Theology Club: What is Open Theism?

[godrulz]

Because God can't possibly be capable of choosing to be ignorant...

Correct. God is 'ignorant' of the aspects of the future because it is not there to be known as a certainty like the past/present.

God cannot logically be ignorant of extant past and present truths. If He is, then He is not omniscient even by credible Open Theism/classical theism standards.

Enyart, ? Willard, ? another obscure guy may cling to your view, but thinking Open Theists can demonstrate why your view is untenable with technical proofs.

 

[Lighthouse]

Correct. God is 'ignorant' of the aspects of the future because it is not there to be known as a certainty like the past/present.

God cannot logically be ignorant of extant past and present truths. If He is, then He is not omniscient even by credible Open Theism/classical theism standards.

Enyart, ? Willard, ? another obscure guy may cling to your view, but thinking Open Theists can demonstrate why your view is untenable with technical proofs.

Then explain what He meant when He made the claims of Himself.

 

[godrulz]

Then explain what He meant when He made the claims of Himself.

Huh?

What I am suggesting is consistent with Scripture and logic. If you have a text (such as in Gen.) that you think supports your view, remember that others have exegeted it differently and probably more correctly, even in the Open Theism camp.

As smart as you, Clete, Enyart, etc. are, you are wrong (and the expert Open Theists or uneducated can probably show you why, in detailed technical proofs or common sense...there is no way God is ignorant of things that I know?!).

 

[Lighthouse]

Huh?

What I am suggesting is consistent with Scripture and logic. If you have a text (such as in Gen.) that you think supports your view, remember that others have exegeted it differently and probably more correctly, even in the Open Theism camp.

As smart as you, Clete, Enyart, etc. are, you are wrong (and the expert Open Theists or uneducated can probably show you why, in detailed technical proofs or common sense...there is no way God is ignorant of things that I know?!).

Would you like to bother giving it a try?

 

[Dialogos]

God is sovereign, correct?

Yup.

If so, does it then logically follow that He could choose to be ignorant if He wanted?

Nope.

And it really only takes about 3 seconds to figure out why. God's attributes don't cancel each other out. God can't do something in His sovereignty that negates His omniscience. God can't have wisdom that is "infinite" (Psalm 147:5) and also be willfully ignorant.

 

[Lighthouse]

Yup.


Nope.

And it really only takes about 3 seconds to figure out why. God's attributes don't cancel each other out. God can't do something in His sovereignty that negates His omniscience. God can't have wisdom that is "infinite" (Psalm 147:5) and also be willfully ignorant.

So His omniscience can't negate His omnipotence [sovereignty]?

It looks like you can contradict yourself.

Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing.

Also, would you care to point to Scripture that states God is omniscient in the way you believe?

 

[Desert Reign]

I think Lighthouse is more than correct here. Those who claim God is omnisicent usually have no clear concept of what knowledge is in the first place. If they so much as made an attempt to rectify that, they might be more respectable.

What exactly is it that God knows all of? What exactly is this thing called knowledge? I've asked it several times here and no one has responded as far as I recall.

 

[Dialogos]

So His omniscience can't negate His omnipotence [sovereignty]?

Nope, it can't.

It looks like you can contradict yourself.

Yes, I can. I haven't, but I can....

Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing.

One cannot be wise without knowledge, but this really just avoids the point rather than discussing it. Your argument appears to be that God can choose to be ignorant of some things if He wants to. The bible, qua psalm 147, says that God's understanding has no limits.

Also, would you care to point to Scripture that states God is omniscient in the way you believe?

I just did, it is unfortunate that you aren't theologically sharp enough to see it.

 

[Dialogos]

I think Lighthouse is more than correct here. Those who claim God is omnisicent usually have no clear concept of what knowledge is in the first place. If they so much as made an attempt to rectify that, they might be more respectable.

Most of us, who you claim don't understand what knowledge is, don't really care whether you think we are respectable or not.

What exactly is it that God knows all of? What exactly is this thing called knowledge? I've asked it several times here and no one has responded as far as I recall.

God knows all that can be known (incidentally, the bible repeatedly demonstrates that the future can be known). Thus God's understanding is limitless.
You can wax philosophical and impress yourself with existential questions all you like, I think that vast majority of folks who happen by this thread, and others, understand what Psalm 147:5 means, and how that necessitates God's omniscience.

 

[Lighthouse]

Nope, it can't.

Think about that for a second.

Yes, I can. I haven't, but I can....

If you weren't ignorant of the contradiction you wouldn't have made it.

One cannot be wise without knowledge, but this really just avoids the point rather than discussing it. Your argument appears to be that God can choose to be ignorant of some things if He wants to. The bible, qua psalm 147, says that God's understanding has no limits.

