But it is the possibility of sin existing, not the certainty that sin would exist, that has to do with free will.
For free will to exist, it’s necessary that both right and wrong choices are possible. Do you disagree with this?
If you make wrong choices impossible to exist, then there can be no free will. Do you disagree with this?
The fact that God foreknew that sin would exist is secondary to the argument.


See? That’s why I see the future in your view as fixed, while in my view it’s not (although you consider it to be). If there was no possible future in which Peter could deny Christ, then he didn’t have free will.


You are making a mess of the future. If we are to speak at all about the future, we must speak about the individual future for each person, not the future of the whole world.

“The young, as well as those of more advanced age, are accountable to God for their time, their influence, and their opportunities. They have their fate in their own hands. ... Every person is a free moral agent, deciding his own future by his daily life.” {RH, January 19, 1886 par. 7}


What you are saying does not make sense. She is making a hypothetical statement: With such an army of workers as our youth might furnish, how soon might the end come. She could have said the same in relation to the past: With such an army of workers as our youth might have furnished (in the 1850’s, for instance), how soon the end might have come.


It isn’t obvious and it isn’t true. The church can hasten or delay Christ’s coming, but God already knows when His people will be ready and when Christ will be able to come. However, it is obvious that God cannot say He knows the date of Christ’s coming if He doesn’t know the date of Christ’s coming.


Please quote me correctly. What I said was, “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.”
Of course if Christ hadn’t overcome the devil’s temptations and sinned, God would have suffered the loss of His Son. Do you disagree?
And of course Christ could only overcome the devil’s temptations by the intervention of His Father supplying the power for Him to overcome them. Do you disagree?
In what other way could heaven be imperiled except by the loss of the second Person of the Godhead? Please read this parallel passage:

“Look upon that wounded head, the pierced side, the marred feet. Remember that Christ risked all; ‘tempted like as we are,’ he staked even his own eternal existence upon the issue of the conflict. Heaven itself was imperiled for our redemption. At the foot of the cross, remembering that for one sinner Jesus would have yielded up his life, we may estimate the value of a soul.” {GCB, December 1, 1895 par. 22}

Your argument is that if God did not create creatures whom He knew would sin, then it would not be possible for sin to exist, and in this case, there would be no free will.

I'm simply pointing out that your argument makes it necessary for sin to exist in order for free will to exist. Your argument doesn't simply imply that it had to be possible for sin to exist, but that sin was certain to exist.

Anther way of stating the same thing is that under your presuppositions, it was not possible for sin to be merely possible to exist without its actually coming to pass.

To answer your questions to me, I agree that it's necessary for both right and wrong choices to be possible for there to be free will. However, I don't believe this has anything to do with which creatures God created. Even if God had created only creatures that did not sin, it still would have been possible for these creatures to sin. In fact, making creatures that would sin would make it not one iota more possible for the other creatures to sin, and would in no way increase the amount of free will they would have.

I do not believe it was possible for God to create *any* creatures with free will without there being the possibility of wrong choices existing.




I think we're having a communication problem here, so let's try not using the word "fixed" and see if that helps. In my view, there are many possible futures. In yours, there is one. Peter will do what he will do, and nothing else, as there is only one future, under your view. Under my view, Peter will do many different possible things. One of the possible things had to do with Peter's denying Christ. But that's just one of the decisions that Peter made that night. He made many other decisions as well, some of which could be certain to occur, and some not.

So, to recap, using "certain to occur" instead of "fixed," under your view, *everything* that Peter would do, *every* decision, was certain to occur, according to what God had seen would happen. Under my view, *some* things were certain to occur, because in every possible future, these decisions by Peter were the same. Other decisions would not be certain to occur, as in some possible futures Peter would do one thing, and in others Peter wouldn't.

One thing is certain, which is if you think my view has the future being fixed, but yours doesn't, there's definately something that's being misunderstood.



That can't be done. We are not independent beings which have no impact on one other. Everyone's decisions has impacts, and contributes to what the future will be.



In any possible future, we will decide our own fate, insofar as eternal destinies are concerned. No other person's decisions can force us to be saved or lost. However, everyone's decisions have an inpact in what will happen.



