The Unchangeableness of God and the Will of God

[Kermos]

I understand all of that and have always understood it and nothing I have ever posted should ever be construed to say otherwise. The problem is it is 1) misrepresentative, and 2) incomplete.

The reason it is misrepresentative is because NOWHERE in all of Christian thought has the term "free will" EVER mean autonomous or completely absent of all control and/or influence AND/OR free of any and all limits. People who say free will means the complete absence of all control, influence, and limits are arguing a straw man. You've been concerned with the laws of non-contradiction and fallacy of false dichotomy (neglected middle) but ignored the problems of red herring and straw man.

The reason the position you've taken is incomplete is because it assumes one condition in all arenas. It assumes all "Laws" are equally applicable in all circumstances when that may not be the case. It certainly has not been proven in this op! Now, as far as I can tell from your posts, we appear to agree, at least implicitly because we agree a person can choose his favor pizza toppings but cannot choose salvation unaided. Two different arenas (pizza, salvation) with two different sets of limits - one less deterministic and with greater liberty than the other.

Here, Josheb, you take exception to what you call "1) misrepresentative, and 2) incomplete" about another author named @Rufus' writings in respect to your writings.

Which brings me to a third point. The debate of free will specifically applies to salvation. It is a soteriological debate. Normally people understand that but synergists are often abusing monergism with straw men but applying non-soteriological volitional agency to Calvinism. All of that is out of place in this thread because this thread is NOT about human will, human volitional agency, human choices - soteriological or otherwise. This thread is about the will of God, not the will of man. This op is the third op in a series by this author that denies the uncontrolled always-at-liberty will of God.

It's not about human volition.

This is not the Arm v Cal soteriology board.



According to your post history, you dropped in Monday, added a few thoughts in this thread, a few thoughts previously in the thread on Daniel 9. Otherwise, nothing in any of @Kermos' three ops. You've come late to the party . This op was posted because of conflict arising in the previous two threads. If you read through this thread, you'll see it is very difficult to get a direct, immediate, unqualified answer to the simply, valid, very op-relevant question, "Does God have a will? Does God possess volitional agency of any kind to any degree?" Why would anyone not answer that question with an immediate unqualified, "YES!"? So, (I hope) you see this thread is not about what you've been posting.

Here, Josheb, you execute your "1) misrepresentative, and 2) incomplete" written thoughts about another author when you wrote "This op is the third op in a series by this author that denies the uncontrolled always-at-liberty will of God". Josheb, your behavior is hypocritical because you DO NOT "Treat others the same way you want them to treat you" (Lord Jesus Christ, Luke 6:31).

Here is the evidence which proves your hypocrisy. See the following for that which Lord Jesus had me write to you previously about your questions:

How about we start with something simple, basic, and fundamental.

Does God have a will? Does God possess volitional agency of any kind to any degree?

Your first question is answered in paragraph 20 where 1 Peter 2:15 is cited in the original post.

Your second question is answered in paragraphs 27 and 28 where John 15:16, John 15:19, and Mark 13:37 are quoted in the original post.

You mentioned "simple, basic, and fundamental" in regard to matters covered in the original post, so it appears to me that the matters covered in the original post exceed your "simple, basic, and fundamental" comprehension.

Did you notice, your post is devoid of Scripture?

And here we have the Truth (John 14:6), the love of Christ controls us believers (2 Corinthians 5:14), His vessels of mercy (Romans 9:21-23)!

I, personally, will cut you some slack because you've come late to the party. Our fellow forum member @Kermos has asserted some very unusual views and argued them with equally unusual methodology (it cannot correctly be called "logic") despite the protests to the contrary, and it does not appear there is any willingness to learn from respondents or amend the ops in any way. The "case" or "argument" (using that term in its broadest sense) begins with the premise God is attached to Himself and therefore God has a will but it is not free because anything attached cannot possibly be free. @Kermos can correct me if I have erred in presenting his position but any objective reading of all three threads shows him making these claims. The first op asserts Adam lacked a free will - a will lacking any and all volitional agency -

You misrepresented that which God caused me to compose when you wrote "The first op asserts Adam lacked a free will - a will lacking any and all volitional agency" because I never conveyed that Adam's will lacked any and all volitional agency. I have written that Adam had a will.

