The Future
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22:13 NASB
End – telos, the Greek word translated “end,” is a particularly knotty problem. Why? Because after Aquinas we have been theologically convinced that telos is directly connected to gnosis, that God knows the end because He sees it all from the beginning. Unfortunately, Aquinas was wrong. He assumed that telos is a word about completion rather than goal. He wasn’t wrong to think in Greek. He was just wrong to think that John, or any other Jewish writer of the text, also thought in Greek. Aquinas’ mistake has led most Christian theology down the path of implicit determinism. After all, if God already knows the end, then it can’t be anything different than what He already knows. He’s God. He can’t be mistaken about things. What He knows must be the case. And if He already knows your end, then, no matter how much you attempt to twist and turn, your future actions are exactly what He knows they will be. You are just playing a script written before the foundation of the world.
That idea is thoroughly Greek. It is not Hebraic.
We can do more than react to stimuli; we can contemplate alternatives and choose between them. We can imagine and act on the basis of our imagination. Because of this we have freedom in a way no other life form has. For everything else, we can give a scientific explanation. Events are the effects of causes. Determinism reigns. But human consciousness is not caused by something in the past. It is oriented towards the future—a future that is radically indeterminate because it is made by our choices, which themselves emerge from the creativity of the mind. Nothing can predict the constructs of the human imagination, and because of this we are capable of creating new possibilities of action. It is this link between language, imagination, the ability to contemplate alternative futures and the freedom to choose between them that frames the mystery of the human person. It is here that monotheism found God. Jewish faith is the supreme expression of reality as it responds to and affirms the personal.[1]
Do you understand? Sacks proposes a radically different God than Aquinas. The God of Aquinas is an idea—an idea of total control, total information, total determinism; a God who encapsulates every cause and effect explanation including your actions. But this is not the Hebrew God. The Hebrew God is fundamentally personal, and that means the future is not fixed. God does not know everything that you will do in advance. You are creating the world as you choose. That’s what it means to be a person, a free will agent at large in the universe. Your choices have cosmic consequences. Aquinas’ God is another name of fate. YHVH is the name of the God who decides to let other beings decide. The universe is at risk over you.
Have a nice day.
Topical Index: future, telos, determinism, person, choice, Revelation 22:13
If you want to read the whole argument about the difference between the personal God of Scripture and the fatalistic God of Christian theology via Aquinas, then get my book, God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience on my web site. But be prepared for some serious thinking.
[1] Jonathan Sacks, Radical Then, Radical Now, p. 70.
Please forgive my enthusiasm and thank you all for indulging my engagement, but I love this!
I spent all day yesterday frustrated at the fatalism the world suffers under. This fatalism is particularly apparent in the East, where people believe that nothing you can possibly do can alter the future. Further, you are stuck with repeating the past in that future. The East has an expression that people pull out when something really fortuitous happens to someone: they say “did you save your country in your past life?”
Stuck with what is essentially means stuck in the past. I think the East is not wrong to observe the natural consequences of attempting to live life without a personal relationship with a personal God: after all, I believe, anyway, that we are hardwired to do what has been done to us, and our choices in the flesh are going to be geared to react to what has been and what is, which means, on this planet, anyway, we are stuck forever trying to play catchup to chaos. Stuck without the necessary forgiveness (reordering) of that past, we are doomed to repeat it in the vain hopes that this time, we can spiral upwards in that fate. Is this not death?
I have noticed that no false religion has a personal god. Zero. That is the one thing that is NOT allowed. Even Catholicism separates us from God through the intervention of other humans, notably Mary. But what the world seems to fear most, which is personal accountability with a personal God, is our only hope to escape the fatalism we are stuck with when we are stuck with attempting to deal with reality on our own.
It is super scary to contemplate that we have been given the creative power, through free will, to determine – to literally create – the future. Apparently, the natural mind finds it simply impossible to even think like that. Sin is where we constantly are trying to throw that free will in the trash can, for sin is where we choose our choices away. We know we cannot handle the personal responsibility for the future ‘on our own’. Sin is where we run from that responsibility. However, when we throw away a personal God, we throw away ourselves, too. Personal creation of the future (and, defined by our free will, we ARE people of that future), through the terrible gift of free choice, is only going to be possible in conjunction with a personal Creator. Its time to get together.
