Posted on 06/05/2004 8:16:13 PM PDT by xzins
The Bible also asserts that He is the head of all principality and power, meaning that He is the ultimate source of Power, which makes Him All-Powerful, i.e. Omnipotent. You rightly assert that God knows everything but you balk at the application of a specific kind of knowledge to His Predestination of people unto salvation, wanting to substitute Foreseeing for Foreloving (for lack of a better term), in order that free will may be maintained. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it is your concept of free will that is the source of your difficulty? You ask us to "modify" our understanding of Total Depravity. How about you modifying your concept of free will?
"If I knew Him I'd be Him."
Here's where we run into problems. You say that God created man with the ability to sin (in laymen's terms, the much-maligned "free will"), and that God didn't make Adam sin but allowed it. But there is a difference between "allowing" sin to enter the world, and setting it up as part of the so-called Eternal Decrees. For God to positively decree all things that come to pass is not the same thing as God permitting it; it is the difference between contingency and necessity. If sin is contingent, it means that God permitted it contingent upon Adam's perfectly-foreknown actions. But if it is necessary, then it means that God has made it that there is no other way that it could be except for Adam to sin: God actively decreed it.
You said, on the one hand, that God positively decrees all things, which would include sin. But in this post, you say that God "allowed" sin. Which is it? If you say that God "allowed" sin, then you agree with the Arminian in saying that sin is not a part of God's actively-decreed plan. But if you say that God decreed sin, then you agree with the blasphemer that God is the direct author of sin, because "all things come about because of his decree."
But sin is not chargeable to God, because He didn't commit it, nor is He responsible for those who bear its curse.
For sin to not be chargeable to God, God could not actively decree that sin would occur, which would mean that Boettner was wrong.
That sinful nature was inherited from Adam, not decreed upon the individual.
So was Adam's damnation blameable on God, then? Because according to some strains of Calvinism, God actively decreed that Adam would sin.
Sorry to take so long to reply, but we’ve been out of town for a family reunion. We’ll be gone again tomorrow and part of the next day. But I went looking for any posts from you, knowing you would ping me to anything particularly fascinating. And, sure enough…
It is evidently very common for theologians to presume that God is limited to a timeline, i.e. He knows the future because He foreordained it. All I can figure is that, since they can only conceive of existence on a timeline, that they have presumed God must be limited in the same way. Doesn’t make much sense when it is stated that way, eh?
Truly, xzins, I wish I knew why theologians aren’t meditating on the obvious – that our vision and our minds have been designed to limit our perceptions. (I Cor 13:12) We are functionally blind to other dimensions, hence we are blind to the nature of time – because time is geometric.
What this means is (whether in special relativity, general relativity and most particularly extra temporal dimensions) – time is relative to the observer. From extra temporal dimensions, what we sense as time is actually a plane or planes - and not a "line". In relativity, essentially no time passes at one space/time coordinate while it races along at another – all depending on the geometry (gravity is a space/time indentation).
Even with that limited mathematical understanding, if God were simply an observer (and He is obviously much, much, much more than that) … He would already know the entire scenario, beginning to end. Moreover, when He moves it is over all of space/time – past, present and future. Therefore, He cannot lie – because when He speaks, it is – even though we may not “perceive” it coming into fruition until some distant point in the future because we sense that our lives pass along a timeline.
IOW, what we see as a movie, frame by frame, He sees all at once, as a whole. He is also able to change it, in any direction – and we’d never know He did unless He told us!
Thus, from our frame-by-frame perspective the future is not determined. For instance, we make a free will choice to hear His voice and follow Him, and He (not us) changes the script. Ditto for other free will spiritual choices. Or we make no such choice and we continue on a ruinous path under the dictates of the laws of physics. Likewise we pray – not because we can change the future, but because He can – and not on a timeline either, but all at once.
I agree with you absolutely – God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and none of these are mutually exclusive.
Thanks for your wonderful reply. I always enjoy reading what you have to say.
IOW, what we see as a movie, frame by frame, He sees all at once, as a whole. He is also able to change it, in any direction - and we'd never know He did unless He told us!
This seems to be similar to a concept which occurred to me while I was thinking about how God manages to answer many different prayers, from many millions of people.
Consider one person: each individual has many choices to make, every hour--some important, and some (seemingly) irrelevant. An important choice might be moving to another city, taking a new job, or deciding to marry. The apparently irrelevant might be what shirt to wear, or whether to brush one's teeth, or whether to retie a loose shoestring.
Every time one of these choices is about to be made, there are at least two possible timelines -- one if choice A is made, and another, if choice B is made. Everything which occurs AFTER this choice is switched into one or the other of these timelines. So, then, thousands of possible timelines, every day, are chosen; in being chosen, they become part of that which solidifies into "history." And, that is for only one person. The same thing happens for each of the billions of people alive today.
God, of course, is perfectly able to see all of the possible future timelines, not only for one person, but for all of those billions. Thus, God is able to answer prayers, by many means--everything from blatant miracles to nudging people to make certain choices. Furthermore, having said in advance that he will certainly do certain things (gather Israel back to the promised land, for instance) He is perfectly able to cause those things to happen, while still allowing people to make their own choices.
