"I Don't Want Free Will" by Martin Luther

[bolil]

To know that the Father chose me and knew me before the world began and sent His Son to be a propitiation for my sins so that I can be with Him forever is a strong motivator in my love for Him.

Also, to know that the wicked will receive judgement is comforting. That is why atheism is the most depressing worldview there is. In atheism, there is no judgement for the wicked. And let me tell you, what you believe governs the way you act. When men believe that there is no final judgement for their sin, it changes them.

But you ask the question as if Christianity is a self-help program or something that has as its main focus how to make us feel good or help us in some way. That is a very anthropocentric view of things. The Biblical view is theopocentric. God saves a people unto Himself for His own self-glorification. Salvation is God glorifying Himself.

I appreciate your beliefs however I must take issue with you condemnation of the atheist and, I do suppose, the agnostic with him. I am agnostic, and I judge myself for my wickedness more harshly than most religious I know. To me time is finite, and every moment spent hurting is IRRETRIEVABLE. Fathom that.

 

[Kade]

...Said the "individual" suggesting group approval. lol

Continue to grade yourself on an ever moving curve dependent on a group around you, but don't expect anyone else to do it to make you sleep better or to satisfy a group.

Or was your post sarcasm?

I wish I had the opportunity to give you the lecture I gave recently on what you can tell from someone just in their writing alone. Interesting words you choose to bold, almost as if you were attempting to deflect from the actual stresses.

My survival on the forum as a dissident and a contrarian is largely dependent on at least a very small contingency of rational minded people. This is the only approval I seek.

I honestly and truly believe that if you think that anyone deserves to burn in hell forever, then perhaps the punishment is more suited for that person.

The ongoing redefining of a god is an anachronism and the belief in it a massive mental delusion. Any fair minded people will eventually come to this conclusion, or at the very least a agnostic conclusion. If they have not, the things that they believe in everyday life must be questioned in their accuracy and veracity.

 

[Sola_Fide]

The insanity has reached an entirely new level.

Why should any of you ever be taken seriously when you believe this much nonsense? I mean seriously.. take comfort in the fact that when you die there is no hell, because anyone who actually believes in it probably deserves to be in it.

"Any of you"? We have any number of views represented in this thread. Classical Calvinism (which is Biblical Christianity), Seventh Day Adventism (which is a heterodox cult in my view), Mormonism (which is a polytheistic cult in my view), Arminianism, atheism, agnosticism, and then a general apathetic attitude. Which view are you condemning? Because they are all different.

I have yet to even respond to the refutations to my view yet. Why do you think you are so special as to not defend yourself, but merely attack everyone from an unspecified point of view? It seems like you should hold yourself to a higher standard than that, because I certainly do.

 

[Sola_Fide]

"The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment."

-Bertrand Russell

Kade,

By the way, your signature quote is contradictory.

One could justifiably ask if Russell's view (that all things are held tentatively) is itself held tentatively or dogmatically. If his view is held tentatively, then it cannot be asserted dogmatically like he is doing. If the statement itself is held dogmatically, then it refutes its own claim that everything is held tentatively.

Basically, Russell is attempting to side-step the issue of truth, but as has been shown so many times, truth is an inescapable concept. In denying it, you affirm it.

 

[GuerrillaXXI]

why is it comforting that one is going to hell and can't do anything about it?

What I find comforting is the knowledge that hell is a fiction. It's a concept derived from pre-Christian pagans that was adopted by later religions because it frightened people into behaving and/or converting to the "right" religion.

Even the people who wrote the earlier works of the Old Testament didn't have any concept of hell. They only believed in a shadowy underworld ("Sheol") to which ALL dead people, good and bad alike, went after death. That's why we never see God threatening people with hell in the older books of the OT. Instead, he threatened them (or even their offspring) with earthly punishments or plain old death. The concept of eternal punishment didn't enter into some strains of Jewish literature until around the time of the Babylonian Captivity. No doubt the Jews got the concept from the pagans, and this rubbed off on the early Christians.