Sure it does. Luther, Edwards, Calvin, and others who started from your presuppositions have produced positions which are logically consistent. Your presuppositions, followed to their logical conclusion, would lead to the position that these men have come to. Try to find some fault in their logic. I'm confident you won't be able to do so. Their arguments are convincing and well reasonsed.



I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. My point was that your view of the future is not compatible with condionality. I didn't say her view wasn't.



I wrote here that you cannot hasten Christ's coming without making its date be sooner, nor delay it without making its date later. How is this not obvious? If you think this isn't true, please explain to me how Christ's coming could be delayed, without making it later. Scratch that. Let's talk about a wedding. Say a wedding is planned to occur on Jan. 1, 2008. But the wedding is delayed. Isn't it obvious that this means the wedding will not occur on Jan. 1, 2008, but on some later date instead?



If there is a certain date in which Christ will come, then Christ's coming can be neither delayed nor hastened, since the date, being certain, cannot be changed. The date cannot bother be certain and changeable! It's one or the other.



I think she was saying that in order to bring about our redemption, heaven was imperiled. I agree that this could only have happened if Christ had been lost. But I don't see here even remotely speaking about God's intervening, or giving Him power to overcome, or any of these things. One could just as well speak of the role of Mary and Joseph in Christ's upbringing, and how that helped Christ to overcome. She's simply not speaking at all about why Christ overcome. She is speaking of the value of a human soul, and how to properly estimate it one must consider that Christ risked all, and heaven was imperiled.

Your viewpoint does not allow for heaven being imperiled, because if God knew from all eternity that heaven would never be in any danger, it could not have been in any danger.



Great quote! I missed this one.

I agree that the point is that Christ risked his own eternal existence. If Christ is God, and all-knowing, and knew from all eternity exactly what would happen, then He clearly was risking nothing. Risk implies uncertainty as to the outcome. I can't say, "I'll risk $20 on this coin toss coming up heads" if the coin is double-headed. Well, I can say it, but the risk would not be a true risk, since I know the outcome, and there is no possibility of loss.

If God ensures that no wrong choice will exist, how can it be possible for a wrong choice to exist?


Which means what I had said before, that under your view the future is fixed in some aspects, and if it is fixed in some aspects, the persons involved have no free will in those aspects.


It’s impossible to discuss the future of all people in the world collectively. There is an individual future, and it’s this we are discussing. If we are discussing Peter, we have to discuss Peter’s future, not the future of the whole world.


No, I’m not speaking about this, but about your assertion that the EGW quote is incompatible with my view.


Ellen White says:

“Had Adventists, after the great disappointment in 1844, held fast their faith, and followed on unitedly in the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world, they would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and Christ would have come ere this to receive His people to their reward.” {1SM 68.1}

Obviously Christ’s coming - the *event* - can occur sooner or later, according to the church’s behavior. But this doesn’t mean that the *date* is changeable. The date is certain, for God already knows when His people will finally accomplish their mission of proclaiming the gospel to the whole world.

According to your view, it seems God still doesn’t know when Christ will come. How could He have known it two thousand years ago, when Jesus mentioned He knew it?


When she says that heaven was imperiled, she is saying Christ could be overcome by temptation – there was a risk.
When she says that the three Hebrew’s lives were at stake, she is saying they could die – there was a risk.
However, you point out that heaven couldn’t have been imperiled if God knew that Christ wouldn’t fail.
I’m pointing out that, then, EGW couldn’t have described the Hebrews’ lives as being at stake, because God knew they wouldn’t die.
Then you said that what EGW meant was that, had God not intervened, the three Hebrews would have died.
And I'm pointing out that, in Christ's case, had He failed to appropriate God's power by faith, He would have been overcome by temptation.

I don't understand your question.



What makes the future fixed is a lack of options. Under your view, there's only one option. Under the view I'm proposing, there are zillions of options. Just because some aspect of these zillions of possibilities have something in common, doesn't mean that free will was any less involved than for any other aspect.

For example, consider the chess player who is thinking of a move. He decides to play Be2 in every possible scenario, although he presses the chess clock at different times. So if you consider just the move, you would say that aspect is the same. However, if you consider the move and the time on the chess clock, you can see there are different possible futures involved. They just happen to have something in common (i.e., the move Be2). However, they also have things not in common (i.e., the time on the chess clock).

