ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3

[Clete]

Lon is correct that you are compromising omniscience, even from an Open Theist qualified perspective. Enyart/Clete is not right on this one.

Saying it doesn't make it so, godrulz.

Shall I beg you once again to make the argument or will it be as much a waste of time now as it has been in the past?

God cannot choose to not know things the devil and men know (He is a perfect Judge, not ignorant of anything knowable...He can handle seeing sin, so don't assume He is like you).

This is as close to an argument as I think you've ever come on this issue and so I'll respond so as to encourage you to take it further and to do so more often.

You're argument doesn't follow. It is not necessary (logically) to have present knowledge of every knowable point of fact in existence in order to be a perfect judge. All that is necessary is the ability to find out any pertinent knowledge that is required in order to make a right judgment concerning any person or event. Since both Bob and I hold that God knows everything that He wants to know of that information which is knowable, your argument fails.

Secondly, your point about God being able to handle seeing sin is simply silly and unresponsive to our actual position. No one has suggested that God is unable to handle seeing sin. There is a difference between not being able to handle something and simply choosing not to do it. Our position is that God is only a first person witness to those events that He wants to be a first person witness too. You can't make Him watch something He doesn't want to watch or be somewhere He doesn't want to be precisely because He is NOT like you or me, He's God! You or I might find ourselves in a place we don't want to be, seeing something we don't want to see. God has no such problem. He is God! He does what He wants to do, goes where He wants to go, sees what He wants to see, knows what He wants know - nothing more - nothing less.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Clete]

The vast majority of all humanity has never heard the name Jesus. Have they chosen not to love Him?

You need to read John 1

 

[Clete]

Ah, so there will be evil in the New Jerusalem.

Only potentially.
Any that might exist would instantly be removed.
I do not believe that any will actually exist in the first place.

How will it be avoided?

Through the power of the Holy Spirit of God. We (and the Jews that live in the New Jerusalem) will maintain our righteousness by the same power that God maintains His own. Indeed, our righteous (those of us in the Body of Christ) is the righteousness of God.

Of course we do not know how all of this works but it is not necessary to know how it works. The point is that if there is not choice there is no love because love is a choice.

By the way, did you think that the trap you were waiting to spring on me was going to throw me into fits and stump me or something?

I dare you to answer tough questions about your theology with the straight forward and direct answers I offer in defense of mine.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Lighthouse]

Lon is correct that you are compromising omniscience, even from an Open Theist qualified perspective. Enyart/Clete is not right on this one.

God cannot choose to not know things the devil and men know (He is a perfect Judge, not ignorant of anything knowable...He can handle seeing sin, so don't assume He is like you).

So you don't believe God is omnipotent. Glad you cleared that up.

Let me carefully take them one at a time.

First of all, to the Hebrew word. It means literally 'to sigh.'
In connection with what is going on, we interpret the sigh, hence the ideas given. Notice that repent is only one of several ways to read that 'sigh.'

Second, if it is indeed contextual to say 'repent,' you and I have to ask which of the definitions we are considering.
1) self-contrition, remorse - Did God make a mistake in making Saul King?
He told Samuel it would not work right off the bat 1Sa 8:18

What happened with Saul was that the Israelites made a mistake by demanding a king when God told them no in the first place.

And in this instance God was sorry He gave into them, even though He knew it would end badly. Same as if you tell your child that if they do something they will regret it, but you let them make the choice. When they come to you in regret you still feel sorry you let them make their own decision. Even though you knew what would happen. Even though you had to give them the freedom so they could learn from their own mistakes.

Also, you will never convince anyone that the meaning of the verse is, "God sighed that He made Saul king.":nono:

2) repented of intemporate behavior - I don't think you want this one on your table. It means God not only made a bad choice, but lacked temperance (self-control).

It was one of the definitions. That doesn't mean it applies to these situations. If I thought it had I would have noted so. I just didn't want the definitions to be incomplete.

3) remorse over one's sins - worse yet, we don't even consider it.

Note that your last one is also dealing with sin.

We know God doesn't sin, so this isn't relevant either.

One of these must be translated sigh for the verses come right next to each other.