Consider what it would mean for hell and damnation to exist. First, it would mean that God created people solely for the purpose of sending them to hell. That would make God an unjust monster. Humans are finite creatures, with finite abilities, willpower, and awareness, so they simply cannot merit infinite punishment. No one deserves to burn forever -- no one. This is common sense that has become all too uncommon. And before anyone says I'm not qualified to judge God's justice, the Bible itself says that I am (because Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). Also, if we're not wise enough to criticize God, then we're not qualified to praise him, either. What good is praise from someone who doesn't have a good understanding of what he's praising?

Another point is that sin could not exist without God wanting it to exist (thus making sin no longer sinful, since it would be in accordance with God's will!). Why? Because if God is the Creator of everything and if God is omniscient, then everything can be traced back to God. If sin is human misuse of free will, then that misuse was caused by flaws in human nature that were put there by God deliberately. If Satan came to be as the result of angelic rebellion, then God had to have given Lucifer some character flaw (pride, malice) that God knew in advance would cause Lucifer to rebel. In other words, no creature created by God, whether angel or man, would have rebelled unless God wanted him to rebel and made sure it would happen by putting rebelliousness into that creature's personality.

Think about it this way. Why won't there be sin in heaven after the Final Judgment? What's going to prevent it? And whatever that is, why couldn't God have prevented sin the same way at the very beginning of creation, so that no one would ever sin?

Speaking of Satan, that's another concept that evolved over the course of Biblical history. Originally the Hebrews conceived of Satan ("accuser") as one of God's servants -- a kind of "prosecuting attorney," but still one of the "good guys." Only later did Christians make Satan into the main "bad guy." Historian Elaine Pagels discusses this process in detail in her book The Origin of Satan.

The sheer number of inconsistencies with logic and known fact in the Bible is breathtaking. Even so, it took me a long time to give up Christianity, mainly because I was afraid to question my religion. Why was I afraid? Because of the threat of hell, of course. That's what it's there for -- to keep you from questioning. No wonder Christianity became so popular -- it carries the ultimate carrot (heaven) and the ultimate stick (hell), and believing (or pretending to believe) is so easy. Even if you think the risk of hell being real is only 0.0001%, the punishment is so unfathomable that you'll still be hesitant to risk it. (The way to get around this is to realize that many other religions threaten hell, too, and each poses about the same risk.)

Government enslaves our bodies; religion enslaves our minds.

 

[GuerrillaXXI]

Classical Calvinism (which is Biblical Christianity)

I no longer believe in the Bible, but I'm very familiar with it. In no way is Calvinism compatible with the Bible. The Bible is full of contradictions with itself, but its contradictions with Calvinism are so blatant that I simply can't understand how anyone who has read the Bible could be a Calvinist.

The Bible teaches that people are judged by both works and faith. For example, in Revelations it says that "the dead were judged according to their conduct" (Rev 20:13). Similarly, one Gospel account shows Jesus welcoming people into heaven or sending them to hell based on how they treated the poor: "I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink," etc. (somewhere in Chapter 25 of Matthew). Elsewhere, Jesus says: "Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter into heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).

There ARE a few verses that do suggest that salvation is based on faith alone, contradicting the above; but these are very brief and are outweighed by the numerous verses like those above. Even so, Calvinism and similar "faith alone" theologies cherry-pick the verses that suggest salvation by faith alone and ignore all the verses that say salvation is at least partly based on conduct.

Similarly, if men's salvation were predestined, there would be no point in Jesus or anyone else exhorting repentance. If the doctrine of "irresistable grace" were biblical, Jesus would not have lamented the unwillingness of Jerusalem to follow him:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matthew 23:37)

This only scratches the surface, as my time to type here is limited. But the above should at least give some indication of how much Calvinism diverges from the plain text of the Bible.

 

[Southron]

If salvation requires faith and works, then how do you know you have done enough works to satisfy that requirement? Are two works necessary or fifty?

 

[jmdrake]

"Any of you"? We have any number of views represented in this thread. Classical Calvinism (which is Biblical Christianity), Seventh Day Adventism (which is a heterodox cult in my view), Mormonism (which is a polytheistic cult in my view), Arminianism, atheism, agnosticism, and then a general apathetic attitude. Which view are you condemning? Because they are all different.

I have yet to even respond to the refutations to my view yet. Why do you think you are so special as to not defend yourself, but merely attack everyone from an unspecified point of view? It seems like you should hold yourself to a higher standard than that, because I certainly do.