Great is our Lord, and mighty in power;
His understanding is infinite.
-Psalm 147:5

You're right, that does say His understanding is infinite. Did you know that understanding is also not knowledge?

And God Himself told Abraham that He was going to Sodom to find out if the cries of His people against the cities were true.:think:

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 18:21

Or how about this one?


Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

-Genesis 3:9

I just did, it is unfortunate that you aren't theologically sharp enough to see it.

You failed, as I pointed out, understanding is not knowledge. It is also not wisdom, nor is wisdom knowledge. Those three things are three separate things.

 

[godrulz]

Genesis 'where are you' is a rhetorical question that God fully knew the answer to. This is standard Open Theist/classical theist understanding. An omniscient God knows the past and present exhaustively and nothing is hidden from His sight (other verse). To say that Satan and Adam knew where Adam was at the moment, but not God, is not biblical Open Theism (maybe your version). Just because we take more verses at face value (rightly so) does not mean there is no figurative stuff in Scripture (or anthropomorphism, rhetorical devices, etc.).

 

[Dialogos]

Think about that for a second.


If you weren't ignorant of the contradiction you wouldn't have made it.

The longer one thinks about it, the more one realizes there is no contradiction. God's attributes are not pitted against one another such that God's omniscience shackles His omnipotence. Nor is it the case that God's omnipotence limits His omniscience.
However the more one learns about your particular brand of open thiesm, the more one realizes just how small your god is and just how little you think of both God's omniscience and His omnipotence.

You're right, that does say His understanding is infinite. Did you know that understanding is also not knowledge?

Did you know that one cannot understand something without knowing it first?

If God is infinite in His understanding, what does that suggest about His knowledge?

And God Himself told Abraham that He was going to Sodom to find out if the cries of His people against the cities were true.:think:

Why do you insist on blurring the clear teachings of scripture by interpreting them in light of obscure passages?

This appearance of God in Gen 18:21 is a theophany. Theophanies are often self limiting appearances of God. God, Who is invisible if 1 Tim 1:17 is true, appears visibly. God, Who cannot be contained by Heaven if 1 Kings 8:27 is true, comes down to meet with Abraham. If we use your method of interpretation here we will not only deny God's omniscience, we will also deny His omnipresence and His invisibility.

Or, we can understand that God, taking on Human attributes in this passage, walks, talks and acts in human ways in order to interact with Abraham and appear before him as three Men, rather than as an invisible, omnipresent, omniscient being. If you take your theology of the attributes of God solely from your understanding of any particular Theophany, you will inevitably have a more limited God than you would if you actually took the whole of scripture into consideration.

Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

-Genesis 3:9

So you believe that this passage is in direct contradiction with the omnipresent God of psalm 139?

 

[Desert Reign]

Why do you insist on blurring the clear teachings of scripture by interpreting them in light of obscure passages?

So this is your hermeneutic? If a passage explicitly disagrees with your theology, you label it as obscure? And that gives you the authority to ignore it?

 

[Desert Reign]

The longer one thinks about it, the more one realizes there is no contradiction. God's attributes are not pitted against one another such that God's omniscience shackles His omnipotence. Nor is it the case that God's omnipotence limits His omniscience.

Asserting this does not make it right. The idea of God's omnipotence and omniscience are Platonic ideas, abstractions from real world examples of his activities. Anyone can tell you that the concepts of absolute omniscience and absolute omnipotence are mutually self-defeating. If God knows the future absolutely then he is bound by that as much as anyone else is.

Alternatively, in the time-eternity world-view, there is no such thing as the future anyway; there is no such thing as knowledge and no such thing as power, these terms are meaningless in a universe consisting solely of an eternal now inhabited solely by an eternal God.

 

[Dialogos]

So this is your hermeneutic?

My hermeneutic is to consider verses in context and to take the entire counsel of God into consideration letting scripture explain itself rather than cherry picking verses and ripping them out of context in order to prop errant concepts about God.

If a passage explicitly disagrees with your theology, you label it as obscure?

Lighthouse's use of it was obscure, the passage itself, when understood in context, really isn't that hard to figure out. God's manifestation of Himself to Abraham as three Human Beings is necessarily an episodic self-limitation. That is, unless you think that God exists eternally in heaven as three visible, corporeal Human Beings.

Is that what you believe Desert Reign?

And that gives you the authority to ignore it?

I didn't ignore it, I explained it. Why did you ignore the explanation?

 

[Desert Reign]

My hermeneutic is to consider verses in context and to take the entire counsel of God into consideration letting scripture explain itself rather than cherry picking verses and ripping them out of context in order to prop errant concepts about God.


