ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3

[Lon]

Psalms 90:1-4, "Before the mountains were born, or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God... For a thousand years in Thy sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night."

Because God has no beginning and no end, a thousand years is a very short amount of time for him, it is like a day is for us. A thousand years passes for God as a day passes for us.

Isaiah 46:9-11 “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’... I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and will do it.”

Isaiah 48:3 “The former things I declared of old, they went forth from my mouth and I made them known; then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.”

In these passages God clearly states he has a past of things he has done and a future of things yet to do. There are theologians who say these verses explain that God is timeless, but these verses only say that God, as infinite being, experiences time differently than we do as finite beings, but he clearly has a past and a future just as we do.

Time in God means he does not have to do everything all at once. Time in God means he existed before he created the world. Is this to complex to understand?

--Dave

I have no problem with scriptures.

Yes, it is too complex. "How did He ever arrive at 'now' with a past that goes forever?"

My contention again: There is no way to explain to us anything outside of our experience. Anything outside of time would have to be explained to us with durative terms because that is all we know. Look at the name He gave Moses for instance: "I Am." Not "I Was" "I Continue to Be."

How can God explain His eternal existence to a being that cannot wrap his mind around the concept (and we can't). Simply by giving us a glimpse in the only terms we can understand. So I disagree with your assertion here. God conveys things to us in a way that we can understand but He also says that many things are beyond us to grasp repeatedly in scripture.

 

[godrulz]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/275987/Wolterstorff-Nicholas-God-Everlasting-1975

The biblical record shows God's experience including duration, sequence, succession (time). The only reason to reject this at face value is that it does not match a timeless preconception. I would not presume that God cannot communicate timelessness to us. If He does experience time, how else would he communicate it other than the way he has (Rev. 1:4; Ps. 90:2)?

Give Wolterstorff a chance to knock some sense into you.

 

[johncalvinhall]

Arminians and Open Theists are cool to the post.

Know how you have a Calvinist nervous? He starts flinging words like, "Arminian" and "Pelagian" around in a vain attempt to smear his opponent.

I don't follow the catechisms of James Arminius, not do I adhere to the dogmas of Pelagius.

If you wish to fling a name at me, in order to separate my stance from yours, use the most appropriate label, "Bible-believing, Blood-bought, child of the Living God", or you can shorten it to "Christian."

 

[Pam Baldwin]

Know how you have a Calvinist nervous? He starts flinging words like, "Arminian" and "Pelagian" around in a vain attempt to smear his opponent.

I don't follow the catechisms of James Arminius, not do I adhere to the dogmas of Pelagius.

If you wish to fling a name at me, in order to separate my stance from yours, use the most appropriate label, "Bible-believing, Blood-bought, child of the Living God", or you can shorten it to "Christian."

Hi Bible-believing, Bloodbought, child of the Living God,

Can you follow your own advice?

Sincerely,
Bible-believing, Bloodbought, Member of the Body of Christ

 

[DFT_Dave]

Evoken has been telling and retelling you very plainly that you cherry-pick quotes and actually misquote often in doing so. That is, you do proof-texting. An honest approach is to represent fairly what someone actually believes, which you do not. Evoken has repeatedly shown you do not really wish to understand Augustine's view of time. You are more interested in defamitory. If Augustine doesn't really believe what your quote is saying but progressed to something else (ie quotes given by Evoken), you may be guilty of lying by stopping at the sentence of contention and purposefully not going futher to see if this is really all the man believed. So, your quote here, from Spoul, in context, may be what you state or it may be something out of context and until I go read the Sproul quote with context, I won't know but will hold suspect your rendition.

Hmmm, the "Bible" you say?
"Go fish."

Isaiah 55:1-12 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

2Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

3Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.

4Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.

5Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee.

6Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:

7Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

11So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

12For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

God is merciful and "he will abundantly pardon" those who forsake their wickedness, is what Isaiah is talking about when he says "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways". And you call me a cherry picker! If you, and Evoken, would bother to read my webpage you would see for yourself that I have quoted and represented Augustine accurately. Shame on you.

http://www.dynamicfreetheism.com/Augustine.html

--Dave

 

[DFT_Dave]

I have no problem with scriptures.

Yes, it is too complex. "How did He ever arrive at 'now' with a past that goes forever?"

