ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
- Start date
PS
I sort of think Clete is right! I doubt you are telling the truth about what you believe the OV definition of "omniscient " to be!
assuranceagent
New member
I think that part of the problem may be that even OVers can't seem to agree on what the OV definition of "omniscient" is.
This very thread started with a debate on whether God knew Abraham's heart prior to the outward evidence he provided in his willingness to sacrifice his son. Now, nearly 15 pages later, you post:
Delmar said:
If both sides are going to be honest, the settled side would need to acknowledge that the more conventional OV view of omniscience is far removed from what man is capable of.
But likewise, the OV side would need to acknowledge that believing God failed to know Abraham's heart prior to outward evidence (or for that matter, any similar assertion) is little if any better than what man is clearly capable of.
God knows the heart at present. This does not preclude an unsettled aspect to a specific test of the heart that may be passed or failed.
Lon: I don't buy that God could not create if He has temporality. In Craig's view, God can think, act, feel in succession, duration, sequence after creation without ceasing to be eternal. In God's endless duration of time, He can choose to create if and when He wants to.
Lucas and Wolterstorff have a stronger view than Craig (though Craig gets the post-creation part right).
http://www.amazon.com/God-Time-Gregory-E-Ganssle/dp/0830815511
(Helm is the strongest Calvinistic view; do you like Craig's middle knowledge?)
Lon: I don't buy that God could not create if He has temporality. In Craig's view, God can think, act, feel in succession, duration, sequence after creation without ceasing to be eternal. In God's endless duration of time, He can choose to create if and when He wants to.
Lucas and Wolterstorff have a stronger view than Craig (though Craig gets the post-creation part right).
http://www.amazon.com/God-Time-Gregory-E-Ganssle/dp/0830815511
(Helm is the strongest Calvinistic view; do you like Craig's middle knowledge?)
Lon
Well-known member
We've had the middle-knowledge conversation before. I'm not certain about it but for a plausible problem solving postulate. Again, I am of the opinion that we cannot possibly comprehend God in entirety. We are very ego-centrically constrained to ourselves. If you could step outside and imagine being in God's shoes, an eternal past goes on forever. It cannot be plotted because plotting would go on forever. There is no time consideration that can accurately assess a non-existent beginning (all existent past). If you don't have a point to begin, you cannot constrain anything to time. It is impossible. I read a lot of Lucas last night. He is committed to the presupposition that the future is open and according to his own words, the ideas he sets out about time are redefinable and not set in stone and again by his own words, are open to refinement other than what we would necessarily hold true concerning our observations. It is completely observable that God cannot possibly be subject to time.
Your assertion that He could start something whenever He wanted is 1) ignorant in proposition upon the premise of an eternal past 2) also a proposition that denies God is 'constrained' to the time line. In order to do this whenever He wants, and I agree, He does it, but not according to time. It would have been impossible if you constrain Him to a time line. It is impossible for God to be constrained to a time-line consideration for if He is constrained to sequence, it is endless and there can never be a 'now' where sequence never ends. So your assertion actually argues in favor of Him being unconstrained by sequence and duration (you are arguing with yourself over your own assertation).
Lon
Well-known member
Context is important. I qualified what I meant by omniscience.
My point? OV qualifies what it means by omniscience.
Granted I took the qualifications to an absurd, but in so doing, I was trying to show that qualifications from finite man upon terms of God's character are limiting. In order to show this, I said "I can know all that is knowable" (OV definition) "to me."
I truthfully believe OV's definition to be restricting Divine attributes to finite understandings. God cannot be confined to finite restraints.
"All that is knowable" works until OV begins to say what is and isn't knowable to God. You will never be able to point to a verse that says dogmatically that God cannot know the future. As I have stated in my last couple of posts, OV is wrong. It is impossible to see God constrained to any duration or sequence. The future is knowable because God cannot possibly be constrained to our time considerations.
You fail to realize that Abraham didn't even know what was on his heart prior to actually raising that knife. He wasn't sure he could go through with it even after Isaac was tied up and lain down.
assuranceagent
New member
Abraham never gave an indication in any sense whatsoever that he was conflicted. He obeyed without question.
No father would go to the length that Abraham went to with an unresolved mind.
You fail to realize that what you assert is speculation without biblical backing.
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
How do you know that?
Gen 22
5: And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ***; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you,
Abraham believed in resurrection. Even if he killed Isaac, God would raise him from the dead, all of God's promises were to come through Isaac and Abraham believed God's promises.
:bang:
assuranceagent
New member
:chuckle: I never get tired of seeing you driven completely mad by the truth.
