LFW Gone Wild

I asked

Why do people choose x and not y given the contraints of LFW? Put another way, why does one person believe and not another?

JCT replied

Because they make a decision to given the choices, it wouldn't be LFW if they couldn't.

This begs the question for LFW. It does not answer the question, "why do people choose x and not y" given the constraints of LFW. Saying "Because they make a decision" is not an answer to the question. It merely restates the question and, at best, moves the question back one step. JCT, do you listen to yourself as you type these answers? "Why does a person choose x and not y?" Answer: Because they make a choice, eg. because they make a decision."

That said, what this illustrates is the inability of the Libertarians to account for causality. Why does one person make that decision given the options? This is a perfectly legitimate question that the Libertarian, as JCT so ably demonstrates, cannot answer coherently. It would be more honest to say, "I don't know, it's a mystery" than to give the answer he gave.

There are two reasons I constantly ask Arminians this question:

1. To demonstrate their inability to answer this question.
2. To demonstrate how unbiblcial the answer is. The Bible ascribes our choices to our motives. So, this is the question Arminians desperately wish to avoid, for it exposes them to a classic dilemma:

a. Admit they can't answer.
b. Admit that the person believed because he was more spiritual, smarter, more afraid, or any other reason.

Steve has already replied to a number JCT's statements, I'll simply second his reply and add my own material.

No it doesn't, as I'm speaking of God's omniscience from a temporal, human perspective when I say 'before.'

This was not in JCT's original statements.

Negative, to one whose knowledge transcends time, they are knowable outside of their being instantiated, as He sees the end as clearly as the beginning.

Wrong, this does not address the knowability of the object of knowledge at all. Indeed, He only knows them because they are instantiated, not outside of their being instantiated. If He knew them outside of the fact, He would know them without them being instantiated at all.

You're confusing the issue, as God's timelessness is what enables Him to know decisions before they are made.

To say that God clearly sees the future begs the question.

Appealing to the timelessness of God says nothing, not a word, about the knowability of libertarian choices. Indeed it merely begs the question that they are knowable to God. The question he needs to answer, and which he hasn't answered is how our LIBERTARIAN choices are knowable since they don't exist in any mind except the mind of the agent and are not knowable until they are instantiated.

His answer is God knows them before we do, from our standpoint, but not His. However, this doesn't answer the question how God could know them before they were instantiated at all, for they can only be done as a product of their instantiation. They are only knowable after they are instantiated by the agent.

Now, it's true that the timelessness of God means that all things are "eternally simultaneous" to God, but that's an ontological category. Here, we're talking about telelogy, a distinct epistemological category. God understands relational sequence, that 1, for example, comes before 2. But if the question is "1 or 2?" and that question is answered only by an agent other than God, then how does He know the answer to it prior to the agent making the decision? How is it knowable in God's mind, if it's only in the mind of the agent? Appealing to timelessness merely begs the question.

The fact that it is resistible means its ineffectual.

Yeah, there's bullet-resistant vests, which makes bullets ineffectual weapons. Great logic. For the record Gene, I consider TD very much a 'functional category;' I'd explain the rest of my beliefs to you, but you appear to have your mind made up about them already, so I won't confuse you with the facts.

That little ditty comes from his statement that the UPG is effectual. However, it's a simple fact that UPG is not at all effectual, since it doesn't effectually draw anybody.

UPG makes TD (Total Depravity) cease to be a functional category. Men need UPG in order to have LFW. But PG is UPG, so TD is thereby not functional as a category. It only functions on paper; in practice everybody has LFW, which gets Arminianism tarred, rightly, with functional Semi-Pelagianism.