A Fresh View of God

There are GOOD Unbelievers!

Daniel A Fresh View of God, Fusion Theism Movement, Simplified Scriptures Series, Stop Judging

(Very important! I have updated my view somewhat on this topic. After reading this post below, please see my newer blog post: Preaching is Important!)

Many Christians today teach that there are only two types of people in the world:

  1. The saved (believers in Jesus) who go to heaven
  2. The lost (unbelievers) who go to hell

I think this is based on a misunderstanding of several Bible passages. Lets look at a few Scriptures:

 “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 2:13-16 ESV)

 “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:5-8 ESV)

The Two Types of Unbelievers:

From what I’ve seen, most Christians today use Romans 8:5-8 as support for their idea that all unbelievers are going to hell because they cannot please God.

However, by comparing that passage to the passage from Romans 2 above, we can see clearly that the Apostle Paul believed that there are two different types of unbelievers — Those who obey their God-given conscience and those who set their minds on the evil fleshly desires.

The unbelievers who obey their God-given conscience, the inner moral law written on their hearts by God, may be excused from punishment on the Day of Judgment when Jesus judges their secret thoughts and desires. (Romans 2:13-16) Whereas, the unbelievers who set their minds on the evil flesh instead of the God-given conscience, will not escape punishment. (Romans 8:5-8)

Unbelievers are Condemned for Rejecting Jesus, NOT for Ignorance

The Bible actually teaches that unbelievers are condemned by God after they have received the knowledge of Jesus, but have chosen to reject this truth. Unbelievers are NOT condemned by God if they are truly ignorant and have never received the knowledge of Jesus (with the exception of the evildoers from Romans 8:5-8 who set their minds of evil desires instead of their consciences). Examine the Scriptures below:

 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:17-21 ESV)

 “Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, “We see,” your guilt remains.’” (John 9:39-41 ESV)

So we can see Jesus Himself taught that God would judge people based on how much “light” or truth they had received about God and Jesus, and that the basis for condemnation of unbelievers, is whether they had rejected the light that they had been given. If unbelievers have received no light about Jesus, they will not be condemned (unless they set their minds on evil, as Romans 8:5-8 says).
What about Ephesians 2?

Many Christians use Ephesians chapter 2 to show that God views all ignorant unbelievers as evil slaves of Satan, even those who have not heard about Jesus. Look at the relevant verses here:

     “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)

 “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,” (Ephesians 2:11-19 ESV)

If you look very carefully here, especially taking note of Ephesians 2:11, you can see that it is talking about how the Jews view the Gentiles, NOT how God views the Gentiles. Notice how it says that the Gentiles are called “the uncircumcision” by the Jews. Paul is showing how the Jewish believers viewed the Non-Jews.

We know that God has always had a different view of Gentiles than this, because Acts chapter 10 declares this:

 “At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, ‘Cornelius.’ And he stared at him in terror and said, ‘What is it, Lord?’ And he said to him, ‘Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.’” (Acts 10:1-4 ESV)

 “So Peter opened his mouth and said: ‘Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’” (Acts 10:34-35 ESV)

So, in summary, Ephesians chapter 2 is speaking about the way that Jews had viewed Gentiles — as being hopeless sinners, outside of the bounds of God’s love, doomed because they were not given God’s Laws. God has always loved the Gentiles (John 3:16)

 “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,” (Acts 17:26-27 ESV)

What about Romans 3?

At first glance, Romans 3 appears to be a scathing condemnation of ALL unbelievers in all of history:

 “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. 

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.’ ‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:9-20 ESV)

Paul was quoting from Psalms here, and in those Psalms, there was a distinction being made between righteous people and evil people. The Psalms were saying that not one person on earth was righteous except for those who were doing good things, which were few in number. Paul here also applies these Psalms to the Jews, because he says that they apply to those “under the Law.” This would mean Paul’s point is that there are many evil Jews out there, just as bad or worse than any of the Gentiles. This point agrees perfectly with Romans 3:9.

Paul is NOT contradicting himself (from Romans 2:13-16 or Acts 17:26-27) by saying that ALL Gentiles are evil sinners, no, rather, Paul is pointing out that many Jews are evil sinners similar to how the Jews view the Gentiles.

Even if Paul was saying that all human beings on earth were evil sinners who deserved condemnation (which, from above, I don’t think is accurate), look at what Paul says right below in Romans 3:

 “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” (Romans 3:25 ESV)

Selective Open Theism

Daniel A Fresh View of God, Free Will vs Predestination, Prophecy

There are many different views on God’s foreknowledge, predestination, prophecies, and free will.

