Does foreknowledge mean predestination?

[Truster]

You assume a lot.

What a miserable comforter you are!

I make a point of never comforting those unto whom it is said "there is no peace" Why would I work against my Master?

 

[oatmeal]

I make a point of never comforting those unto whom it is said "there is no peace" Why would I work against my Master?

I understand that you wish to give God all the glory for your salvation.

That is a wonderful goal and motive

For He does deserve all the glory, for we cannot save ourselves like God can by the works of Jesus Christ.

Being a willful recipient of God's goodness does not diminish God's glory.

 

[Truster]

I understand that you wish to give God all the glory for your salvation.

That is a wonderful goal and motive

For He does deserve all the glory, for we cannot save ourselves like God can by the works of Jesus Christ.

Being a willful recipient of God's goodness does not diminish God's glory.

Yes it does. It turns salvation into a spectacle and some sort of arrangement, made in time, whereby the choice and decision rest with man. Even writing this disgusts me...

 

[JudgeRightly]

There is really no foreknowledge with God because He lives in the ever present "now."

Scripture does not support this.

God, being both infinite and eternal,

You should have stopped there, because that is supported by scripture. But what you said next is not supported by what you just said. If something has no beginning and no end, that does NOT necessarily equate to being outside of time.

is not bound by either space or time, as we are.

Scripture does not support this. It supports the opposite.

This principle has long been understood within Calvinist circles. William Ames (1576-1655) was one of the foremost of Reformed thinkers, often known as "the Learned Doctor Ames" because of his great intellectual stature among Puritans, said the following:

Quoting someone who is a supposed authority on the Bible does not equal quoting the Bible itself, especially so if what the person is saying does not have its roots in what the Bible actually says. Let's take a look:

"There is properly only one act of the will in God because in Him all things are simultaneous and there is nothing before or after.

A quick Google search of "in Him all things are simultaneous... (etc.)" does not return any scripture verses whatsoever. It's not in the Bible. That makes it dogma. As I read through some of the search results, every entry I see uses the above phrase to literally reject what the Bible says, and then reinterpret said verse through the lense of that phrase.

That's not how God's word works. Sure, there are hermaneutics that we can use, but I'm pretty sure they shouldn't contradict what's being said. Yet this is laid down as authoritative, making it a false dogma.
What does the Bible say about something like this?

*Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written:“That You may be justified in Your words,And may overcome when You are judged.” - Romans 3:4 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans3:4&version=NKJV

If we say something that contradicts or goes against God's word, we are in the wrong, not God.

Strike one.

So there is only decree about the end and means, but for the manner of understanding we say that, so far as intention is concerned, God wills the end before the means" [/I][emphasis mine](William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, translation and introduction by John, Dystra, Eudsen, [Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1968], 153-154).

Again, this is not what Scripture says.

*Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’ - Isaiah 46:10 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah46:10&version=NKJV

From (or since) the beginning, God declares the end.
From (or since) ancient times, God declares things that are not yet done.

It's that simple.

According to Ames all things in the eternal state are "simultaneous and there is nothing before or after."

"According to Ames"?
But what about "according to the Bible"?

This idea that all things are "simultaneous" with God was expressed by another prominent Calvinist author, Loraine Boettner:

"Much of the difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Predestination is due to the finite character of our mind, which can grasp only a few details at a time, and which understands only a part of the relations between these.

Or, maybe it's due to the fact that it's not supported by scripture... :think: Do you think that if God wrote a book, that anyone, even a child, could understand it? Why do these supposedly great theologians think that a concept presented in the Bible would be hard for us to understand? I don't get it.

We are creatures of time, and often fail to take into consideration the fact that God is not limited as we are.

This is true. That doesn't mean, however, that God is outside of time, which again, is not shown in scripture.

That which appears to us as 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' is all 'present' to His mind. It is an eternal 'now'...

I guarantee you that neither Loraine nor you you can find a verse in the Bible that supports this statement. In fact, I KNOW that you can find verses that say just the opposite, that God has a past, he is in the present, and is looking towards the future.

