Can someone explain certain aspects of Christian doctrine to me, particularly the concept of God's grace, will, plan, and predestination, etc?
So if God has predetermined everything, and everything happens for a reason, and God wills everything, than there is no actual free will, right? So if a good person is murdered, that was god's will, therefore the one who murdered that person was also exercising God's will and therefore blameless, right?
Seems kind of fucked up. Is this just a Calvinist thing or is all of Christianity like that?
God knows everything, he hasn't predetermined everything. Everything is a consequence, and God is aware of everything, but not everything is the will of God, for he himself has given us Free will.
If a good person is murdered, that's a consequence of someone else's will, not God. God lets it happen because he doesn't meddle in the matters of humans that much, his intention is that people worship him and help each other out of their own will.
Parker Perry
You're still thinking like a human, and not a character on a stage. Even if Macbeth is ordered by the script to kill his king, he still has to be punished for it
Lincoln Rodriguez
The usual explanation is that God is not only omniscient but omnipotent, and thus capable of blinding himself as to the actions of specific individuals, and in this fashion, gives you a soul (even if this is treading on the "Can God make a rock so big he can't lift it" conundrum.)
It made a little more sense under the original Hebrew model, where angels don't have free will, as he did not do this for them (or, going further back, when he was neither omnipotent nor omniscient, just the "mightiest" of each), but I suppose it's among the better "problem of evil" arguments.
Much like us, God compartmentalizes.
Xavier Miller
How do I know what role I am to play though? So if you are scripted to play the bad guy, is it inevitable that you have to play that role? Can't you opt out somehow?
You're focusing on the wrong thing. It's not a question of knowing or not knowing, it's that you can't deviate from the script. You're predestined to be the good guy or bad guy, the same way a character is. Even if you don't know you're still predestined to play your role
Jordan Long
Seems kind of unfair. What denomination elaborates the most on this doctrine you are putting forth?
It's not exactly a popular stance among Christian religions, which tend to favor the whole free-will and responsibility thing, for obvious reasons.
Michael Martinez
There's no such thing as predestination, though. Things are constantly ongoing, and we still don't know every single thing that's out there.
Jayden Young
Well, science would disagree, but as we're talking religion... Some religions also don't agree.
I suppose we always have free-will from our own viewpoint though, as yes, we are creatures of limited perception and intellect, and thus cannot predict the future, or even fully understand our decision making process.
In this fashion, it is only God who lacks free will, for he knows with perfection all he has ever done and all that he ever will do.
Asher Turner
If you fall from an airplane, you will fall down to earth due to the forces of gravity acting upon you. Flail as you may, it won't change the fact.
What will change is if there is another outside force acting against gravity. Namely, other gods.
Jayden Moore
The way I understand it is thus. Imagine you have a child. And you give that child a bowl of candy and a bowl of foul smelling rotten garbage. Which will he choose? Probably the candy. No question. We knew from before the child even made the decision what decision he was going to make. But by knowing that, we are not then making the child choose the candy. Same with God. God knows you better than you know that child in the example. You can do whatever you want to do. God already knows what it is (mostly because He exists outside of Time, Time is irrelevant to him. We're characters in a Youtube video, he's the guy watching the screen, outside of our video-world. Does that help? Also the "Can God make a stone heavier than he can lift" "paradox" is just a trick, it actually can be resolved very simply. Hope some of that was coherent
Jack Stewart
>So if a good person is murdered, that was god's will, therefore the one who murdered that person was also exercising God's will and therefore blameless, right?
It's not always God's will that someone be murdered. Sometimes it is. For example, James Holmes is a prophet of the Lord.
Why does this board have so many schizophrenic tripfags?
Landon Kelly
how do you know something that hasn't been determined?
Alexander Cox
In Christian theology God exists outside of time and space. From a human perspective this is difficult to imagine as we exist only inside of time, but God is able to see everything that has happened, will happen, and is happening at the same "time", for want of a better word. His knowledge of the future as we percieve it is not predestination, but an extratemporal higher awareness.
Sebastian Moore
*perceive By "we exist only inside of time", I was focusing on the time aspect, not implying that humans exist outside of space but inside time.
Daniel Hill
>Why does this board have so many schizophrenic tripfags?
Your poor theological knowledge isn't my mental disorder.