My contention again: There is no way to explain to us anything outside of our experience. Anything outside of time would have to be explained to us with durative terms because that is all we know. Look at the name He gave Moses for instance: "I Am." Not "I Was" "I Continue to Be."

How can God explain His eternal existence to a being that cannot wrap his mind around the concept (and we can't). Simply by giving us a glimpse in the only terms we can understand. So I disagree with your assertion here. God conveys things to us in a way that we can understand but He also says that many things are beyond us to grasp repeatedly in scripture.

You say that God has expressed himself in terms that we can understand but that these terms are not true of him. You accuse me of lying and now you accuse God of the same.

When God says "I Am" he means always was and always will be. If he said to Moses "I was" he would mean that he no longer is. "I Am" does not mean "I Am timeless".

--Dave

 

[Evoken]

If you, and Evoken, would bother to read my webpage you would see for yourself that I have quoted and represented Augustine accurately. Shame on you.

Alright, let's make it clear again, that you haven't. The very first quote on your page is this:

"What is time? I do not know." - Augustine
​

However, what St. Augustine actually said in the Confessions (Book XI, Chapter 14) is this:

"What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not."​

Right from the start, you misrepresent what he said and do not quote him accurately. Then you proceed to quote from him what you have posted already (snipped for brevity):

"For what is time? [...] and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time."

"And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I am still ignorant as to what time is […] How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is?"​

I gave each set of text a different color because they belong to two different chapters. The first is from chapter 14 and the second from chapter 25. Yet here you mingle both without distinction. You also ignore the sentence that follows in the paragraph from chapter 25:

"Or is it, perchance, that I know not in what wise I may express what I know?​

See how this has the same form as the complete quote from chapter 14 above. It is not that he is ignorant as to what time is, but the issue is explaining what it is. As I have told you already, these passages are not dead ends but rhetorical questions and appeals to God as inner teacher that he makes before proceeding (as he does) to the solution of the difficulty in question.

Besides those quotes, in your page you ignore very much everything the saint actually said about the nature of time and the conclusions he reaches on the different chapters of Book XI. Despite this you say:

"Nothing could be more ironic than this revered theologian saying that he doesn't know what time is on earth but he knows what eternity is in heaven."​

But your remark is confronted with something (and other things which I have posted already) the saint concludes on the chapter that follows your last quote:“time is nothing else than distention” (Chapter 26). So your claim that he doesn’t know what time is and your appeal to isolated passages from Book XI to support your claim while ignoring everything else he said is a far cry from accurately quoting and representing him.

That said, I will not repeat myself here on this point. I have already showed on two previous posts on this thread (here and here) that your claim is incorrect and that you are not giving an accurate representation of his views on your page.

Moving down on your page, you also say that:

"He creates this problem because he misinterprets and misrepresents scripture when he states that time is "something" created by God.

Augustine "Thou madest all time and before all times thou art."

The reason Augustine believes that time is created is because he is a theologian and a philosopher, a Christian and a Platonist…"​

And...

"Time is a characteristic of anything that exists and is active. Any kind of movement is a change of some type and incorporates time [...] Time does not exist in itself as something material or as an invisible form of energy."​

But St. Augustine does not believes that time is "something" that exists in itself that is material or an invisible form of energy. When he says that God made all time he is not referring to the creation of time as "something" that exist in itself. Rather, time presupposes motion and the creation of a creature such as the heavens and the earth brings about that motion and thus time. So he says in the Confessions:

"Let them therefore see that there could be no time without a created being." (Book XI, Chapter 30)​

Later, he expressed himself more fully on this point in City of God (Book XI, Chapter 6):

"For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change, who does not see that there could have been no time had not some creature been made, which by some motion could give birth to change [...] and thus, in these shorter or longer intervals of duration, time would begin? [...] And if the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, in order that it may be understood that He had made nothing previously [...] then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time [...] But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the world's creation change and motion were created..."​

You say “any kind of movement is a change of some type and incorporates time”, he says “time does not exists without some movement and transition”. You say “time is a characteristic of anything that exists”, he says “there could be no time without a created being”.

If St. Augustine doesn’t know what time is, neither do you.


Evo

 

[Lon]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/275987/Wolterstorff-Nicholas-God-Everlasting-1975

The biblical record shows God's experience including duration, sequence, succession (time). The only reason to reject this at face value is that it does not match a timeless preconception. I would not presume that God cannot communicate timelessness to us. If He does experience time, how else would he communicate it other than the way he has (Rev. 1:4; Ps. 90:2)?

