THE HARD QUESTIONS
When I was first
investigating religion, I encountered several things that didn't make
sense to me. And often, when I asked people my hard questions, they
would
fall back on the cop out: "There are some things about God that we just
can't ever understand." I refuse to accept that answer. I know the
argument. Our brains are finite, so the things we can
understand are limited. But that kind of argument simply doesn't help
me at
all.
So, when I was trying to decide if God existed, some of my questions
made
it hard for me to believe in God.
In particular, I had a question that
appeared
to contradict God's existence. So, even while God was showing me a
personal miracle (see my testimony), this
question
conflicted with my desire to believe. The rational side of me refused
to accept the existence of God as long as this question remained
unanswered. I was finally able to believe, because I argued
that, even
though nobody knows the answer to my question right now, people could
figure it out in the future. The human race continues to learn new
things every day. Why not accept the miracle as sufficient evidence
for me to believe in God, and then I'll continue trying to figure out
the answer to my question.
And, a year and a half later, I came up with an answer that
satisfied
me!
That question and its answer can be found on this page, along
with other hard questions that I have struggled with. For some of them,
I offer possible answers.
I have been told that God
is good. He's not just good,
but He is pure good. He is
completely incapable of sinning. In fact, by His very nature, He must
oppose sin wherever He sees it. If He didn't, that lack of action would
be sinful.
I have also been
told that God is omniscient.
He
sees everything in our universe as clearly as we can see things in our
field of vision. Actually, he can probably see better than 20/20. I
expect His vision is more like 20/-5.
In addition, I
have been told that God is timeless.
He lives outside of time. He doesn't move forward through time like us.
He can always see all times that will, did, or do exist in our universe.
If that's not
enough, God is perfect. He
cannot make a mistake.
And of course, I
have been told that God created the
universe and everything in it. There is nothing in our universe
that
God is not responsible for.
If you accept
these four premises, then you must
face a very difficult question: Why did God create humans? He could
have known that humans would eventually start sinning, because He is
timeless. And, since He is omniscient, we can't argue that He just
wasn't paying attention, and he didn't realize that we would sin. In
fact, since He's perfect, He is unable to make a mistake. So, since He
created humans, and He is incapable of sin, it must therefore have been
a good
thing to create humans. But by creating humans, we can't get around the
conclusion that God indirectly created sin, even though that shouldn't
be possible. Maybe he didn't create very much sin. Perhaps the human
race is just a miniscule speck when viewed relative to the entire
space-time continuum. But how could God even create a speck of sin.
I
have been told
that God is perfect. He never
makes a mistake. However, in I Samuel 15:10-11a1,
the Bible says:
The
word of the Lord then came to Samuel:
"I regret that I made
Saul king,
for he has turned away from Me
and has not carried out My commands."
|
If God cannot make a mistake, how
could he ever have cause to regret?
Answer
In the
red
letter edition of the NIV Bible,
everything Jesus says is printed in
red, while the rest of the text is black. My question is, why aren't
the quotes of God printed in red? Is the Son somehow more important
than the Father? There are so many of God's quotes in the Old
Testament, but they're all printed in black. In fact, God even speaks
in the New Testament in
John 12:283:
Then
a voice came from heaven, "I
have glorified it, and I will glorify it
again." |
But this
quote
is not printed in red.
Answer
What is the big
deal
about God's
name? Throughout
the Bible, you can find "in God's name," "in Jesus' name," "in the
Lord's name," etc. In fact, one way to refer to God in Hebrew is Hashem
(The Name) or simply
Shem (Name). For example, it's used in
Leviticus 24:16b3.
"'...
when he blasphemes the Name,
he must be put to death...'"
|
The
Bible has a strange way of using the word, "in". Jesus tells his
disciples in John
14:203:
"On
that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."
|
"If
you remain in me and
my words remain in
you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you."
|
What does
the phrase,
"in Jesus'
name", mean? Christians generally end their prayers with, "in
Jesus'
name, Amen." Also, in
John 14:13-143,
Jesus tells his disciples:
"And
I will do whatever you ask in
my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may
ask me for anything in my
name and I will do it."
|
Most people
claim that the
Trinity is
something that cannot be understood by
humans. I refuse to accept that. So, the Trinity is described by three
facts
5:
1. God is three persons.
2. Each person is fully God.
3. There is one God.
How is this possible?