You forgot v.11

“I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has oturned back from following Me, pand has not performed My commandments.”

And it's an assumption to say one of them must be translated "sigh."

You're missing the point of v.29 which is that God does not repent as man repents. That is all the verse is saying. God does not repent of sin. It does not mean that God does not sigh as man sighs. And the other two verses, as I pointed out, do not mean that God sighed that He made Saul king.

We have similar words that must be translated in context for them to make sense.

That man who did that was horribly wicked.

That concert last night was wicked.

We know, even though the word is the same, that there is distinction: One means heinous, the other terrific.

I know that v.11 and v.34 do not mean that God changed His mind that He had made Saul king. That's not even possible. But it does mean that God was sorry He had. He regretted it. Which is another meaning of the word.

But you seem to be forgetting about other places the word is used. Like in Jonah, when God changed His mind about destroying Nineveh.

It is the same with nâcham - sigh, regret. I believe from other scriptures, that God does not make mistakes and so doesn't repent. He feels for our pain, but it cannot be a change of mind toward sin. Sighing over making Saul king is not a poor choice, God allows it per 1Samuel 8:18. This doesn't mean He doesn't grieve for His people. It means He grieves and still does what is necessary. He makes no mistakes to be repentent of. His 'sigh' must be seen as emotionally involved with His children. If I discipline my kids and they cry, I sigh in sharing their pains. I cannot relent until I have their response, whether I can guess it coming or not. They have to respond and discipline is aimed at effecting that corrective response.

But if you tell your child they are going to be disciplined, and they stop acting up and apologize, you may decide not to discipline them because you recognize they have learned the lesson the discipline would have been meant to teach them, correct?

Or because I don't agree with you?

You can be as vitriolic as you wish. I'll not return evil for evil here.

If my gentle answer does not appease, I have nothing left. I'll leave you with what I've written.

No, it's because you didn't understand what I was saying. You're disagreeing with me is not the issue here at all.

Good question. We aren't really told. Probably the same way that Christ came as a human and lived a perfect life in this sinful world.

The correct answer is that we will know God, and when God is known there is no desire to leave Him. He is so good we will want nothing other than to be with Him.

Maybe a better question is this: Can you violate the law when there is no law?

"...where there is no law there is no transgression. "
-Romans 4:15

 

[Lighthouse]

Saying it doesn't make it so, godrulz.

Shall I beg you once again to make the argument or will it be as much a waste of time now as it has been in the past?


This is as close to an argument as I think you've ever come on this issue and so I'll respond so as to encourage you to take it further and to do so more often.

You're argument doesn't follow. It is not necessary (logically) to have present knowledge of every knowable point of fact in existence in order to be a perfect judge. All that is necessary is the ability to find out any pertinent knowledge that is required in order to make a right judgment concerning any person or event. Since both Bob and I hold that God knows everything that He wants to know of that information which is knowable, your argument fails.

Secondly, your point about God being able to handle seeing sin is simply silly and unresponsive to our actual position. No one has suggested that God is unable to handle seeing sin. There is a difference between not being able to handle something and simply choosing not to do it. Our position is that God is only a first person witness to those events that He wants to be a first person witness too. You can't make Him watch something He doesn't want to watch or be somewhere He doesn't want to be precisely because He is NOT like you or me, He's God! You or I might find ourselves in a place we don't want to be, seeing something we don't want to see. God has no such problem. He is God! He does what He wants to do, goes where He wants to go, sees what He wants to see, knows what He wants know - nothing more - nothing less.

Resting in Him,
Clete

Great. Now I have MC Hammer's "The Addams Family" playing in my head.

 

[Clete]

How can God exist eternally in the past if he is in time? How would He have ever arrived at this point?

Good question. The answer is...

"We do not know."

However, having one unanswered question is not reason to abandon sound reason in exchange for a whole collection of unanswerable questions as the settled theist does.

Note that the question you pose is a genuine paradox and not an antinomy. I doubt you understand the difference but there is an important one. A paradox is something that seems to contain a contradiction that we know cannot actually contain a contradiction. Zeno's motion paradoxes are great examples of true paradoxes. They seem to rationally conclude that we cannot move, which is obviously false. The point being that we do not accept the conclusion of a paradox.

