^ What this awesome person said. Yes, God predestined the sacrifice of Jesus, definitely. I was talking about predestination as commonly understood by Calvinists, that is, predestination of the elect.

Jenny, first, it says "as many as were appointed", which is passive and does not attribute the action of appointing to anyone. If you look into the original Greek, you will also find that the word translated "appointed" really means something closer to "aligned with". As many as were in the state of being aligned with eternal life believed. This fits with the verb tense, it's not an active appointing, it's a passive state of being. (And in the case of the second, he's talking to Christians...yes, God did appoint that Christians would do good works. It's called sanctification. He predestined that people who believe in him would be sanctified. As for the choosing, did not Jesus choose the twelve, and one of them was a devil?)

Lycanis, I don't feel like going all-in, but I just want to address one small issue with your comments on Ephesians 2:8-10. You say that since it does not specify whether grace or faith is the gift of God, we must assume it means both. But that is not the case. See, you're applying the gift of God statement to only grace and faith, but there is one other thing in that verse you are not applying it to--the saving. The gift of God here is that he saves us by grace through faith. Whose faith is it? Yours. The gift of God is that he saves you by his grace through your faith. Makes perfect sense.

Also, you're adding extra meaning to the verses that use the metaphor of death for sin, in order to say that we are so dead we can't even ask to be saved. If you take such an extreme view of being dead in sin, please consider that you are terribly inconsistent if you do not take an equally extreme view of being dead TO sin, because Paul contrasts the two with undeniable comparison, and says that Christians are as dead to sin as unbelievers are dead in it.

Haha, that is funny.

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading Jeremiah's and Mike's posts... and Mike, I especially liked how you brought it around to writing again. Thanks, you two!

While this is one of my favorite subjects, and one I'm most passionate on, I was wondering if perhaps we should take care to leave it related to writing, or else keep it in private messages and private chats/chats elsewhere.

I think one of the ways this topic most relates to writing is this: how do you deal with sinful, harmful actions of one character against another? In some secular films and books, I've seen a trend towards just having bad things happen pointlessly, which makes sense if we live in a man's-choice-driven world. How can we show that God intends every evil act for ultimate good? I've been studying Joseph, and pondering on that. Does anyone have any thoughts on that specifically?

I don't think God intends any evil acts for good. I think he works them out for good.

If it's solely up to God then he could bring about the same good without the evil. He is great enough to give us the ability to choose right or wrong and still work out the wrong for good.

Thanks for all your posts, guys!

I will get around to writing out a response. Probably later on tonight!



I agree, Matthew. I don't believe every evil act brings about good necessarily either though. It says Rom_8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. But that doesn't mean that all evil acts bring about good. Certainly not every evil act. I believe that for Christians we know that no matter what happens, God is going to work good out of the situation for us, that's what He promises us. Whether it means that through trouble we're brought closer to Him, or our family unit becomes stronger etc. However, good will not be brought out of every act of evil that happens. Evil's acts can see families divorced, broken apart and worlds broken in two. There are times when evil will destroy a person's world, and not work good out of it. I think both sides should be realistically shown.

I'd be interested to see some scriptures backing up those positions, y'all, as it's my position that God does intend everything that happens for ultimate good and for His ultimate glory, so naturally I believe we should reflect that in our stories. That doesn't mean it won't hurt immensely... sometimes more than could be imagined... but I believe He does orchestrate everything for good. And I'm aware that I didn't give verses either just there, as I'm busy at the moment. *chuckles* But if anyone has time, I would be curious to see where in Scripture you get those opinions.

Well, we can see in several places where God punishes people for their sin. Obviously he didn't intend them to sin, or what justification is there for punishing them? He would be punishing us for doing what he wanted us to do.

He mentions sometimes that he wants to do something good for Israel, but they were not willing, meaning that because he gave us free will, he can't then just force us all to accept good. God is in no way responsible for evil. We choose evil (just like Adam and Eve did), and we now have the opportunity to choose God. The comparison between what Adam did (and our choice to follow his lead) and what Jesus did (and our choice to follow his lead) is clearly and directly laid out by Paul in Romans 5. This means they are choices of the same nature. So either Adam had no free will and was compelled by God to sin, or we have as much free will to make such a choice as Adam did.

Likewise, in Romans 6, we, as humans, are called to present ourselves as slaves to righteousness IN THE SAME WAY as we once presented ourselves slaves to sin. So either God makes us choose sin, or we choose it ourselves and therefore must choose God ourselves.

Another comparison he makes in chapter six is between being dead to sin and then dying to sin. So either you are totally unable to do any wrong once you are saved, or being dead in sin is actually a metaphor and not quite as extreme of a depraved state as many Calvinists say it is.

