For some time now, our exchange in this thread has been a series of repetitions of the same arguments from both sides. So, I decided to make just a last summary of my main points:

1) Free will could be defined as freedom of decision or of choice between right and wrong. For free will to really exist, God must bind Himself to respect both choices and to allow the possibility of existence of both choices. If God prevents the possibility of existence of one of the choices, this cannot be called free will. You say God must only respect the free will of beings who already exist. But the problem is not that the free will of beings who do not exist would be disrespected, but that free will would not exist in the first place.

It could be expressed this way:

- For complete freedom of choice between right and wrong to exist, two conditions must be met:
a) God must not prevent the possibility of existence of either choice; and
b) God must respect either choice if and when it is made.

- If God chooses not to create some beings because they will opt for sin, God prevents the possibility of existence of one of the choices and just allows the possibility of existence of the other choice.

- Therefore, freedom of choice cannot be said to exist.

2) If the outcome of a future is such that it cannot change, then that future is fixed. And if there allegedly are many possible futures, but the outcome of each one of them is such that it cannot or will not change, then all of them are fixed. And if the future is fixed in some of its parts, then there is no free will, according to your reasoning, for the persons involved.

There is no such thing as some decisions that people with free will will always make. Different circumstances can change things. In the example you gave, a person who in normal conditions would never make the decision to kill himself by jumping off a building, may do exactly that if the building is on fire and he decides that it’s better to die by jumping off the building than to die burned.

There are many examples both in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen G. White which favor my view. Ellen White says that the three Hebrews's lives were at stake, but of course God knew that He would deliver them. Although Christ could have come already if His people had fulfilled His plan, and even though we are able to hasten His coming by what we do, the fact is that the Bible is clear that God knows the day and the hour of Christ's coming.

Well, here is a different perspective:

The problem is not with God’s knowledge or his beforehand knowledge. The problem is the way it is believed to be. People reverence power; and knowledge as well as knowledge beforehand is the one-up power that people like to have, especially with all the things that people do not want others to know. So of course it is ascribed to God in the way that people would conceive having it if they were up there.

For most people, the understanding that God lives by faith is a foreign concept. To be sure God knows all there is to be known; but not all that people would like to know is there to be known. When God gave sovereignty to his beings, he limited his own knowledge of what shall be. There is a difference of plan and purpose and having the ability to bring it to pass, and “perfect” foreknowledge. To live in “perfect” foreknowledge is a very hopeless, meaningless state to live in.

When people talk about foreknowledge they talk about it one-sidedly. They talk about its effect on creation, whether it would limit creation’s freedom or not. However, I will speak of its effect on him who is supposed have such knowledge, namely God.

First, having such “perfect” knowledge, means you (God) cannot do anything about it. It would render God powerless to do anything about it. To have to live with such knowledge is without virtue, unless you enjoy “playing” with those who don’t have such knowledge. But then it is only a game that has a fixed outcome. And anybody tires of that soon, and would like to interact with someone real.

Second, to have such "perfect" foreknowledge would make all the other virtues of Divinity impossible. The glory of God: faith, hope, love, patience, longsuffering, forgiveness, repentance, mercy, grace, wisdom, understanding, judgment…. All of these go by the wayside and are sacrificed on the altar of “PERFECT” foreknowledge. So those who aspire to such “perfect” foreknowledge do not realize that they sacrifice “the glory” of God to it.

Rosangela, it doesn't seem to me that we have just been repeating things. I see some linear things happening, and some issues that I think would still be worth working out. I'm trying to say that I've appreciated your output, and hope it will continue awhile longer. I've had a couple of terrific insights that I would not have gotten without your participation, at least not now.

Regarding your positions, I see that there are some implications to the view you hold that would be good to consider. I also see there are some holes in your argument (or, at the very least, what appear to be holes, which you haven't cleared up it doesn't seem to me). Finally there are some things which look to be misunderstandings of concepts, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of language, but I also think would be worth clearing up.

So I hope you'll continue things a while longer. Perhaps you might be willing to continue at a slower pace. That is, make a couple of posts a week on the subject instead of one every day.

I'll mention one of the insights. I probably should have picked up on this earlier. It is that if the future were such as I have been suggesting it is (which is the same as we perceive it to be, comprised of possibilities that haven't been determined yet, as opposed to a single-threaded thing which can be known as such) then the implications of how God would if this were true are unpalatable to you. Thus you prefer a God who would create beings that were certain to sin to One who would create beings that were unlikely to sin, because of the implications this has in regards to God's being in control. Therefore that God is in control is extremely important to you, more than the questions of theodicy that are involved in taking the position that God created beings that were certain to sin.

