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John Conger | PentecostalTheology.com
Question: In Arminianism how do you reconcile Gods absolute foreknowledge with the suffering? If God knew the fall of man was coming and billions would be tormented for eternity in hell why would he create man?
Ricky Grimsley [12/26/2015 10:43 PM]
Good thing i am an open-theist.
Michael Green [12/26/2015 11:37 PM]
He created man with will to see what choice he would make. Man pushes God away. God doesn’t push man away. Man creates his own torment God just knew it would happen.
John Conger [12/26/2015 11:52 PM]
I know the belief, my question is how can you believe he is a loving God if he created man knowing most would suffer damnation?
William Lance Huget [12/26/2015 11:56 PM]
This is a problem for most views and even atheists bring it up. Open Theism is a more biblical, coherent free will theism and resolves the issue. The possibility of the Fall does not mean it was necessary, intended, caused, desired, probable.
Calvinistic decretalism/determinism is the most problematic. Arminian simple foreknowledge based on eternal now is also based on wrong assumptions leading to wrong conclusions.
Michael Green [12/27/2015 12:00 AM]
No man has to suffer damnation it is a choice. When Adam bit the apple it gave us the knowledge of good and evil. God himself wishes that all would come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and not evil. Unfortunately some are very stubborn and refuse to believe. Read Genesis God said He was sorry He even created man that’s why He sent His Son to reconcile us back to Him. When Adam bit the apple we were all condemned but God made a way for us to escape through His Son Jesus Christ.
John Conger [12/27/2015 12:02 AM]
But you believe God knew most would not choose life prior to creating man correct?
William Lance Huget [12/27/2015 12:02 AM]
Exhaustive definite foreknowledge is not logically possible, even for an omniscient being, if libertarian free will exists (contingencies).
Michael Green [12/27/2015 12:04 AM]
He is a very very loving God its man who consistently disappoints Him. Read the Old Testament how God’said chosen people repeatedly worshipped idols and we’re sexual immoral. God was and still is patient with them for many centuries.
John Conger [12/27/2015 12:05 AM]
I’m not sure you’re understanding my question.
Michael Green [12/27/2015 12:06 AM]
No if he was disappointed I believe even He did not expect the outcome
John Conger [12/27/2015 12:09 AM]
Ok thank you for the honesty. I also agree with everything else you’ve said fyi. I believe he knew it was a possibility but limits his own foreknowledge
Michael Green [12/27/2015 12:10 AM]
Yw
William Lance Huget [12/27/2015 12:10 AM]
How does God limit His FK?
John Conger [12/27/2015 12:13 AM]
I believe he could have exhaustive foreknowledge iif he wanted. But obviously he would not be able to experience the relationship with man of that were the case. And obviously he had the ability to since only the father knows the time of his coming. Jesus obviously limited his own fore knowledge
William Lance Huget [12/27/2015 12:15 AM]
Are you Open Theist?
John Conger [12/27/2015 12:15 AM]
Pretty much
David Smith [12/27/2015 12:30 AM]
This entire discussion presupposes that somehow God is limited to human understanding, emotion, etc… One of the basic theological tenants of theology is that God is omniscient.
Michael Green [12/27/2015 12:34 AM]
Yeah but open theist? Arminianism? Aren’t we all the body of Christ?
William Lance Huget [12/27/2015 12:35 AM]
John Conger Most Open Theists would affirm that God knows all that is knowable and is ignorant of nothing. An omniscient being cannot choose to not know the knowable. If the future was exhaustively knowable in this type of actualized creation, He would know it. The reason He does not have EDF is because it is logically impossible in light of LFW (non-determinism), just as omnipotence is limited to the doable (He cannot make square circles or married bachelors).
So, to have love, relationship, free will, image of God, etc., moral agents logically limit His FK because they are significant others with a say so. Endless time vs eternal now is also an issue in that the future is fundamentally different than the fixed past or actual present. Jesus was limited on earth as a man, but not in pre-existence and post-resurrection. The reason He did not know at that time, was the Father had not fixed the date of the Second Coming. When the Father knows, the Son will know.
David Smith [12/27/2015 12:37 AM]
reformed?
Michael Green [12/27/2015 12:40 AM]
Wow deep don’t really understand what you said but i think its good.
John Kissinger [12/27/2015 4:40 AM]
IS OPEN THEISM HERETICAL? http://www.pentecostaltheology.com/is-open-theism-heretical/
Ricky Grimsley [12/27/2015 6:02 AM]
Open theism isnt heresy. There is plenty of evidence for it. William Lance Huget is doing a great job of explaining it. Jesus was an open theist. He knows the father pretty well right? Matthew 26:39 KJVS
[39] And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt .
John Kissinger [12/27/2015 6:08 AM]
Roger E. Olson has done a great job explaining: Is Open Theism a Type of Arminianism? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/11/is-open-theism-a-type-of-arminianism/
Ricky Grimsley [12/27/2015 6:24 AM]
I don’t consider myself any type of armenien.
Varnel Watson
Now this is a good oen Walter Polasik Wayne Scott Stan Wayne
Wayne Scott
From the most famous Arminian in history:
John Wesley, 1703-1791: “I believe the merciful God regards the lives and tempers of men more than their ideas. I believe he respects the goodness of the heart rather than the clearness of the head; and that if the heart of a man be filled (by the grace of God, and the power of his Spirit) with the humble, gentle, patient love of God and man, God will not cast him into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels because his ideas are not clear, or because his conceptions are confused. Without holiness, I own, “no man shall see the Lord;” but I dare not add, “or clear ideas.” (Wesley On Living Without God, 15.)
Wayne Scott
And from a couple of others:
C.S. Lewis, Apologist, 1898-1963: “…But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other [unreached] people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.” (Lewis, Mere Christianity)
Billy Graham, Evangelist, 1918- “I think that everybody that loves Christ knows Christ, whether they’re conscious of it or not, they’re members of the body of Christ… Whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts they need something that they don’t have and they turn to the only light they have and I think they’re saved and they’re going to be with us in heaven.”(Billy Graham, Interview with Robert Schuller)
Stan Wayne
This is a mystery that is tackled very subtly in these passages:
Catholics (Jesuits) call the concept “the anonymous Christian”
“The true light was coming into the world. This is the true light that gives light to all people.”
John 1:9 ERV
“They show that in their hearts they know what is right and wrong, the same as the law commands, and their consciences agree. Sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done wrong, and this makes them guilty. And sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done right, and this makes them not guilty. All this will happen on the day when God will judge people’s secret thoughts through Jesus Christ. This is part of the Good News that I tell everyone.”
Romans 2:15-16 ERV
Wayne Scott
Agreed. But people who are blinded by their idea that God condemns people for not knowing or doing that He has not revealed to them or commanded them to do cannot see this.
Walter Polasik
I move that the Graham quote be stricken from the record. That man was such a compromiser that he lost sight of what the true Gospel is (as can be seen from his quote). Yes, Muslims acknowledge “Isa” (Jesus) but not as Savior and not as Son of God or God. There is the difference I cite Jesus’ own words at John 8:58. They hold true for the Muslims just as John 3:3 and 19 does. Graham was loved by the world and fawned over by the great men and paparazzi. What did Jesus say, “Woe to you when men speak well of you.” Graham openly said he agreed with Mother Theresa and the Pope. And don’t get me started on Robert Schuller and his “possibility thinking”. You only need to add Norman Vincent Peale and his “positive thinking” to complete that triangle.
Varnel Watson
could not see the Graham quote – werent he said to be a mason or something?
Walter Polasik
Troy Day Haven’t heard that, …but it wouldn’t surprise me. Peale was.
Varnel Watson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-cD-1HhZFc
Walter Polasik
I’m not sure that’s “iron clad proof”. But, it doesn’t surprise me that Graham is hob-knobing with the Who’s Who of the world. Many more than just him like to be in the big spotlights. And as to his alleged Freemasonry? Again, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Stan Wayne
The issue that is a mystery is not whether there is none other name whereby we must be saved but whether belief in that name can exist prior to knowing its pronunciation
Verses like “I have much people in this city” before paul arrives or the issue of the wise men or OT believers prompts this.
Walter Polasik
Stan Wayne This is not too difficult a matter to understand. Before the name “Jesus” (Gk. Ieusous, Heb. “Yeho-shua” or Joshua) was known as a saving name (note, there were OTHER “Jesuses” in the Semitic world at that time Matt. 1:21; Col. 4:11) the name of Yahweh sufficed to draw people to salvation. “Jesus”, after all, means “Jehovah saves”. God has ALWAYS had a people for His name in every place. He says as much in the Old Testament. After all, it’s God who searches the hearts and minds. (Ps. 7:9; I Thess. 2:4). Israel is called “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). And remember that God sent out a “diaspora” of believers all over the place early on in the Church’s history. Also, there were those who worshipped the True God long before He revealed His name to Moses. (Ex. 6:3; compare Gen. 4:26).