Is forgiveness without a price a virtue?

[Justin108]

Is it a good thing to be able to forgive without any price?

If so, is God imperfect for being unable to forgive sin without Jesus' sacrifice?

[The Tanager]

2. Radical evidence for radical claims.

Can you name a few reasons why the average person ought to believe int he Christian God? The reason you gave me for why you believe in him was a personal experience. But not everyone had this personal experience. So personal experience aside, what reason does the average person have to believe in the Christian God?

Cosmological argument, teleological, ontological, moral, various other arguments that make a cumulative case. I know those don't necessarily point directly to the Christian God, but they are part of the cumulative case. Historical evidence for the Resurrection. Personal experience. I further believe in the Christian God for both of those reasons.

If you're suggesting we use the Bible as evidence for the resurrection, would it also be ok to use the Quran as evidence for Islam?

It would be okay to use the Qur'an as evidence for various events that it speaks about. That doesn't mean the Biblical accounts or the Qur'an are necessarily true, but they are historical documents to be considered when trying to come at what we can know or rationally believe about history.

So God negated the free will of Moses, Paul, and everyone else he appeared to/spoke to in the Bible?

No. I wasn't catching that you still meant 'how to convince you' was 'appear to me.' I take those as two different issues and responded to the first without limiting it to 'appear to me.' I don't think God appearing to someone would necessarily negate free will.

As long as you don't consider the argument from ignorance or the god-of-the-gaps as the "best explanation", then yes.

To clarify, you mean that best explanation is okay? We don't need 100% certainty? That 'best explanation' is good enough to rationally believe in God's existence?

You're not answering my question. You're just repeating yours. How would I be almost certain that what I'm feeling is another being? I cannot answer this if I cannot even imagine it.

I don't know you, so I don't know how you would be almost certain. I'm making the general point that Person A feels almost certain (however Person A got to that feeling of 'almost certainty').

I said in post 116 "he should make it impossible for me to even hear Satan's voice if I did not want to". My position did not change.

Thanks for clarifying it in a way that I could understand your original point, then. But now I'm confused on why you made this point.

No but Calvinism is the belief that his omniscience leads to some being destined to be damned, regardless of what they do. If God would be "wasting his effort", trying to convince someone because he knows that someone will go to hell, then that someone is damned regardless of what he does. This is Calvinism

I don't disagree about Calvinism. But 'wasting his effort' doesn't mean people are damned regardless of what they do. They are damned exactly because of what they do. God knows what they will freely do. The cause-effect is human action-damnation. The cause-effect isn't God's knowledge of their action-damnation. God's knowledge of is not the cause, but comes about because of the human action/choice.

4. Greater goods obtain with divine silence

a) greater total number of everlasting relationships
b) hiddenness buys more quaity in the relationship
c) hiddenness buys more quality total
d) ...with more participation in God's work

Let's look at (a) first. One, Fewer people may love God because we may become chafed by God's perfection appearing so clearly before us. The "we get it already" kind of thing.

Two, our suffering may become more personal if we have God explicitly refusing our request for healings and the like. We may feel more betrayed, thinking God is obligated to help us in spite of the greater good. This could result in many enemies and haters of God, which could catalyze into a movement since humans galvanize each other into their causes.

Three, we could lose people like CS Lewis who came to faith through struggling with the silence of God and subsequently has helped millions of people in their relationship with God through his writings. There could also be less exaggerated examples where the silence of God in a specific atheists' life greatly impacts other people to believe in and deepen their trust in God.

[The Tanager]

3. The Effect of Sin

God wants us all to choose surrender, yet literally everyone of us chooses self-reliance. Yes, God wants us to have a completely different nature. He designed us to find self-reliance more attractive yet he wants us to choose surrender

God wants us to have a different nature than the one we choose for ourselves, yes. But you said God expects us to have a different one than God designed us to have. That is not what Christianity claims. If you think Christianity necessarily leads to that, then give an argument to back up your claim.

You've given one reason, but description of what occurs does not necessitate prescription of what occurs.

Because, according to your definition, heaven isn't a place at all. Heaven is an action. The action of surrendering to God relationally in every situation is heaven.