I think the same issues come up in the atonement discussions as well. That is, if the purpose of Christ's death were not penal, then this has certain implications regarding God that you find unpalatable.

I'll get to the specifics of what I had in mind above in a later post, and hope you choose to respond. Even if not, thanks once again for your input up until now.

To summarize your first point, you are arguing that if God did not create beings that would sin, then free will would not exist.

You state it by saying that God could not prevent these creatures from existing, but since not preventing them from existing means the same thing as saying God had to create them, this equates to what I said above.

It seems to me that it should be obvious that free will is not dependent upon the existence of sin in order to exist, and that a position that asserts this must be inherently flawed.



No, just the particular outcome would be fixed. "Certain to occur" would be a better way of putting this than fixed.

The future encompasses the totality of everyone's existence. This is just dealing with one person's decision in one place. Someone in China could be doing completely different things. Under your view the entire future, including everything that anyone does at any time, is fixed (or determined, or settled, or certain to occur). This is a far, far different thing than asserting that the outcome of some particular person in some particular circumstance can be known with certainty.



Under the Augustinian idea, the future is determined before it happens. There is just one future, the future which is known by God, and has been determined. You can't have many possible futures, each of which are determined. This is like having a square circle. If there are many possible futures, then the future has not been determined, or fixed. That's what the phrase "many possible futures" means.



Here's an example to consider. Say you are given three fruit to pick from, an apple, an orange, and a pear. There are three possible futures. You are arguing that there are three fixed futures, so the person does not have free will. This doesn't follow because the person is determining which possible future will occur. The point is that the future has not been determined until the person who makes the choice determines which future will occur.



Of course there are choices that people with free will will always make. For example, there are many people who would never choose to have relations with their children, regardless of the circumstances. There are numerous examples that could be given of specific choices that specific people with free will would always make.

To use the building example, there are people that would prefer to die rather than jump off a building. Many people have made that very choice. My statement was not that there are some people who would kill themselves by jumping off a building, even though under ordinary circumstances they wouldn't, but there are some people who wouldn't do so under any circumstances, and this statement is true.



In order to substantiate your view from Scripture or Ellen G. White you need to show necessity, not just sufficiency. In other words, you cannot substantiate your position merely by presenting examples, but must rule out the possibility of any counter example. To establish my position, all I have to do is present a counter example.

Here's a math example. Suppose you assert there are no prime numbers greater than 20 but less than 30. To support your position, you cite 25. There is a number which is not prime, and it's between 20 and 30. When I point out that 23 is a prime, that refutes your assertion.

Similarly, when Ellen White says that all heaven was imperiled by our redemption, that refutes your assertion. Your view of the future does not allow for the statement that heaven was imperiled. That should be obvious. If God has known for all eternity that heaven was never under any danger whatsoever, it could not be said that it was imperiled.



I agree that God knows the day and the hour of Christ's coming, but not that this phrase means what you think it does.

If we can hasten Christ's coming, that means we can change its date. If we can change its date, then it cannot be fixed. If it's not a fixed date, then God cannot know it as a fixed date, because that would entail God's knowing something to be different than what it really is.

To come at this in a different way, if God knows Christ will come on Dec. 9, 2040, then Christ will come on that date. There's nothing we could do to change that date, which should be very obvious. To change the date would entail causing something God knows to be true not to be true. How can that happen?

When EGW wrote that Christ could have come in the 1850's, if it were the case that God has always known that Christ will come in Dec. 9, 2040, then God would have known that to be true at the very time that Ellen White was writing that Christ could have come in the 1850's. Obviously if Christ could have come in the 1850's, then God could not have known that He was certainly going to come in 2040.

To put this another way, if God knew in the 1850's, that Christ was certain to come in 2040, then it was certain at that time that Christ would come in 2040. If it was certain that Christ would come in 2040, then it was equally certain that He would not come at some other time, like the 1850's. Ellen White could not have written "Christ could have come before now" but instead something like "The plans of God know no hurrying or delaying. Christ will come when He comes. We must be ready for whenever that is."

If free will is based on the choice between two alternatives, but you allow only one alternative to exist, how can this be called free will? It should be called “free right choice.”


The future encompasses many occurrences which have nothing to do with free will. Are they also fixed? If you consider that they are, then you are saying that God decides how the future will play out for each person, which obviously is not what I believe. But if we are discussing free will, we then have to discuss the future for each free-will event separately.