And antinomy, on the other hand, looks an awful lot like a paradox accept for that last sentence. Theologians actually do accept the conclusion of an antinomy in spite of the fact that all rational thought would insist that it cannot be the truth.




But leaving all that aside, your question cuts in both directions anyway because whether or not you hold to the idea of God existing outside of time or not, you definitely hold to the notion that God's existence had no beginning and so in both cases it seems we must conclude that there is no way to ever arrive at the present moment and yet here was all are reading posts together on TOL.

And so while I acknowledge your question as both a valid and interesting one, the fact that neither of us can answer the question renders it moot against the Open View.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Nick M]

God cannot choose to not know things the devil and men know (He is a perfect Judge, not ignorant of anything knowable...He can handle seeing sin, so don't assume He is like you).

Once again, you are just making things up.

Jeremiah 31:34

No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

He chose to not know it.

And it is reiterated to the kingdom Jews, to whom he was talking in prophecy.

Hebrews 10:16-17

This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more

:loser: :nananana:

What do you say STP? Will God be forced by his own natue to remember their sins, when he said they would be blotted out?

Yes


U-nconditional Election - There is no merit in man that He should be chosen over another. God shows no favoritism.

Unconditional means it has to be there, even if you don't want it. Let us check the Bible again on that.

How about the Kingdom Jews? Nope.

Matthew 10:33

But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.

How about those under grace? Nope.

2 Timothy 2:12

...If we deny Him, He also will deny us.

 

[Clete]

Great. Now I have MC Hammer's "The Addams Family" playing in my head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x4TS5LQnO4

 

[assuranceagent]

However, having one unanswered question is not reason to abandon sound reason in exchange for a whole collection of unanswerable questions as the settled theist does.

The problem with this statement is that your theology creates a whole host of undesirable and potentially unanswerable questions.

Questions like:

- What security can be had in a world where God can be mistaken?
- How can we trust a verse like Rev. 21:4 in a Heaven or a New Jerusalem where there exists the potential for evil?
- How can we trust any prophecy in light of the fact that you yourself assert that many of them proved to be incorrect?
- How can you assert that God possessing exhaustive foreknowledge necessitates a belief in His utter, pinpoint determinism and control, and yet fail to recognize that His lack of exhaustive foreknowledge necessitates a belief that He lacks control, since so much of what He may plan or purpose hinges on unknown future events and actions of man?
- How can you on one hand state that God knows all that can be known, and then turn right around and on the other state that He didn't know where Adam was in the Garden? Or the resolve of Abraham's heart? Or the evil of Sodom? Or our sins?
- How can you deny God's omnipresence and then flippantly state that 'prayer finds it's way to Him?'
- How can you essentially say of the possibility of evil in the new Jerusalem, "It's theoretically possible, but it just won't happen" and then mock the same statement when the settled theist asserts the very same thing of the possibility of thwarting God's exhaustive foreknowledge?
- What security is there for the believer when, according to Clete's assertions, the possibility for rebellion must continually exist in order for there to be the possibility of love?​

In summary: How can an Open Theist point the finger at Settled Theism and, with a straight face, make an accusation they themselves are equally guilty of?

And before you get all fussy, I'm not saying that you, in particular, made all these statements or assertions. But they have all been made by open theists in this thread and others in recent days.

 

[Clete]

Clete.

The resemblance is striking. Both physically and behaviorally.

I do get Gary Busey comments from time to time but I've been told I look and act a lot like Phil Mickelson.

http://golf.about.com/od/philmickelson/ss/mickelson08col_2.htm

 

[assuranceagent]

I do get Gary Beucy comments from time to time but I've been told I look and act a lot like Phil Mickelson.

http://golf.about.com/od/philmickelson/ss/mickelson08col_2.htm

Could be. All I had to go on was the pic on your profile page.

Incidentally, I get Kevin James all the time. Like you, both physically and behaviorally:

 

[Clete]

The problem with this statement is that your theology creates a whole host of undesirable and potentially unanswerable questions.