Just as He sees at one glance a road leading from New York to San Francisco, while we see only a small portion of it as we pass over it, so He sees all events in history, past, present, and future at one glance."[/I] (Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination [Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932]).

Once again, I point out that scripture DOES NOT support this idea that all of time is stretched out before him, and he can see all of it at once. That idea comes from pagan Greek philosophers. Remember the "Fates"?

Therefore, since God does not actually look into the future because with Him all things are happening simultaneously then the future in regard to human choices are not limited in anyway.

There's that dogma again. It's pervading your thinking, in fact, so much so that you did not, in that entire post and in the next two that I quote here, post ANY scripture verses to back up your beliefs. NOT. ONE.

I posit that you cannot, because the Bible does not say that God is outside of time.

All things are happening simultaneously to the LORD, not to man. He exists outside of time and is not constrained by time as man is.

Again, you provide no scripture to back up your claims, and you only use what other theologians say to support your position, and what they say goes against what the Bible says. What was that verse again?

"Let God be true and every man a liar."

The LORD created the universe and then set the things in motion and then sits back and observes His creation in action.

Of course. God created in 6 days, in order. He didn't skip around from Day 2 to Day 5 to Day 1.

(And before you say, "Well that's just from Moses' perspective (the author of [most of] Genesis)," let me remind you that no one existed prior to Day 6, and I'm pretty sure the animals aren't going to be much help passing down the creation story from the day they were created... So there would be no history passed down by man describing those first 5.5 days as they happened. Only God could tell the author how things happened on those days.

He started by creating the heavens and the earth, light, and day and night on Day 1.
On Day 2, He made the firmament, calling it Heaven, and made it to divide the waters above from the waters below (See kgov.com/hpt).
On Day 3, He made the dry land to appear, and the waters He brought together to do so He called Seas. He made the plants.
On Day 4, He made the stars in the sky, and then He made the Sun and Moon, one to rule the day, and the other the night, setting the earth in motion, and set them all for signs and seasons, and to provide light on the earth.
On Day 5, He made all the sea creatures and birds of the air, and told them to "be fruitful and multiply."
On Day 6, He made all of the land dwelling creatures. And then He made Man and Woman, and gave them dominion over the earth. He then told all of them to "be fruitful and multiply."
And on the 7th Day, God sat back from his work, and admired it, curious to see what it would do.

Now, you may be saying, "But the verse says 'rested'." (Which brings up another point I will address in a moment...)

From https://www.gotquestions.org/God-rest-seventh-day.html :

The Hebrew word translated “rested” in*Genesis 2:2includes other ideas than that of being tired. In fact, one of the main definitions of the Hebrew word*shabat*is “to cease or stop.” In*Genesis 2:2the understanding is that God “stopped” His work; He “ceased” creating on the seventh day. All that He had created was good, and His work was finished. The context of*Genesis 1–2strongly affirms the idea of God’s “rest” being a cessation of work, not a reinvigoration after work. The narrative tells us which things God created in each of the first six days. His power is displayed through the creation of light, mountains, seas, the sun, moon and stars, plant and animal life, and, finally, humanity. There are many parallels between the first three days of creation and the second three days. However, the seventh day is a sharp contrast. Instead of more creating, there is*shabat. Instead of God “doing” more, He “ceased” from doing.

Now, as for God "shabat"? Tell me, JS, does God ceasing to do work (or "resting" for that matter" indicate a change in what He is doing? Or does it indicate no change at all?

If you say that it does not indicate a change in what he's doing, then I pose this question:
Is God still, to this very day, creating?
Was God the Son, at the beginning of creation, being crucified on the Cross?
Did God tell Moses how He created and that he did it in order, from day 1 to day 6? or did God skip around when He told him?
Has God brought His people out of Egypt yet?
(Remember, answer these from God's perspective, not man's)

If not, then You would be correct. It indicates a change, a sequence, a "before" and "after". First He created, then he ceased creating.

Time is a prerequisite of Creation. It is a prerequisite of change. You cannot have "before and after" if there is no time, therefore time itself cannot be created, for to have a "before time" and "after time", time must already exist. And if time does not yet exist, then it never will exist, because there cannot be change without time.

