patman said:
Hilston, you have an interesting take on what I consider to be one of the S.V.'s bigger fall backs.
What Unsettled Theists call "fall backs" I call obvious conclusions.
patman said:
When I read the Word, I understand that it is describing events. Yes, it is sometimes poetic, but if it says God changed his mind, it must mean what it says.
That's because you're an Open Theist. Open Theists can't tell the difference between an obvious figure and a non-figurative statement. Looking at the Word through Open Theist lenses, and taking Open-View assumptions to their logical conclusions, God's word fails, prophecies fail, God is less than God and cannot be trusted.
patman said:
The only way to disagree with me is to do what you did, and say, "The action itself is not a figure, but the description of it is figurative." SO by saying that the Bible is so figurative that we can twist the words of it to fit our beliefs instead of letting it shape is, not the other way around.
Do you believe Jesus is a door made of wood and nails? Do you believe He is a rock, or a light or a loaf of bread? Why not? Because the idea of Christ as being a literal rock, or a light, or a loaf of bread doesn't make sense in light of what you already assume about God. Here, your conclusions about figurative language would be correct based on correct assumptions about God's nature and existence. However, when the Open Theist, whose
raison d'être is to bring God down and raise man up, reads that God changed His mind, they seize upon it as proof that God must be more human-like than God-like, using trial and error, not being sure of what the future will bring, handcuffed to the free will of His creatures, etc. ad nauseum.
What is the mission and purpose of the Open Theist? To secure for themselves freedom from God, total autonomy and final authority.
How does the Open Theist set about to accomplish this? The steps are as follow:
(1) Under the guise of "freeing" God from any association with evil, the Open Theist strips God of His essential and transcendent attributes, i.e. His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, impassibility and immutability;
(2) Under the guise of extolling God's hatred of evil, the Open Theist over-emphasizes and distorts God's imminent attributes, i.e. that He is living, loving, good, personal and relational;
(3) Under the guise of affirming justice, and all the while ignoring its true definition, the Open Theist makes man completely and totally autonomous by insisting that man's will must have libertarian freedom, otherwise God could not justly hold them accountable;
(4) Under the guise of affirming genuine love, and all the while ignoring its true definition, the Open Theist makes man the final authority by insisting that man must choose for himself whether or not God will save him.
What methods are used by the Open Theist to accomplish this?
(1) They sit in judgment of God by seizing upon apparent contradictions in the Bible, and explain them by declaring God's ignorance;
(2) They sit in judgment of God by seizing upon apparent contradictions in the Bible, and explain them by declaring God's lack of foresight;
(3) They sit in judgment of God by seizing upon finite and figurative descriptions of God as changing and emoting, and to explain them by declaring God's ignorance and lack of foresight.
These are the methods employed to one degree or another by every Open Theist I've encountered over the past eleven years. They takes a couple passages of scripture that seem to contradict, and eisegetically use them as prooftexts for his their theology. Do they bother to study them out to see what the verses really mean? No, there's no reason to. It says what it says. Nevermind that the concept of God actually changing his mind is contrary to the decretive will of God demonstrated from Genesis to Revelation. Instead the Open Theist jumps on the apparent contradiction and declares (by implication): See! See! Either God is less than God, or else the Bible contradicts itself. And since the latter cannot be true, the former must be. By insisting that God has actually, non-figuratively, changed His mind, you've made God less than God.
And such is the mission and purpose of Open Theism. If a passage seems to say that God is fickle, don't even consider that it might be a figure of speech intended to emphasize rich, poignant, and wonderfully important insights that the original audience would have readily understood. Use it instead to prove that God is fickle. If a passage seems to say that God is too dumb to see something coming (i.e. is surprised by something), don't even consider that it might be a figure of speech intended to emphasize rich, poignant, and wonderfully important insights that the original audience would have readily understood. Instead, use it to prove that God is a dimwit. If a passage seems to say that God is ignorant, don't even consider that it might be a figure of speech intended to emphasize rich, poignant, and wonderfully important insights that the original audience would have readily understood. Use it to prove that God is ignorant. And so on.
Here's the diffierence in approaches to such passages:
The Bible student who believes in the Infinitude of God sees these descriptions in the Bible and concludes, "God cannot be fickle, dimwitted or ignorant, therefore these must be figures of speech conveying something even more emphatic and important than would appear on the surface; I'd better study this out."
The Open (i.e. Unsettled) Theist sees these descriptions and jumps immediately to the conclusion that God is less than God, just as you've has done regarding alleged failed prophecies. Notice all the hoops that one must jump through to make sense of a passage that otherwise makes perfect sense according to the careful Bible student,
sans hoop-jumping.
The Open Theist will misquote the scripure to deny that God is the author of confusion and evil. The Open Theist attempts to use God's own word to tear Him down and baldly asks the Settled Theist: "Is God the author of confusion or not?" The answer is yes. God is the author of everything. God is infinite, unbounded, supreme. Nothing is greater than God; God is not subordinate to anything, not time, not man, not man's judgment, not man's will. Yet the Open Theist will readily and eagerly seize upon any verse they can twist to make God subordinate to all of these. And since God's attributes of being "good, personal, living, relational and loving" take priority over everything else, then He really can't
do anything, which is what has been demonstrated abundantly in this forum for more than a decade. It is abundantly evident in the inability of any Open Theist to tell me one thing that God actually, actively is doing in their lives on a daily basis. What is God actively doing in your life right this moment, patman? The Open Theist has no answer.
