Does God know the future?

[godrulz]

Knight, anyone who answers that question would be a fool. Only God knows.

If he asked you a question about math or physics that you could not answer, would you say only God knows? Various Christian theologies would be able to provide a possible, reasonable answer, whether they agree or not. I know you are not stupid, so you must just be lazy.

 

[Johnny]

I still don't believe free-will and God's foreknowledge are mutually exclusive. Here's an alternate argument:

If God knows everything about you, which scripture indicates He does, then He knows what choices you will make. By knowing this for each individual on the Earth, God could know the future. This doesn't mean you haven't made a choice, it simply means that God already knows what choice you will make. The question is not "could you have chosen otherwise", because by defintion you could have. The question is "would you have chosen otherwise", to which the answer is no.

For example, you know that if you place $1,000,000 and a bowl full of rotting flesh in front of someone and tell them they can have only one item, you know they will pick $1,000,000. You know this because you know that people want money, and people are repulsed by rotting flesh. Does that mean people didn't have a choice? No. You simply knew what choice they would make when presented with the scenario.

 

[godrulz]

I can understand where open theism is coming from. You are trying to understand God in a more intimate relationship with humans and I commend you for that, but you don't have to destroy predestination to do it.

What in fact you are doing is molding God down into human for to make Him more understandale to us, but in the process you are creating a pantheistic new age type view of god.

Hogwash. Transcendence and immanence are classic themes in all views. Pantheism is a heresy rejected by all Christian views, including Open Theism. Process Thought is more different than similar to OT.

Pinnock:

"We may thing of God primarily as an aloof monarch, removed from the contingencies of the world, unchangeable in every respect of being, as an all-determining and irresistible power, aware of everything that will ever happen and never taking risks. (Greek philosophy...model=sovereign/transcendent)

OR we may understand God as a caring parent with qualities of love and responsiveness (Heavenly Father ring a bell? rulz), generosity and sensitivity, openness and vulnerability, a person (rather than a metaphysical principle) who experiences the world, responds to what happens, relates to us and interacts dynamically with humans (covenant God- rulz)." (biblical= sovereign/immanent)

Open Theists all affirm that God does predestine and foreknow many things. He also correctly knows some of the future as unsettled/open. This is the type of creation He chose.

 

[godrulz]

Obviously God allowed it. But the fault is with the men who acted on their hateful lust for vengence against "infidels". Yet God remains in control. He is still on the throne. One day we will understand His purpose.

His purpose is to judge and destroy evil, not affirm it as His will (see the Gospels and the ministry of Jesus on earth...God in the flesh).

 

[godrulz]

No, not ordinary. It was a brutal attack by religious zealots. It has unfortunately shaken the faith of the people that their government could protect them. But for a moment, people returned to church in search for comfort from the One they had forgotten.....God.

God can creatively, responsively, redemptively respond to evil. This is a far cry from linking God causally to it. Nothing mitigates the heinous murder of millions of Jews by Hitler. God will bring justice and comfort, but it does not mean God is responsible or allowing it for a higher good. When the tower fell in the Gospels, Jesus did not read too much into it (or the man born blind). Hyper-Calvinists would blame God and say there was a higher purpose. Jesus simply affirmed that He would be with us through the evil thrown at us by Satan and the world.

 

[godrulz]

Yes! He knows Satan will be sent to the Lake of Fire, for example.

Eternity future.

Open Theists also affirm that God knows much of the future. The free will contingent parts of the future are correctly known as possibilities/probabilities vs certainties/actualities. This is not inconsistent with a proper definition of omniscience (cf. a hyper-Calvinist understanding of sovereignty is not the biblical model of sovereignty).

 

[godrulz]

I still don't believe free-will and God's foreknowledge are mutually exclusive. Here's an alternate argument:

If God knows everything about you, which scripture indicates He does, then He knows what choices you will make. By knowing this for each individual on the Earth, God could know the future. This doesn't mean you haven't made a choice, it simply means that God already knows what choice you will make. The question is not "could you have chosen otherwise", because by defintion you could have. The question is "would you have chosen otherwise", to which the answer is no.

For example, you know that if you place $1,000,000 and a bowl full of rotting flesh in front of someone and tell them they can have only one item, you know they will pick $1,000,000. You know this because you know that people want money, and people are repulsed by rotting flesh. Does that mean people didn't have a choice? No. You simply knew what choice they would make when presented with the scenario.

