ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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Wow!
Thank you (Seriously)!
Sure!
Why not?
Can you argue that such a translation would be in error, or is your personal opinion all you've got?
I've read such a translation in a couple of different places, one of which was from a man who is widely considered to be one of the foremost Christian philosophers of our or any other generation. A man, by the way, who happened to have been a hard core Calvinist and was sixty times more qualified than either you or I to translate anything in the Bible.
I want to be right. Clever is nice too; it makes for good reading and I like it when people read my stuff and get something worthwhile from having done so but being right is vastly more important to me.
And I suppose you do.
If so, then make the argument. Tell us and one of the most prolific Christian authors in modern history why the translation of Logos as Logic is incorrect. The translation is so obvious as to be on the level of intuitive. It's not like I'm suggesting it should be translated into the word "canine" or "apple" or something that is clearly unrelated to the concept being communicated.
Go ahead AMR. If your so educated and I'm such a moron, make the argument and prove me wrong.
No. Never.
I don't consider myself to be a "Clarkian" anything but Gordon Clark is the man your up against on this translation of the word Logos, not me.
Notice however how I do not dismiss every syllable of what the man said based solely on the fact that he was a Calvinist. A man being wrong in one area doesn't make him wrong in another.
You're an idiot AMR.
Did you really think that I wasn't aware of Clark's theology? How is his error in some area unrelated to translating Greek relevant? At best his other errors are reason to be careful and look at other things he says with a suspicious eye to make sure that it isn't yet another error, but then you have that same problem don't you? If you're so willing to reject Clark on the basis of some errors he's made then why are you not willing to do the same with Calvin and Luther and Augustine?
Resting in Him,
Clete
Evoken
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I relied on what you said. "God knows all that is knowable. What is knowable is increasing.; God knows these things exhaustively, but not before they become real..."
If God knows all that is knowable and what is knowable is increasing, then it follows that what God knows is increasing. The reverse of this, which is equally valid, is that as we go back in time, what is knowable decreases and what God knows also decreases. This leads us to a point where there is nothing knowable (the beginning).
My post was not concerned with impossible objects of knowledge(which as far as God is concerned, I am tempted to argue do not exist, but that is besides the point), but with the manner that God obtains knowledge and the manner in which he thinks.
Evo
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themuzicman
Well-known member
Your reversal assumes that God knew nothing at some point, and it is equally (and even moreso) possible that God's knowledge may be increasing in one area (the free will decisions of men), and not increasing in other areas (knowledge of Himself, knowledge of all possible courses of the future, the nature of the universe, etc), such that the base of knowledge that is increasing may reach the bottom before what God knows reaches zero.
Muz
Muz
The reverse is not valid at all. It does not follow that because something is now increasing that it must have begun at zero.
How is it beside the point?
It is the entire point!
What God knows and doesn't know is directly relevant to whether we have a free will and the Open View is alternately called "Free Will Theism" for a reason. If we do not have a free will then the God of the Bible is unjust. The Open View, rather than redefining the term 'justice' to mean whatever we want it to mean as the Calvinists do, we simply acknowledge what the Bible says about what God does and does not know. Greek philosophy says that God must know everything, including every event of the future, the Bible repeatedly says otherwise. The question then becomes: If the Bible is willing to say that God learns things, why aren't you?
Resting in Him,
Clete
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So, you're saying God is not completely immutable?Can an omnipotent God also be immutable? This is an old chesnut that newcomers to theological topics “re-discover” when they begin exploring the domain. Every new student of theology encounters this; it is a favorite of professors who like asking "extra credit" questions. At first, it appears to be a logical dilemma, and some exclaim, “Aha!”, yet when we properly define our terms no dilemma exists. Thus, Lighthouse, I have not been too motivated to answer the question here. In any event, to give you credit for persistance, and to put an end to your question,, my answer is YES, God can be omnipotent and immutable per the discussion of these terms below.
Please carefully review the items below and get back to me should you have more questions. I have provided as many Scripture references for each item as I could think of for your review, too.
God’s incommunicable attributes
First, as Christians we must realize that while God’s attributes are a sufficient source for a description of God, they are not comprehensive. After all, we are admonished, “Who has known the mind of the Lord…?” (Rom 11:34) and that God’s thoughts are much, much, higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55:9). The incommunicable attributes of God are those attributes that cannot be fully shared with man, thereby exalting God above man. God is the creator, and mankind is His creation.
