ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2

[patman]

Yes, we only call a being "God" if they have the attributes of God.

So you would stop calling me a person if I changed into an angel? Yes, you should, even if I have some breakfast with you and talk about various matters of interest.

Blessings,
Lee

You don't mean that, Lee...

God became a man named Jesus, so now you are saying he isn't God?

 

[Philetus]

So God is mistaken if he doesn't know how a Flex Capacitor works, even though it doesn't actually exist?

Good line!

:chuckle:



It doesn't????????

I thought that was a documentary.

I mean, if Lee can imagine it then surely God can and if He can must do it.

P

 

[patman]

Hi Patrick,

I would say that the issue isn't over God giving up one of the 'omnis' as you call them. The issue would be if things could occur outside of God's providence or domain like Adam sinning without God being aware of the possibility or occurrance. This would mean that God might not be able to carry out His purposes where free agents were involved. Scripturally this isn't the God we know.

You used the word "might" above. By using the word "might," you imply that God COULD still be able to accomplish his will (even in spite of those conditions), you just don't think it is likely.

If it is true that there is a small chance that God could accomplish his will of future events, what about God do you see as lacking that you doubt he can do so?

In other words....

What weakness do you see in God that causes him to be crippled if he is without absolute future knowledge?

 

[lee_merrill]

You are underestimating His infinite, creative intelligence and power. You wrongly think that God is like a man who must control and micromanage every detail in order to get done what needs to be done over time.

It's very simple, if you think most of the people on your party list will come to your birthday party, and they can (without sin) decide not to, you may be disappointed.

And let's say God makes a Burley and and Blogit creature on some far distant planet, and they decide to rebel, and there is such a flood of wickedness that a flood (just speaking hypothetically) is necessary, and we all regret that Burleys and Blogits were made on Aldeberan. Impossible?

Just what is it that makes it so difficult for you to grasp the difference between possible and actual?

Because if there is a possibility of disappointment, then you cannot say it is impossible we would be disappointed in heaven.

You claim that God knows your future free-will choices that you haven't made yet based on contingencies that don't yet even exist.

Yes I do, based on God making sure predictions of future free choices--how could God know that Peter would remain faithful many years into the future?

God doesn't guess. God is always right about the next course of actions.

I agree! The Open View does not agree, for how is it that OVT says God regretted making Saul king? That sounds like a different choice would have been better.

... if Lee can imagine it then surely God can and if He can must do it.

A being, to be omnipotent, does not have to actually do every possible deed.

God became a man named Jesus, so now you are saying he isn't God?

God the Son became man, and yes, Jesus is God, that does not mean that God is Jesus.

Blessings,
Lee

 

[Clete]

Luke 21:33 KJV.
Psalms 12:6-7 KJV.

God promised to preserve his words. Where are his words? There are no originals.
If God's words are not being used, the message in the Bible may or may not be accurate.

God has preserved His word, as I have specifically explained to you already. Don't be an obtuse dork. Simply repeating your position like some stupid parrot doesn't refute the arguments I've made.

The idea that the King Jams Version, or any other version of the Bible is a flawless translation is, frankly, idiotic. KJVO ding-bats can't even agree amongst themselves as to which of the various editions of the King James Version is the inspired translation. Such mindless positions only serve to undermine the message of the Bible and further marginalize Christianity in our society.

I'm extremely disappointed in you STP. Don't proceed to blow your entire reputation to smithereens by continuing this intentional intellectual blindness. You've been tricked STP! Believe me, I know! I've attended churches that teach this nonsense and I've heard every clichéd argument, like the completely irrational one you just mindlessly posted here, in existence and none of them hold water. They amount to a lie. You've been lied too STP! Open your eyes and don't fall for it any longer! The position is not necessary, it is not Biblical, it is not rational, it is not true! Your understanding of what God's word is is faulty, your understanding of what it means to preserve it is faulty, your understanding of perfection is faulty and your conclusions that are based on these faulty premises wouldn't follow even if they weren't faulty premises! The entire position couldn't be more completely baseless!

