SaulToPaul 2
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Soccer was meant to play on grass with your feet, not on ice with sticks!
ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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Soccer was meant to play on grass with your feet, not on ice with sticks!
Yes. If you are trying to trap me, I asked a mathematician about numbers and infinity. Endless succession is not a problem. As well, Zeno's paradox (can an arrow reach a target if there are infinitely smaller intervals before it gets there) has been resolved with math and logic (see Lucas again on instants vs intervals).
There are earthly events. I would expand beyond events and recognize that the triune God had thoughts and feelings that require succession or duration, even apart from acts or 'events'.
Historical narrative/genealogy/speculation. Do you hold to the 'gap theory'? If not, it is reasonable to assume the Fall happened early in man's history, not long periods after (Gen. 1-3).
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
So, "time" in eternity past, had no beginning but it had an end when God
created the universe?
SaulToPaul 2
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SaulToPaul 2
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I'm a mathematician...not as good as lee_merrill, but one nonetheless.
elected4ever
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God is authoritative not libertarian. Where did God give permission to do what we wonted in conflict with His divine plan for man? It is because of this libertarian view that man fell in the garden. Deeds are not done with no consequence.
Endless time <<<<-------CREATION----------->>>>>>>>>>
Revelation 1:4 and 8; Ps. 90:2
Time or duration did not cease when the material universe began. Did time cease or start just because you are born or die?!
Creation was the beginning of a unique measure of time for us, not the beginning or end of time as a concept itself. God is from everlasting to everlasting. His years are without end or beginning (Ps. 102). We are everlasting with a beginning, but no end. He is without beginning or end (but that does not make Him timeless anymore than us living forever makes us timeless...tensed expressions are used several times in Revelation about heaven/eternity).
God knowing beforehand does eliminate free choice, but let's take what you say and look at it another way that is more favorable to your position. Let's say God takes exhaustive knowledge of the future and gives it to someone else. They can truly say they know the future exhaustively, but they don't cause any of it. That would be true, right?
I think it was known as possible in the mind of God forever. If...then....It became certain in the mind of God when the Fall took place. It was implemented centuries later, not in eternity past. The reason it can be known is based on predestination, ability, foreknowledge, not crystal ball foreknowledge. God is intelligent, not EDF.
Thx for trying to clarify, even if you disagree (I hope it is not a trap).
Note: Probable is not actual/certain.
Libertarian free will fully affirms justice and consequences, as do other views (but more consistently, since if God is omnicausal it would negate our personal responsibility).
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
As I walk into your trap, I'll say "I guess so..."
Does God knowing a free choice beforehand eliminate free choice?
SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
Sorry, I misworded my question. You had said earlier that "time as we know it" began at the creation of the universe. Speaking specifically of the "time" as God understood it before creation, did it have no beginning but a definite end?
I assume you reject the KJV rendering of Rev 10:5-7 KJV?
lee_merrill
New member
Well, yes, I would also wonder what Godrulz means by time as God understands it. Is it subject to Einstein's time dilation? Is there an inertial frame of reference?
For a clear exposition of relativity, see Feynman's "Six not-so-easy pieces" book, by the way--which Lee has not yet finished. By the way...
I'm not sure I could do without the first verse of "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder"!
"When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more,
And the morning breaks eternal, bright and fair..."
Blessings,
Lee <- Expecting STP is the better mathemetician
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lee_merrill
New member
A neat paper on time-travel is here, I just heard of this on the History Channel, and a discussion of this can be found here, soon to be a book. Not that I understand this! But it does show that some degree of time-travel may be possible, if Mallett is right, then you can travel back to the moment when the time machine was created.
Blessings,
Lee
Blessings,
Lee
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So you aren't sure? You've been saying all along that God knowing a choice does not remove a person's will. How much more so for a being that wasn't God that merely knew the same choice but had nothing to do with it? Shouldn't it be a whole-hearted "yes!"?As I walk into your trap, I'll say "I guess so..."
Here you say it again with this rhetorical question. So if it isn't God that knows, surely, another being knowing would not eliminate choice? Right?
That's not true! It proves a lot more than that. It proves that what is foreknown is necessary, not contingent. In other words, it proves that what is foreknown is not carried out freely.
How many of those 40 posts were in response to unbelievers?
Are you not here discussing Open Theism yourself? What do you want me to do; turn every discussion into "Do you know Christ?"? If so, just how effective do you really think that would be and why don't you do the same?
Besides that, I find here on TOL that those who are not believers aren't interesting in discussing the gospel specifically and most of them reject the gospel they have heard because they understand intuitively that it doesn't make any sense! Why in the world would anyone want to saved when they don't think they are lost and when every attempt they've ever heard to explain otherwise is chocker-block full of contradictions and absurdities that they are most often asked to simply overlook "by faith". One of the key reasons I do what I do here has everything to do with defending the fact that the Christian worldview is the only rational worldview. In those 40 posts, did you count how many times I proclaimed that all doctrine must be BOTH Scriptural AND rational?
Further, who are you to question me about how I minister to others on this website? Do you know me? Do you have some insight into God's use of my talents that I am somehow been left unaware? Does the Bible not teach us that not everyone is a foot and not everyone is a hand but rather that we all have our own place and our own function within the Body of Christ? If you have a passion for preaching the gospel to the lost then amen and more power to you! I'll support you in that effort in every way I know how and I'll thank you to support me in my effort to educate believers, in a variety of ways, that they don't have to check their brains at the door of the church and how they can strongly defend their faith against all comers no matter what direction the attacks comes.
Further still, this website is in existence primarily to provide a place for people to discuss theology. Thus the name THEOLOGY Online! Discussing theology with unbelievers would have to be limited primarily to one type of gospel presentation or another, which is perfectly fine except that it would make for one heck of a boring website and most likely none of us would be here discussing anything at all and there most certainly wouldn't be any unbelievers here getting preached at.
