Which is really the most tragic story?

Sorry, I never saw this post. I was responding to the one after this and it rolled over to the next page before I was done.

You defined omniscience but not predetermination. And you didn't show the distinction between the two from your perspective by giving an example of something God has merely foreknown versus what he has predetermined.

I'm fine with this definition of omniscience. I just refuse to draw unfounded finite, linear conclusions based on causal laws of time and space about that which happened "prior" to its existence. This matter would be more clearly noted if you would also define predetermination and show the distinction between the two along with examples.

We both know the reason you have been hesitant to do this. You mistakenly equate omniscience with predetermination; therefore, there is nothing God has known that He hasn't predetermined due to this false and biblically unfounded assumption.

Even God's own thoughts, ideas, choices, decrees are predetermined because they are foreknown in this concocted view of yours, which has lead you to contradict scripture by supposing that God doesn't make choices when clearly scripture says he does. Just appeal to mystery and use the 'coos' of scriptures. None of us have 'out grown' the terms God has revealed in scripture, Luke, so please stop pretending as if you have.

 

How long before? :laugh:

See my point? You are using finite linear language to speak of infinite matters.

Might we say that you are speaking anthropomorphically?

Again, what does the word 'past' mean in a place without time? You are stuck in a linear mindset...we all are.

Yet, you draw an unfounded and unbiblical conclusion based upon an linear casual assumption about something an infinite God knew and did during eternity? How?

You assume a causal relationship between what God KNEW and what he created based on it being done "PRIOR" to the existence of time itself. How does that work???

The bible never says, "If God knew it before creating it then he must have determined it to be." That in itself in an 'anthropomorphic' based assumption.

 

As I stated before and you didn't answer, "Equating poetic physical descriptions of God with didactic clear theological teachings about what God does seems somewhat subjective, don't you think?" Who decides with biblically revealed attributes and actions of God are real and which ones are anthropomorphic?

I mean the whole doctrine of ELECTION is based on God choosing....which is something you claim He doesn't do. Why not just claim that he doesn't choose in the same way we choose, and that we can't fully comprehend how he makes his determinations within the eternal counsel of His will? Why directly contradict scripture by claiming God doesn't do what it says he does?

And further why do you think the truth that "God knows everything" is more or less anthropomorphic than "God makes choices?" Both of them are beyond our full comprehension.

I did. I just think it is interesting that you quoted my request all the way up the the word omniscience but left off the request to show how it is different than predetermination and the request for examples. Hmmmm I wonder why?

No, but its contradicting scripture to state the exact opposite of what it says based on the fact that you don't know any better way to describe it.

You don't think Paul was smart enough to say, "God doesn't really make choices because he already foreknows everything he is going to do, thus everything he does is actually eternally pre-existance." And so he is reduced to use simpler language for us common folks and just say God chooses? That is my point. What makes you think your description of what God does is better than scriptures description of it? And why didn't scripture just use YOUR terms in the first place?

If God wants us to understand Him, I'm sure he has no problem with us understanding Him based upon the terms He chose, rather than the dogmatic conclusions of a finite speculator.

 

Luke, you seem to think the only two scholarly conclusions to the problem of divine omniscience and human freedom is Determinism or Open Theism, and that is simply untrue. There are many various approaches. All of them are speculative and I personally think the appeal to mystery regarding infinite matters is probably more productive, but here is one such example:

God is able to know the future because of the way that God exists, eternally. Boethius describes God’s eternal existence as follows:

“Eternity is a possession of life, a possession simultaneously entire and perfect, which has no end. . . That which grasps and possesses the entire fullness of a life that has no end at one and the same time (nothing that is to come being absent to it, nothing of what has passed having flowed away from it) is rightly held to be eternal.” (Consolation CV 6.4, 144).
God is not like humans who exist wholly at each finite moment in time and endure through time. A human possesses her life only in a small finite window which we call “now”—the past life is no longer possessed but gone, the future is not yet realized. Since our human life is lived in a finite “now”, it is never full and complete but is fragmented. God, however, is perfect and God’s life is not fragmented like the life of a temporally enduring human. He lives in the eternal “now.” His “now” stretches over our past, present, and future. Our finite present is representative of God’s eternal present, but our finite present is only a faint and imperfect model.

Thus by being eternal, the future is not off in the distance for God but is subsumed under his eternal presence. Since God wholly exists at all times in his eternal “now” he can know what happens at every time. Boethius says that God’s foreknowledge “looks at such things as are present to it just as they will eventually come to pass in time as future things.” (Consolation CV 6.21, 147). Boethius’ explanation for how God knows the future is a kind of perceptual model. Foreknowledge is a simple awareness of the future, not involving any complex deductive or inductive reasoning. If having knowledge of something before it happens is like looking far off in the distance, having knowledge in the “eternal now” is like perceiving something immediately before one’s eyes. God “sees” with the divine mind all of existence immediately in one eternal moment. [See Marenbon (2003)].