You say that if the KJV (or whatever version you think is perfect) isn't perfect and since we don't have the originals that Jesus must have lied! That's stupid STP! Jesus didn't lie! Jesus can't lie! He's God, for crying out loud! Hasn't it ever occurred to you that rather than mindlessly concluding that the KJV must be a perfect translation that perhaps you need a different understanding of what it means to preserve God's word? Wouldn't that make a lot more sense than just arbitrarily choosing the KJV as the perfect word of God? How would you know that its the KJV anyway? How do you know that God didn't preserve His word in German or Latin, or for that matter, how do you know that the various manuscripts don't contain the "perfectly preserved" word of God? How do you know that the "perfectly preserved" word of God isn't in a vault somewhere in the south of France? By your understanding of what the preservation of God's word must mean, you couldn't prove otherwise! For all you know Bill Gates has the only extant copy of the "perfectly preserved" word of God in his sock drawer! The point here being that some version of the Bible isn't perfect just because we declare it to be and if someone claims that a particular version is perfect then its up to them to prove it, and guess what STP? You cannot prove the KJV or any other version of the Bible is a perfect translation! On the contrary! You can know for an absolute fact that it is not a perfect translation because there is no such thing as a perfect translation! If fact, the only way you can get around the errors is to declare the errors themselves to be inspired! If that isn't irrational, unfalsifiable nonsense then nothing ever has been!

Alright! That's enough of that! I'm done discussing this. I most certainly do not wish to make an enemy of you over this and so if you want to discuss Open Theism then I'm happy to do that and we can use whatever version of the Bible you want, but I'm not going to entertain this flawless translation issue any longer. There are other threads dedicated to that topic where the discussion can be, and has been, fleshed out in more detail if you're interested.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Clete]

Ahem--And even in a perfect world, God could still be wrong due to not knowing free-will decisions, and thus there could be disappointment even in heaven! Due to God's advice not turning out to be best--correct? According to the Open View...

I had a response to this typed but then a read a later post that made me delete it. I refuse to discuss Open Theism (in this context) with people who may or may not be actual Christians.

God the Son became man, and yes, Jesus is God, that does not mean that God is Jesus.

God is Jesus! If A=B, B=A. If Jesus is God, then God is Jesus. There is not more than one God, Lee. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are ONE God (Deuteronomy 6:4, John 10:30).

Care to explain yourself or shall I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you not saved and remain in your sins?

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[godrulz]

God has preserved His word, as I have specifically explained to you already. Don't be an obtuse dork. Simply repeating your position like some stupid parrot doesn't refute the arguments I've made.

Clete

If he was offended by my 'rookie' comment.....:dizzy:

 

[patman]

God the Son became man, and yes, Jesus is God, that does not mean that God is Jesus.

Blessings,
Lee

Lee...

Logics question, real quick.

A = B... so is B = to A?

 

[SaulToPaul 2]

Clete,

I'm very disappointed at how quickly you'll blow a fuse at a brother who
simply believes he has the word of God in his hands, and is willing to rely on it
as such.

Now, carry on with Open Theism...

 

[Clete]

Clete,

I'm very disappointed at how quickly you'll blow a fuse at a brother who
simply believes he has the word of God in his hands, and is willing to rely on it
as such.

Now, carry on with Open Theism...

I blew a fuse, as you put it, because you completely ignored perfectly valid arguments and simply repeated your position as though doing so made those arguments disappear or something. In short, I "blew a fuse" because you pulled a RobE/AMR type maneuver and that is both insulting to me and denigrating to you! And while I definitely think you're one of the good guys here and consider you to be an ally on most issues, I don't play favorites with the truth. I can't very well give RobE a hard time about his intellectual dishonesty while turning a blind eye to yours or anyone else's. If the sort of argumentation you employed were valid then everything any of us believe would all be true and we would all be wasting our time here. My response may have disappointed you, but you have to understand that it was intentionally offensive, as was entirely appropriate, and I will allow the offense of it to work its ministry.

Now, as you say, let's carry on with Open Theism, shall we?

If you tell me what, in your mind, is the most pressing question/objection that Open Theism needs to answer, I'll do my best to answer it for you.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[lee_merrill]

Lee...

