Does he have to?
If he knows all that he will ever do before he ever does it then is he deciding anything or is everything already decided by him.
--Dave
Theology Club: What is Open Theism?
- Thread starter surrender
- Start date
Does he have to?
If he knows all that he will ever do before he ever does it then is he deciding anything or is everything already decided by him.
--Dave
If this is so, we would expect Open Theism to be a majority view or not so resisted by traditional views. The Bible is the basis, but Open Theism writings are helpful/influential/informative.
So do we...:king:
God knows all that is knowable and is ignorant of nothing knowable. Some things are inherently unknowable by His sovereign will.
No you don't. What is inherently unknowable for God? Does he know your thoughts and choices you will make? If not, he is not totally omniscient.
He knows the past and present exhaustively. The future is not there yet to know, so He knows reality as it is (possible vs actual; anticipatory).
God does not know where Alice in Wonderland is and He cannot create a rock too heavy to lift, so omni-attributes do have some logical qualifications.
He knows my thoughts because they exist to be known. He knows my past and present choices and my possible future choices, but contingency means future knowledge is not as certain as the past or present. This is the nature of reality God created (vs determinism), so it is a sovereign, voluntary, logical self-limitation of exhaustive definite foreknowledge.
If Open Theism denied a proper, biblical definition of omniscience, I would reject it. You are rejecting a straw man or begging the question because you have not adequately researched the issue (including 'eternal now', etc.).
Omniscience
"...for God is greater than our heart, and knows all things," (1 John 3:20).
When we say that God is omniscient (all knowing), we are saying that God's knowledge is perfect, and that God's perfect knowledge has always been possessed by Him from all eternity. He knows all things, in all places, at all times. There is nothing that God does not know. Furthermore, God knows all things that could exist, but do not. This means that God knows all things potential as well as actual. God's perfect knowledge also includes Himself. He knows Himself perfectly and completely. God does not look into the future to see what will happen, and thereby learn. This would violate God's omniscience. God does not, as the Open Theists maintain, self-restrict His knowledge of the future free will choices of people. It is also a violation of God's omniscience to say that God cannot know the future, since the future does not exist.
However, we do not conclude that the infinite knowledge of God means that God "knows" sin. The knowledge of God means that God knows things, and He knows about things. He does not "know" sin in the sense that He experiences it. ( Ref: Carm.org. )
CARM is Calvinistic, anti-OT. Your proof text has a context that relates to past/present knowledge. You are wrongly reading your preconceptions about future and exhaustive definite FK into it (goes beyond text). We also agree that God knows possibilities as they are (possibilities are not the same as actualities...they may or may not obtain/come to pass, so there is an element of uncertainty unless you bring in determinism or eternal now loop holes that are not defensible/without problems).
So GR, no matter what is presented, you believe that there are things that God can not know. Is that correct?
God knows reality as it is. The future, by His design, is fundamentally different than the past or present. If free will is true, then any given contingency may or may not come to pass. Before a free moral agent makes a choice, there is an element of indeterminancy, especially from before the agent exists (after existing, some things become more predictable). So, God correctly knows that aspects of the future are merely possible or probable, not actual/certain. Once the anticipatory future becomes the fixed past through the present, then the nature of His knowledge changes because reality that He knows perfectly changes.
Since God knows all that is logically knowable, there is no compromise in omniscience (cf. He is not less omnipotent because He can only do the doable...so, He cannot create square circles because of a logical contradiction/absurdity, not because of a limitation or deficiency in His perfection).
http://www.opentheism.info/index.php/pages/gregory-boyd/
What don't you get about this summary above (the technical proofs could fill a book)?
Shasta
Well-known member
People generally advocate for things because they believe in them. Why else would they?
In traditional theism God's changeless or immutability are not about His being unable to act. God can by an act of His will interact within and enter the time-space-continuum.Your issues are with Prime Mover of classical Greek philosophy.
The fact that God "moved" or "acted" does nothing to disprove my case because, as I said, nothing in the concept of changelessness prevents God from acting.
All the text of creation says explicitly is that God began to act and then continued. No point was made that these acts necessarily followed from ages of contemplation or extended from a pre-existing temporal nature.
No, I am simply saying you have the wrong view of God.
Dialogos
Well-known member
So what allowed God to experience the passage of time prior to the creation of the sun and the moon.
Oops, now your balloon has just busted.
