ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3

[Lighthouse]

Is Greg Boyd part of "it says?

This is from Boyd's book "God of the Possible"


This is a move made by every heretic in church history. JW's and Unitarians said the deity of Christ is not something we should fight about.

This issue is not one that can be used in deciding if one is a Christian or not. If you disagree with me, that does not mean you are not a Christian. If you deny the deity of Christ, that's a different story.

But Boyd is wrong if he thinks this issue should never be debated. But if he means we should never get into fisticuffs about it, I agree.

Everyone is sovereign over their own knowledge...

I can't choose not to know something.:nono: I also can't choose to know something. If I want to know something I don't already know, I must search it out, if that is possible. And I cannot choose to forget things I do already know.

 

[Delmar]

What about the second part? "and a thousand years as one day."

I actually owe you a debt of gratitude for helping me to finish that thought!...

So what David was really saying was this:

Lord, that fraction of a second from when words are formed in my brain to the time when I actually speak them, you O Lord know what I will say during those nanoseconds.

He said before and that is what he meant.

I guess that time when I hit my finger with a hammer; the Lord had to be really quick, because there wasn’t much time between the formation of the words in my brain to when I actually shouted the words.

Open View Theism :bang:

Nanoseconds before is before is it not? Nanoseconds before is not the same as during, and is certainly not after! The contradiction you are trying to show is simply an invention of your mind! In fact, I feel quite confident that you will agree with me when I say that, for God, a nanosecond is plenty of time to accomplish a great many things!

So for God, a thousand years is as a day in that what man wouldn't have time to accomplish in a thousand years, God would have plenty of time to accomplish in a day,







or even in a nanosecond!

 

[godrulz]

Dr. Ronald Nash:


Like the Dr. says, OVT'ers not only take away from God's foreknowledge, they also take away from His knowledge of the present and past.

I think he misses the point. If I have a car accident, God knows because it is a completed event. A test of human heart and motive is dynamic and not known as a certainty until the event is truly in the past. At time x, God knows that Jimmy Swaggart loved God and was sexually pure. He can see growing compromise and weakness. He can see him approaching the prostitue and knows the potential for him to fall. He also knows that he may change his mind at the last minute and not compromise. Until the temptation or trial is finally acted on, there is still an element of uncertainty/unsettledness.

God knew Abe's heart and past/present intimately (Psalmist confirms this). Until the knife was actually plunged in the kid's heart, God would not know how far his trust would be. He could intend to obey God to the bitter end and yet at the last second chicken out and compromise. The face value reading of the text is that God NOW knew for a certainty what was known as a high probability. If God knew the future exhaustively, the test and language are a sham.

As Sanders says, God does not fake history (in your view, he does, and accommodates for our supposed inability to understand much about God and His higher ways).

Nash is not quite understanding the text nor OVTs take on it.

 

[godrulz]

He used them because we can still submit to the flesh, which isn't good for us. But that doesn't mean we lose our salvation when we do that.

It is impossible to stop believing something you know to be true.


WRONG!

To say that God could not know the present is a fallacy of proportions too grand to comprehend. But knowing that God is capable of not knowing something, because He can choose to not know, is the truth that the "omnipotence" crowd seems determined to ignore.

God cannot choose to not know something knowable unless He is not omniscient. God can create free beings and contingencies leading to a self-limitation or reservation of his knowledge and power. OVT is correct to say that God knows all that is knowable. The TOL version of what he wants to know when he wants to know it goes too far and opens us up to legit criticism.

We do not loose our salvation when we submit to the flesh. Paul talks about disciplining believers in this case. Unbelief is a unique sin and the antithesis of saving faith. In this case, other contexts relating to final apostasy, not fleshly lapses, applies (e.g. Heb. 3; 6; 9; Jude).

Of course we can stop believing things we know to be true. There are many atheists that used to strongly believe in theism, God, Christ, Christianity, etc. They once believed rightly that those things were true, but then disgressed to believe a lie instead.

There are godly Christians raised in sound doctrine that knew and believed truth and had the witness of the Spirit. Through deception and disobedience, they are now Muslims or followed guys like David Koresh or Jim Jones (who once had more orthodox ideas).

 

[godrulz]

I agree. However, one of the consequences of open theism is that not only does it take away God’s perfect foreknowledge, OVT also takes away God’s perfect present and past knowledge.

This may be true of LH and Clete, but it is NOT true of academic OVT. Nash and others are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the view in their criticisms. I cringe when I read anti-OT books because they are often easy to refute and simply defend Calvinism and use generic arguments that apply equally to Arminianism (free will theism). They show a lack of understanding of the intricacies of our view and have lame counterarguments since they are attacking straw men that I would also reject.