Skip am a bit confused here, you are saying that God does not know the beginning from the end ? How so he is all seeing all knowing! He knew us before we were form in our mother’s womb, please explain
The answer is long and rather complicated. It is laid out in great detail in my book, God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience. https://skipmoen.com/products/god-time/ If I tell you that the idea that God knows the past, present and future entirely originates from Greek philosophy and not the Bible, you will probably be even more confused since the Church has taught this Greek idea for a long time. But if you read the book, you will see that what the Bible teaches is a partial open future where your choices actually make a difference. The book is NOT a easy read, but if you really want to know how we got into this conundrum, it will explain it to you.
God may not know what choices we will make but He knows the result of whatever choice we make. We are free to choose.
This is Augustine’s argument. It fails. To see why, you could read the book. The result of a choice freely made cannot be known beforehand for it it were, the choice could not have been otherwise. In spite of the desire to have it both ways, the logic of the problem excludes this solution without equivocation on the word “free.”
Hi Skip and Others,
Your reflection today in my estimation places importance on two Biblical advisements: Choose this day whom you will serve; lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. The second puts are motivation in concert with YHVH. I have three concerns though that probably relate to Monica’s comment above. Proverbs 3:5-6, the command to trust in the Lord and He will direct your paths. Jonah outrightly refusing to go to Ninneveh. I do not recall the exact reference but the verse that advises, The steps of a righteous one are ordered by the Lord. I assume this fits in with the “open future” ideology, but “Go sin no more,” is a command and YHVH perhaps nonverbally communicating to the woman and us, I think you can do this! Thanks for the food for much thought..
David
I think you just debunked all prophecy as nothing more than good guesses.
David,
A few months ago I would have agreed with your statement. However, in examining prophets more closely, what I discovered is that the message they bring does not always (in fact rarely) prophesie about a particular time and place with particular persons; it can be a prophecy that is fulfilled again and again. The paradigm under which I have grown up teaches the former and doesn’t leave open the future for anything more than God just pulling strings to make things happen the way he already knows they will. From a Greek philosophical approach this makes sense. From a Hebraic standpoint, it does not. It takes away any freedom we as humans have in the process of living. My 2 cents.
Blessings
Kevin
There’s a death penalty for getting it wrong, you know.
Maybe. That’s the beauty of free will. Maybe.
Would any sane person prophecy specific, detailed results of the entirely unexpected end of a siege within 24 hours if you and everybody else understood you were only proclaiming The Almighty’s best guess about that, but you would still be executed if it didn’t work out that way? How can you possibly reason that was the Hebraic understanding of the nature of prophecy?
I think you might have missed the point. What God decides to do without human contingence is what He decides, but that does not encompass the majority of the words of the navim.
I think as well you might be missing the point. There was an army and a city full of very hungry people involved in that affair, every one of them exercising free will. I do not see this distinction you are making to marginalize this Scripture.
I’m not trying to marginalize the text. The argument isn’t settled with one text since Hebrew is quite comfortable embracing paradoxes and even contradictions. That’s the way a phenomenological language works. But a text does not defeat the logic of the propositions. If you want a God who foresees and dictates the future acts of apparently “free” individuals, then you must embrace the logical fatalism that this implies, regardless of the phenomenological descriptions. There is no such thing as freely determined. However, there is also no prohibition concerning God’s ultimate, overriding execution of His will. It just means that those people who are involved are not FREE to choose otherwise and therefore cannot be held accountable for the results.
Please read the whole argument, with all the details and logical extensions, and then let’s discuss it again and see where we go. Thanks.
I do not understand why you posit foreseeing and dictating to be two sides of a coin; i.e., if you can foresee perfectly what someone will choose to do, you are inherently compelling them to do so. If I have read a book enough times, I will always know what is coming when I read it again, but I am in no position to influence the story. Since God exceedingly rarely chooses to intervene in the exercise of free will, how can that be construed into dictating outcome?