Consider a different scenario where the chess player sometimes decides on one move, and sometimes on another. It should be clear that the future is no more fixed when the move he chooses is certain than it is when it is uncertain.

There's no lack of free will happening anywhere.

What makes for the lack of free will under your view is a lack of options. There are no lack of options in my view. There are zillions of them. These options may have something in common, but they are still different options, as considering the time on the chess clock should make clear.



You can't separate the future of a person from the future of other people who impact that person's future. There's in interdependence here.



Your assertions are logically compatible with the conclusions of Luther, Edwards and Calvin, but not with Ellen White. They start off with the same presuppositions regarding foreknowledge that you do. These presuppositions lead logically to where Luther, Edwards and Calvin take them.

When I was in Brazil, I heard a pastor pray that about our hastening Christ's coming. I asked him about it afterwards, and he said, "Oh that's just an expression." He recognized the logical inconsistency of believing there is a fixed date for Christ's coming and being able to hasten it.

There are logical consequences to the presuppositions you are taking. You are mixing the presuppositions of one system (a deterministic one) with the conclusions of another system (a non-deterministic one).

For example, the idea that Christ's coming will occur on a certain date is not compatible with the idea that His coming can be hastened or delayed.



If the event of Christ's coming occurs sooner, then the date corresponding to it changes correspondingly to an earlier date. For example, if the event occurs 1 year sooner, the year of the date would be 1 less.



If the date is certain, then it can't be changed. If the date can't be changed, then the timing of the event cannot be changed, which means that it cannot be hastened or delayed.

Here's an example. Say I'm going to a wedding, and the event is scheduled for a certain date, like April 1. If the wedding is hastened by one month, that means it will take place on March 1. Similarly, if the wedding is delayed by one month, that means it will be one month later, on May 1. If that date must be on April 1, no matter what, then it can neither be hastened nor delayed.



I think Greg Body does a good job addressing this, so I'll quote from him:





In the case of the Hebrews, the comment that the Hebrews lives were at stake is clearly from the perspective of the Hebrews. If God had not intervened, they would have died. They didn't know what God was going to do, so from their perspective their decision really involved risking their lives, even though God knew their lives were not at stake.

However, when Ellen White said that heaven was imperiled, this wasn't at the perspective of a mere man, but from the perspective of God.

When did Christ risk all? When He decided to become a human being. From Christ's perspective, His eternal existence was at risk. But Christ is God (and at that time, God only, not having been incarnated) so the perspective being shared is God's perspective.

I mean, if God ensures that no wrong choice will exist (by abstaining from creating all creatures who would make a wrong choice), how can it be possible for a wrong choice to exist?


The question is, how much time before the event does the future need to become known for it to be fixed? I came upon an interesting opinion the other day. The person began by presenting what exactly figures into the choice that an agent makes at a given time: 1) physiology 2) history/experiences 3) beliefs. 4) immediate thoughts and emotions 5) environment. God has perfect knowledge of our physiology and our history/experiences. God also is aware of our beliefs and our immediate thought and emotions. If we couple this knowledge with a perspective of time that has no lower quantizable limit, we have a situation where the immediate future is fixed.
God perceives the agent Bob at T1. God chooses to calculate the future of Bob at T1 + 1 femtosecond (fs = 1 quadrillionth of a second). As there is nothing that affects what Bob will do in the next 1 fs that God cannot perceive, God’s calculation is not a statistical probability but a mathematical certainty. At T1, the subsequent fs is determined.
At T1 + 1fs, the subsequent 1 fs will also be discernable. Consequently, there is never a time when the future is not fixed and determined.

Of course it is. The date is already taking into account the hastenings and delays. Suppose a train starts at 8:00 a.m. in a city and, depending on the weather conditions, at the middle of the trip the conductor informs at what time he will arrive. When the train started it was raining. However, after some miles the train encounters sunshine on its way and the rails are not wet, so the conductor informs the next train station that he will arrive at 8:50. Or suppose the train encounters a heavier rain, so the conductor informs he will arrive at 9:15. So, the weather conditions can hasten or delay the arrival, but when the time of the arrival is informed, it is already taking into consideration the hastenings or delays.