 

[godrulz]

Is Greg Boyd part of "it says?

This is from Boyd's book "God of the Possible"


This is a move made by every heretic in church history. JW's and Unitarians said the deity of Christ is not something we should fight about.

Cmon. The existence of God, Deity of Christ, resurrection of Christ, salvation by grace/faith, etc. are core Christian doctrines. The Arian controversy, etc. was a big deal in church history and settled.

Issues of determinism vs free will theism, the nature of time vs eternity, the exact nature of God's providence or the nature of creation/the future came much later in church history.

One can be a Calvinist, Arminian, or Open Theist and be a Christian since we affirm the Deity of Christ, etc.

One cannot be a polytheistic Mormon (who may lean to Open Theism vs Calvinism) or an Arian JW (who also believe that God has limited prescience) and a biblical Christian.

Calvinists vs Open Theists are not heaven-hell issues (both can go to heaven through faith in Christ).

JWs/Mormon cults are false gospels and are heaven-hell issues.

I believe the issues are important and have practical implications, but Boyd is correct in general.

It is because Calvinists misunderstand the issues and are so entrenched in their narrow worldview that they wrongly assume is the only possible interpretation of Scripture (TULIP is problematic), that they feel a view on whether the future is open, closed, or partially open/closed is a fatal attack on orthodoxy. It simply has not been a big issue in church history, but is more of one now as we have resolved other issues and are looking to new ones rightly raised by philosophers and theologians who see a need for clarity and consistency.

Rather than shutting down dialogue, it should be encouraged, but the establishment is not open to this and would rather be wrong, it seems.

JWs do make a big fight against Trinitarianism, etc. There is no need to make a big fight about the exact nature of the future, because you cannot show from Scripture that the right answer is germane to the gospel.

Scripture also does not definitively resolve all theological issues, so godly philosophy and logic also has a role in peripheral issues (Deity, etc. are essential and clearly revealed without controversy to those who know and study the Word...equally capable, godly believers, however, do differ on styles of worship, church government, sovereignty vs free will, eschatology, etc.).

 

[godrulz]

(2 Peter 3:8) But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Dave:

How about if you tell us how you understand this verse?

Delmer gives the following: “A day is as a thousand years" is about perspective. Two hours on the highway, to a five year old, seems like an eternity! To a 50 year old trucker, it's just the start of a good morning!”

It is clearly a figurative simile (comparison using like or as), not a wooden scientific, mathematical statement. It is about perspective (God's years are without end, but our life is a flash), not equivalence.

The context is about perception of slowness of the Lord's return. In light of our lives, it seems like it is taking forever (limited perspective). In light of eternity, it is a drop in the bucket for God and the delay is more than justified in light of the lost.

Standard non-OVT commentators fully agree with this point. You will be hard pressed to find anyone but ignorant laymen or proof text this as support for eternal now/timelessness ideas.

 

[godrulz]

This is our current state, yes. I wonder though what Paul meant when he said that Christ will "transform our lowly body" (Phil 3:21). How will things change for us then? Will we still be temporal beings? I don't know.

We will have glorified, immortal bodies (vs flesh and blood subject to decay and death).

It does not mean we become atemporal (which would negate our personal existence).

 

[godrulz]

What about the second part? "and a thousand years as one day."

It is a metaphor or simile...ask an English teacher who does not believe in God and one who does (should be same answer).

"I am the bread of life"

Jesus is the Lamb of God; He is a King like a lion.

 

[godrulz]

You keep forgetting that I am not a Calvinist.

I agree that God does not want any to perish, and I believe in free will. However, I do not believe in open view theism.

How does a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day to God support OVT?

It uses tensed expressions about God's experience (Rev. 1:4; Ps. 90:2; Ps. 102:27; Ps. 93:2-5= endless time/duration, not timelessness; Rev. has several verses that show time in heaven/eternity...half hour, etc.).

 

[Delmar]

It is a metaphor or simile...ask an English teacher who does not believe in God and one who does (should be same answer).

"I am the bread of life"

Jesus is the Lamb of God; He is a King like a lion.

And yet I do believe that God uses such figures of speech in order to give us a glimpse of who He really is and how He really operates. I really did enjoy formulating an answer to tetelestai's question because I do think I was able to pull out a kernel of truth. Can you imagine, for example, God ever feeling the need to be in a hurry?

 

[godrulz]

And yet I do believe that God uses such figures of speech in order to give us a glimpse of who He really is and how He really operates. I really did enjoy formulating an answer to tetelestai's question because I do think I was able to pull out a kernel of truth. Can you imagine, for example, God ever feeling the need to be in a hurry?

