In article <139.59.11.05.073311000@srcbs.org>, Bart Goddard says...
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>matthew_member@newsguy.com wrote:
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>>>The purpose of this scenerio is not as an allegory for God, (although
>>>there is some allegory here) but to show that "will" is not a
>>>well-defined thing, or at least it's not easy to nail down what
>>>someone's "will" is.
>>
>> Of course, I have known this for a long time. In fact, it was I who
>> told you that Luther and Chemnitz never understood the definition of
>> 'will' in the NT. For they denied what St. Maximus the Confessor knew
>> so well, that the very word 'will' (qelhma) implies that the _person_
>> doing the willing is both rational and free.
>
>You don't know what you think you know.

Playing mind-reader again, Bart? Stick to the math you do so much better than
you do mindreadding.


> Luther uses the
>term "free will",

That he does. But he subtly and dishonestly changed the _sense_ of the term. For
he did NOT meant the same as Augustine did, as is clear from comparing "The
Bondage of the Will" with "De Gratia & Libero Arbitrio".

> and says things like "they ascribe more
>to free will than its due."

And depending on who "they" is, that might be acceptable. But he probably meant
the Romans, which would have made it unacceptable.

> As I've said all along, it's
>this modern interpretation of "free will" that is the problem.

Which "modern interpretation"? It is not monolithic.

>You can be rational, and you can be "free", as long as
>you realize that "free (1500)" doesn't mean "free (2005)".

No, that is not good enough. "Free (1500)" is _still_ wrong. And it doesn't do
you much good to know you are 'free' if you still misunderstand what it means
for God to have created Man rational. But this too was widely misunderstood when
Luther & Chemnitz wrote.

>>>On one hand, I will that there be no snapping wrenches. On the
>>>other hand, I try to snap them, willing that the defective ones break
>>>here in my shop, rather than in the hand of my customers.
>>
>> The analogy is worth something, but not that much; for the big
>> difference between your will and God's is, of course, that He is
>> omnipotent, you are not.
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>No, the "of course" here is that, if you read my first quoted
>sentence about, this is not an analogy about God.

That was a weak and unconvincing disclaimer.

> It's an
>illustration of how "will" can differ and not be contradictory.

And I critiqued that too.

>The fact that you went ahead and tried to critic it as
>if it were an analogy about God is very telling.

Now you are the one who failed to read. I did not "critic[sic] it as if it were
an anaology about God", I covered