I have recently embraced “Open Theism,” but my view is a customized version of Open Theism which harmonizes with the Scriptures even better (in my humble opinion).

I refer to my view as “Selective Theism” or “Selective Open Theism.” In general, it is the same as Open Theism, with one major difference: 

Open Theism says God cannot know certain things about the future because they haven’t happened yet, and God can’t know in advance what a person with free will would choose to do.

Selective Open Theism says God has the ability to know the future, but He chooses only to selectively know certain things, related to His purposes and prophecies, but blocks out the rest in order to allow free will to play out.

Selective Open Theism does a better job of explaining and harmonizing the fact that God, in the Bible, centuries in advance, predestined that evil men would murder His Son, Jesus, and also predestined that one of Jesus’ close friends would betray Him. (Acts 4:27-28) Otherwise, the alternative option is, that God had to cause the evil men to commit evil and murder Jesus, which would be a violation of James 1:13.

Jesus Himself exercised Selective Foreknowledge at Mark 13:32.

In the Old Testament, God seems to have exercised Selective Foreknowledge many times (Genesis 22:1, 12; Exodus 16:4; Exodus 20:20; many other passages too) where He blocks out future knowledge of free will choices, and has to watch them unfold as they happen.

However, by the same token, there are certain prophecies where God knows the minute, exact details, sometimes centuries in advance! (Daniel 9:24-26; Isaiah 45; 1 Samuel 10:2-16)

This also explains why God changes His mind at times. He discovers things that people are doing (or failing to do), and reacts accordingly. (Jonah 3:9-10; Exodus 32:14; Genesis 6:6-7)

The Bible makes it clear that God CAN change His mind unless He has sworn an oath or made a promise! (Jeremiah 18:6-10; Hebrews 6:17-18)

Now, the question may arise: How can God selectively choose what He wants to know about the future, unless He already knows ALL of the future?

This seems to be a mystery that the Bible simply doesn’t clearly explain. However, it possibly gives hints, if we examine how and when Jesus saw the future when He was on earth.

Each time Jesus saw the future, or spoke about the future of a thing or a person, He was right there with the thing or person. For example, Jesus was looking at the Temple when He foretold the future destruction of that Temple. Jesus was sitting next to Peter when He foretold that Peter would deny Him three times. Jesus was eating bread with Judas when Jesus saw that Judas was about to betray Him.

So, perhaps it is similar with God in heaven. Maybe God’s foreknowledge is triggered when He thinks about certain people or things, and then He can choose to zoom in or zoom out, regarding their future.

(The only other theory I can think of, is that God sees ALL of the future, but then He selects to forget most of it, in order to allow true free will.)

The Old Testament Law of Moses

The Bible makes it very clear that God only gave the Mosaic Law to the Jews for a limited time period, and that these laws included special rules for the culture and circumstances of that time, as well as concessions made for sinful, stubborn people, which did not represent God’s ideal commandments. (Matthew 19:8; Galatians 3:23-29)

The Law of Moses expired and became obsolete after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 5:1-4; Hebrews 8:7-13; Romans 10:4)

This, as well as the fact that God tolerated less-than-ideal practices in the Mosaic Law, such as polygamy, incest, slavery, women being treated as property, shows God to be flexible and open to change in His dealings with imperfect, evolving human beings.

The Case for Free Will

Daniel A Fresh View of God, Free Will vs Predestination, Science

The Case for Free Will

From an Atheist’s Perspective

Each of us assumes free will exists whenever we make a logical argument or an appeal to reason. If free will is an illusion, then so is the freedom to logically form an argument using reason. If you aren’t actually choosing to think about the logic of an argument, but instead, you’re only following pre-programmed cause-and-effect, there would be no way of ever knowing if anything is real, and you would never even be able to trust the conclusion that free will is an illusion, since that could be an illusion as well.

Coming to the conclusion that free will is an illusion is self-defeating (since, if it were true, we would never know whether it was actually true) and it goes against all the assumptions we make during logical arguments and using the scientific method. This conclusion destroys the very foundation that was used to arrive at the conclusion.

It therefore seems more logical to come to the conclusion which supports the validity and trustworthiness of logical conclusions, which is the existence of free will.

How Can the Subconscious Brain Choose Things WITHOUT Intention?

People who deny the existence of free will usually say that the subconscious brain selects our thoughts for us, then gives the conscious part of our minds the illusion that we used reason and logic to make a rational choice.