Answer
I am told
that the Bible is
complete
in that it contains
everything that
God has ever told us. Of course, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
disagree on exactly what is "the Bible," but let's just look at
Christianity. The NIV translation of
I John 5:7-83 is:
For
there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and
the three are in agreement. |
But in the King James Version of the
Bible, the same verses,
I John 5:7-82, say:
For
there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and
the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear
witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these
three agree in one.
|
How can both Bibles be complete?
Many
people claim that the Bible is the directly-inspired word of God, and
therefore it is
inerrant. If
that is true, how can Peter
say, in
1
Peter 2:63,
For
in Scripture it says:
"See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame." |
From the context
preceding this verse, it appears that the stone
is meant to represent Jesus, because of the phrase "trusts in him". But
the verse that Peter is
quoting, Isaiah
28:163 (in
the very same version of the Bible) actually says,
So
this is what the Sovereign LORD says:
"See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone
for a sure foundation;
the one who trusts
will never be dismayed..." |
This verse is
significantly different. How could God misquote himself
if he doesn't make mistakes? And notice that the word "him" is not
found here, so it is less clear that the stone represents Jesus. Now
here is the
Jewish Bible's translation of Isaiah 28:161.
Assuredly,
Thus says the Lord GOD:
"Behold, I will found in Zion,
Stone by stone,
A tower of precious
cornerstones,
Exceedingly firm;
He who trusts need
not fear..."
|
This
is quite a difference! Now it is quite clear that this verse is not
talking about Jesus at all, since there are many stones instead of just
one. So it seems that Peter misquoted and misinterpreted the verse. I
wouldn't expect to find such mistakes in an "inerrant" Bible.
I have been
told
that all of the words in the Bible are
the Lord's words, and it is
all
true. If that's the case, then
what do we do with
1 Corinthians 7:12a3,
where Paul writes:
To
the rest I say this (I, not
the Lord): If any brother...
|
If this is true, then "If any
brother..." is not said by the Lord. However, since it is in the Bible,
it is said by the Lord. So we have a logical contradiction. How can
this be resolved?
I have been told
that Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam are not
sexist religions.
Men and women are considered to be
equal. It's just that men and women have some significant differences,
and so it is appropriate for them to have different
roles. For example, men cannot give birth to and nurse babies, two
things that tend to create a very strong bond between a mother and her
child. So it makes sense for women to have the role of taking care of
the children. And, men tend to be stronger and faster than women, so it
makes sense for men to have the role of hunting for food. And I can
accept argument that to a certain extent. However, if religions really
aren't sexist, then how can one explain the following verses?
In the Jewish Torah,
Leviticus 27:1,2,51 talks about how much
money to sacrifice in order to dedicate a person to God:
The
LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite
people and say to them: When anyone explicitly vows to the LORD
the equivalent for a human being, ... If the age is from five years to
twenty years, the equivalent is twenty shekels for a male
and ten shekels for a female.
|
For Christianity,
Colossians 3:183 of the New
Testament says:
Wives, submit to your husbands,
as is fitting in the Lord. |
And, for Islam,
Koran
2:228b4 states that:
...
men have a status above
women. God is mighty and wise. |
What were
Jesus'
last words before he
died on
the cross? Well let's look at the four gospels. According to
Matthew 27:503:
And
when Jesus had cried out
again in a loud voice,
he gave up his spirit. |
Okay. So He ended his life with a scream. And
Mark 15:373
says:
With
a loud cry, Jesus
breathed his last. |
So this also says He screamed and
then died immediately. Now let's look
at
Luke 23:463:
Jesus
called out with a loud voice, "Father,
into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said
this, he breathed his last. |
Um... Maybe the scream wasn't just,
"Aaaaaaaaaa!!!" Perhaps He
screamed, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." But it seems
extremely strange that Matthew and Mark would fail to mention the
specific words that He
screamed.
Well, maybe
John
19:303 can
clear this up.
When
he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With
that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. |
Now we have a real problem. How can
we possibly resolve this
discrepancy?
I
have been told that the reason Jesus
died
was to pay the price for the sins of all mankind across all
time. For this to be true, it's important for Him to be God, rather
than a man, because
Romans 6:23a3 says:
For
the
wages of sin is death...
|
So Jesus' death, if He was merely a
man,
could only pay for one man's sins. Oh, it's true that he suffered
extreme torture, but how many deaths could that be worth? 20? 100?
