In this clip,
Frank Turek offers some wise advice, but the falls back on the Arminian trope that "God doesn't force anyone to love him". Of course, that's a cliche swipe at Calvinism.
Problem is, the objection is nonsense. You can't be forced to do what you were predestined to do. If you were predestined to do it, then it's not like you were going to do something else before God stepped in to override your plans. If you were predestined to do something, then there never was anything else you were going to do. It's not like you chose to go in one direction until God thwarted your choice.
Now, you can disagree with Calvinism for other reasons, but the "forced" trope that Arminians mechanically bandy about is simply thoughtless.
I guess they think there is a conflict between God operating at one level, determining that I will do such and such, and me being a cause of my action and that for the sake of some perceived good. But as long as we have that, I don't see how we exclude free will in any meaningful sense. But I don't see any problem between God being the conserving cause of all that is and giving them causal power and them being real causes.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is how a lot of modern Arminians seem to make no distinctions at all between different models of predestination, Augustinian, Thomist, Calvinist, Molinist, and just assume that the mere commitment to God predestining whatever shall come to pass means we have no free will (whatever that term means to them).
Yeah, the real problem is that I honestly don't think we are capable of understanding how God views time. Time came into existence when the universe was created, so the entire concept of what was before time zero is nonsensical. It is not a billion years is like a second to God. He created time, he exists apart from and outside of time.
DeleteNow, try to explain how time-space causality works from the perspective of a being that exists outside of both time and space.