www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology How Much Does God Know...A Discussion On Open Theism

Originally posted by Pavel Ivanovich:
Joel what are you talking about when you say the Church in your original statement. I ask as you and yours (as some one has informed already here) have adopted the Western European Protestant faith, what do you define as the Church?

THE UNIVERSAL REFERS TO ALL BELIEVERS WHO HAVE COME FAITH ALONE, GRACE ALONE FOR SALVATION AND SEE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE CHIEFCORNERSTONE. THAT THERE IS ANOTHER NAME WHEREBY MEN MUST BE SAVED. THIS WOULD INCLUDE ALL CHRISTIANS WHO BEAR WITNESS AND CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD.

Joel,

This is rather similar to the Gnostics of the early centuries. Since Muslims confess that Jesus Christ is Lord then I gather you would consider tham to be Christians as well.

CDL

CDL:

You would be incorrect because Islam denies the deity of the Jesus Christ as being God. They only see him as good teacher. Muhammed is the great and last of the prophets. Islamic faith would not be consider Christian by any means.

See: Bible Charts on Religions: By Walton, Zondervan Press.

Yes. Joel is right Jesus is just another of the Prophets, of whom Mohamed is the last and the greatest.

I think there have been previous postings in the past 4-5 months, that identify that Islam has borrowed heretical texts from such as the Gnostics and others like them.

Now back to the tpic at hand

Fr DeaconEd you say

"God has always saved us. Before we were created or the universe came to be, God knew us and loved us and saved us. What for us is a sequential passage of time is simply NOW for God. We can get a glimpse of that when we reflect on our own experience. A boring class takes forever while and exciting period of time passes quickly. Scripture tells us that a thousand years are as a moment for God -- and that is an understatement."

I guess the difficulty I have with this reply (which incidently is one that Aquinas would have had great sympathy with) is that it treats time as if it is like space. On this view God is able to take in all of the temporal series at once, so to speak, just like we can see an entire highway from a high vantage point all in one go. Indeed the common experiences you refer to back this up (each of these take for granted the sequential nature of time)

But time does not seem to be like this at all. Rather time seems to be essentially sequential. Events come into exitence, then pass out of existence. They do not seem to exist all at once in one go.

It seems to me that in the abscence of creation God is eternal in the sence of timeless. But upon creating the world he beocmes a temporal being - a being in time much as we are. But, as scripture points out, his expreience of this time will be very different from ours because of his perfect nature.

The implication for the issue at hand is that if we are to solve the problem of the incompatability human freedom and divine foreknowledge we need another solution, because upon creating the world, God does indeed have literal foreknowledge.

Paul,

Forgive me if I have mistaken what you write, but it appears that the sentence I cited from your post is the issue for you.

As an aside, I was trained in Thomistic philosophy, so it's gratifying to think that he would have no problem with what I posted.

We have to remember that, to all intents and purposes, time is nothing more than a measure of change (Einstein says as much in his general theory of relativity).

But, since God is changeless it follows logically that time does not exist for God; it is only a human construct.

But your issue seems to be with the apparent conflict between free will and foreknowledge on the part of God. That is, if God already knows our choice, is the choice freely made? Is that a fair summary of the question I think you are asking?

Let's consider another case, one we can deal with more easily (a math teacher I once had said when faced with a hard problem, find an easy one that's like it and solve that, then move on to the hard one). Consider the sun (and, for the sake of discussion, we'll use the colloqial expressions associated with it). The sun rises in the morning and sets at night. This has gone on for a long time, and shows no sign of abating. Thus we have "foreknowledge" that the sun will rise. Does that knowledge cause the sun to rise? Of course not.

But, you say (or, at least, I anticipate you will say this) we haven't been making a given decision for millions of years. Actually, we have. Since God exists outside of time, and since all things are happening NOW, it follows that, from God's point of view, we have ALWAYS made a given choice.

Thus, what God knows is based upon what we choose, not that we choose what God already knows.

I trust that's at least clear as mud, and maybe a little clearer.

Fr. Deacon Edward

I do not know why, perhaps someone can explain it to me, but believing that God knows everything about me fills me with tremendous comfort. It seems it would be the other way round but, in my case at least, it is not so.

I just love the Psalms that talk about God knowing everything. THey have always been my favorites.

Jason

You may have noticed that human beings sometimes have great difficulty when faced with an authority that they would prefer to control and dominate. Even, sometimes, and especially the authority of their own consciences.

I am always grateful when I find things, as you and I share here, where I am happy for the loving authority of the Father. So I don't think that you are strange in this at all.

