intentions moment by moment.

You mentioned that this would lead to everything being like ‘a play’. Could you expound? And also, how is this any different on your view of compatibilism?

*My point may be more clear by saying a little more about three words: intention, choice, and act. Choices presuppose intentions. I cannot ‘choose’ a hamburger over pizza if I don’t first have some intention of trying to find food. The reverse, however, does not seem to be true. Intentions do not presuppose choices. That is, you do not choose to intend to find food. You could disagree with this and say that it’s easy to choose to intend to find food. And you could, I believe, choose to do this, but even this choice presupposes some prior intention, such as ‘intending to prove to chrisguy90 that I CAN choose to intend to find food.’ CS Lewis put the point in a nice analogy: choice is more akin to the steering of a ship; without some intention or motive power already present, it doesn’t do any good.

The real question, then, is how can we cause our intentions without choosing them? (Again remember, if we don’t cause them, we cannot be responsible for them. There is no way for them to be ‘our’ intentions’. ) Well, I think we must posit some unique kind of ‘act’, which is different than both intention and choice as they are used above. I submit that a pre-existent state, in which we are at an ‘epistemic distance’ from God, is a reasonable hypothesis to entertain.