Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: xzins
On the contrary, Nby. It is those who say that God doesn't know who are the first kin of the open theists.

So by establishing that God DOES know, Open Theism is toast. I think that we can agree that, given God being Omnipotent, He therefore DOES have complete and perfect Foreknowledge. His Omnipotence is pretty much a given, is it not? I, for one, can't see how anyone could say they believe in God and not believe in His Omnipotence.

If Boettner is saying that God does not have independent total prescience, then Boettner, too, is calling into question the omniscience of God.

This statement puzzles me. Perhaps I'm not understanding what you're getting at. "Independent Total Prescience"? What God knows, He knows completely and totally. Are you saying that "Knowledge" is something that exists apart from God?? How could that be? Since by His Omnipotence He called the Creation into existence, it follows that he knows everything about it, down to the smallest detail. It follows then that His Knowledge of the working of His Creation is also absolute.

If I say that God only knows the future because He has planned the future, then I have made knowledge dependent on power, and AT LEAST called into question its independent existence.

Once again, are you saying that Knowledge has an existence separate from God? When Knowledge is spoken of this way, it is an abstract concept. God is not abstract. His Knowledge is not abstract either, but specific. Can He know something that doesn't exist? Yes, because He can call into existence things that don't exist. To do so involves the power to create, and the knowledge of what it is He wants to create. Anything else is random, and randomness is entropy.

As I see it, you're still trying to make room for that autonomous free will that you're so certain you possess.

40 posted on 06/06/2004 8:11:20 PM PDT by nobdysfool (Faith in Christ is the evidence of God's choosing, not the cause of it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies ]


To: nobdysfool; P-Marlowe

What I'm saying is that God is all three, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. One of those is not dependent for its existence on any of the others.

Strip A away and B still remains.

In Boettner's mathematic B is dependent upon A. Therefore, Strip A away and B disappears because it is dependent upon A.

God foreknows because God planned CAN BE interpreted to mean that B (foreknowledge) is dependent upon A (foreappointment).

Do you agree that God foreknows ONLY because He foreappointed?


41 posted on 06/06/2004 8:26:41 PM PDT by xzins (Retired Army and Proud of It!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson