Uncle Davey wrote:
> Uzytkownik "Grinder" <grinder@no.spam.maam.com> napisal w wiadomosci
> news:0tc4f.249987$084.245527@attbi_s22...
>
>>Uncle Davey wrote:
>>
>>
>>>A participant on www.usenetposts.com/forum asked a
>>
>> > riddle, as follows:
>>
>>
>>>>This is what just came to my mind which I would like
>>
>> >> to discuss with all of you:
>>
>>>>Is human will free? If it is not free, then people
>>
>> >> cannot be held responsible for their sins, as they
>> >> don't have the capacity to abstain from sinning. But
>> >> if human will is free, then God is not all-knowing and
>> >> almighty, as people might choose to behave this way or
>> >> that.
>>
>>>>Now, what is the solution to this?
>>
>>>And my reply was the following:
>>>
>>>First you would need to define "free".
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>
>>>There is freedom to make choices between possible alternatives.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>
>>>That's how I would answer your riddle
>>
>>I see you didn't really trouble your answer with the conflict between
>>our free will and God's omniscience.
>>
>>If God already knows what we're going to pick at any give choice, how
>>are we free to choose any of the possible alternatives? Either:
>>
>>a) We can choose any of the alternatives, including those different than
>>what God *knows* we're going to pick -- thus invalidating his omniscience.
>>
>>b) We can only choose the alternative that God has forseen for use, thus
>>making free well an illusion.
>>
>>I've outlined this conundrum a dozen or so times to theists who hold
>>that God is omniscient, yet we have free will. So far, I have only
>>received complimentary dance lessons.
>
>
> As I say, the answer is in Christ.
>
> We do not have a freedom not to commit sin. That choice was made for us.
>
> The choice that we have is whether or not to believe in the saviour.
>
> With regard to repentance and faith, it is true that God does determine
> those to whom he gives truth. Even Jacob when repenting before meeting Esau
> in Genesis 32 says to God that he doesn't deserve all the truth he knows.
> Then shortly after this the risen Christ comes and wrestles with him, and
> gives him the name of Israel. That name, which remains on everyone's lips to
> this day, came to a man soon after his acknowledgement that he didn't
> deserve any truth from God, and had been given it out of mercy.
>
> This is the beginning of wisdom. To understand that God does give as He
> pleases, truth as well as any other gift. That is why we are not free, in a
> sense, to chose His truth and believe it for our salvation, he needs to give
> it. But at the same time you can do as Israel did and bind God to a
> struggle, saying to even the most high God "I will not let thee go, except
> thou bless me". Wonder of wonders! Of course the creator and redeemer Christ
> could have had power to wrestle with Jacob in such a way as to crush his
> every atom at the subquantum level, or to fling him into interplanetary
> disintegration, but he allows jacob to win a blessing! So in the same way we
> can come, and lay claim on blessings from God. Only later we know, that we
> could never have come without his grace, but you are free to go to God and
> claim the promises, that those who come to Him He will not cast out. That
> those who pray "o Lord, help me to believe" receive their faith. You can
> choose to believe in God.
>
> And if you believe on Christ for your salvation, then it will be as an act
> of will on your level whatever it may be looked at from another level.
>
> I hope this is an answer for you. If not, I will try again.
It is an answer, but not to the conundrum originally posed.
Perhaps it will help to detach the question from God -- think of some
omniscient barber in the place of Him, as an omniscient being, coupled
with our theoretical free will is enough to produce the logical conflict.
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