Does God know the future?

[Z Man]

And what I would like you to prove is:

God the Father would be dead too

It's not clear to me what you want me to prove. That God the Father is dead, or died with Jesus? If that's it, then I don't believe He did.

I'm not here to 'prove' anything. I only asked 'who raised Jesus from the dead' to get your noodle's thinking. It may not be a good argument, but I was trying to get us back on track of this topic: Does God know the future? My argument is that if God does not know the future, as you OV'ers proclaim, and that He is confined within time just as we are, which you OV'ers believe, then how can Jesus also exist in this time with God the Father? I realize Jesus was God, but I'm talking about the Trinity here.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but according to the Open View, when Jesus came to earth, in our time, He was completely God, and yet completely human, to which I agree. However, to make your theory correct about time, Jesus also had to be God the Father, and God the Spirit. If not, then Jesus was God in time twice, which means that either a) when Jesus died, there was no one to raise Him again, or b) there were two Gods in existence at the same time.

I believe that God exists outside of time; that to Him it's just as much 2005 as it is 2050, or 1981. Jesus was God actually coming into our time continuem. But God the Father was still in the eternal realm. When Jesus died, God raised Him from the grave. It's that simple.

But I can't comprehend how God can always be in time, and yet send His Son in time. I don't know, maybe this is all silly and non-sense, but this is a place to discuss theology, is it not? Just something to get people thinking. Like I said, it may not be a good argument, and I definitly don't know enough about time and space and the such, but it is interesting to ponder. If God died, who raised Him from the grave?

 

[JCAtheist]

People wholeheartedly try and give a response, but you only refute by calling them 'dumb', or 'stupid', and that they are not reading your posts correctly or responding the way you'd like them to. How can anyone debate with you when you've already dismissed them as 'stupid', or wrong?

Z-Man.. you have done exactly this to me.. in another thread, or maybe this one even.. called me an idiot. How am *I* supposed to debate *you* now? Does this not seem hypocritical to you? It does to me. (And note, I said seems hypocritical, not you are a hypocrit - quite a difference in meaning )


Why does this have to carry on where people can't control their own emotions on this subject? I understand its something to be passionate about, but many people here seem to drop the helping hand for other Christians, and just start blasting them with prideful banter, or words to put them down instead of edify. I do it myself sometimes unfortunately.. but I work hard not to. Seems in this thread, people forgot to work on it.

Anyway.. sad turn of events that a Christian poster feels they might even leave because of the lack of love and edification from other Christians.


IN Love and Peace

JCAtheist

 

[Clete]

Actually Z Man it's three times. For whatever reason three times is my emotional limit. It makes little difference whether it is having to pick something up off the floor for the third time after having dropped it twice or if I'm having to repeat the exact same piont to the exact same person or group of persons because they just can't seem to understand what I'm repeated and rephrased twice already. The third time I do something generally needs to be the very last time I do it or else my head starts to want to explode. I do not simply respond by calling people stupid or dumb unless I have a specific reason for doing so and I don't then unless I've gotten fed up with having to repeat the same thing over and over again.

The whole time though, both he and you did nothing but attack me and say I was stupid and wasn't answering your post, or his. It was silly.

After searching for all of 10 seconds I found the thread you were looking for. Here's a link...

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14654&highlight=Calvinism+makes

I still would like to see an argument that I have ignored and proof that I didn't respond substantively in this thread. I made some of what i consider to be the most important posts I've ever written on that thread and they were directed specifically at you. Also that thread got to moving pretty fast and I was attempting to formulate some rather complex arguments and I was not lying when I said that I had missed your posts. It seemed there for a time that I missed every post you made! It was infuriating even to me. But you'll notice that when I did discover them or when you finally pointed them out to me I immediately responded as soon as it was possible to do so. The point being, you simply have no grounds to hold this attitude about me that you clearly do. I long for people to make interesting and complex arguments that actually make me have to stop and think. Hilston was the master at asking very difficult questions that sometimes took me days to think through. If you think you are capable of such intellectual prowice in the defence of your beliefs then get your game face on and bring it to me. If their is something in that thread you want me to respond to, point it out and I'll respond to it, again. The thread is already six million posts long, a few more hundred won't hurt anything.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[drbrumley]

It's not clear to me what you want me to prove. That God the Father is dead, or died with Jesus? If that's it, then I don't believe He did.

I'm not here to 'prove' anything. I only asked 'who raised Jesus from the dead' to get your noodle's thinking. It may not be a good argument, but I was trying to get us back on track of this topic: Does God know the future? My argument is that if God does not know the future, as you OV'ers proclaim, and that He is confined within time just as we are, which you OV'ers believe, then how can Jesus also exist in this time with God the Father? I realize Jesus was God, but I'm talking about the Trinity here.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but according to the Open View, when Jesus came to earth, in our time, He was completely God, and yet completely human, to which I agree. However, to make your theory correct about time, Jesus also had to be God the Father, and God the Spirit. If not, then Jesus was God in time twice, which means that either a) when Jesus died, there was no one to raise Him again, or b) there were two Gods in existence at the same time.