If I as human can perfectly see the future choice of another personal agent, then I might be able to say that the choices made by that person are still free because as a human seer I have no direct control over the outcome. There is a potential contradiction in this statement since if I know in advance the absolute truth of the statement, “John will do y at a future time t” is seems hard to imagine that John cannot change his mind. I am not INFALLIBLY omniscient But God is. Therefore, if God knows in advance that “John will do y at a future time t” it is NOT possible (logically) that John can change his mind and therefore, John is determined, not because God knows but because God infallibly knows. Of course, no human being infallibly knows. That’s why God’s “foreknowledge” is not the equivalent of you reading a novel. If God knows that the statement “John will do y at time t” is true, and God cannot be mistaken, then it is not possible at time t that John can so something other than y. I hope you see that this is a logical statement, not simply a theological one. It depends on what we mean by “freedom of choice.” If you wish to claim that God can INFALLIBLY know what John will do and John still has “free choice,” then you will have to explain how the infallible knowledge of the truth of that claim can be absolutely certain and still not be determined. And I don’t mean causally determined (although it is hard to imagine how that is not also entailed). I mean “determined” as a consequence of what the words “true” and “infallible” mean.
Back to you.
Abraham Heschel, I Asked for Wonder:
The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey it full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words. P. 104
Excerpt from God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience See if this helps.
We can formalize these features in a definition of temporal omniscience in the following way:
Df. A person P is omniscient at time t if and only if he knows at time t of every proposition which is true at time t that it is true, and he knows of every proposition about a time later than t which is such that what it reports is physically necessitated by some cause at t or earlier, that it is true and he knows the logical limitations entailed by his knowing with certainty only these things.
(3) God’s omniscience does not stand alone. In relation to omnipotence, it implies that God knows every future act that He intends to do at time t for God’s omnipotence can guarantee that such future acts will occur. Nothing except God Himself can prevent God from doing what He decides to do. But this does not mean that God’s intentions are permanently fixed and of the same class as timeless truths. For intentions are temporal actions. And as expressions of temporal truths they can change their truth-values as the agent changes his mind. But a change in intention does not entail that God knew something which was false at an earlier time simply because it is not true at a later time. For such a suggestion would merely reinstate the ambiguity we have uncovered concerning the temporal and logical contexts of ‘true’. God’s knowledge of His own intentions is indexically related to the present moment. It is not a statement of unalterability.
Not quite. In general Hebrew prophecy is NOT intended to come true. It is contingent on human reaction (cf. Jonah). However, what God determines to do for His own purposes is determined, because if He should exercise His option, there is none other who can opposes Him. This from of prophecy is rare but important. All the rest is commentary. 🙂
So what do we do with prophecy? What happens to Revelation? He explicitly tells us what is going to happen in the future. Is this not translated correctly either? He doesn’t know how it all will end/begin? How do we believe and trust in anything?
It seems Ya could know the future of world events because He can “steer” things like Pharaoh , He can tell us “all Israel will be saved” because He knows that when He reveals to them “the one whom they have pierced” that they will choose Him and repent. all this He can do without violating choice.
It “seems” like that, but that assumption involves a lot of logical implications that are not supported by the text. So, back to the drawing board. Time to ask, “What does this mean?” not “What does it seem to say?” To do that we have to look at all the evidence, not just select the pieces we think match the way we have been taught. Once more I pled, read the book. All of the complications are analyzed and compared to Hebrew thought. It is helpful, but a difficult topic if you approach it from a Greek Western point of view.
See previous comment and the, READ the book. It will help. There are a lot of tangles in this doctrine that need to be straightened out.