The central problem with Open Theism's claim that God experiences time just as we do is that every conceptual experience of time is measured by, and experienced in the context of, the created physical universe.
Apart from a physical universe, there is absolutely no concept of time that you can define or conceive of.
You still don't get it, do you? Time isn't an objective reality, it is a subjective reality. Time is contingent upon our experience of those physical realities and we can only experience spacetime in a singular way. We can't both experience the rate of change of matter and energy at high velocity while simultaneously experiencing the change of matter and energy while stationary. That's why God doesn't experience time like we do, is independent of those physical limitations.Desert Reign said:
Dialogos
Well-known member
Fundamentally different to us, you keep projecting human limitations on to God.
Its not.Godrulz said:
Man's will is a slave to sin right up until the moment God sovereignly chooses to liberate it. I realize that this is an inconvenient reality for semi-pelagians but it is nevertheless what the bible teaches.
You've created an artificial threshold here Godrulz. Every moral agent that exists, exists because God created it. Your theology has God waiting on Himself to create someone before He can begin to make guesses on what that creation will do.Godrulz said:
Even humans have the ability to create something and know for certain what the purpose of that creation will be prior to its actually being created, it is truly peculiar that the Open Theists deny this ability to God.
How can you say I have a wrong view of God unless it contradicts the right view?
You say you have the right view of God but your view is a self-contradiction because you say God is timeless but can enter time.
If God were timeless by nature he would contradict that nature by acting in time.
Aristotle had it right because he said a timeless God cannot enter or act in time.
Aristotle rightly and logically concluded that the world could not have been created by a timeless God with out contradiction to his immovable, changeless and timeless nature so the world is as eternal as the immovable God who is the cause of it's movement.
To say an immovable, changeless and timeless God can enter the world of movement, change and time would be a contradiction.
--Dave
You have a flawed definition of omniscience.
You are also making the argument that God is incapable of being ignorant of something if He so chooses, thus claiming He is not omnipotent.
Which is it?
You are confusing omnipotence and omniscience. Using your logic, God could know the future exhaustively despite it being logically impossible if free will contingencies also exist.
Willard and Enyart/etc. may have implied your view, but most credible academic Open Theists would refute it since it denies omniscience (Satan/man/books know things God does not know?). God knows all that is knowable. He cannot be ignorant, by choice, of extant past/present reality. He does not know the future because it is not there, not because He choses to be ignorant of something knowable.
You are not helping our cause. Unless you understand the technical, philosophical issues that make your view untenable from an Open Theist perspective (let alone a Calvinistic or atheistic one), then you should not be dogmatic.:noid:
BR is even more wrong in his assumptions (I am generally on your side, but not on this detail).
You're an idiot.
My intention is to show the opposing side's argument to be illogical by arguing from their viewpoint [to a degree].
You also don't seem to be able to read very well; as my argument is that their argument is illogical because they claim God is omnipotent and yet they also claim that because of His omniscience [according to their definition of the word] He is incapable of choosing not to know something; which is a contradiction.
You're the one who wants to deny God's own words on the subject.
God is sovereign, correct? If so, does it then logically follow that He could choose to be ignorant if He wanted?
:blabla:
Shut up and get lost.
God cannot choose to cease to be God, cannot choose to not be eternal, cannot choose to not be holy, etc. Sovereign and omnipotent does not mean He can choose to create square circles, married bachelors, 1+2=3 and 8 at the same time, etc.
It is logically indefensible for an omniscient God to be ignorant of things that Satan and men still know.
It is logically indefensible for an omniscient God to be ignorant of things that Satan and men still know.
Take it up with Him; He's the One who claimed to go to Sodom and Gomorrah to see if what He had been hearing was true.
Some Open Theists would see this as anthropomorphic to avoid contradiction with other plain Scriptures. As well, an angel or theophany might be different than essential God. Open Theists are right to reject the figurative card by classical Open Theists in the God 'changed His mind' motif, but that does not mean there are not other contexts that use figurative language. e.g. when God asked Adam where He was, it was not because God was deaf, dumb, blind in the garden...it was a rhetorical question...so, this is one passage that people differ on, even in our Open Theism camp (God coming down...). We all interpret Scripture, so don't just think you are reading it and right and other views are not claiming the same with understanding based on other factors/verses.
Because God can't possibly be capable of choosing to be ignorant...
