Aimiel
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Sorry you feel that way.
Proof from the Bible that God is In Time
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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No. Open theism denies the Omnipresence of God. Open theism can't accept that God can be here and still maintain his Omnipresence in the eternal Heavenly realm.
This is where you open theists have to deny the Trinity of God and the deity of Christ.
After you deny the Omnipresence of God you have to then deny His exhaustive knowledge which makes God not all knowing.
Not if you believe that God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are One in three persons. Saying that God is only "in time" as we humans experience it denies His Omnipresence and the Triunity of the Godhead.
God is timeless. He existed before time began. God is the definition of eternal and timelessness.
Psalm 90:2
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
Open Theism does not deny omnipresence (Pinnock speculated about a locale for God's manifestation, but not everyone agrees). Perhaps you are thinking that God is in the past and future, but the problem is that the future is not a place one can be in (it is not space, not a created thing, etc.).
Open Theists (unlike early Socinians) do not deny the Trinity or the Deity of Christ. If they do, they are either modalist or not even Christian (and not Open Theist, just heretics with peripheral Open Theism commonality).
God is omniscient, a different attribute than omnipresence. God knows present reality because He is omnipresent, but this is a different issue than exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future free will contingencies.
Ps. 90:2 shows that God is eternal, everlasting, experiences endless time (before and after creation). It does not say He is timeless. Your mistake is to think that Platonic eternal now is biblical. Endless time, not timelessness, is biblical revelation and logical.
Verdict: You not only do not understand Open Theism, but you reject a straw man caricature of it.
No I am not thinking that God is in the past and in the future. God knows the future. What do you think Omniscience is?
You just did a dance around the two attributes of God. You still will not admit that God is all knowing.
Here is your verdict: You can't explain open theism without dancing around the Scriptures and applying God's all knowing where ever you see fit.
Either God is all knowing Omniscient or He isn't. Have you made up a new word yet that changes omniscient to "kinda sorta all knowing"?
om·nis·cient
adjective
1.
having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.
God is ignorant of nothing. He is all-knowing, knowing all that is possible to know. He does not know where Alice in Wonderland is. This does not make Him less omniscient. God knows all that is knowable. Unless determinism is true, the future is correctly known as possible, not actual. In your view, you have free agents choosing and settling the future before they even exist. This is illogical and unbiblical.
We both affirm omniscience, but differ as to the possible objects of certain knowledge. The future is simply not like the fixed past or actual present. I reject a wrong view of omniscience, not the truth itself.
Interact with this or shut up: http://reknew.org/2008/01/is-it-tru...ou-dont-think-god-knows-the-future-perfectly/
You beg the question with your view the same way Calvinists do with their wrong view of sovereignty. Rejecting hyper-Calvinism is not rejecting God's sovereignty/biblical truth.
Does the fact that God cannot create a rock too heavy to lift (logical contradiction) mean that God is not omnipotent?
We both affirm omniscience, but differ as to the possible objects of certain knowledge. The future is simply not like the fixed past or actual present. I reject a wrong view of omniscience, not the truth itself.
Interact with this or shut up: http://reknew.org/2008/01/is-it-tru...ou-dont-think-god-knows-the-future-perfectly/
You beg the question with your view the same way Calvinists do with their wrong view of sovereignty. Rejecting hyper-Calvinism is not rejecting God's sovereignty/biblical truth.
Does the fact that God cannot create a rock too heavy to lift (logical contradiction) mean that God is not omnipotent?
Aimiel
Well-known member
It would mean He wasn't all-powerful (which we believe He is). He can't make a rock which He can't lift because He eats His Wheaties every single day. The infinite power He holds would allow Him to make a rock as big as Himself, but it would preclude all other creation (since all space would be taken up by the rock); but He could still lift it, since He is above creation and created space and time, and not limited by size, space, time or distance. His Omnipotence, Omniscience, Love and Grace are un-fathomable. In fact, just one of those categories of His Character (Grace) will be the subject of thousands of years of study in our future.