Lighthouse's use of it was obscure,

You said that it was an obscure passage. Not that his use of it was obscure. Does this now mean that you are retracting what you previously said?

the passage itself, when understood in context, really isn't that hard to figure out. God's manifestation of Himself to Abraham as three Human Beings is necessarily an episodic self-limitation. That is, unless you think that God exists eternally in heaven as three visible, corporeal Human Beings.

Is that what you believe Desert Reign?

I didn't ignore it, I explained it. Why did you ignore the explanation?

Actually, the issue was not whether I believe God exists in heaven as three human beings. The issue was why did God need to find out what was going on in Sodom if he was already omniscient? You haven't answered that except to pass it off as an obscure passage.

Do you believe that God spoke the truth to Abraham in saying that he needed to go down to Sodom to get first hand knowledge of what was happening, Dialogos?

 

[Dialogos]

You said that it was an obscure passage. Not that his use of it was obscure. Does this now mean that you are retracting what you previously said?

No, the clarity of the passage was obscured by Lighthouse's poor treatment of it.

I suppose it would have been more accurate to say that Lighthouse distorts the clear reading of scripture by appealing to his obscure interpretation.

Actually, the issue was not whether I believe God exists in heaven as three human beings.

...he said, dodging the question....

The issue was why did God need to find out what was going on in Sodom if he was already omniscient?

Where does it say that God needed to find out what was going on in Sodom.

It doesn't say that in the scripture.

I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.” (Gen 18:21)

There is no mention that God needed to go down in order to see, it just says that this was the method that God chose to use in order to communicate to Abraham what He was going to do.

"Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?" (Gen 18:17)

Do you believe that God spoke the truth to Abraham in saying that he needed to go down to Sodom to get first hand knowledge of what was happening, Dialogos?

God didn't say he needed to go down to Sodom to see what Sodom was doing, it says that God chose to disclose to Abraham what He was doing, therefore God chose to manifest Himself as three men.

If God was so limited that he needed to do recon on Sodom in order to accurately know what was going on there, then how can David accurately say, "Where can I go from your Spirit?" (Psalm 139:7)

Do you think that God's Spirit was capable of knowing David's thoughts and actions no matter where he was but incapable of knowing what was going on in Sodom without a recon mission?

Really?

Do you believe that the residents of Sodom were exempt from the truth of Hebrews 4:13?

Are you arguing that Proverbs 5:21 is untrue in this instance?

Really?

Either Gen 18:21 is an anthropomorphism that describes God's intent and activity as a Theophany, or Hebrews 4:13 is false, Proverbs 5:21 is a sham and you can throw out Psalm 11:4, Psalm 119:168, Proverbs 15:3, Jeremiah 16:17, 17:10 and 32:19, 2 Chronicles 16:9...

I have more, do you need them?


Godrulz, please tell me that not all open theists do hermeneutics this way because if so open theism is in worse shape than I thought.

 

[Lighthouse]

Genesis 'where are you' is a rhetorical question that God fully knew the answer to. This is standard Open Theist/classical theist understanding. An omniscient God knows the past and present exhaustively and nothing is hidden from His sight (other verse). To say that Satan and Adam knew where Adam was at the moment, but not God, is not biblical Open Theism (maybe your version). Just because we take more verses at face value (rightly so) does not mean there is no figurative stuff in Scripture (or anthropomorphism, rhetorical devices, etc.).

Why do you assume Satan knew where Adam was?

You're not very bright.

The longer one thinks about it, the more one realizes there is no contradiction. God's attributes are not pitted against one another such that God's omniscience shackles His omnipotence. Nor is it the case that God's omnipotence limits His omniscience.
However the more one learns about your particular brand of open thiesm, the more one realizes just how small your god is and just how little you think of both God's omniscience and His omnipotence.

It is not God's abilities that I believe to be limited, except by Him; it is existence/creation that I believe to be limited. God does not see, or know, that which does not exist to be seen or known; not because God is limited, but because those things do not exist.

You believe God is omnipresent, but He has made it clear He will not be present in the Lake of Fire, so what now?

Did you know that one cannot understand something without knowing it first?

:doh:

He understands that which He knows; He does not know that which does not exist, and thus cannot be known.

And he also does not have to know that which He wishes not to, and yet this does not limit His understanding of that which He knows.

If God is infinite in His understanding, what does that suggest about His knowledge?

It suggests that you neither understand, or know, knowledge and understanding.

Why do you insist on blurring the clear teachings of scripture by interpreting them in light of obscure passages?

I take Him at His word over the words of men.

And what you think is clear is your preconceived ideas being read into it, by you.