Certainly not the number of people who have lived or will live across
all time. However, if He is God, then His life has infinite value, so
His death was worth more than the finite number of deaths of all people
across all time.
But here's the problem: Jesus never really died. His body may have
died, but the part of Him that is God continued to live. Even during
the three days that His body was dead, I'm told that the divine part
of Jesus was still alive, visiting the underworld, or something like
that. And His God part, which is the part that has infinite value,
continues to live today. So, the only price that Jesus actually paid
was the death of His body, which would seem to have no more value than
the death of a single person.
So how can we argue that Jesus has paid the price for the sins of all
people across all time?
Answer
Orthodox Jews work hard to follow
the laws of the covenant of Moses, as specified in the Torah (the first
five books of the Bible) and other later writings (such as the Mishnah
and the Talmud). For example, they go to tremendous lengths to prevent
dairy products from coming into contact with meat, by using two
different sets of dishes. Some even use two dishwashers, as they are
concerned about traces of meat being left in the dishwasher after the
meat
dishes are washed, and then if the dairy dishes are washed in the same
dishwasher, that meat could come into contact with the dairy.
However, despite this adherence to the laws in such an extreme manner,
there are some laws in the Torah that Orthodox Jews do not follow
today. For
example, they don't sacrifice animals. I have heard the claim
that this is because animal sacrifices are supposed to be made at the
Temple in Jerusalem, but the Temple was destroyed in 70AD, and it has
not been rebuilt. But I think this is a weak argument, because the laws
of the Torah don't say that animal sacrifices should be made at the
Temple. It says they should be made at a tabernacle. And I don't see
any reason that a tabernacle cannot be built today.
There is another law that Orthodox
Jews do not follow in
Deuteronomy 25:53:
If
brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his
widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall
take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.
|
Can Orthodox Jews simply pick and choose which laws they're going to
follow?
In some
parts of the Bible, God does not
seem to follow the "Let the punishment fit the crime" philosophy. In
Leviticus 24:13-163, He imposed the
ultimate penalty for blasphemy.
Then
the LORD said to Moses, "Take the blasphemer
outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his
head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites:
'If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible; anyone who
blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put
to death. The entire
assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or
native-born, when he blasphemes the name, he must be put to death...' "
|
And
Numbers
15:32,353
concerns what we would consider to be a far lesser crime. But
nevertheless, it still has the same penalty.
While
the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on
the Sabbath day... Then the LORD said to Moses,
"The man must die.
The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp."
|
What are we supposed to learn from these examples? Should we be giving
thieves and adulterers the death penalty?
Answer
The Bible
tells us to
submit to those
who have authority
over us.
I
Peter 2:13-14a3
says:
Submit
yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men:
whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors...
|
Everyone
must submit
himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except
that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been
established by God.
|
My question is, what if the
authorities are corrupt? Is a German Jew
living in Nazi Germany required to submit to a Nazi soldier? The
soldier certainly has authority over the Jew, but when he says, "Come
with me," is the Jew forbidden to flee or to shoot the soldier? And
what about the future time when the antichrist is supposed to rule the
world? Should Christians follow all of his laws in accordance with this
command?
I am told that
Jesus never sinned. But what about
Matthew 21:123?
Jesus
entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling
there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches
of those selling doves.
|
I don't think that the money changers
and salesmen were violating any of God's commandments. But even if
those
people were doing wrong, there were certainly more
peaceful ways for Jesus to deal with the problem. Doesn't his behavior
seem to be sinful? I understand that anger is not a sin, but acting on
it could be sinful. Are we justified in doing similar things to
any people that we catch committing sins?
Deuteronomy 13:2-41 warns us about
false prophets.
If
there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner and he gives you a
sign or portent, saying "Let us follow and worship another god" ---
whom you have not experienced --- even if the sign or portent
that he
named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or
dream-diviner. For the LORD your God is testing
you to see whether you really love the LORD your
God with all your heart and soul.
|
Could this be talking about Jesus?
