I am baffled, please explain

[Pallas_Athene]

Your scenaro is not logical. If God knew every conceivable pair would sin, that does not mean that they had no free will. It would mean they freely chose to disobey.

Are you familiar with the concept of “possible worlds”? If every conceivable human pair would have sinned, then God would be unable to create a pair, which would not have sinned. Observe the universal operator of “every”. That means that every pair would be created to become a sinner. That is the meaning of “preordained”.

I think the reason is that this provided him the opportunity to demonstrate his Infinite Compassion and Mercy. It also promised to be a condition to elicite a more perfect love from his creatures. Who is more greatful, he who has been forgiven much or he who had nothing for which to be forgiven? Having been forgiven much we are more greatful, and our love is greater than otherwise.

What is better, to sin and be forgiven, or not to sin at all? You argue that this world with all its sins, horrors, pains and sufferings is somehow “inferior” to the Garden of Eden. Are you serious? A sinless person needs no compassion and needs no mercy and definitely needs no “salvation”, since he would already be “saved”.

He did not " put them to the test, " he allowed them to be tested, but he warned them not to test him, or they would die.

Come on. Who tested them, if not God?

He did not want Adam and Eve to fail. He wanted a proven love, freely given.

If he did not want them to fail, he should have created them so they would freely choose not to sin. And if being created with knowing that they would sin, and that fact had no impact upon their free will, then the other scenario is also true: “to be created with full knowledge that they will not sin would not intrude upon their free will either.”

Of course, but this was not the situation of the Fall. It was no trick, and they were clealy warned of the serious consequences.

A real loving father does not place a bowl of poisoned candy on the table and does not warn his children about the serious consequences.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

But what if the only way the child will learn its lesson is by being cursed and chased out of the house?

Then you pick and choose a different child to be created. Don’t forget, the omniscience places God into a very awkward position. Knowing what will happen, being free to act otherwise, and still deliberately performing the act puts the full responsibility unto God’s shoulders. No excuse about “free will”.

Remembering of course that the curse will be lifted and the child readmitted instantly if they repent and ask.for re admittance.

The curse has never been lifted. We still live in this cursed world.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Every act of God is deliberate, of course. And God does not think. He doesn’t have to. Making two people who would not sin as our first parents would not have deprived them of free will, you are correct. However, like a previous poster, I believe all human couples would have disobeyed.

Maybe you believe, but that is neither here nor there. If God could not create humans who could stay sinless, then he is not omnipotent. After all there is nothing logically impossible about creating people who stay sinless. And the only thing that God is unable to do is to create logical contradictions.

Besides, there is a perfectly simple method to get rid of sin. Sin is disobedience. To get rid of disobedience, you do not give any commands, which could be disobeyed.

Mystery, though, is not a cop-out. It is a fact. If God is not full of mystery, please tell me of what substance God is made? Where does he live? How does he pass his time? How do the bread and wine become the Body and the Blood of Christ? How was Christ resurrected? I mean physically. Please explain the physics of the resurrection to me? Many people know that God is, but no one knows what God is.

I am sorry. As far as I am concerned, none of that is “mystery”, all of that is simple mythology.

The Cross did plenty for those who died prior to Jesus’ crucifixion. We do not know, with certainty, that anyone is in hell, but presumably, before the crucifixion, the wicked went to hell, and the righteous went to Sheol, sometimes referred to as “Abraham’s bosom,” a place of waiting. The Creed states that Christ “descended into hell.” Why would God “descend into hell?” He did so to gather up those who were waiting and take them to heaven. Their time of waiting had ended.

Sorry, this is empty, unfounded speculation.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

But that’s the thing, we got so much more than a cure for cancer! We got to call God our Father, the childlike name Abba. We got an advocate who brought to humanity a physical connection to the Divine when she allowed God to take flesh in her womb. The human condition was so elevated by the Incarnation that God brought us to heights Adam and Eve could not even aspire to before the fall.

When on Easter Vigil the Church announces the Resurrection, She sings, ‘‘O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!’’ It is not sour grapes but praise and adoration for a glorious and generous God who exalted us with the remedy He created for original sin.

I can not believe my eyes. To say that there is a “happy fault” which would elevate this “sin”-ravaged world to a level which is superior to the Garden of Eden is beyond comprehension.

 

[Bradski]

Of vital importance in understanding free will and God’s omniscience is that merely knowing what a person will do doesn’t equate to making him do it.

You are in a dispute with your neighbour. He goes to the local gun shop and tells the guy behind the counter that he wants to buy a gun ‘because I am going to kill Della’. The owner, fully believing that he will carry out his threat, sells him the gun anyway. The guy goes to your house and while you are out he shoots every member of your family.

