ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2

[godrulz]

I am an incompatibilisit. You also are forgetting exhaustive and definite.

EDforeknowledge is not compatible with genuine, libertarian free will. The exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is a logical absurity, a contradiction (either EDF is not true or free will is redefined and is illusory).

Just because God and man foreknow some of the future (in retrospect, it is proven right), does not prove EDF of all free will contingecies.

Back to the drawing board...there are piles of papers to try to support this. Engage them, if you have not, and make an informed decision.

Judas does not prove or disprove EDF, but it is a common objection that OTs must respond to (like prophecy or Peter). The Calvinists and Molinists and Arminians also have issues to respond to, so we are not the only ones on the hot seat.

Which view is most biblical and least problematic, even if it does not have all pat answers yet?

 

[godrulz]

Scratching one's head is far from changing one's mind. Would this really only cause you to wonder?

Yes, I would have a harder time explaining this amount of remote detail and retain any sense of genuine free will. I can explain Cyrus, Judas, and Peter, but could not explain a list of all sports event outcomes handed to me that was written before creation. I would have to become a rational hyper-Calvinist determinist or an irrational simple foreknowledge Arminian (I still have not heard a good explanation for SFK, just an assumption of the mystery of it...perhaps eternal now would help, but that is even more incoherent for a personal God who interacts with history).

In my early months as a thinking Christian, I spun my tires/gears trying to make the incoherent, coherent. When the lights went on (even without exhaustive understanding), it became coherent and I cannot revert to trying to make the nonsensical reasonable. Wrong assumptions lead to wrong conclusions.

 

[SaulToPaul 2]

muz,

just to clarify, no one in Israel killed Abel.

 

[Lon]

I would say Arminians are incompatibilists (depends how we define it). I thought it related to determinism and was originally a discussion within Calvinism only. Arminians believe in simple foreknowledge, not the compatibility of determinism and free will. So, I would say compatibilism is a Calvinistic thing to justify some sense of free will with determinism (the other groups are free will theists and would reject this). I also thought you were more simple foreknowledge or middle knowledge, not determinism.

Judas was a free, responsible moral agent. If a doctor gives you a cancer diagnosis and a possible range of life expectancy (terminal), his knowledge does not determine your choices (suicide, treatment, etc.) nor does it cause cellular changes within your body. Jesus saw the 'cancer' developing in Judas without tampering with his will.

Actually, I was a determinist Arminian so always conceded Calvinistic points. It would have been scriptural suicide not to. It would have been denying the whole counsel of God. Grant you, we all pretty much start this way. You cannot have a real systematic theology that is owned until you read His Word multiple times. Anybody who has a systematic theology other than this way is indoctrinated. We can be influenced by men we see as Godly, but this is no excuse for lack of self-study. I GREATLY fear to ask for a number of hands of those who have read through their entire Bibles, moreso if we ask for 'more than once.'

 

[Lon]

Lon:

My spider sense is tingling. I followed your post to a point, but lost track at the chocolate issue. I see no reason to assume God even dictates mundane choices like taste preferences. If you have kids, you should know that their tastes for mushrooms, onions, vegetables, etc. can be cultivated. There is a strong environmental influence. A person raised vegan will not likely like meat. A person who eats junk food because of parent's early introduction, will tend to get in that habit. To assume God micromanages these things without some things being open and inherent in a creative, self-determining creation comes to close to B.F. Skinner's genetic behavioralism (vs image of God).

Total depravity is not total inability.

Sovereignty can be providential control and does not have to be meticulous control of every moral and mundane choice.

In God's sovereignty, He chose to give us significant freedom to facilitate non-coerced love relationships. This does not come without risk (hence the world and lives are in a mess). He works to mitigate and redeem things, but He does not always intervene. He macro vs micromanages.

So, hyper-Calvinism, Molinism, compatibilism, etc. are simply based on different assumptions than Open Theism (which I feel is the most biblical, rational position).

The fact I can chose chocolate or vanilla, whether I desire it or not, shows that my mind and will are sufficient causes without having to speculate that God is dictating my desires that make me chose. Being morally neutral, you can chose whatever flavor you want. Yesterday I had to choose between 24 soft ice cream flavors. I am convinced that my unique personality and ability made the final decision and that it was not foreknown from eternity past (nor was my choice a threat to national security or the sovereign rule of God!).

A few thoughts for you to consider your presuppositions. I'm not trying to dissuade you here as I have been in similar shoes and believe your suppositions to be valid, but perhaps it will at least open up the discussion a bit more.

First off, thanks for trying to read my thoughts on freewill. I am continuing to flesh it out so I understand losing you at points, but some of this is well-gelled if not cemented in my mind.

