Z Man said:
Clete and Dave,
Let me clear up some things that I think you have misunderstood about my take on 'logic'. For one, I am not saying that logic does not apply to us, or that God is 'irrational', like some insane madman whose 'thoughts' (speaking in human terms here) serve no purpose. What I am merely suggesting to Clete is that to study the Bible, and discuss theology, and to learn things about God using logic is fine and dandy. But what really ticks me off and what I believe to be a dangerous road, is to take that same logic that you use to interpret things that you have learned about God, and then say that our ways of thinking about Him also apply to His way of thinking.
There is nothing Biblical to suggest that there is any other sort of logic than what we know as logic. And I'm not talking about wacky man made forms of logic used in computer programming or some higher mathematics; I'm simply talking about the garden variety logic. The sort of logic that said that truths are never self-contradictory; that something cannot be both one thing and not that thing at the same time. I'm not talking about what seems wrong because of some ignorance on our part or anything else like that. When I talk about absurdities, I'm talking about that which
cannot be true, not simply that we can't figure out how they could be true but that we can figure out for certain that they CANNOT BE.
In other words, Clete makes the observation that we live in time. We experience a past, and we know that there is a future to come. But to take your conclusion about yourself in time and then apply it to God is, IMHO, wrong. Let me explain....
It makes no difference what you opinion is Z Man. Don't you get it? I'm not talking about what I think might be true or what I want to be true but what HAS TO BE TRUE. Doing things takes time; if God does not experience time then He can't do anything. God does and always has done things and so He does and always has experienced time. There is not one single thing, Biblical or otherwise; that you can present that could possibly refute that. It cannot be refuted without arbitrarily changing the definition of the terms used, which is cheating. So it's not about opinions or beliefs but about truth. If the sort of logic you use is valid we could never know anything for certain, never.
What we experience and learn about God, we do so in our timeline. We receive knowledge about God in a sequence of our own time. We experienced God in our past, are experiencing Him now, and will expect to experience Him in our future. When Abraham received a promise from God, it was about his future. Abraham was not at that time yet to see the full blossom of God's promise, so to Abraham, it hadn't been done yet. Abraham had to put trust and his faith in God in hopes that he would experience God's promise when the time came.
Nothing about this contradicts my position in the slightest. You MUST read timelessness into the text or order to get it out of anywhere in the Bible.
But this is our experience with God. I don't think it is correct, or logical, to turn it around and say that God too has experiences with us on a timeline as well. I don't believe that God made a promise to Abraham without knowing that the promise was a reality, not just a future 'hope', or reality to come. To God, it was a reality. It was just a matter of Abraham and his decedents catching up to the point in OUR time that God had ordained the promise to blossom.
There is exactly nothing in the text to indicate this is so! Nothing! Without your theology, you would never get this from the text at all.
My point is, what may be logical to us may not be logical to God.
IMPOSSIBLE! What is self-contradictory is self-contradictory. What is false is false and what it true is true. A lie doesn't magically become the truth just because God walks in the room! The very idea of that is blasphemy. And again, If what you are suggesting here is the way things really are then it is not possible for us to know anything.
We know that it's logical to eat, or else we'll die. We know that it's logical to have a heterosexual relationship in order to procreate, rather than having a homosexual relationship. We know that it's logical to expect the sun to rise in the morning; for us to grow old and die; and for some of our plans to become realized at a point sometime in our future, while others are not. But for us to say that God is contained by the same logic is ludicrous. God does not think it logical for Him to eat. God does not think it logical for Him to have any sort of 'procreating' relationship. God does not think it logical that He will experience a passing of time in which He will grow old and die. And I do not believe that we can say that God think it is logical to expect things to happen in the future, or that He reminisces about His past.
Eating, reproduction, geriatrics, etc all have to do with nature and natural processes. It is not logical to expect a super-natural being like God or the angel or us after we depart this life, to be effected by such natural processes. Nature pertains to the natural not the supernatural. The creature is limited to the creation but the creator is not. I seriously wonder, after reading this, whether you understand at all what logic and reason is. It's no wonder I feel like I am pounding my head against a brick wall with you. You aren't even speaking the same language.
It's simply foolish to believe that God is bound by the same logic as we find to be relevant in our lives. Again:
Isaiah 55:8
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord.
In the first chapter of the very same book of the Bible God says this though...
Isaiah 1:18
“ Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD
It is not my or anyone's intention that I know of to bring God down to our level. No one is suggesting that we are remotely as intelligent as God is or that we have the ability to process the amount information with the wisdom and clarity that God can. And so yes, for these reasons and many more, God's thought a very much above our thoughts, but they are not lower than our thoughts! Irrationality (which includes all things that are not of sound reason and logic) would not be an improvement in God's thinking, but a failure.
Resting in Him,
Clete