Questions like:

- What security can be had in a world where God can be mistaken?​

So you only trust in a god that CANNOT hurt you rather in one who has promised not to do so. Is that what you are saying?

Whether that was your intent or not that is the only alternative.

- How can we trust a verse like Rev. 21:4 in a Heaven or a New Jerusalem where there exists the potential for evil?

The same way we can trust the loving God who inspired the verse to be written.

How can we trust any prophecy in light of the fact that you yourself assert that many of them proved to be incorrect?

Because we know why a prophecy might fail.

I do not, nor does anyone else I know of, believe that prophecies can simply fail for no reason or for any reason whatsoever. Jeremiah 18 explains explicitly why a prophecy might fail. A chapter, by the way, the destroys your entire theological worldview. A chapter that makes no sense whatsoever in a settle view world. A chapter that can only make sense if indeed prophesy are not pre-written history.

How can you assert that God possessing exhaustive foreknowledge necessitates a belief in His utter, pinpoint determinism and control, and yet fail to recognize that His lack of exhaustive foreknowledge necessitates a belief that He lacks control, since so much of what He may plan or purpose hinges on unknown future events and actions of man?

I do not fail to recognize it.
God does not exert nor does He have exhaustive control over ever event that occurs. If He did, He would be unjust and it would be impossible to love Him or for Him to love anyone else. God risks rejection in order to make love possible.

How can you on one hand state that God knows all that can be known, and then turn right around and on the other state that He didn't know where Adam was in the Garden? Or the resolve of Abraham's heart? Or the evil of Sodom? Or our sins?

I do not state that God knows all that can be known. God knows all that He wants to know of that information which is knowable. No other position is either Biblical or rational.

How can you deny God's omnipresence and then flippantly state that 'prayer finds it's way to Him?'

Because God is where He wants to be and knows all that He wants to know.

How can you essentially say of the possibility of evil in the new Jerusalem, "It's theoretically possible, but it just won't happen" and then mock the same statement when the settled theist asserts the very same thing of the possibility of thwarting God's exhaustive foreknowledge?

Because the latter is irrational (i.e. it is self-contradictory), the former is not.

What security is there for the believer when, according to Clete's assertions, the possibility for rebellion must continually exist in order for there to be the possibility of love?

You keep repeating this. I doubt you understand the implication you are making. You can only trust a god that is incapable of hurting you rather than one who has demonstrated His genuine love for you by His actions, not because He couldn't do otherwise but because He didn't want to do otherwise. That's what makes it love.

In summary: How can an Open Theist point the finger at Settled Theism and, with a straight face, make an accusation they themselves are equally guilty of?

Because we are not equally guilty of it - that's just the whole point!

As Dr. John Sanders put it, "The [open view] is an attempt to provide a more Biblically faithful, rationally coherent, and practically satisfying account of God and the divine-human relationship..." [emphasis added]

And before you get all fussy, I'm not saying that you, in particular, made all these statements or assertions. But they have all been made by open theists in this thread and others in recent days.

I don't get all fussy about well thought out posts that actually make a cogent point. Its when people say stupid and blasphemous things that I "get all fussy", as you so eloquently put it.

Resting in Him,
Clete​

 

[tetelestai]

Only potentially.
Any that might exist would instantly be removed.
I do not believe that any will actually exist in the first place.

How will it be avoided?

Through the power of the Holy Spirit of God. We (and the Jews that live in the New Jerusalem) will maintain our righteousness by the same power that God maintains His own. Indeed, our righteous (those of us in the Body of Christ) is the righteousness of God.

Of course we do not know how all of this works but it is not necessary to know how it works. The point is that if there is not choice there is no love because love is a choice.

By the way, did you think that the trap you were waiting to spring on me was going to throw me into fits and stump me or something?

I dare you to answer tough questions about your theology with the straight forward and direct answers I offer in defense of mine.

