3/7/2023 Fun interaction on Facebook on God and Logic. Basically I posted:
There has been debate on this within Christendom no doubt and thus affected one's view on God's sovereignty, i.e. predestination vs. arminianism, various understanding of trinity, Christ's dual nature (creaturely vs. divine), apologetics methods (i.e. transcendental vs. classical), C.VanTil & G.Bahnsen vs. WLCraig & F.Turek, etc.
It comes down to this:
1. God = logic (it's a property of God, attribute of God, nature of God, logic = logos, etc.) or
2. God > logic (God created/authored logic, logic is not logos, attempted archetype vs. ectype models, etc.)
#1. God cannot be and not be, God cannot lie, etc.
#2. Anthropomorphic language is prohibited to fully grasp God. God simply is (Am). Hence #1. is not applicable.
#1. Then God is arbitrary.
#2. No. Again, creaturely language.
etc.
But as a foundation to understand all these, I would suggest first to grasp this:
God is Truth, He is the source of Truth, He is the ontology of Truth.
-Truth itself (Himself) is not the same as understanding of the Truth
(Not talking about human mental capacity. Qualitative distinction, not in a quantitative manner)
-Understanding of the Truth is not the same as Explanation of the Truth.
-Explanation of the Truth is not the same as hearing of the Truth.
German philosophy on existence vs. Dasein also helped advance this line of study.
In theology there is a great emphasis on making the distinction between God's Knowledge of Himself vs. God's Knowledge of the world to avoid the risk of pantheistic switch. (Van Til - The Defense of the Faith, Chp 3 The Christian Philosophy of Knowledge - 2. God's Knowledge of the World)
After another google alert about running out of free storage space (11 used of 15 GB), I took about 2 hours cleaning up. Downloading emails with large attachments and photo galleries to my Photo drive. Bringing the used space down from 11GB to 7GB.
Thanks to fyyy.tv's response to my gmail request for links to Stephen Tong's remaining videos: 请问哪里可下载 《唐崇荣讲道集9》《唐崇荣讲道集10》《唐崇荣讲道集11》 等等？I was given new link to access. May the downloading project continues!
Also coming across the old AAA astronomy club music by Donna Stearns wife of Jason Kendall, kept a copy in my 2008 photo archive as well in case it's lost online: UP, UP, UP IN THE SKY
Turek attacked Calvinists again:
"If we don't have capacity to choose Him, then God would be unjust"
and here's my response:
Jesus said, you must be reborn by the Spirit according to HIS OWN will. So, God chooses first with no condition based on your part. After that, you get to choose. Not before, not at the same time as God chooses.
If we all deserve hell as sinners, then God has no fault in judging us. The inability to be saved is only our fault, not God's. Would Frank say to God, "well, I was a sinner because God You did not show me the truth earlier, because you know...I would have chosen you earlier"?
Frank got the part right about God is so sovereign that He could cause us to..., Frank just couldn't process further than dead man can't see until awaken.
Frank's definition of predestination in Ephesians is about guaranteeing of your choice, nothing to do with predestination, and he called Calvinism confusing.
Despite how eloquently he could put it using "human free will" being foreknown by an omniscient God yet passive in sovereignty due to man's will, by his own argument, Frank is in fact calling this God either an unjust God or a puny God - who desires to save all, but either doesn't actually want to or unable to because He's restricted by man's will. A passive God is still nonetheless less sovereign than an active God. So, these verses are not what he thought. Therefore, unlike how Frank puts it, "ALL" here could easily be seen as to "ALL" kinds of people of social levels, "ALL" classes of sinners, NOT "every single person on Earth", even this interpretation, as flawed as it can be, is still better than Frank's confusing interpretation of it which is dissonant to all other passages in Scripture.