But actions of physical beings take place in a place. Heaven describes both.

Are atheists welcome in this new earth?

They don't want to be in it in a relationship with God, so God doesn't force it upon them.

I never said we can't. I said it's outside our nature. There's a difference. Tigers can eat carrots, but they don't because it is in their nature to prefer meat. Similarly, humans can choose surrender, but they don't because it is in their nature to prefer self-reliance.

It wasn't in their initial nature to prefer self-reliance. But as they begin to choose self-reliance their nature is transformed, habituated into one that now prefers self-reliance. And it could have been the other way around if anyone made that choice.

If literally every single human chooses self-reliance, how can you say this is not our nature?

Because description of what occurs does not necessitate prescription of what occurs. Why are you making that jump? If I roll a dice five times and it comes up a 2, 4, 6, 6, 4 does this mean it is not in the nature of a dice to come up a 3? No. Why not? Because description of what occurs does not necessitate prescription of what occurs.

No. "Free will" would result in a scenario where some people choose option 2b over 2a. The fact that literally everyone ends up choosing 2a over 2b tells us 2a is more attractive.

So, free will MUST result in a some people choosing surrender in every situation. That outcome is determined? Or is it just probable?

Then why does no one ever choose this?

For various reasons. We aren't all the same.

Why does everyone choose this?

For various reasons. We aren't all the same.

Why is the reverse not true? Why is it not harder to choose self-reliance once you've chosen surrender?

I think it probably is. But humans have not chosen surrender enough. If Christianity is true, however, with Jesus' help we will become one who does this and it won't be hard to freely choose surrender eventually.

I am talking about when he created us... If God wanted us to surrender to him (when he created us), why did he not make our nature to desire it more (when he created us)?

Because God wanted us to FREELY surrender. If our nature was to desire surrender more we would surrender out of instinct, not free will.

Why is our nature (when he created us) to desire self reliance over surrender?

It's not.

Not just "more", it was chosen always.

No, I never said it was always chosen. We've chosen surrender to God in our lives as humans. But we've gotten to the point where self-reliance is now what we choose...and this brings our need for Jesus in.

If surrender and self-reliance are equally attractive and equally addictive then why is it that literally everyone chooses self-reliance?

Either
a) one HUGE coincidence
b) self-reliance is more attractive/addictive to our nature
c) other (please specify)

Free will necessitates the possibility that zero, one, 25%, 50%, or 100% of humans, over their millions of choices in life, choose self-reliance. History shows us 100% is how it has worked out. Not a coincidence. These aren't various mechanical processes or things like a die that has no free will. Free will means all of these possibilities are possible. But only one of those outcomes will actually happen.

[The Tanager]

4. Analysis of One Analogy of the Christian Solution

Why does he need to do it with us? Why can't he help us do it without doing it with us?

He could have. He gave us the Law. But we freely blew it. We disobey and choose self-reliance. So now if it's going to be done...because of us...He must do it with us.

Jesus has that nature. Not us. How does it help us that Jesus has this nature?

Because we now have someone who can walk us through actually helping us to change our nature. God can't walk it through if God can't walk surrendering. God can't walk surrender without having a surrendering nature.

But Jesus is God. How can Jesus surrender to himself? How is this any different from self-reliance?

Jesus is a Person of the Triune God who takes on a created, human nature that by definition should be surrendering to the Divine to be what it was made to be. It's not like a human surrendering to himself, because that would be a human nature surrendering to that same human nature. That would be self-reliance. That's not the Incarnation.

Ok let me be more specific. Why can't God do it without becoming Jesus first? Why can't pre-Jesus God walk us through the decisions, by our side and help us actually surrender?

For the twentieth time, because you can't surrender if you don't have that ability. You can't move your hand if you don't have a hand.

Is God human now? Does God currently have a surrendered human nature?

Yes. Jesus, one of the Persons of the Triune God currently has a perfectly surrendering human nature.

The entire point of my analogy is that the psychiatrist (God) does not need to recover from addiction himself (surrender) in order to help the addict recover from addiction (surrender). That is the whole point of my analogy. Recovering from addiction is "surrender" in my analogy. Why does God need to recover from addiction first in order to help others recover from addiction?

