A Conversation on Free Will

NOTE:  The formatting on this is a little bit rough.  

It originated as a conversation I had with a 

seeker on the topic, but I liked this format so 

well I thought it would work here.  I realize this 

is not an academic format, and would never 

pass it off as such, but if it is too distracting or 

too difficult to follow, please comment 

below and I'll fix it.
Thanks.

God not only knows the future, He knows all possible futures.

God not only knows this reality, but all possible realities.  Further, He knows which of those possible realities we are in, and therefore, knows what we will do.

But, as I'm fond of saying, "God's foreknowledge is not determinative."

That is, by knowing what WILL happen, God does not CAUSE that to happen.

For example,

God knows that tomorrow, I will commit a sin.

God does not CAUSE me to sin, but He knows it will happen.

ok.  So now we must ask "Why?"

Why did God create a universe like this?

Why does the possibility for evil exist?

Why do children get bone cancer and high school girls get raped?

because of sin

But what is Sin?

Sin is our disobedience to God.

That disobedience corrupts everything.

So God did not create a world where people could get cancer

but sin corrupted the world God created.

But why did God give us the capacity to sin in the first place?

Why did He not create us incapable of sin?

Love.

Suppose you really love a girl, and you want her to love you back.

So you send her cards and flowers and candies

you ask her out, you buy her gifts

but over and over again, she rejects you

Now, you're a big, powerful, 6 foot 4 inch, 300-pound man, and she's a little tiny 4 foot 9 inch, 98-pound woman....

so you decide you're going to force her to love you

Is that possible?

Can you force her to feel love for you?

not at all

You might be able to force her to SAY she loves you, but it won't be genuine love.

Because love cannot be forced

If love is forced, it ceases to be love.

it becomes something else.

Next question:  What does God own?

God owns absolutely everything, including our bodies and our possessions

not to mention the rest of the universe

But God does not own our love.

He DESERVES it, to be sure

But He cannot take it.

For us to love, we must also be free NOT to love.

Otherwise, that love is not love, but something else.

What is it?

I don't know, but it is not love.

My sister had a doll when we were kids.

When you push a button on its back, it would say "I love you."

It was kind of neat, but I never felt an emotional attachment to it.

Why?  Because it had no choice in the matter.

It could not do anything BUT say "I love you."

But it didn't really love me, and I intuitively knew this.

God cannot force us to love Him.

But that is what He wants.

That is the only thing, in all of existence, that He cannot seize for himself.

So, in order for us to actually love God, we must be free to not love Him.  That is why He has given us free will.

Free will is the thing that makes real love possible.

New Testament Textual Criticism

We have so many ancient manuscripts we can compare them and find out what the truth really is. it's not a big deal. The argument some are making is that since there are mistakes in various manuscripts, the whole of the Bible is corrupt. This is very much not the case. For example...

1.   I c_n do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
2.   I can do all things thr_ugh Christ who gives me strength.
3.   I can do all things through Christ who gives me stren_th.
4.   I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
5.   I can _o all things through Christ who gives me strength.
6.   I can do all thi_gs through Christ who gives me strength.
7.   I can do all things through Christ w_o gives me strength.
8.   I _ do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
9.   I can do all things through Christ _.
10. I can do _ things through Christ who gives me strength.

This is a passage from Philippians 4. I have copied the same sentence ten times. There are 11 words in the passage. There are ten errors in the text I have presented, indicated by _. Some of those errors are significant, removing whole words or even phrases. Some of them remove single letters.

But can you compare all ten and find out what the original said? Yes, you can, even though every single one of them is, in some way, corrupt. Where there is an error in each one, there are 9 or 10 other ones with the correct reading. Each of those errors (_) is called a "textual variant."

Now, my illustration if flawed. I only gave you ten sentences and ten textual variants. How many textual variants are there in the New Testament documents? Nearly 400,000. That is more variants than the total number of words in the New Testament (Dr. Bart Ehrman loves to point this out).

But how many manuscripts do we have? That is, what is the size of the sample which contains these 400,000 variants? Roughly 1.2 MILLION pages. This means that there is approximately 1 variant per THREE PAGES, not one variant per sentence.

You'll see in my illustration above ten variants in ten sentences. This is a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER CONCENTRATION OF ERRORS than we find in reality.

But was it hard to understand what the original said? Not at all. We can do it almost instinctively.

The New Testament is the single best-attested document of ancient history. NOTHING else comes remotely close to its attestation. The New Testaments we have today are reliable and accurate.

For more information on this topic, see the work of Dr. Daniel Wallace.

Dr. Daniel Wallace on New Testament Textual Criticism

Three Days and Three nights

The "Three days and three nights" issue stems from a failure to understand Jewish holidays.  The Bible says Jesus was crucified on the day before the Sabbath.  If you don't know anything at all about Jewish holidays (like the Passover) you have to say the Crucifixion was on Friday.

But if you have a Jewish holiday in the mix, you can add additional Sabbaths to the week.  Jesus was crucified on Thursday.  Friday and Saturday were both Sabbath days that week.  For example, Leviticus 23:26-32 speaks of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and verse 32 fixes a Sabbath day on the 9th day of the month... regardless of what day of the week that is.

Leviticus 23:32
It shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict yourselves. On the ninth day of the month beginning at evening, from evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath.”

Jesus was crucified, then, on the day before the Sabbath, but in this case, it was not the weekly Sabbath, but rather the High Sabbath for the Passover.

So Jesus was dead on...

Thursday NIGHT............................  Friday DAY,
Friday NIGHT...............................Saturday DAY,
Saturday NIGHT...and a portion of Sunday DAY.

Why do I say just a portion of Sunday?  Because He was raised ON the third day, not AFTER the third day.

Matthew 17:22-23a
As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.”

Why do we have Good Friday celebration, then?  The same way we remember Memorial day on a Monday, or we observe a holiday that falls on a Saturday by taking Friday off.  It's more convenient for a civilized society.

But very few educated Christians believe that Jesus was crucified on a Friday.

There are two common errors people make with this:  One, they try to force it to fit the "Good Friday - Resurrection Sunday" narrative.  When they do that, they are forced to make the argument that "counting is cultural," and "any part of a day or night counted as a whole day or night."  Even if that's the case, we do not see the third night, even partially.  We see Friday Day, Friday Night, Saturday Day, Saturday Night, Sunday Day.... but even with the most generous counting method possible, we only see three days and two nights between Friday and Sunday.

The other mistake people commonly make is to insist that "Three days and three nights means three full days and three full nights.  72 hours exactly!"  But I have already answered this objection above:  Jesus did not complete the third day in the tomb.  The Scripture says he rose "on the third day," not after it.

That is why I hold to a Thursday evening crucifixion.  Jesus died on the day of preparation, as Matthew 27:62 indicates.

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 

That is, they do this the day after the crucifixion, which Matthew tells us is also the "next day," the one after the day of Preparation.

The Day of Preparation is the day when Jewish households would do extra work to prepare for the rest of the Sabbath.

Mark 15:42 agrees:
42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath,

Also, John 19:14-16:
14 Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” 16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. 

But if Friday was the High Sabbath (probably of Unleavened Bread) and Saturday was the Weekly Sabbath, then the women, who were obviously eager to anoint the Body (they began their journey to the tomb before sunrise) would have had to wait two full days of Sabbath observance before they could defile themselves by touching a dead body.