After all, which is more powerful...God or sin? If God is more powerful, you would expect that the image of God in humans could not possibly be destroyed by sin, therefore, anyone has the capacity to do good things because everyone has something of the image of God left in them. Everyone has a conscience, the law of God written on their hearts. Of course, everyone also chooses to ignore it sometimes and sin, which is why there is no one who is good if you judge them by God's perfect law. If God is more powerful, you would expect him to be able to completely free you from sin, because, after all, you have died to it. When someone has died to this world, how can they live any longer in it? They can't even visit it for a moment. They're gone. This would be the extent of being "dead to sin" under the Calvinist interpretation of the metaphor of death. You would never, ever sin.

Funny then, that Calvinists are the complete opposite of the holiness doctrine and therefore highly contradictory.

So in order to resolve the paradoxes and contradictions, you need only take the middle ground. All men are capable of both good and evil. All men are condemned because they have chosen to sin (not because Adam sinned, nowhere does the Bible say that we are condemned for Adam's sin...), and likewise all men are saved by grace through faith if they choose to have faith and ask forgiveness.

From this standpoint, there is absolutely no way to say that God intends evil. Evil is only ever the doing of men and demons. Because evil by definition is going against God, to say that God intends evil is to say that God is going against himself, and anyone divided against himself cannot stand. Simple reasoning (and Ezekiel 18) will show that in order to be held responsible for our sin, we must necessarily be the sole instigator of that sin (not God, not Adam, not our parents.) Only then is God totally justified in punishing us.

So yes. Evil things happen to good and bad people alike. All things, in the grand scheme of eternity, will work out for good for those who love God. Thus, you may face a whole lot of trouble in this world, and it may end horribly in this world. But there are rewards in heaven for faithfulness, and sometimes that's the only "working out for good" we get. You can't deny that many of the stories in this world do not end with anything good, even for those who love God. You can twist and distort and read meaning into it all you want, but the devil is the prince of this world, and sometimes bad things are just plain bad.

While I cannot agree, Matt, I enjoyed reading a more thorough presentation of your view, so thank you for taking the time to write it up.

That's just barely scratching the surface, but you're welcome.

*can't help a laugh*

Wow you really made some good points Bat's (lol, sorry, had to) but I wanted to respond to the OP on the original topic. When I write, especially when I write about God, I normally portray him in ways that the Bible itself has portrayed him. He normally manifests in a human form when he does not wish his presence to be known and in the case he does, he does so by manifesting through nature. He also sends MC's and other chars through dreams. (Say anything about the interpretation of dreams and I got enough evidence for this to drown you in.) The original poster talked about movies any books in which God "begs", but as far as I know, I've never seen or read about God begging any MC's to do the right thing. The closest thing I can remember is God saying "You know what the right thing to do is, now do it." God is always demanding the MC does the right thing, and often appears in a sort of "You should have done what I said" capacity on the off chance they don't obey. In my stories God does not beg, He commands respect and righteousness of his servants, He does not appear to unbelievers (With unique exceptions) because in his infinite wisdom he knows this will do little good, But likewise he does not control the MC's or anyone else, He has set his example and made his laws known. Either people obey or they do not, If they choose not to they suffer usual due to events brought about by their disobedience. Simple as that.

Mathew's post is good. So is DawnBringer's – he said something of what I was going to try to say.

I see. Of course I believe God knows everything. But you're saying that, though God knows what's going to happen, He didn't make it happen, just like I can study an architect's design and know his plan thoroughly, even if I didn't make it. Is that what you're saying?
Question: if God didn't make the plan, who did?

I must say, this discussion is fun. Let's keep it that way. I mean, this is our Awesome God we're talking about!

Hello all! I was just lurking, and reading snippets of how this discussion has gone, and I thought I'd make a contribution in response to Aemi's question.


Currently, I think my beliefs lie more or less along with Matt's--though God made us and knows exactly what all our choices will be, he didn't force us to choose them. But I also believe that God did make the plan.

