RC Sproul on the Doctrine of God

[makesends]

Interesting.

I was replying to https://christcentered.community.fo...n-the-doctrine-of-god.2586/page-4#post-113738

Not certain why it did not reply to @Eternally-Grateful post.

Any way to incorporate it to that post?

'Edit' your post> go to his post> select and click on the 'quote' popup> go back down to your post edit, place your cursor where you want to insert the quote and click on the "Insert Quotes" button? --I don't know. That's what I would do.

 

[ElectedbyHim]

'Edit' your post> go to his post> select and click on the 'quote' popup> go back down to your post edit, place your cursor where you want to insert the quote and click on the "Insert Quotes" button? --I don't know. That's what I would do.

Fixed.

Thank you.

 

[Eternally-Grateful]

You equate God causing all things, logically necessarily implying that we have no freedom to choose. Depending on what you mean by 'freedom' in that phrase, that is faulty logic.

Then explain it to me/ Because o lot of people have tried. No one has succeeded.

The mindset that puts us into God's economy of operation/existence, or God into ours, is, (yes), going to produce the conclusion that we are Robots, given the assumption that God caused all things. But that is a faulty mindset. --God is not like us, literally not. He is that much above us --infinitely above us-- he is of a different order, or kind, of thing from us, that for him to cause every most miniscule fact of this temporal universe, or even the arena of angels before this temporal universe, does not imply that he too answers to natural fact.

He created us in his image

He created us to love us

There is reasons he used terms we understand about himself. Because we are created in his image.

Even those Calvinists/Reformed who believe (ask @Josheb for a couple of post numbers) in some necessary semblance of 'semi-independence' of the human, do everything they can to deny that God is like us, or that he operates from anything (any place) our point-of-view can posit. (Take a look at "God's Attribute of Aseity". He is subject to nothing except himself.)

Which means GOD choses what he will do. And what he will nto do Not us.

Agree?

BTW, God's anger is not like ours. It is infinite, unlike ours, and it does not rule him though he says "it carries him", unlike how it our passions can run out of control. It is not hard for me to say that God's justice is brought against those who defy/rebel, because he is the one who invented and brought into existence and completed that very fact. It is, all of it, a result of God being the first cause. There is no logical escape from his being first cause.

Oh I agree.

It’s a righteous anger. When he is mad, He has every right to be mad. Unlike us.. which can have unrighteous anger.

So when Gods wrath is poured out on this earth, its a righteous anger

However. How is it righteous if God de read everything if no one has a choice in the matter.

I keep hearing we do have a choice.. But then when it gets down to it. We do not have a choice.

See how confusing it is?

 

[Eternally-Grateful]

Might be worth starting a thread (though it has been done before) on assumptions of the synergist's philosophy/mind/mindset, such as that the command implies the ability to obey, and that God being just implies that he would not punish creatures for doing what he planned all along that they would do, and inviting @Eternally-Grateful to it.

I have too much to do at present to gather a list.

I think he tried that already. I passed

I do not believe man saved himself. Nor do I agree that a person who thinks he is saved by grace through faith is a syllogist.

Aerial mocked me because I said I was one way then another way. So I chose to no longer discuss this wiht him.

using Ariel’s defenition of syllogism, I can see his confusion.

But I am not confused.

 

[makesends]

Then explain it to me/ Because o lot of people have tried. No one has succeeded.

He created us in his image

He created us to love us

There is reasons he used terms we understand about himself. Because we are created in his image.

Which means GOD choses what he will do. And what he will nto do Not us.

Agree?

Oh I agree.

It’s a righteous anger. When he is mad, He has every right to be mad. Unlike us.. which can have unrighteous anger.

So when Gods wrath is poured out on this earth, its a righteous anger

However. How is it righteous if God de read everything if no one has a choice in the matter.

I keep hearing we do have a choice.. But then when it gets down to it. We do not have a choice.

See how confusing it is?

If you must look at it backwards, assume as a given, the fact that we do choose.

Given also, the fact that God is first cause, which logically implies that there is no fact outside of his causation.

Then our choosing, and our choices are caused, whether directly or indirectly, by God's causation.

Given further, that first cause is with intent, i.e. God, and omniscient God at that, then all that he caused he intended to happen. It is not by mistake that Adam and Eve, and the rest of mankind (except Jesus Christ) have fallen into sin.

But if you still must insist that our choices are robotic if God determines (or 'establishes' them, as the WCF puts it), then go with your construction, but please find a reasonable logic that shows that God's causation provides, perhaps, an 'envelope' of fact within which our little notions of possibility and unknowable chance prevail over outcomes. That is, to me, anyway, a huge logical error to arrange that, even if put into an envelope, but it is monstrous to consider something coming to pass outside of God's causation. That is simple denial of his Omnipotence.