The God Delusion

[Kurieuo]

John 3:16 to me, is the most obvious verse proving OSAS. If I believe today, I have eternal life. If I lose that life, it was never eternal to begin with.

Actually, to be technical, the condition of everlasting life in John 3:16 is based upon belief. Therefore, if one stops in their belief, the condition is no longer satsified, and one might indeed perish. So this verse alone, I don't believe gets you there.

With other passages in Scripture, like the one I just quoted in Romans, the case becomes much stronger and requires some explaining should a person disagree.

You have much to learn young grasshopper. The condition of obtaining everlasting life by God's grace, is through belief. Once one believes, he has everlasting life. Everlasting life means he will live forever. If for any reason one would perish, that means he only had temporary life, not everlasting life. And God would be a liar.

All it takes is one word to get stuck in the logical gears that churn in my mind.

If you can put matters in OSAS terms that resolves the difficulties below; until then, "once" in OSAS intended in a temporal sense, such is temporal language useful in describing matters in ways that make sense to us who are created, but on most fundamental levels such structures fall apart and can only be figurative representations at best. Nonetheless, like Newtonian physics, it can be useful. OSAS highlights important truths.

Yet, what's the issue? "Once" is temporal talk. God' isn't temporal, unless one believes God is in fact now temporal?
On the most foundational levels of existence, Existence itself has no bounds. Existence has always been, or else nothing would exist. Existence, specifically Aseity, is something we ascribe to God.

So then, God has no boundaries, is even transcendent, then "Once" doesn't apply to God who knows the beginning from the end. Rather, it's actually simply a matter of those who are adopted of God in Christ to be revealed. (Romans 8:19) God sees the outcome of His plan, such that everything to Him is final. There is no "once" to God. He knows those who are His already, and they (in temporal speak) will be found as the world and lives of people unfold.

Now if God is temporal, or became temporal via some change in Himself (as Bill Craig believes), then God's not strictly immutable. If God's not immutable then Divine Simplicity must be shown the door. If we toss aside Divine Simplicity, then we no longer really have a language for talking about God. Rather the God we talk up becomes very anthropomorphic, and very temporal-like, very much like us.

You said I often talk very complex like, well above is a more complicated response. To be clear, I do believe in OSAS, but would highlight to people that the correct placement of person being saved was when they were chosen in Him before creation. (1 Peter 1:20-21; Ephesians 1:4) It seems more correct to me to try and see matters from God's point of view, and as such Christ's, rather than in terms of our temporal view of the world. Nonetheless, a temporal perspective is also often beneficial to us, particularly since we're physically temporal beings.

[Philip]

You said I often talk very complex like, well above is a more complicated response. To be clear, I do believe in OSAS, but would highlight to people that the correct placement of person being saved was when they were chosen in Him before creation. (1 Peter 1:20-21; Ephesians 1:4) It seems more correct to me to try and see matters from God's point of view, and as such Christ's, rather than in terms of our temporal view of the world. Nonetheless, a temporal perspective is also often beneficial to us, particularly since we're temporal beings.

OK, K, time to go soak your head in a bucket, let it cool down a bit!

Of COURSE, from God's point of view, salvation is and has ALWAYS been decided - because God always had a criteria for those whom He would eventually save, and He always knew He would apply Himself to those that met that criteria, and He has forever known this (God cannot have NEW knowledge, but ALL knowledge ALL the time). Plus He has always known precisely WHO would meet His criteria for salvation (those who would have faith in Christ). But what He did not decide, but yet foreknew, was peoples' decision to choose to have faith in Jesus. The idea that a man could be saved and then lose it would suggest that God has backed off and left such a man to his own weak impulses, and that although God could have foreseen this reversal of faith, He initially saved Him, yet while also fully knowing He would eventually turn away - which makes absolutely no sense. God sees us - ALL of us - as we will ONE DAY be. And so it is for all that come to salvation - He knows they will remain saved, NOT because of a MAN'S perseverance, but because of HIS perseverance. One is a highly doubtful - actually, impossible - thing to hope for; the other is a CERTAINTY because it is entirely God-dependent, and it is an ETERNAL decision by a God who has eternally known, most importantly, what HE would do, and secondly, what our response to Him would eventually be. The difference is that God does not have to wait upon our decision/response to him in TIME, to decide to apply His salvation - because, to Him, the future is always as clear as events only a moment ago. The scenario described in which an initially saved person backtracks and loses his salvation implies that 1) it wasn't ENTIRELY God-dependent to begin with, and 2) it implies that God can make a mistake of saving someone in which His salvation eventually "wouldn't fully take." But God cannot be surprised, and He does not make such mistakes!

[Kurieuo]

I'd prefer to not soak my head in a bucket. These always make for entertaining theological mind-bending games.

Something my arrival at Divine Simplicity has highlighted to me, is the paradoxes (not to be confused with contradictions) that arise when grappling the finite in light of the infinite and vice-versa.

In philosophy, there are what are known as paradoxes of plurality which show an infinite within the finite. For example, Aristotle put forward the dichotomy wherein a runner must traverse an infinite number of points to reach a finish line of finite distance. How is this possible?