Then your analogy does not apply to my view of the Christian solution, so it is useless as a critique of that solution.

So the psychiatrist can't help the addict recover unless the psychiatrist get's hooked on drugs first? Because that's exactly what the analogy implies.

Not at all what it implies if you want it to be an analogy of my view. The psychiatrist can't help the addict IN THE SPECIFIC WAY of hand-over-hand flushing the drugs down the toilet unless the psychiatrist has a hand. Without that, the psychiatrist doesn't have the ability to physically move the addict to do the action the addict needs to do but can't do on his or her own.

Of course it is impossible to move a hand with your hand if you don't have a hand, but it is not impossible to move a hand using other methods if you don't have a hand. So let's apply this analogy to God

So
moving our hand = surrender
God moving our hand = helping us surrender
God moving our hand with his hand = helping us surrender through Jesus
God moving our hand using something else = helping us surrender using not-Jesus

If God's goal is to help us "move our hand" (surrender), then he does not need to use his own hand to achieve this. He can move our hand through other means. He is omnipotent.

And, once again, there is another method God could use and DID use. God told us free creatures what we needed to do and how to do it: surrender. But God can't force us to freely do this (because that is logically incoherent). We have failed at that method even with God's help, so we need a different method: Jesus.

I've said there are two methods. If you think there is a third available to God then name it. Don't just offer some vague 'if God is omnipotent, there must be a third option.' Logically, I think these two are it.

Ok read carefully... in post 118, I asked "Can you show a Divine being taking on a surrendering nature as logically impossible?". I never said it is logically impossible. I asked if YOU can show ME that it is logically impossible.

I read yours carefully, now read my response carefully. I don't think it is logically impossible. I never claimed it was logically impossible for God to take on a surrendering nature. You seemed to as I stated in that last post.

In post 65 you claimed that being human was not in God's nature. And you argued that, therefore, God can't become human and Christianity is absurd.

I never said "replace it", I said "fix it".

And you implied why couldn't he just do the same thing he did at creation the first time around. But creating a new one means replacing the old one.

Yes that is what I'm asking. If I were an omnipotent wizard, I would be able to breathe fire in a dragon way without becoming a dragon, so why can't God surrender in a human way without becoming human?

What is the dragon way of breathing fire? It involves having dragon parts.

Ok so now you're moving the goalpost. Logical fallacies are a clear sign of desperation. I would recommend you rephrase your entire argument and fix the wording this time. If R2 is as you defined it in post 123, then the logical conclusion would be that a freely and perfectly surrendered human nature is logically impossible. Fix your wording and get back to me

Absolutely not. I never moved the goalpost. I didn't add any words, you missed the wording when you responded and therefore misunderstood what I was saying. It always said (at the time of creation), but you missed that in your response in post 128, which I pointed out in post 133. That isn't moving the goalpost, but helping you see where the goalpost always was. Anyone can see that by looking back at those posts. Go back, read the argument carefully and then reply to what it actually says.

[The Tanager]

Please point out which of the following premises are incorrect

P1 - it is impossible to surrender if you do not have a higher being to surrender to
P2 - God has no higher being to surrender to
P3 - Jesus is God
C1 - Jesus has no higher being to surrender to (from P2 and P3)
C2 - it is impossible for Jesus to surrender (from C1 and P1)

P2 - God (with a Divine nature alone) has no higher being to surrender to
P3 - Jesus is one Person of the Triune God (with a Divine nature and human nature).

Which means C1 and C2 no longer follow.

[Danmark]

Cosmological argument, teleological, ontological, moral, various other arguments that make a cumulative case. I know those don't necessarily point directly to the Christian God....

Exactly. Those arguments are all empty, invalid, and circular. Even if they were persuasive, they certainly do not 'point to' any specific god. Empty arguments piled onto themselves do not become effective simply because there are more than one of them; hence there is no 'cumulative' persuasive effect.

Historical evidence for the Resurrection. Personal experience. I further believe in the Christian God for both of those reasons.

There is no 'historical evidence for the Resurrection'* and 'personal experience' is of no persuasive value to others in advancing a supernatural claim that defies objective reality.