Self-Existence (sometimes called Independence or Aseity)
God is self-reliant. He does not need us, or creation, or anything. On the other hand, mankind is totally God-reliant. God’s being is qualitatively different that any other being. Mankind relies on God for all His sustaining of life. For example, see Acts 17:24-25; Job 41:11; Rev. 4:11; Ps. 90:2; 2 Pe. 3:8
Eternity
God exists outside the bounds of time. God is without beginning or end. God experiences no succession of moments in His being. God sees all of time “equally vividly”. For example, God created the universe, yet there has never been a moment in God’s mind that the universe did not always exist. From God’s perspective, any extremely long period of time is as if it just happened. Moreover any very short period of time, e.g., one day, seems to God to last forever: it never ceases to be “present” in his consciousness. This is what I mean when stating that God sees the past, present, and future equally vividly.
God is not subject to any limitations of His creation. God is far greater than anything He has made. Mankind has a beginning, and each person must function within the boundaries of time. God, unlike man, does not have to learn anything, and God does not react out of surprise to events. This does not mean God is impersonal, indeed, God speaks to us, rejoices in us, and loves us. God also sees events in time and can and does act in time. God created time and rules over time, using it for his own purposes and glory. But God’s experience of time nothing like mankind experiences time. God’s does not experience a patient endurance through eons of endless duration, instead God has a qualitatively different experience of time than we do.
For example, see Ps. 90:2; Ps. 90:4; Rev. 1:8; Rev. 4:8; John 8:58; Ex. 3:14; Isa. 45:21; Isa. 46:9-10; Gal. 4:4-5; Acts 17:30-31
Unity (sometimes called Simplicity)
God is one, and His nature is indivisible, that is God is not divided into parts. Each aspect of God’s character operates in perfect harmony with all the others. There is an assumption that every attribute is completely true of God and is true of all of God’s character. For example, God’s justice is never compromised by His mercy, nor is His mercy ever compromised by His justice.
When Scripture speaks about God’s attributes it never singles out one attribute of God as more important than all the rest. All such attempts to do so misconceive of God as some combination of parts, with some of these parts being more influential or larger than other parts. For that matter, what would it mean to say this or that attribute of God is “more important” than another? Does it mean that there are some of God’s actions that are not fully consistent with some of His other attributes? Does it mean that there are attributes of God that He somehow sets aside at times so that He may act in ways that are slightly contrary to those attributes? Naturally we cannot accept either perspective. Instead we see all of God’s attributes as various aspects of the total character of God and such questions are not necessary.
God’s unity is contrary to God’s creatures, who often work in disunity. For example, mankind may function purely out of anger, or a sense of justice, or out of empathy, despite acting in a way contrary to other aspects of their nature.
For example, see 1 John 1:5; 1 John 1:48; Ex. 34:6-7
Immutability (sometimes called Unchangeability)
God’s perfections and attributes are unchangeable. They do not increase, or decrease in number, quality or power. This is in comparison to mankind who is totally depraved, and as we are in that state desperately need to be changed. God not only does not change from without or from within, He cannot change from without or from within. There is no self-development or degeneration of God. God’s perfection is all that God can be or want to be. Only God alone is altogether unchangeable. God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises. Having said that, God does act and feel emotions, and He acts and feels differently in response to different situations. All of God’s creatures are mutable by the power of the God, in whose power is all creatures’ existence and non-existence. For example, see Ps. 33:11; Ps. 102:25-27; Mal. 3:6; James 1:17; Isa. 46:9-11; Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Zech. 8:17
Infinity
See Eternity
Omnipresence
God is everywhere present in all of His being, yet God acts differently in different places and God cannot be contained by any space. Indeed, God existed before anything we can call spatiality existed. Mankind is confined to a singular location in the dimension of “time”. For example, see Gen. 1:1; Deut. 10:14; Jer. 23:23-24; Ps. 139:7-10; I Kings 8:27; Isa. 66:1-2; Acts 7:48; Col. 1:7; Heb. 1:3
God’s communicable attributes
These are attributes of God that are more shared with mankind
Omniscience
God knows Himself and all things actual (i.e., all things that exist and all things that happen) and all the particular things that could ever be actualized in one simple eternal act. There is nothing that God does not know. Man’s knowledge is learned, and apart from the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the Scriptures, man’s knowledge of any given topic is imperfect. For example, see Job 37:16; 1 John 3:20; 1 Cor. 2:10-11; Heb. 4:13; 2 Chron. 16:9; Job 28:24; Matt. 10:29-30; Isa. 46:9-10; Isa. 42:8-9; Matt. 6:8; Matt. 10:30; Ps. 139:1-2; Ps. 139:4; Ps. 139:16; Rom. 11:33
Omnipotence
God can do anything God wills to do that is consistent with His character. God can do what God in fact does not do--in the sense that the present course of events in no way is produced by God from any necessity. Other events could well have happened, had God willed them to happen, and God could have willed them to happen had God wanted to. If God wills events, then events happen, but God didn't have to will them. In other words, God is able to do all His holy will. While God’s power is infinite, God’s use of that power is qualified by His other attributes, just as all of God’s attributes qualify all of God’s actions.
