Maia and V: http://www.christianthinktank.com/copycat.html
Abstract…what objective standard determines whether you’ve given too much…the Golden Rule of which you gave the “giving” version? Do you know anyone who always follows the Golden Rule (not just the giving version), to the point that it describes them (such a person would be without vice)? Of course you know what I’m getting at. If there is no such person, there is nothing in reality to which the standard corresponds. So any value/significance, et cetera, lost…isn’t really lost…because it never really existed in the first place. But, I submit, that if there ever is any real value of this sort–it also is never really lost, even if we lose the ability to recognize it.
Ierrellus. I agree with you that love with no condition is the greatest gift.
Oughtist…I like Norm Geisler’s “Chosen but Free” on this. Any chance you’d grab that book and sift through it w/ me? I am checking out WLC’s Molinism, but as yet am still satisfied with Geisler’s moderate Calvinism (and don’t know enough yet to completely compare/contrast them). In short…yes, genuine love is a choice…no, God does not have to cease being God to allow us to choose. He sustains in existence every physical aspect composing the choice, but that in itself is not enough to determine that choice, which is self-determined (or it isn’t a choice, isn’t genuine love). Considering he sustains every moment from beginning to end, …he is sustaining the future, knows it will happen, and it will happen only if he allows it (he is entirely sovereign over our choices). It is therefore predestined–but with our choices included. Just as Forrest Gump said…it’s both. The question is: Is faith a work by which we are saved (as opposed to “irresistible grace”)–wouldn’t that contradict the idea that God’s love is with no condition? Are the faithful “better than” the unfaithful, in God’s eyes, and so his grace is not actually unconditional? On the other hand…if he whammies our faith with irresistible grace, then how was our love a choice? Why doesn’t he whammy everyone? Why does he love so arbitrarily–how is that just? But, here is what I think. He doesn’t whammy anyone (hardening a heart only prevents a mind from changing for the wrong reasons…it doesn’t make the mind choose something completely different), and faith (though it is a work) is not what saves us. His grace (unconditional love) is what saves us, but he can only save the willing. It would not be love to save the unwilling. It is not that he does not love the unfaithful, it is that he won’t force his love on them. The one thing both faithful and unfaithful have in common is that they are not morally perfect. They all sit somewhere on the spectrum from good to evil, and only God occupies the good end–and his love is not relative to that spectrum, loving the good more than the evil…his love for each person is the same, regardless where they are at on that scale. Some goody-goodies never understand that–they think they are better than everyone else and don’t need God. If anyone is more likely to recognize their need for unconditional love, it’s those on the extreme evil end. So, faith does not necessarily equate to moral superiority. God loves the faithful and the unfaithful equally–and faith is only a condition of receiving grace, because God cannot force love on someone. I would rather conclude ‘that’, than conclude God decides at random who to whammy into submission (and who to let choose hell/annihilation) with (without) irresistible grace. [Just in case you’re thinking this: I doubt he would hold it against someone who was ignorant about anything that would change his/her mind toward acceptance. But, there are some who know exactly what they are rejecting. They’ve done their homework (as opposed to ‘saying’ they’ve done their homework), and they’ve gone their own way. The doors to hell are locked from the inside (C.S. Lewis) (of course…others are annihilationists).]
P.S. When God took on flesh, he gave up most of his “omni” aspects (omniscience, omnipotence, et cetera), except omni-benevolence (Philippians 2:6). That’s the one thing most essential to being God. That would be self-defeating…to give up divine omni-benevolence, in order to demonstrate it. However, he did give up the rest.