After all, He told people to follow a God that they had not
experienced, namely Himself. But the God that He
claimed to be is the
same God that the people already knew. Can we get another clue to help
us determine when the above verses apply? Well, we can look at the
surrounding verses,
Deuteronomy 13:1,51. (Note that, in the NIV version of the
Bible, these verses correspond to
Deuteronomy 12:32
and 13:43.)
Be
careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you: neither add to it
nor take away from it. ... Follow none but the LORD
your
God, and revere none but Him; observe
His commandments alone, and heed
only His orders; worship none but Him, and hold fast to Him.
|
This makes
it clear that we are to follow God's commandments exactly as He gave
them to us. Since these verses are found in Deuteronomy, they must be
talking
about the laws of Moses. This suggests that a false prophet might try
to change the laws. Did Jesus do that? Well, Christians today certainly
don't keep all of
the laws of Moses. They don't observe Passover
(which is particularly strange, since Jesus certainly observed
Passover). They don't do the ritual washing before meals, and neither
did Jesus in
Luke
11:383.
But
the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus
did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.
|
Also, Jesus
changed the divorce law in
Matthew 19:8a,93.
Jesus
replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives... I tell you that
anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits
adultery."
|
Was Jesus was a
false prophet?
Answer
I am told
that God is
timeless. He knows
everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and
everything that will happen. He knew all this, before humans even
existed.
Well, that's rather disconcerting.
It means that God knows exactly what words I'm going to type next. I'm
going to type it, regardless of what I want, how I feel, and what I
think. It is already decided long before I am aware of my decision. I
am completely powerless to prevent myself from doing it.
On the other hand, I am also told that God gave us free will. That
means we have the freedom to make our own choices. So I get to decide
what I will type next. God lets me make that decision on my own.
How can this contradition be resolved? Is everything already
determined, or do people have free will?
ANSWERS
To answer this
question, consider the following analogy. Suppose you are a fan of
a Major League baseball team. You have chosen a team that has all of
the most skillful players in the league. So, it's not at all surprising
when they
dominate all season long, winning their division by a huge margin and
winning every game in the postseason to become the World Series
champions. And, of course, this is all very good, and you are very
happy with your team.
But imagine another
scenario, where, at the
beginning of the season, your team is predicted to be a big loser. And,
as the season begins, they quickly fall deep down into last place. But,
over the course of the season, they get better and better, shocking
everybody when they just barely manage to sneak into the playoffs. You
are absolutely thrilled! And then, even though your team is predicted
to lose every game of the playoffs, they do the impossible, managing to
pull off just enough wins to become the World Series champions. The
games are all extremely close and you scream a lot.
Can you agree that,
although both scenarios are
good, the second scenario is much better than the first? Isn't it so
much more exciting to see a very weak team improve to just barely
achieve the highest goal than to see a very strong team achieve the
goal without there ever being any question of its success?
So, God is like the
strong team. He is perfectly
good, and, without question, everything He does will always be good. We
certainly like to root for God, since He always wins. But with the
result never being in doubt, it lacks something.
Alternatively, humans
are like the weak team. They
are expected to lose the competition of good, and they nearly always
fulfill that expectation. But imagine that, over the course of the
millennia, they
improve, and they begin to win more often. If they can go on to pull
off the most amazing feat of all, becoming perfectly good, wouldn't
that be so amazingly awesome?
The thing that humans
have that God doesn't, is the
ability to improve. God cannot get better, while humans can potentially
become more and more good. So, although God is perfectly good, it is
an even greater good to improve from sinful to perfect goodness. The
greater the
distance that is traveled, the more rewarding the final prize is.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
I do not yet have an
answer to this question.
The answer to the
question, in
a nutshell, is that a name is a way to represent something or someone
in written or oral form. For example, when somebody writes your name on
a piece of paper, they aren't merely writing a sequence of letters.
They are talking about you, the real person. To put it another way,
when you hear
the name of somebody you know, what comes into your mind? Do you think
of the sounds of the name? The letters of the name? The syllables of
the name? No. You think of the person. Various attributes of
the person comes to mind as you become consciously aware of an image of
that person in your brain that is similar to the one that you would
form if you were actually looking at the person. So the person's name
is a representation of
the person, himself. In effect, the name and the person are
interchangeable. The name
is
the person.
That means whatever you do to a person's name, you do to the person,
himself. If you curse a man's name, you curse the man. If you
blaspheme God's name, you blaspheme God.