________________-
*'Historical evidence for the resurrection' is a separate topic that has been hotly debated here and elsewhere for many years by many people. I see no such evidence; certainly nothing sufficient to support some belief in the supernatural.

[Justin108]

You can. I can't

You think you can't. You may be right. You may be wrong. I am not being reasonable if I simply take your word for it, though.

If I made the claim that I can fly and you responded with "you can but I can't", would I be able to say "you just think you can't fly but you actually can"?

But anyway, as I said before, if you insist that I can then explain to me how

Ok. Please show me how I can choose my belief? Because I sincerely don't know how.

Do you mean you don't even understand what it means?

I mean that I do not know how to choose belief as belief to me is an automatic process

If so, what it means is that you have considered an issue and there is more than 1 plausible alternative. You then select one of those plausible alternatives to believe as true amidst the uncertainty.

I can't do that because in virtually every instance, one option is more plausible than the other. I automatically believe the most probable outcome. When both options are virtually equal in plausibility, I take the middle ground of uncertainty.

Regarding God (the Christian God to be exact), I do not consider him plausible and so I cannot choose that belief. So using your method, belief in God is still not a choice (to me) as the Christian God is not plausible (to me).

I am merely explaining how I function. Since we are discussing thought processes, I literally have no way of demonstrating my claim. I can not take a picture of how my though processes work. So you can either
a) Accept you and I process information differently and that my beliefs are based on uncontrollable intrinsic conclusions
b) Believe I am a liar

Or (c) Believe that you are honestly wrong. You are explaining how you think you function. For me to agree with you I need to know why you think you function that way.

How exactly should I explain that to you? Suppose I made the claim that "my heart beating is an automatic process and I literally cannot help it". If you were to ask "how do you know your heart beating is an automatic process?", how would I be able to explain that to you? What would be a satisfactory answer?

Ok then make the selection (without evidence) that fairies exist.

Why? We are talking about choice. Why limit choice to mean making a selection without evidence.

I am trying to illustrate that if belief was truly a choice, then evidence would not be needed. Nothing is needed to make any other choice, so why evidence needed to make the choice to believe?

Simply put, is it possible to make the choice to believe in fairies without evidence? If no, then it is by definition not a choice.

If one cannot choose, it is not a choice. Do you agree with this statement?

Choice means making a selection and can be done with/after looking at the evidence OR without looking at the evidence.

Just to clarify, you are in fact saying it is possible to choose a belief without looking at the evidence? If this is what you are saying (which, according to this quote, it is exactly what you are saying) then why can't you choose to believe in fairies? I have asked you this many times and every single time you come up with an excuse for why you won't. I am asking if you can. Here you clearly say one can make a selection without evidence. You have no evidence for fairies. Can you make the selection to believe in fairies?

What exactly is my definition of choice according to you?

Making a selection without looking at the evidence.

I have never defined choice this way. I said if belief is a choice then evidence is not necessary. So you can make a choice with evidence, but you don't need evidence.

Here you seem to say that if evidence is involved, it can't be a choice. What am I missing here?

No I said if evidence is needed then it can't be a choice.

Fairies are not logically impossible so why did you call belief in fairies "not a live option"?

Because logical impossibility is not the only thing that kills an option. People that tell us information about fairies don't even believe they existed.

Have you ever wondered if fairies are real? I'm here to tell you, my friend, that indeed they are.
https://exemplore.com/magic/How-to-Find-Real-Fairies

Among many other things. If you think there is actual evidence worth considering, let me know and I'll consider it.

So you're saying that unless there is evidence, something is a dead option? Please give me the evidence for the Christian God

Can you perhaps think of a reason that does not automatically assume the atheist in question is evil? Can you think of a reason why a moral atheist would choose atheism over theism?

You mean like "a feeling of rationality" that I gave in that last post? Most humans seem to see such a feeling as being beneficial.

Can one not get a feeling of rationality from choosing theism?

What is the difference between belief in fairies and belief in God?
Fairies don't have thousands of years of debate on their existence.

Why does this matter? All this means is that the topic of God is more popular. So this is basically an appeal to popularity.