Give Wolterstorff a chance to knock some sense into you.

The only reason to assume that God is constrained to your 'temporal, finite, and limited' language (and mine) is faulty assumption. I come to the text already well-aware that God's ways are higher and thoughts higher.

This is truth, Will, sir. -Sensed-knocked-you.

 

[Lon]

Alright, let's make it clear again, that you haven't. The very first quote on your page is this:

"What is time? I do not know." - Augustine
​

However, what St. Augustine actually said in the Confessions (Book XI, Chapter 14) is this:

"What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not."​

Right from the start, you misrepresent what he said and do not quote him accurately. Then you proceed to quote from him what you have posted already (snipped for brevity):

"For what is time? [...] and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time."

"And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I am still ignorant as to what time is […] How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is?"​

I gave each set of text a different color because they belong to two different chapters. The first is from chapter 14 and the second from chapter 25. Yet here you mingle both without distinction. You also ignore the sentence that follows in the paragraph from chapter 25:

"Or is it, perchance, that I know not in what wise I may express what I know?​

See how this has the same form as the complete quote from chapter 14 above. It is not that he is ignorant as to what time is, but the issue is explaining what it is. As I have told you already, these passages are not dead ends but rhetorical questions and appeals to God as inner teacher that he makes before proceeding (as he does) to the solution of the difficulty in question.

Besides those quotes, in your page you ignore very much everything the saint actually said about the nature of time and the conclusions he reaches on the different chapters of Book XI. Despite this you say:

"Nothing could be more ironic than this revered theologian saying that he doesn't know what time is on earth but he knows what eternity is in heaven."​

But your remark is confronted with something (and other things which I have posted already) the saint concludes on the chapter that follows your last quote:“time is nothing else than distention” (Chapter 26). So your claim that he doesn’t know what time is and your appeal to isolated passages from Book XI to support your claim while ignoring everything else he said is a far cry from accurately quoting and representing him.

That said, I will not repeat myself here on this point. I have already showed on two previous posts on this thread (here and here) that your claim is incorrect and that you are not giving an accurate representation of his views on your page.

Moving down on your page, you also say that:

"He creates this problem because he misinterprets and misrepresents scripture when he states that time is "something" created by God.

Augustine "Thou madest all time and before all times thou art."

The reason Augustine believes that time is created is because he is a theologian and a philosopher, a Christian and a Platonist…"​

And...

"Time is a characteristic of anything that exists and is active. Any kind of movement is a change of some type and incorporates time [...] Time does not exist in itself as something material or as an invisible form of energy."​

But St. Augustine does not believes that time is "something" that exists in itself that is material or an invisible form of energy. When he says that God made all time he is not referring to the creation of time as "something" that exist in itself. Rather, time presupposes motion and the creation of a creature such as the heavens and the earth brings about that motion and thus time. So he says in the Confessions:

"Let them therefore see that there could be no time without a created being." (Book XI, Chapter 30)​

Later, he expressed himself more fully on this point in City of God (Book XI, Chapter 6):

"For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change, who does not see that there could have been no time had not some creature been made, which by some motion could give birth to change [...] and thus, in these shorter or longer intervals of duration, time would begin? [...] And if the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, in order that it may be understood that He had made nothing previously [...] then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time [...] But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the world's creation change and motion were created..."​

You say “any kind of movement is a change of some type and incorporates time”, he says “time does not exists without some movement and transition”. You say “time is a characteristic of anything that exists”, he says “there could be no time without a created being”.

If St. Augustine doesn’t know what time is, neither do you.


Evo

Dave,

Pay attention, please. It is you who are asserting here. I've been to your site and spent time there. Defense is a mechanism but we aren't being malicious here by any purpose. We are giving reasonable assessment of your misquotes and cherry-picking, as we and others have already said, repeateldly. No less than four people have told you the same things, repeatedly. Me? I'd think with 4 chiming in on the same refrain that they were hitting on some truths I'd have been obtuse to. Don't be purposefully obtuse in defense. It is actually anti-intellectual and emotional to persist where you've been criticized by four different people.