I understand that, in the time that the Bible was written, people were
much more aware of the equality between a person and his name. We still
have some remnants of that in our language, as we can say things like,
"You're giving him a bad name."
To answer this
question, consider
two people on opposite sides of the world. Then they begin moving
toward each other. After a very long time, they are only one mile
apart. Certainly, they are much closer than before. They continue
moving toward each other until they can see one another. Now they have
achieved a higher level of closeness. Before too long, their hands are
touching, so they are closer still. Then, when they hug each other,
they
are very very close. Now imagine that they continue moving toward each
other so that
their bodies intersect. Now that's really close. And finally, they are
occupying the exact same space. This is the ultimate
closeness.
Of course, people cannot really occupy the same physical space. So
instead of the people, let's talk about souls. Since
souls are not physical, we must imagine them moving toward each other
in some kind of spiritual space. And when they reach the ultimate
closeness, they are really "in" one another.
Based on the verses quoted in the question, we see that it is possible
for words to be in a person. I expect that can only happen if the words
are spiritual in nature.
What about asymmetrical in-ness? Can Jesus'
words be in me, even if I am not in those words? And, if
Jesus is in me, but I am not in Jesus, does that mean that Jesus is
smaller than me?
The answer to this
question is clear once
you understand what "in" means (See that
question and
its
answer.) and what
"name" means (See that
question and its
answer.). Putting them together, "in Jesus'
name"
should make sense. When we say, "in Jesus' name" at the end of a
prayer, we are claiming that our words are infinitely close to Jesus in
the spiritual sense. This is an asymmetrical in-ness, so you'll also
need to look at this
question and its
answer.
The answer to this
question
is: The Son is in the
Father and the Father is in the Son, the Spirit is in the Father and
the Father is in the Spirit, and the Spirit is in the Son and the Son
is in the Spirit. (To understand what "in" means, read this
question and its
answer.) So,
although they may be separate persons with separate personalities and
knowledge, that doesn't prevent them from being ultimately close in the
spiritual sense. And in that sense, they are one entity, which we can
call Lord (Adonai). Also, this suggests that, even though we cannot
hope to be the
same as the Son, we can still strive to be in
the Son.
When people say that
the Bible was written by God and is complete, they aren't talking about
the NIV, and they're not talking about the King James Version. They are
referring to the original writings of the apostles, before they were
hand-copied and
translated many many times over the centuries. Misquoting Jesus6 says
that the part about the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, "...
which scholars have called the Johannine Comma, ... [cannot] be found
in the oldest and superior manuscripts of the Greek New Testament."
But much later, in the sixteenth century, Desiderius Erasmus published
a
version of the Greek New Testament that included the Johannine Comma,
and it "...became the standard form of the Greek text to be published
by Western European printers for more than three hundred years." The
Johannine Comma is very important, "... since it is the only passage in
the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the
Trinity... Without this verse, the doctrine of the Trinity must be
inferred from the combination of a variety of passages... This passage,
in
contrast, states the doctrine directly and succinctly."
So this is how I
would answer the question.
The apostle John never wrote the Johannine comma. Rather, Jerome, the
author of the official Latin translation of the Bible (the Vulgate),
added
that verse about 300 years after John died. Over the next eleven
centuries, the
Christian church adopted the doctrine of the Trinity based on that
single
verse.
By the time Erasmus published the Greek standard, the Trinity had
become such a fundamental part of Christianity that the Johannine Comma
had to be included, even though it couldn't be found in any of the
older Greek versions of the New Testament. Erasmus's Bible was then
translated to make the King James Version of the Bible. About 300 years
later, when it was generally accepted that the Johannine Comma couldn't
be
found in any copies of the Greek New Testament that were written before
Erasmus made his version, the authors of the NIV Bible decided not to
include it, except in a footnote.
The conclusion then
is that the Johannine Comma was not written by God, and without it, the
doctrine of the Trinity becomes very difficult to defend based on the
Bible. This suggests that, if it weren't for Jerome's creativity, the
Trinity might
never have become a doctrine of Christianity.
I do not yet have an
answer to this
question.
If the Bible really
is the word of God, then this question
reveals a
conflict between what God has said and what logic tells us. The simple
way to resolve this conflict is to declare that at least this part of
the Bible isn't really the word of God. However, let's try to find
another solution. Consider this hypothetical situation. (Note that, to
my knowledge, none of it is true.)
