Unfolding Patterns Of God's Plans

Good thought I heard from Wayne Grudem the other day...he was talking about the way that God unfolds His purposes and reveals His Glory gradually over time, for instance:

Creation Of The World - Whether you hold a "Day-Age" view or a "Literal" view, etc, God gradually created and sculpted the world over time.

The Calling Of The Jews - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Twelve tribes...

The Sending Of The Messiah - centuries passed before Jesus was incarnated.

Spreading Of The Gospel - gradually over centuries, we are seeing God's Purposes unfolding.

The more I think about it, the more all of life is like this. There is a development process to all things that have life, meaning, value, and purpose. The only things that are really made in an instance are material and expendable.

So this gradual revealing of God's purpose certainly has personal application to us as well. He wants our lives to have meaning, value, and purpose, and the only way to do that is through a gradual development via a daily relationship with Christ.

In fact, Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon delivered on the Sabbath Morning, January 7th, 1855, stated the following: "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity."

I think that God unfolds His purposes gradually, so that we can "continually investigate" His greatness...Allow me to draw a parallel from the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century, Saint Anselm, who coined the phrase, fides quaerens intellectum...translated to mean, “faith seeking understanding”...Perhaps God has so arranged life that our faith seeks an understanding, and then our understanding leads to a revealing...then purpose...

Faith --> Understanding --> Revealing --> Purpose

For Anselm, "faith seeking understanding" was “an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.” He believed that true faith is a love for God and a drive to act as God wills...Ultimately, our purpose is to become Christ-like...Jesus was everything God is, and He was everything that we were meant to be...so what happened was that sin entered the world, we became separated from God, and our image became distorted...man has been on a search for purpose ever since...a search for God through Christ...a desire beyond all desires in which C.S. Lewis beautifully summarized in the following quote:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

...God, through His gradual unfolding of meaning, value, and purpose, wants us to first have a "deeper knowledge" of Him...and a deeper understanding of Him...a desire to become Sanctified and Christ-like...so that when God unfolds our meaning, value, and purpose in life, we see Him as the architect, the composer, and the designer of it all.

Determinism vs Free Will, Part 1

I will be recording a few thoughts as I ponder Libertarian Free Will (Molinism and Arminian) vs Compatibilism/Determinism (Calvinist) ...I also want to toss in some thoughts about hard-lined, scientific determinism, such as materialistic atheism/philosophical naturalism...and while I certainly do not desire "in-house" fighting among fellow Christians, I do think the discussion leads us to a better understanding of God's Word, so it should prove to be a fruitful endeavor!

...so, for the first entry, a question and a thought for those who believe in determinism...

1. How do you know that determinism is true? From an epistemological viewpoint, you could not be able to logically affirm the validity of determinism, because you would simply be determined to believe in determinism...it results in circular reasoning...it is self-defeating to try and come up with reasons for why determinism is true or how you know it to be true, because the second you invoke reasoning, you have canceled determinism...one can not be determined yet at the same time use any sense of reasoning...can a computer give you a reason for why the input leads to the output? No, it simply does what it is told, but it has no concept for why or how it works...this is how determinism works, there is no way around it...

...on the same view, I find it puzzling when someone who holds to determinism as doctrine, tries to persuade me to believe in determinism...they do not see the logical incoherence that is inherent in doing so, because it would mean, if persuaded to believe in their argument, that I CHOSE to believe in determinism...but I can not freely choose anything if I have been pre-programmed for determinism...

They could say, "well, this just means that you were determined not to believe in determinism." Then by default, if, for the sake of argument, determinism was true, this would mean I was determined to believe in free choice...but this would be another logical blunder to be pre-programmed to believe in choice because it would lead me to the option of not believing in determinism....which means I would never defend determinism as a realistic truth and thus would be self-defeating for me to be determined as a determinist who believes in free choice...

More to come on this issue, next up...Do Calvinist's have accountability groups?