Joined September 2022
- Tweets 15,488
- Following 570
- Followers 391
- Likes 9,248
1,553 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
10 Jan 2025
Though we debate aspects of being in Christ, think we can all agree:
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature
[having been]
created in Christ Jesus to do good works
[which we do with]
our liberty which we have in Christ
[so we]
do not turn [our] freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another
18
8,549
Dead Heroes Don't Save retweeted
Theology 101: For people who point out that Jesus was never married, I want to point out that heβs had the most high-maintenance bride in human history for almost 2000 years.
8
15
95
3,200
Jun 11
Does this confirm what Arminians have been saying, that the gospel offer to the reprobate is impossible and deceptive?
Jun 11
The gospel offer is impossible and deceptive if unconditional election is not true.
3
7
563
Jun 10
Fear not if something in the backroom turns out to be a creature from above
The doctrine of the Incarnation would conflict with what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also that there were other rational species in it who had, like us, fallen, and who needed redemption in the same mode, and that they had not been vouchsafed it. But we know none of these things. It may be full of life that needs no redemption. It may be full of life that has been redeemed. It may be full of things quite other than life which satisfy the Divine Wisdom in fashions one cannot conceive.
- CS Lewis
Jun 8
Steven Spielberg says his new movie, Disclosure Day, about aliens will have Christians and people of faith second-guessing their own religion.
Spielberg says the movie will take the position of the Church.
"Is God our God only on this planet, or is God a God for every system where there's civilization?"
"That would mess up a lot of people."
1
134
Jun 6
Given that the agent settling to a choice (or volition) is an act of the Will
Under compatibilism consider:
1) The act of willing is necessitated by the strongest motive to a single act (Edwards)
2) External factors include the environment, physical laws, initial conditions of the universe. Internal factors include genetics, emotion, goals, experiences, character
3) All the elements of the choice including the agent's weighting of motives and options is already fixed by antecedents (internal and external) before the agent begins an act of the will (determinism)
4) All the antecedents involved in (2) are already fixed by antecedents (internal and external) recursively (determinism)
5) The act of willing itself adds no new originating power. It simply registers what the prior factors have already determined to be decisive (from 1 & 3)
6) Genuine alternative possibilities prior to and at the point of settling are eliminated (from 3, 4 & 5)
7) The agentβs activity of settling to a choice is nothing more than the necessary effect of antecedents in which the agent is making an internal endorsement of a fixed result that could not be otherwise
This is what agent as settler status reduces to in compatibilism. Let the reader judge if that is an adequate description of genuine agency
8
4
388
Jun 9
Been a good discussion with @PhilosopherJoeC and worked out a new premise 1
x.com/i/status/2064459513650β¦
Jun 9
Would this be better?
(1) At the moment the act of willing occurs, it is conditionally necessitated by the strongest motive directing the agent toward a single act (Edwards)
31
Jun 6
We've been over LFW thought I'd give a look at compatibilism and see what you thought @Pastor_ChrisH
Also @ReformedCaio would be curious which premises you'd accept or reject
Also would like your thoughts
@theo_bruv and @Mindtrap028
1
1
194
Jun 6
most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spiritβs or human authorβs intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are ... Sometimes what we bring to the text ... leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.
- Gordon Fee
Jun 5
I think the Bible is the most poignant example of a book that people say 'this isn't my view, it's just what it clearly says'.
Have some humility and acknowledge that it's your view or the view that you accept about what the Bible says/means on a doctrinal issue.
1
2
143
Dead Heroes Don't Save retweeted
Jun 4
Theology 101: Reminderββchurch historyβ is NOT βthe study of how everybody throughout history misinterpreted the Bible until we came along.β
6
7
67
2,175
Jun 2
Which is a Will worth wanting?
