ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1

[patman]

Since man is free God was unable to make these events happen through power, so how is it that He knew of them hundreds, or even thousands, of years in advance without foresight?

Rob? Were you ever a kid? Not calling you too old to remember, but were you? Kids have freewill, yet parents everyday conduct their plans for them, and they very often comply. Were you completely out of control as a kid or something, that you don't know this? If a parent can predict and plan for future events for their child, how much more God?

Genesis 15:12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."​

Exodus 12:40
Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.

1)How did God know of Israel's enslavement in advance?

Possibilities: 1.)God caused it to happen and knew it in advanced. 2.) God could foresee the coming famine and knew how he would help Israel, yet was wise enough to know the slavery would result (not to hard for God).

PSM 105
23 Israel also came into Egypt,
And Jacob dwelt in the land of Ham.
24 He increased His people greatly,
And made them stronger than their enemies.
25 He turned their heart to hate His people,
To deal craftily with His servants.
....
42 For He remembered His holy promise,
And Abraham His servant.
43 He brought out His people with joy,
His chosen ones with gladness.
44 He gave them the lands of the Gentiles,
And they inherited the labor of the nations,
45 That they might observe His statutes
And keep His laws.

2)How did God know that Abraham would have a son?

Same answer, he caused it to happen.

3)How did God know that Isaac would have a son?

ditto.

4)How did God know that Jacob would have a son?

likewise.

5)How did God know that Joseph would be sent to Egypt?

Same again.. Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. HOWEVER>>>> This peophecy does not mention how the enslavement ould come about. Why do you assert God knew exactly how it would happen?

6)How did God know that Jospeh would rise to power?

same answer, same question.

7)How did God know that a famine was coming?

Meteorology school?

8)How did God know Jacob would send his sons to Egypt?

The were hungry.

9)How did God know that Joseph wouldn't kill his brothers?

These questions are becomeing a stretch, Rob. So what if he tried? He wasn't mad at his father or the rest of Israel.. And so what if did try? Couldn't God protect them? Couldn't God ask him not to do it and he simply obey?

10)How did God know the Jews would be freed?

Do you not see God can plan and cause things and work in people and through them? Future knowledge is not required at all...

11)How did God know where the Jews would go?

Seeing as how he had the big cloud in the sky............ leading the way...

12)How did God know when the sin of the Amorites would reach its full measure?

I guess God figured when they started to resist the Jews that would be it..? Think it through. 1. God wants to give that land to the Jews. 2. he sends word out to everyone not to curse them or withstand them. They do anyway, after all it had been their home for some time. 3. They sinned. A very bad sin. It was bound to happen, and God could see it coming without a magical looking glass. All he needed was his vast wisdom and immense brain.

13)How did God know any of this before Isaac was born?

Again, you are asserting some things that are not really mentioned. But the answer is God had a plan and a reason for all this to happen. That's how he knew.

 

[godrulz]

Even traditional views on this recognize that God is not a 'machine' and is personal. To cast Open Theism as the only religion to believe God is relational would be in direct opposition to 2000 years of Christian history.

Rob

Half true...classical views do talk about strong immutability which is a static view. A dynamic, changing, responsive God (does not change in essential nature or character) is personal in contrast to a static view. Likewise, 'impassibility' says that God does not have emotions. In contrast, God and man in His image has will, intellect, and EMOTIONS. Again, on paper your views are problematic and you practically believe like an Open Theist while denying it.

 

[Bob Hill]

Rob,

I would say, about a majority of Christians do not believe that man has free will.

Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

However, I believe man has the freedom to believe or not believe what God has done for the whole world.

Bob Hill

 

[godrulz]

Rob,

I would say, about a majority of Christians do not believe that man has free will.

Bob Hill

I am not sure the majority of Christians are Calvinistic, but most believers live as though free will is true. I suppose even a Calvinist thinks compatibilism vs incompatibilism leaves room for free will, but it strains the definition and is not libertarian freedom.

 

[RobE]

Rob? Were you ever a kid? Not calling you too old to remember, but were you? Kids have freewill, yet parents everyday conduct their plans for them, and they very often comply. Were you completely out of control as a kid or something, that you don't know this? If a parent can predict and plan for future events for their child, how much more God?

I'm the one who continues to say that God is more capable than we are. I wish you would consider how many foreknown actions of free will agents over 400 years this story includes.

Genesis 15:12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.".

Exodus 12:40
Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.​

1)How did God know of Israel's enslavement in advance?

Possibilities: 1.)God caused it to happen and knew it in advanced. 2.) God could foresee the coming famine and knew how he would help Israel, yet was wise enough to know the slavery would result (not to hard for God).

This in itself supports my claims.

2)How did God know that Abraham would have a son?

Same answer, he caused it to happen.

How without interfering with free will?

5)How did God know that Joseph would be sent to Egypt?

Same again.. Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. HOWEVER>>>> This peophecy does not mention how the enslavement ould come about. Why do you assert God knew exactly how it would happen?

Are you saying that God forced Joseph's brothers to do evil against him?