Chocolate: I come from a long line of chocolate lovers. I do think you have some mixed ideas here. You said we can learn to like certain foods and I totally agree BUT that is a VERY Skinnarian/Pavlovian idea. I'd suggest some of your thinking is also non-cemented but well-gelled if you think a little more about it.

Despite a family, who wholly love chocolate, I'm am pretty much a loner in familial tastes. I prefer vanilla, banana, and nuts.

Next, I do believe in predictable pattern. OV actually supports Skinnarian psychology/sociology in many respects. "Man is a machine" wasn't an encompassing statement in his mind. He knew their were deviants, but he was looking to evolutionary/genetic mutations for answers on divergence. I do believe he had some truth in his analysis. We can certainly fault him on extrapolating his data a bit too far with conclusion, but we tend to understand and see his discoveries, as you have shown in your post. We don't like the impersonal extrapolations like determinism and machine, program and completely known but we should pay attention to scripture for such.

1 Corinthians 13:12-13
ut then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

1 Cor 8:3

Jeremiah 1:5

Romans 8:29

Galatians 4:9

1 Jn 3:2

 

[godrulz]

Actually, I was a determinist Arminian so always conceded Calvinistic points.

Determinism is the opposite of free will theism (Arminian). What do you mean, a 'determinist Arminian'?!

Skinner? No way, jose.

One of us is going senile. I don't see your verses supporting your ideas. Have you been in the catnip again?

 

[Lon]

Determinism is the opposite of free will theism (Arminian). What do you mean, a 'determinist Arminian'?!

Skinner? No way, jose.

One of us is going senile. I don't see your verses supporting your ideas. Have you been in the catnip again?

Of course I knew there was no official animal. It was where I was.

As to Skinner, you actually supported the idea when you suggested we can learn to eat peas. I knew very well that you'd have a difficult time accepting it of yourself way before I posted.

 

[RobE]

I am an incompatibilisit. You also are forgetting exhaustive and definite.

No. I'm not forgettting. Knowledge must be definite and exhaustive to be knowledge at all. Otherwise, its merely a belief.

If I know that A will happen and B occurs instead; then I never 'knew' A would happen.

EDforeknowledge is not compatible with genuine, libertarian free will.

Prove it. In fact I challenge you to prove that libertarian free will exists without assuming foreknowledge is present during your free act(the proof of LFW requires foreknowledge to verify itself).

The exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is a logical absurity, a contradiction (either EDF is not true or free will is redefined and is illusory).

How is it contradictory? The two motifs require it. The story of Judas requires it. The story of Peter requires it. The proofs of God changing His mind requires it. For if God wasn't exhaustively and definitely going to destroy Tyre; then He did NOT change His mind when it was NOT destroyed.

Just because God and man foreknow some of the future (in retrospect, it is proven right), does not prove EDF of all free will contingecies.

Ah, but your claim is that foreknowledge of free actions is incompatible and a logical absurdity. How might you run back and claim them to be compatible when it becomes convenient?

Judas does not prove or disprove EDF, but it is a common objection that OTs must respond to (like prophecy or Peter).

How is this claim true when Christ foreknew of Judas' betrayal and future disposition? Both of which were free choices.

The Calvinists and Molinists and Arminians also have issues to respond to, so we are not the only ones on the hot seat.

Sure, but they have given answers. The have their reasons which don't conflict with their beliefs. This thread isn't entitled 'Calvinism' or 'Arminians'; but is titled 'Open Theism' so that Christianity might view their answers. Saying, "The other guys have more problems," isn't an answer at all! It's an attempt at obfuscating the arguments.

Perhaps you might explain how it might be said to be 'known' without it being definitely or exhaustively known. See, if it doesn't occur then it wasn't known at all.

 

[RobE]

Skinner? No way, jose.

Group behaviors? Society's behaviors? Predicting the response to stimulus?

 

[RobE]

Yes, I would have a harder time explaining this amount of remote detail and retain any sense of genuine free will.

And you claim that I'm committed to my position. LOL:chuckle: . I would submit to you, that if what you say here is true; you wouldn't believe the words if God spoke them to you personally.

Why don't you present your proof of incompatibility so that I might understand your great enlightenment.

 

[Lon]

One of us is going senile. I don't see your verses supporting your ideas. Have you been in the catnip again?

Sorry, I missed this first go. The verses are about being fully known and are posted in reference to that. I'd not say either of us are going senile, but you can definitely say I didn't give explanation for the verses sufficiently.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Why don't you {godrulz} present your proof of incompatibility so that I might understand your great enlightenment.

He cannot.

 

[Lon]

Knight

Knight

How busy are you?

I've missed you for a few pages now.

