A problem with open theism (HOF thread)
- Thread starter docrob57
- Start date
- Status
Mr. 5020 said:
A comparison using like/as is a simile, a figure of speech vs wooden literalism. His 6-day (24 hours/day) creation was not 6000 years. In light of everlasting time, a thousand years perceived by God is a wisp of time. For us, it is many lifetimes. Regardless, the atomic clock measures time the same way for us and God: one instant and interval at a time. Creation and Second Coming do not happen in the same instant for us nor God.
Agape4Robin said:
An everlasting duration of time (Ps. 90:2; Rev. 1:8) is more cogent than incoherent timelessness (whatever that means in light of a personal being). God has no beginning and no ending, but this does not mean He does not have sequence/duration/succession in His thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Jeremiah85 said:
You underestimate His omnicompetence. A grand chessmaster does not have to play both sides to win the game. God does know everything knowable. He correctly knows future choices as possibilites/probabilities until they become actualities/certainties and are then known as such. He knows reality as it is: past, present, and the open future (He only settles some of it in advance).
justchristian
New member
Godrulz...IF time was something and not just an expression of equence/duration/succession, if it could bend, be speed up, slowed down,looped or stoped would you admit OV would place God in a universe and would be a heresy. Again this is all IF time were something to be a universe beyond God.
justchristian said:
Theoretical physics and Einstein's theory of relativity do not trump biblical truth. The Hebraic view of eternity as everlasting duration is simple and self-evident. Greekish 'eternal now/timelessness' is abstract and bizarre.
Even if aspects or relativity are true, it would not be a threat to Open Theism. God is master of the universe and its physical properties.
justchristian
New member
nice dodge. so IF aspects of relativity are true God chooses this limited interaction with time presented by OV, or is under it as a part of an external universe?
Mr. Coffee
New member
It's a prophecy about Nineveh. But if God didn't have perfect foreknowlege, he was lying. Lying because he claimed he knew. But in Open Theism, God can know the future if he has firmly made up his mind about what he will do. So God could only have been proven right in giving this prophecy about Nineveh by destroying it. Unless the statement is a warning, and was understood as such. It was.Knight said:
Jonah 4:1-2
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the LORD, and said, "Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm."
Jonah knew it was a warning, and so did the Ninevites. Traditional Theists and OVers have their own reasons for accepting this. Otherwise, it's a problem verse for all of us.
julie21
New member
Thought I'd chime in with this thought to take my mind off stuff...
Boyd argues the points of God never knowing the experiences of novelty, adventure, spontaneity or creativity in the classical view of foreknowledge.
God created so many things in the 6 days that He rested on the 7th. His creativity is still being borne out with each child and creature that is born...even though He knows them before they are knitted in their mother's womb, I believe that He would still enjoy the knowledge of each coming into existence. Ask most mothers or delivery nurses etc...knowing that life is imminent does not limit the joy of birth. How many parents who have videotaped their childrens births, watch it over and over again, with renewed joy each time, even though they know exactly what is going to happen?
Why does God need adventure? Boyd might need it, but maybe God had enough to begin with in creating everything, and now just wants to sit back and rest, as He did on the 7th day.
Maybe God is like us, as we were made in His image...perhaps He is just like all of us who, no matter how many times we watch the re-runs of our favourite TV shows, we still laugh at them...even though we know every detail of the script etc.
He knows exactly what is going to happen and when and how, but still loves watching His creation going along their ways, making blunderous choices with their God given free will, but still knowing that we will never end up anywhere but where He knows we will.
The Boyd statement of God 'existing in an eternally static state of unchanging facts, and God's responding to it as "of course, I've known that would happen for an eternity" doesn't mean that God has a life that is mundane. That is merely Boyd putting his own personal prejudice on it because Boyd does not enjoy that type of existence, but he doesn't know that God shares is sentiment. [ pg 129 of God of The Possible] Is Boyd not limiting God to Boyd's personal perceptions of what God personally needs in His Divine life?
And at the end of ur time, and Christ's return, won't God have immmeasurable pleasure and novelty and adventure with us in eternal heaven?
Makes sense to anyone? Not to all I know, but it's just how I think on it at this time.
Also...Knight...I am seriously interested in your response to why God knowing our future free will choices would in any way be a coercion by Him to induce us to love Him?