From time to time He enters into His creation to help it along but nothing which He does interferes with a man's free will. You might say that He is on the outside looking in.

Again, no scripture verse supports that. If anything, the Bible says that God is on the inside looking around.

Not if the LORD is seeing everything happen with one glance.

Which he's not, and you can't show using scripture.

Not once throughout those entire posts did you use scripture.

 

[oatmeal]

Free will is the mental ability to make choices. It does not mean all choices are known. It does not mean that all seemingly available choices are rational doable or obtainable. (Person threatened with death, do this or die, stillhas a choice and the ability to choose). It simply means the mental ability to choose. It does not mean the physical nor mental nor spiritual ability to carry out that choice.

 

[oatmeal]

My willful and freely exercised choice to love and serve God because I acknowledge His love and goodness and light glorifies God. Being apreprogrammed robot reduces God to a imperfect computer programmer.

Why do you call yourself " Truster " ? If your doctrine is correct, you are not capable of trusting for you had no choice in the matter. You should called yourself "mindless idiot" or "mental vegetable" since you are incapable of doing anything on your own

 

[JudgeRightly]

The first law of thermodynamics is the same as the first law of conservation and that is, that energy can neither be created or destroyed.

So far, we agree. Since I have not interacted with you much, I don't know your religious background, but for the purpose of writing this reply, and dissecting your argument, I'm going to assume (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that you are a theistic evolutionist of some sort.

So it would seem that if energy cannot be created, then it always was, and If it can never be destroyed, it always will be. Therefore, according to this law, energy must be eternal, having neither beginning or end.

While that is true, you forget the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy in a closed/isolated system (ie, the universe) always increases. Meaning that if the universe had always existed, then it should be cold and dead by now. Yet we have plenty of "hotspots" in our universe, galaxies of stars, nebulae, planets, etc.

Energy can be and is converted to matter.

No argument there.

In fact, this material universe at the time of the Big Bang was pure energy which has been converted to matter only to be reconverted to its original form as energy during the phase of the Big Crunch.

There are only three possible explanations for the origin of the universe (and I challenge you to come up with a fourth that does not involve any of the other three).

1. The universe "created" itself, or came into existence on its own
OR
2. The universe always existed
OR
3. A supernatural "creator" (ie something outside of this universe) brought the universe into existence.

The first two possible explanations contradict the first two laws of thermodynamics, which can be summed up as:

1. A rock cannot create itself; and
2. A fire cannot burn forever.

Therefore we are left with only one option, that a supernatural "creator" (not necessarily God, but that's a philosophical discussion, not a scientific one) brought the universe into existence.

If you believe that a universe of mindless matter has produced beings with intrinsic ends, [in Kantian terminology, an end-in-itself] self- replication capabilities, and “coded chemistry? Then you must accept that it is the eternal energy which has neither beginning or end, that has become this material universe and has developed a mind that is capable of comprehending mind.

See, the problem with that is that there is no law of physics that can bring about symbolic logic or consciousness or information. Information can only come from information.

So, up to this point, it doesn't look good for your explanation of the origin of the universe...

This is the condensed account of creation as recorded in Genesis’.....…”In the beginning God created the universe=heavens, and earth was formless and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and God’s active force was moving on the face of the waters.* Then God said let there be light.

Let's just quote the actual passage, that way we don't miss anything...

*In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. *The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.*Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. *And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. *God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. - Genesis 1:1-5 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1:1-5&version=NKJV

Here is the scientific theory of creation........In the beginning, there was the “BIG BANG” which spatially separated the infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small singularity, which event spewed out a liquid like soup of electromagnetic energy in the trillions of degrees, it was from the quantum of that liquid like electromagnetic energy (Waters) that the earth and all the heavenly bodies would be created, and although, all that the earth was created from, was already there in the beginning, the earth at that time had neither shape, which meant it was formless, nor mass=void, and no suns had yet come into existence to light up the darkness of the expanding space.

Newton's Third Law states that "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

If the Big Bang was the reaction, what was the "action"?

And where did all that energy/matter come from anyways? Well, see my explanation above.

