Reasoning led by the Holy Spirit during years of prayerful study...
The Bible story of YHWH's interaction with HIS creation ends with the heavenly marriage of the Lamb, the state of the heavenly experience of full communion with GOD.
Now it seems prima facie that a real marriage (not just paper only, so to speak) to be based on real love, MUST BE ACCEPTED, not forced upon the chosen partner. I have many times faced arguments that a Stepford Wife unable to ever reject HIM or choose to sin would have been a better choice to avoid the suffering sin from a free will has caused but I can't countenance that....GOD is not such a piker.
We read bible references to holy and elect angels and we assume that Satan et al were not created to be evil but chose it by their free will so why do we gloss over that the other angels became holy and elect by their free will acceptance of GOD's marriage proposal and rejection Satan's pov?
Huh? God proposed marriage to the angels? Where do you get this?
Nevertheless, the point that the Bride must, of her own will, accept the proposal, is not debated here, but whether God changing the will (regeneration) is a "forcing"/ a "coercion". You can well believe, that a will changed and built upon God himself, will happily accept the proposal.
Furthermore, the 'real love' you speak of cannot be of human origin, but of God. "Apart from me, you can do nothing."
Prove? What a strange thing to say... If everyone had a free will and could choose any option they wanted without being coerced to make that choice, it is reasonable to assume that the results of choosing will be spread across the options BUT it is also POSSIBLE that all the choices could have been ALL for one option and not the other or vice versa, especially when GOD was doing HIS best to influence us without any coercion to accept marriage proposal by teaching us HIS gospel, ie salvation from all sin to be found only in the Son.
Wow this is complicated! Maybe you can restate it for me. I don't follow.
However, it seems plain you credit humans with intrinsic integrity, ability, all on their own! The Gospel says different.
Without a free will but only doing what we were created to do:
1. we have no culpability for our sin because there was no
mens rea, no intent to sin just an automatic choice foisted upon us. So sin, no judgement excet by injustice.
2. If we do not sin by our own free will uncoerced by any force, then we sin by GOD's will and He is the creator of evil in this universe, a hard position to accept in light of
Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. etc etc.
1. Wrong. Without free will, there is still will, and for the lost, will that is set against God, with full intent to sin (per Romans 8:5-8), whether the option chosen is recognized by the chooser as done in sin/rebellion, or not.
2. 'Uncaused' do you mean, by 'uncoerced'? But God causing 'all things, whatsoever shall come to pass' is not coercion. God may use coercion, but that is only one of the many things leading to the choice one makes. Jonah was coerced to obey, to do what he did not want to do, but he still chose to obey. His choice was caused by many things, with God at the head of them all, and in the end, he saw it better to obey than to not obey —in the final analysis, he did what he wanted at that moment of decision. The only uncaused thing is God, first cause.
To eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is probably a metaphor for choosing to make your understanding of good and evil real by sinning.
Oh boy, not this! Probably not a metaphor.
To eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is probably a metaphor for choosing to make your understanding of good and evil real by sinning.
Whether Adam and Eve lived in a garden with a real tree is immaterial, the metaphor holds that sin can only be judged upon a person who sins by their free will either by rejecting YHWH as their GOD and the Son as saviour or by rebelling against HIS command.
You can't see how God caused that sin be, by putting Adam into this situation to choose, not only knowing full well what the result would be when he made Adam, but planning it for the better final purpose, a people for himself —his dwelling place? He sinned of his 'free'will.
FWIW I used to admit to freewill, only in that our choices are real choices, with real results —not that they are unfettered and uncaused. Logically, there really is no way to get around the fact that they are caused. No, that doesn't mean we are robots. We do have will.
Inherited sin is a blasphemy forced upon the church by the previous decree that we are created on earth, not in heaven / Sheol previous to earth which butts hard against the scripture that
- we are conceived as sinners at conception,
- none are righteous, not even infants and
- the sinfulness of infants is proven by the death of infants as death is the wages for sin, not a consequence of life.
Are you not then butting hard against the Scripture that says in Adam all have sinned? But HOW does scripture that
- we are conceived as sinners at conception,
- none are righteous, not even infants and
- the sinfulness of infants is proven by the death of infants as death is the wages for sin, not a consequence of life,
work against the doctrine of original sin? Or do you differentiate between the doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of inherited sin?
When they accepted the creation on earth theory of mankind by traducianism or the creationism of the soul at birth they they cut themselves off from humans becoming sinners by their own free will and so must blame Adam AND GOD for instituting the creation of HIS Bride by a system that forces her to live in abject corruption and suffering through no guilt of her own. Yikes.
What? Who are you referring to by 'they', who do this? This is not the doctrine of original sin. What in the world are you talking about?