I finally have a moment to explain the background to my previous post on Freedom while I have a moment at lunch!  (That’s right, we’re working overtime again…unfortunately, since we’ll have Thursday and Friday off this week for Thanksgiving, we won’t get overtime pay…which kinda makes it hard to be motivated to work overtime sometimes….)

Anyway, on Sundays I get together with some friends for a theological/philosophical discussion at a local coffee shop.  The coffee shop is called Agia Sophia, which is Greek for “Holy Wisdom.”  As one might guess from the name, it’s also run by people who are Greek Orthodox (I’m making the distinction for my parent’s sake, who get to deal with the Russian Orthodox believers in Ukraine–but from now on, I’ll just call it Orthodox for short!).

Ironically, this Sunday we had five people there.  The names: Peter, Andrew, Joshua, Joseph, and John.  Yes, we could practically write our own gospels :-D  In any case, the make-up of the group consisted of myself (PCA Presbyterian) and my brother (Reformed, but non-denominational at the moment), a Roman Catholic, an Orthodox, and a person who is coming out of the general Evangelical church who is now looking intently into Catholicism.

In any case, one of the people whom I had not met before gave the presentation Sunday.  This is before I knew what his background was.  It began as a look at when the New Testament Church began.  Eventually, we morphed into a discussion as to what the intent of Genesis 1:1 was.  That is, what is the reason God created anything in the first place?

This person presented the “freedom” argument that I mentioned briefly in that Pensèe previously linked.  This was in response to my pointing out that given Ephesians 1 and the fact that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world and also Revelation 13:8 which speaks either of people’s names being written in the book of Life before the foundation of the world or that it was the Lamb (Christ) who was slain before the foundation of the world (depending on how one translates the Greek) then it would certainly be the case that before Creation, God had already intended to save some and for Christ to be the means by which this salvation would occur (this is also demonstrated in 1 Peter 1:20, which speaks of Christ in the following manner: “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world”).

In other words, my argument was that the purpose of Creation was primarily soteriological.  That is, Creation occured so that God could demonstrate the depths of His love in saving those who are sinners (Romans 5:6-8).  This required there be sin first, and thus part of the intent of Creation included the fact that there would be sin.  This is obviously a hard saying, yet one that is inescapable based on the Scriptures I’ve alluded to here.

Naturally, there was some disagreement from the guy who was presenting the talk.  He gave the freedom argument.  That is, God wanted to create people who were able to either accept or reject Him.  He didn’t want to create automatons.

Yet this doesn’t solve the fact that Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world, and it doesn’t solve the fact that we who are saved are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.  Both of these things occured before God created anything.

Thus, we are left with a problem for Arminianism.  Either we must stipulate that God intentionally created people so that they would sin, or else we must argue that it is impossible for God to actually create anyone who would not sin.  You see, if God did not want them to sin, yet He knew that they would sin and He created them anyway, then this means that God is not able to create people who could freely refrain from sinning–for if He could, would He not have done so?

In short, the Arminian must argue that free will necessitates sin!  This is an even stronger version of total depravity than the Calvinist holds to, for indeed the Calvinist argues that it is not man’s freedom that is the problem but it is his nature.  Thus, in heaven, Christians will have freewill but their natures will be sanctified and thus they will continually choose good; but for the Arminian, the nature isn’t the problem–freedom itself is, and therefore there can be no guarantee of salvation even in heaven!  What is to stop the Christian from freely sinning from heaven in such a scenario?

Since my lunch break is over I’ll have to stop here for now :-)  However, a quick question:  Do you know which theological background the presenter had?

That’s right: he was Roman Catholic.  Which only goes to show that when it comes to the mechanics of soteriology, there is very little difference between Arminians and Catholics.