This appearance of God in Gen 18:21 is a theophany. Theophanies are often self limiting appearances of God. God, Who is invisible if 1 Tim 1:17 is true, appears visibly. God, Who cannot be contained by Heaven if 1 Kings 8:27 is true, comes down to meet with Abraham. If we use your method of interpretation here we will not only deny God's omniscience, we will also deny His omnipresence and His invisibility.

:doh:

Even in a limited form He would not have had to go see if the outcries were true, as He would have known before the theophany, if your theology is correct.

Or, we can understand that God, taking on Human attributes in this passage, walks, talks and acts in human ways in order to interact with Abraham and appear before him as three Men, rather than as an invisible, omnipresent, omniscient being. If you take your theology of the attributes of God solely from your understanding of any particular Theophany, you will inevitably have a more limited God than you would if you actually took the whole of scripture into consideration.

So God had to talk to Abraham this way because Abraham was too ignorant to understand God as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; but we are more intelligent than Abraham, so we can understand it when Abraham could not?

Are you also going to tell me this is the reason Abraham bargained with God and why God didn't just tell Abraham there weren't that many righteous people in the two cities, but rather kept the bargaining going?

So you believe that this passage is in direct contradiction with the omnipresent God of psalm 139?

How does Psalm 139 paint God as omnipresent?

David is saying that God is always with him. And in the end he even asks God to search him to see if there is anything wicked in him.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting
-Psalm 139:23-24

 

[godrulz]

Asserting this does not make it right. The idea of God's omnipotence and omniscience are Platonic ideas, abstractions from real world examples of his activities. Anyone can tell you that the concepts of absolute omniscience and absolute omnipotence are mutually self-defeating. If God knows the future absolutely then he is bound by that as much as anyone else is.

Alternatively, in the time-eternity world-view, there is no such thing as the future anyway; there is no such thing as knowledge and no such thing as power, these terms are meaningless in a universe consisting solely of an eternal now inhabited solely by an eternal God.

Omniscience and omnipotence are biblical concepts, but they must be rightly defined and understood (not all tradition is truth).

 

[Dialogos]

It is not God's abilities that I believe to be limited, except by Him; it is existence/creation that I believe to be limited. God does not see, or know, that which does not exist to be seen or known; not because God is limited, but because those things do not exist.

The behavior of Sodom was perceivable, your example doesn't even meet your own standards here.

You believe God is omnipresent, but He has made it clear He will not be present in the Lake of Fire, so what now?

So you then conclude that God was not also in Sodom?
Lets get to the heart of this ridiculous argument.
First, God is not unaware of what will happen in the lake of fire, in fact scripture says that the damned will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the Lamb (Rev 14:10), so it is not as if God has no presence whatsoever in the lake of Fire. He is fully aware of that happenings therein.

Second, even if you were right in your previous assumption (which you weren't) what does that have to do with your silly assumption that God was ignorant of Sodom's sin until He went down there Himself as a Theophany to check it out?

He understands that which He knows; He does not know that which does not exist, and thus cannot be known.

Sodom existed and could be known, so your silly example fails, and demonstrates your inability to turn biblical data into sound exegesis.

Even in a limited form He would not have had to go see if the outcries were true, as He would have known before the theophany, if your theology is correct.

No, He didn't have to. He didn't have to show up as three Men either, but that is what He did. Your attempt to use this passage in order to develop a doctrine of God's omniscience fails because God is using anthropomorphic language to describe His anthropomorphic appearance.

So God had to talk to Abraham this way because Abraham was too ignorant to understand God as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; but we are more intelligent than Abraham, so we can understand it when Abraham could not?

Huh?

God did what He did. He didn't tell you or I why He did it that way. What isn't clear is why God chose to talk to Abraham as Three Men. It also isn't clear why He said that He would go to Sodom to see with the eyes of those Three Men what any omniscient being would already know.

What is clear is that the consistent testimony of scripture is that God may use Human eyes to see things if He so chooses, but He does not need to do so. If you had read my post to Desert Reign, you would realize that God doesn't need to come down and do recon via theophany in order to know what is going on in Sodom and arguing to the contrary (A) does open theism no good, (B) is clearly cross-ways with other clear passages of scripture and (C) makes you look totally silly.

How does Psalm 139 paint God as omnipresent?

"Where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence?" (Ps 139:7)

David is saying that God is always with him. And in the end he even asks God to search him to see if there is anything wicked in him.

David says that he can't go anywhere that God does not see him (see Psalm 139:7-12). Really, just read the Psalm, its getting a little tiresome explaining to you what is obvious to most. David can't hide from God anywhere because God's presence is everywhere.