Having a discussion on Open Theism in a discord server I'm in. This is nearing the end of the conversation, or at least, that's what it feels like.
Bugs said:
Honestly, after conversing with my pastor, and watching quite large number of videos on everything ranging from Calvinism to Arminianism, to Open-theism, and reading a boatload of Scripture, I typed out a huge (like 4 discord limits) response, but decided that a shorter answer will suffice for this.
I appreciate your succinctness.
God MUST know the future, simply because prophecy exists, and is written in Scriptures, that have not yet been fulfilled.
Just for that reason alone?
If so, then if all I do is show you that prophecy is not future settled history revealed, would you admit that there is no need for God to know the future?
And which is necessary, prophecy or love?
No act of man, can change the Scriptural integrity.
This sounds like begging the question.
You're assuming that the future was settled in order to prove that the future is settled.
Look, I agree, there are some things that are predetermined to happen.
But it's not because the future is known. It's because God intends to bring those things about.
God isn't going to break His promises to Israel or to Abraham. Thus, anything that is based on those promises, will happen.
You wanna know how I know He isn't going to break His promises?
Because God demonstrated His love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.
God doesn't change things on a whim. He is the exact opposite of arbitrary!
If the end times were to be changed, and the prophecy became no longer relevant, this would render God a liar, Scripture imperfect, and thus unreliable, and Christianity a false religion.
Scripture itself shows this to be wrong.
God told Jonah to tell Nineveh that "in forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed."
Was God a liar when it didn't happen?
NO!!!!
Of course He didn't become a liar when He did not destroy Nineveh!
The same is true with the End Times.
If God changes His mind on the end of the world, but still gives Israel the Kingdom He promised, because they returned to Him, and spares the rest of the world, would He not be completely within His authority to do so?!
Why would that make Him a liar?
Again, I bring up the analogy of a father who promises to take the entire family to 6-Flags (or wherever) if his son gets good grades in school, but when his son gets good grades, and they're on the way there, the boy disrespects his mother. If the father then says, "I'm turning the car around, because you did not honor your mother," does that make him a liar, since they will no longer be going to 6-Flags? NO, it makes him a good father!
If God tells Israel, "I'm going to take you into a land flowing with milk and honey, and I'll even fight your battles for you, in order to drive out the people that live there already," but just before they enter the Promised Land, they send out scouts, where 10 of them say "there's giants in the land, we can't defeat them!" but two say "let's trust God!", and they stop trusting God because of the 10, is God justified and right for leading them around in circles for 40 years until everyone above a certain age dies, and NOT leading them into the promised land? OF COURSE HE IS!
Does that make Him a liar?! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT DOES NOT!
God can change and adapt His plans to the belligerence of men. He's powerful enough to do that.
Secondly, God absolutely interferes with OUR understanding of free-will (influenced by sin nature and the Holy Spirit, fighting to be the foremost desire upon which we will act).
What is this "our understanding of free will"?
If it's not free, it's not a will.
A will is the ability to choose otherwise.
If you do not have the ability to choose otherwise, you do not have a will.
Abraham had the ability to choose otherwise, when presented with the command to kill his son Isaac on Mt Moriah. He chose to reach out for the knife, and at that moment, God stopped him and said "NOW I know that you fear Me"!
Examples like the perfect conception of Jesus in Mary (all others are conceived in sin),
This does not require God to know the future. It doesn't require the future to be settled or known.
It simply requires a woman to be willing to submit to her Creator for Him to bring about His plan.
Joshua 11:20 (God hardened their hearts),
Do you think that means that God has some kind of hardening agent? Or that He mysteriously manipulates them into becoming hardened?
Or could it be that "God hardened their hearts" is just saying "what God did made them harden their hearts against Him"?
We mere mortals harden hearts all the time.
A politician hardens his opponents' hearts just by speaking.
A scam televangelist hardens the hearts of millions against God.