Jonah Toft

Let me put the problem this way:

This evening I had a glass of wine. This act is not free in the sense that it was not possible for me to have chosen to avoid haivng the glass of wine. Why? The reasons go like this:

(1) Regardless of whether God is timeless or temporal it is a fact that the proposition "God knows that Paul will have a glass of wine at 6 pm (est) on 6/8/06" is true. [this follows from divine omniscience]

(2) What is more this propostion was true last week.

(3) But the past is unchangable - it is permanent and in a certain sense necessary.

(4) So this propostion is necessarily true in the sense that it is not possible to make it false (because its truth was extablished in the past).

(5) So there is nothing I can do to make it false - I have to drink the wine. It is not possible for me to avoid drinking it. This will apply to every choice I make!

Paul

On behalf of the Australian Cultural Attach� Sir Les Paterson who has just crawled out the door (same cask of wine as Paul) . I should point out that text should have read (WST) as in Western Standard Time and the date as listed there is dd/mm/yy.

The confusion comes from projecting our experience of time onto God. God sees you drink the wine (or not). That is what God knows. It is your decision. To say God knows before you decide is to import time, and therefore change, into God, which is not correct.
Think about it.

Everything you say might very well be true - that God is eternal and beyond time and that temporal existence is perculiar to humans. But this makes no difference to the argument.

The fact is the statement "God knows that Paul will have a glass of wine" is true and it was true in the past - and will always be true.

As such its truth is something that cannot be modified by me.

To reiterate - the fact that God is outside of time in no way affects the fact that there are propositions that describe his knowledge that are true at certain points in time. Those that correctly describe the future will at some stage be in the past and therfore cannot be modified. So those that describe the choices of humans cannot be modified by the actions of those humans.

You are quite right in saying that merely reiterating a fallacy does not make it any less fallacious. But I might add that merely calling something a fallacy does not make it so. This is especially so given that I have made it clear why the argument does not the mistake you claim.

The argument makes no presuppostions about God's relationship to time i.e. it is neutral concerning the question of whether God is timeless or not.

What it does presuppose is that certain propositions about God's knowledge (as opposed to God's knowledge itself) have a truth value in time. In particular it claims that the proposition "God knows that Paul will drink wine" is true before this event occurs. Moreover it claims that because it is true temporally prior to this event, this event will have no influence on the necessity of the proposition.

To see that this is so we can reformulate the argument so that it does not make any reference to God at all:

(1) the proposition "Paul will drink a glass of wine tomorrow night" is true prior to this event happening
(2) As such there is nothing that Paul can do to make this proposition false (I cannot change the past).
(3) So Paul is not free with respect to this choice.

The reason why the argument works is because future tense propositions have a necessity relative to the the future events they describe. This is not a logical necessity but what might be termed a temporal necessity. But this is a strong enough necessity to impinge on freedom.

The only way to avoid undermine the argument is to either show that furture tense propositions are neither true nor false, or to show that temporal necessity is not strong enough to undermine freedom. Insisting on the timelessness of God does nothing.

This is my final word on the matter - it has been an enjoyable debate.

Paul

Paul,

Rather than cite specific passages from your posts, let me provide some (possible) insight into the problem.

I'm not sure if you have any training in physics, but I have to start there. Einstein gives us some insight into time. In one of his writings (which one isn't pertinent, but if you want to know I'll supply references) he writes that simultaneity does not exist except from a particular point of view. He uses this example, suppose you left earth on a spaceship and traveled a significant distance away (say, 2.3 light years) and were able to return here, say, 10 years later (you can't travel at the speed of light). What for you would have been 10 years of elapsed time would be singificantly more for the people on earth because time is affected by velocity.

Thus, time itself is not constant.

Now, to your postulate. You contend that your drink of wine was "forced" because God had "previous knowledge" of the action and that this knowledge somehow predisposed or limited your freedom. Yet, in point of fact, your freedom was not affected by His knowledge at all. Had you choosen a soft drink, or water, or even a Foster's He would still have known what you choose. But that knowledge in no way influenced you. Thus, your action was freely choosen without regard to what God knew.

If I place a thirsty person in a room and put a glass of water and a glass of acid on the table we know that the person will drink the water. He is not forced to do so, yet he will.

Foreknowledge does not force an act to occur. In fact, advertising is all about "foreknowledge" in that it attempts to create a need which it then "solves." Probability enters the picrure for us humans, but for God it does not.

We are free to love God or to walk away from Him. He does not force either choice, although He knows what we will do.

BTW, the fallacy in your argument is not a logical fallcy, but a POV fallacy. YOu keep postulating everything from our perspective, but not from God's.

Does that help?

Fr. Deacon Edward