Resting in Him,
Clete

Clete, let me see if I understand you, and OVT. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

You do not believe God is omniscient (all knowing), but do believe He is omnipotent (all powerful). You base this on a theory that you believe puts God in a paradox. The theory being that if God knows the outcome of everything (omniscient) then that would make God unable to change anything (powerless). This theory takes away from His omniscience, but magnifies His omnipotence. (makes God powerful)

In other words for God to be omnipotent, there is no way that He can know the future (omniscient), because if He knows the future, He would be unable to change anything, which would take away His power (omnipotence). Therefore, if you take away God’s omniscience, God then does not know the future, and then God becomes omnipotent, and can interact with human beings by changing whatever He wants, and in the process, learns stuff.

Also, for you to believe God is omniscient, it would mean that His love for you is determined, and therefore God would not be able to change it, which would also mean that God has no choice. Hate then would not be a possibility since God has to have hate as a possibility in order to love you, according to you.

Is this what you believe?
:juggle:

 

[Lighthouse]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x4TS5LQnO4

I expected that.

Could be. All I had to go on was the pic on your profile page.

Incidentally, I get Kevin James all the time. Like you, both physically and behaviorally:

And the picture of yourself to compare it to?

 

[assuranceagent]

So you only trust in a god that CANNOT hurt you rather in one who has promised not to do so. Is that what you are saying?

That's not really what I meant. I should have been more clear.

What I mean is that if the possibility can exist that God could be mistaken, what security do we have in the promises He has made? We can only trust those promises to the extent we can be certain of their fulfillment. What if an unknown variable makes the fulfillment of those promises untenable?

The same way we can trust the loving God who inspired the verse to be written.

I trust the loving God who inspired the verse because I believe that there is no capacity in Him for evil. I believe He is only light and there is not darkness in Him. And I believe that when our sanctification is complete and we are conformed to His image, the same will be said of us.

Because we know why a prophecy might fail.

It is my opinion that you go too far in saying that prophecy 'fails.' In fact, the Bible is clear that a prophet is known to be authentic or false on the basis of whether what he prophesies comes to pass. If the prophecy fails, so does the prophet.

If I tell my son that I will respond with 'X' if he does 'A' and then he does 'B' and I respond 'Y', what I originally said did not fail and I was not mistaken. It is simply that the necessary trigger never occurred (likely as a result of my warning).

I do not, nor does anyone else I know of, believe that prophecies can simply fail for no reason or for any reason whatsoever. Jeremiah 18 explains explicitly why a prophecy might fail. A chapter, by the way, the destroys your entire theological worldview. A chapter that makes no sense whatsoever in a settle view world. A chapter that can only make sense if indeed prophesy are not pre-written history.

Jeremiah 18 does no damage to my theological framework. See my previous comments.

Let's suppose that in my example I told my son that if he threw a tantrum, he was going to get a spanking. My 'prophecy' to him is the vehicle by which I bring about my will. God does the same, albeit with more perfect and effectual result. This bears nothing on His foreknowledge and does not require Him to change His mind. It is simply an 'A' leads to 'X'/'B' leads to 'Y' scenario for which only one side of the equation was made known.

I do not fail to recognize it.
God does not exert nor does He have exhaustive control over ever event that occurs.

For clarification of my position, I'll interject that I believe that God does have exhaustive control over every event that occurs, but I do not believe that He chooses to exert that control in every case.

If He did, He would be unjust and it would be impossible to love Him or for Him to love anyone else. God risks rejection in order to make love possible.

I agree in the sense that if God was exhaustively deterministic, He'd necessarily be the author of sin. I don't believe that God exhaustively ordains all that occurs.

I also don't believe that God 'risks' rejection to make love possible, but that's a whole 'nother debate.

I do not state that God knows all that can be known. God knows all that He wants to know of that information which is knowable. No other position is either Biblical or rational.

I'm not trying to be overly argumentative, but I fail to see how it is rational to believe that an omniscient God (omniscience as defined by the OV) could simply choose not to know something that could be known. It is my opinion that anthropomorphic understanding of those passages which seem contrary is both more rationally and more biblically consistent than trying to shoehorn a reconciliation that requires God to be willfully ignorant.

Because God is where He wants to be and knows all that He wants to know.

Again, I fail to see the rationality of that statement.