But there was momentum within that ever cooling cosmic cloud of wave particles which are the quantum of that liquid like electromagnetic energy, which wave particles are not really particles at all, having zero mass and no electric charge, yet they carry angular and linear momentum.*One would expect, that those wave particles which are the quantum of the liquid like electromagnetic energy, would have continued to expand further and further away from each other in the expansion of the universal building material.

I'm sure there's some meaning to this... But it's not worth addressing until we get past the origin bit...

But with the angular momentum of those waves they collided with each other in nuclear fusion in the creation of the first basic molecules. As the universal temperature dropped to some billions of degrees, the dark energy which was the expansion's acceleration force, began to form into dark matter, hydrogen and helium, with trace quantities of lithium, beryllium, and boron. As the universe expanded and cooled, more hydrogen molecules were formed, and from these, after some thirty million years of attraction, came the formation of the first gigantic stars, from which the galaxies would later be created.*

So, speaking of exotic matter... If the universe really did come from a big bang, and not a supernatural creator, shouldn't there be equal parts matter and anti-matter? If so, where's all the anti-matter?

And God said, “Let there be light.

Woah woah woah... When did God enter the picture? I thought we were talking about the Big Bang, which is the "universe creating itself" explanation.

The Bible says a supernatural creator created the universe. Not the other way around, and it definitely doesn't say that the universe created itself.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Which was not the light of our sun within this minor solar system within this Milky Way galaxy,

I don't know of any creationist who claims it was... I certainly don't.

which solar system would not be created for some nine billion years after those first massive stars that lit up the darkness of the bottomless pit.

See, the problem with saying "nine billion years" is that it's not in the Bible, and the Bible doesn't support that idea. The Bible says "in the beginning," and "the evening and the morning were the first day" .. "second day" .. "third day" .. "fourth day" .. "fifth day" .. "sixth day" .. "and on the seventh day, God rested (or ceased creating)".

The word used for "day" in Genesis 1 is the same word used for "day" elsewhere in the Old Testament, 'yom.' There is no indication anywhere that it means anything other than a 24 hour period.

Was the earth created before our minor sun, as is revealed in the Bible?

Yes. Yes it was. The earth was created on day 1. The sun was created on day 4, which if you know how to count, comes after day 1, and day 2, and day 3.

So even barring my argument above about the explanations for the origin of the universe, if the Bible says that the stars and the sun and the moon were created after the earth, then that probably means that the Big Bang model (including the Nebular hypothesis) would not even come close to fitting what the Bible says.

And did life begin to evolve on earth before our sun burst into life?

No, not according to the Bible, which states that plants were created on day 3:

*Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. *And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. *So the evening and the morning were the third day. - Genesis 1:11-13 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1:11-13&version=NKJV

And that means that the Sun, which was created on day 4:

*Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; *and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. *Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. *God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, *and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. *So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. - Genesis 1:14-19 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1:14-19&version=NKJV

Were not the sources of energy for the first day of all plant life's existence.

And could the complexity of life as seen on the earth today, have evolved over the comparatively short period of a mere 14 billion years?

No. It couldn't. In fact, it would more time than is conceivable to get one protein, let alone have it actually mean something.

The age of our present physical universe gives too little time for these theories of biogenesis to get the job done.

Agreed.

The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self- replication capabilities, and “coded chemistry? Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problems.

The answer is simple: It can't. Life is information based, and as information can only come from other information, an "informationless" universe could never produce information. Therefore, the only logical explanation is that there is a supernatural source of information (ie, God)

Our ancient ancestors expressed the belief that our scientists of today are just beginning to come to terms with, and that is, that following each “Big Bang” there comes the “Big Crunch,”when this universe is condensed once again, into the infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small singularity from which it originated.

If you believe the Bible, then you know this isn't what happens anyways.

There is no way whatsoever that the world as it has evolved to today, did so in the short 14 billion years since the last BIG BANG.

We agree on this point.