Our lives are finite, our belief in Christ is a finite act, and yet it is one built upon an infinite eternal decree. How can we reconcile? Except we note in reason and experience where the finite crosses the infinite experience shows many seeming impossibilities to be real. As I place my hand on the wall, I realise it has traveled an infinite number of points in the air to get to where it now rests. I can't explain it, it hurts my mind to, it is true. As I contemplate the strangeness that existence has always infinitely existed, and it may hurt my mind to do so, the fact anything exists now shows that it is true the infinite has always existed uncreated on the most foundational levels.

It is neither the case that we chose God (infinite), yet it is true we choose God (in a finite temporal sense), nor is it the case God chose us (finite sense), and yet He did (eternally so). We, the contingent and finite have been actualised from the Infinite Eternal by decree, yet we appear free to make decisions (to limited even finite degrees i.e., as bound by physics). Other than that, it is perhaps better to walk away and let the paradox be. People can argue for both sides, and it is often interesting, yet I doubt anyone truly understands except God these theological paradoxes where the infinite eternal crosses with finite temporal space.

[RickD]

John 3:16 to me, is the most obvious verse proving OSAS. If I believe today, I have eternal life. If I lose that life, it was never eternal to begin with.

Actually, to be technical, the condition of everlasting life in John 3:16 is based upon belief. Therefore, if one stops in their belief, the condition is no longer satsified, and one might indeed perish. So this verse alone, I don't believe gets you there.

With other passages in Scripture, like the one I just quoted in Romans, the case becomes much stronger and requires some explaining should a person disagree.

You have much to learn young grasshopper. The condition of obtaining everlasting life by God's grace, is through belief. Once one believes, he has everlasting life. Everlasting life means he will live forever. If for any reason one would perish, that means he only had temporary life, not everlasting life. And God would be a liar.

All it takes is one word to get stuck in the logical gears that churn in my mind.

If you can put matters in OSAS terms that resolves the difficulties below; until then, "once" in OSAS intended in a temporal sense, such is temporal language useful in describing matters in ways that make sense to us who are created, but on most fundamental levels such structures fall apart and can only be figurative representations at best. Nonetheless, like Newtonian physics, it can be useful. OSAS highlights important truths.

Yet, what's the issue? "Once" is temporal talk. God' isn't temporal, unless one believes God is in fact now temporal?
On the most foundational levels of existence, Existence itself has no bounds. Existence has always been, or else nothing would exist. Existence, specifically Aseity, is something we ascribe to God.

So then, God has no boundaries, is even transcendent, then "Once" doesn't apply to God who knows the beginning from the end. Rather, it's actually simply a matter of those who are adopted of God in Christ to be revealed. (Romans 8:19) God sees the outcome of His plan, such that everything to Him is final. There is no "once" to God. He knows those who are His already, and they (in temporal speak) will be found as the world and lives of people unfold.

Now if God is temporal, or became temporal via some change in Himself (as Bill Craig believes), then God's not strictly immutable. If God's not immutable then Divine Simplicity must be shown the door. If we toss aside Divine Simplicity, then we no longer really have a language for talking about God. Rather the God we talk up becomes very anthropomorphic, and very temporal-like, very much like us.

You said I often talk very complex like, well above is a more complicated response. To be clear, I do believe in OSAS, but would highlight to people that the correct placement of person being saved was when they were chosen in Him before creation. (1 Peter 1:20-21; Ephesians 1:4) It seems more correct to me to try and see matters from God's point of view, and as such Christ's, rather than in terms of our temporal view of the world. Nonetheless, a temporal perspective is also often beneficial to us, particularly since we're physically temporal beings.

Sorry K,

You lost me at "All".



I think Jac explained it best here:
http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... 54#p198454

Jac wrote:
The problem with your analogy is that you are viewing eternal life as a commodity, a thing you can have or lose. But life is no such thing. To have life is to be alive. To not have life is to be dead. Life is that which lets you have commodities. It is not a commodity in and of itself. To lose life, then, is not to lose a thing but to be something: dead. When Jesus says that we have eternal life, that means that we will never die (and so John 3:16 is emphatic on this, as is 5:24). To "lose eternal life" would literally be to say "to die even though it is impossible to die." It's self-contradictory nonsense.

[Vergil]

So to gain Everlasting life . . . one must truly believe in the Father.

[Philip]

So to gain Everlasting life . . . one must truly believe in the Father.

AND???!!! One must believe JESUS is God, that the Father is HIS Father, and part of the very same God! Because the REAL Father is part of the Triune God - ONE God with three distinct persons, which includes the Father, The Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. If one believes in a Father God and Jesus is not His Son AND ALSO GOD, then you believe in a false God - and not the one that saves. Believing Jesus is God is critical to being saved - it is THE key! It's also the way to quickly distinguish a cult: Who and what do they say Jesus is - if they say Jesus is not God: CULT!!!

[Vergil]

So to gain Everlasting life . . . one must truly believe in the Father.

AND???!!! One must believe JESUS is God, that the Father is HIS Father, and part of the very same God! Because the REAL Father is part of the Triune God - ONE God with three distinct persons, which includes the Father, The Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. If one believes in a Father God and Jesus is not His Son AND ALSO GOD, then you believe in a false God - and not the one that saves. Believing Jesus is God is critical to being saved - it is THE key! It's also the way to quickly distinguish a cult: Who and what do they say Jesus is - if they say Jesus is not God: CULT!!!

I agree, One God in 3, 3 in One.

Forgive me if i forgot to add that milord,