Since God is present with His people (because He chooses to be) if He were to perchance witness one of them committing sin, can He then simply 'un-know' it? Can He literally force Himself to forget what He has just witnessed?

Even so, we may simply have to agree to disagree here. Perhaps we can find common ground though: Can we agree that God, should He desire it, has within Him the capacity and ability to be omnipresent?

Because the latter is irrational (i.e. it is self-contradictory), the former is not.

If one is irrational, so is the other. They pose the same argument.

You keep repeating this. I doubt you understand the implication you are making. You can only trust a god that is incapable of hurting you rather than one who has demonstrated His genuine love for you by His actions, not because He couldn't do otherwise but because He didn't want to do otherwise. That's what makes it love.

I'm not concerned about God hurting me. I'm concerned about ME hurting me. We have all proven that if the capacity for rebellion exists, we will actualize it.

God is not fickle, I am. You are. We all are.

Because we are not equally guilty of it - that's just the whole point!

And yet it is a point that is lost to all the debate among godly men and women that suggests otherwise. Equally godly men and women have struggled with these very same questions for years. Decades. Even centuries. If your theological framework were truly as unassailable as you state, we wouldn't be on page 20 something of the third thread of this debate.

As Dr. John Sanders put it, "The [open view] is an attempt to provide a more Biblically faithful, rationally coherent, and practically satisfying account of God and the divine-human relationship..." [emphasis added]

Which is essentially a meaningless statement. That's what EVERY theological framework attempts to do. And ATTEMPT is the key word in all of them.

I don't get all fussy about well thought out posts that actually make a cogent point. Its when people say stupid and blasphemous things that I "get all fussy", as you so eloquently put it.

Fair enough.

 

[Lon]

Sounds like a lot of gobldy goo to me! The fact that one event happens before another is simply reality! The fact that God is real is not a constraint! The Bible presents God as doing things in sequence and you can't show one example that shows this is not the case.

Clete just made my ignore list thus erasing his hate, spite, malice, neg rep on my previous post to GR before your comment.

Just because one can draw a line infinitely around the world (equator, etc.) does not mean we cannot travel from New York to Jerusalem.

New York to Jerusalem is a segment. It has both a starting and stopping point. God has no starting or stopping point in which you could apply duration. Duration is a mark from point A to B.

Duration is NOT a limitation on God (though it can be for man). The fact that the first coming happens before the Second Coming for God shows clear sequence without compromising His eternality/uncreatedness.

God has a history, His Story. Jesus is God and walked in time without ceasing to be God. Timelessness is incoherent for a personal being, even an eternal One (with no beginning or end, but experiencing endless time).

If it "is NOT a limitation," how then could you say being 'unlimited' in reference to it would be incoherent? This is incoherent to me.

Greater minds will have to break Lon's loggerjam in his brain (his logic is faulty, but I cannot give the detail necessary to correct it).

Who has a log-jam?

Once again, SINCE God's past continues forever and future unilaterally, there is absolutely positively without a doubt no possible way He could be said to be restrained, measured, or understood by time, progression, duration. He is both going backward (it never ends) and forward at the same time forever and ever and ever. There is no point but Him existing for you to apply any duration of time to. An eternal past denies duration because it goes on forever. We are sequential, what is past for us is over and done BUT with God the past is eternal. You cannot conceive of it the same way we understand the past. It is not even remotely the same. Our past is over because we traveled it from point A (birth) to B (now). It is over because it is already measured. God's eternal past is measureless. Time as duration, as a concept is a measurement!

God is unconstrained, outside of time, because it cannot be used. It is like trying to use a tape measure to measure His immensity. It doesn't apply, at all. It is meaningless because it cannot be done. Applying time measurements and understandings to God doesn't apply, cannot be done, is absolutely meaningless. The only time God is measurable in time is when He interacts with us along our time line.

 

[assuranceagent]

And the picture of yourself to compare it to?

I don't understand.

...that is a picture of me.

I know...uncanny, huh?

 

[godrulz]

So you don't believe God is omnipotent. Glad you cleared that up.