This is a limited analogy that Open Theists could somewhat agree to. God knows the past and present exhaustively. This present knowledge would be predictive of proximal future behavior. This is a far cry from knowing every mundane and moral choice of every creature from all eternity before they existed when there would be no present facts or past characteristics to base future knowledge on. The knowing of a nothing is a bald contradiction.

What object of knowledge was there for God billions of years ago to know the exact words I would chose to respond to the various contingencies of these posts? My thoughts are based on my unique growth in this lifetime. I also could have decided to go to bed instead of type. There is nothing about tonight that could possibly be foreknowable before I even existed, including by an omniscient God.

 

[Johnny]

What object of knowledge was there for God billions of years ago to know the exact words I would chose to respond to the various contingencies of these posts? My thoughts are based on my unique growth in this lifetime. I also could have decided to go to bed instead of type. There is nothing about tonight that could possibly be foreknowable before I even existed, including by an omniscient God.

It depends on how deterministic you think the universe is. It is our experience that the universe is, by and large, deterministic, with the exception of quantum phenomena (which are usually only evidence under very special circumstances). Nonetheless, if you believe God designed the universe, then it is within His capability to know the exact state of the entire universe. If you believe that He knew the ordered structure of the universe in the past, the future structure could easily be extrapolated by an all-powerful God. Every single interaction could be understood and predicted. As far as we can tell, human behavior is by and large determined by physical interactions, governed by physical laws. That is, every decision you make is the result of a chemical reaction, which is the result of the way your neurons are connected (and many other factors), which is the result of your development, which is the result of your environment, and on and on all the way back to where the first life sprang up, where the oceans were, where the earth was, etc. Theoretically, every interaction in the known universe could be traced back to some ordered state which God knew. Because physical laws govern the universe, the exact state at X time in the future could be predicted.

I still feel my argument which approaches God as being "outside of time" is valid and is better than this argument. Other than calling the notion of God being outside of time "irrational", I haven't seen a well written refutation. I also feel that Romans 9 is still a powerful Biblical example of determinism. Although others have attempted to discount it, Paul is well aware of what he is saying. Romans 9:19 clearly indicates that Paul is aware that it seems unfair and unjust that God would force His will upon someone, and then find fault in it, but as Paul notes, who are we to question God?

 

[godrulz]

In Romans 9, the Jewish Roman believers questioned God as to why Israel was bypassed and the Gentiles were given favor. This is not a proof text to support irrational thinking about theology.

Determinism is a false assumption about God's ways. The law of cause-effect applies to inanimate creation. The law of love and liberty and free moral agency governs agents made in the image of God. Wrong premise=wrong conclusions.

 

[logos_x]

God can creatively, responsively, redemptively respond to evil. This is a far cry from linking God causally to it. Nothing mitigates the heinous murder of millions of Jews by Hitler. God will bring justice and comfort, but it does not mean God is responsible or allowing it for a higher good. When the tower fell in the Gospels, Jesus did not read too much into it (or the man born blind). Hyper-Calvinists would blame God and say there was a higher purpose. Jesus simply affirmed that He would be with us through the evil thrown at us by Satan and the world.

Well said godrulz :thumb:

 

[Z Man]

Coward.

Speak for yourself:

Post #424 by Z Man

Why?

How can I be responsible for something I have no control over?

We've been over this discussion several times. And everytime we indulge in this debate, you leave after I bring in the Scriptures. Just to prove my point, here we go again:


In Luke 22:31-34 Jesus not only predicts that Peter will deny him three times that very night, but treats the act with such certainty that he is already praying for Peter's future repentance and future ministry.


Luke 22:31-34
"'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.' But he said to Him, 'Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!' And He said, 'I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me.'"



This absolute knowledge that Peter would sin, how often he would sin, when he would sin, and that he would repent does not remove Peter's moral responsibility in the least, which is made plain by the fact that Peter weeps bitterly precisely when he remembers the words of Jesus' prediction. Peter does not say, "Well, you predicted this sin, and so it had to take place, and so it can't have been part of my free willing, and so I am not responsible for it." He wept bitterly. He was guilty and he knew it.

