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 Dizerner
- 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.
Dizerner
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".
Dizerner
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
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