praise_yeshua
Active Member
Who said anything about "pre-programmed". None of us believe God received love external to His own Innate quality of Character.
BAD arguments against Calvinism that need to STOP!
- Thread starter Diserner
- Start date
Who said anything about "pre-programmed". None of us believe God received love external to His own Innate quality of Character.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
Not really. The Greek root deals with completeness.
If love does not control us, we will be out of control.
Diserner
Active Member
Exactly.
So God was not "pre-programmed" by his nature, he freely chose his own dispositions and character.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
Even hypotheticals must be constructed properly or they don't have any meaning. If you're trying to reason your way through this, then you need a proper framework of understanding to build a proper "hypothetical".
Diserner
Active Member
Sounds like some chicken soup for the soul nonsense, I'm not interested.
We are not manipulated like robots.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
The immutable nature of His Character says otherwise.
This "paradox" doesn't make sense to you because of how you view love. Love is first and foremost, pure and requires freedom to the contrary to be pure.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
I never said anything about robots. I'm not eliminating freedom in what I say. However, you're ignoring the necessity that the pureness of love demands.
1Co 9:16 For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!
1Co 9:17 For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.
1Co 9:18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
1Co 9:19 For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
TibiasDad
Active Member
God is love, and all that he does and allows is consistent with his being love. He cannot deny himself.
Doug
civic
Active Member
Amen
praise_yeshua
Active Member
I believe most people just don't understand what a meaningful and mature relationship means when you speak of "loving" one another. God chose the "husband/wife" relationship in creation to show forth the very nature of love that mankind "needs".
God is love. However, we can't truly love in relationship until we've actually been loved. People go throughout their lives and never really understand this. I've come to realize what love is in my relationship to God. We must be taught to love through experience and often through our own failures. Our love must be contrasted against 'God's love'.
Our natural love is born out of desires and needs that God doesn't have Himself. Most people "love" out of necessity and self centered desires to control others.
Such never builds a mature and lasting relationship that is MEANINGFUL at every level. It is a incomplete love devoid of self sacrifice and empathy.
Completeness in love is found in the very Character of God. It is unchanging and inexhaustible.
Most people see the "love of Christ" as "Stockholm Syndrome". Especially "Calvinism".
This life is design to challenge our perspective and prove our love of what "sort" it is. This is why I often mention the teaching of the willing servant found written in the law of Moses in Exodus
Exo 21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
Exo 21:3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.
Exo 21:4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
Exo 21:5 And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:
Exo 21:6 Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.
Loving those that do not love you only starts a relationship, it can never complete it.
God is love. However, we can't truly love in relationship until we've actually been loved. People go throughout their lives and never really understand this. I've come to realize what love is in my relationship to God. We must be taught to love through experience and often through our own failures. Our love must be contrasted against 'God's love'.
Our natural love is born out of desires and needs that God doesn't have Himself. Most people "love" out of necessity and self centered desires to control others.
Such never builds a mature and lasting relationship that is MEANINGFUL at every level. It is a incomplete love devoid of self sacrifice and empathy.
Completeness in love is found in the very Character of God. It is unchanging and inexhaustible.
Most people see the "love of Christ" as "Stockholm Syndrome". Especially "Calvinism".
This life is design to challenge our perspective and prove our love of what "sort" it is. This is why I often mention the teaching of the willing servant found written in the law of Moses in Exodus
Exo 21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
Exo 21:3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.
Exo 21:4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
Exo 21:5 And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:
Exo 21:6 Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.
Loving those that do not love you only starts a relationship, it can never complete it.
praise_yeshua
Active Member
Denying His own essence certainly is self defeating.
civic
Active Member
I think this bears repeating brother and I believe you snd I would be in agreement. This comes from my thesis paper.
All doctrine begins with God at its starting point. God’s innate attributes are Aseity (God is self-sufficient), Infinite (without limit), Eternal (God has no beginning or end, he is timeless), Immutable (God is unchanging), Love (God is love), Holy (God is set-apart), Perichoresis (the indwelling of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). Divine Simplicity states God is Love because He is Love, not because He possesses that quality. God is the center of all the Divine Attributes. They point to His Being. God is not distinct from His nature.
God is Love. In love, the Father sent the Son on our behalf to be the perfect sacrifice for sin. We Love because He first loved us and sent His Son as 1 John 4:19 tells us.
We must understand how God's attributes all work in harmony together, not in opposition to each other. God's attributes and character flow from His love—for God is love.
God being love has nothing to do with His creation. That is secondary. God is love, and that love is perfect, lacking nothing within His Triune nature as God. Love, by definition, has to be expressed with another, which is why a unitarian god cannot be love. Love requires another to share and express that love, and it is what we see with the Triune God. God is love before anyone/anything existed.
Before creation, there was no sin. There was no judgment, wrath, mercy, grace, and justice. Why? Because those are God's secondary attributes concerning the creation and the fall. God's love is a primary attribute, like Holy is a primary one. Everything about God flows from His being Love which includes His secondary attributes, which were not in use until the creation and the fall.