As the man who sold the gun had full and absolute knowledge of what your neighbour was going to do, would you hold him responsible in any way for what happened?

 

[Pallas_Athene]

You are in a dispute with your neighbour. He goes to the local gun shop and tells the guy behind the counter that he wants to buy a gun ‘because I am going to kill Della’. The owner, fully believing that he will carry out his threat, sells him the gun anyway. The guy goes to your house and while you are out he shoots every member of your family.

As the man who sold the gun had full and absolute knowledge of what your neighbour was going to do, would you hold him responsible in any way for what happened?

The trouble is that many people do not realize that there is very little difference (if there is ANY difference at all) between actively performing and passively allowing something.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Also it should be noted that from a legal standpoint culpability for an action is directly related to one’s ability to not perform that action. Let’s say someone in a hospital switches the labels on two drugs and a nurse administers what she thinks is the right drug to a patient. Technically you could say the nurse killed the patient but in reality she was not culpable. The same thing occurs if you’re driving and someone hits your car and forces you to hit another car or a person. If there was no course of action that you could have taken to prevent this from occurring then you are not responsible for it.

Now we take that idea and apply it to God, Adam, and Eve. God having created Adam and Eve but also knowing what they would do, God is responsible for the eventual consequences. As someone noted upthread, the song goes “Oh necessary sin of Adam”. If it is necessary and unavoidable then Adam could not have done anything but sin, therefore he is not responsible but God is.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

If there is a sign on God’s desk, it must say: “The buck stops here”. With full power and full knowledge comes full responsibility. There can be no excuse.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

If there is a sign on God’s desk, it must say: “The buck stops here”. With full power and full knowledge comes full responsibility. There can be no excuse.

Ha! I’m a little more confident in Harry S. Truman in that regard.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Are you familiar with the concept of “possible worlds”? If every conceivable human pair would have sinned, then God would be unable to create a pair, which would not have sinned. Observe the universal operator of “every”. That means that every pair would be created to become a sinner. That is the meaning of “preordained”.

What is better, to sin and be forgiven, or not to sin at all? You argue that this world with all its sins, horrors, pains and sufferings is somehow “inferior” to the Garden of Eden. Are you serious? A sinless person needs no compassion and needs no mercy and definitely needs no “salvation”, since he would already be “saved”.

Come on. Who tested them, if not God?

If he did not want them to fail, he should have created them so they would freely choose not to sin. And if being created with knowing that they would sin, and that fact had no impact upon their free will, then the other scenario is also true: “to be created with full knowledge that they will not sin would not intrude upon their free will either.”

A real loving father does not place a bowl of poisoned candy on the table and does not warn his children about the serious consequences.

You don’t seem to have any interest in truth. Perhaps in some far off future day you may be.

Good luck.

Linus2nd

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Maybe you believe, but that is neither here nor there. If God could not create humans who could stay sinless, then he is not omnipotent. After all there is nothing logically impossible about creating people who stay sinless. And the only thing that God is unable to do is to create logical contradictions.

Besides, there is a perfectly simple method to get rid of sin. Sin is disobedience. To get rid of disobedience, you do not give any commands, which could be disobeyed.

I am sorry. As far as I am concerned, none of that is “mystery”, all of that is simple mythology.

Sorry, this is empty, unfounded speculation.

So, you cannot explain the physical substance of God to me or tell me how the resurrection was accomplished. That alone proves God is filled with mystery. You have confirmed it.

And if you are an atheist, which I strongly suspect, I do not believe you can tell me who the Prime Mover was, what the Uncaused Cause was because there has to be one, God or no God. No self-professed atheist has ever provided an answer to that.

Case closed as far as I’m concerned. God wins, as always. I’m willing to talk with people, but only if they open their mind to something new. As Linus said, you seem to have no interest in truth. Your bafflement seems to be set in stone. Maybe some day you will be interested in your eternal life. I would hope so.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

You don’t seem to have any interest in truth. Perhaps in some far off future day you may be.

It is unwise to make unfounded assumptions about the motivations of other people.

So, you cannot explain the physical substance of God to me or tell me how the resurrection was accomplished. That alone proves God is filled with mystery. You have confirmed it.

I am also unable to explain how the leprechauns disappear as soon as look in their directions. That does not make them “mysterious” either.

Case closed as far as I’m concerned. God wins, as always. I’m willing to talk with people, but only if they open their mind to something new. As Linus said, you seem to have no interest in truth. Your bafflement seems to be set in stone. Maybe some day you will be interested in your eternal life. I would hope so.

Just like I told Linus, it is not wise to make assumptions about other people. I am very much interested in the “truth”, but if something is illogical and irrational, it cannot be the truth, much less “Truth ™”.

