Cold Case Christianity: we are in control

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

Is God in Control or Are We in Control?

Posted: 13 Apr 2020 05:36 AM PDT 

I’m often asked where I “land” on the issue of God’s sovereignty and human freedom. How much free will do we actually have as humans? If God is all powerful and all knowing, if God knows the end from the beginning, if God has predestined us to come to faith, doesn’t it follow that humans are simply along for the ride? 

Rush has the answer:  Attention all planets of the Solar Federation:  we have assumed control...we have assumed control. (the All the World's a Stage album had the best version...RIP Neil Peart).

But seriously, a simple logically deductive syllogism shows libertarian freewill cannot exist if god's foreknowledge is infallible.

Anything God foreknows, is incapable of failing (dictionary definition of infallible)
God foreknows that Julie's will eat a candy bar tomorrow.
Therefore, Julie's eating a candy bar tomomrrow is incapable of failing.

There are only three ways to refute a deductive syllogism:  prove premise 1 is wrong, prove premise 2 is wrong, or prove the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

Sure, premise one could be wrong, but if so, then the doctrine of God's infallible foreknowledge is false.

As a Christian, it’s clear to me that God is powerful enough to accomplish his goals without limit (see Daniel 4:35, Romans 9:15-16, Ephesians 1:5-6, and Romans 1:9-11). I call this power of God to accomplish whatever He wants the “Make Sure” Will of God.

But then if God has any will beyond the "make sure" crap, then he is sort of like a drunk woman, preferrng to be uncertain.  I'll pass.

But if God is in complete control of every aspect of our lives, how do we answer the following questions?
 When people fail to come to faith, is it God who is preventing them?

If you stand around doing nothing while a child in yoru custody fails to use chemicals correctly and endures injury, is it YOU who is preventing their proper use?  If not, you must think we should get rid of our system of civil law, which charges people all the time with "negligence" (i.e., failure to act when acting was within one's power and acting would have prevented an injury without causing another)

 When evil happens in the world, is it God who is responsible?

Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then you tell me what is implied by your 2nd Timothy 3:16 trust that such scripture remains profitiable for doctrine, reproof and correction TODAY.

How could God ever hold us responsible for anything?

The same way we capture a wild animal on the loose in the neighborhood.  It's inability to control its dangerous desires doesn't mean we are obligated to turn away.

Is the ‘will of God’ a divine plan for our lives?

As a Christian bible-believer that's YOUR problem. You cannot show from the bible that God has a plan for any particular individual, and you cannot show that the bible has the least bit of relevance to modern humanity beyond the useless trifle of being a historical curiosity.  The question is whether God gives a shit about you at all.  The answer from actual reality is "no".  The answer form the bible only works for the people to who those books were originally intended.  Sucks to be you.

While the Bible affirms the sovereignty and power of God, it also provides examples when God does not seem to be able to accomplish something He desires. In Matthew 23:37-38, Jesus seems to be unable gather Israel because they were unwilling.

Agreed.  But as an atheist, I deny biblical inerrancy, and thereore do not expereince any compulsion to decide whether the bible teaches Arminianism or Calvnism.  It teaches both, which means the bible contradicts itself on doctrine.

In 2 Peter 3:8-10, We are told that God does not wish that anyone of us should perish (but that all of us should come to repentance), yet we know that many people in our world will NEVER accept Jesus, never come to repentance, and simply will not be saved. So what’s up with God’s sovereignty?

A better questoini would be:  Why should be blindly assume an apostle's theological viewpoint is necessarily correct?  Especially an apostle who denied Jesus three times, and who, even after experiencing the gift of the Holy Ghost in Acts 2, was condemned as a moral hypocrite by Paul.  Methinks the inerrantist's trust in biblical infallibility is just shy of foolhardy.  It is anything but realistic.

How can it be that something can be within ‘God’s will’ (God can desire something) yet He seems to be unable to make that something happen?

Easy, the bible contradicts itself.  Will that answer cause J. Warner Wallace to stop using Jesus to attract attention to himself?

I think the Bible actually describes two kinds of “will of God”.

That's a sobering admission, coming from an inerrantist.  No, you won't be "haronizing" freewill with God's sovereignty anytime soon, will you.