Huh? God is omnipotent, but that does not mean He can create square circles. To say that God can limit His omniscience or that He can cease to be eternal is not a hit on omnipotence.

Your rookie mistake is to confuse omnipotence and omniscience issues. They are not identical, but related.

If it is a possible object of certain knowlege, God knows it. The way He limits His knowledge of future issues is to allow contingencies vs determinism. The past, present, and future are also not identical (the past is fixed; the future is not yet).

Academic Open Theism rightly affirms exhaustive past and present knowledge. The theories of LH and Clete go beyond most OT views, so the burden of proof is on you guys. Why can you say things without defense (beg question) and it is fine, but if I do, it is 'saying it does not make it so'?!

 

[godrulz]

Once again, you are just making things up.

Jeremiah 31:34

No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

He chose to not know it.

Once again you are reverting to proof texting preconceived ideas.

When you forgive someone, do you literally forget it?

Forgiveness is NOT amnesia. It is choosing to not bring it up again.

How can man and demons remember past sins, but the omniscient God cannot? Every time you would think of the past or if it was played on video, God would be reminded of it.

You owe me $10. 'Forget it'. Does this mean I have Alzheimer's or does it mean I relax my demands/claims and don't bring up the debt again? Forgiveness is not literal forgetting.

Consider it a figure of speech vs wooden literalism. Other explicit Scriptures show that God knows all that is logically knowable. Nothing is hidden from His eyes.

The way God does not remember sins is to not throw them in our face and dwell on them. It does not entail divine amnesia, unnecessary for forgiveness and impossible for an omniscient, omnipresent being. Unless you are prepared to make us gods knowing things God does not, I would rethink your view (which would be fringe even by OT standards).

Classical theists think Open Theism is a denial of truth and compromise. You are not helping the cause by being even more extreme than most Open Theists.

 

[Lon]

Some scriptural support:

Once again you are reverting to proof texting preconceived ideas.

Mat 10:26 "Do not be afraid of them, for nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing is secret that will not be made known.

When you forgive someone, do you literally forget it?

Forgiveness is NOT amnesia. It is choosing to not bring it up again.

Psa 32:1 Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Psa 32:2 Blessed is the man to whom Jehovah does not charge iniquity.

]How can man and demons remember past sins, but the omniscient God cannot? Every time you would think of the past or if it was played on video, God would be reminded of it.

Isa 66:18 For I know their works and their thoughts; it comes to gather all the nations and the tongues; and they will come and see My glory.
1Ch 28:9 And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind. For Jehovah searches all hearts and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts.

You owe me $10. 'Forget it'. Does this mean I have Alzheimer's or does it mean I relax my demands/claims and don't bring up the debt again? Forgiveness is not literal forgetting.

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slow... as some regard slowness... meh

Consider it a figure of speech vs wooden literalism. Other explicit Scriptures show that God knows all that is logically knowable. Nothing is hidden from His eyes.

Joh 21:17 Jesus said a third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that Jesus asked him a third time, "Do you love me?" and said, "Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you." Jesus replied, "Feed my sheep.

The way God does not remember sins is to not throw them in our face and dwell on them. It does not entail divine amnesia, unnecessary for forgiveness and impossible for an omniscient, omnipresent being. Unless you are prepared to make us gods knowing things God does not, I would rethink your view (which would be fringe even by OT standards).

Ecc 3:17 I thought to myself, "God will judge both the righteous and the wicked; for there is an appropriate time for every activity,
and there is a time of judgment for every deed.
Ecc 12:14 For God will evaluate every deed,
including every secret thing, whether good or evil.
2Ti 4:18 The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever! Amen.
2Pe 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; when it comes, the heavens will disappear with a horrific noise, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze, and the earth and every deed done on it will be laid bare.
2Co 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

Classical theists think Open Theism is a denial of truth and compromise. You are not helping the cause by being even more extreme than most Open Theists.

It is a difficult call. It seems more ignorant than purposeful heresy. It is a sign of indoctrination without understanding. Even if God 'could' forget, these scriptures support your position that He doesn't.

"Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against Him." This is the biblical definition of His 'forgetting' - complete forgiveness.