Jerry Shugart said:JS: First of all,"with God all things are possible"(Mt.19:26).
RULZ: This does not mean that God can do the logically absurd like creating a rock too big to lift.
JS: And secondly,if the future cannot be known how do you explain the following?:
"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure"(Isa.46:10).
The Lord can declare "the things that are not yet done" because He has a foreknowledge of those things.The verse does not say that He can declare the end from the beginning because He can see some of "the things which are not yet done".
RULZ: This is a favorite verse of Open Theists like Gregory Boyd. Is. 46:11 goes on to say that He will bring about what He has planned....that will I do. He knows some aspects of the future because of His omnicompetent ABILITY, not His foreknowledge. He is able to predetermine and foreknow some things, because He intends to bring them to pass apart from other free moral agents. It is wrong to extrapolate that He brings ALL things to pass or that He knows the future exhaustively. In this context, and for this particular prophecy, He knows because He brings it to pass. Many other moral and mundane things are unknowable and unsettled until man makes an actual choice.
cf. Is. 48:3 "I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I ACTED, and they came to pass."
The context is about proximal prophecies relating to Israel and judgments. It is not a proof text for exhaustive foreknowledge of future contingencies from trillions of years ago. The verse has God's ABILITY, not foreknowledge in mind as the mechanism for how He can know SOME (not all) things about the proximal future. It is illogical for God to know exhaustively every chess move Fisher and Spasky would make zillions of years before they even existed as objects of knowledge. The only way to have this would be a sheerly deterministic universe. It is self-evident that we have genuine freedom to make alternate choices. This is part of what it is to be in the personal and moral image of God.
JS: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?"(Ro.12:33,34).
The Open Theologists claim that they know the mind of the Lord and that they know the ways of the Lord even though Paul says that that "his ways are past finding out".The Open Theologists use verses that are in regard to a narrative in order to attempt to prove their theology despite the fact that their interpreation of those verses directly contradict verses that are in regard to the very nature of the Lord.
RULZ: God wants us to know Him personally and intimately. We cannot understand everything about the infinite God with finite minds, but His revelation does communicate truth about His nature and ways. It is the glory of a king to search out a matter. Calvinism has much to say about who God is and what He does. Open Theism seeks the same thing: to understand God and His ways within the parameters of His knowable revelation in His Word. We do not fully understand the triune nature of God, but we are expected to worship Him in Spirit and truth. Calvinism distorts the revelation of God and makes Him responsible for heinous evil and the damnation of most of the human race that He could save if He would only chose to. A caricature of God is a stumbling block and a barrier to faith for those who are thinking and seek to love and serve a God who is not arbitrary and evil. The problem is not with OTs interpreting verses in a contradictory manner. The problem is that some classical theists are forced to take some straightforward passages figuratively because it contradicts a preconceived theology.
There is a difference between questioning God and His ways in certain circumstances when we see through a glass darkly, and claiming we cannot know basic things about His character and attributes. We know He is loving, faithful, personal, omnipotent, etc. It is not wrong to speculate on the nature of the future and how the eternal God relates to His temporal creation. Open Theists do not claim to know about God exhaustively, but desire to know what is knowable truthfully. If Augustine was unduly influenced by Platonic ideas, we want to get back to solid biblical ground. This is our responsibility. The verse is not a proof text to justify sloppy theology, the Queen of sciences. The study of God is paramount. Sovereignty is rarely mentioned in the Bible, yet it is the crux of Calvinism. The concept is certainly in the Bible, but the definition of how God is sovereign is what is debated (providential vs meticulous control).
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