Your quote there exposes that you illegally equate "free-will" and "will" when you wrote "a free will - a will".

You use the unbiblical term "free will" while you erroneously call it Christian.

The Bondage Of A Man's Will​

Free-willians, in a respect, are correct that "there's no difference between self will and free will", and that respect is that both self will and free will lead to hell.

Now, instead of listening to themselves lie with things like "Free will is all through the scriptures", they need to listen to Apostolic testimony as shown below.

Peter the Apostle wrote that prior to being saved, people have a self will that brings such people under damnation with the devil according to the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 2:9-10).

Paul the Apostle wrote that after being saved, people have a will that is bound under the loving control of God according to the Apostle Paul (Philippians 2:13).

Here's Paul from the Bible, again. Overall, Paul uses free will as illusory instead of concrete in Philemon 1:14 - and this is the only occurrence of "free will" that I am aware of in the New American Standard Bible New Testament.

Free-willians do not have a free will, as described by Paul.

Free-willians do have a self will, as described by Peter.

Free-willians gleefully separate themselves from God's will and the Christ of us Christians Who says "you did not choose Me, but I chose you" (John 15:16) and "I chose you out of the world" (John 15:19). We Christians in God's Spirit have a will bound enthusiastically in joy and love to God by God for God through God, as described by the Word of God.

The above mentioned Apostolic testimony verbatim:

• "the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority; daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties" (2 Peter 2:9-10).
• "it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).
• "but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but of your own free will" (Philemon 1:14).

God saves us children of God from the wrath of God by God's grace for God's glory! Praise be to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

continued to post #62

 

[Kermos]

continued from post #61

despite being made in God's image, because Adam was sinful. He was subjected to futility because of his disobedience.

You misrepresented that which God caused me to compose when you wrote "despite being made in God's image, because Adam was sinful". I conveyed Adam was evil prior to eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6), and that Adam was sinful after he disobeyed God's command. God caused me to examine the meaning of Adam being created in the image and likeness of God in the Was Adam imparted free will from the beginning of Creation? thread original post.

Various post-disobedient verses have been erroneously, eisegetically, irrationally, fallaciously applied to the pre-disobedient Adam. Verses pertaining to something that happened long after the beginning have been applied to the Adam "from the beginning of creation."

You misrepresented that which God caused me to compose when you wrote that it was "erroneously, eisegetically, irrationally, fallaciously applied to the pre-disobedient Adam" when I conveyed that the Apostle Paul includes the time before Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6) in the following because Paul established the timeframe endpoints with "the whole creation" and "until now" (Romans 8:22) for the exclusion of Adam's willpower being involved with Adam eating of the tree forbidden as food as per Paul's writing pf "the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly" (Romans 8:20); therefore, "from the beginning of creation" is the Truth (John 14:6) despite your preaching to the contrary.

That is the history and context for "free will" in this thread. It has nothing to do with salvific free will.

There are FOUR (4, like your account number) instances of you, Josheb, you hypocritically proclaiming "1) misrepresentative, and 2) incomplete" thoughts about another author.

As a reminder, Josheb, in your opening paragraph you took exception to what you call "1) misrepresentative, and 2) incomplete" about another author named @Rufus' writings in respect to your writings.

"Free-will" for God is completely absent from all of Scripture, so free-willian philosophy is non-Christian.

"Free-will" for man is completely absent from all of Scripture, so free-willian philosophy is non-Christian.

And here we have the Truth (John 14:6), the love of Christ controls us believers (2 Corinthians 5:14), His vessels of mercy (Romans 9:21-23)!

 

[Josheb]

Here, Josheb,

You had your chance many weeks and many posts ago, and you are still using verses about post-disobedient conditions and verses about sinful humans to define God's will and God volitional agency. Posts 61 and 62 repeat and rehash things already posted and already addressed. The question whether or not God has a will at still hasn't received a straightforward direct unqualified "Yes," or "No," answer without obfuscating commentary, and you're still posting adversarially.

I'm not interested.



Does God have a will? Yes, or no?

 

[Kermos]

@Rufus,

Let me see if I cannot establish some common ground for/between the two of us.