You will never convince me that a man can resolutely decide to kill his own child unless the man is not of a sound mind. And Abraham was of a sound mind. There is no way he did not struggle all the way with the issue.
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SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
It wasn't murder. Was God offering his Son as a sacrifice murder?
assuranceagent
New member
Oh, I agree with you completely. Believe me, I have two sons. I would struggle mightily.
That said, the issue isn't with whether or not he would struggle, the issue was with whether or not he feared God (since that's what OVers claim God learned from this test: that Abraham indeed, feared God). Taking your argument to the next step I'd have to say that, from a father's perspective, the fact that Abraham even considered sacrificing his son confirms his fear of God. And to think he was ready to actually carry it out?!...
While I'd struggle with the test Abraham was faced with (much as he did), without fear of God, there'd be no struggle because it wouldn't even enter into consideration...
The argument made by the OVers in this thread is that Abraham was unsure whether he actually feared God or not. And that he wasn't resolved in that decision until the point at which he raised the knife.
Nonsense. There wouldn't even have been the opportunity to raise the knife without fear of God.
assuranceagent
New member
I'll also point out that you are trying to have it both ways again. You can take the red pill, or you can take the blue pill, Neo. You can't take them both.
When Abraham officially raised the knife was he resolute in his decision? If not, how did that confirm anything for God which could not have been known previously? And if so, was he still of sound mind?
To be honest I don't even know why I used the term murder. I meant kill. I've changed it.
This wasn't about whether or not Abraham feared God, but at what level he feared God. Not if, but how much.
And that is not the argument of the OVers. That's my argument. Solely. Unless one of the others wants to come in here and say they agree with me.
Nobody said I wanted both. A man of sound mind can become resolute in such a decision. But then again, maybe he was still struggling.:idunno:
All I know is that God stopped him. And my guess is that God learned what He wanted to when He saw Abraham doing what God asked of him, while struggling with it.
Of course, the strongest verse, imo, for the OV deals with Abraham, but is not this one.
And the LORD said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.”
-Genesis 18:20-21
Lon
Well-known member
You all seem to have your own choices for compelling verses (just an observation I can't figure).
This one in particular is a problem with understanding omnipresence. If God has to literally 'go down' then He couldn't hear your prayers over there without leaving me from over hear when I am also praying. God conveys thoughts in what people can understand. They really are the 'children' of Israel when this is written. Perhaps this is why God loves them so much. He took a humble slave nation and raised them up intellectually as well as spiritually but Moses, in conveying truths to these uneducated slaves, must express God's view in very basic terms which include anthropomorphic understandings, especially in the Pentateuch (the beginning books).
How does middle knowledge or simple foreknowledge explain this free action from trillions of years ago? How does compatibilism/determinism explain it? Does God give me the desire that I must act upon to make random nonsense?
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Today I decided between eating out or at home or what type of cuisine to have. I like Vietnamese and East Indian. I worked and wanted to stay home and bring in Viet. My wife wanted to go out and have Indian. We did the latter, but it could have gone either way (bad wind storm almost pushed us to home). How could something this simple, let alone trillions of mundance and moral choices, be foreknown as a certainty from before creation?! If it involves desires, how does God know what desires and how would he actualize a possible world to ensure the complexity of things would be exactly what He wants and knows? How can He just look ahead and see things that are not there and that may or may not actualize as expected?
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ifj=29ut90-jgobfob[vmq= eghe4=0mdlkmeloeg004tu34u=24ut=24ut=2u0jgjo;ldmmvmmvmslg
Today I decided between eating out or at home or what type of cuisine to have. I like Vietnamese and East Indian. I worked and wanted to stay home and bring in Viet. My wife wanted to go out and have Indian. We did the latter, but it could have gone either way (bad wind storm almost pushed us to home). How could something this simple, let alone trillions of mundance and moral choices, be foreknown as a certainty from before creation?! If it involves desires, how does God know what desires and how would he actualize a possible world to ensure the complexity of things would be exactly what He wants and knows? How can He just look ahead and see things that are not there and that may or may not actualize as expected?
ieowg390g390y=049y0=3uy0=934tgoplm lkdfmvoierjgo3mgoermgoirmgoembormboeohq9jhg389399038u
dreadknought
New member
Your desires are still yours and you have been given the authority to exercise your will and authority over your natural surroundings and the immaterial things that you are in control of in the now. You act in the now. Nothing you can or will do is outside of what the Creator of all things can know, will know or act upon today or tomorrow. You being a foreknown child of God, can (and will) be influenced by the Purpose and Will of God.