One that is self-determined by the agent with genuine openness (can be otherwise) until settling on a choice
- or -
One that isn't self-determined and can't be otherwise because the choice is a certain effect of the strongest motive which is the certain effect of some other cause, that isn't in the Will, which is the certain effect of some other cause which is also a certain effect. And so on
4
142
May 31
A doctrinal scheme may be framed with a set of definitions dovetailed into each other with so exact a mutual fit, that the very coherency & structural exactness of the system of terms may seem to demonstrate the truth & solidity of the doctrine. Yet ... an essential idea may be so excluded ... that the doctrine may be imperfect or false
- Whedon
1
116
May 31
Apparently Whedon is a fan of Feynman's Razor
"there is no truer test of a definition than this that it reproduces in the mind the clear and precise idea for which the term stands ... even in the minds of children, [then it] is a real perfection"
74
May 31
LFW is YOUR controlled comparative choice (volition) where you have a power to deliberate over competing affections, influences, goals to fix a settled intention & motive in a set of circumstances
That is self-determination
That is what gives us freedom to and from an act
That is the moment where things could be otherwise
May 31
Core issue 1: The luck/randomness problem. If a choice is truly undetermined (not fixed by prior causes, motives, character, or divine decree), then what tips the scale between A and B? It starts looking like chance, not your controlled choice. How do you get responsibility from luck?
6
12
766
May 31
Whedon does a far better job of defining terms and laying out a case for Liberty than Edwards
x.com/i/status/2059677387588β¦
May 27
The Will is the volitional [pluri-efficient] power by which alone the soul consciously becomes the intentional author of external action - external that is, to the Will itself
- Whedon
2
125
May 30
Now that's a free will worth wanting...
May 29
Though an inanimate object, when exempted from supposable impediments would always be called free, not so a living agent. ... To the freedom of a living agent, therefore, the twofold power is requisite; the power TO the act and the power FROM the act.
- Whedon
89
May 30
God hating Esau is not ordaining him to eternal damnation as a reprobate. It is His choice/preference to use Jacob as the one through whom the promises to Abraham would come
That's part of Paul's argument that God can include Gentiles and exclude Jews who don't accept Christ
βBut since this cannot be denied, the thing which the prophet says about the hatred of God toward Esau is not to be understood absolutely, as if it were a total and sheerly hostile hatred β as though Christ (and that without any regard to Esauβs sins, before he had done either good or evil) had shown him no grace and given him nothing good β but only comparatively, in relation to Jacob, toward whom He showed far greater love and grace, and whom He preferred before the firstborn Esau out of His free love; especially in that He chose him as the heir of the promised land (which was a type of the heavenly inheritance), and thus also as the heir of the covenant in the promised Seed, who was to be born from him and not from Esau.β
βJohannes Bergius, The Will of God Concerning the Salvation of All Men
1
5
1,002
May 30
We can't even be sure Esau will not be in the kingdom
The narrative in Genesis shows him as having forgiven Jacob running to welcome and embrace him upon his return
x.com/i/status/2055353121212β¦
May 15
When the author of Hebrews says Esau was immoral he uses the word ΟΟΟΞ½ΞΏΟ. That can often refer to sexual immorality but here seems to be a metaphor for the worldliness of Esau who "sold his own birthright for aΒ singleΒ meal". It also fits what we find in Genesis
2
2
264
May 29
Though an inanimate object, when exempted from supposable impediments would always be called free, not so a living agent. ... To the freedom of a living agent, therefore, the twofold power is requisite; the power TO the act and the power FROM the act.
- Whedon
164
May 28
A categorical ability suggests that in a moment of decision we have the freedom and power TO act AND the freedom and power FROM the act. That is only possible when there is an alternative power in the Will (pluripotent/simultaneity of potencies)
Edwards requires only an ability TO perform the act, not an ability FROM the act in that moment. There is no ability to diversify the act
May 28
No one is so unwise as to deny that the Will can act differently in different cases
- Whedon
Basically we all affirm a conditional ability where we would have done otherwise if things had been otherwise
But even a clock hammer can strike otherwise if it were under different circumstances
88