Logics question, real quick.

A = B... so is B = to A?

Yes, yet Jesus is not the entirety of God, is the point here. Though God's fullness dwells in him--these are matters of some concern for theology, which I recommend you and others to read before repeating various questions--this decision as to the overall nature of God and Christ I believe is writ large in various creeds.

Blessings,
Lee

 

[Philetus]

If he was offended by my 'rookie' comment.....:dizzy:

Who knows?

Head On, apply directly to the forehead.

:doh:

 

[Nick M]

I didn't say that!

I do say if God doesn't know all future free-will choices, he might be mistaken about the best course from time to time, even in a sinless world.

Blessings,
Lee

How so? How can God be mistaken about the best choice somebody might make? The implication doesn't make any sense, and you probably mean something other than what you wrote.

Right and wrong is not a point of view. And he only takes one way, the right way. If we choose the wrong way, it is on us.

Yes I do, based on God making sure predictions of future free choices--how could God know that Peter would remain faithful many years into the future?

The Bible says more than once he knows us in the womb. He knew us when we were formed up. The mixing of genes, placing in order, or whatever. Just the same as an engineer knows and can predict the behavior of his machine. The main difference is that we are living, and we choose to sin against God.

 

[ApologeticJedi]

Luckily Micheal Jordan knew the future -- else he might not be able to win a one-on-one matchup against his eight year old. :think:

Apparently the typical view of God's power isn't that great, that people think God could lose if He shouldn't have future knowledge. Reactionary statements against Open Theism promote this lack of faith in God.

"I'll only have faith in God if .... " say too many Calvinists.

 

[Philetus]

Originally Posted by Philetus
Just what is it that makes it so difficult for you to grasp the difference between possible and actual?

Lee: Because if there is a possibility of disappointment, then you cannot say it is impossible we would be disappointed in heaven.

I didn’t say ‘impossible’ I said I’d get over it IF. The point is you are trying to build your view of reality on speculation … something not even God does. (I can't wait to see how you twist that one.)

Originally Posted by Philetus
You claim that God knows your future free-will choices that you haven't made yet based on contingencies that don't yet even exist.

Lee: Yes I do, based on God making sure predictions of future free choices--how could God know that Peter would remain faithful many years into the future?

Read my sentence again … or for the first time … whichever. Was it prediction or encouragement?

Quote: Philetus
God doesn't guess. God is always right about the next course of actions.

Quote: Lee: I agree! The Open View does not agree, for how is it that OVT says God regretted making Saul king? That sounds like a different choice would have been better.

You might agree but your reason for doing so stinks and betrays your lack of understand the Open View ..... again ... and again ... and again.

You assume God made Saul king because God knew Saul would/wouldn’t disappoint the people or God. Maybe Saul was just the best choice available. He was tall. But, the very act of demanding a king disappointed God. Samuel told them it wouldn’t work out the way they imagined but they persisted. They wanted to be ‘like other nations.’ Not God’s idea but one He could work through. That set up an entire set of circumstances and contingencies that God had to work through to continue with His overall intentions.

Ask your self this one ... Its a tuffy for all of us: Who's Idea was it to build the Temple? God's or David's. Just an attempt to get off your preoccupation with prediction and center the debate on relationship/interaction between God and humanity where it should be if we are going to focus on Open Theism.

Lee: A being, to be omnipotent, does not have to actually do every possible deed.

Neither does He have to be in meticulous control of every deed done by others.

Bless you, too.
Philetus

 

[lee_merrill]

How can God be mistaken about the best choice somebody might make?

He can, if the best choice is not the only choice, or if there are several equally good choices--there must be several non-sinful alternatives, correct, if there are free choices in heaven?

The mixing of genes, placing in order, or whatever. Just the same as an engineer knows and can predict the behavior of his machine.

The problem is that God knew before Jeremiah was born. The engineer's prediction can be basically certain because he is making a machine, yet people are not machines, so how could it be known that a man named Cyrus would decree that Jerusalem be rebuilt? or Jeremiah would really be a prophet?