It’s not this I was referring to. Suppose I will choose the apple, this is the future that is fixed, as opposed to saying that there are hundreds, or even thousands or millions of possible futures for me to choose the apple, each one comprised of each second, or nanosecond. This simply does not make sense. Either the future is determined in terms of the outcome or of seconds and nanoseconds.


When you don’t have air to breathe, completely unpredictable things can happen. God can’t predict that.


Of course it doesn’t, because she similarly describes the lives of the three hebrews as being at stake when, according to you, they weren’t, because God knew He would deliver them.


How can you know a date if it can be changed at any time? This doesn’t make any sense.
It’s true that Christ could have already come if His people had fulfilled the conditions for His coming. It’s also true we can hasten or delay it by our behavior, but God already is taking this into account when He says He knows the date of Christ’s coming. He already knows when the conditions will be met for Christ to come.

Why do you think that the creatures who would not sin did not have free will? Once God decided to create creatures that would sin, then they (the creatures that would not sin) all of a sudden obtained free will?

It doesn't seem that what you are asserting here makes any sense. It seems to imply that free will does not exist without sin.



I don't know what your point is here.

Here's an analogy which may help in regards to what I'm saying. Consider a slide (like for a slide show) to be a snapshot in time which represents a juxtaposition of the all the decisions FMAs have made, and any other things which would cause this particular future to be what it is. There are zillions of these slides possible for any moment in time. (in fact, as time goes on, some of the slides go away as possibilities, as possible futures become eliminated).

Everybody's decisions goes into determining which of the slides will be chosen. If you look at all of these zillions of slides, they may have some attributes in common. For example, it may be in all of them that the sun comes up. Or Peter denies Christ. Or whatever. In any case, what is happening is that the FMAs make decisions, the combination of which (in conjunction with whatever non-FMA determined influences there are, such as physical laws or whatever) result in a given slide coming to pass.




I don't know how I can better explain this than by the chess move scenario. Did you not understand that example? The chess player makes the same more, Be2, in each scenario, but the time on the chess clock is different? One particular thing, the move, Be2, is the same, but there are clearly different futures involved, as the time on the chess clock makes clear.

I think this is a good example to work with. If you don't understand this, please ask me some question, and I'll respond. If you do understand this, you should be able to apply this example to the situation you are talking about here.



You're going off on a tangent here. My point was simply that there are some things, like let's say having relations with their children, that some people will never do in any circumstances.



The situation with the Hebrews has nothing to do with heaven being imperiled for our redemption.

In the case of the Hebrews, they would have died had God not intervened miraculously to save them, which is obviously what Ellen White was communicating (which, I assume, you agree with. If not, what do you think she was saying?).

God didn't intervene miraculously to save heaven. Heaven was really in peril. Not conditionally (like if God did not act, as in the case of the Hebrews) but in actual fact. If you disagree with this, then please tell me what you think Ellen White's statement really means.



It makes a lot more sense than saying that we can hasten Christ's coming if we can do nothing to change the time that He comes.



Your understanding of God's knowing the date of Christ's coming means that there is some certain date, say Dec. 9th 2040, in which Christ will come. If God knows that Christ will come on Dec. 9, 2040, then it is certain that Christ will come on this date. If it is certain that Christ will come on this date, then it is certain that He could not have come on any other date.



If God is already taking into account our behavior in regards to the date of Christ's coming, then we can't do anything to hasten His coming, because it's been taken into account!

If we can hasten Christ's coming, that means we can make it happen sooner. But if His coming is certain to occur at some specific time and date, obviously that can't be done.

The logic here is very simple:

a)If God is 100% certain that Christ will come on a certain date, then Christ will certainly come on that date.
b)If it is certain that Christ will come on one date, then it is certain He will not come on some other date.

Saying that Christ is certain to come on a certain date is not compatible with saying that He could come, or could have come, on some other date.

Free will does not exist without sin being possible.


Do you mean Peter would deny Christ in all possible futures? Isn't there a possible future in which Peter doesn't deny Christ?


I’m trying to understand what exactly you define as a fixed future, but if the ingredients necessary for a fixed future are an outcome which won't change and a precise moment in time, then in your view one of the possible futures would be fixed – precisely the one (slide or chess move) which coincides with reality.


I think not even this kind of thing can be affirmed with security. If Satan takes possession of the heart, unpredictable things can happen.