They don't have cosmological, teleological, ontological, moral...

All of these arguments end in "therefore, a supernatural being exists". Normally people then fill in the gaps and say "and that supernatural being is God". How do we know this supernatural being isn't fairies? You can use every one of these arguments to form the conclusion that fairies exist.

To illustrate:
- using the cosmological argument, I can conclude that fairies are the first cause
- using the teleological argument, I can conclude that fairies designed the complex world
- using the ontological argument, I can conclude that fairies are the greatest beings in the universe
- using the moral argument, I can conclude that morality comes from fairies

Oh so because you personally believe fairies to be absurd, you immediately reject them as "dead options"? To me, the Christian God is just as absurd as fairies. Can I now go ahead and call the Christian God a "dead option"?

If you really think they are absurd in the same way than you have simply ignored the history of philosophical debate for the past thousands of years.

If you think fairies are absurd, then you have simply ignored the philosophical arguments I have just provided.

And just to note (as already mentioned), I find the Christian God to be absurd. None of the philosophical arguments necessarily conclude the Christian God. The arguments simply conclude a supernatural being. I'm fine with a deistic god. It's the Christian one I find absurd.

[Justin108]

Can you name a few reasons why the average person ought to believe int he Christian God? The reason you gave me for why you believe in him was a personal experience. But not everyone had this personal experience. So personal experience aside, what reason does the average person have to believe in the Christian God?

Cosmological argument, teleological, ontological, moral, various other arguments that make a cumulative case. I know those don't necessarily point directly to the Christian God, but they are part of the cumulative case.

Imagine I was a Deist. How would you go about convincing me that your God is real?

Historical evidence for the Resurrection.

I haven't seen any

Personal experience.

You can't use that as evidence

It would be okay to use the Qur'an as evidence for various events that it speaks about. That doesn't mean the Biblical accounts or the Qur'an are necessarily true, but they are historical documents to be considered when trying to come at what we can know or rationally believe about history.

Ok I considered them and I found them unconvincing. Now what?

To summarize, you made the claim that "Yes, I do think the average person has enough reason to believe in (the Christian?) God's existence."

Yet so far, all you've given me is
- the philosophical arguments, which point to gods in general and so can be used to justify just about any religion (not just Christianity)
- the evidence for the resurrection, which is "the Bible says so"

Is this what you meant when you said the average person has enough reason to believe in the Christian God? Or do you have other reasons you have not yet mentioned?

So God negated the free will of Moses, Paul, and everyone else he appeared to/spoke to in the Bible?

No. I wasn't catching that you still meant 'how to convince you' was 'appear to me.' I take those as two different issues and responded to the first without limiting it to 'appear to me.' I don't think God appearing to someone would necessarily negate free will.

You said "using your definition of convince (as I see it) negates free will" (post 136). What do you think my definition of "convince" is?

To clarify, you mean that best explanation is okay? We don't need 100% certainty? That 'best explanation' is good enough to rationally believe in God's existence?

If you can justify why it is "the best explanation", then yes.

You're not answering my question. You're just repeating yours. How would I be almost certain that what I'm feeling is another being? I cannot answer this if I cannot even imagine it.

I don't know you, so I don't know how you would be almost certain. I'm making the general point that Person A feels almost certain (however Person A got to that feeling of 'almost certainty').

So you're asking if I would be convinced that God exists if I felt almost certain that God's pretense is within me?

Thanks for clarifying it in a way that I could understand your original point, then. But now I'm confused on why you made this point.

When I suggested that God speaks to me directly, you asked "how would you know it isn't Satan?". Well here's your answer.

I don't disagree about Calvinism. But 'wasting his effort' doesn't mean people are damned regardless of what they do. They are damned exactly because of what they do. God knows what they will freely do.

Does God "know" that I will still not believe in him if he appeared to me?

Let's look at (a) first. One, Fewer people may love God because we may become chafed by God's perfection appearing so clearly before us. The "we get it already" kind of thing.

This makes no sense. Can you please restructure this argument? What exactly do you mean by "chafed"?

Will all atheists get "chafed" by God's perfection? Would you get "chafed" by God's perfection if he actually showed it to you?