Absolutely, figures of speech convey and illustrate spiritual truth and reality in terms we can understand. Nurturing qualities in God can be compared to certain things, but that does not make God a woman or a mother hen with chicks.

To make 1000:1 a scientific statement is poor exegesis and misses an obvious figure of speech in a broader context that explains the analogy.

The trick is to discern when a figure of speech is used and what it means, and when we can take things at face value. The problem with OVT critics is that they make things figurative without warrant (anthropomorphisms) when it disagrees with preconceived ideas about God (changing mind, etc.). We should be just as careful to not make a few things wooden literalisms when they could be figurative (God coming down to see or asking Adam where he is).

Hermeneutical principles for allegory, metaphor, simile, parable, prophecy, etc. have a few twists compared to historical narrative or didactic passages.

 

[godrulz]

http://www.gregboyd.org/qa/open-the...sm/what-is-the-significance-of-2-peter-39–12/

Any quibbles with this, peanut gallery?

 

[Lon]

"Everbody is illogical, Everybody"

As I said, debating and reasoning with you is not possible given your irrational state of mind.

--Dave

Dave, this is denial and serving logic instead of God. Clete says the Word is Logic, but I'm saying the two are different. That is, Christ really is logic. What we 'possess' is only a 'form' of logic in our mental faculties.

Your arrogance is mind over faith 1) Is an affront to all mentally challenge (they couldn't know God in the OV because they CANNOT be humanistically logical) - Strike one

2) You guys have the audacity to think you are logical and the rest of us are not. Sorry, but I'll say this again. None of us are 100% logical, none of us. If you think otherwise, you've bought a huge lie. "You will not die. You will be 'like' God knowing good and evil." The lie? They already knew good! Sin infects our thinking -strike two

3) God rejects human logic!

1Co 1:17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel; not in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
1Co 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those being lost, but to us being saved, it is the power of God.
1Co 1:19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the perceiving ones."
1Co 1:20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
1Co 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom did not know God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.
1Co 1:22 For the Jews ask for a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom;
1Co 1:23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.
1Co 1:24 But to them, the called-out ones, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1Co 1:25 Because the foolish thing of God is wiser than men, and the weak thing of God is stronger than men.
1Co 1:26 For you see your calling, brothers, that not many wise men according to the flesh are called, not many mighty, not many noble.
1Co 1:27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
1Co 1:28 and God has chosen the base things of the world, and things which are despised, and things which are not, in order to bring to nothing things that are;
1Co 1:29 so that no flesh should glory in His presence.
1Co 1:30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who of God is made to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption;
1Co 1:31 so that, according as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."

-strike 3

There is a HUGE difference between using your own intellect and adopting God's logic Who purposefully confounds humanizing!

So the RC has mysteries and so do the majority of the rest of us because we actually believe God here that faith is more important when we don't know answers that we see in scripture, God purposefully leaves vague to teach us to NOT rely merely on our intellect. We have one perfect thing in this world, and that is Christ. Your logic, no matter what you assert, is flawed and the rest of us are not buying your 'perfect logic' line. I've seen holes in OV for a year and a half now. Do we of tradition have holes or apparent logical contradictions? Yes. You wrongly discount scriptures that suggest one thing however like EDF and predestination, and a future that is knowable. You discount every prophetic utterance of future from every prophet in history. God says what a prophet says about the future must come to pass or he/she isn't a prophet. The very test of prophet is whether or not they have DF concerning the future! If a prophet has it, then God certainly does and exponentially so (EDF).
"Then we lose freewill." That is what is illogical. You discount EDF in favor of logically working out the dichotomy where quite probably, the answer is purposefully confounding by God Himself. So where I say, "Okay, I'll trust God." You are instead demanding an explanation from Him like unbelievers demand a sign.

What more can be said? It is the mark of intellect, without all facts in front of a person, to simplify in Algebraic expression what is not solvable. That is, we rework the expression so that it is less complicated and ready for answering as soon as the missing values are included but we do not solve.
It is actually anti-intellectual to try and do so because you are over-stepping your bounds. You cannot solve if values are purposefully left out.

Sometimes the values for solving are given in scripture and we must find them, but when we do, we should check and recheck multiple times to ensure that the value is correctly included OR let God be the teacher, such as when Jesus corrected the Pharisees about eternal life. If not, the logical and right answer is merely simplifying, not solving!

Simply playing the 'logic' card where I hold suspect 'your' logic doesn't prove anything to me, especially when I see your values pointing to wrong answers (I've gotten an answer quite different because I simplify rather than solve for x). Intellect is completely within reason to leave x alone if or until a solve is provided.