I believe that God exists outside of time; that to Him it's just as much 2005 as it is 2050, or 1981. Jesus was God actually coming into our time continuem. But God the Father was still in the eternal realm. When Jesus died, God raised Him from the grave. It's that simple.

But I can't comprehend how God can always be in time, and yet send His Son in time. I don't know, maybe this is all silly and non-sense, but this is a place to discuss theology, is it not? Just something to get people thinking. Like I said, it may not be a good argument, and I definitly don't know enough about time and space and the such, but it is interesting to ponder. If God died, who raised Him from the grave?

I answered you who raised Jesus from the grave. I answered it biblically. Jesus did. Jesus raised himself.

I say that God has His own time, but He is outside the time of His thoughts. I do not consider "time" a dimension in the same sense as those other dimensions .Time is merely the separation of events. Anyone who separates events must have time to do that. God separates events, right? So, He too must be moving through a time of His own. Yet, we can extrapolate what is observable to us in this regard as well. The watch on our wrist tells us what time we are in. However, we can think thoughts in any time we like. We are clearly outside the time of our thoughts. We can move through the time of our thoughts in either direction, but we can only move forward through the time we exist in. This should apply to God as well.

 

[drbrumley]

Did you ever hear the theory that, “First there was nothing, and then it exploded”? This is akin to saying, “There was a time when Time did not exist, and after some time, Time began.” This is an illogical theory, because events have to be separating in order to change the initial situation. As such, Time must have always existed. It must be eternal in the same sense as the First Cause must be Eternal. Neither can have a beginning. Things can change, but Time must continue on forever, as the simple separation of events. Even if all events were to cease, Time would be the measure of how long it has been since they ceased.

 

[Clete]

That is a brilliant way of explain it Dr.!

Eternity is not timelessness it is an inexhaustible amount of time. It does not make sense to accuse us of saying that God is "limited to time" because time is not limited. It is as inexhaustible and eternal as the mind within which the concept of it exists.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[nancy]

As I tried to explain to Clete last night, the problem with your arguments is obvious.

When you read in Scripture that God predestines something you take it to mean God wills something to occur.

Predestination means that God has foreknowledge. It belongs to God's intellect, not his will.

When they speak of predestination of people and what they will do, it just means God has foreknowledge of what their choices will be.

Providence is God's will when he orders things to his ultimate plan and goals. He does this as the First Cause and orders their nature towards his will.

Predestination is limited to things that deal with man's supernatural end, not every little decision we make.

 

[nancy]

Clete, saying time is eternal is a contradition in terms. A property of time is succession. Eternity means no succession.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Here's a more recent post in which Knight has still not responded to.

God ordained that I not respond to you any longer.

 

[nancy]

You guys, I don't think anyone here expects to read something that will change their perspective views.

When we debate we do get practice in defending our different views. That's all this is, a debate forum so there is no reason to get mad at each other.

 

[Clete]

Predestination and foreknowledge are not synonims Nancy. There is a real difference between Calvinism and Arminianism.

And your definition of enternity is not logically necessary but is rather derived from you theology. You cannnot substanciate your theological definition of the word eternity Biblically.

By the way, I did intend to respond to your PM's when time allowed but I think it is better to do it here anyway. I wasn't ignoring you though, okay?

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[nancy]

All right, so you guys agree we are just debating different aspects, we are not trying to change each others minds.

 

[JCAtheist]

God ordained that I not respond to you any longer.

:first:


L&P

JCAtheist

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Knight,

In the United States, I have certain 'rights'. If my rights are infringed upon, it's against the law. These rights I have guarantee my freedom. If you say that God infringes upon my freedom to make whatever decisions I want, I am just not free anymore. Don't you see the amount of justification your Theology has to use to make free will work? It's just a glaring contradiction.

It's likes this: I tell my son that he has the freedom to decorate his room with any color he wants. I place a myriad of different cans of paint on his floor. Each can has a different color of paint. My son chooses freely the red can. Before he begins painting, I go in remove the red can of paint but leave all the others (he, of course, doesn't see me remove it). He then shrugs his shoulders and chooses blue. Before he begins painting again, I go in and remove the blue can. I keep doing this until I get the color down to the one that I really want although it appeared to my son that he chose it.

The above analogy is crude although that's basically what you're saying God does to us "free" humans. This isn't free will at all. It may appear to look like free will but it's not. You may as well change the term to "manipulated will".

SOTK, I am responding to you at the risk that you wont respond back to my response just like the last time in this tread.

So please, as a friend, if I take the the time to respond please give me the courtesy of comtemplating my response and responding back OK?

