Are we talking about the Jesus who actually taught Eternal (or Aionion) Punishment and Hell (Hades & Gehenna) and the Paul who taught Eternal (or Aionion) Destruction and also about possible Total Reconciliation while never mentioning any sort of Hell? That Jesus and Paul?
Ah, in those terms (i’m afraid I had to go look them up), i’d say that libertarian free will is by definition incompatible with determinism. Honestly I think i’d tend to hope that we don’t have free will of that kind. Though that only works with 100% accuracy; you can still get pretty damn close, close enough potentially, I would argue, to make the three betrayals prediction work.
God as described by Calvinists turns out to be capricious and cruel.
God as described by Arminians turns out to be a failure.
Universalism is the way to go.
Foreknowledge doesn’t obviate free will, any more than postknowledge does.
Indeed. I have a book in which a defender of Calvinism says that of course God’s love is universal, and he even loves the people burning in the lake of fire. Because he loves how much agony they are in and loves to hear their screams. Because that is where they belong because he said so. And he loves that because he loves himself. So he loves them.
I wish I were exaggerating, but no, that’s his argument.
That didn’t stop him from telling Judas to avoid the bread.
ETA: Also, what part of being perfectly predictable doesn’t deny free will? When you start talking about Jesus being able to ‘safely’ make statements without changing the future, that doesn’t put the power to change Peter’s actions in Peter’s hands - it puts it in Jesus’s. Peter remains an automaton, merely reacting to things that happen, and absent changes to those things is locked into following his predetermined course.
Foreknowledge does indeed obviate the possibility that we are not deterministic, precisely by making foreknowledge comparable to postknowledge. Postknowledge is possible because the past is fixed; locked in place. You cannot choose to not have posted your prior post - if you had any free will on the subject, it’s certainly gone now. Thus I can know with certainty that you posted. Making facts about the future similarly certain similary removes any semblance of (noncompatiblist) free will from the future and present, too.
The difference between libertarian and compatiblist free will is worth knowing, by the way, since compatiblist free will is not useful to most theistic arguments in defense of God. If God created us with the foreknowledge that we would use our compatiblist free will to choose a route that would lead us to eternal suffering, then he has wound up a wind-up toy and deliberately set it to walk itself into the furnace. And thus retains full responsibility.
I disagree - it’s the numbers that make it incredible (meaning, I can’t give the idea credit). ‘Then, shalt thou betray me thrice. No more, no less. Three times shall be the number thou shalt betray, and the number of the betraying shall be three. Four times, shalt thou not betray, neither shall thou betray twice, excepting that thou then proceed to thrice. Five times is right out. Once the betrayal three, being the third betrayal be reached, then hearest thou the cock be crowing, who being awake and in range of your hearing, shalt crow its second time - and until that time, not.’
Also it’s not like the bible is pussyfooting around this - of course Jesus can predict the future with perfect 100% certainty. He does it rather a lot. To presume that he lacks absolute certainty sounds almost like a modificaion of the character, along the lines of saying that Santa doesn’t really squeeze down impossibly thin chimneys, but he instead picks locks to accomplish his covert gift-delivery services.
I was raised a Calvinist up till the age of 15. It was the Canadian Reformed Church, comprised entirely of Dutchmen.
The formal idea of predestination was never talked about in my presence so I never really understood it, but now its all becoming a little clearer as to exactly what I was locked into.
The belief in predestination is probably why I never saw any outreach or proselytization. It also explains why we needed to separate ourselves from the activities of the world except from going to school or work or business. No movies or dancing.
The prevailing mindset I was in was that I was different from my school mates and that I was special.
It was like Holland was blessed with a population of the Elect and that privilege extended to their offspring.
When I was 21, the elders of that church came to visit me to advise me that I had to make a choice. I was still in The Book of Life (although I never asked to be there). Its still possible to fall from Grace.
If it wasn’t for the death of my mother of seven children resulting in my father leaving that church, I probably would still be there. By the grace of God, I was de-elected.
Actually Calvinism holds to eternal security-that is that all the people in the Elect will always be in the Elect with the possible exception of those who commit the ultimate blasphemy. Also most Calvinists believe in missionary efforts-I think your church was Hyper-Calvinist.
Well, so it wasn’t that he was de-elected, it’s that he never was elected. God knew he was gonna go to hell when God formed him in his mother’s womb.
Basically yes.
Per Wikipedia, the Calvinist doctorines of “irresistible grace” and “perseverance of the saints” contradict your postulated exception - the Elect are in, permanently; if they were going to commit ultimate blasphemy they wouldn’t have been Elect in the first place.
EDIT: I am apparently slow. Blast it.
You seem to be right.
No, because youn are making several ssumptions: that time is real in some special but undefined sense, that the past is locked and unchangeable, and ultimately assuming that people cannot choose. You are making the assumptions for sake of argument, but making them all the same.
In fact, there are theoretical scientific means by which we could observe events, which to us have not happened yet. Time ain’t all that static. God, as an observer who created and is presumably in some sense outside Time, can see our future because the very concepts of past and future are meaningless. You might as well say Right and Left, or Fore and Aft. There is progression, perhaps, but not time.
There will ultimately be a universe composed of our choices. He is at the end of it as at the beginning. He knows exactly what we will have chosen. That does not, however, force or require him to control what we choose.
Why do you think this? Why wouldn’t postknowledge be possible if the past were mutable?
No, knowledge of what choices will be made is not the same as control over those choices.
Suppose I know what you ate for breakfast yesterday. Does that mean I picked what you ate? Obviously not. You chose your breakfast and I only have knowledge of what your choice was.
Now suppose I know what you will eat for breakfast tomorrow. It still doesn’t mean that I’m picking the menu. You’ll choose what you eat and I only know what your choice will be.
Personal opinion: I believe in predestination, but live my life pretending to believe in free will, because it’s less depressing.
Can there be an intermediate level of predestiny? It seems to me it’s an all or nothing proposition. If it is your destiny to do X, then no one or nothing else in the universe can exercise free will or chance circumstance to stop you.
If you can choose to believe you have free will, doesn’t that mean you do?
Not if that’s what you’re destined to believe, or destined to pretend.
And not if the concept of free will doesn’t make any sense. Free will is a vaguely defined idea designed to appeal to peoples’ emotions but it doesn’t hold up logically. In other words if it’s impossible you can’t have it.