You’re going off on a tangent here. What you affirm is that if there is no risk in the outcome, there is no risk in the process. Therefore, if God knew Christ was going to be victorious, there could be no risk for Him – or for heaven. Using the same logic, since God knew that He was going to deliver the three Hebrews, there could be no risk for their lives. But Ellen White says their lives were at stake.


Of course we can! For instance, Ellen White says,

“With such an army of workers as our youth, rightly trained, might furnish, how soon the message of a crucified, risen, and soon-coming Saviour might be carried to the whole world! How soon might the end come,--the end of suffering and sorrow and sin!” {MYP 196.1}

It would be possible for this to happen but if, because of our indolence, this is not happening, we are responsible before God for delaying His coming. However, God is already taking this into account when He says He knows the date of Christ’s coming. The fact that God knows the date of Christ's coming doesn't mean that we (individually and as a church) aren't hastening or delaying it.

This is my argument. Your argument is that free will does not exist without sin being certain.

I pointed out several posts ago, your view makes sin inevitable. It is my recollection that you agreed with my reasoning.



Yes and no. (you mean "wasn't" there) It's like the chess player moving Be2 in the analogy I gave.



Under your view, there's only one future. That future, in all its details, is settled, certain, fixed, or determined, whatever synonym you prefer. It simply means that there is one thing that is certain to happen, at any moment in time, for every person, every FMA, every inanimate object.

Under my view, there are possible futures, zillions of them, which may have some things in common to them, such as the sun coming up, or Peter denying Christ, or a person dying, or many possible things.

Did the slide analogy make sense? There are many factors that go into making the future what it will be, including the decisions of billions of FMAs that haven't been made yet. Some of these decisions are certain to occur, (like some people deciding to go to work) and others not certain (some people may or may not decide to go to work).



Unpredictable things *can* happen, but they needn't happen. There are some things which are certain to occur. Because *some* unlikely thing might happen does not mean that *everything* is unpredictable.



Let's be specific here. Consider a proposition like, a given coin, before being flipped 11 times, will come up tails. If the coin comes up heads the first flip, then the proposition is false. Likewise if it comes up false the second through tenth flips.

Now let us say that the coin is a double-headed coin. That means there is no chance that the proposition the coin will up tails in 11 flips will happen. Likewise, there is no chance the coin will come up tails in any of the flips 1 through 10. If there is no risk that the coin will come up tails before 11 flips, then it must be the case that there is no chance that the coin will come up tails in flip 1, or flip 2, or flip 3 and so on up to flip 10.

This should be obvious.



In my post, to which you are responding, I asked you directly if it was not obvious what Ellen White meant. I also addressed your argument.

What is it that you think the phrase "All heaven was imperiled for our redemption" means? In the case of the Hebrews, isn't it obvious that EGW was saying that had God not intervened, the Hebrews would have been lost? As I pointed out, this interpretation is not possible in the statement "All heaven was imperiled for our redemption." So what does this sentence mean?



She wrote this because she didn't share your idea of the future.

On the one hand, you hold a viewpoint which logically makes the hastening of Christ's coming impossible, but on the other hand, you quote someone who says it is. All this does is show that her viewpoint is different than yours.



We could be responsible for the date being as late as it is, but not for delaying it, because to delay it, or hasten it, would mean having the power to *change* the date. But under your view, it is logically impossible for us to change the date of Christ's coming.



a)If God knows Christ will come at a certain date, say 12/9/2020, then it is certain that Christ will come on that date.
b)If it is certain that Christ will come on a given date, then it is certain that Christ will not come on some other date.

Do you disagree with either point a) or b)? If so which point, and why?

Again, under your perspective, we could be responsible for the coming of Christ being at a late date, but this would be a date that God always knew would be the case. That is, it would always have been the case that Christ's coming would be 12/9/2020 (or whatever the date is). This date cannot be changed! Since it cannot be changed, Christ's coming cannot be hastened, or delayed, nor could it have already occurred in the past. We would have no more power, under your view, to change the date of Christ's second coming than we would to change His first.

As I said previously, I use the word “possible” in the sense of “that can be; capable of existing,” not in the sense of “that can be in the future; that may or may not happen.” So, if God made sin incapable of existing by creating only creatures that wouldn’t sin, there would be no free will.


Sorry, I didn’t get it.


And what I said is that, if you consider that under my view the whole future is fixed, under your view one of the futures is also fixed – that one in which there is one thing that is certain to happen, at a certain moment in time, for a given person (since you transformed the future in an onion with several layers of nanoseconds).


This is absurd! Everything she says in the quote is in the conditional future, indicating something that could happen.