That’s funny. There is a logical inconsistency in believing there is a fixed date for Christ’s coming and being able to hasten it, but there is no logical inconsistency is saying that the date is not fixed, but God knows “the day and the hour.” The Brazilian pastor is wrong when he says that hastening Christ’s coming “is just an expression” but Boyd is correct when he says that the fact that the Father knows the day and the hour “is an idiomatic way of saying” that the decision as to the date is the Father’s (of course it’s not, if it’s entirely in the hands of human beings). Very funny indeed.

If Ellen White was referring to the risk on the perspective of the Hebrews, then she was referring to the risk of temptation on the perspective of Christ as a human being. She never refers to His decision in heaven, but to His conflict on earth.

“Remember that Christ risked all; ‘tempted like as we are,’ he staked even his own eternal existence upon the issue of the conflict. Heaven itself was imperiled for our redemption. At the foot of the cross, remembering that for one sinner Jesus would have yielded up his life, we may estimate the value of a soul.” {GCB, December 1, 1895 par. 22}

I'm just going to comment on one thing here, and the rest later. Earlier you wrote:



Just now you wrote this:



These are just two different ways of saying the same thing, that is, a "fixed date" and a "certain date" are saying the same thing.

I was writing from my perspective. From my perspective, I don't believe it was possible for God to create beings with free will who were certain not to sin.

From your perspective, I think you're being inconsistent. You can't argue that we have free will, on the one hand, because God's knowledge of our future decisions does not force us to make the choice we make, and simultaneously argue that had God not created beings He foreknew would sin that the creatures He did create could not sin.

However, having said this, I'm glad you see the problem of God's not creating beings He knew would sin in this light, as it shows you are aware of the connection between God's having foreknowledge in the way you perceive it to be and our actions.



Again, you can't isolate just one person in considering this, as everybody's actions are interwoven. So while the future is becoming fixed, in one certain aspect, for one specific person, there are all sorts of decisions still in flux during that same small moment in time.



I'm assuming that the train had a scheduled arrival time in your scenario, say 10:00, and that time was met, even though there were "hastenings" and "delays" during its progress.

The problem with the illustration here is that the train's time of arrival was not hastened nor delayed. The train's *projected* time of arrival was hastened and delayed.

In order to make a true analogy to the case we are considering, one would need to ask the question, was it actually possible for the train to have come earlier or later than it did. I assume, in the case of the train, we would say yes, but we are leaving out a key ingredient, which is in the case of Christ's coming, the exact moment which Christ will come is (under your view) certain.

If we add to the train analogy the specification that it is 100% certain that the train will arrive exactly on time, then we can say that it is 100% certain that the train's arrival could neither be hastened nor delayed.

It's like with the wedding example. If the wedding is scheduled for April 1, and hastened by one month, that means the wedding occurs on March 1. If it it certain that it will occur on April 1, then it can neither be hastened nor delayed.

This is like saying if 2+2 is certain to equal 4, then it can neither equal 3 nor 5.

The same problem arises in trying to simultaneously affirm that the date of Christ's coming is certain, yet He could have come in the 1850's. Obviously one or the other of these things is true, but not both.

I imagine you would respond something like, Christ could have come in the 1850's had the church responded differently, but God knew they wouldn't. This is just another way of saying that Christ could not have come in the 1850's, because if God knew with certainty that the church would not respond differently, then He knew Christ couldn't have come in the 1850's.

To put it another way, if Christ could have come in the 1850's, then the creatures whom God foreknew would not sin could sin, even if God did not create the creatures He foreknew would sin. This is exactly the same logic here.



This is a good point. In any study such as this, there will be statements which apparently say something other than the truth. For example, in the study of the state of the dead, there are many Scriptures which give the impression that the soul is immortal. How does one resolve this problem?

I faced this issue in becoming an SDA. I saw that there were good arguments as to why the soul was mortal and good arguments as to why the soul was immortal. Which was right? What criteria should I used to decide? Should I weight the verses, and see which side could list more verses?

The criterion I wound up using was what did the two views way about God. It seemed to me that the SDA view presented a view of God's character which was more in harmony with what Scripture had to say about God.