God can always do better than what God does--there will always be a gap between God and any participation in the goodness of God. Thus God cannot be required to do the better, only something which is good. God can make each of His creations better. Of course, if God makes a human being, God makes a human being, not an angel; but God could have made people more virtuous and wise than the ones God has made, and God can make things better than human beings or angels or whatever God may in fact have made.
Man is totally reliant on God for any power he may have.
For example, see Jer. 32:17; Jer. 32:27; Gen. 8:14; Luke 1:37; Matt. 19:26; Ps. 115:3; Matt. 3:9;
Sovereignty
God is continually involved with all of His created things in such that God (1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which He created them; (2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and (3) directs them to fulfill His purposes. In other words, God is totally sovereign over all of His creation. Absolutely nothing in God’s creation can act independently of God’s sovereignty. God will always do what He has said, and will fulfill what He has promised. Man may claim sovereignty over his own life, but ultimately God is in control.
For example, see Heb 1:3; Col. 1:17; Acts 17:28; Neh. 9:6; 2 Peter 3:7; Job 12:23; Job 34:14-15; Job 38:32; Matt. 5:45; Matt. 6:26; Num. 23:19; 2 Sam. 7:28; Ps. 33:14-15; Ps. 104:14; Ps. 104:29; Ps. 135:6; Ps. 139:16; Ps. 141:6; Ps. 148:8; Prov. 16:1; Prov. 16:33; Prov. 20:24; Prov. 21:1; Prov. 30:5; John 17:17; Eph. 1:11; Gal. 1:15; Jer. 1:5; 1 Cor. 4:7
OK, answer this: Could God change, if He wanted to?
I believe that God's character does not, and will not change. But His mind can change. And He can learn new things, and create new things.
I also believe that He could change the things that will not change, if He so chose. However, I believe that He has the ability to not change them, i.e. He is not unable to sin, He is able to not sin.
I believe in omnipotence over immutability. However I do not believe He is omnipotent in that He can do things that just cannot be done, i.e. knowing something that does not exist to be known.
Philetus
New member
Is another way of asking your question: "Can God choose and create an environment that includes 'chaos' (contingencies) and thereby choose to not know or manipulate every detail of its development?" or more specifically; "Can God create a plant or animals to reproduce after their own kind without knowing or controlling every detail of the process or outcome?"
Does that get at your question of immutability, foreknowledge and omnipotence?
Philetus
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What God knew in the beginning was infinite possibilities and His own infinite potential. He knew the universe and significant others did not exist as actual until He created them. Once created the universe God made limited those possibilities to a more specific set of possibilities determined by the kind of universe God in fact made and ruled out the possibilities of others (like square circles). Once made God knew the universe as actual, yet, because God included possibilities for development that only existed as possibilities (contingencies) there are details that remain yet unknowable even to God. There was never a time that God knew nothing. There is never a time that God knows the unknowable contingency as actual.
Yes.
Also, is God omnipotent enough to perform His will, without having to have exhaustive foreknowledge of future, yet to be, events?
Ask Mr. Religion
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Muz,
We cannot even state the question in these words, for they belie the notion of God existing in the flow of temporality. We must resort to analogous God-talk. Yesterday and today and tomorrow have no existence, except in time. There are no "befores" and "afters" with God, a changeless being. God is outside of this flow, seeing this flow in an eternal vividness, a vastly qualitatively different experience than what we experience as time. Finite creation through its whole range exists as a medium through which God manifests His glory. Time is a property of the finite creation and is objective to God. He is above it and sees it, but is not conditioned by it. He is also independent of space, which is another property of the finite creation. God was ontologically prior to time, but not chronologically prior to it. No temporal continuum existed when God created the universe; hence it was not necessary for God to choose a moment in time in which to create. Rather from all eternity, God chose to create the temporal continuum itself, which had a beginning.
The universe was created ex nihilo (out of nothing). Consequently, God does not change “internally”, that is, His essence, by creating something else. The only thing that changes is “external”, the relationship of the world to Him. After creation and after, God became “Creator” for the first time. That is, at creation God gained a new relationship [to Him but not from Him to creation], but not any new attributes. God did not change in His essence, but in His external activity. There is no change in what God is, but what God has done. The change is only in the effect, not in the Cause (God), since He caused from eternity all that was later to be effected in time. Failure to make this distinction leads to the neotheistic confusion of speaking of God “changing His nonessential nature”. This failure also assumes that to act in time is to be temporal. It does not demonstrate that the Actor is temporal; only that His acts are temporal. God does not have a “nonessential” nature. “Nature” is what is essential to a thing. So a nonessential nature is a contradiction in terms. Since nature means essence, it would be a nonessential essence, which is nonsense.