Jesus was glorious in the prediction, and Peter was guilty. Why do all four gospels tell this remarkable prediction in detail? Surely the deepest answer is the one given by John 13:19, "I am telling you before itcomes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am." His foreknowledge of "all the things that were coming upon him" was an essential aspect of his glory as the incarnate Word, the Son of God. The denial of this foreknowledge is an assault on the deity of Christ.



Genesis 20:1-6
And Abraham journeyed from there to the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur, and stayed in Gerar. Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, "She is my sister." And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, "Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife." But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, "Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also? Did he not say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she, even she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have done this." And God said to him in a dream, "Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.



God did not allow Abimelech to touch Sarah, yet at the same time, it was Abimelech's integrity and innocence that forbade him to touch Sarah. He was still responsible for his actions although they were ordained by God.



2 Samuel 24:1-4; 9-10
Again the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, "Go, number Israel and Judah." So the king said to Joab the commander of the army who was with him, "Now go throughout all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and count the people, that I may know the number of the people." And Joab said to the king, "Now may the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times more than there are, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king desire this thing?" Nevertheless the king's word prevailed against Joab and against the captains of the army. Therefore Joab and the captains of the army went out from the presence of the king to count the people of Israel.

Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to the king. And there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men. And David's heart condemned him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done; but now, I pray, O Lord, take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have done very foolishly."



If this isn't obvious, then I don't know what is. God moved David to take a census, and yet, David was guilty of doing it afterwards, and he knew it. God ordained and still, David was responsible.

Give up Knight. Only a fool would debate AGAINST Scriptures. And if I know you, that means you'll continue to debate...

 

[Z Man]

If he asked you a question about math or physics that you could not answer, would you say only God knows? Various Christian theologies would be able to provide a possible, reasonable answer, whether they agree or not. I know you are not stupid, so you must just be lazy.

Lazy? I was just being 'respectable', and wise.

Fine, you know what. Since all you bozo's want an answer to Knight's question, here goes:

Knight asks, "YES or NO, am I (as a heretic Open Theist) fulfilling God's perfect plan for me that He created a millennia ago?"

Here is my most wise answer everyone, listen up! My answer is NO! Knight, you are most definitly not fulfilling God's perfect plan for your life because you're not over here at my house as my slave. As soon as you get over here and start doing my chores for me, then you'll be doing God's will for you.

There; that's my answer. Accept it or leave it.

:thumb:

 

[Z Man]

There goes Z Man again, denouncing free will while acting exactly as though it exists.

If humans have no free will, how did they "make up" the concept? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that God made it appear that humans invented the concept of free will? Or better yet that God made it so Z Man would think that the concept of free will seemed to be invented by men?


:dizzy:

What does freewill have anything to do with the way humans think? Just because we have the capability to think of ideas doesn't mean we automatically possess 'freewill'.

 

[godrulz]

What does freewill have anything to do with the way humans think? Just because we have the capability to think of ideas doesn't mean we automatically possess 'freewill'.

We are in the personal, moral, spiritual image of God. The personal image of God means we have independent will, intellect, emotions, self-determination. Just because God makes life possible and gives us these gifts, does not mean He has to meticulously control them. It is self-evident that we have free will, but it is not absolute (we cannot overthrow the God of the universe, though we can resist His will for us...'but they were not willing'...Jesus about Jerusalem as He wept...the Pharisees rejected God's purposes for them...Lk. 7:30).

 

[Freak]

Open Theists also affirm that God knows much of the future.

Yes, I know and this is where I have the problem with open theism. The Scriptures clearly teach free will and God's perfect & complete knowledge of all things.

 

[Johnny]

Determinism is a false assumption about God's ways. The law of cause-effect applies to inanimate creation. The law of love and liberty and free moral agency governs agents made in the image of God. Wrong premise=wrong conclusions.

It also demonstrably applies, at least partially, to the animate creation. Every thing that goes on in your brain can be traced to a physical process which is governed by physical laws. Nonetheless, I still feel, as you have stated, that we do have a free will. A strictly determinate nature rules out free-will almost completely in that our decisions can be predicted based on a large number of factors leaving only the experienced illusion of free-will. And while I feel this assertion is partially true, I suspect our soul has some role in our free will. I presented that argument as an alternate to the argument I presented earlier, but it is clearly much weaker on a number of grounds. For this reason I still prefer to argue from the notion that God is outside of time.