 

[Lon]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/275987/Wolterstorff-Nicholas-God-Everlasting-1975

The biblical record shows God's experience including duration, sequence, succession (time). The only reason to reject this at face value is that it does not match a timeless preconception. I would not presume that God cannot communicate timelessness to us. If He does experience time, how else would he communicate it other than the way he has (Rev. 1:4; Ps. 90:2)?

Give Wolterstorff a chance to knock some sense into you.

First sentence: "God cannot technically be eternal" ???

No dice!

"God cannot be eternal because He changes" "But in a sense, God never changes"

What?

My contention again (repeatedly) - God is relational to, but unconstrained by, our duration. Both/and, not either/or. I suppose I must restate this many times until glory. Wolterstorff, realizing it or not, is saying the same thing in his contradictory terms.

If the last quote of his doesn't make that clear, I don't know what does. It is a complete rephrase of what I've always said.

 

[Lon]

7Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

11So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.



God is merciful and "he will abundantly pardon" those who forsake their wickedness, is what Isaiah is talking about when he says "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways". And you call me a cherry picker! If you, and Evoken, would bother to read my webpage you would see for yourself that I have quoted and represented Augustine accurately. Shame on you.

http://www.dynamicfreetheism.com/Augustine.html

--Dave

Fail. It says exactly what I said it does (cherry-picking indeed).

Meh.

 

[godrulz]

You say that God has expressed himself in terms that we can understand but that these terms are not true of him. You accuse me of lying and now you accuse God of the same.

When God says "I Am" he means always was and always will be. If he said to Moses "I was" he would mean that he no longer is. "I Am" does not mean "I Am timeless".

--Dave

"I AM" shows that He is uncreated, self-existent, without beginning or end. It can be claimed by either view (endless time or timelessness). He is from everlasting to everlasting. His years are without end. He is the one who is, was, will be (has a past, present, future like any personal being). Timelessness is philosophical, not explicitly biblical (Lon should guard against preconceptions/eisegesis).

 

[godrulz]

The only reason to assume that God is constrained to your 'temporal, finite, and limited' language (and mine) is faulty assumption. I come to the text already well-aware that God's ways are higher and thoughts higher.

This is truth, Will, sir. -Sensed-knocked-you.

The context of God's ways being higher relates to redemption, not ontology and incoherence/science/logic.

 

[godrulz]

First sentence: "God cannot technically be eternal" ???

No dice!

"God cannot be eternal because He changes" "But in a sense, God never changes"

What?

My contention again (repeatedly) - God is relational to, but unconstrained by, our duration. Both/and, not either/or. I suppose I must restate this many times until glory. Wolterstorff, realizing it or not, is saying the same thing in his contradictory terms.

If the last quote of his doesn't make that clear, I don't know what does. It is a complete rephrase of what I've always said.

Watch the context. We agree that God is eternal. Eternal does not have to mean timeless. Everlasting duration is also eternal. He is agreeing with Lucas that change and timelessness are incompatible. Strong immutability is an assumption (philosophical), not explicitly biblical.

Sanders points to 3 theological issues we disagree on:

1) Divine timelessness is incompatible with the core beliefs of free will theism (it is no coincidence that we disagree on free will, eternity, and immutability...one of us needs a paradigm shift).

2) Ex. Def. For. is incompatible with the core beliefs of free will theism (we do not elevate free will, but God's love and goodness and relationship over philosophical constructs or wrong understanding of sovereignty/providence).

3) The supposition that God intends evil is incompatible with free will theism (the problem of evil is a problem for Calvinism).

(expanded on in the Ware ed. book on Doctrine of God)

 

[Lon]

"I AM" shows that He is uncreated, self-existent, without beginning or end. It can be claimed by either view (endless time or timelessness). He is from everlasting to everlasting. His years are without end. He is the one who is, was, will be (has a past, present, future like any personal being). Timelessness is philosophical, not explicitly biblical (Lon should guard against preconceptions/eisegesis).

It is not.
"From everlasting to everlasting."

The first sentence said God couldn't be eternal.

Why is it, other than OV 'necessary' supposition, do you think God has a duration 'like any personal being?'

It is necessary to reject it for an OV tenor, not from any other framework including Arminian. Again, and realize you are being obtuse to this and very very very very much so: He is both relational to and unconstrained by time. He presently has a past (that is going on and on and one and never ends). He exists in our 'now.' The future is no hurdle for Him and in fact, for a future to exist, it must be guaranteed in Him. You cannot breathe one minute from now unless He wills it.

