As I said, if we see free will as a gift from God, then we must admit free will has two sides: the Creator’s side and the creature’s side. Therefore, if God doesn’t fulfill his part, this gift can’t be called free will and, of course, no creature indeed has free will. If God suppresses the possibility of wrong, under God’s perspective you are just free to choose what is right. Free will becomes, then, an illusion.


God chose to create beings that could love and serve Him. For this reason He run the risk of the uprising of sin.


I don’t think the Father made a poor decision. First, he respected his son’s choices. And second, the final result was good.


That the true end of God’s decision of permitting sin to happen can be seen in the new earth and in a universe eternally secure.


In fact I don’t see things the same way as you, and I don’t consider that sin was inevitable. I consider that it just became inevitable because one of God’s creatures would choose to sin, and God, because He had decided to endow His creatures with free will and respect their choices, allowed or permitted this choice to happen instead of suppressing it. This is how I would express things.
But your way of seeing things and your choice of words is different. Anyway, I see no problem with the concept. You can create a new thread, but I have nothing to say other than what I’ve already said.

Say God created just one FMA: Gabriel. Wouldn't Gabriel have every opportunity to do wrong? How would God have been suppressing the possibility of wrong by creating Gabriel? Would free will in this instance have been an illusion?

I don't understand why you think God was under some obligation to bring wrong into the world, just because He wanted to create a create a creature, or creatures, with free will.



Given the character of God is such that it is, I would say God created creatures whom *He* could serve. Keep in mind the words of Jesus. ("The Son of Man came to serve, not to be served.")



If the final result was good, then my statement still remains, because I said that a person bears responsibility if the result is bad, not good.



Are you saying that God is dependent upon sin in order to have a universe which is eternally secure?



Then your response was misleading. If you had said you understood my argument but didn't agree with it and pointed out why, that would have been clearer.



So it was inevitable.



I don't want to create a new thread which is discussing the problems of sin's being inevitable if you don't believe sin was inevitable. I'm still not clear on this. Everything you have said, except for the one phrase above, "and I don't consider that was sin was inevitable" implied that you believed this was the case. However, since you have said you don't believe sin was inevitable, please explain how God could have created creatures with free will without sin coming about, given your presuppositions.

Under my perspective yes, it would. Once God knew that a creature was going to make a wrong choice, what does He do with this knowledge? If He knows that this would happen, and decides to prevent it from happening, He is deciding to prevent wrong choices from existing. Therefore, it’s obvious that He only respects right choices, and that this cannot be called free will. Gabriel wouldn’t have the opportunity to do wrong, because he would never exist to decide to do wrong.


You are focusing on one aspect while I’m focusing on another. God is a sovereign, which means we serve, or obey Him. It’s not He who obeys us, but we who obey Him.


That's the point. God also made the final result of sin to be good.


Could the universe be eternally secure without the cross? I don't know. All I’m saying is that the result of sin will be a universe eternally secure, therefore the final result will be good.


I believe Judas could have chosen not to betray Jesus, but you find this irreconcilable with my view. In the same way, I don’t believe sin was inevitable, but you find this irreconcilable with my view (in the same way that I think that God's decision to create Adam and Eve is irreconcilable with your view). There were two possibilities, but obviously just one would come true. The fact that God knew which one would come true doesn’t negate the fact that there were two possibilities.

But there's only Gabriel. There is no other creature.



Wait, wait, wait!! God is not preventing "it" from happening by choosing not to create other beings besides Gabriel. He would be not acting to cause something to happen, not the same thing. If you choose not to have a child, you are not preventing that child that does not exist from doing something. You are simply choosing not to bring the child into existence. A child, or being, who does not exist cannot be prevented from doing anything. You have to exist to be able to do something.[/quote]



What? Gabriel, under the proposed scenario, does exist. Only Gabriel exists. He has the opportunity to do good or to do evil. God is respecting whatever decision Gabriel makes. I don't understand why you think Gabriel's free will would somehow be impacted. I'm sorry I'm not following your argument.



Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father. In order to do so, He girded Himself with a towel, and washed the feet of His disciples. He came not to be served, but to serve, and in so doing revealed the Father.





You mean like the end justifies the means? God made it inevitable that sin would happen so that He could make good come from it?



Of course no one is disputing that the final result will be good. That's not a point that needs to be made. My interest is if you think the universe could have been made eternally secure without sin existing.



