Does God know the future?

[Poly]

Godrulz it EXPLICITELY says he knows who will be saved and who will not. He is not picking people, he had foreknowledge.

Nancy, how would you respond to Philosophizer's comments in posts 250 and 251?

How can God know the future and not have caused it? If something is already in existance and can be seen, it had to have been created. Who created it?

 

[nancy]

Clete, your telling me that Rom. 8:28-30 does not speak of predestination to glory (entering heaven) as opposed to predestination to grace (becoming a Christian)?

 

[Clete]

Clete, your telling me that Rom. 8:28-30 does not speak of predestination to glory (entering heaven) as opposed to predestination to grace (becoming a Christian)?

That's precisely what I am telling you. First of all the distinction between grace and glory you are making is artificial and cannot be Bibically established. It is likely an attempt to reconcile two sets of verses, one of which teaches that we cannot lose our salvation the other teaches that we can. There is no need to reconcile such verses, they are speaking of two different groups of people from two different dispensations and both mean precisely what they seem to mean. All of which, while quite complex, can be Biblically established beyond any doubt whatsoever. The short version is that the verses that teach we can lose our salvation were all written by member of the nation of Israel to members of the nation of Israel who were under law, the verses that teach we cannot lose our salvation are written by Paul to the Body of Christ who are under grace. Now a distinction between law and grace, that would be Biblical!

But Dispensationalism is too far off the topic of this thread so we can discuss that later. In short, your redendering of these verses would make God unjust or it would make our existence meaningless, one or the other or both. Either way, our free will cannot logically survive your theology. You will have to drop one or the other in order to remain logically consistent in regards to this issue.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[nancy]

Clete, it has been the clear understanding for 2000 years that those versus mean predestination to glory. That is where the whole problem of free will that has been debated for two thousand years arises.

We become the image of Christ at our ressurection of the body in heaven. God has predestination (foreknowledge) to who will be ressurected in heaven.

This has also been the Jewish understanding of God that God has predestination to glory.

I am about to listen to your misinterpretation of Scripture so you can try to get around a thorny issue? A misinterpretation that refutes 2000 years of history? I don't think so.

 

[Clete]

Clete, it has been the clear understanding for 2000 years that those versus mean predestination to glory. That is where the whole problem of free will that has been debated for two thousand years arises.

Irrelivent. Even if this were so,(which I do not believe it is), the fact that everyone has been wrong for 2000 years does nothing to prove your case.

We become the image of Christ at our ressurection of the body in heaven. God has predestination (foreknowledge) to who will be ressurected in heaven.

This is partly correct but partly wrong as well. We are being made into the image of Christ, it is a constant continuous current action.

This has also been the Jewish understanding of God that God has predestination to glory.

This is flatly wrong. Who are you gettting thing from. There is absolutely no Jewish tradition that even remotely resembles any form of predestination, nor do they have any tradition of a beleif in a God who knows the future exhaustively. It is the Jewish Scriptures which present unfulfilled prophecies and depicts God as doing things like bringing the animals before Adam "to see what he would call them". I don't know where you got this idea but it is clearly wrong. But, once again, even if you were correct, the fact that the Jews got it wrong does nothing to prove your case.

I am about to listen to your misinterpretation of Scripture so you can try to get around a thorny issue? A misinterpretation that refutes 2000 years of history? I don't think so.

Did you mean that you are NOT about to listen? I think that must be what you meant and that's fine. Stick your head in the sand and ignore Scripture and sound reason. It's no skin off my nose.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[nancy]

I'll admit I was partially incorrect with the Jewish faith statement as it was only after Greek influences that they started thinking about predestination.

On the other hand you are flatly wrong with your missinterpretation of Scripture, but I guess one can interpret what he wants to into scripture which leads us to the question of who has the authority to interpret scripture (the Catholic Church who wrote the new Testament of course).

Free will in terms of Christianity is speaking of the chioice between moral good and evil not whether one gets into a car and gets into an accident as your past example suggested.

All that God creates is good and God wills all men to be saved. God simply has foreknowledge who will choose him and who will not. He is not making us turn away from him through that foreknowledge.

 

[kmoney]

Who created God?

Kevin

 

[intro2faith]

Who created God?

Kevin

Oh Oh Oh!!! I KNOW! No one

 

[intro2faith]

Did God see that scene that takes place 3 hours from now when He created the universe? If so, He must have created that scene as well. If so, how is His knowing the scene any different from His causing the scene?

Oye vay, you've confused me enough to re-think this whole thing!

 

[nancy]

Clete, now that I think of it and reread your posts, you and your fan club here have the very root of the debate fouled up.