What are the results of Open Theist theology?
(1) God is reduced to an incidental being who does not really, actually, actively DO anything;
(2) Man is exalted to a level of total autonomy and final authority on all matters related his own life and eternal state.
What is the Open Theist's raison d'etre? And as I stated at the beginning, the answer is: To secure for themselves freedom from God, total autonomy and final authority. And this should sound familiar, because the sin of seeking autonomous authority is the sin of Adam, and is (almost) as old as time itself.
What is the conclusion concerning Open Theism?
Open Theists have succeeded in created a God in their own image and have thereby committed the sin of Adam. They have sought to independently, on their own will, on their own judgment, authority and autonomy, to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, to acquire autonomous knowledge and judgment apart from God. Such a specious theology is powerful and compelling to the uninitiated, and directly appeals to the innate rebellion and sinful nature of man. This is the Broad Road, bidding welcome to the basest level of humanistic theology. Open Theism, taken to its logical conclusion, impugns and denigrates God, thereby pulling Him down. Open Theism exalts man's freedom and autonomy
from God, thereby giving man the final authority of all matters concerning his own life and eternal state. Open Theism is nothing new. It started in the Garden of Eden, and has existed in one form or another ever since. Its goal is to question, judge and reduce God to something acceptable to sinful humanity. Its goal is to make God less than God and to make man more than man. It is humanism with a Luciferian impetus. With man as the final authority, God has become incidental, untrustworthy — the Sand God.
Job 40:8 Wilt thou also disannul My judgment? wilt thou condemn Me, that thou mayest be righteous?
patman said:
And this is what you do. You take what was written and rewrite it in your own mind to mean what you think it should. Your re-writeing of the verses about God changing his mind into "God changed His actions ..." is evident of this fact.
No, you misunderstand. I do not rewrite the verses. They stand the way they are written. But just as Jesus is not a wooden door made of nails, neither is God fickle or uncertain. So in the former case, the astute reader recognizes the obvious figure of speech. In the latter case, the astute reader recognizes an obvious figure of speech. Only those whose goal is to denigrate God's essential attributes will assume that God is like man, and that a repentance verse means God actually changed His mind. Why do you trust this God, patman? He might change His mind about your salvation. He might change His mind about things He has promised in His word. You have no guarantees. You have a Sand God.
patman said:
Hilston, your claims are very dangerous. They empower mere-mortals to take scripture and re-write it to fit their own agenda.
On the contrary, patman, a logically consistent and normative hermeneutic protects mere mortals from taking scripture and rewriting it to fit their agenda. What you claim as "very dangerous" is
exactly what Open Theists do by re-labeling an obvious figure to be non-figurative.
patman said:
Sure, call it all figurative, you can make it mean ANYTHING.
Really? Let's see it then. Show me how using figurative language can make a verse mean "anything."
patman said:
You do not intend for this, but it is what you are doing even in your own understandings, and it holds others and yourself back.
Don't just assert, patman. Prove it.
patman said:
Here is why you should know you are mistaken about the figurative-answer in this particular instance.
1. God tells Israel he will without fail drive out the other nations from Israel.
2. Israel sins.
3. God tells Israel he will let the other nations stay forever.
4. 3000 years later those nations are effectively gone.
God made a decision to help Israel, and said he would do it with out fail. Wouldn't he be able to see into the future and know he would fail too drive them out as he said? Then he says he would never drive them out. And the same logic applies. They are gone today. Didn't God foresee this? Why then did he say otherwise? Are his words false?
On my view, God's words are not false and if they have not been fulfilled, they will be according to God's predetermined time-table. On the Open View, however, this is just another prooftext for God to be untrustworthy, rash and impulsive in His declarations, uncertain and unsettled about the future, ignorant and open to error. If I see a passage that seems to tear God down because of failed prophecy, my conclusion is that I'm missing something and that I have to study it out. And in every case I've been challenged with thus far, I was better off for not jumping to irrational Open-View conclusions. The Open Theist, however, doesn't bother studying it out, because "it says what it says," missing the fact that how something reads can be significantly different from what something says ("I am the Door").
patman said:
If you believe he has absolute foreknowledge, yes, they contradict.
Excuse me, patman, but they contradict according to YOUR view; not mine. And I'm the one who believes in absolute foreknowledge. You need to better understand what you're dealing with before you launch into these misguided criticisms.
patman said:
Instead his words reflect his actions at the time they were said. God didn't figuratively preform an action at all. God simply spoke his plans.
His plans included a change of action, patman.
patman said:
NOTE: The reason why God changed his mind to change his actions about his promise have little to do to answer the question, 'why did God say this would happen when he knew without doubt it wouldn't?'
Either one of two answers is true: (a) You don't understand the passage, or (b) God is less than God. The Open Theist chooses (b) for all the reasons I've outlined above.
Nice try,
Jim