Fantastic article Skip! I believe that there are over 23 verses in the OT where the word “repent” is used and literally means God changed his mind. Based on the response of the individual. He chose Saul as king but Saul’s heart changed and God said that he repented (or changed his mind) in response to Paul’s disobedience. He knows that there will be a future kingdom on the earth and the Messiah will rule. There are many prophecies of the future times but my personal choices and decisions can change, I decide whether to use the gifts that God gave me or not. We read throughout the OT that God always “needed” someone to stand in the gap. David stood in the gap between Goliath and Israel. God could have worked through David’s brother’s or Saul, but He worked through David because he chose by his free will not to live in fear but to step in the gap. God could have used any other of the soldiers but they were afraid and where there’s fear, we don’t trust God and He is limited by our decision not to obey. Esther stood in the gap. She had a choice. Could God have still saved a remnant of Israel, yes, but if Esther did not stand in the gap, many of the Jewish men, women and children would have died. That would not be God’s will but again He is limited in how He can work and do this will by our obedience or disobedience. God warned Cain about controlling himself but Cain still decided to kill Abel and God’s response was what have you done, your brother’s blood cries out to me. He didn’t say “Oh I knew it all along, I told you so!” Why did he even bother approaching Cain, unless he thought that he could change his mind! Wonderful and insightful article that challenges our current theology. Do we believe what scripture says or the theology of the times that is rooted in Greek thinking? Bravo Skip and thank you! Len
We humans love to package things for salability, configure them for usability, label them for understandability, shelve them for visibility and discard them for unsuitability. It’s how we merchandise. It’s how we purchase product. We love things in a good container. It’s manageable and controllable. But can we package God that way in an attempt to understand Him? Can God be placed in a box, contained within the borders of our minds? We attempt this through ‘God is’ and ‘God can’ and ‘God knows’ or ‘God knew’ statements. We all are familiar with the ‘God knows’ statement that He knows the ‘beginning and the end’ of everything. We classify that knowing as one of His attributes. We also say He is impassible, not capable of suffering, yet that is contradicted all over Scripture. A subject for another day, perhaps. Are our days determined? Does God know everything we will think and do? Has He created our reality that way? I am going to choose to give God a lot more credit for creativity, then what that assumes. Can He know the end if He chooses? I would answer ‘most likely’ to that question. Did He create with that purpose in mind? My thinking is that He might be bored silly with that kind of creation; rather vanilla if you ask me. And if we say that God knows exactly what we are going to do in advance of our doing, what does that say about His ‘love’ for his creation and his creatures, you and I? Think of the Holocaust or human trafficking or any number of putrid happenings. I am seeing God a little differently than the packaging handed to me, to be swallowed whole, without question. He has blessed us with freedom and will to move in any direction we choose. We are unpredictable, yet we are an important part of His good creation. We are like an artist creating a new piece of music each day. We are not a completed work and I sense God’s enjoyment in watching that progression. I see greater enjoyment in observing that, then in looking at the finished product and missing all the building of that product and the various twist and turns in the process. Can God know the end? I suppose He can if He chooses. But did He create reality and the Cosmos that way? I doubt it. I see God as actively involved in His good creation, enjoying the process when it turns out good and grieving the process on far too many occasions. Is God less powerful, less good, less righteous in seeing God this way. Absolutely not! God created life unscripted for His enjoyment and His purposes. Awful things happen and good things happen. We share in God’s enjoyment, with a playing part in a sort of, cosmic ‘jam session.’ And who knows the end of such a session or would even want to? Not me!
Freedom entails risk, on God’s behalf and ours. To ask God to know it all in advance is to erase freedom. We can do that, but, as David said, there’s a death penalty for getting that wrong. If God is willing to risk it all to have freely choosing agents interact with Him, why are we so determined to put it all back into His hands and pretend that He has it all worked out before we make the choice? This is the dilemma of a Greek idea of perfection and its implications for time and choice. It’s complicated, but not unintelligible. If your choices really matter, then they cannot be determined before hand. If they are determined before hand, then they really don’t matter.
Roots Run Deep
Truth and Consequences
~ and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome [the goal, the end result, the consequence] of your faith the salvation of your souls. As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries,. ~ (1 Peter 1.8,9)
~But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap (the consequence, the goal, the end results) leads to holiness, and the result [‘tarpon’ -the fruit, the consequence, the goal] is eternal life ~ (Romans 6.22)
~ Then you will know the truth, [the results, the fruit, the consequence will be?] —and the truth will set you free ~ (John 8.32)
~ if the Son [the One, the Living Word of God, who is Truth Incarnate] sets you free, you will be free indeed! ~ (John 8.36)
~ Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth ~ (John 17.17)
~ The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times ~
(Psalm 12.6)
Now, concerning the Sovereignty of God and the free will of man. The short answer is yes. Yes to both. It is so. Amen. We are totally free in the choices we make. (All of them). We are not free from the consequences of our choices. (Again, all of them). God, the living God, the One was “from the beginning,” does know the “end from the beginning,” and all the “in-between” as well. Who is man to limit Him or what He can do?