• God has a will.
• God's will is not under the control of anyone other than God Himself and He and He alone, is able to do whatever He so desires (given any limits inherent in HIs character). God has a will, God has a will that is free, and God alone has a will that is free.
• Humans were created with a will. They were created to be volitional creatures with volitional agency; the ability to make real choices.
• Human volition is not free, it is not without control or influence AND humans are not able to choose anything always as they desire. There are, instead a myriad of controls AND limits on human volition, some of them divine (God can always over-rule man any time He chooses) and some of them temporal (time and space are temporal limits with deterministic controls).
• The biggest control AND the biggest limiter on human will is sin. God permits man to do many things sin does not permit. Sin is so egregious in its control over the human will it has made humanity dead and enslaved. Sinful man is not free and does not possess anywhere near the level of volitional agency sinless man possesses.
• Prior to Genesis 3:6 Adam, and by inference the rest of humanity, was sinless. Genesis 1:31 declares Adam good and Romans 5 describes how he was also sinless prior to his act of disobedience. Adam was good AND sinless prior to Genesis 3:6-7.
• AFTER Genesis 3:6-7 Adam's condition changed and with Adam all of humanity AND the world in which we live changed. We went from being good and sinless with a will unfettered by sin to being not-good and sinful with a will now fettered by sin and all the sinful conditions existing in the world because of one man's disobedience.
• The effects of sin have not eradicated the will. Human will still exists.
• The effects of sin have limited the agency of the human will.
• The chief limitation is that sinful man cannot choose God salvifically anymore. This is what we now call "Total Depravity," and it is not an Arm v Cal position because Arminius agreed: man in his sinful state is incapable of doing anything that might please God salvifically. Man cannot in his own power do any salvific good unaided by God.
• Other controls and their limitations are the linear nature of time and space for humans. Our intellectual faculties do not permit us to know or wholly understand ALL of the predicate influences coming to bear on any given moment of choice. Neither can we understand all the possible consequence on all the possible others any one single choice might have on others throughout the time line. We are completely ignorant of all those controls and others not stated.
• Despite the above, the classic monergist position (as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith) is that God ordained all things from eternity without doing violence to the human will AND without doing violence to the contingencies of secondary causes. In other words, even monergists implicitly affirm the existence of the human will the existence of secondary causes, and the existence of contingencies. It does not matter whether you agree; I am simply stating doctrine affirming both volitional agency and controls and limits so that no one mistakenly thinks the term "free will" literally means free. It does not and never has.
• Even Pelagians in their misguided heretical views believe human volition exists and exists in a compromised stated once a person has sinned.
• Not only does God have a will not controlled by others that is able to work and will as He desires, the position He lacks either is both a normative and statistical outlying position NOT representative of orthodox, historical Christianity as a whole.
• Because of sin, Man is in need of salvation from that condition of sin and the commensurate wrath of God but no matter how strongly, how frequently or how enduringly man wills otherwise, he cannot save Himself from sin.
• God, because He has a will, and a will that is free, has freely chosen to save some.

I assume that at least some of that received a hearty "Amen!"

Most of it has nothing to do with this op. This op is about the unchangeableness of God and His will, not humanity's. This op claims God's will is not free. This op states there are only two options, either a man's will is controlled by God, or a man's will is controlled by the man. The op says nothing about the human will controlled by sin. Logically speaking, the op has implicitly argued when a man's will is controlled by God it is a human will controlled by a God who Himself does not have free will and cannot do as He pleases. The last sentence of this op claims every person has a will that is either self-willed or a will in Christ, and in ALL CAPS the op states,

NO SCRIPTURE STATES THAT GOD HAS A FREE-WILL. NO SCRIPTURE STATES THAT MAN HAS A FREE-WILL.

No scripture states The Creator exists external to creation but that is, nonetheless, the undeniable, inescapable, logically necessary conclusion to "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." So we find the op contains a lot of flaws, including but not limited to arguments from silence, begged questions, false causes, false equivalence, false dichotomies/neglected middles, straw men and red herring (no one actually believes free will is completely absent any and all control or limits). The dissent has been uniform (no one agrees with any of the three ops), although different respondents have approached it in different ways. The ensuing defense has added to the problem of faulty reasoning by adding ad hominem, loaded questions, shifting onus, and appeals to purity (no true Scotsman). I tell you this for three reasons: 1) if you're going to engage the op expect more of the same, 2) you seem to have some knowledge of logic and I appreciate that, and 3) I share that knowledge and appreciation.

