@Bill Sorensen: You may not like the paradox but you …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Bill Sorensen:

You may not like the paradox but you can not deny it or its implications.

But I do deny your artificial paradox where God is somehow responsible for causing both good and evil. That God caused the rebellion of Lucifer and Pharaoh, and all others who follow the path of evil.

We agree that God gives His moral beings free will. He also expresses by way of commandments how the free will must choose if on going eternal life is to be maintained.

That’s right. But this does not mean that God causes or is in any other way responsible for the actual choice of the freewill agent.

If you choose to rebel and be lost, then it is God’s will that you will be lost. God honors your freedom to choose and will not over turn it.

Yes, but it was not God’s will that anyone would actually choose to be lost or to rebel against His will in the first place.

Yet, the bible says, “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

That’s right. God wills that all should choose the path of life, not death. The fact that there are those who will freely choose to walk the path of death is contrary to God’s will for them. The fact that He also wills to uphold the choices that free will agents choose, even if they deliberately choose self-destruction, does not change the fact that He never willed anyone to make this choice.

Is God willing that any should perish? Yes, those who refuse to repent will surely perish and God is not only willing that they should perish, but participates in the execution of the sinner.

You’re confused. God is not willing that anyone should choose to perish. However, there are those who choose contrary to God’s will – who actually choose to perish. In honoring their choice, in letting the wicked choose death instead of life, God is not somehow happy about their choice. He is never willing that anyone should make such a choice… though He is, ultimately, willing to honor the free will choices that are made – even those that go against His will.

So, God’s “will” must be understood from more than one perspective. God’s best and desired will is that a sinner would repent.

That’s right. That is always His will.

None the less, if the sinner does not repent, it is God’s will that they should perish. Because God has willed that the sinner’s will can trump God’s desired will and in such a case, God wills that they should perish. Even though, He could keep them alive forever.

Just because God wills to uphold the final will and decision of the wicked does not mean that God also willed them to have rebelled to begin with or to have refused His repeated offers for pardon. God never wills nor is He in any way responsible for the rebellion of the sinner or any of the acts of those who are acting contrary to His desire for all to turn to the path of light and life.

Also, ironically, it is the sinner’s will to perish rather than continue on in a life of suffering and pain – a life that is borrowed from the one he/she hates. It is an act of mercy, on the part of God, to allow the sinner to die. It is not a willful act for God. He does not desire or take pleasure in the death of the wicked. Again, He never willed their rebellion or the final condition to which such rebellion will eventually lead.

This is not so difficult to comprehend if you are “willing” to carefully consider the issue and its implications.

I have considered this issue long and hard for many years. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re understanding the implications of what you’re saying – of a God who is both good and evil, of a God who causes rebellion and then punishes people for doing what He caused them to do. That’s evil Bill. There is no getting around this conclusion by claiming that a “paradox” somehow makes it Ok…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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