However, we (humans) must remain free in our choices, otherwise we have no choice and the “fatalistic” view (we’re all doomed) prevails. Friend, what about faith,hope and love? Are any of these, in the least, tainted by “fatalism?” No. Not by a long shot. Friend, the LORD is good. Always good. Regardless of my circumstances or situation, He is, and remains, “good.” He is the (hello) “Good Shepherd!”
The “future,” however, is not fixed. Prayer, it has been revealed, can and does change things. What then is the (always) right choice? Yes, o yes, — it is to pray. Amen.
Its kind of funny – Jews pray: Hashem, please give me today the strength to cope with everything that crosses my path (-as if the future and God’s plan was fixed)
Christians pray: Father please help me with this, change that, give me whatever is needed ( as if the future is not fixed) – yet they both believe the opposite!!
And what would the purpose of repentance or obedience be if the future was fixed? Both can alter the direction of my life.
Wait a minute. Please give me your take on Psalm 139:4-5, …there is not a word on my tongue, but, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
This certainly seems to indicate He knows what we’re going to say before we say it. What’s to prevent Him from knowing everything in the future as well?
Because the future doesn’t exist as REALITY until it is chosen, unless you are going to argue that it is already fixed, in which case choice is an illusion. Which way do you want it? You choose, it matters, the future changes OR you only think you choose, it doesn’t matter, the future never changes.
Skip, Thank you for this response. I certainly do not accept that the future is fixed. I am most grateful for the truth that we have free will, but I have always believed that God’s Omniscience KNOWS what the future holds–He knows which way we will choose, etc. As for His Omnipotence, I feel He could have created the heavens and the earth in a nanosecond, but He chose to take six days to set an all important pattern. His knowledge and His power knows no limit. That makes me a simple man who takes His word seriously.
The issue remains. If God knows infallibly what you will do, then logic implies you cannot do otherwise, since to so otherwise would mean God didn’t know infallibly. You can’t have it both ways. Whatever he knows to be true MUST be true. Ergo, you actually don’t have the logical option of choosing other than what He knows will be true. Your argument is Augustine’s solution and unfortunately, it doesn’t work. All of this is based on the Greek idea of perfection.
Get the book. Then see what you think.
When it comes to sin, there is no other way it could be: sin = death. End of a boring non-story. Sin is precisely refusing to exercise any of those lovely choices that are possible: sin is where I am AVOIDING a real choice. Really easy to calculate, mathematically speaking.
I think where it gets interesting is when someone chooses to exercise love. Anything then becomes possible. Anything meaning real, of course. Sin negates reality. Simply. The outcome is certain with sin, but not with righteousness. Righteousness throws a new playing piece onto the board.
There is an illusion I think we suffer from in that we think sin and righteousness equal two sets of possibilities. That is wrong. There is only one set. Paul says “ALL things are possible, but not all things are expedient”. Sin is not a thing, so therefore is not a real choice. Sin is the negation of choice, simply. Totally predictable. No new calculation necessary.
What a terrific subject, and discussion. It opens up so many other ideas. Without some understanding of the Hebraic view of mankind, I might never have realized that “free will” is a sacred gift, and I think it is included in Gen. 1:27 (the image).
Laurita, your words, “Sin is the negation of choice, simply. Totally predictable. No new calculation necessary,” cause me to imagine binary numbers arranged in ever-increasing branches, full of ‘ones’ of righteousness. 🙂
And now I am wondering if anyone’s righteous actions could “surprise” the LORD today, and if so, what would He feel?
Genesis 3:9. The Hebrew word speaks of surprise, the surprise that Adam is not where he is expected to be. The surprise that sin has caused separation.
You paint a picture of a not ever-present deity. Where was he and what was he doing when the pinnacle of his creation, his masterpiece, was dialoging with the rebellious one? Was he asleep? Was the network down? You’re right, then–he is a fallible shepherd. The adversary now appears less irrational–he may yet overcome the not so almighty.
How much more fallible must his human son be, then? What exactly did he think was finished on the cross? According to you, certainly not the future–that is still in play.
I pity you.