Only when we come to the realisation that this generation of the universe, has evolved from a series of parental universal bodies that have preceded this one,

Do I even need to say how ridiculous that sounds coming from someone who is, I'm assuming (and again, correct me if I'm wrong), a theistic evolutionist?

will science begin to realise the time scale involved in the evolution of man from mindless matter, which was created from the eternal energy.

"A fire cannot burn forever"
"Information can only come from other information"

Our ancient ancestors believed in an eternal oscillating universe.

Our ancient ancestors, at the very least, starting with Noah, believed in a God who created the heavens and the earth. And I imagine most of Adam and his descendants (at least the first few generations) did too.

Universe after universe is like an interminable succession of wheels forever coming into view, forever rolling onwards, disappearing and reappearing; forever passing from being to non being, and again from non being to being. In short, the constant revolving of the wheel of life in one eternal cycle, according to fixed and immutable laws, is perhaps after all the sum and substance of the philosophy of Buddhism. And this eternal wheel has so to speak, six spokes representing six forms of existence.” ---- Mon. Williams, Buddhism, pp. 229, 122.*

Funny how you're quoting a Buddhist instead of the Bible...

"A rock cannot create itself"
"A fire cannot burn forever"
"Information can only come from other information"

The days and nights of Brahma are called Manvantara, or the cycle of manifestation, ‘The Great Day,’ which is a period of universal activity, that is preceded, and also followed by ‘Pralaya,’ a dark period, which to our finite minds seems as an eternity. ‘Manvantara,’ is a creative day as seen in the six days of creation in Genesis, ‘Pralaya,’ is the evening that proceeds the next creative day. The six periods of Creation and the seventh day of rest in which we now exist are referred to in the book of Genesis as the “GENERATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE.”*

http://kgov.com/babels-curse

The English word “Generation,” is translated from the Hebrew “toledoth” which is used in the Old Testament in every instance as ‘births,’ or ‘descendants,’ such as “These are the generations of Adam,” or “these are the generations of Abraham, and Genesis 2: 4; These are the generations of the Universe or the heavens and earth, etc. And the ‘Great Day’ in which the seven generations of the universe are eternally repeated, is the eternal cosmic period, or the eighth eternal day in which those who attain to perfection are allowed to enter, where they shall be surrounded by great light and they shall experience eternal peace, while those who do not attain to perfection are cast back into the refining fires of the seven physical cycles that perpetually revolve within the eighth eternal cosmic cycle.*

Sounds like religious mysticism... Are you actually a buddhist?

A series of worlds following one upon the other,-- each world rising a step higher than the previous world, so that every later world brings to ripeness the seeds that were imbedded in the former, and itself then prepares the seed for the universe that will follow it.

No sense replying to this, as there's no way to test it, meaning it's not really science.

This is the true resurrection in which all from the previous cycle of universal activity, who still have the judgmental war raging within them, are born again into the eternal cycles of rebirths in the physical manifestation.

Again, no way to test this.

Another universe may have preceded ours, study finds. May 14th, 2006. Courtesy Penn State University and World Science staff.*

Three physicists say they have done calculations suggesting that before the birth of our universe, which is expanding, there was an earlier universe that was shrinking.*

To arrive at their pre-existing universe finding, Ashtekar’s group used loop quantum gravity, a theory that seeks to reconcile General relativity with quantum physics.

These two seemingly fundamental theories are otherwise contradictory in some ways.*Loop quantum gravity, which was pioneered at Ashtekar’s institute, proposes that spacetime has a discrete “atomic” structure, as opposed to being a continuous sheet, as Einstein, along with most us, assumed.*In loop quantum gravity, space is thought of as woven from one-dimensional “threads.” The continuum picture remains mostly valid as an approximation. But near the Big Bang, this fabric is violently torn so that it’s discrete, or quantum, nature becomes important. One outcome of this is that gravity becomes repulsive instead of attractive, Ashetkar argued; the result is the Big Bounce.*

Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, a cosmologist who has explored some related concepts, wrote in an email that the new research “Supports, in a general way, the idea that the Big Bang need not be the beginning of space and time.”*The universe “may have undergone one or more bangs in its past history,” he added.*Steinhardt and colleagues have also proposed a bounce of sorts, but it’s different. It could turn out that the two scenarios are equivalent at some deep level, but that’s not known, he added. Steinhardt‘s scenario makes use of string theory, another attempt to reconcile General Relativity with quantum physics.*Some versions of string theory portray our visible universe as a three -dimensional space embedded in an invisible space having more dimensions.