Boyd argues the points of God never knowing the experiences of novelty, adventure, spontaneity or creativity in the classical view of foreknowledge.
God created so many things in the 6 days that He rested on the 7th. His creativity is still being borne out with each child and creature that is born...even though He knows them before they are knitted in their mother's womb, I believe that He would still enjoy the knowledge of each coming into existence. Ask most mothers or delivery nurses etc...knowing that life is imminent does not limit the joy of birth. How many parents who have videotaped their childrens births, watch it over and over again, with renewed joy each time, even though they know exactly what is going to happen?
Why does God need adventure? Boyd might need it, but maybe God had enough to begin with in creating everything, and now just wants to sit back and rest, as He did on the 7th day.
Maybe God is like us, as we were made in His image...perhaps He is just like all of us who, no matter how many times we watch the re-runs of our favourite TV shows, we still laugh at them...even though we know every detail of the script etc.
He knows exactly what is going to happen and when and how, but still loves watching His creation going along their ways, making blunderous choices with their God given free will, but still knowing that we will never end up anywhere but where He knows we will.
The Boyd statement of God 'existing in an eternally static state of unchanging facts, and God's responding to it as "of course, I've known that would happen for an eternity" doesn't mean that God has a life that is mundane. That is merely Boyd putting his own personal prejudice on it because Boyd does not enjoy that type of existence, but he doesn't know that God shares is sentiment. [ pg 129 of God of The Possible] Is Boyd not limiting God to Boyd's personal perceptions of what God personally needs in His Divine life?
And at the end of ur time, and Christ's return, won't God have immmeasurable pleasure and novelty and adventure with us in eternal heaven?
Makes sense to anyone? Not to all I know, but it's just how I think on it at this time.
Also...Knight...I am seriously interested in your response to why God knowing our future free will choices would in any way be a coercion by Him to induce us to love Him?
This "warning" theory of yours is not in the text. God did not tell Nineveh that they would be overthrown UNLESS they repent. He did not say that. What He did say was very specific, "40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown." I think it's only 5 words in the original language, there was no mistaking the message. In fact, had the message been softened at all, chances are the Ninevites would not have repented at all.Mr. Coffee said:
Really the only way one could ever come to the conclusion that this even could possibly have been a warning is if they were familiar enough with God to understand the principle taught in Jer. 18.
And if that wasn't sufficient to convince you that Jonah's prophecy wasn't simply a warning, let's look at something that could not have been a warning at all.
Joshua 3:9-11
9So Joshua said to the children of Israel, "Come here, and hear the words of the LORD your God." 10And Joshua said, "By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites:
Here God makes a very clear promise to Israel to drive out all these peoples from before them. But make no mistake about it, HE DID NOT DO THIS! He just absolutely did not do it. It never happened at all. Why? Because of Jer. 18, that's why.
Jer. 18:9And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; 10If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.
It's simple really, God says (not just about Israel but about any nation) that if He decides to do something with or for that nation and they repent and the circumstances therefore change to the point that it would no longer be righteous for Him to do what He thought to do then He will not do it. How is that not simple to understand? It's just couldn't be any clearer.
Resting in Him,
Clete
P.S. I'm going out of town for the weekend. I may not post again for a couple of days.
Clete said:
Yes, God knows that as the result of your free choices, others free choices and what ever other factors may be at work that you will get into a car accident. You do have the option of staying out of your car, but you won't. God is not causing the auto accident to happen. He knows it will happen because He knows all of the causal factors leading up to it.
I don't have time to read all the posts that I missed. Unfortunately, the discussion seems to have devolved into a name calling match.
Jeremiah85
New member
Thank you, you have stated wht I was trying to say much more concisly then I could.docrob57 said:
Freak
New member
I'm not a Calvinist, Knight. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. There are some biblical truths found in Calvinism but I do not find my identification in Calvinism. Rather I find it in Christ alone.Knight said:
No. Not sure for the others, though. I'm a follower of the Holy Trinity. Do you find your identification in the theology of open theism or in Jesus Christ?
Last edited:
Agape4Robin
Member
I am a Christian, not Calvinist, not Arminian, not anything other than a believer and follower of Christ.Knight said:
Simple......
Agape4Robin
Member
It's not polite to ask a lady her age.......... :nono:godrulz said:
- Status