So when the Bible goes against your belief, your fall back position is to just pretend you are following "Biblical Christianity" and attack your fellow Christians who, unlike you, rely on the Bible. Again from James 2.

James 2:14-26

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good[a] is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Oh, and as a Seventh Day Adventist I was not taught James 2:24. I actually ran across that recently. As I child I was led to believe the Bible actually said "The just shall live by faith alone". In Adventist academy I learned that Martin Luther added that to the Bible, but we still were taught the same doctrine only without predestination. It's only been a few months that I've known the truth. That not only did Martin Luther add to the Bible what was not there, but that he ignored what was there. I still think the reformation was important. But I must put the Bible in its entirety above John Calvin and Martin Luther and St. Augustine. The Calvinist scholar that you posted a while back to explain away John 3:16 made the point that you must compare scripture in a way that it doesn't contradict itself. Well that holds true with James 2:24. There is no honest way that you can come to the conclusion that James 2:24 is talking about anything other than salvation. Thus works must play a part in salvation. But not works of the law. Instead it's works of faith. When Abraham was going to offer up Isaac he was breaking the law! But by doing that he showed evidence of his trust in God. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Mere belief has no substance. The Bible says that God gives every man a measure of faith. What a man does with God's gift of faith is the difference between salvation and damnation.

 

[jmdrake]

If salvation requires faith and works, then how do you know you have done enough works to satisfy that requirement? Are two works necessary or fifty?

I'll let Jesus answer that:

Luke 10:27
And He answering said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus wants your all, whatever your all is. He makes up the difference. God revealed this truth to me years ago when I was a child on an elementary school gymnastics team. One thing I worked on was the rings. The coach would tell me to jump then he would lift me the rest of the way. One day when he wasn't around I thought "I can do this by myself". I jumped and jumped as hard as I could, but I didn't come close to the rings. So I thought "I'm not really doing anything". So the next time in class I did an experiment. The coach told me to jump, but I just held up my hands and pretended to jump. Sure he lifted me up, but he said to me "What's wrong? You didn't even try to jump." God knows that in our own strength we can't follow His requirements. That's why he doesn't leave us to fend for ourselves. But He expects us to "jump" to the best of our ability! All He asks from us is everything, knowing that our everything won't nearly be enough without Him. That's why we are told "Submit yourselves unto God, resist the devil and he will flee from you." Step one is submitting to God. That's me being with my coach. The next is resisting the devil. That's me jumping as hard as I can, knowing that really I can't make the mark without the coach lifting me, but also knowing that the coach is going to always make sure I make the mark. The devil fleeing is me reaching the rings, through the power of the coach making up for my pitiful effort.

Another illustration of the same idea is in the nature drama "The Bear". I won't tell you what happens and spoil it. But watch from 1:19 on.



Great movie!

 

[low preference guy]

God wouldn't have created a contradictory Bible, thus, you shouldn't take the Bible so seriously as if it were written by a logician.

 

[jmdrake]

Your conclusions require two suppositions that not all Christians share.

1) That hell is eternal. (Some believe the effect of hell is eternal but not hell itself. Ezekiel 28, which most Christians believe refers to Lucifer, says that God will bring him to "ashes" and consume him)

2) That free will is somehow a character flaw. If God wanted creatures with the ability to choose Him then He would have to instil in each the power to make the wrong choice.

Here is an interesting essay on Quantum Mechanics, God and freewill.

http://www.abarim-publications.com/
http://www.abarim-publications.com/HeisenbergUncertaintyPrinciple.html#.UCHZiiNDSOw

What I find comforting is the knowledge that hell is a fiction. It's a concept derived from pre-Christian pagans that was adopted by later religions because it frightened people into behaving and/or converting to the "right" religion.

Even the people who wrote the earlier works of the Old Testament didn't have any concept of hell. They only believed in a shadowy underworld ("Sheol") to which ALL dead people, good and bad alike, went after death. That's why we never see God threatening people with hell in the older books of the OT. Instead, he threatened them (or even their offspring) with earthly punishments or plain old death. The concept of eternal punishment didn't enter into some strains of Jewish literature until around the time of the Babylonian Captivity. No doubt the Jews got the concept from the pagans, and this rubbed off on the early Christians.