 

[godrulz]

He cannot.

Will not. Do you know how many technical papers and books there are on this subject in secular and evangelical circles? I am satisfied with my statement based on decades of reseach to the best of my ability. Do I want to start trying to distill this into posts that few will read? No.

I have given links before or pointed to research. The fact that it is debated in great detail beyond most of our grasps shows that I cannot prove it in a post or two.

As long as you are going to water down libertarian free will with compatibilistic pseudo-free will, I will never be able to prove anything. We are talking different languages.

I have given this before. It is not modal logic in great detail. If you can't agree with this, you won't agree with a 20 page proof of it either.

"If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contingent, it may or may not happen, or it may be one of many possibles. And if it may be one of many possibles, it must be uncertain; and if uncertain, it must be unknowable."

This makes sense to me. If free will is genuine, EDF becomes impossible. To retain EDF, we have to tinker with genuine contingency.

Further, "A certain event will inevitably come to pass, a necessary event must come to pass, but a contingent event may or may not come to pass. Contingency (free will) is an equal possibility of being and of not being."

Simple, until you start making it cloudy by talking about causative desires that God gives and still claiming freedom. If there is an element of uncertainty in contingent choices, and there is (self-evident....chocolate or vanilla, unknown for sure until I choose), then EDF is logically impossible for all moral and mundane choices of all creatures for all times from eternity past.

This is why a common explanation to justify EDF rests on specious 'eternal now', indefensible simple foreknowledge, or crass determinism/omnicausality. You can assume these things and beat the chest that you have proven EDF, but if the basic assumption is wrong, it is simply begging the question.

"The future choice of holiness or sinfulness (or whatever) is, therefore, a thing now wholly undetermined, and hence an unknowable thing. And being an unknowable thing, its prescience involves an absurdity, and hence ignorance thereof necessitates no imperfection in Deity."

Since I wrote these quotes on scrap paper almost 30 years ago, I do not know the sources. Could be Hasker, Pinnock, who knows? They were also in a larger context of more detailed proof.

Boyd has some charts or appendix that Bob Hill linked somewhere (from "Satan and the problem of evil"; Methodist Lorenzo McCabe has some early papers that also 'proved' these things...part way down on this link http://www.revivaltheologypromotion.org/rtpfullcat.htm).

Pinnock: "The distinction between what is possible and what is actual is valid for God as well as for us. The past is actual, the present is becoming, and the future is possible (rulz-not yet)."

Hasker (about omniscience) "It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe any true proposition such that His knowing that proposition at that time is logically possible."

Is it logically possible to know in advance as a certainty something that is contingent, possible, may or may not be?

Hence, EDF of future free will contingencies is a logical absurdity (despite loopholes like compatibilism, eternal now, determinism, objections about Peter or Judas, tradition, etc....we can deal with these in detail, one by one...it certainly has been done extensively in the literature on both sides."

 

[godrulz]

"A future free act is, previous to its existence, a nothing; the knowing of a nothing is a bald contradiction."

"As omnipotence is limited by the possible, so omniscience is limited by the knowable. We do not limit omnipotence by denying its power to do impossible or self-contradictory things. Neither do we limit omniscience by denying its power to foreknow unknowable things." (correctly known as possible until they become actual; modal logic and technical philosophical arguments are out there to demonstrate this).

He knows things as they really are. We agree that God is omniscient, but disagree as to the possible contents of reality that He fully knows. The future is unique. If you blur the distinction between it and past/present, you will have a wrong conclusion.

The giving of free will in order to have reciprocal love relationships brings a VOLUNTARY self-limitation of power and knowledge. Calvinists freak out and think this is humanizing God. No it is NOT. It is to the glory of God and not a threat to sovereignty that is based on right, not might.

 

[godrulz]

This is the heart of the matter:

The model of God in Greek philosophy is sovereign and transcendent.

The biblical model proposed by OT is sovereign and immanent.

(note: there are definite facts and indefinite possibilities, so God correctly distinguishes these as the creation He actualized vs a raw deterministic, mechanical one)

Pinnock: "We may think of God primarily as an aloof monarch, removed from the contingencies of the world, unchangeable in every aspect of being, as an all-determining and irresistible power, aware of everything that will ever happen and never taking risks.

Or (OT), we may understand God as a caring parent with qualities of love and responsiveness, generosity and sensitivity, openness and vulnerability, a person (rather than a metaphysical principle) who experiences the world, responds to what happens, relates to us and interacts dynamically with humans."

This is NOT Process Thought, finite godism, but relational, biblical theism. It trumps specious determinism (most of you have a modified view, but need to go further for a biblical, coherent theology free from traditions that are more philosophical than biblical).