Blessings,
Lee

 

[Philetus]

Luckily Micheal Jordan knew the future -- else he might not be able to win a one-on-one matchup against his eight year old. :think:

Apparently the typical view of God's power isn't that great, that people think God could lose if He shouldn't have future knowledge. Reactionary statements against Open Theism promote this lack of faith in God.

"I'll only have faith in God if .... " say too many Calvinists.

:thumb:

Calvinists believe in the future. Open Theists believe in God.

P

 

[Philetus]

Yes, yet Jesus is not the entirety of God, is the point here. Though God's fullness dwells in him--these are matters of some concern for theology, which I recommend you and others to read before repeating various questions--this decision as to the overall nature of God and Christ I believe is writ large in various creeds.

Blessings,
Lee

Oh, Lee. Oh, Lee. Oh, Lee! Lord God, Almighty!

To my Open Theist Brothers,

Want a great source that deals with the whole debate over “Who Jesus Is” and how Dualism keeps creeping back into the Theology of the West, get your hands on the works of Thomas F. Torrance. (That isn’t his only subject but Incarnation and Christology seem to be a primary theme in his writting. I first encountered him in “Theological Foundations for Ministry” edited by Ray S. Anderson, T&T Clark, Edinburg, 1979/2000. (Anderson’s a good read in itself). There are several exerts of TFT in the book. Here are two pages of Torrance found there:

768 THOMAS F. TORRANCE

….. tems have been taking firm shape beneath the decay of the old and are already beginning to break through the surface, although as yet they may not be generally recognized. What I would like to do now, is to draw attention to several of these exciting features which seem to me to indicate the shape of change and advance in the years ahead, in the hope that the identification and considera¬tion of them in this way will contribute to the constructive reorien¬tation we need.
It is particularly exciting to find that at last in the develop¬ment of modem theology, as in the scientific revolution, a reinte¬gration of structure and substance has been taking place, but a rather different kind of structure and substance than that which obtained in the Augustinian-Aristotelian or the Augustinian-¬Newtonian eras of western theology. The latest evidence for this is to be seen in Professor D. M. Mackinnon’s outstanding contribu¬tion on ‘substance’ in Christology in the recent volume of Cam¬bridge studies in Christology.4 In the scientific revolution, replac¬ing the old mechanistic structure and the discarded ‘metaphysical’ notion of substance, we have dynamic field-structure and the con¬tinuous substance of fused matter and energy, together constituting the indivisible reality of space-time. It is something quite parallel and of course on a different level, that we find struggling to emerge in theology, with the dynamic form and persistent being of a space-time universe in continuous interaction with the living God, the Creator and Redeemer. This is nowhere more evident than in the doctrine of God itself, in which we are learning to think together the being of God in his acts, and the acts of God in his being. The significance of that can be seen if we glance at the respective problems of theology in the Augustinian-Aristotelian and Augustinian-Newtonian eras. The high Patristic conception of the being of God in his acts tended to suffer severe refraction within mediaeval dualism which led on the one hand to a rather abstract and static concept of God’s being and on the other hand to a diminished concept of his acts which tended to be replaced regularly by a metaphysical notion of grace. This led to the reac¬tion of Protestant theology which has increasingly laid the em¬phasis upon the redemptive acts of God in Christ and in history, but here the high Reformation emphasis upon the acts of God in his being has suffered severe refraction within the Cartesian-¬Newtonian-Kantian dualism which resulted in the detachment of

4 Christ and Faith in History, ed. S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton (Cam¬bridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972), pp. 279ff.