Given your perspective, God set into motion a course of events that had to result in sin occurring. In fact, you've repeatedly made the point that God had to create beings He knew would sin in order to respect free will. God not only knew that sin would occur, but He specifically rejected the scenario of creating only beings He knew would not sin for the specific purpose that sin could exist, so that He could be respecting free will.

Regarding Judas, if God knows the future is going to be a certain way (or knows the future is a certain way, however you want to put it), then the future really is the way God knows it to be. Judas could not possibly (logically, not physically) have done anything contrary to what the future is. This is just another way of saying that you can't make something happen which can't happen.

It's not that God knew what Judas was going to do forced him or prevented him from doing something, but that Judas could no more do something different than what the settled future already indicated than that the sun could not rise, or any other known, or settled, event could not happen.

I don’t know how to express it better. Gabriel – or any other being - would never have had the opportunity to do evil, because they wouldn’t have lived to choose evil. God is not respecting whatever decision Gabriel makes – God is only respecting Gabriel’s right choices. His freedom to do evil is only illusory, because if he indeed would choose to do evil, he wouldn’t have come to existence.


You are repeating what you said, and I can only repeat what I said. God is a sovereign, and it’s we who obey God, not God who obeys us.


We will not be able to reach an agreement here. God just permitted sin to exist and overruled it for good.


I told you I don’t know, because I don’t know if the universe could be eternally secure without the cross, and there would be no cross without sin. Now you tell me your opinion – would the universe be eternally secure without the cross?


God respects free will in terms of future choices – this is clear. At a certain point in Eve’s conversation with Satan, it was obvious that Eve would choose to sin, yet God did not send any kind of warning to her, but deliberately let her future choice happen. After she sinned and before she took the fruit to Adam, God could have warned Adam, but He didn’t. So, He could have prevented sin on earth, but He didn’t, and could have prevented sin in the universe, but He didn’t.

Gabriel, under the proposed scenario, does exist. Only Gabriel exists. He has the opportunity to do good or to do evil. God is respecting whatever decision Gabriel makes. I don't understand why you think Gabriel's free will would somehow be impacted. I'm sorry I'm not following your argument.

I don’t know how to express it better. Gabriel – or any other being - would never have had the opportunity to do evil, because they wouldn’t have lived to choose evil. God is not respecting whatever decision Gabriel makes – God is only respecting Gabriel’s right choices. His freedom to do evil is only illusory, because if he indeed would choose to do evil, he wouldn’t have come to existence.

You're not being consistent in your reasoning. When speaking of Judas, you maintain it was possible for Judas to repent, even though God knew he wouldn't. Well then, it was just as possible Gabriel would choose to do wrong as it was that Judas would repent, in which case God is respecting Gabriel's free will.

You can't have it both ways. Either it's true that Judas could not repent, or it's true that Gabriel could choose to do wrong.

Quote:
Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father. In order to do so, He girded Himself with a towel, and washed the feet of His disciples. He came not to be served, but to serve, and in so doing revealed the Father.

You are repeating what you said, and I can only repeat what I said. God is a sovereign, and it’s we who obey God, not God who obeys us.

I substantiated what I said by presenting several paragraphs from "The Desire of Ages". I didn't just repeat myself.

Quote:
God made it inevitable that sin would happen so that He could make good come from it?

We will not be able to reach an agreement here. God just permitted sin to exist and overruled it for good.

This is what I say, and makes sense from my perspective. It doesn't make sense from yours. You're not being logically consistent. Your picking from one perspective, and then from another, and mixing them together in a salad.

I'll explain in more detail in a following post, with a quote from Luther. (I'm giving this as a tease, so you'll be sure to tune in).

Quote:
My interest is if you think the universe could have been made eternally secure without sin existing.

I told you I don’t know, because I don’t know if the universe could be eternally secure without the cross, and there would be no cross without sin.

This isn't quite what you said before, although one could draw this inference. (but sometimes you disagree with the inferences I draw, so a direct statement is better).

Here you are stating you don't know if the universe could be made eternally secure with sin. Well, if it couldn't be, then God was dependent upon the existence of sin in order to make the universe eternally secure. You see this, right?

Now you tell me your opinion – would the universe be eternally secure without the cross?

If one perceives the cross in terms of a principle, then I do not agree with your assertion that the cross could not have existed without sin. The principle of the cross is that God was willing to do whatever was necessary in order to save any of His creatures, regardless of the cost to Himself. The principle of the cross is that God is utterly self-sacrificing, to a degree that is truly amazing, beyond comprehension.

I believe God could have demonstrated this principle without sin existing, and that God could have safeguarded the universe without sin existing. It seems likely to me that God was working on accomplishing this very thing, but Lucifer gummed up the works. God will still accomplish His objective of safeguarding the universe, but it will be with a horrific interlude in the middle, which needed have been there.

Quote:
you've repeatedly made the point that God had to create beings He knew would sin in order to respect free will.

God respects free will in terms of future choices – this is clear. At a certain point in Eve’s conversation with Satan, it was obvious that Eve would choose to sin, yet God did not send any kind of warning to her, but deliberately let her future choice happen. After she sinned and before she took the fruit to Adam, God could have warned Adam, but He didn’t. So, He could have prevented sin on earth, but He didn’t, and could have prevented sin in the universe, but He didn’t.

I don't know why you're writing this. It's not addressing the point I was making.

The point I was making is that sin, from your perspective, was inevitable, because God had to create beings who would make wrong choices (i.e. sin) in order to respect free will.

This is what you've been asserting:

a.God foresaw some of the creatures He created would make wrong choices if He created them.
b.God could not refrain from creating them, because if He did so, He would not be respecting the wrong choices of His creatures, and thus not respecting free will.

a. and b. imply that God had to create beings that would make wrong choices. In other words, sin was inevitable, once God decided to create beings with free will.

If EDF (Exhaustive Definite Foreknowledge) is true, the two consistent views regarding the future are the Calvinist view of absolute predestination and Spinoza's view of a wholly necessary world. The future is eternally definite either because the one eternal being willed it from eternity to be what it is or because it is logically impossible, and thus eternally impossible, for it to be other than it is.

What is inconsistent, as theological determinists have always argued, is the classical Arminian view that wants to affirm EDF while also affirming self-determinism. As Luther argued,



Conversely, if one grants libertarian free choice, one must deny that God possesses EDF.

The logic here is straightforward. On the one hand, free agents are said to cause the definiteness of their own actions. On the other hand, the definiteness of their actions is held to be eternal (in God's EDF), though the free agent is not eternal. How are we to conceive of a temporal cause producing an eternal effect without granting retroactive causation?

The problem here is simply the supposition that the future is definite before the FMA makes it so. How it became definite is actually inconsequential to the problem.

(The above is from "Satan and the Problem of Evil," by Greg Boyd, except for the use of "FMA").

The key here is that there is the Creator’s side and the creature’s side, remember?
From Gabriel’s side, it would be possible for him to choose to do wrong. But from the Creator’s side it wouldn’t, because if he had decided to do wrong, God would have prevented his wrong decision (by preventing his existence).
In Judas’ case this didn’t happen. From the creature’s side, it was possible for Judas to repent, and from the Creator’s side, God didn’t do anything to prevent his repentance.


You substantiated something which, as I have pointed out, is not related to what I said. Does God obey us? Are we the sovereigns and He the subject?


It doesn’t seem so to me, but we will only know when we arrive in heaven.


It does address the point you were making. What I have been saying is that God respects future choices, even if they are sin choices.
Now I cited two examples in which future sin choices could be reasonably predictable, under your perspective, and known by God, but God did not interfere to prevent them from happening. So, under your perspective, from a certain moment onward sin became inevitable in this world, because God knew it would happen, but He did nothing to prevent it in order to respect free will.

Does this mean that if I like vanilla and hate chocolate, and I will obviously choose vanilla, and God knows it, then I don’t have free choice?

Either it was possible for Gabriel to do wrong, or it wasn't. There aren't "sides" to reality. So let's simply this a bit, and just ask the question, under the scenario that God had created only Gabriel, would it have been possible for Gabriel to sin?

Regarding this:



it's not a part of the scenario that God would not have created Gabriel if he would have sinned, so you can't use this.

Also, it's weird to assert that God is preventing a person from sinning by not creating them. If the being does not exist, he cannot do anything, and cannot be prevented from doing anything. Only beings that exist can be prevented from doing something.



Here's the original exchange:



To this I responded that Jesus revealed God's character as One who lives to serve rather than be served, and the DA quote I provided said the same thing, in more detail.



If you're right, then God was dependent upon sin's existing in order to safeguard the universe.



I was talking about your perspective, that under it sin is inevitable. You were denying that before. It appears you're trying to argue that sin was inevitable under my view.

My argument is that under your view sin was inevitable. Do you see this? If you don't, then please address my argument (presented before, not repeated).

If, after doing this, you wish to discuss whether sin is inevitable under my view, we can do that, but let's please resolve the issue I was asking you about first.