Our zone, called a braneworld [the word comes from its similarity to a sort of membrane] could periodically bounce into another, parallel braneworld.*Such an event might look to us, stuck in a few dimensions as we are, as a Big Bang. “I don’t know if Ashetkar’s case translates into a bounce between braneworlds like we are describing,” Steinhardt wrote. But by his estimate, this cataclysm won’t take place for another roughly 300 billion years—so there is hopefully plenty of time to answer the question.*

Sounds like a bunch of science fiction to me.

The problem with such claims is that it tries to use greater complexity to explain something that's already complex. In other words, it's a punt, from this universe to the previous, and to the one before that, ad infinitum.

Just as the Big Bang theory has been evolving over the years and is continuing to evolve as new data becomes available, these big Crunch theories that are just beginning to emerge are still in their infancy.

Because three dimensional time as we know it, does not exist prior to the Big Bang: from the return of the universe to the infinitely hot, infinitely dense and infinitesimally small singularity of origin to the next Big Bang when three dimensional space and time would begin, time does not exist, thus [As I believe] the erroneous Big Bounce theory. The universe appears to disappear as the contraction ceases, then it appears to instantaneously expand outward again and time and three dimensional space begin.

More things that are impossible to test.

I would rather a theory which states that there are many galactic clusters out there within the eternal and boundless cosmos, each cluster=universe in its own position in Space-time, consisting of billions of Galaxies falling inward toward a Great Abyss, Black Hole, or Bottomless Pit, where it is torn to pieces Molecule by molecule, atom by atom, sub-atomic particle by sub-atomic particle, and reconverted into the electromagnetic energy from which they were created and accelerated along the dark worm hole to speeds far, far in excess of the speed of light, where that liquid like Electromagnetic energy is locked in the fourth dimension where time as we know it does not exist, until it is spewed out in the trillions of degrees, somewhere far beyond the visible horizon of the eternal and boundless cosmos, where, from the cooling quantum of that electromagnetic energy a new universe is created, or rather, the old universe is resurrected, to continue on in its eternal process of evolution.

Ok.

The eternal energy that can neither be created nor destroyed, has become this entire universe and everything within it. All the life forms that the eternal energy has become, are information receivers that feed into the eternal evolving mind that is God, who is all that exists.

Again:

"A fire cannot burn forever"

The term, "THE WORD OF GOD," pertains to the sense that is identical to the term “LOGOS” or the mold. The mold by which the whole sense of a thing is given. In other words, the very plan from the outset.

Not sure what that has to do with the Big Bang, as the logos became flesh and dwelt among us as Jesus Christ...

*continues reading*

In Sanskrit the similar meaning is given in the use of the word 'vach.' Vach means word. But in Sanskrit teachings of the Sanatana Dharma, vach has many levels. Including where the word is first considered as being in the mind as a thought, not as the spoken word or speech.

Ok, if I've seriously misjudged your beliefs, I apologize. As I read your posts, you seem more and more a Buddhist than a theistic evolutionist...

We humans, may express in our spoken words, all the information that has been gathered through the senses of our bodies in the creation of the invisible minds=spirits that are “WE”. Our word is the expression of “Who we are.” Your words are the expression of the spirit that is “YOU” the mind.

But the “LOGOS=WORD” who is the gathered universal information=spirit of the aeons, express the information that has been gathered to the universal soul as another universal body, which is in the image and likeness to the previous universe, [The Resurrection] in which the eternal Spirit=mind has and can, continue to evolve.

That seems like a very, very loose translation of what is said in the Bible, but it's not supported by the rest of the Bible.

 

[beloved57]

Gods foreknowledge is grounded in His predestination, or His pre-determination of things, for instance in the matter of the crucifixion of Christ Acts 2:23

23 [FONT=&quot]Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge[prearrangement] of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:[/FONT]