I reject your view upon my logic as inferior. Faith usurps human logic, and yes, despite what any say here, there is a difference between God's logic and ours. His is flawless. Huge difference.

 

[Lon]

Everyone is sovereign over their own knowledge...

I disagree, I cannot forget things I'd like to, nor do I know things I'd like to.

 

[Lon]

http://www.gregboyd.org/qa/open-theism/arguments-for-open-theism/what-is-the-significance-of-2-peter-39–12/

Any quibbles with this, peanut gallery?

Of course:

What is the significance of 2 Peter 3:9–12?

Peter says that the Lord has delayed his coming because “he is patient with you, not wanting any to perish” (vs. 9). We are encouraged to be “looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” [NIV: “speed its coming”] (vs. 12).
If the future is an eternally fixed reality, of course God would foreknow the exact day of his return. Hence it is deceiving to suggest that it could be delayed because of his patience or speeded up by the way we live (e.g. by evangelizing).

Wrong, see again, here is logical rationalizing that proves we are not 100% logical (we make mistakes all the time).
His premise dismisses EDF where the date is fixed already upon the concept that He isn't willing that any should perish. His logic is caught in an OV loophole that he can't escape from now. He's stuck rationalizing with an OV mindset.

If God is never deceptive, however, it seems we must accept that the day of Christ’s return is not fixed and thus that the classical understanding of the future which requires that it be fixed is incorrect.
Along these lines, we should perhaps note that when Jesus says “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son of man, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32), this can easily be taken as an idiomatic way of saying that it lies in the Father’s authority to determine this time. It need not entail that the Father has already set the exact date (see Acts 1:7).

Boo. Hiss.

"This can easily be taken..." if you have an OV mindset! The answer to the dilemma is apparent already to traditional theology without the OV blinders.

"...no one knows...but only the Father..." (Mark 13:32)

That is the natural rendering of the text. Boo! Boyd! Boo!

 

[eveningsky339]

I disagree, I cannot forget things I'd like to, nor do I know things I'd like to.

Yes you can. If you really wanted to you, you could repress things you don't like to think about. This occurs in dissassociate disorders such as amnesia, fugue, post traumatic stress disorder, etc. But of course actually repressing things we don't want to think about has dire consequences, so even though we have the ability to, we don't usually do it.

 

[Lon]

Yes you can. If you really wanted to you, you could repress things you don't like to think about. This occurs in dissassociate disorders such as amnesia, fugue, post traumatic stress disorder, etc. But of course actually repressing things we don't want to think about has dire consequences, so even though we have the ability to, we don't usually do it.

Interesting. I repeat "I cannot repress" what I know. There are things I'll never forget despite not really wishing to. All anyone has to do is ask me about my childhood. I'd really be perplexed if others can do this and I cannot.

This to say, I don't think we are completely sovereign over our brain matter. Others, including God, have an impact on us as well.

 

[DFT_Dave]

The future of this world does not exist for God to see.

We have been looking at the nature of God, I would like to look at the nature of the created world in lelationship to what we have been debating.

C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Cristianity writes: “Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this Time series—this arrangement of past, present, and future—is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist. We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do.”

“God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is still 1920 and already 1960.”

I think that Lewis is correct about our existence, we live moment by moment. We are created finite and so we are limited in that we cannot go back to the past nor jump ahead into the future.

Before I make some points here, does anyone want to disagree with this, add to this, or change it in anyway?

--Dave

 

[DFT_Dave]

From Lon: Dave, this is denial and serving logic instead of God. Clete says the Word is Logic, but I'm saying the two are different. That is, Christ really is logic. What we 'possess' is only a 'form' of logic in our mental faculties.

Your arrogance is mind over faith 1) Is an affront to all mentally challenge (they couldn't know God in the OV because they CANNOT be humanistically logical) - Strike one

2) You guys have the audacity to think you are logical and the rest of us are not. Sorry, but I'll say this again. None of us are 100% logical, none of us. If you think otherwise, you've bought a huge lie. "You will not die. You will be 'like' God knowing good and evil." The lie? They already knew good! Sin infects our thinking -strike two

3) God rejects human logic!

God rejects human logic that does not rest on the Lord of God. The Greek philosophers, those who wrote the Vedas, and anyone else who does not base his or her reasoning on the Word of God are the ones that God is speaking about in the verses you quoted.

We are to be logical and Biblical, not illogical and Biblical. When anyone is illogical with the Bible they are misinterpreting it. When anyone is logical with the Bible, as we are in OV, they are interpreting it correctly.

--Dave