Since you are making a point of this detail, the passages involved, both in the Bible and in EGW, are not speaking about a date. The passages speak about delaying or hastening the event – that is, Christ’s coming.


Heaven was imperiled in the sense that Christ wouldn’t have returned to it if He had sinned.
So EGW is saying that had God not intervened, giving Christ power to resist temptation, He would have been lost, and heaven would suffer His loss.

This is my argument. Your argument is that free will does not exist without sin being certain.

As I said previously, I use the word “possible” in the sense of “that can be; capable of existing,” not in the sense of “that can be in the future; that may or may not happen.” So, if God made sin incapable of existing by creating only creatures that wouldn’t sin, there would be no free will.

This is equivalent to saying that if God did not create creatures that sinned, there would be no free will. You see this, don't you?

If God had to create beings that would make wrong choices, then God had to create creatures that would sin, in which case sin was certain to exist, not something merely capable of existing. While it's true that anything that is certain to exist is possible (i.e. capable of existing), using the word "possible" when the word "certain" would be appropriate, certainly conveys a different meaning.

Quote:
R: Do you mean Peter would deny Christ in all possible futures? Isn't there a possible future in which Peter doesn't deny Christ?

T: Yes and no. (you mean "wasn't" there) It's like the chess player moving Be2 in the analogy I gave.

Sorry, I didn’t get it.

My answer may not have been clear. Sorry. I meant "yes" to the first question, and "no" to the second.

Quote:
Under your view, there's only one future. ... Under my view, there are possible futures, zillions of them

And what I said is that, if you consider that under my view the whole future is fixed, under your view one of the futures is also fixed – that one in which there is one thing that is certain to happen, at a certain moment in time, for a given person (since you transformed the future in an onion with several layers of nanoseconds).

There are are possible futures, which involve everyone, all at once. There are some things about these futures which may be in common, such as the sun rising. None of the futures are determined until the possible future becomes a reality, which isn't until every single creature capable of making a decision which would impact the future makes those decisions.

Quote:
She wrote this because she didn't share your idea of the future.

This is absurd! Everything she says in the quote is in the conditional future, indicating something that could happen.

But your view of the future is not logically compatible with conditionality. If God knows Christ will come on a certain date, then it is certain Christ will come on that date, and equally certain He will not come on some other date. There is no opportunity for conditionality here. The date can't be different than what it is already known to be. There's no "something that could happen." There's just what will happen.

If what will happen was precisely known in the past, then that knowledge is a part of the past. The future of what will happen, being a part of the past (in the form of knowledge) could no more be changed than anything else in the past.


Quote:
We could be responsible for the date being as late as it is, but not for delaying it, because to delay it, or hasten it, would mean having the power to *change* the date. But under your view, it is logically impossible for us to change the date of Christ's coming.

Since you are making a point of this detail, the passages involved, both in the Bible and in EGW, are not speaking about a date. The passages speak about delaying or hastening the event – that is, Christ’s coming.

The date of Christ's coming is referring to the timing of that event. To hasten the event is to change its timing, which is to change its date. You cannot hasten Christ's coming without making its date be sooner, nor delay it without making its date later. This is obvious, isn't it?

Quote:
What is it that you think the phrase "All heaven was imperiled for our redemption" means? In the case of the Hebrews, isn't it obvious that EGW was saying that had God not intervened, the Hebrews would have been lost? As I pointed out, this interpretation is not possible in the statement "All heaven was imperiled for our redemption." So what does this sentence mean?

Heaven was imperiled in the sense that Christ wouldn’t have returned to it if He had sinned.
So EGW is saying that had God not intervened, giving Christ power to resist temptation, He would have been lost, and heaven would suffer His loss.

Here's what she wrote:



If you get out of this that she is saying that had God not intervened, giving Christ power to resist temptation, then He would have been lost, then I think you're reading an awful lot into this passage. Where does it say anything evern remotely resembling that? What I see it saying is:

a.The value of a soul is inestimable.
b.To know it's worth, we should consider the work of Christ.
c.This work includes His suffering at Gethsemanee and Calvary.
d.This work also includes the risk that Christ took, a risk that placed heaven in peril.

Again, where is there anything about God's intervening here? Also, how do you get from the phrase "heaven itself was imperiled" the meaning, "if Christ hadn't returned there, heaven would have felt His loss." Why doesn't the phrase mean that heaven itself was in danger? Why should it mean something different?

If I read something like, "for our freedom, Paris was imperiled" could I understand that to mean, "If Charles De Gaulle did not return to Paris, then Paris would have felt his loss"?