No Open Theist that I know of thinks that freewill means UNLIMITED freewill. You are creating a strawman argument about how you percieve open theism that simply isn't a part of open theism.

Open theists would acknowledge that God spends a great deal of time attempting to conform, influence, manipulate our will to His will. In fact, I have recently dedicated an entire thread to this very point.

So, it's very likely that you simply do not fully understand open theism which is fine, no one is twisting your arm, you can believe whatever you want to believe and I will love ya just the same. OK? :up:

But at least give yourself the chance to mentally explore the concept in a fair and reasonable way.

Deal?

 

[drbrumley]

All right, so you guys agree we are just debating different aspects, we are not trying to change each others minds.

I disagree. When presented the truth, it is only fitting one change his/her mind.

 

[godrulz]

If you had read my post #799, you would of seen that I didn't mean it to:

Well Clete, tell me this. If God is limited by time just as we are, and He came to earth as Jesus, who raised Him from the dead?

God is NOT limited by time just as we are. We have a beginning and an end so we have a limited amount of time on earth to do our thing. God is from everlasting to everlasting with no limits to the duration of time to do things. We are confined to one location. God is omnipresent, so He can do many things at once in many locations during a short duration of time. Satan is limited like us. God is not like us or Satan. God is also omnicompetent and can do things perfectly in a brief moment all around the world. We can do one thing at one time. We can get tired or distracted or killed.

The Father and Spirit did not incarnate. Only the Word, the Son, became flesh and was voluntarily limited (Phil. 2 = 'kenosis') for a time. He laid aside the exercise of His Deity, not His essential Deity. It was veiled by His humanity and He voluntarily as the God-Man (depended on the Father vs independent preexistence). The Bible says that the Father and Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. John 2 says that Jesus raised Himself from the dead. Like creation, the resurrection involved all of the triune God. This is stated as true, but not explained exhaustively or philosophically, so we can only speculate on the nature of the incarnation.

Now that we dealt with your straw man of the Open view, would you like to come over to the dark side? You will be surprised at the light of truth that resolves the problematic thorns of the rose of TULIP.

 

[nancy]

Clete, predestination comes from the Greek "prooridtz" which means to know in advance by God's foreknowledge. Predestination and the elect always refers to god's knowledge.

Calvin made the same mistake you are making by thinking predestination means predeterminism.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Clete, predestination comes from the Greek "prooridtz" which means to know in advance by God's foreknowledge. Predestination and the elect always refers to god's knowledge.

Calvin made the same mistake you are making by thinking predestination means predeterminism.

I don't think any Open Theist would have a problem with that definition.

God knew in advance what He planned to do with the Body of Christ.

 

[Z Man]

Actually Z Man it's three times. For whatever reason three times is my emotional limit. It makes little difference whether it is having to pick something up off the floor for the third time after having dropped it twice or if I'm having to repeat the exact same piont to the exact same person or group of persons because they just can't seem to understand what I'm repeated and rephrased twice already. The third time I do something generally needs to be the very last time I do it or else my head starts to want to explode. I do not simply respond by calling people stupid or dumb unless I have a specific reason for doing so and I don't then unless I've gotten fed up with having to repeat the same thing over and over again.



After searching for all of 10 seconds I found the thread you were looking for. Here's a link...

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14654&highlight=Calvinism+makes

I can't get the searches to work right for me. Maybe I just don't know what I'm doing. Where exactly is this thread at in the forums? I looked under Hall of Fame, but no luck.

I still would like to see an argument that I have ignored and proof that I didn't respond substantively in this thread. I made some of what i consider to be the most important posts I've ever written on that thread and they were directed specifically at you. Also that thread got to moving pretty fast and I was attempting to formulate some rather complex arguments and I was not lying when I said that I had missed your posts. It seemed there for a time that I missed every post you made! It was infuriating even to me. But you'll notice that when I did discover them or when you finally pointed them out to me I immediately responded as soon as it was possible to do so. The point being, you simply have no grounds to hold this attitude about me that you clearly do. I long for people to make interesting and complex arguments that actually make me have to stop and think. Hilston was the master at asking very difficult questions that sometimes took me days to think through. If you think you are capable of such intellectual prowice in the defence of your beliefs then get your game face on and bring it to me. If their is something in that thread you want me to respond to, point it out and I'll respond to it, again. The thread is already six million posts long, a few more hundred won't hurt anything.

Resting in Him,
Clete

Ha! No thanks. We'll just leave that in the past. I have no desire to stir up old flames again. And besides, I have nothing pressing that I want to revive; I was just answering your question to list posts I thought weren't answered. I'm not worried about them now. Let's just move on...

 

[Z Man]

God ordained that I not respond to you any longer.

You proved my point I made earlier.

Why are you afraid to debate when I bring in Scripture references?