Dispensationalism makes no sense outside of the Open View! Romans 9 is where Paul gives his best argument for how God was justified in cutting Israel off. In that chapter he quotes Jeremiah 18. In fact, for all intent and purposes Romans 9 is Jeremiah 18. The point being made in both chapters is effectively identical. The only difference is that Paul in Romans 9 is basically making the point that the cutting off of Israel is the result of Jeremiah 18 being enforced against Israel.
Jeremiah 18 is Open Theism! There is not one single way to explain Jeremiah 18 from within a Settled View paradigm without rendering whole swaths of words meaningless or without directly contradicting yourself. Jeremiah 18 directly states that God's prophecy may not come to pass and explain what would cause that to happen. How does that make any sense if God already knows what everyone is going to do? It doesn't even make any difference how He knows it! Regardless of whether you're a Calvinist who thinks that God makes everything happen or an Arminian who simply witnessed it all happen in advance, either way Jeremiah 18 smashes your theological worldview to dust! There is simply no way that you can make it make any sense whatsoever. And if Jeremiah 18 makes no sense then Romans 9 makes no sense either and if Romans 9 makes no sense then Dispensationalism makes no sense.
Now that's Open Theism applied to Dispensationalism. You can apply it to ANY aspect of the Christian faith and the result is the same. It is a fundamental issue that touches literally every single aspect of the Christian faith from one direction or another. So much so, in fact, that I have repeatedly argued that if the future is settled by any means whatsoever, the Christian worldview is falsified. If the future is settled God is unjust and therefore unrighteous. If the future is settled, love is impossible. The Bible is completely based upon God righteousness, justice and love. If even any one of those concepts are shown to be meaningless then the whole of the Christian faith is completely proven false, including the gospel! Indeed, if the future is not open, the God of the Christian Bible does not exist! Now how much more relevant of a discussion do you think you could find? Whether or not the future is open or settled is totally foundational to the whole point of the Christian faith!
Finally, I would point out that this entire discussion about the importance of Open Theism vs. the Gospel message is a red herring that I have intentionally indulged. The fact of the matter is that it makes no difference whether I can defend the discussion of Open Theism or not. Even if Open Theism was a completely trivial side issue the fact remains that you don't get to just decide which arguments are valid and which are not on a whim. You reject a perfectly good argument and you do so for no reason at all and merely proclaim that "it makes no sense" as though your saying it makes it so and that just simply isn't the way it works. How would you respond to a person you were presenting the gospel to who responded by saying, "Well, it just doesn't make sense..."? Would you consider that to be a valid response? Why not? That's what you are doing here! If you can do it, why can't anyone else? You're throwing away the whole store here, STP and you don't even see it! You want to discuss the gospel? Great! How are you going to do it by throwing rational thought out the window? On what basis are you going to object to an unbeliever doing the exact same thing you are doing here? On what basis are you going to object to a Covenant Theologian when they reject your Dispensationalism on the very same basis that you are here rejecting this line of reasoning? And if you think that you won't get caught with your pants down on this, think again! It will happen! In many respects its happening to you right now! Do you think that the four or five people active in this thread are the only ones who read it? I certainly hope you don't think that because I can guarantee you that they are not.
Now one last brief point. Some in the past have thought that I hold to the position that if one doesn't instantly become a Open Theist and embrace all it teaches on the basis of a single argument that I summarily proclaim them to be intellectually dishonest. Let me assure you that I do not believe any such thing. I am not saying that you have to be convinced by this argument. All I'm saying is that it is intellectually dishonest for you to reject it for no reason or simply because you don't like its conclusion. If you are unconvinced but cannot give a good explanation as to why then say that! That's a perfectly valid and intellectually honest thing to say. I've heard one or two relatively good arguments in support of a really really old Earth that I have no idea how to refute. I remain unconvinced that the Earth is older than about 6000 years old but you'll never find me dismissing good arguments frivolously nor humming while sticking my fingers in my ears, pretending like such arguments don't exist. I remain unconvinced not because those arguments are irrational or logically invalid but because they are insufficient to overcome the weight of all the other arguments and evidence in support of the Biblical teaching. And so, until such time as I either learn how to refute the arguments or learn how I've misunderstood the Bible, I remain aware that there are some very valid questions and arguments that I do not know the answer too and I patiently wait for those answers to come either in this life or the next. That is the honest way, the honorable way, the Christian way to respond to an argument that you cannot answer.
Resting in Him,
Clete
It would be rate (i.e. speed) that would equal zero, not time. Existence implies duration and so time could not be zero because if you were to say that time=zero you would be saying that duration=0 because information about duration and/or sequence is what the word 'time' communicates, and if something has no duration that thing does not exist.
No, of course it didn't, but the principle still worked even if the words and symbols used to communicate them didn't. There was, for example, three persons in the Trinity even before the word "three" or the number itself existed. And had there been, hypothetically speaking of course, one more person in the Godhead, there would have been four and so on. Logic worked before the word logic ever existed.
By the way, in a later post you said that you 'understand their "logic"'. Why did you do put the word logic in quotes like that?
Resting in Him,
Clete
lee_merrill
New member
Well, it means more than a few, and if as you say, God's power is enough to ensure most will be saved, then this result is by God's decision. And then "you are not far from the kingdom of Calvinism"!
Yes, and how can "all Israel" being saved be known? What, if only a few are still being saved, then most of them at that time have no choice?
Blessings,
Lee
How can you not see that this translates to...
"Fine. It's now necessary that I contingently choose T."
Can't you see how that is a contradiction? You may as well have said the dark, overcast night sky cast blinding bright yellow shadows.
Resting in Him,
Clete
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