That’s the point. What you are saying is that the fact that God carefully planned every detail about how Adam's body should work means He used His individual discretion in determining our physical characteristics, but the fact that He carefully planned how Adam’s mind should work doesn’t mean that He used His individual discretion in determining the characteristics of our mind. Don’t you think this is a contradiction?


Yes. God used His individual discretion to establish a “connection between cause and its effects.” Do you really believe that nobody created the law of cause and effects? Whatever you sow, you will also reap. God created this law; it did not come to existence by itself.


Everyone who admits he is wrong needs pardon. But light must first reach you before you admit you are wrong.


No, it doesn’t, because death is the penalty for willful disobedience.

“Said the angel: ‘If light come, and that light is set aside or rejected, then comes condemnation and the frown of God; but before the light comes, there is no sin, for there is no light for them to reject.’” {1T 116.1}


If He had taught this explicitly, we wouldn’t be discussing it. But obviously the fact that He did not teach this explicitly doesn't mean He didn't teach it implicitly.


Our salvation has a price, which means that our pardon has a price, for no sinner can be saved without being pardoned.


It’s a metaphor, or symbol, to let us know that our forgiveness is possible because of Christ’s death in our place.

“Through him [Christ] mercy was enabled to deal justly in punishing the transgressor of the law, and justice was enabled to forgive without losing its dignity or purity.” {ST, June 18, 1896 par. 2}

I haven't said God didn't use His individual discretion in determining the characteristics of our mind. I haven't said anything like that. Of course He did. He planned every detail of every part of us.

What I've been saying is that the fact that doing something evil results in bad results is not a result of God's making us in some special way. Simply creating a being in His image, with free will and a conscience, necessitates that one cannot act contrary to the principles of life, which are the principles of love, without experience bad results from doing evil. This isn't something that God made happen, as if He could have made something else happen. God could no more create a sentient being that could love and be loved that could experience good results by doing evil than He could create a square circle.

When I presented the challenge of your being God for a day and creating such a being, I actually thought the solution you came up with was a good try. You suggested that God could have created beings that would love one another, but have no knowledge of Him. However, eternal live is knowing God, so I found fault with that try, but I think it was a good effort.

I don't believe that it is possible for God to create sentient beings other than how He did. Although there are millions of worlds, I am sure every sentient being in every world will have the same characteristics of conscience and free will, and that the same effects of experiencing bad results for doing evil would be universal (of course, they never did evil, so that didn't happen).



Yes. I believe it's like circles are round. Cause and effect is not something that had to be created, as if it could not exist.



I disagree. If what you assert were true, then everything there is would be arbitrary, which is to say, they would be a certain way only because that's the way God wanted it. Therefore we should choose to do things the way God wants, because He is #1 in the universe; He outranks everybody. He could have made things some other way, but chose not to. We need to learn how God actually did make things, and conform ourselves to that. The why doesn't matter, only the what; that is, we need not learn to do certain things because of some reason, all we need to know is what God wants.

I don't believe this is what God wants. I believe He made things a certain way because that's the only way they could be. I believe He wants us to learn the truth about the way things are. For example, it's more blessed to give than to receive. This is truth. Not because God made things this way, but because it really is more blessed to give than to receive.

So Jesus Christ did not create truth, but revealed it. The Plan of Salvation is not one possible solution, but the only solution, because only by revealing the truth could wrongs be made right.



Every who does wrong and knows it is wrong needs pardon. Admitting the wrong is irrelevant to the need. That Lucifer had light is self-evident from the fact that God offered him pardon.



Not in an arbitrary sense, but as a consequence. God was trying to save Lucifer from his sin, because He knew it would kill him.



The inevitable result of sin is death, which Satan would have experienced, had God *left* him to reap the full result of his sin.




Right, and the fact that God offered Lucifer pardon showed that Lucifer had light. He wouldn't have needed pardon otherwise, as needing pardon means he was condemned, which means he had light.



People disagree all the time regarding things Christ explicitly taught. At any rate, regarding your assertion that Christ did not explicitly teach that the purpose of His death was so that God could legally pardon us, I agree!



I agree.



I see it the way Fifield explained it.



I agree completely! More than that, I think you put this particularly well.

Scott, how do you explain all the OT stories that attribute to God judgments that resulted in people dying?

Regarding #100439, what is "the wrath"? In English, we would just say "wrath." Paul is saying that Jesus Christ will save us from wrath.

1) Most Jews to this day don’t believe there is a literal devil.
2) They also believe that everything in Nature is controlled by God.
3) They also believe that sickness and disease are directs acts of God punishing either the person or the persons children.
4) They also believe that all evil is sent to mankind and is directed and controlled by God as tests to humankind.

With that cultural paradigm how else could they have interpreted the events they saw?

Remember that the very first act of Jesus, after His baptism, was to be driven into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Jesus’ very first statement was that there really is a devil and he really does tempt us and there really is a battle going on between good and evil. Jesus established most of the principles that we use to explain the Great Controversy.