Consider what it would mean for hell and damnation to exist. First, it would mean that God created people solely for the purpose of sending them to hell. That would make God an unjust monster. Humans are finite creatures, with finite abilities, willpower, and awareness, so they simply cannot merit infinite punishment. No one deserves to burn forever -- no one. This is common sense that has become all too uncommon. And before anyone says I'm not qualified to judge God's justice, the Bible itself says that I am (because Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). Also, if we're not wise enough to criticize God, then we're not qualified to praise him, either. What good is praise from someone who doesn't have a good understanding of what he's praising?

Another point is that sin could not exist without God wanting it to exist (thus making sin no longer sinful, since it would be in accordance with God's will!). Why? Because if God is the Creator of everything and if God is omniscient, then everything can be traced back to God. If sin is human misuse of free will, then that misuse was caused by flaws in human nature that were put there by God deliberately. If Satan came to be as the result of angelic rebellion, then God had to have given Lucifer some character flaw (pride, malice) that God knew in advance would cause Lucifer to rebel. In other words, no creature created by God, whether angel or man, would have rebelled unless God wanted him to rebel and made sure it would happen by putting rebelliousness into that creature's personality.

Think about it this way. Why won't there be sin in heaven after the Final Judgment? What's going to prevent it? And whatever that is, why couldn't God have prevented sin the same way at the very beginning of creation, so that no one would ever sin?

Speaking of Satan, that's another concept that evolved over the course of Biblical history. Originally the Hebrews conceived of Satan ("accuser") as one of God's servants -- a kind of "prosecuting attorney," but still one of the "good guys." Only later did Christians make Satan into the main "bad guy." Historian Elaine Pagels discusses this process in detail in her book The Origin of Satan.

The sheer number of inconsistencies with logic and known fact in the Bible is breathtaking. Even so, it took me a long time to give up Christianity, mainly because I was afraid to question my religion. Why was I afraid? Because of the threat of hell, of course. That's what it's there for -- to keep you from questioning. No wonder Christianity became so popular -- it carries the ultimate carrot (heaven) and the ultimate stick (hell), and believing (or pretending to believe) is so easy. Even if you think the risk of hell being real is only 0.0001%, the punishment is so unfathomable that you'll still be hesitant to risk it. (The way to get around this is to realize that many other religions threaten hell, too, and each poses about the same risk.)

Government enslaves our bodies; religion enslaves our minds.

 

[Southron]

What I find comforting is the knowledge that hell is a fiction. It's a concept derived from pre-Christian pagans that was adopted by later religions because it frightened people into behaving and/or converting to the "right" religion.

Do you have any evidence for this?

Consider what it would mean for hell and damnation to exist. First, it would mean that God created people solely for the purpose of sending them to hell. That would make God an unjust monster. Humans are finite creatures, with finite abilities, willpower, and awareness, so they simply cannot merit infinite punishment. No one deserves to burn forever -- no one.

No one deserves to burn based on what moral standard?

Another point is that sin could not exist without God wanting it to exist (thus making sin no longer sinful, since it would be in accordance with God's will!). Why? Because if God is the Creator of everything and if God is omniscient, then everything can be traced back to God. If sin is human misuse of free will, then that misuse was caused by flaws in human nature that were put there by God deliberately. If Satan came to be as the result of angelic rebellion, then God had to have given Lucifer some character flaw (pride, malice) that God knew in advance would cause Lucifer to rebel. In other words, no creature created by God, whether angel or man, would have rebelled unless God wanted him to rebel and made sure it would happen by putting rebelliousness into that creature's personality.

I agree that God allows sin to exist as part of His plan.

I'm sorry that you have apostatized.

 

[VIDEODROME]

Guerilla XXI my understanding is that Sheol or Gehenna become Hell through screwy translations in some bible versions like King James.

If someone wanted to review this topic would it be a good idea to get a NIV(New Internations Version)? It seems that instead of a fiery hell passages refer to "The Grave".
Or just to be sure would yet another Bible translations with the word Sheol be worth having?

I'd also be interested in any input you have on Gehenna.

 

[The Northbreather]

+rep

Some people never consider the beautiful and comforting power of knowing that salvation is not of our will.

Look into the the concept of the Eros from ancient times. It delves a bit deeper into the subject I believe.