[Of course, it should be noted that this is only a concept, not directly derived from scripture.]
It is evidently very common for theologians to presume that God is limited to a timeline, i.e. He knows the future because He foreordained it. All I can figure is that, since they can only conceive of existence on a timeline, that they have presumed God must be limited in the same way.
I think we should never limit God (in our minds) to only those things which our minds can conceive.
DG
Others propose the existence of extra dimensions of time. If this were true, the timeline we are on including our sense of history and future would be like a vector on a plane and not a line per se. Thus a change could be made to our "history" but we would never know it happened because our present and future would be changed as well.
At any rate, whether history is solidified or is malleable, and regardless of which direction the arrow of time is pointing, God is certainly not bound in any respect to our sense of time, much less a timeline. As you say:
Think about it a minute. You seem to believe that the fact I know there will be a cake on my table tomorrow is more important than me knowing I am going to make it and put it there. It will exist because of a work of my hands making and putting it there..
I know the sun is coming up tomorrow (my foreknowledge) that does not redound to my glory
I can not conceive that to know something in advance is more significant than knowing it because I did it as a part of my plan.
What a helpless impotent and useless god man worships today .
If you knew you were baking a cake tomorrow, and you predicted that cake would be there, and you died tonight, then there would be no cake tomorrow.
You would have just proven the difference between foreknowing as a separate ability and foreknowing based on the ability to foreplan.
I do not think that "God's omniscience is dependent upon God's omnipotence".
What I think is that God has a different relationship with time than we do. That's what makes him omniscient, is that He knows the future because he doesn't merely exist in the here and now, but in the future as well as in the past. As Jesus said, "Before Moses I AM".
Thus God can introduce prophecy in 3000 BC and already knows instantly the effect on man at the end of the age.
Otherwise, God's propheses that man will do evil are problematic. They would imply that God could only prophesy that man would do evil because He has the power to make man do evil. But if He does that, then man no longer is excercising free will and is not responsble for his acts.
But if God knows the future because He IS already in the future at the same time he is dealing with us, then man can have free will and neither God's omniscience or His omnipotence is affected.
While I agree that God works according to a plan, I do not believe that he manages it to the minutest detail. Again man's free will comes into play. God knows what man will choose because He's seen it already, but God doesn't force man to choose right or wrong. The extent of God's inteference is up to Him.
That unique relationship is also the only way that the believer's names could be written in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world, yet man still has a choice. They could not be written then, if man truly has a choice, and if God experiences time the same way we do, for they could not be known.
Omnipresence, if it actually means "all" would include all times as well as all places.
My first take would be to say that God's omniscience is separate from His omnipresence that is separate from His omnipotence.
If His omniscience is a separate attribute from His other attributes, what would it mean to say that God is all-knowing?
Yes, I have read a little about this theory, over the years. It is likely that my little conceit was subconsciously derived from it. I tend to dismiss the "multiple universes" idea, mostly because I cannot really understand it; and it does not fit my limited concept of the nature of God. My opinion, I know, does not change whether the idea is valid, or not.
Thus a change could be made to our "history" but we would never know it happened because our present and future would be changed as well.
Again, this seems wrong, but only because I am unable to understand how it could work. Nevertheless, I both believe and strongly assert: God is perfectly able to change the past, and to do anything else which He chooses to do. (And, as you say, He could already have done so, but we are not aware of it. )
DG
It seems to me that omniscience is somewhat dependent on omnipresence as you defined it. By that I mean, if God was not omnipresent, then how could he know what was occuring where He wasn't. I think it's likely that if the attribute of omnipresence was removed, omniscience would suffer.
It seems to me that if we need to answer the question of "How" God can be omniscient, then we should also have to answer the question "How" can He be omnipresent.
If I accept because of biblical revelation that God is Holiness, Justice, Love, etc.....then I should also be able to accept with due biblical revelation that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
God has the ability to be everywhere.
Likewise, God has the ability to know everything.
I don't know that we can answer "How" to any of the questions. We can at best speculate. I agree with you that not understanding how God has certain attributes, or how they work, doesn't prevent me from accepting that He has them as claimed. But my acceptance of those attributes as fact, doesn't mean I have to stop asking questions or speculating.
I thoroughly agree with your comment about asking questions and speculating. God gave us minds and He expects us to use them to His glory. He is glorified anytime we understand more of His revelation whether we uncover truth in His bible or in His nature.
The description (discovery) of gravity was not anti-Bible.
I continue to believe that the 3 omni's are separate because I interpret the bible to reveal them that way. I can think of no place where it indicates that one is dependent on the other. I can think of places where they appear to work in concert.
I don't think we are given enough information to say whether they are dependent on each other or not. However, I did dissagree with the premise the article made that the omniscience was dependent on omnipotency, because it implied that the only way God knows the future is that He thoroughly controls the future. And that would appear to deny man free will.
You are definitely correct about that. It would deny free will.
Thanks, DTN. Signing off for now.
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