Why do you “pity” me? Do you think that I’m not theologically correct and therefore need pity? Or do you imagine that because I believe the future depends on the actions of free will agents within the confines of God’s grace I don’t have a relationship with Him? Do you have pity on all the poor souls of the Bible who asked God for change but knew He really already knew the outcome? I am nonplussed. What can I say? In the world of a God who already knows ALL the “choices,” at least you don’t have to struggle with moral decisions. Since He already knows what you will do, you can just go ahead and do whatever you wish. Is that a better reality than the one that says what you do actually matters?
See, you are convinced I do not struggle with moral decisions, that I believe I have no need to do so. I do not see how we can stop talking past each other. May we both receive greater revelation.
I am sure you do struggle with decisions, as all human beings do. My reply is not about you personally at all. It is about the logic of a position that asserts God knows the ACTUAL choices of human agents beforehand, and the logical consequences of that claim regardless of whether or not the human agent perceives moral dilemmas. If you set aside the ubiquitous human experience of free choice and subsequently dependent consequence, then you must embrace fatalism with or without a God whose knowledge encompasses what the ACTUAL outcome of choice is before the choice is made. I am not denying that God knows every possibility of every possible choice. I am simply saying that if God knows the ACTUAL choice and its consequences, then that choice cannot be free. To claim it is still free is to equivocate on the meaning of “free.”
So, if this means we are talking past each other, then I guess God must have known we couldn’t agree beforehand, and foreseen that this would go as it has, and therefore there is no point in doing anything except what He already knew we would do, and in this case, that I would write back to you in spite of the fact that we don’t seem to be communicating. Now, if God knows what you will do next, then please do it. 🙂 Particularly since you can’t help but do so.
Yesterday I saw what I was going to do today, but decided against it just now.
Yesterday I asked what to do today and saw that I was compelled to do it anyway.
Yesterday it was revealed from the scroll of the book that I won the lottery today, but I forgot to buy a ticket.
What a brain warp this subject is. 🙂
Yeah, just forget about it (He already knew you would).
🙂
Abraham Heschel:
God is invisible, distant, dwelling in darkness (1 Kings 8:12). His thoughts are not our thoughts; His ways in history are shrouded and perplexing. Prophecy is a moment of unshrouding, an opening of the eyes, a lifting of the curtain. Such moments are rare in history. . . . It was as if God had opened a door: in the prophets His word was revealed. . . . Not forever, the prophet is told. The Lord will shut the door, and the word will obtrude no more. And yet, the word of God never comes to an end. For this reason, prophetic predictions are seldom final. No word is God’s final word. Judgment, far from being absolute, is conditional. A change in man’s conduct brings about a change in God’s judgment. No word is God’s final word. p. 105.
Thanks, Skip. More to consider…
His Part and Ours
Hannah prayed, and she gave birth to Samuel.
Hezekiah prayed, and 185,000 Assyrians were slain.
George Whitfield prayed and a thousand souls were saved in one day.
George Mueller prayed and hungry orphans were fed.
Hudson Taylor prayed and inland China was evangelized.
“If My people who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray..”
I believe that God knows the result of whatever choices we make, we are free to choose.
As I mentioned in the previous reply, Augustine’s solution is not a solution. What you wish to believe does not matter to the logic of “free choice.” For a choice to be free, it must entail the possibility of NOT choosing it. Therefore, the outcome of the choice must depend on the actual choice made, not on the possibility that it might go one way or the other. Knowing the possibilities is perfectly consistent with NOT knowing the actual choices made until they are made.
Different tact time–perhaps introducing the concept of “certainty is a mathematical limit” resolves the dichotomy.
How do we reason about likely outcomes? We assess probabilities of different outcomes based upon what we believe are the probabilities of certainty regarding every datum in our ever accumulating and revising database of the universe. We “know” very little with extremely high certainty beyond, “I think, therefore I am” and many historical facts; e.g., I was born, I experienced learning to count.
Suppose we consider the possibility that the Almighty is in the same boat as us (created in His Image), but to an unfathomably different degree, so much so that His miscalculations are exceptionally rare, and only occur in the presence of two or more possibilities that He calculates are practically equal. Such surprises are hardly of a blindsiding nature and His contingency planning is really, really good. The capacity of the adversary in this regard, though far beyond our own, is many leagues removed from God’s.