Ephesians 2:7
That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
An 'age' is approximately 2,150 years (the length of time for the vernal equinox to move from one constellation of the zodiac into the next -- Wikipedia) and we will spend ageS (plural) to come exploring His Grace. We won't need grace in Heaven, since we're like Him and stand in His Presence; so we will simply be studying what took place in the earth. We will study Adam, and what grace God extended to him in his lifetime (and beyond, as people studied his life or remembered him). Then we'll study Eve... et cetera, et cetera...
Ephesians 2:7
That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
An 'age' is approximately 2,150 years (the length of time for the vernal equinox to move from one constellation of the zodiac into the next -- Wikipedia) and we will spend ageS (plural) to come exploring His Grace. We won't need grace in Heaven, since we're like Him and stand in His Presence; so we will simply be studying what took place in the earth. We will study Adam, and what grace God extended to him in his lifetime (and beyond, as people studied his life or remembered him). Then we'll study Eve... et cetera, et cetera...
No, open theism contradicts omniscience. What part of "all knowing" don't you get?
"God knows all that is knowable..."except". That is a direct contradiction to the definition of God and His attribute of omniscience.
You do not affirm God's omniscience in and of Himself. You add the "except" and that nulifies God's all knowing attribute.
Aimiel
Well-known member
If God couldn't see the future, He would never speak prophecy. He is The Only One Who is capable of speaking in the future-perfect tense. He is beyond time as the stars are beyond our reach. He is above all, not subject to gravity, shadows, dust, time or other corruption. He is God. We cannot begin to imagine just how great He is, no matter how long we contemplate His Holy Goodness.
Open theism is a house of cards.
Right. Open theism opens up God and Bible prophecy to the possibility of lies. If God isn't all knowing then neither is the Bible.
Absolutely not true. I pointed out many pages ago and asked several questions specifically about prophecy that never went answered.
It is those who adhere to exhaustive foreknowledge that make God out to be a liar as I pointed out many pages ago...and again went unchallenged.
Really? I affirm God's ability to have exhaustive foreknowledge and that is a deficit?
What part of being omnipotent, all-powerful, do you not get in light of God not being able to make square circles? You assume a flawed definition of omniscience and beg the question. All-knowing excludes many things that are not objects of certain knowledge or are absurd.
Just because this stuff is over your head does not mean Open Theists are not on the right track.
Logically, it negates the possibility of a non-deterministic universe (but that is over your head, too bad).
The problem is that most prophecies are not predictive. Many are declarative based on God's ability/intentions or conditional and open depending on men's responses to God's warnings (Jonah, etc.).
Prophecy is not a problem for Open Theism since there are a variety of types with none depending on EDF.
Omniscience is over your head. It's really easy.
God is all knowing. You can categorize it all you want but you are still missing the point.
Aimiel
Well-known member
God knowing doesn't preclude our choices. It merely means He's bigger than us.
God is all-knowing, but that does not mean He knows where Yoda is right now. God knows all things knowable. The future is inherently unknowable as a certainty if there are free will moral agents. This is by God's sovereign choice. God is not ignorant of anything knowable.
The parallel is that it is not a denial of omnipotence to say that God cannot make square circles. In your view, God is all-powerful, so He could do this, but no thinking atheist or theist would agree with you. We need to qualify terms because God's revelation does.
Gee, sounds like God is going to change His mind. Did you always hope for a "wishy washy" God?
Let's play the prophecy game one more time.
God said to Jonah:
Later we learn that:
It's a simple game really. Did God lie when He told Jonah to tell Nineveh that they would be overthrown in 40 days if He knew that they would not be overthrown in 40 days? He said that He was going to do something and He did not do that which He said He was going to do.
If God has exhaustive foreknowledge and He knew that Nineveh was not going to be overthrown in 40 days when He said that they would be overthrown in 40 days then He lied when He said that they would be overthrown in 40 days.
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