 

[bunklocoempire]

I wish I had the opportunity to give you the lecture I gave recently on what you can tell from someone just in their writing alone. Interesting words you choose to bold, almost as if you were attempting to deflect from the actual stresses.

My survival on the forum as a dissident and a contrarian is largely dependent on at least a very small contingency of rational minded people. This is the only approval I seek.

I honestly and truly believe that if you think that anyone deserves to burn in hell forever, then perhaps the punishment is more suited for that person.

The ongoing redefining of a god is an anachronism and the belief in it a massive mental delusion. Any fair minded people will eventually come to this conclusion, or at the very least a agnostic conclusion. If they have not, the things that they believe in everyday life must be questioned in their accuracy and veracity.

Uh... I used the mysterious-all-telling bold to emphasize what I believe should be your concern in relation to others around you.

I don't really have an issue with what I see as your sense of individualism, different folks have different life experiences and perceptions of truths -I know that.

What I do have an issue with is 'coaxing' any individual into thinking that group approval is somehow necessary for anything.

Lay out your life experiences and let others convince themselves if you've got some great truth to share. Or not.

And as far as eternity without God, or eternity with God, well yeah, you've made an excellent point there.

Through God's word and my life experiences, the stakes are as high as I am convinced to play for.

The stakes are as high or low as anyone convinced to play for.

I've already shared my belief on what the stakes are for me back at #37. As it also tells why I even show up to play .

 

[KingNothing]

predestination to me sounds like all of our lives are just one big story in one big book, that the author (God) has written, and we have no control over our fates in this story. I find this makes people who believe in predestination feel that because they believe in predestination they must be one of the chosen ones by God (thus feel comforted).

I wouldn't want to be born if I knew from the day I was born I had no choice or no control over where I'm going, afterall we're talking about eternal torment in hell.

I think that the idea of an omnipotent God requires a belief in predestination. I'm not sure how religious people who don't believe in it reconcile this.

 

[KingNothing]

Well, you make it seem as if there are these people out there who are trying to believe and God is stopping them. That is not the case.

Eh, when the colonies were initially being settled, didn't most people believe that you were either born with Grace or you weren't, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it?

 

[matt0611]

I think that the idea of an omnipotent God requires a belief in predestination. I'm not sure how religious people who don't believe in it reconcile this.

Yup, you're right. Its the only way to reconcile it.

The only way for non-calvinist Christians to stay consistent is to either subscribe to "open theism" (where God doesn't know the future) or Molinism / middle-knowledge (where God knows everything that does or will happen and God also knows what His creature would freely choose if placed in any situation).

Both are completely un-biblical and I would consider "open theism" downright heretical.

Predenstination, the elect, foreknowledge, these are all terms that appear in the bible.

The only way to reconcile God's providence and the will of man and to do it biblically is the reformed / calvinist view.

 

[jmdrake]

I think that the idea of an omnipotent God requires a belief in predestination. I'm not sure how religious people who don't believe in it reconcile this.

Easy. An omnipotent God has the power to place limits on His omnipotence. Christianity requires a believe in a God that limits His omnipotence because Jesus (who is God) said He didn't even know the day or the hour of His return, but that only the Father knew it. If God wills man to have free will, then man has free will. Saying God can't allow man to have free will makes God not really omnipotent.

 

[jmdrake]

Heresy is the Calvinist believe that John 3:16 doesn't mean what it says. Heresy is the Calvinist belief that God only loves the "elect". And Calvinists can't deal with James 2.

James 2:14
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?
James 2:24
24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

But hey, keep kidding yourself into believing that you are the one that's Biblical when you are following your unbiblical belief.

Edit: And you really don't believe God is omnipotent because you don't believe God has the power to grant man freewill.

Yup, you're right. Its the only way to reconcile it.

The only way for non-calvinist Christians to stay consistent is to either subscribe to "open theism" (where God doesn't know the future) or Molinism / middle-knowledge (where God knows everything that does or will happen and God also knows what His creature would freely choose if placed in any situation).

Both are completely un-biblical and I would consider "open theism" downright heretical.

Predenstination, the elect, foreknowledge, these are all terms that appear in the bible.

The only way to reconcile God's providence and the will of man and to do it biblically is the reformed / calvinist view.