Free will deals with moral good and evil. Not choices between taking your car or the bus to work or any of these examples you have used.

You don't have a clue what the real argument is about.

 

[kmoney]

Oh Oh Oh!!! I KNOW! No one

Thank you, but I was directing that question toward Clete. Sorry I didn't do that.

So Clete,

Who created God?

Kevin

 

[Mr. Coffee]

There is absolutely no Jewish tradition that even remotely resembles any form of predestination, nor do they have any tradition of a beleif in a God who knows the future exhaustively.

http://www.gnpcb.org/assets/products/excerpts/1581344627.2.pdf

This excerpt shows that the early rabbis believed in exhaustive sovereignty, and that they did not get these ideas from the Greeks or from anything other than the Old Testament. I've reproduced only a portion of it here:

Modern Rabbinic authorities describe the Rabbinic view of divine providence, foreknowledge, and even foreordination, in words that would bring a smile to the divines of Dordt or Westminster.

Kaufmann Kohler, for example, depicts God’s sovereign rule over human affairs as follows:
. . . God is Ruler of a moral government. Thus He directs all the acts
of men toward the end which He has set. Judaism is most sharply contrasted with heathenism at this point. Heathenism either deifies nature or merges the deity into nature. Thus there is no place for a God who knows all things and provides for all in advance. . . . On the other hand, Judaism sees in all things, not the fortuitous dealings of a blind and relentless fate, but the dispensations of a wise and benign Providence. It knows of no event which is not foreordained by God. . . . A divine preordination decides a man’s choice of his wife and every other important step of his life.

Similarly, G. F. Moore describes the Rabbinic view of God’s providence most compellingly and appropriately:
Nothing in the universe could resist God’s power or thwart his purpose. His knowledge embraced all that was or is or is to be. . . . The history of the world is his great plan, in which everything moves to the fulfillment of his purpose, the end that is in his mind. Not only the great whole, but every moment, every event, every individual, every creature is embraced in this plan, and is an object of his particular providence. All man’s ways are directed by God (Ps 37, 23; Prov 20, 24). A man does not even hurt his finger without its having been proclaimed above that he should do so.

The tension between divine sovereignty and free will in Rabbinic theology does not, however, lessen God’s foreordination or foreknowledge:
That man is capable of choosing between right and wrong and of carrying the decision into action was not questioned, nor was any conflict discovered between this freedom of choice with its consequences and the belief that all things are ordained and brought to pass by God in accordance with his wisdom and his righteous and benevolent will.
Likewise, Efraim Urbach declares, “The Gemara deduces . . . that the deeds of man that are performed with understanding and in conformity with the laws of ethics and the precepts of religion can assure the desired results only if they accord with the designs of Providence, ‘which knoweth what the future holds.’”And finally, Alan J. Avery-Peck writes:

While thus avowing the existence of free will, the rabbis generally focus on the idea that, from the beginning, God knew how things
would turn out, such that all is predestined. This idea emerges from
the comprehension that the world was created as a cogent whole, with its purpose preexisting the actual creation. The rabbis thus understand all that was needed to accomplish God’s ultimate purpose has [sic] having been provided from the beginning of time. . . . In the Rabbinic view, there are no surprises for God. All is in place and ready for the preordained time to arrive.
Calvin and Knox could hardly ask for more.
But the Rabbis are their own best witnesses. The Rabbis testify that God foreknows all things. “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given,” says Rabbi Akiba, whom Tanchuma bar Abba echoes:
“All is foreseen before the Holy One, blessed be He.”48 Rabbi Hanina states: “Everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of God.” And Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah responds in a similar way to the Romans:
The Romans asked R Joshua b. Hananiah: Whence do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, will resurrect the dead and knows the future? [After quoting Deut 31:16, which foretells many future free actions] He replied: Then at least you have the answer to half, viz., that He knows the future. According to the Rabbis, God foreknows a man’s thoughts before he thinks them or even before he exists. Rabbi Haggai in the name of Rabbi Isaac says, “Before thought is formed in the heart of man, it already is revealed before you.” Likewise, Rabbi Yudan says, “Before a creature is actually created, his thought is already revealed before you.” RabbiEleazar ben Pedath teaches that, unlike man, God judges perfectly
through his foreknowledge:
Unless a mortal hears the pleas that a man can put forward, he is not
able to give judgment. With God, however, it is not so; before a man speaks, He already knows what is in his heart. . . . He understands even before the thoughts have been created in man’s mind. You will find that seven generations before Nebuchadnezzar was born, Isaiah already prophesied what would be in his heart. . . . Surely, if God could foresee seven generations before, what he would think, shall He not know what the righteous man thinks on the same day? Moreover, God foreknows man’s deeds. Rabbi Abbahu says, “At the beginning of the act of creating the world, the Holy One, blessed be he, foresaw the deeds of the righteous and of the wicked.” God foreknows, based on his foreordination, even mundane events, such as marrying a woman or purchasing a field. Rab Judah says:
Forty days before the embryo is formed an echo issues forth on high
announcing, “The daughter of So-and-so is to be a wife to So-and-so. Such and such a field is to belong to So-and-so” . . . as is illustrated by what occurred to Raba, who overheard a certain fellow praying for grace saying: “May that girl be destined to be mine!” Said Raba to the man: “Pray not grace thus; if she be meet for you, you will not lose her, and if not, you have challenged Providence.” . . .
. . . from the Torah, from the Prophets and from the Hagiographa it
may be shown that a woman is [destined to] a man by God.