Thus, the Lord is very careful not to lead His prophets onto saying anything unless He calculates it has effectively no chance (“impossible” is defined statistically as probability <= 1.0E-50) of being derailed by any exercises of uninfluenced free will.
Does this model fit all the data, particularly what The Scriptures have to say about the nature of God's reality? Time to reread The Bible again…
Sounds like a good track to me. Except I doubt Descartes statement is really as “certain” as we would like.
Well, that’s exactly what the definition of certainty posited–it is an unattainable limit that is infinitely approachable (in theory).
Is there any difficulty positing God’s database is, was, and ever shall be entirely flawless and pure, merely incomplete as pertains to events on our particular timeline (I’d like to keep God’s location outside of our timeline out of this if possible) and that he never has any difficulties accessing any of it?
I am seeking funding and my wife’s agreement that will enable me to acquire and absorb your dissertation. Does God know if I shall succeed?
I, for one, am quite sure you will acquire it. The doubt hovers around if you will absorb it. 🙂
On what basis are you quite sure? Did The LORD give you a word of knowledge^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprobability signifying that is His Will? Be careful how you answer.
I was answering on a lighter side with a little giggle. Nothing heavy with theology. My “quite sure” is itself quite limited and based primarily on your exhibited drive for understanding. Nothing more. As to absorbing Skip book referenced, I would think it would be a challenge to take on for anyone on this blog.
I’ve been reading that book for quite a while. It’s been a very slow journey for me, but, it’s forming my thoughts bit by bit, very, very slowly.
No. But if you do, then that possibility will become a reality and He will know it as such.
🙂
Since you wrote nothing about the database question, then we can stipulate The LORD was monitoring The Fall in realtime or was the data merely being captured, not processed until He noticed Adam was AWOL?
Not sure how to reply to this since databases are not my area of expertise. But let’s just suppose for the moment that God knows every true statement and its referents and every possibly true statement, and, of course, all things that are false. God knows the POSSIBILITIES in all their intricacy and He knows all the ACTUALITIES and all their implications. This is omniscience, but it does not require that He know ACTUALITIES before they are actual.
Databases are not my area of expertise, either, I just use them, especially the one inside my skull (which I would prefer to be a lot more reliable). My question is essentially exactly when and why did God experience surprise in the Garden that His expectations had not panned out? Was He surprised only that Adam made a last second choice to miss the appointment; i.e., how much time passed between the surprising choice being made and His experience of surprise? His questions to Adam could indicate He was truly seeking knowledge He did not yet have. What is your interpretation of the Scriptures regarding this?
Hebrew is phenomenological. It records the way things APPEAR. That’s what this story is about. How does it APPEAR to God and Adam? How would it APPEAR to us reading this story.
Are you suggesting APPEARances could be, ah, MISLEADing in any Hebrew account?
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22:13 NASB
The short and the long; For me this earth and our lives are there for a Godly or Christ purpose and not to recreate the way we need to interpret it through one study upon another.Resulting from this our study needs to be to show as approved to God through Christ and not latter critics view of what the records reveal.
My pastor directed me to http://www.iep.utm.edu/o-theism/ which I am certain contains data familiar to you, Dr. Moen. He also reminded me of the conclusion of Ecclesiastes, gently suggesting my time might be better redeemed than attempting to consume your dissertation. I still need to hear from The LORD His view on that undertaking.
I am still concerned that new believers perusing this website receive a one-sided presentation of much of what the Scriptures were created to convey to mankind. It bothers me that they may not read this comment and click on the link.
Perhaps your concern will lead you to create your own web site and blog.
It’s interesting how you accuse the presentation, as given, of being “one sided” and therefore deceptive through lack and then immediately turn around and use “concern for new believers” (as being more easy to influence?) as a tactic towards arousing curiosity towards clicking on the link you provided. (a deceptive tactic) Beings that you could have simply stated your case and worded your presentation any number of ways, I assume it’s willful. If you’re seeking recognition and/or confirmation, you’re going about it the wrong way.
Just a reminder, please, no offense meant, but I try not to assume any wrong motives by anyone here. Well intentioned might lead to misunderstanding, but I will always assume that comments are well intentioned.
My apologies to you and the other bloggers for my contentious remark, it wasn’t intended that way. I’ll refrain from commenting in regards to this thread in the future.
I, too, will refrain from commenting further.