Read all three opening posts. Reading all three threads in their entirety isn't necessary for the sake of this op (even though this op is predicated on the first two and one he did not author). The opening ops speak for themselves.

The Holy Scripture is inspired, inerrant, and infallible!

If you believed that the Holy Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16-17), then you would cease adding free-will into Holy Scripture because you would be terrorized with fear about the sin of practicing the lawlessness of adding free will into the Word of God where free-will does not exist (Matthew 7:21-23). The Word of God is Life (John 6:63, John 24:6). Praise be to Lord Jesus!

While the Bible is inerrant, you wrote "No scripture states The Creator exists external to creation", yet the Lord God Almighty states:

I am YHWH, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God
(Isaiah 45:5)
​

And, the Word of God declares:

Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me
(Isaiah 43:10)
​

Therefore you are in error with "No scripture states The Creator exists external to creation", and your error leads your errant thinking that you can add free will into the Holy Scripture where it does not exist.

Since the Bible is infallible, then your self-willed, fallible man additions of free-will into the Holy Scripture results in a great fall (see the word fall inside of the word fallible) because it is written:

do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar
(Proverbs 30:6)
​

And, of the new Jerusalem, the Apostle John wrote:

nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life
(Revelation 21:27)
​

Notice that no one who practices lying gets in, and a human fallably adding to Holy Scripture is the human lying.

NO HOLY SCRIPTURE STATES THAT GOD HAS A FREE-WILL.

NO HOLY SCRIPTURE STATES THAT MAN HAS A FREE-WILL.

I know that the original post is comprehensible because fastfredy0 expressed a clear conclusion of the original post quite readily, but you cast misrepresentation against the original post (see this proof post) again and again, and you insist upon unnecessarily repeating your questions which are answered in the very original post that you misrepresent.

And here we have the Truth (John 14:6), the love of Christ controls us believers (2 Corinthians 5:14), His vessels of mercy (Romans 9:21-23)!

 

[Josheb]

NO HOLY SCRIPTURE STATES THAT GOD HAS A FREE-WILL.

No scripture states God does not have free will.

Every single op is argued from a fallacy = the fallacy of argumentum ex silentio. All three of them. All three of them are rife with other mistakes in reasoning and exegesis as well but the protest, "No Scriptures states X !" particularly nonsensical. Scripture does not state God existed prior to creation but that is necessarily the logical conclusion of His having created creation. Arguing God has 42 heads, three arms, four tails, and wears a robe of magenta and lime green slime from the mucus of a Lower Gerzakian winged turtle because that is nowhere stated in scripture is nonsense.

Arguments from silence are always and everywhere fallacious.

"the argument from silence is a fallacy of weak induction that treats the absence of evidence as evidence itself."​

The protest "No Scripture! No Scripture! No Scripture!" can be repeated ad nauseam but the protest does not make the position argued valid, veracious, true, or correct.




I tried to start with the most basic concepts (does God have a will? Is God self-existent? Define "free." What controls God?) and walk through the scriptures one premise at a time only to be attacked and reported again and again.

NO HOLY SCRIPTURE STATES THAT GOD HAS A FREE-WILL.

Psalm 115 states otherwise.

Psalm 115:3
But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.

So does Psalm 135

Psalm 135:6
Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the ocean depths.

In fact, there are a bunch of scriptures reporting God's ability to do whatever He pleases.

Job 42:2
I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.

Daniel 4:35
“All the inhabitants of the earth are of no account, but He does according to His will among the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can fend off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’

Romans 9:18, 20
So then, He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires............ On the contrary, who are you, you foolish person, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?

Ephesians 1:10-11
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will....

He cannot do whatever he pleases/desires/wills/chooses if not free to do so.

NO HOLY SCRIPTURE STATES THAT GOD HAS A FREE-WILL.

That is demonstrably incorrect.

• God has a will.
• God's will and His will alone is unfettered, not under the control of anyone or anything else.
• God thinks, feels, wills, and does whatever He desires and nothing or anyone can make Him do otherwise.

All three ops are built on mistaken content and poorly reasoned (content and method).