In fact, God foreknows and foreordains even the most insignificant
events: “No man bruises his finger here on earth unless it was so decreed against him in heaven.”

Yet, the question remains: Where did the Rabbis get these views?
Greek philosophy was a false guide, unable to show us the way. Perhaps another religion—Zoroastrianism, or the constantly mutating pagan religions—influenced the Rabbis? This is another false notion, without advocate or evidence. But surely we are kidding ourselves. One needs only to grasp keenly the obvious to answer the question. Indeed, the modern Rabbinic authorities have already instructed us in the way, having pointed us to the answer, both natural and simple—the Old Testament. This, in turn, answers a related question. Where did the Fathers and the church get their views of God? The same Old Testament, of course. The apostles simply maintained the traditional view of God, revealed to them in the Old Testament, taught to them by their rabbis, and affirmed to them by their Lord. The Fathers and Christians have believed this ever since. Have the Rabbis misread their Old Testament
for centuries? Have Christians misread the same Old Testament—and the New Testament—for centuries? Openness advocates must answer yes, but common sense, supported by the evidence, must answer no. Openness advocates cannot sustain their claim that the Fathers incorporated Greek philosophy into the church’s theology. Sanders cites no evidence; Boyd furnishes only his estimation. Granted, Sanders and Boyd appeal to a few similarities between Greek philosophy and Christian theism, but these similarities do not prove that the Fathers synthesized biblical and Greek philosophical ideas into the church. They have not proved and cannot prove their assertions. They simply beg the question. To prop up their faltering claim and to sidestep their obligation to prove their claim, Sanders and Boyd must put the infection of Greek philosophy into the church before the earliest of the Fathers. This neatly and artfully explains everything: why all the Fathers were duped, and why no evidence exists to prove when the infection occurred—everything just happened so early. The claims of Sanders and Boyd are
more like a modern conspiracy theory—the lack of evidence only confirms the conspiracy—than actual history.

 

[nancy]

Thanks Mr. Coffee.

 

[Delmar]

Clete, now that I think of it and reread your posts, you and your fan club here have the very root of the debate fouled up.

Free will deals with moral good and evil. Not choices between taking your car or the bus to work or any of these examples you have used.

You don't have a clue what the real argument is about.

freedom of choice is freedom of choice.

 

[philosophizer]

Oye vay, you've confused me enough to re-think this whole thing!

That makes me happy!

 

[philosophizer]

Thank you, but I was directing that question toward Clete. Sorry I didn't do that.

So Clete,

Who created God?

Kevin

Kevin created God? Was that your answer?

 

[nancy]

deardelmar,

If this what you and your friends here have been basing your whole argument on, you don't have a clue what the heck you're talking about.

Case closed.

 

[kmoney]

Kevin created God? Was that your answer?

Kevin isn't my answer. Kevin is my name. And I'll ask you the same thing.
Who created God?

Kevin

 

[intro2faith]

deardelmar,

If this what you and your friends here have been basing your whole argument on, you don't have a clue what the heck you're talking about.

Case closed.

Whoa everyone! Hold up! Let's try to remember to keep this debate friendly
I'm not even sure as to what I believe on the whole subject anymore, God could know the future exhaustively, or He could know just the things He chooses to know, and deal with everything else as it comes. I'm still hashing it over in my mind. It's all so confusing! :dizzy: But regardless of it all, we gotta remember this verse(which I am always seeming to go against!!)

Philippians 2:14-15
Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe
Isn't that a beautiful verse? Hmm...that gave me the idea to start a thread on everyones favorite Bible verses! I know, it's probly already been done before....but what's the harm in doing it again?

 

[Delmar]

deardelmar,

If this what you and your friends here have been basing your whole argument on, you don't have a clue what the heck you're talking about.

Case closed.

Since your view of these matters is so very different than mine it is no surprise that you and I see different issues as pivotal.