Jesus is the very first theologian known who said that God is only good. Every other religion taught that God did both good and evil, including the Jewish religion!

scott

And what I have been saying is that the bad results we experience when we do something evil are basically a consequence of the way in which God created our minds to function, of the characteristics He implanted in our minds, and of the laws of cause and effect He established.


Maybe they couldn’t have eternal life, but sure they could have eternal existence.


So you believe God didn’t create one of the main laws of the universe. Then He must have submitted to it, for He certainly could have created trees capable of yielding several kinds of fruits but created, instead, every tree yielding fruit according to its kind.


He indeed didn’t create truth – He is the truth. He defines, in His own person, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. Things are the way God wants them to be, and His way is the best way – this now is clear to the whole universe.


Everyone who does wrong needs pardon, whether they know it or not.

Now, if you know that what you are doing is wrong, you have already admitted you are wrong. I’m not saying you admit it to others, but that you have already admitted it to yourself. However, this is only possible if you had light showing you that what you are doing is wrong.

There were indeed several occasions on which Lucifer was almost convinced that he was wrong, but there was a moment when he was unequivocally convinced of this and had to make a choice.

“The Lord saw the use Satan was making of his powers, and he set before him truth in contrast with falsehood. Time and time again during the controversy, Satan was ready to be convinced, ready to admit that he was wrong. But those he had deceived were also ready to accuse him of leaving them. What should he do?--submit to God, or continue in a course of deception? He chose to deny truth, to take refuge in misstatements and fraud.” {RH, September 7, 1897 par. 11}

“But such efforts as infinite love and wisdom only could devise, were made to convince him of his error. His disaffection was proved to be without cause, and he was made to see what would be the result of persisting in revolt. Lucifer was convinced that he was in the wrong. He saw that 'the Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works' (Psalm 145:17); that the divine statutes are just, and that he ought to acknowledge them as such before all heaven. Had he done this, he might have saved himself and many angels. He had not at that time fully cast off his allegiance to God.” {PP 39.1}


Perhaps, but the words on which we are apparently in agreement have a different meaning for you and for me.

The point I've been trying to make is that I don't believe that the fact that we experience bad results because we do something evil is because of something God arbitrarily does, but is instead due to the nature of things. By nature of things, I mean, the nature of evil, and the nature of sentient beings. Iow, I don't believe God could create sentient beings capable of giving and experiencing love who could do evil things and not experience bad results.



A cow can have eternal existence. This is getting a bit off point, I think. My point is the same as I made above, that our experiencing bad results from doing evil has to do with the nature of being loving sentient beings, as opposed to something God imposes upon our existence.



??? What does this have to do with anything?

My point is that causes have effects like circles have roundness. Iow, you can't have a cause without an effect. Not because God created a law which said "causes shall have effects" but because that's what causes are. They are things which effect something (not affect, but effect).

Your point about trees lost me.



Right!



Things aren't the way God wants them to be.



Over and over again, God offered Lucifer pardon. Each time was for some sin that Lucifer had done, of which he had light, otherwise there would have been no occasion for pardon to be offered. When God offers pardon, it is because we under condemnation. When does condemnation come? When light has been rejected.

You are right that there came a time when Lucifer had to make a choice. He couldn't keep on sinning forever without there being any consequences to his own soul. At some point continued sinning would cause him to complete case off his allegiance to God. He would so harden his heart that he would lose the capacity and the willingness to respond to the Holy Spirit.

The fact that there was some point on which Lucifer was not convinced, does not mean there was no point on which Lucifer was convinced. Iow, Lucifer could not have been convinced that his course in rebelling against God was totally without merit. However, he could have been convinced that Jesus Christ really was the Son of God, and he was wrong to be envious of Him for that reason. Another example is that EGW writes that Lucifer allowed envy and resentment to prevail over him (I can't remember the exact things involved, "envy" and "resentment," but something like that). The language she used depicts that a struggle took place within Lucifer, which Lucifer was conscious of.

Anyway, we know that God was offering Lucifer pardon again and again, so Lucifer must have been doing things for which it made sense for God to offer him pardon (which would be things he knew were wrong).



That's the whole point of this thread. You believe Christ had to die because of an imposed requirement, a requirement you would say God imposes because of attributes of His character (e.g. His holiness requires that sin be punished, or else He cannot forgive it). I believe He had to die to solve a problem that couldn't be solved in any other way, a problem which had to do with truth being misunderstood.

Isn't that really the reason there are so many denominations? Most of us agree on the words, but the words mean different things to different people.

Praise God Jesus saves us because He is so graceful and not because we've figured out the big puzzle!

scott

Or, it could be specifying a certain source of wrath: ours or God's. I am inclined to believe it refers to God's wrath. The following passages speak of the wrath of God.

John
3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

Romans
1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

Ephesians
5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

Revelation
14:10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:
14:11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.