---

To sum up: God’s omnipotence would have allowed him to create humans who would freely choose not to disobey, and as such not to “fall”. His omniscience foresaw that this particular human pair will “fall”. There is nothing that God does not do deliberately. Therefore God deliberately chose that particular human pair, knowing full well that they will fall. As such God wanted the humans to fall. To say that the fall was a foreseen, but unintended consequence would be contradicted by the fact that God does everything deliberately.

Some respondents said, it was God’s plan from the get-go, they said that Jesus’ sacrifice was part of God’s original intent. (How would they know it, is really a “mystery”.)

As for the reconciliation, it was not logically necessary for Jesus to suffer, God could have pardoned us freely. Some posters asserted that God did not need the self-sacrifice for his own sake (after all God needs nothing), the self-sacrifice was for our benefit, so we could see the immensity of God’s love for us.

Unfortunately that makes no sense at all. I doubt very much that this would be the official teaching of the church. (If there is an infallible document to prove me wrong, I am ready to reconsider.) But to go through all that pain and suffering if it is not logically necessary does not show “love”. It shows irrationality in its most severe form. If a human would do something similar, we would call him hopelessly stupid. Of course since this is just the individual opinion of a few people, it does not need to be taken seriously.

As such the method of reconciliation remains an irrational proposition. If some pain and suffering would yield a disproportionately greater good, then the pain and suffering would be justified. But if there is no logical necessity, then the self-imposed suffering only elicits a .

 

[Della]

You are in a dispute with your neighbour. He goes to the local gun shop and tells the guy behind the counter that he wants to buy a gun ‘because I am going to kill Della’. The owner, fully believing that he will carry out his threat, sells him the gun anyway. The guy goes to your house and while you are out he shoots every member of your family.

As the man who sold the gun had full and absolute knowledge of what your neighbour was going to do, would you hold him responsible in any way for what happened?

God knowing and willing are still two different things. The gun shop owner does not will anyone’s death even if he knows about it. He doesn’t make the buyer shoot anyone even if he knows it will happen. Of course, your analogy, like all analogies is imperfect. I could try to create an analogy for my point, but it too would be imperfect and so no more convincing/settled that yours.

However, you are laboring under a misunderstanding about the will of God. God’s will depends on what we decide to do. All the prophecies of the OT, for instance, were provisional, depending on how the people reacted to what God warned them would happen “if.” So, if, like the people of Nineva they repented, Jonah’s prophecy–that they would be destroyed, didn’t happen. Jonah was even angry at God because of that–he too seemed to have the mistaken idea that if God says something will happen that it absolutely will happen, when in reality, what happens depends on what people decide to do. That’s the essence of free will.

In Eve’s case, she had a choice set before her. She made her choice, and then Adam made his. The fall of man being the result. Mary was presented with a choice, as well. She obeyed and the result was the redemption of man.

We need not be angry with God for being able to see what we will decide when the choice is left entirely up to us. If we had no choice, then God would be a monster playing with us, knowing we would have to fail. However, that’s not the case, hence no need to blame God for our own choices. How we wish to respond to this knowledge is up to us.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

God knowing and willing are still two different things. The gun shop owner does not will anyone’s death even if he knows about it.

Allowing someone to perform something that you do NOT want to happen is not different than actively performing the same act. There is no such thing as “foreseen but unintended consequences” for God. Anything that happens is either directly willed or passively allowed by God, but there is no real difference between them.

Let’s put it this way: “God does not “not want” the atrocities to happen”. And a double negative is a positive.

However, you are laboring under a misunderstanding about the will of God. God’s will depends on what we decide to do.

That is not what the church teaches. God is “simple”, he has no parts. If his “will” would be contingent upon our action, then his will would be contingent, and as such God would be contingent.

 

[Della]

Allowing someone to perform something that you do NOT want to happen is not different than actively performing the same act. There is no such thing as “foreseen but unintended consequences” for God. Anything that happens is either directly willed or passively allowed by God, but there is no real difference between them.

Let’s put it this way: “God does not “not want” the atrocities to happen”. And a double negative is a positive.

You seem very sure. But, being sure and being right aren’t the same thing. Neither is knowing what will happen and making it happen. There is a real difference whether you acknowledge it or not.

That is not what the church teaches. God is “simple”, he has no parts. If his “will” would be contingent upon our action, then his will would be contingent, and as such God would be contingent.

Sorry, but you’re simply wrong about that. God lets men make their own choices. The history of God’s dealings with man is filled with examples of this. We are free agents. God doesn’t make us do anything. He does influence us–sometimes quite strongly, but he never makes anyone decide anything.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

You seem very sure. But, being sure and being right aren’t the same thing. Neither is knowing what will happen and making it happen. There is a real difference whether you acknowledge it or not.