Here comes the rotten eggs, tomatos, tar and feathers:noway:

 

[godrulz]

Sorry, I missed this first go. The verses are about being fully known and are posted in reference to that. I'd not say either of us are going senile, but you can definitely say I didn't give explanation for the verses sufficiently.

We both agree that we are fully known since God knows the past and present exhaustively. The future is not fatalistically fixed or we are mere machines, so it is not known as exhaustively settled if it is not.

I can wake up for church or sleep in tomorrow. Imagine that?

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

"If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contingent, it may or may not happen, or it may be one of many possibles. And if it may be one of many possibles, it must be uncertain; and if uncertain, it must be unknowable."

Fails from the beginning assumption that truly free acts exist. They do not as long as a supreme being, God, exists. Likewise, the rest of your post lands on the philosophical error of your underlying premise that truly free acts exist concurrently with a Supreme Being. If you don't understand this, then you have not read many of all those technical papers you mentioned, nor do you grasp the underlying philosophical and theological arguments.

Next!

This makes sense to me.

Of course it does to you. :squint:

You have responded for me: You can assume these and beat the chest that you have disproven EDF, but if the basic assumption is wrong, it is simply begging the question.

"The future choice of holiness or sinfulness (or whatever) is, therefore, a thing now wholly undetermined, and hence an unknowable thing. And being an unknowable thing, its prescience involves an absurdity, and hence ignorance thereof necessitates no imperfection in Deity."

To say a Supreme Being is incapable of necessary knowledge and free knowledge is to deny the appeal to perfection underlying the quoted argument.

Next!

Is it logically possible to know in advance as a certainty something that is contingent, possible, may or may not be?

Yes. A truly Supreme Being is not subject to contingencies. Rather contingencies are imposed by a Supreme Being upon the creature, and they are not imposed upon the Supreme Being.

Next!

Hence, EDF of future free will contingencies is a logical absurdity

Error! The incorrect application of the underlying philosphical and theological assumptions noted above by whomever you are quoting will lead to this incorrect conclusion of absurdity.

Next!

I see now that you do not possess the sufficient background in philosophy or theology to properly grasp the fallacies in your assertions. I urge you to dig deeper into "all those technical papers, etc" on both sides of the argument.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

"A future free act is, previous to its existence, a nothing; the knowing of a nothing is a bald contradiction."

Again, the statement fails when the existence of a Supreme Being is assumed. This is an argument from atheism. God can know whatever is impossible not to know. Nothing you have quoted or stated here or previously can be shown to have demonstrated the impossibility of God's necessary and free knowledge.

"As omnipotence is limited by the possible, so omniscience is limited by the knowable. We do not limit omnipotence by denying its power to do impossible or self-contradictory things. Neither do we limit omniscience by denying its power to foreknow unknowable things."

This is the openist attempt to redefine the terms omniscience and omnipotence, to define non-omniscient omniscience and non-omnipotent omnipotence. These are no-things that fail on philosophical and theological grounds.

The giving of free will in order to have reciprocal love relationships brings a VOLUNTARY self-limitation of power and knowledge.

Sentimentalities are insufficient as a basis for proper philospohical and theological argumentation. This is an attempt to slip in humanistic notions of God being able to change His mind, where no proper groundwork has been even attempted. Your sentiments ignore the absolute nature of a perfect Supreme Being.

 

[godrulz]

Next? Seriously? All you are doing is assuming genuine free will does not exist?! This is exactly what Aquinas and others did in their 'proofs' of timelessness.

Forget the big spiritual issues. What about mundane things? Is a lottery draw random or fixed by God (God the Gambler?)? Is my choice of typing correctly or makenn spilling misstaekes predestined by God from eternity past? Cmon! If not, then I introduced a contingency that was not known by God trillions of years ago. If not, then EDF is false (only takes God not knowing one thing).

You still think God is controlling this?!igojer90]gj390]gju390gji0eqo[gj9eqge3ugh[8egu[890u Cmon.

You blew off quotes from credible thinkers because they do not agree with your denial of free will. This is standard, arrogant Calvinism. When I read the technical papers, there were arguments and counterarguments. William Lane Craig is a great thinker, but I am not persuaded that everything he concludes about 'middle knowledge' is correct. I suspect you have spent many years bolstering your position in your own mind. You assume it is infallible, but are blind to the possibility that you are dead wrong in some areas.

If you cannot see these simple assertions, including that this is not foreknowable before creation by an omniscienct Godjrg0=jr3=90j3bnirjoeijgo0ejg0[3094u0gu3[80uj

then I shall respond in kind to your truth and nonsense: your premise does not agree with my premise, so next...next....next...here here here:baby: