Divine Knowledge and Arminianism

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I was not accusing anyone of anything. I was merely assessing a commonly used statement. I simply find these kind of trite statements and formulas to be useless from an argumentation standpoint.

I know, I got your point. Believe me, it is well-taken from a scholarship standpoint. I was just pointing out that saying such things does not necessarily amount to straw-manning, which the last sentence of your paragraph in this post seemed to imply. I know you did not explicitly accuse anyone, but when you replied to the statement in question by saying we should not argue against our opponents according to "what we think they should confess," to me it implies that this is in fact exactly what was being done. At the moment, I can't make sense of the comment any other way in the context presented. Forgive me if I am misreading you or your intent.
 
I know, I got your point. Believe me, it is well-taken from a scholarship standpoint. I was just pointing out that saying such things does not necessarily amount to straw-manning, which the last sentence of your paragraph in this post seemed to imply. I know you did not explicitly accuse anyone, but when you replied to the statement in question by saying we should not argue against our opponents according to "what we think they should confess," to me it implies that this is in fact exactly what was being done. At the moment, I can't make sense of the comment any other way in the context presented. Forgive me if I am misreading you or your intent.

Well, if you say something along the lines of “consistent Arminianism leads to open theism” you are essentially telling your opponent that if they really understood their position, they would confess such and such. This is presumptuous and not very helpful in an argument.
 
Well, if you say something along the lines of “consistent Arminianism leads to open theism” you are essentially telling your opponent that if they really understood their position, they would confess such and such. This is presumptuous and not very helpful in an argument.

Fair enough. I still respectfully maintain the validity of the statement regardless of whether or not it is helpful in an argument. Truth by its nature is perfectly consistent with itself. If Arminianism is not true (which we would affirm), yet still within orthodoxy (which we would affirm), then there must of necessity be inconsistencies therein which prevent it from falling into grievous error which is outside of orthodoxy, open theism being one of these errors. I am not sure how this is presumptuous; it seems to me to be a perfectly logical and legitimate thing to assert.

EDIT: Furthermore, telling someone that seeking consistency in their belief would cause them to confess such and such is not the same thing as telling them they do confess such and such. That, being a straw man, would indeed be presumptuous. But that is not what I am doing. We tell Roman Catholics all the time that their soteriology leads to a denial of salvation by grace, yet they deny this emphatically, saying they in fact do believe in salvation by grace. Yet telling them this is not presumptuous, is it?
 
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