Not on our scale, that is true. (But the gun shop’s owner is culpable because he knowingly provided the weapon which was used by the perpetrator).

But God’s knowledge is fundamentally different. When he creates a new human being, he already knows how that human will behave during his whole life, what choices he will make in every situation. He has the choice to create that human or not. If he creates that human, then he sets all the actions of that human in motion, so he is the final causative agent for all the actions of the human. It is not his “knowledge” that makes the human’s actions, it is his action of creation that makes the human’s action - while knowing what those actions will be.

Sorry, but you’re simply wrong about that. God lets men make their own choices. The history of God’s dealings with man is filled with examples of this. We are free agents. God doesn’t make us do anything. He does influence us–sometimes quite strongly, but he never makes anyone decide anything.

Not directly. But indirectly, yes - by creating that human.

It is like a starting a small, inconsequential avalanche. At the beginning there is no danger, it is the gravity and the viscosity of the snow that will create the destructive force. You could try to defend, that you only make a minor snowball, and it was not your knowledge that made it to grow out of proportion which then created the disaster. Yes, it was not your knowledge… it was your action which created the disaster. If you are just a small child, you could not have foreseen the events, and as such you would not be held culpable. God does not have that excuse.

He is just as culpable as the gun shop’s owner who did not “make” the perpetrator to do what he did, he “only” provided the wherewithal to the action.

 

[Della]

Not on our scale, that is true. (But the gun shop’s owner is culpable because he knowingly provided the weapon which was used by the perpetrator).

But God’s knowledge is fundamentally different. When he creates a new human being, he already knows how that human will behave during his whole life, what choices he will make in every situation. He has the choice to create that human or not. If he creates that human, then he sets all the actions of that human in motion, so he is the final causative agent for all the actions of the human. It is not his “knowledge” that makes the human’s actions, it is his action of creation that makes the human’s action - while knowing what those actions will be.

Not directly. But indirectly, yes - by creating that human.

It is like a starting a small, inconsequential avalanche. At the beginning there is no danger, it is the gravity and the viscosity of the snow that will create the destructive force. You could try to defend, that you only make a minor snowball, and it was not your knowledge that made it to grow out of proportion which then created the disaster. Yes, it was not your knowledge… it was your action which created the disaster. If you are just a small child, you could not have foreseen the events, and as such you would not be held culpable. God does not have that excuse.

He is just as culpable as the gun shop’s owner who did not “make” the perpetrator to do what he did, he “only” provided the wherewithal to the action.

No. You’re still conflating two very different things. I’m not going to endlessly debate with someone who simply won’t admit that he’s doing so. It’s a waste of both our time and energy. I can’t and won’t try to convince anyone who will not have it any other way than how he wants to see it. It’s impossible for me to do so. :tiphat:

 

[Bradski]

God knowing and willing are still two different things. The gun shop owner does not will anyone’s death even if he knows about it. He doesn’t make the buyer shoot anyone even if he knows it will happen.

I didn’t ask if you thought the owner willed something or not. I simply asked if you think he bears some responsibility for what happened. Would you agree that he did?

 

[davidv]

Not on our scale, that is true. (But the gun shop’s owner is culpable because he knowingly provided the weapon which was used by the perpetrator).

But God’s knowledge is fundamentally different. When he creates a new human being, he already knows how that human will behave during his whole life, what choices he will make in every situation. He has the choice to create that human or not. If he creates that human, then he sets all the actions of that human in motion, so he is the final causative agent for all the actions of the human. It is not his “knowledge” that makes the human’s actions, it is his action of creation that makes the human’s action - while knowing what those actions will be.

It seems to me that this assumes some linearity in God’s thinking and knowledge. Is this true? What is the rational basis of making that assumption?

Not directly. But indirectly, yes - by creating that human.

It is like a starting a small, inconsequential avalanche. At the beginning there is no danger, it is the gravity and the viscosity of the snow that will create the destructive force. You could try to defend, that you only make a minor snowball, and it was not your knowledge that made it to grow out of proportion which then created the disaster. Yes, it was not your knowledge… it was your action which created the disaster. If you are just a small child, you could not have foreseen the events, and as such you would not be held culpable. God does not have that excuse.

He is just as culpable as the gun shop’s owner who did not “make” the perpetrator to do what he did, he “only” provided the wherewithal to the action.

 

[oldcelt]

If there is a sign on God’s desk, it must say: “The buck stops here”. With full power and full knowledge comes full responsibility. There can be no excuse.

Yep…it is the only logical conclusion that can be reached.