I'm going to offer a model for how this can work. I make no claims about how accurate it is, but I simply want to show that such a thing is logically possible. This idea was my dad's, and I think it's really cool

So...God is omnipotent and omniscient; he stands outside of space and time, and he's creating the universe. (Please pardon the use of verbs that imply time--consider them indicative of causality and not temporal sequence )
For the purposes of illustration, let's pretend the physical universe that God is creating is two-dimensional--like a sheet of paper, or the very imaginative world of "flatland". People and other physical entities are represented as coloured points and lines and shapes on the flat surface, which is otherwise (again, for illustration) transparent.
This way, we can imagine time as the third dimension. One sheet of universe-paper represents the universe at one moment. Now, lets stack another sheet on top of it--this one represents the universe at the very next instant. So it looks pretty much identical, but some of the figures on its surface are very slightly displaced from where they were.
Now stack on tons more sheets, on front and behind, reaching all the way back to the beginning of the physical universe and all the way to its end--and press them all tight against each other. All the people and things existing in the universe are now threads, going back and forth and winding around each other and interacting with each other as time progresses--and all this is a static object before the eyes of God. He sees the universe in its entirety at all times. For an even simpler and rougher image of this, check out the timeline diagram from this episode of Star Trek Voyager...

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... elines.jpg

...so, God is sculpting the universe, shaping this object into something that is meaningful and that brings him glory. And his act of sculpting it is taking into account all of time. If we're just looking at plain old physics, God can control where all the threads go just by tweaking the initial conditions to be just right. Looking good!
But now, throw humans into the mix. God created them with a free will (or so we assume in this model, anyway) because free will is necessary for meaningful love, or something like that--one way or another it contributes to revealing his glory, and so is worth all the pain and complexity it causes. But having humans in the universe makes the threads go in directions that God does not control--at least not directly. So, very shortly after humans show up on the scene, the threads would go berserk. Butterfly effect and all that--we know quickly a small decision can result in vast differences.
But God's plan is not thwarted, because even though God doesn't control our decisions, he knows what our choices will be (he sees all time at once), and because he knows our being so intimately, he knows what our choices would be in any possible scenario we could find ourselves in, given any possible upbringing we could have had beforehand--and he controls our placement.
God placed Pharaoh in the time and place that he did, knowing that when Moses came, Pharaoh would harden his heart and turn Moses away. And God placed Moses in his particular time-and-place (and his mother and sister, and the previous pharaoh's daughter) so that Moses would, by his own choices, come to the point where God could use him to do something great. And of course, God was doing lots of other things with these placements, too--the story isn't all about Moses.
So this, then, is the picture that this model (which may or may not be accurate) paints: that God, in creating the universe, is writing a huge story in which we all are characters, but we actively participate in the story through our choices--we actually make contribution to the story God is telling--and God is just so epic that he takes that all in stride and makes it come out to his glory. Isn't that really cool?

So yeah, this model makes lots of assumptions and has some weird theological implications (like--what if God's placement of us could affect our ultimate decision to follow him or not? Then wouldn't God's placement of us amount to predestination even given a certain form of free will?), and I wouldn't preach it as gospel-truth. But I hope it makes a good case for the logical compatibility of free will with God's sovereignty over creation and history.

Aaaaaand there went my whole evening, writing that up. Love you guys lots, but this is why I can't hang out here too much...though I will certainly hang around for a bit to read any thoughts/responses to this and say hi to people. (Hi Lycanis! )

Oh wow! I have a similar concept though not nearly as advanced. That God exists outside of Time and space and is therefore able to see all of time occur before him in an instant. However my idea was no where near as well thought out.

That model you've depicted is pretty cool. I've pictured something similar, though didn't take it to that level. God has all of time spread out before Him, and is outside of it...like an author with his book he wrote.

However, I believe that God's story is already written. From God's perspective, it's done already.





God knew what would happen in the future because God wrote the story already...and the Bible says that God not only knew what Pharaoh would do, God was ultimately the one who hardened Pharaoh's heart.

Yet, in Exodus 8:15, what happens? Note who did the hardening to begin with. God doesn't actually harden Pharaoh's heart until after he had done it himself.

(Hi Cephron!!! *was very happy to see you posting* )

Awesome theory! That's actually something I've thought of too--given what we know of God, that He is omnipotent and omniscient (among many other things beyond our full comprehension), I'm convinced that that is at least representative in some way of how He went about creation, and how He has exercised and is exercising His power over what He made.

Yes. It's so amazing to ponder and think about. Thank you so much for taking the time to post, and bring it up!

^ This is what I was going to mention.

God does not harden Pharaoh's heart until the very, very end. Throughout all the rest of it, Pharaoh was doing it himself. He was asking for it...defying God directly.

It reminds me of this:



I think that once people have consistently hardened their heart against God, that in the end He does give them over, because yes they are constantly defying God directly.

In short, I don't need to worry because God is in control. I mean, literally. He actually is.
And I can trust Him because He is absolutely good.

I don't know how I would have gotten through the past couple years without knowing that.

I should probably catch up on this entire thread, but I'm lazy and am going to reply to this by saying I believe God to be perfectly in control of the lives that have been given over to Him. I don't believe God controls the lives of those who choose to go their own ways.