Two, our suffering may become more personal if we have God explicitly refusing our request for healings and the like.

So God refusing our requests by ignoring us is somehow better? If I were a Christian, I would be far more offended by God not doing anything than if God told me why he isn't doing it.

We may feel more betrayed, thinking God is obligated to help us in spite of the greater good.

This is already the case in the current state of things. Many blame God for betraying them. Many feel God is obligated to help them. How would God revealing himself change anything?

Three, we could lose people like CS Lewis who came to faith

Why is it important that CS Lewis came to belief in God through faith rather than reason? What's so special about faith?

Three, we could lose people like CS Lewis who came to faith through struggling with the silence of God and subsequently has helped millions of people in their relationship with God through his writings.

If God revealed himself, then people like CS Lewis would not be necessary. This is like saying "if food was readily available to people in Africa, then there would be no one helping get food to people in Africa. Therefore it is a good thing that there isn't food readily available to all people in Africa". Do you see the flaw in this reasoning?

[Justin108]

God wants us all to choose surrender, yet literally everyone of us chooses self-reliance. Yes, God wants us to have a completely different nature. He designed us to find self-reliance more attractive yet he wants us to choose surrender

God wants us to have a different nature than the one we choose for ourselves, yes.

That is not the nature I was referring to. To clarify, let's define a few terms for debate

Default-nature: this is the nature we began with. This was before we chose self-reliance. This was before we chose anything.

Chosen-nature: this is the 2a, 2b we've been talking about. This is self-reliance and surrender. Each of these is a chosen nature.

So to get back to my earlier question, with these definitions in mind.

God wants us all to choose surrender, yet literally everyone of us chooses self-reliance. God wants us to have a completely different default-nature. He designed us to find self-reliance more attractive yet he wants us to choose surrender. He designed us with a default-nature that is more attracted to self-reliance. Why did he do this?

Are atheists welcome in this new earth?

They don't want to be in it in a relationship with God

How do you know what atheists want? I would want a relationship with God. I just don't believe he exists

so God doesn't force it upon them.

So instead he forces us to die and go to hell. I would gladly go to this new earth. God allowing me would not be forcing me

I never said we can't. I said it's outside our nature. There's a difference. Tigers can eat carrots, but they don't because it is in their nature to prefer meat. Similarly, humans can choose surrender, but they don't because it is in their nature to prefer self-reliance.

It wasn't in their initial nature to prefer self-reliance. But as they begin to choose self-reliance

Why did they choose self-reliance then??? Why did everyone choose self-reliance?? Why is it that there are no instances of people choosing surrender, and then continually choosing surrender? Why is self-reliance like some kind of addictive drug that forces you to choose it the moment you get a taste, but surrender isn't? Why is self-reliance so attractive? Why is it so addictive?

their nature is transformed, habituated into one that now prefers self-reliance. And it could have been the other way around if anyone made that choice.

Why did no one else make that choice? How is it that literally no one has ever chosen surrender? How is it that no one ever chooses the other way around?

If literally every single human chooses self-reliance, how can you say this is not our nature?

Because description of what occurs does not necessitate prescription of what occurs. Why are you making that jump? If I roll a dice five times and it comes up a 2, 4, 6, 6, 4 does this mean it is not in the nature of a dice to come up a 3? No.

The difference is you rolled the dice 5 times. Contrast to humans, there are currently 7 billion living humans and even more humans that have died over the years. And not a single one chose surrender? If you rolled a dice several billion times and it does not land on 3, I will find that highly suspicious.

No. "Free will" would result in a scenario where some people choose option 2b over 2a. The fact that literally everyone ends up choosing 2a over 2b tells us 2a is more attractive.

So, free will MUST result in a some people choosing surrender in every situation. That outcome is determined? Or is it just probable?

Probable is an understatement. It will be staggeringly improbable for literally billions of people to all choose 2a over 2b. It's about as likely as landing heads billions of times in a row, flipping a coin.

Then why does no one ever choose this?

For various reasons. We aren't all the same.

it would seem we are all the same because for some mystery reason, we all choose 2a.