The first is what I call the “Make Sure” Will of God, the second is what I have come to call the “Sure Wants” Will of God.

Then god is fucking stupid, since if he "sure wants" something and has the "make sure" power to get the job done, then only he is to blame if he refuses to resolve the problem by exercise of his powers.

God wants all of us to be saved;

You cannot show that anything in the NT was intended to apply to modern-day people.  If we can show the NT authors intended to address 1st century people, YOU acquire the burden of showing they intended to address anybody else.  No sophistry about how God can intend a wider audience than the human author intended.  If the authors didn't intend something, then since the author was your only hope of showing the author's divine inspiration, any god who allegedly inspired them also didn't intend that something.  The reaosnableness of that inference is not going to disappear merely because you can preach about how God can have greater plans for a person than their own plans.

He wants all of us to come to faith in Jesus;

Even the people whom he ordained by his providence to live in times and circumstances preventing them from hearing about Jesus? 

He wants all of us to reflect his moral precepts;

He wants us to use fire to kill little girls for engaging in pre-marital sex (Leviticus 21:9)? Or did some dickhead "apologist" on the internet suddenly discover how easily the "satire" excuse can be exploited to defend biblical "inerrancy"?

He wants all of us to love one another.

Even those whom he instructs us to hate (Deut. 23:6)?

But he also knows that none of this is truly possible unless each and every one of us is allowed to have the ‘freedom’ to love, obey and follow (see Mark 3:34-35, 1 John 2:17, Ephesians 6:5-6, Romans 12:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 and 1 Peter 2:15-17). Without ‘free will’, humans are simply robots who respond according to pre-programming rather than from a position of true love and obedience.

you are assuming true love cannot exist without the libertarian notion of freewill existing.  Not true.  obviously dogs and lower mammals love their young, yet you would probably argue that as creatures of instinct they do not have "freewill".

You are also forgetting the deductive syllogism I started this post with.  If God's foreknowledge is infallible, then those human acts (such as love) that he foreknows are "incapable of failing", which logically prevents the person from withdrawing the love at the time God infallibly foreknows they will show that love.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’),

Bullshit, the way he turns humans to carnage in the bible, god is quite capable of simply using his power to rescue you from anything.  Telling yourself maybe God allowed you to do evil because of Frank Turek's "Ripple-Effect" sophistry is mere self-delusion.  The ripple-effect theory does nothing to render the atheist theory of evil "unreasonable".

but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

Then he is fucking stupid and his problems are his own fault.

Yes, it is God’s will that no evil should exist in the world (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that evil is eliminated.

Yes, it is dad's will that his baby son not get raped, (it's protection dad 'sure wants'), but this does not mean that dad will 'make sure' that such rape possibility is eliminated.  Nice going.

Yes, it is God’s will that we should live a certain way and seek to know His heart and character, but this does not mean that he will ‘make sure’ that no one behaves immorally.

I'd say you've ventured further out into the surf than atheism can permit.  This Arminian/Calvinist debate is YOUR problem.

There are two kinds of ‘will of God’ passages in the scripture. Some describe God’s sovereignty and some describe God’s moral character and desire for our lives.

And there is no reason to think the bible is inerrant.  So there's nothing unreaosnable in assuning the bible gave rise to churches with contradictory theology, beause the bible itself teaches contradictory theology.

While it is certainly within God’s power to eliminate all evil, to control our behavior and to allow none of us the possibility of rejecting Him, to do so would eliminate the possibility for something precious to God: the ability to love. (I’ve written more on this in the section on Evil here at ColdCaseChristianity.com

So what's more important to god?  The criminal's ability to love?  Or the child's safety from rape?

Under God's stupid reasoning, America's love would be more god-like if jails removed their locks and incarcerated only those who chose to endure their punishment.  if God is going to let rapists and murders run free, how could we have less love than god if we also allowed such criminals the same freedom?  If God isn't going to stop evil, then it must be good to let evil exist.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

You are only saying that because of the bible's contradictory statements, not because it is at all clear that this is in fact the case.  What a fool to pretend that so many ancient authors, seperated from each other by centuries, nevertheless wrote in perfect harmony about subjects philosphers have disagreed on for millenia.  Not even most Christian scholars accept biblical inerrancy!

How exactly do your musings do ANYTHING to disturb atheism?