To look at the point differently, even non-theists recognize that there is a real difference between an uncreated Creator and a created world. One has no beginning and the other does. One has no temporal starting point, and the other does. In the same way, theists insist that God is beyond time, even though He made time. After all, every creator is beyond his creation the way an artist is beyond his painting or a composer is beyond his composition.
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Philetus
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Good, lord!
That’s the most almost intelligent thing you have almost said, AMR.
So, God always almost ‘related’ to creation even before it existed? :doh:
GOD'S NATURE DOESN'T CHANGE! We agree.
God RELATES and relationship is DYNAMIC! God relates to us. God responds to us. That's change because of what free creatures do or don't do. That doesn't compromise God's nature ... that IS God's nature. We are not dried oil on canvas. We are not musical notes to be played by others. We are persons. Well, at least non-Calvinists are people.
That’s the most almost intelligent thing you have almost said, AMR.
So, God always almost ‘related’ to creation even before it existed? :doh:
GOD'S NATURE DOESN'T CHANGE! We agree.
God RELATES and relationship is DYNAMIC! God relates to us. God responds to us. That's change because of what free creatures do or don't do. That doesn't compromise God's nature ... that IS God's nature. We are not dried oil on canvas. We are not musical notes to be played by others. We are persons. Well, at least non-Calvinists are people.
Nang
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This does not accord with the Holy Scriptures, that clearly testify:
"Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." Psalm 139:16
All men are the creation of God. As Creator, all the days of every human were written and fashioned . . .(ever heard of the Lamb's Book of Life?) . . . made and established out of nothing, in order to fulfill God's eternal purposes . . .(ever heard of the Everlasting Covenant?) . . . and, just as man was created out of nothing, according to the will, purposes, and wisdom of Omniscient God; so do all the works of His creatures issue from His hand.
"Lord, you will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our works in us." Isaiah 26:12
"Oh Lord, for Your servant's sake, and according to Your own heart, You have done all this greatness, in making known all these great things." I Chronicles 17:19
". . He who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done IN God." John 3:21
To deny God's total knowledge and sovereign control over every happening in His creation, is to deny God as Creator.
God is not just a powerful, "starter."
Such teaching would constitute the lesser religion of Deism, which is equally untruthful as its cousin, ungodly humanism.
The OVT is just another philosophical view; a post-modern humanism, based on the religious limitations of Deism at best.
The OVT does not accord with the word of God, at all.
Nang
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Duration is for temporal things that an atemporal, necessary being, God, has created.
For your interpretation of God, time (and space) would have to be something existing outside of the universe. Yet we know from physics time is related to gravitational forces and mass. Does a spiritual God have mass? Weight? If you don't agree that time exists outside of all that God created, then God must share the attributes of the created universe, since, after all, time is one of the attributes of the exiting matter in the universe. If God shares this attribute with the universe, then God is limited to the boundaries of the known universe. I don't think you want to go there.
Your choices are: pantheism, panentheism, or God existing beyond the boundaries of time (and space), but working within both, yet subject to neither. I'll stick with the third choice.
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First, you could drop the anti-Calvinist vitriol. I know you think yourself clever and seek to puff yourself up with these needless asides, but the pride you are feeding only diminishes you in God's eyes as we discuss His holy and sacred attributes.
Second, I do not hold that God's creatures are "free creatures" as the term "free" is commonly defined by open theists. But that is another topic discussed at length elsewhere. Third, I am not denying that God relates with His creatures. The issue is that you assert that God's relations with His creatures somehow changes God. This I deny. There is no biblical support for your unsupported assertion above and much (that I have cited in many posts) to support my position that God does not change.
God's creatures are dependent upon Him, but God is not dependent on His creatures. God knows about the relationship of dependence; therefore when there is change in the creature's dependence on God, there is no change in God. Just as when a person changes his position from one side of a pillar to the other, the pillar does not change; only the person changes in relation to the pillar. So while the relationship between God and creatures is real, God is in no sense dependent on that relationship.
Please see the latter paragraphs of my post here for more elaboration on this topic.
themuzicman
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You just contradicted yourself.
First, there is no "before" or "after" with God, but then there must be a "nothing" before the universe can be created out of it, thus, for God, there is a "before creation" in a temporal sense.
Which only continues to expose the logical contradiction between atemporality and ex nihilo creation.
You've shifted into God's internal immutability with respect to His character and nature, which I have no disagreement with.
Again, I have no issue with this as far as it goes. However, to say that God is atemporal altogether is a contradiction. God may experience some other temporal existence that is far different from ours, but in order for creation to be "ex nihilo", God must experience some kind of temporal existence.
Muz
Unresponsive/red herring.
AMR,
If Lighthouse's question 'begs the question' then how does your belief that "God exists outside the bounds of time.", not do the same thing?
Does not the concept of existence presuppose duration?
Please answer the question directly.
Resting in Him,
Clete
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