I had a feeling it was beyond your ability. Too bad, simplicity is often evidence of accuracy.
What am I to make of you, Knight? You start this discussion belying a sincere interest, yet your intentions were mockery. Is there not an open theist within TOL, other that perhaps godrulz, that seeks honest discourse versus the fun and games at the expense of others or self-puffery?
Do you believe God is still free?
Yes, I do. To deny otherwise is to deny that God cannot intervene in His temporal creation. 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.
Can God create something new right now? (assuming He wanted to?)
Yes, I do. God 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 vastly qualitatively different experience of time than we do.
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. God is above time and sees time, but God is not conditioned by time. He is also independent of space, which is another property of the finite creation. God was ontologically prior to time. 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.
Can God, write a new song?
Asked and answered above.
So you believe that Christ is still suffering on the cross?
No I do not. The correct question is how does God perceive temporal events. You misunderstand God’s transcendent nature, especially regarding time. There are no ‘befores’ and ‘afters’ with eternal God. He exists outside of time. Nevertheless, God created time and can/does act within time. You are trying to map God into this time box, applying terms and concepts that we understand about time, but God’s atemporality is transcendent of these concepts. God sees everything that we know as “time” equally vividly and He has done so for eternity. 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.
Let me try an analogy. Have you ever re-read a book that you enjoy? As soon as you start to read suddenly your mind is flooded with all the imagery, context, and plot of the entire book. A poor analogy, since “suddenly” is a succession of moments, albeit quantum moments, yet I think you can make the connection to what I mean about God’s experiencing everything equally vividly.
And when Christ said.... "it is finished" you believe it isn't really finished?
No, I do not. But again, it is how God sees temporality that is the topic, no? We humans are bound by time existing within times continuum and subject to its flow. From God’s perspective, any extremely long period of time, such as the crucifixion, 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.
And completely unbiblical to boot. The Bible is filled cover to cover with examples of God living sequentially. From Gen 1 to Revelation 22:21 you cannot escape God's rational, sequentially character.
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It's all so silly! God says He created and then He rested. According to Calvinism God is still creating! According to Calvinism God can't rest on the 7th day.
God’s special revelation (the scriptures) is revealed to His temporal creation. The Scriptures have many historical accounts of time based events. You must, however, when studying the bible, look to the didactic verses, those that teach us about God’s attributes, especially those of God’s eternity. I cited many of them in my original reply, which you have ignored.
God being out of time is a Calvinist invention.
You need more study of the doctrine and resist resorting to polemics. It is not an invention of Calvinism, it is a biblical truth believed by most Protestants.
You can't have it both ways AMR. God either determined that man would sin or He didn't, it can't be both ways.
So, the topic shifts from time to foreknowledge? OK. We must not confuse foreknowledge with foreordination. Foreknowledge presupposes foreordination, but foreknowledge is not itself foreordination. The actions of free agents do not take place because they are foreseen, they are foreseen because they are certain to take place. When I say, 'I know what I will do,' it is evident that I have determined already, and that my knowledge does not precede my determination, my knowledge follows my determination and is based upon my determination.
A list of over 4,000 predictive prophecies from the Scriptures can be obtained here. Of these, over 2,300 are predictive prophecies concerning future free human decisions or events that involve such free decisions. When these quantities are examined they clearly form a strong position for God’s foreknowledge of free human decisions.
In the end I think it's safe to say you need to alter your list. It should go more like this
You are just being silly now.
I think your biggest issue, and the problem with most Arminians and open theists, is that you need to understand that God can do as He pleases. He neither needs nor requires our permission to as He wishes to do. The Potter remains free. See Ps. 135:6; Is. 14:27; Is. 46:9-10; Ps. 33:8-11; Is. 41:21-23; Prov. 21:1; Dan. 4:34-35.
As Spurgeon once preached:“There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of Divine Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all.
There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the kingship of God over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne.
On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne.
They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean;
but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love.
They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head.”