6)How did God know that Jospeh would rise to power?

same answer, same question.

Are you saying that the 'bad wife' was forced by God to do evil?

7)How did God know that a famine was coming?

Meteorology school?

Who needs school?

8)How did God know Jacob would send his sons to Egypt?

The were hungry.

Why didn't they go fishing?

9)How did God know that Joseph wouldn't kill his brothers?

These questions are becomeing a stretch, Rob. So what if he tried? He wasn't mad at his father or the rest of Israel.. And so what if did try? Couldn't God protect them? Couldn't God ask him not to do it and he simply obey?

Well, how did God know that Joseph, Jacob, or his brothers wouldn't be killed by some other unknown act of a freewill agent?

10)How did God know the Jews would be freed?

Do you not see God can plan and cause things and work in people and through them? Future knowledge is not required at all...

Don't you see that in order to formulate a plan you must have simple foresight?

12)How did God know when the sin of the Amorites would reach its full measure?

I guess God figured when they started to resist the Jews that would be it..? Think it through. 1. God wants to give that land to the Jews. 2. he sends word out to everyone not to curse them or withstand them. They do anyway, after all it had been their home for some time. 3. They sinned. A very bad sin. It was bound to happen, and God could see it coming without a magical looking glass. All he needed was his vast wisdom and immense brain.

Vast enough and immense enough to know what people will do in the future?

13)How did God know any of this before Isaac was born?

Again, you are asserting some things that are not really mentioned. But the answer is God had a plan and a reason for all this to happen. That's how he knew.

My final questions: Did God plan creation and have reasons for creating us? Is that how He knows the future?

Rob

 

[RobE]

Rob,

I would say, about a majority of Christians do not believe that man has free will.

Bob Hill

Catholic theology insists that free will and Divine Foreknowledge both exist. That would take care of the 'majority' issue. I should also point out that Calvinism is condemned as a heresy. The idea of simple foresight resolves the problem of foreordination and makes them compatible. The methodology in which free will exists with foreknowledge present has been debated continuously. Grace and its influences establishing the perfect balance for justice is the key ingredient to that equation. I know free will exists. I just am unable to determine 'how' free will exists from my limited perspective. I could 'cut the knot' as Calvinists do by denying free will or 'cut the knot' by denying causality as Open Theists do; but that would be dishonest to the scriptures and myself. The scriptures point to free will and foreknowledge being true simultaneously. How is it possible that both are true? God is able to do that which I am unable to comprehend.

Honestly,

Rob

 

[godrulz]

My final questions: Did God plan creation and have reasons for creating us? Is that how He knows the future?

Rob

Much of God's foreknowledge is based on exhaustive past and present knowledge or on His ability to bring things to pass. It is proximal vs remote in many cases (God can see weather patterns and is a master at meteorolgy as the Creator of the earth; He can also directly intervene in nature to make anything happen or He can let Satan or man do their thing to influence outcomes).

God did plan and have reasons for creation. Many of these are broad and general and involve His moral will. There is significant freedom within His moral will. His sovereign will does not meticulously dictate every detail in His creation. His individual will for us can be undermined by our rebellion.

God knows some vs all of the future. He knows the Second Coming will take place, as prophesied, because He will make it happen and no one can stop it. This does not mean He knew that I would type this exact response trillions of years ago. I am bringing new creative things into existence through my free will98g98ehj9jhb osfgfihbmronbjm

Not knowing this (not knowable) in advance does not affect His sovereign rule nor His omniscience which merely moves from possible/probable when contingent things are actualized in the present.

 

[godrulz]

Catholic theology insists that free will and Divine Foreknowledge both exist. That would take care of the 'majority' issue. I should also point out that Calvinism is condemned as a heresy. The idea of simple foresight resolves the problem of foreordination and makes them compatible. The methodology in which free will exists with foreknowledge present has been debated continuously. Grace and its influences establishing the perfect balance for justice is the key ingredient to that equation. I know free will exists. I just am unable to determine 'how' free will exists from my limited perspective. I could 'cut the knot' as Calvinists do by denying free will or 'cut the knot' by denying causality as Open Theists do; but that would be dishonest to the scriptures and myself. The scriptures point to free will and foreknowledge being true simultaneously. How is it possible that both are true? God is able to do that which I am unable to comprehend.

Honestly,

Rob

You are giving up to soon to solve 'the mystery' or antimony. The problem is not that it is not resolvable, but that you are misunderstanding His revelation on the subject.

Part of the solution is that God foreknows/predestines some vs all things. You are proof texting one motif while making figurative the second motif. His foreknowledge is not exhaustive due to the type of contingent vs deterministic creation He chose. Open Theism is the more biblical position resolving the enigmas of Calvinism or Arminianism/simple foreknowledge. It is the least problematic of the possible views and is a credible alternative to the traditional views that are not without problems themselves. The key is to understand Open Theism and not reject a straw man caricature of it.