Suppose you toss a
ball in the air and when it comes down, it stops and hangs in the air
at the level of your eyes for three seconds before falling to the
ground. What are you going to make of that? Your eyes told you that the
ball hung in the air, but science tells you that that is impossible.
Which do you believe? Your senses or
science? Well, since you know that your senses are fallible, and your
eyes can be deceived by optical illusions, you might decide to rely on
science instead of your senses.
Now suppose that you
are reading a new scientific paper written by a famous physicist in a
peer-reviewed scientific journal. This paper claims that, under a very
very rare set of circumstances, a ball may hang in the air, and it goes
into a detailed mathematical analysis that specifies precisely what
those circumstances are and presents a proof of the scientist's theory.
This paper disagrees with what science has told you. So which do you
accept now? Well,
you know that the scientific method is not logically
valid, and scientific theories have been changed in the past. For
example, Newton's laws were accepted as scientific truth for centuries
before Einstein convinced the world that they were not entirely
accurate. So you might accept the claims of this paper over the
scientifically-accepted theory.
But suppose that,
when you read the proof in the paper very carefully, you discover that
it includes a logical contradiction. Now you must choose between the
paper and logic. Which do you consider to be the
higher authority? If you believe, as many do, that
logical reasoning is infallible, you will surely rely on the logical
conclusion over the paper's theory.
And now comes the big
one. Suppose that, reading the Bible, you discover that God says a ball
can indeed
hang in
the air. Now you must decide what is
the supreme authority? Logic
or God? If
only one can be right, and the other must be wrong, which do you rely
on when they disagree? Although it may be inconceivable to imagine that
logic
could ever be flawed, is it even harder to believe that God might be
mistaken? If
you decide to put the greater trust in God, then you can accept that
the Bible could be God's word, despite any logical contradiction that
you
might encounter in it.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
The answer to the question is yes: Orthodox Jews
can simply pick and choose which laws
they're going to follow. Howver, this must be a consensus
decision of all of the Orthodox Rabbis. Even still, this seems very
strange that
humans should have any right to disobey God's laws under any
circumstances.
I will say this much.
An Orthodox Jew has a clear and strict code that he follows. And he
does not simply follow a personal moral code, as most pepole do. He
follows the same code
that many many other people around the world also follow. I think this
is far more admirable than the way most people decide how they
personally want to live their lives (and then change their minds at any
time based on their circumstances).
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
I do not yet have an
answer to this question.
I do not yet have an answer to this
question.
The answer to this
question is yes and yes.
Everything
is already
determined, and despite that, people have free will. God knows what I
will type next before I make my decision, but He doesn't make the
decision for me. Even though he knows my decision before I do, the
decision is still mine. God lets me make the decision.
The strange part is that these events are occurring in the wrong order.
First God knows what my descision is. And then I make my decision. The
effect occurs before the cause. How is this possible?
It just is. There's no contradiction. This is because God doesn't act
on my decision. If He did, then our time line could get messed up. For
example, suppose God sees that I'm about to type something that reveals
a secret about God that He doesn't want me to tell anyone. So, just
before I make the decision to time it, He causes me to have a heart
attack and die. That would be a problem of the form: X causes Y which
causes Z which causes not-X. X is my decision to type the secret.. That
causes Y, which is God learning that I'm going to type the secret.
That, in turn, causes Z, my heart attack. And my heart attack causes me
not to type the secret. Therefore God doesn't learn I'm going to type
the secret, so He doesn't give me a heart attack, and so I
do decide to type the secret, and
so on.
But as long as God doesn't act on my decision by changing something in
my past, there is no contradiction.
An alternative answer to the
question
can be found
here.
References
1: TaNaKH: The
Holy Scriptures. 1985. The Jewish Publication Society.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
2: Holy Bible: King
James Version. 2002. Barbour Publishing. Uhrichsville, Ohio.
3: Holy Bible: New
International Version. 1984. Zondervan. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
4: The Koran.
1999. Translator: N.J. Dagwood. Penguin Books. London, England.
5: Grudem, Wayne. 2000. Systematic Theology. Inter-Varsity
Press. Leicester, England. 239.
6: Ehrman, Bart D. 2005. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who
Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco. 78-83.
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