Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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"Over the past year or so I've developed a new way of thinking(for me) about these unexplainable difficulties"

Please elaborate. Also has this forum anything to do with spurring you on to do this?


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Since I began to study apologetics I've been at least as much interested in the negative side (what's wrong with other worldviews) as the positive (defending theism). It's only since I've been arguing the case almost daily that I've seen this perspective as part of the overall argument. It actually derives from a Scripture:

John 6:
65And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."
66As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.
67So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?"
68Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.

Jesus had just conveyed a "hard" doctrine - the inability of man to be accepted by God on his own merit. This also involves the doctrines of election and predestination. Because of this hard doctrine, many of the disciples abandoned Jesus, probably because they thought it was irrational and also bruised their pride. No doubt these thoughts also occurred to Peter. But when pressed by Jesus, I believe Peter considered the alternative. "Will I now return to Judaism? What about Plato and Aristotle? I could turn Epicurean." But only Jesus had "words of eternal life". No matter how difficult to understand and accept what He was saying, there was simply no attractive alternative.

So my post was simply pointing out that though there are hard doctrines in theism in the overall view it answers the big questions in an ultimately reasonable way. No other worldview does so.

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Allow me to point out that you could avoid these dillemmas and still have your God and your Jesus if you would simply allow for the possibility that one of many of your specific doctrines might be incorrect. For instance

1. God can't see the future


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As I said, no worldview answers all the big questions. Eliminate from Christian theism all you would like, that won't answer the questions. If God can't see the future then the Bible is wrong about prophesy and predestination, and therefore isn't the Word of God. So now what's my worldview supposed to be? Now what are the answers to those questions?

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2. There are at least a few exceptions to the idea that you must be sure that Jesus is divine to enter heaven


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I don't think believing in the divinity of Jesus is required. Though it seems odd to accept Him as Saviour (which is required) while rejecting His divinity.

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I said many times that it seems to me that if there is a god he is probably irritated at you


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But if the God of the Bible doesn't exist, should I care that some god is irritated at me but not sufficiently so to tell me?

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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But if the God of the Bible doesn't exist, should I care that some god is irritated at me but not sufficiently so to tell me?


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Unless you're amoral then if god exists he has told you whats right and wrong. The caring is built in to the system.

chez

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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I think maybe you're misunderstanding the concept of original sin?

I don't think Christians believe that if person behaves "perfectly" he can therefore be without sin. Even if a person always made what seemed to be the selfless choice, in every single circumstance, he would still be sinful. This has nothing to do with free will and is considered an inherent part of human nature (since Adam, for those who believe the Adam & Eve story is literal).

So they would say yes, we have the free will to do the right thing every time... but we are still not holy enough for heaven because all humans are inherently defective. Only through Jesus can we overcome this defect of our species.

Maybe I'm way off but I think original sin (man's nature) and free will (man's actions) are considered 2 different things.

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This type of argument dates back to Augustine/Pelagius, with Augustine arguing for original sin as a very physical thing passed down from generation to generation and Pelagius arguing that it had a more social character.

Anselm argued for the necessity of sin. There's a catholic saying something like "blessed sin, that we were given such a glorious redeemer." Anselm's thought is pretty close to what you are talking about revots. As Adam and Eve disobeyed God, we must repay him. But more than give back what we took, we must pay for the offense as well (like if I steal something from you I can't just give it back and make everything ok). If everyone were to live a completely sinfree life, we could cover the "interest" but never the "principal". So now we owe God a debt that we can't pay. God can pay it but that's not right for him to pay his own debt, so along comes Jesus as a god-man.

Luther would completely agree with Sklansky's assessment.

The Catholic thinker Toland rejected the Augustinian notion of necessity in the late 17th century, writing that we are responsible for our own sin.

The bottom line is that there is no unified concept of original sin. A lot of people use it just to refer to the fact that we often do things we don't truly want to do. As for the conservative Christian view, I think it's a bit of a stretch too.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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But if the God of the Bible doesn't exist, should I care that some god is irritated at me but not sufficiently so to tell me?

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Change the word "doesn't" to "does", and you could be making an athiest/agnostic argument.

Anyway my guess is that most Christians think that yes we do have free will, but (even leaving aside original sin which labels us defective at birth) a sinless life is an impossible standard for humans. Here is part of a prayer said in Catholic mass every Sunday:

"I confess to almighty God,
and to you,
my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do..."

Given these standards who can possibly be sinless? Who has never even had a THOUGHT of jealousy or vanity or selfishness etc.? Who has never committed a sin of omission? It is an impossible standard.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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People by their natural actions cannot merit Heaven, not because their actions are sinful, but because they are natural actions and not supernatural. They can merit heaven by cooperating with the grace of God (a supernatural action for a supernatural place) if they so choose. How would that make them a robot?

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Is that Orthodoxy peter666? It doesn't sound Orthodox to me. I don't think I've ever heard it put like that. You're not denied heaven because of your sins but because you can't do the supernatural by yourself? What happened to Jesus dying for your sins and all that?

PairTheBoard

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It's true that we can't go to Heaven because of Original Sin, however, that was a consequence of actions taken after the fact and was not a condition inherent in our nature. Basically, we were NOT preprogrammed NOT to go to Heaven, which seems to be what Sklansky had interpreted, along with John Calvin.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

Again paying $100 each to you and Not Ready to have a debate on this forum of at least five substantial posts each.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

Once you admit that "original sin" takes away some free will the discussion is over. On the other hand you say that Catholics accept the possibility of a pious Jew or Muslim being saved.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

"I don't think believing in the divinity of Jesus is required. Though it seems odd to accept Him as Saviour (which is required) while rejecting His divinity."

Would that mean something like assigning to him the position of God's human representative where God helps him perform some miracles (including perhaps his own ressurection)? If so, what's so odd about that?

But you still didn't respond to my question about what is the fate of someone who thinks his total disbelief in Jesus is pleasing to God.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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Once you admit that "original sin" takes away some free will the discussion is over.

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Not so. For we aren't talking about one's salvation being determined by one's action in one act. Even if for example, we determine a certain person had 70% of the free will of Adam, and thus the greater possiblity of sinning, it nonetheless remains that over the course of a lifetime, that person mostly has free will, and that furthermore, can get "extra" as it were, by recourse to God. In poker terms, if your EV on a particular hand is 70% on the flop allin, you are going to lose your stack 30% of the time. But long term, you're getting a win. And the long term, the period of one's life on earth, is the time frame in question generally. By "generally" I mean that if you murder someone and get hit by a car right after, you're probably toast. But that will only be because you've forfeited many other chances in the course of life and thus aren't getting another here to repent before dying.

Also I want to emphasize again, that even not having the more easy ability to not sin that Adam and Eve originally had, one can still get help from God's grace to shore up what is lacking. As great as God's Judgement is, His Mercy is greater yet, *if* one asks for and is willing to receive it.

Re: We Are All Sinners With Free Will?
 

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Also I want to emphasize again, that even not having the more easy ability to not sin that Adam and Eve originally had...

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So you believe that Adam and Eve were literal people who literally chose to fall from tangible communion with God? If yes, how long ago do you think this happened, approximately? How do you address the glaring problem of oral tradition being inconsistent with the Fall?