When we consider the question of foreknowledge, there is a similar issue. There are statements which speak about God's knowing the future, and prophecies which are striking. These can give the impression that God has EDF. On the other hand, there are statements from the SOP that Christ's coming could have been earlier, that it can be hastened or delayed, that Christ took a risk in coming here, that God took a risk in sending Him, that God struggled to make the decision whether or not to send Christ after having three meetings with Christ who had to plead for permission; none of these are congruent with EDF.

In Scripture there are dozens of texts which speak of God's changing His mind. There are prophecies which did not happen as prophesied (one wonders why God, having EDF, would prophesy something He knew would not happen). We see God regretting decisions He made, and there are many other things which could be added which are not congruent with EDF.

So how do we decide? To me the bottom line comes down to what these things say about God. I think this is the real reason that you and MM resist the ideas I've been sharing. You don't like the idea of a God who is not in control, which is how you perceive God would be if He didn't have EDF. You prefer a God that created beings He knew would sin to a God who created beings that had a very small chance of sinning, because of the lack of control this would imply.


It's looks to me like you're really missing the point here. Christ, *before* becoming a human being, at the time He was only God, with perfect foreknowledge, exactly like God the Father's, at *that* time risked all in order to come here and save us.

The praise that Ellen White is offering to Christ is that He was willing to risk His eternal existence *in making the decision to come here*. Here's another quote which makes this point clear.

I don't think this reasoning is inconsistent. If God prevented the possibility of sin from existing, it can’t be said that sin was an option.


According to your model, as time advances, so does God’s knowledge of the future. As any new situation arises, God can know what will happen in a femtosecond. The point the person is trying to make, I think, is that the difference between the two models is that in one of them the future can be known with just one femtosecond of antecedence, while in the other it can be known with zillion hours of antecedence – but it would be fixed in both cases. This seems to make sense, since God knows not only our thoughts, but He knows our motives better than we ourselves know them, and also knows our physiology, and our history, and our emotions. So, although I think that this can’t be applied to prophecies, which are usually made a long time in advance, it would be applicable to our individual lives in your model. In the case of prophecies involving the free will of persons (Peter, Judas, etc.), I simply consider them completely incompatible with your model.


There isn't a scheduled arrival time. The arrival time is dependent on the weather conditions, and at a certain point of the trip it can be predicted. Of course the illustration has many limitations but, in the case of Christ’s coming, it can occur earlier or later, however the moment it will occur can be predicted since the beginning because, under my model, God knows perfectly the “weather conditions” that will be encountered by the train during the trip.


Suppose I ask my son to do the dishes. I know he can do it in 20 minutes but, because he doesn’t like to do it, he takes 40 minutes to accomplish the task. I knew he would take 40 minutes (because this happens every day), but of course he could have accomplished the task in 20 minutes. In this sense Christ could have come in the 1850’s, but God knew this wouldn’t happen.


No, it’s not the same logic, and I have already explained why. From the creatures’ side, it would be theoretically possible for them to choose to do wrong. But, looking at it from the Creator’s side, it wouldn’t, because if they had decided to do wrong, God would have prevented their wrong decision (by preventing their existence).
In the case of the Adventists in the 1850’s the situation is different because, from the creature’s side, they could have received the 3d angel’s message and proclaimed it to the world, and from the Creator’s side, God didn’t do anything to prevent them from doing that.


From these, I don’t see at all the statements that Christ’s coming could have been earlier, that it can be hastened or delayed, and that God struggled to make the decision whether or not to send Christ, as incompatible with EDF. That Christ took a risk in coming here describes His struggle with temptation. And Ellen White doesn’t say that God took a risk in sending Christ here, but that God sent Christ to meet a fearful risk.


Both the Bible and Ellen White make clear that God doesn’t change His mind and that He doesn’t regret any decisions He makes. Of course there are conditional prophecies which communicate God’s purposes to reward good behavior and to punish bad behavior. It’s up to man to decide how he will respond.


I think the text is clear: “that He not only became an exile from the heavenly courts, but for us took the risk of failure and eternal loss.” Both go together, and both refer to earth, not to heaven.
All the references to risk I know of speak about Christ as a human being meeting temptation. Christ took a risk at the moment He was born, not in His pre-existent state. God cannot be tempted, nor can He take a risk.

Rosangela, I wrote an answer to your post from work, but forgot to send it, so pending that I'll ask a question. Do you agree that reality is what God perceives it to be?

Well, I think so.