So of course, the plagues that mocked the gods of the egyptians would of course result in God hardening pharaoh's heart, and even for the nations who were already against Israel to harden their hearts.
and many other instances where He directly intervenes with the choices of man to fulfill His promises and will.
God intervening is evidence for my position, not yours, because I'm the one who says God is free, and the future is not settled.
Let me ask you this:
If Judas Iscariot had repented just before he betrayed Jesus, do you think God would have been angry that Judas did not betray Jesus? Or do you think Jesus would have been overjoyed that Judas chose not to betray him?
All this to say, we are not MEANT to understand God to His full extent.
No one is saying that we are meant to understand God to His full extent.
But that doesn't mean we can't understand Him at all!
In fact, it's precisely because God gave us His word that we can understand Him ON OUR level, because He became a man! He literally condesended to us, so that we COULD understand Him. That's how much He desires a relationship with His creation!
Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
AMEN!
God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours.
They're not lower!
Meaning God doesn't justify evil for His own glory, nor does He send people to Hell for doing exactly what He predestined them to do!
"It is healthy for us to acknowledge that much of God is beyond our ability to comprehend. I dont think God pivoting on our account gives us control over Him. I think when He moves based on our requests, it's both covered within His sovereign knowledge, as well as being an example of His relational nature. I believe they can both exist"
Don't forget to cite your quotes, good sir.
That's from A. W. Tozer.
What he's presenting is an antinomy, which is a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable. In other words, a paradox.
Truth is non-contradictory. If you have a paradox, or a contradiction, then at least ONE of your premises is incorrect and needs to be corrected.
Yes, much of God is beyond our ability to comprehend. No, that doesn't mean we can't understand Him at all.
God pivoting on our account is part of being in a relationship. No, it doesn't mean we will "control Him," it means that we can affect Him (contrary to the concept of God being impassable).
God moving based on our requests shows a change, it shows that the future is not settled, and He is free to act or not act.
His "Sovereign knowledge" and "relational nature" here are what are in conflict here. Whenever the word "sovereign" is used, especially by someone like Tozer, you have to ask "what is his definition of the word."
If by "sovereign," he means, "in meticulous divine control over literally everything, no maverick molecule, etc," that's not what the word actually means, but is the theological baggage that Calvinists bring to the text because it's required to uphold their belief system.
So when the phrase "sovereign knowledge" is used, he means that God knows everything that will happen infallibly, because He's the one who predestined it to happen.
Why is this a problem, and conflict with "relational nature"?
Because you can't have a relationship with a robot. If God predestined everything that will happen, including every decision you will make in your lifetime, and you do not have the ability to choose otherwise, then you do not have freedom.
In order to have a relationship, you must have the ability to not be in a relationship. If you do not have the ability to refuse the relationship, then that's not a relationship, by definition.
For example, if a man finds a woman, and he takes her to his home, and then boards up the exterior so that she can't escape, you would rightly call that kidnapping, and you would rightly determine that the man is not well and be disgusted with him.
But if a man finds a woman, and woos her, going to her time and time again, and forms a relationship with her, and then takes her to his home, but leaves the exterior alone and doesn't board it up, and tells her "you can leave at any time," and she chooses to stay, that's a relationship, and is desirable; the man is not mentally ill.
This applies to both the argument for hell's existence, and for this topic.
I posted a link earlier (and I'll post it here again) that shows how infallible foreknowledge means that men do not have wills.
If a man (or woman) does not have the ability to choose otherwise, then they are not responsible for what they do.
If they are not responsible for what they do, then God punishing them for what they do is unjust.
God is just, therefore men have the ability to choose otherwise, and God cannot infallibly know the future exhaustively.
God infallibly knowing the future, and having a personal relationship with His creation, are mutually exclusive.
Edit: adding this for later, to be added in above and expanded:
You mentioned, "If the end times were to be changed..."
The end times DID change. Everything was on track for the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy of weeks, with Christ's DBR fulfilling multiple of the feasts, followed by Pentecost, and a year of the HS's digging. Yet something happened and the entire thing was put on hold.