The Church in the New Era of Change 769

the acts of God from his being and their present-day dissolution in the timeless events of the existentialists: the loss of ontology has proved quite fatal. Protestant scholasticism had certainly tried to save theology from all this by encasing the teaching of the Refor¬mation in the static concepts developed by the Newtonian outlook upon the universe, in a way not unlike Newton’s strange recasting of his own understanding of the universe in terms of differential law into the axiomatic mould of a geometry of the interrelations of rigid bodies independent of time: but all that is breaking up under the shift from the old cosmology of separated space and time. Now in our own day we see the rise of an Evangelical-Catholic theology in which the patristic understanding of the being of God in his acts and the Reformation understanding of the acts of God in his being are being thought together in such a way that there promises to arise out of it a profound but rather different kind of synthesis from that which arose out of the great mediaeval tradition. Owing not a little to the critical analysis of traditional concepts carried out in the scientific destruction of dualism, Christian theology is now more free and more open for positive reconstruction. The way ahead seems to lie in bringing that critical clarification to bear upon the pioneer work of Karl Barth in his conjunctive rethinking of the being of God in his acts and the acts of God in his being which has so far contributed more than anything else to the ad¬vance of theology in recent centuries.
(ii) The second outstanding feature to which I wish to draw your attention has also to do with Karl Barth, in his doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which has initiated a reversal of thought in the fundamen¬tal grammar of theology, carrying us back through Peter Lombard and John of Damascus, to the great Greek theology of the Early Church. St Augustine had certainly taught that the Trinity bears upon the basic structures of our knowledge of God in such a way that triadic patterns are implied in the human soul, which plays an essential role in our knowledge of God from the very start. But the inherent dualism in Augustinian thought, especially after the col¬lapse of the enlightenment theory of knowledge, tended to separate the knowing soul from the being of God, so that the mediaeval Church brought in Aristotelian modes of thought to help overcome the cleavage. Actually, however, the effect of that measure was to harden the cleavage while only half-overcoming it, so that, as we can see very clearly in the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas, the doctrine of the One God was cut off sharply from the doctrine of the Triune God, the former only being related to the epistemologi¬cal structure of the knowing mind. Moreover, that carried with it a ....​

I'll bet only GR and maybe Clete read that. Oh, and my buddy Patman who has made some great points.

If anyone can get there hands on Torrance's Time Space and the Incarnation (I think is the title) I would love to know what you think.

P

 

[Nick M]

He can, if the best choice is not the only choice, or if there are several equally good choices--there must be several non-sinful alternatives, correct, if there are free choices in heaven?

No. You are still proceeding from a false assumption. You claim God laid everything out based on knowing the future, and if he doesn't know the entire future, he won't know the best choice. Wrong. He only chooses right from wrong, not what type of ham to eat for dinner.

The problem is that God knew before Jeremiah was born. The engineer's prediction can be basically certain because he is making a machine, yet people are not machines, so how could it be known that a man named Cyrus would decree that Jerusalem be rebuilt? or Jeremiah would really be a prophet?
Blessings,
Lee

That is my point. We can think, a machine can not. God knows us better than we know ourselves. It isn't that he already saw it happen. He knows how we should react to certain input, and to great degree of accuracy, how we will. But people have still stumped him. Genesis 6!

God will relent of the destruction if the people change their way, and he will withold the blessing if they do evil. It is contingent on that nations actions. That means he is not the puppet master.

 

[ApologeticJedi]

He can, if the best choice is not the only choice, or if there are several equally good choices--there must be several non-sinful alternatives, correct, if there are free choices in heaven?

What was your point in this Lee? That God could pick a good choice that turned out later to be sinful? I'm not sure that can happen.

If you mean that God could come to regret His good choices -- then certainly Saul would be a good example of that. But to argue that God is unable to overcome these setbacks would be foolish.

The problem is that God knew before Jeremiah was born.

Ask a 8 month pregnant mother if babies in the womb have personalities. My wife would say they do. These days they encourage you to talk to your child and that almost always they will respond to the parent's voice.

The engineer's prediction can be basically certain because he is making a machine, yet people are not machines, so how could it be known that a man named Cyrus would decree that Jerusalem be rebuilt?

Cyrus (Kurash) was a common name for the kings of Persia. In Cyrus the Great's Prism , he mentioned that His grandfather's name was also Cyrus. So it seems to be a common royal name.

So how hard was it for God to convince one of the men with a common royal name to start the rebuilding effort? --- Well it would be hard for you or I, but not outside what God could do.

You act like God has no ability whatsoever. Do you really think this is something God is too impotent to overcome if He can't use some future gazing ability?