I am talking about when he created us... If God wanted us to surrender to him (when he created us), why did he not make our nature to desire it more (when he created us)?

Because God wanted us to FREELY surrender. If our nature was to desire surrender more we would surrender out of instinct, not free will.

Yet our nature is to desire self-reliance. So what's the difference? Literally all of us choose self-reliance. It would be hard to argue that this isn't out of instinct when literally all of us choose it.

To illustrate, there are people with eating disorders where they eat sand. There are literally no people who choose surrender. It is more natural for us to eat sand than it is to choose surrender.

Why is our nature (when he created us) to desire self reliance over surrender?

It's not.

Oh ok. So it's just coincidence that we all, literally every single one of us, chooses self-reliance? One massive coincidence?

If surrender and self-reliance are equally attractive and equally addictive then why is it that literally everyone chooses self-reliance?

Either
a) one HUGE coincidence
b) self-reliance is more attractive/addictive to our nature
c) other (please specify)

Free will necessitates the possibility that zero, one, 25%, 50%, or 100% of humans, over their millions of choices in life, choose self-reliance.

Yes. But if it turns out that literally 100% end up choosing self-reliance, then this would be a) one HUGE coincidence. Is that the one you're going with?

History shows us 100% is how it has worked out. Not a coincidence.

coincidence
kəʊˈɪnsɪd(ə)ns/
noun
1.
a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.

Is it remarkable that literally 100% of people chose self-reliance over surrender? Yes.

Is there an apparent causal connection? If yes, then please tell me the causal connection? If no, then this is by definition a coincidence. The causal connection that I suggested (it's in our default-nature to choose self-reliance) you reject. So do you perhaps have a different causal connection to why 100% of us choose self-reliance over surrender?

[Justin108]

Why does he need to do it with us? Why can't he help us do it without doing it with us?

He could have. He gave us the Law. But we freely blew it. We disobey and choose self-reliance. So now if it's going to be done...because of us...He must do it with us.

So that's it? There's the Law, and then there's him becoming Jesus? Those are the only possible options? Sounds pretty limited for an omnipotent being.

Let me rephrase my earlier question: Why does he need to do it with us in order to get us to successfully surrender? Why can't he successfully help us do it without doing it with us? Why is "doing it with us" the only possible successful solution? Why is an omnipotent God so limited?

Jesus has that nature. Not us. How does it help us that Jesus has this nature?

Because we now have someone who can walk us through actually helping us to change our nature. God can't walk it through if God can't walk surrendering.

You don't need to be able to do something in order to walk someone through it.

God can't walk surrender without having a surrendering nature.

Please explain why it is logically impossible for God to walk us through surrendering without having a surrendering nature

But Jesus is God. How can Jesus surrender to himself? How is this any different from self-reliance?

Jesus is a Person of the Triune God

Define Person

...who takes on a created, human nature that by definition should be surrendering to the Divine

Is "the Divine" someone else? Or is it the same being? If it's the same being, then Jesus is literally surrendering to himself. This is self-reliance. At this point it just sounds like you're making these things up as you go along

Ok let me be more specific. Why can't God do it without becoming Jesus first? Why can't pre-Jesus God walk us through the decisions, by our side and help us actually surrender?

For the twentieth time, because you can't surrender if you don't have that ability.

For the twentieth time, explain why it is logically impossible to do so.

You can't move your hand if you don't have a hand.

Obviously. But God is not moving his own hand, he's moving ours. I can move your hand even if I didn't have a hand myself.

The entire point of my analogy is that the psychiatrist (God) does not need to recover from addiction himself (surrender) in order to help the addict recover from addiction (surrender). That is the whole point of my analogy. Recovering from addiction is "surrender" in my analogy. Why does God need to recover from addiction first in order to help others recover from addiction?

Then your analogy does not apply to my view of the Christian solution, so it is useless as a critique of that solution.

So a psychiatrist can help an addict without becoming an addict, but God can't help humans without becoming human? So in this instance, the psychiatrist has fewer limitations than God? That's odd.

It is not useless as a critique. It perfectly illustrates why God would not first need to afflict himself with human-ness in order to help humans. A God that would need this is terribly finite and thus not omnipotent.