Let’s examine how this works in conjunction with Gods sovereignty and His love. God is sovereign and also love. Both sovereignty and love as they intersect with God have been revealed plainly to us by God in His word. He has done this both through his word and his works. And God has sworn never to change for He is Immutable.
God's sovereignty is never exercised in violation of his love. His love is very everlasting, for God is love. The love of God has not the slightest shadow of variation, and it, not his sovereignty, is the basis upon which his moral standards rest. Any promotion of any doctrine that represents God as acting in a way that violates his love appealing to the fact that He is sovereign is found nowhere in the pages of scripture.
The fact that God can do something is not a justification for Him doing it. The fact that God can damn everyone without a reason is not an argument for justifying teaching that he does as in the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination. All that He can do is restricted by the standard that God values most which is His love. If it will violate love, God will not and cannot do it for that would be contrary to His nature and character as a loving God. And if it will violate love then it is not right. God cannot make it right by doing it just because He is sovereign. If God does it just because He is sovereign then He would not be God but something else.
What makes God, God is so intricately bound to his intent for doing things that if He were to do a thing just by virtue of the fact that He is sovereign and can do it rather than by virtue of the fact that it is loving? He would not be God as we know Him but something else. If sovereignty is what defines what makes up love in such a way that God doing anything is what defines love, then love has no meaning and can be anything and everything it is and opposes any time, which is ridiculous.
This below is from the Calvinist Theologian Abraham Kuyper on God is love:
“Before God created heaven and earth with all their inhabitants, the eternal Love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shone with unseen splendor in the divine Being. Love exists, not for the sake of the world, but for God's sake; and when the world came into existence, Love remained unchanged; and if every creature were to disappear, it would remain just as rich and glorious as ever. Love exists and works in the Eternal Being apart from the creature; and its radiation upon the, creature is but a feeble reflection of its being.
Love is not God, but God is Love; and He is sufficient to Himself to love absolutely and forever. He has no need of the creature, and the exercise of His Love did not begin with the creature whom He could love, but it flows and springs eternally in the Love-life of the Triune God. God is Love; its perfection, divine beauty, real dimensions, and holiness are not found in men, not even in the best of God's children, but scintillate only around the Throne of God.
The unity of Love with the Confession of the Trinity is the starting-point from which we proceed to base Love independently in God, absolutely independent of the creature or anything creaturely. This is not to make the divine Trinity a philosophic deduction from essential love. That is unlawful; if God had not revealed this mystery in His Word we should be totally ignorant of it. But since the Scripture puts the Triune Being before us as the Object of our adoration, and upon almost every page most highly exalts the mutual Love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and delineates it as an Eternal Love, we know and plainly see that this holy Love may never be represented but as springing from the mutual love of the divine Persons.
Hence through the mystery of the Trinity, the Love which is in God and is God obtains its independent existence, apart from the creature, independent of the emotions of mind and heart; and it rises as a sun, with its own fire and rays, outside of man, in God, in whom it rests and from whom it radiates.
In this way we eradicate every comparison of the Love of God with our love. In this way the false mingling ceases. In principle we resist the reversing of positions whereby arrogant man had succeeded in copying from himself a so-called God of Love, and into silencing all adoration. In this way the soul returns to the blessed confession that God is Love, and the way of divine mercy and pity is opened whereby the brightness of that Sun can radiate in a human way, i.e., in a finite and imperfect manner to and in the human heart, to the praise of God. “From his book on the Work of the Holy Spirit Volume 3, Second Chapter Love- xviii Love in the Triune Being of God “
TibiasDad
Active Member
Thus, Theology, A Word about God.
I would phrase this a little differently. God is God because he Omni in all his attributes, he is perfect in every aspect of his being. His being, being what it is, makes him God. He does not exist because of these attributes, these attributes are defined by his being. That’s why God is love, but love is not God.
If God is love, then everything he does is motivated by and structured in love. So, for instance, God commanding worship is not egocentric, but rather is for our benefit and well being. “Love seeks not its own” means that God’s motivations are always focused outwardly toward something other than himself.
Sovereignty is an accumulated attribute, a sum total of all that he is that results in nothing being greater than or able to overcome or overthrow his authority. The fact that he cannot be ultimately overthrown becomes a beautiful aspect because he is love; this authority is not self-seeking but seeks our benefit over his own, and he does so at his expense.
Doug
Was allowing the slaughter of 6 million Jews borne out of Gods love?
Ummm: HOw sdo How do I love thee??