It is the glory of a king to search out a matter (Proverbs). We cannot know everything about God and His ways, but there is sufficient revelation to have a biblical understanding of what foreknowledge, free will, predestination, etc. is and is not. Not all views are equally credible. We know God is triune without understanding all the details. We know that God foreknows some things and that we have free will. It becomes a biblical, logical, philosophical resolvable problem to say that God exhaustively foreknows all future free will contingences (He does not, by His own choice to create an open vs closed creation).

 

[patman]

I'm the one who continues to say that God is more capable than we are. I wish you would consider how many foreknown actions of free will agents over 400 years this story includes.

Am I to brush off God's amazing abilities to plan and foresee and orchestrate the things he plans to do? I stand amazed at his powers and refuse to play them down for you or anyone. Especially for the sake of this silly debate... it has become silly.

--sigh--

Impossible or not:

God can foretell future events without absolute foreknowledge?

If you could just admit it is possible...

 

[zapp]

I'm persuaded, merely from scripture [how quaint, eh?] that part of the problem with this and other global theological battles is our tendency, on all sides, to extrapolate to the general cases that are finite, purposeful, and unique.

Not all christians are John The Baptists. Not all christians have the same God-breathed experience as Paul. Thankfully, not all followers of Jesus cast out demons and heal the sick, and BETRAY CHRIST as Judas did. [I note that there are not a lot of sermons preached about how Judas is a type of us all....]

God has the "sovereignty" .... Kingship, to require something of some subjects that He does not require of the whole populace. I'm very cautious about presuming upon the whole the character of certain unique cases. I'm not sure I'm a Gideon [though I'm surrounded by a_ _ _ s . God the Father may indeed have "dictated" the outcome of some, but what warrant have we to force that model on the whole of His Kingdom, much less the whole of the heathen?

 

[patman]

I'm persuaded, merely from scripture [how quaint, eh?] that part of the problem with this and other global theological battles is our tendency, on all sides, to extrapolate to the general cases that are finite, purposeful, and unique.

Good call!

 

[Bob Hill]

Does God know all of the future? Or, does God not know some of the future actions of man?

Here are some passages that show God doesn’t know for sure what the future actions of man will be in all cases: Gen 22:12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

I think a very interesting passage is Jer 3:6,7: The LORD said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot. 7 “And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘She will return to Me’ [ay lee tah shuv 3rd p. s. f.]

But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

God expected Israel to respond to His love.

But they didn’t.

 

[Bob Hill]

God thought Israel would turn from their evil ways when God had Jeremiah prophecy. Jer 26:1-3 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the LORD, saying, 2 “Thus says the LORD: ‘Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them. Do not diminish a word. 3 Perhaps everyone will listen and turn from his evil way, that I may repent concerning the calamity which I purpose to bring on them because of the evil of their doings.’”

But Israel’s response was consistently typical: Isa 5:1-4 Now let me sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard: My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. 2 He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; So He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. 3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. 4 What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, Did it bring forth wild grapes?

Israel did not do as God thought they would.

Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

Then, is it possible for man to do contrary to what God thought man would do?

The answer, here, is yes.

Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

Is this demeaning to God?

I don't think so, but I am a person who believes in the Open View.

Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

Sometimes, God changes His mind, or repents, because of man’s actions. The word, repent, is used of Job when he repented before the Lord. When Job was talking to God, he said in Job 42:5-6: “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. 6 Therefore I abhor myself, and repent [Heb. na gham] in dust and ashes.” What does the word na gham mean?

This same word is used of God repeatedly. Gen 6:5-7 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD repented [na gham] that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I repent [na gham] that I have made them.”

Did God destroy man, whom he created, from the face of the earth?

Yes, in the flood.

Bob Hill

 

[Bob Hill]

One of the most interesting OT passages is the one where God repents twice and doesn’t repent once. 1 Sa 15:11,29,35 “I repent [na gham] that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the LORD all night.

“And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent [na gham]. For He is not a man, that He should repent.” 35 And Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul, and the LORD repented [na gham repented] that He had made Saul king over Israel.

Yes, He repented twice and didn’t repent once.

What a wonderful God.

Bob Hill

 

[elected4ever]

Does God know all of the future? Or, does God not know some of the future actions of man?

Here are some passages that show God doesn’t know for sure what the future actions of man will be in all cases: Gen 22:12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

I think a very interesting passage is Jer 3:6,7: The LORD said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot. 7 “And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘She will return to Me’ [ay lee tah shuv 3rd p. s. f.]

But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

God expected Israel to respond to His love.

But they didn’t.

Genesis 22:11 *¶And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
12 *And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

An Angel is not God but a messenger of God. It is not reasonable to assume the words of an angel who had to find out something because he did not know is the same as the words of God who does.

Jeremiah 3:6 *¶The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.
7 *And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

Jehovah also said to me in the days of Josiah the king, have you seen what the apostate Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every green tree, and has fornicated there. and after she has done these, will she return to me? but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw.

Gives a little different picture that what you suggest.

 

[godrulz]

Taken at face value, Pastor Hill is on the right track with understanding God's responsiveness and the partially open future He chose to allow by creating other free agents, significant others, with a say-so.