So the psychiatrist can't help the addict recover unless the psychiatrist get's hooked on drugs first? Because that's exactly what the analogy implies.

Not at all what it implies if you want it to be an analogy of my view. The psychiatrist can't help the addict IN THE SPECIFIC WAY of hand-over-hand flushing the drugs down the toilet unless the psychiatrist has a hand. ...

Ok why are you introducing the "hand-to-hand" analogy here? That was an entirely different analogy. In this analogy, "surrender" is recovering from drug addiction. So to apply that analogy to God, God would have to recover from drug addiction (surrender) himself in order to have a recovered-nature (surrendered nature). If you don't like my analogy, then point out its flaws. Don't just shove it aside and go back to your "hand-to-hand" analogy. The reason my analogy is fitting is because according to you, God would need to change himself (become human) in order to get a surrendered-nature. My analogy captures that perfectly. The psychiatrist needs to change himself (become an addict) in order to get a surrendered nature (recovered nature). Where is the flaw in my analogy?

Of course it is impossible to move a hand with your hand if you don't have a hand, but it is not impossible to move a hand using other methods if you don't have a hand. So let's apply this analogy to God

So
moving our hand = surrender
God moving our hand = helping us surrender
God moving our hand with his hand = helping us surrender through Jesus
God moving our hand using something else = helping us surrender using not-Jesus

If God's goal is to help us "move our hand" (surrender), then he does not need to use his own hand to achieve this. He can move our hand through other means. He is omnipotent.

And, once again, there is another method God could use and DID use. God told us free creatures what we needed to do and how to do it: surrender. But God can't force us to freely do this (because that is logically incoherent). We have failed at that method even with God's help, so we need a different method: Jesus.

Read what I said again. If God's goal is to help us "move our hand" (surrender), then he does not need to use his own hand to achieve this. His other methods did not achieve this. In other words, if God were omnipotent, he would be able to successfully help us surrender without becoming Jesus first. He can successfully move our hand through other means. He is omnipotent.

I've said there are two methods. If you think there is a third available to God then name it. Don't just offer some vague 'if God is omnipotent, there must be a third option.' Logically, I think these two are it.

Your entire solution is vague!

Step 1 - God became Jesus
Step 2 - God achieved a surrendered human nature
Step 3 - Using this surrendered human nature, Jesus helped us surrender (somehow)

Step 3 is incredibly vague. Can you perhaps explain how he did this? Not how he metaphorically did this, so don't tell me about hand-holding again... I want to know the logical process of step 3. How did step 3 happen?

I read yours carefully, now read my response carefully. I don't think it is logically impossible. I never claimed it was logically impossible for God to take on a surrendering nature. You seemed to as I stated in that last post.

Ok is it possible to do so without becoming human?

I never said "replace it", I said "fix it".

And you implied why couldn't he just do the same thing he did at creation the first time around. But creating a new one means replacing the old one.

Don't tell me what I implied. Read what I literally wrote. I explicitly used the word "fix". God can "fix" our nature without becoming human. If God can create our nature without becoming human, then why can't he fix our nature without becoming human?

Yes that is what I'm asking. If I were an omnipotent wizard, I would be able to breathe fire in a dragon way without becoming a dragon, so why can't God surrender in a human way without becoming human?

What is the dragon way of breathing fire? It involves having dragon parts.

The wizard is magic. He can achieve this without dragon parts.

Ok so now you're moving the goalpost. Logical fallacies are a clear sign of desperation. I would recommend you rephrase your entire argument and fix the wording this time. If R2 is as you defined it in post 123, then the logical conclusion would be that a freely and perfectly surrendered human nature is logically impossible. Fix your wording and get back to me

Absolutely not. I never moved the goalpost. I didn't add any words, you missed the wording when you responded and therefore misunderstood what I was saying.

What is your definition of a freely and perfectly surrendered human nature? Be precise in your wording

[Justin108]

P2 - God (with a Divine nature alone) has no higher being to surrender to

Does God have a higher being to surrender to now?

P3 - Jesus is one Person of the Triune God (with a Divine nature and human nature).

Are they not the same being?