But think about this deeply: How can a part of the brain with NO intentionality, NO goal, and NO plan or purpose, choose to prefer truth over lies, or choose “good” morals over “bad” morals? How can this non-intentional part of your mind select what is rational over what is irrational, without any goal?

This leads directly into our next subheading…

Why Trust Your Subconscious?

If your subconscious has no intentionality, no plan, no purpose, and no goal, why would you trust any of your thoughts to be the truth instead of falsehood? Why would you trust any of your morals to be “good” instead of “bad?”

If your subconscious brain is constantly feeding the conscious brain illusions and lies, why would you believe any of your thoughts given to you by your subconscious?

Do We Have TWO Separate Wills in the Brain?

If you want to claim that your subconscious brain does operate according to its own will, with its own intentionality, plans, and goals, then you aren’t actually denying free will. Instead, what you are claiming is that your brain has TWO wills, one (the subconscious) which has more control over the other, and the conscious mind doesn’t have access to the subconscious mind.

In order for the subconscious brain to have intentionality, it would have to have its own free will, therefore, you still would have free will and intentionality, but somehow this would take place separately from your conscious mind.

So your subconscious has its own plans, and is deceiving your conscious brain so that you don’t get in its way.

I think it’s much simpler (thus following Occam’s Razor) and more logical, to assume that free will actually exists at the conscious level.

From a Biblical Perspective

Despite what many Calvinists and determinists say, the Bible makes it clear that Yahweh highly values and respects the free will that He granted to humans, and He doesn’t like to intervene to alter free will, or the course of history, unless certain thresholds are passed first.

God is love, and love is not possible without freedom to choose to express it. Without free will, “love” would just be a robotic action we were pre-programmed to perform. In fact, every action we take would be determined from eternity past, and God would basically be a puppet-master pulling all the strings, or simply watching things unfold exactly how He already decided they would.

The very first human events recorded in the Scriptures are God having humans go through tests so that they could exercise their free will – Adam and Eve on whether they would eat from the Tree, Cain on whether he would kill Abel or not.

God gave the precious gift of free will to His angels also. A beautiful spirit (commonly called Lucifer), a very high-ranking angel, was granted free will. But he used this free will to turn and attack God in an attempt to be worshiped as God himself. Lucifer harmed many of the other angels and humans in his destructive quest. Lucifer is now known as Satan the Devil. (Isaiah 14:9-20; Ezekiel 28:13-18; Luke 10:18)

Without free will, God had to have programmed Lucifer to rebel, and programmed Adam and Eve to sin, thus God would be the direct cause and architect of all of the evil and suffering we see on earth. This is in direct contradiction to what the Bible says at James 1:13. 

In addition, it would mean God Himself is very illogical and irrational in getting angry with His creation for doing exactly what He programmed them to do. This would not harmonize with the logical minds He gave us. Plus, many other Scriptures declare that God never does anything immoral or evil.

Also, it goes against how we view ourselves and how we view reality and logic, so even without appealing to the Bible, it doesn’t make sense. If we assume that our moral values were given to us by God, then it would be illogical for a God who has similar morals as we do, to be the author of evil.

To quote “Truth Magazine” on this topic:

“Morality is real only if mankind is free to choose. In a world of fate or determinism, in which all things are predetermined and fixed, mankind has no responsibility.”

God Changes His Mind

Daniel A Fresh View of God , ,

The popular modern claim in many Christian churches that “God never changes His mind,” is false and does NOT agree with the Bible.

The Holy Scriptures are actually quite clear that God does indeed change His mind:

* God changed His mind and regretted that He had created mankind because of their evil. (Genesis 6:6)

* The Lord changed His mind and decided not to destroy the Israelites after Moses pleaded with God. (Exodus 32:12-14)

* God changed His mind and told the angel to stop killing people. (2 Samuel 24:16)

* God changed His mind and decided not to annihilate King Rehoboam. (2 Chronicles 12:12)

* God changed His mind and decided not to destroy the city of Nineveh after He told Jonah He would. (Jonah 3:10)

* God promised that He would change His mind in response to humans changing their minds. (Jeremiah 12:15; 18:7-10)

___________________________

The only time God is not free to change His mind, is when He has made a vow, promise, or oath. He views those as unbreakable. (Hebrews 6:17-18)

1 Samuel 15:29 and Numbers 23:19 are declaring that God does not change His mind **like a human does** (in other words, God doesn’t change His mind for no reason, or for fickle/sinful reasons– God isn’t wishy-washy).