Col 1:14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins.
Col 1:15 who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation.
Col 1:16 For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through Him and for Him.
Col 1:17 And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.

Jam 4:13 Come now, those saying, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and spend a year there, and we will trade and will make a profit,
Jam 4:14 who do not know of the morrow. For what is your life? For it is a vapor, which appears for a little time, and then disappears.
Jam 4:15 Instead of you saying, If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.
Jam 4:16 But now you boast in your presumptions. All such boasting is evil.

 

[Lon]

Watch the context. We agree that God is eternal. Eternal does not have to mean timeless. Everlasting duration is also eternal. He is agreeing with Lucas that change and timelessness are incompatible. Strong immutability is an assumption (philosophical), not explicitly biblical.

Sanders points to 3 theological issues we disagree on:

1) Divine timelessness is incompatible with the core beliefs of free will theism (it is no coincidence that we disagree on free will, eternity, and immutability...one of us needs a paradigm shift).

2) Ex. Def. For. is incompatible with the core beliefs of free will theism (we do not elevate free will, but God's love and goodness and relationship over philosophical constructs or wrong understanding of sovereignty/providence).

3) The supposition that God intends evil is incompatible with free will theism (the problem of evil is a problem for Calvinism).

(expanded on in the Ware ed. book on Doctrine of God)

I thought I was watching the context. He gives contradictory terms. I don't want to be guilty of a "Dave-ism" here, did I miss something else?
If so, I will rephrase as necessary but I thought the multiple quotes were from context.

The problem of evil is not just a problem for Calvinists as all of us have repeatedly proved in these three threads and others.
Go figure I'd find yet another reason to think Sanders anti-intellectual and illogical. The boy says God makes mistakes, doesn't understand past his nose that he must address the problem of evil, and is in frequent contact with cults.

If I were you, I'd never quote Sanders again.

 

[Lon]

You say that God has expressed himself in terms that we can understand but that these terms are not true of him. You accuse me of lying and now you accuse God of the same.

When God says "I Am" he means always was and always will be. If he said to Moses "I was" he would mean that he no longer is. "I Am" does not mean "I Am timeless".

--Dave

Lying? No, communicating in terms we can understand. It is no lie to express what is inexpressible in our finite language. Again: God is relational to our time. Being relational to it, He has the things you mention but He is unconstrained, supersedes, is beyond those parameters.

And for the record, I did not accuse you of lying, I said if you mischaracterize on purpose it would be a lie. I don't want you to stop when you 'find' what you are looking for but consider honestly when others say you've mischaracterized and not gone far enough because persistence amounts to a lie. Purposeful mischaracterization is a lie.

 

[Lon]

The context of God's ways being higher relates to redemption, not ontology and incoherence/science/logic.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

Why is it, that our thoughts would need to be forsaken if we are logical?
Why would our ways need realignment if we were logical?

Get back on page with me here. Our intellect is not left intact from the Fall. It takes a Divine work to get us thinking rightly again.

 

[godrulz]

I thought I was watching the context. He gives contradictory terms. I don't want to be guilty of a "Dave-ism" here, did I miss something else?
If so, I will rephrase as necessary but I thought the multiple quotes were from context.

The problem of evil is not just a problem for Calvinists as all of us have repeatedly proved in these three threads and others.
Go figure I'd find yet another reason to think Sanders anti-intellectual and illogical. The boy says God makes mistakes, doesn't understand past his nose that he must address the problem of evil, and is in frequent contact with cults.

If I were you, I'd never quote Sanders again.

Ps. 90:2 from everlasting to everlasting

Are you thinking of Pinnock and Mormonism? What is the issue with Sanders and cults?

The free will defense is an adequate answer for the problem of evil. Determinism impugns the character and ways of God and is contrary to revelation.

Endless time or timelessness (A vs B theory; presentism vs eternalism) are both possible models of eternity/eternal to consider.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Ps. 90:2 from everlasting to everlasting

Are you thinking of Pinnock and Mormonism? What is the issue with Sanders and cults?.

Looks like Sanders' name to me at end of the second page of this item. Actually it is not surprising at all that he (and Pinnock) would be toadying to Mormonism. Humanists tend to seek one another out, which is why Mormonism is ecstatic. See also here and here.