I'd still like to see some scriptural support for complete indeterminism, wherein free-will is paramount and cannot be violated. I think there is a balance to be struck. Free-will does play a role in our lives. John says that "Whoever believes" on Christ will be saved. That makes it sound like our will has at least some role in salvation. Others make it sound like God chose us. Thus, I believe, there is a balance that must be struck between free-will and God's will. I think that scripture clearly teaches that God knows the future. I also feel that, as you have stated, we are made in the image of God and thus have the ability to chose evil or good. Thus, free will and God's foresight must be reconcilable. I think it's absurd to completely throw out one or the other simply because you can't make them logically fit. As I have argued, if God is outside of time, they both fit just fine. In other threads, Ninevah said essentially that it is possible to hate someone while loving them. While this seems counterintuitive, Ninevah assumed this position because it must be possible if God can do it. I do wonder why some are so willing to accept completely counterintuitive notions elsewhere, and yet deny that it's possible here, discounting the notion that a balance can be struck as "irrational".

I do feel that there is some scriptural support for the notion that God can and does force His will upon people. It is, I believe, still clear from Romans 9 that Pharoah didn't have much of a choice. Paul clearly understands this. Earlier I saw Knight quoted as saying

"Why?

How can I be responsible for something I have no control over?"

Paul anticipates this question and says, "19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?"

 

[godrulz]

Yes, I know and this is where I have the problem with open theism. The Scriptures clearly teach free will and God's perfect & complete knowledge of all things.

If you were conversant with the ongoing dialogue and research in this area in theological/academic circles, you would realize exhaustive foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is a logical contradiction or absurdity like God creating a rock too heavy to lift. Free will is self-evident. God does have perfect and complete knowledge of all past and present reality. It is an erroneous extropolation to think He can know a nothing, which is what the future is. The things He knows about the future are based on His ability to bring things to pass (Is. 46; 48). God does not bring all things to pass (such as what the players will do in a future Superbowl or if and when I will brush my teeth). He correctly distinguishes past, present, and future, possibilities/probabilities and certainties/actualities.

I believe you are rejecting a straw man caricature of the Open View since you do not understand it and wrongly assume it limits God. The issue is the nature of God's creation and the future, not the omniscient nature of God which we all affirm.

The research is technical (modal logic, etc.). Do not underestimate the philosophical influences on your view (e.g. eternal does not have to mean timeless; the biblical view is that it is an everlasting duration of time). I believe you have uncritically accepted the classic assumption, since it is the only view you were exposed to in your formative years as a believer. I was in the same boat as a new Christian, but always had trouble trying to reconcile superficial statements made by pastors/evangelists with sound thinking and biblical evidence. Just because you once heard an analogy of 'eternal now' and a timeline does not mean it stands up to scrutiny.

Calvinism's determinism negates genuine libertarian free will. Arminianism's simple foreknowledge is still problematic. The alternate view (the openness of God's creation) allows us to take the biblical evidence literally: somethings are predetermined and known; other things about the future are unsettled and God can and does change in response to changing contingencies.

 

[godrulz]

Johnny: Animate creation is not primarily cause-effect, but the law of instinct. Angels and man are in a different category as free moral agents. Man, in particular, is in the image of God. We have a spiritual and personal dimension that is higher than plants and animals.

Pharaoh did have a choice. It says he hardened his own heart. Things progressed based on his choices. God's judicial hardening or responding to the circumstances does not show an intial causal link. Determinism, free will, and exhaustive foreknowledge simply cannot co-exist. Something has to give to maintain coherence.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Here is my most wise answer everyone, listen up! My answer is NO! Knight, you are most definitly not fulfilling God's perfect plan for your life because you're not over here at my house as my slave. As soon as you get over here and start doing my chores for me, then you'll be doing God's will for you.

:chuckle:

 

[Freak]

Free will is self-evident.

Yes, it is.

God does have perfect and complete knowledge of all past and present reality.

This is where we disagree. In light of these truths, I believe God's knowledge of all things is perfect!

Do you know how God controls the clouds
and makes his lightning flash?

Do you know how the clouds hang poised,
those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?

Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.

Godrulz, you have, essentially, placed a limitation on God's understanding, yet Scripture tells us that God is not limited in "understanding."

Look, you disagree. Who cares?! This issue isn't a essential issue, the lost world around us could care less. It's fun to debate it, though.