Malachi 1 ► |
(Genesis 25:19–28; Romans 9:6–29) 1This is the burden of the word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi:a 2“I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you ask, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet Jacob I have loved, 3but Esau I have hated,b and I have made his mountains a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.c” 4Though Edom may say, “We have been devastated, but we will rebuild the ruins,” this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Land of Wickedness, and a people with whom the LORD is indignant forever. 5You will see this with your own eyes, and you yourselves will say, ‘The LORD is great—even beyond the borders of Israel.’” The Polluted Offerings 6“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. But if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is your fear of Me?” says the LORD of Hosts to you priests who despise My name. “But you ask, ‘How have we despised Your name?’ 7By presenting defiled food on My altar. But you ask, ‘How have we defiled Youd?’ By saying that the table of the LORD is contemptible. 8When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is it not wrong? And when you present the lame and sick ones, is it not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you or show you favor?” asks the LORD of Hosts. 9“But ask now for God’s favor. Will He be gracious? Since this has come from your hands, will He show you favor?” asks the LORD of Hosts. 10“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle useless fires on My altar! I take no pleasure in you,” says the LORD of Hosts, “and I will accept no offering from your hands. 11For My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be presented in My name, because My name will be great among the nations,” says the LORD of Hosts. 12“But you profane it when you say, ‘The table of the Lord is defiled, and as for its fruit, its food is contemptible.’ 13You also say: ‘Oh, what a nuisance!’ And you turn up your nose at it,” says the LORD of Hosts. “You bring offerings that are stolen, lame, or sick! Should I accept these from your hands?” asks the LORD. 14“But cursed is the deceiver who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but sacrifices a defective animal to the Lord. For I am a great King,” says the LORD of Hosts, “and My name is to be feared among the nations. |
No, Dizerner is right about this. God has all power over everything. And HE has 100% free will. He can do whatever HE wants. But HE "Chooses" to Limit Himself, to place boundaries on His Own Free Will. Now if HE was the only life form in existence, it wouldn't matter what HE did because there wouldn't be anyone to benefit or suffer from His Choices, but Him. But HE "Chose" of His Own Free will, to create life forms in His Image, life forms who also have free will. Therefore, because HE is all Wisdom, and all knowledge, He understands that unchecked free will, will come to destroy any Kingdom in which there are other life forms. So God places limitation and boundaries on His Own Free will, "out of Love, Care and Compassion" for the other life forms HE created. He does this willingly, of His own free will. He is a merciful God. No one makes Him Merciful, HE chooses of His Own Free will, to place "Mercy" as part of the limitations on His Own Free Will. Not because men deserved His Mercy, but because without Mercy, no kingdom of free will beings can grow or survive. David understood this.
Ps. 44: 20 If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god; 21 Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart. 22 Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. 23 Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off for ever. 24 Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression? 25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaveth unto the earth.
26 Arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies' sake.
Nehemiah understood this.
Nehemiah 9: 30 Yet many years didst thou forbear them, and testifiedst against them by thy spirit in thy prophets: yet would they not give ear: therefore gavest thou them into the hand of the people of the lands.
31 Nevertheless for thy great mercies' sake thou didst not utterly consume them, nor forsake them; for thou art a gracious and merciful God.
His Free will choice to place limitations and boundaries on Himself, is what defines His Character.
But we are not Wisdom, or Knowledge. We are not God, therefore, because of God's Mercy, HE gives us Limitations and Boundaries to place on ourselves, so we can learn to be Perfect, even as HE is perfect. To Love others, even as HE has Loved us. He doesn't have to do these things, but because HE Loves and has compassion on men, HE gives them Laws, that HE knows we need to endure in this world with Free will. Like His Begotten Son, the Christ Jesus endured in this world, who also, of his Own Free Will, Humbled himself to God and became obedient unto death..
There is something Holy about a mortal Human with Free will, "Choosing" to place the limitations and boundaries HE created, on ourselves. To turn away from this world's religions, and the lusts of our own desires, and submit to HIS Righteousness, and to His Definition of clean, Holy and Good, which can cause suffering and in some cases "The Loss of all things". But in the end, Paul said the cost was insignificant compared to the reward that is promised to them.
But "many" are turned away from God's Love, by other voices in the garden that HE placed us in, to prove us. He gives us example after examp0le of men, "who profess to know God", even quote some of His words, to convince them not to trust in God's Laws. And we are to choose which "voice" to listen too.
God has placed a lot of limitation on His Own free will for us. Longsuffering, patience, compassion. He even allowed the perfect Human being, His Own begotten son, who offered Himself to God, so that we might have the opportunity to change, and turn to God in repentance.
No one has ever Loved me like that, so I'm all in for God and His Words that this same Jesus said to Live By. And that of my own free will.
Eternally-Grateful
Active Member
so do we blame God or do we blame Hitler
TibiasDad
Active Member
Is God love? Did 6,000,000 Jews die? If both are true, there must be a corollary; which of these do you deny?
Love allows one to act to their own detriment and to the detriment of others, for there is no freedom outside of love. Love always trusts, but trust can be violated. Love always seeks, but seeking can be rejected!
Doug
civic
Active Member
DavidTree
Active Member
That is not true love
No parent that operates in love will permit their child (no matter their age) to inject/smoke/drink fentanyl or other life destroying drugs into their bodies.
No person, who acts and lives in love, will allow a another person to commit suicide and/or murder, when they have the ability/opportunity to intervene.
JESUS Says = "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends."
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