4cb162a2
XPost: alt.christnet.christianlife, alt.religion.christian.baptist,
alt.religion.christian.biblestudy
From: shell-stamford@cox.net
"James R" wrote in message
news:c33a1009-49c2-4371-badb-1491caebee5e@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
snip
This reader has cut off the long post in the wrong place and I cannot
seem to find a way to stop it from doing so. I just the post has just
gotten too long for it.
Chuck:
James, if that's the case, you can always edit the length down as I just did
above, to allow room to focus in on a point of interest for you. The only
time someone snipping tends to get to me is when they snip what I have said,
only to then characterize it in an inaccurate way in their response, and
then proceed to argue against THEIR characterization of what I actually
said. That, to me, is intellectually dishonest. That is tilting at
windmills; erecting strawman arguments, whatever one cares to call it, and
it is a waste of everyone's time.
As long as you dont' do that, feel free to snip whatever you want with my
blessings!
James:
At any rate, I have enjoyed the discussion and I think we are mostly
in agreement on this, the disagreement , if any seems to be in our use
of terms.
Chuck:
I have also enjoyed our discussion to this point, and feel the same way:
that we are largely expressing the same truths using different
approaches...with the one caveat I mentioned last time, that your approach
gives us no way to justify God allowing so much evil to occur for so long,
without calling His omnipotence and omniscience into question. For if God
knows how to stop evil, and is powerful enough to do anything possible (and
it certainly seems that acting to preclude any evil is logically possible to
do for an omniscient Being!), then we have to have a way to justify God NOT
stopping evil, and I don't think your analysis, as far as I understand it
anyway, gives us a way to do that.
The Free Will Defence, once understood, gives us that way.
James:
I would simply make one more point.
When Jesus came, and was tempted by Satan, He was offered the worlds
by Satan for bowing down and worshiping Satan. Jesus never challenged
Satan's claim to ownership of this world. That is a fact that has not
come up in our discussion.
Chuck:
Well, actually it has been at least implied when you talked about God giving
man dominion over all the earth and I agreed with you on that point. That
dominion transferred to Satan in the Garden at the Fall, did it not? Isn't
that what Jesus is acknowledging by not disputing Satan's claim here?
James:
To be complete, I think this fact must be
part of it. If Satan is the god of this world, then this also
explains much of the evil in this world and also the facts regarding
God's "holding" back on intervention or methods of intervention.
Chuck:
While I agree with your conclusion, I'd like to see how you get there.
James:
If Satan owns the world, what is God's ability to intervene? I think
He did what was "legal" by sending prophets and used those that
believed to intervene, including Jesus of course who paid the price
for freedom for those who believe. That freedom to not be under
Satan's rule and authority to resist Satan and as Acts 10:38 says to
destroy his works. As Christians we are different from the rest of
humans in this way. Satan's ability to rule over us is broken and we
have authority in Christ over him. In this we see acts of authority
like casting out devils, healings, etc. The authority of the believer
is also an interesting discussion.
Chuck:
Yes, it most certainly is, but I would suggest we get there by some other
route than by questioning God having any number of ways open to Him to
intervene and eradicate the evil in the world. True, the world is under
Satan's dominion, because God gave dominion to man, and man transferred that
dominion to Satan when man put Satan in the position of "controller of my
life" (i.e., Adam made Satan his "God") by man's sin.
But does it follow that God must save man? Or that God couldn't just cease
to sustain Satan in being and everything that now belongs to Satan as well?
It would be perfectly just of God to simply eradicate all of creation; the
world, mankind, the universe, the angels, and start over...or not do
anything else except to be the eternal God God always was before He created
anything. We need to see that God was under no obligation to create, and is
under no obligation to sustain creation in being regardless of the moral
state of that creation. Creation can therefore never become "good" enough
to "oblige" God to sustain it in being, nor "evil" enough to "oblige" God to
cease sustaining it in being. Creation exists for one, and only one reason:
the good pleasure of selfless Love.
So we can't question God's ability to intervene in His creation simply on
the basis of Satan's present dominion over it. We can't conceptually limit
God's avenue of intervention to what God has done through His Son, Jesus
Christ, or the pouring out of His Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers,
for if we believe Revelation (not to mention Exodus!), there will come a
time when God intervenes in the world in a very different fashion, and even
here we cannot say that because this is what God does this is all God can
do, or the softer version of it, this is what God is "obliged" to do. We
want to be very, VERY careful in our thinking that we don't accidently begin
to use lines of thought that either directly or indirectly limit the actions
of an Absolute Being.
Anyway, it's fairly clear to me you're on the right track and we have no
serious differences in this area.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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