So, the best way to explain this approach is to say right NOW you know that I wrote the word "NOW" in all caps, but you didn't determine me to do it, you just know it because you are experiencing it right NOW. In the same way, God is in the eternal NOW experiencing and thus knowing all that is to know within time and space...not necessarily because he has determined it but because he has experienced it in the 'eternal now.' Of course this is still much beyond our full understanding but it gives another mode of understanding such complex matters.

 

:thumbs::thumbs: Good point.

 

And it DOES.

IF..IF...IFFFFFFF you don't ASSUME the deterministic premise that "if God fully knew everything before creating everything then he must have determined it to be."

But you assume this is true and then argue against my view as if I must accept your premise (the fallacy of 'question begging'). Then accuse me of changing the subject when I attempt to point out to you the real distinctions in our view by having you define and show examples of the terms being debated.

Listen, Luke, I know where you are coming from. I used to believe that premise too. I used to think it was like 2+2=4 and that everyone should just accept it as fact like I did. But I came to understand some things:

1. Scripture never says that "if God fully knew everything before creating everything then he must have determined it to be." Which is the exact argument you are making when you write: "If God is TRULY omniscient, meaning that he has always known all there is to ever know about everything, and he KNEW that billions of people would perish if he made this world, yet he went right ahead and made it any way then the Arminian has the EXACT same problem that the Calvinist has. (Now, you may claim you have "not been debating "predetermination" or the causal effectuality of God," but just ask yourself, "What is the problem that the Calvinists have?" See, you are invoking your premise onto our system and then making the fallacy called 'you too.' )

2. This premise uses linear cause/effect and time based logic to draw this conclusion.

3. This premise draws conclusions which seemingly contradict what we know of God's holiness and inability to even tempt men to evil. It leads to the inevitable conclusion that God originates/authors evil intent.​

See, you think it has to be Determinism OR Open Theism because of your premise. We don't accept your premise Luke. I provided you another view, did you see that post? There are many speculative philosophical views regarding this question besides Determinism or Openness. I quoted one of them in hopes that you would see there are alternatives.

Define it, give me an example of it along with an example of something known by God but not predetermined and then you will see why it matters to this discussion. I'm trying to get you to see why you are 'begging the question.' You claim we have the same problem as Calvinism because you are assuming we accept the same premise as Calvinists. We don't. Defining the terms will hopefully help you to see that.

You've quoted scholars to support differing view point plenty of times. This was just to show that there are many alternatives to determinism or open theism out there. You don't seem to want to know that fact because it is easier to try and pigeon hole me into one or the other so as to attack. The problem with Open Theism is the same problem as with Determinism...they both accept that premise you keep trying to force on me.

 

Luke,

I know what you are saying and I'm trying to explain how you still are presuming your premise upon me.

You said, "I am saying that God knew what would happen in this world before he built it and he went ahead and built it any way."

I don't accept THAT premise. Ok? I can't possibly understand how an infinite being KNEW something PRIOR to originating it. I can't even explain a divine eternal idea or thought exists, can you? Your statement, to me, is a completely linear mindset and I reject it altogether.

On the one hand you argue that God doesn't really make choices and that is anthropomorphic because he couldn't possibly deliberate in the same way man does, yet you turn right around and assume God foreknows things that will happen in the future, like a man who can look down through the corridors of time, and chooses to create them anyway just like a man might do. He doesn't make choices like we do, even by your own admission, yet you are basing an entire 'problem' that needs to be solved on his CHOICE to create something He FOREKNOWS.

I'll concede the point, that if God is like a fortune teller who simply looks through the linear timeline of existence to see what will happen and then chooses, like you and I make choices, to create the world in such a way that it will be exactly like He foresaw, that we both have a similar problem to answer. But I don't believe God foreknows in the way a man would foreknow something, and I don't think God is limited by the cause/effect relationship of time and space, and I don't think God chooses eternally known finite events in the same way you and I would. So, I refuse to subject an infinite God to our finite linear concepts of before and after in order to concluded cause and effect problems which impugn his holy nature.

I really think if you would have taken the time to read some of the scholarly alternatives I presented this would have been clear.

I know it is difficult to see someone else's perspective when you have grown so used to only seeing it one way, but one of the reasons we come to this forum is to be stretched a little and to possibly learn new perspectives. So, I don't pretend that I can convince you to believe my view but I do at least hope I can help you to understand it well enough to correctly represent it.

Blessings. And I do appreciate your tone. This has been a good discussion. If you read any negative tone into what I'm saying please know its not intended. I'm just passionate like you, not angry or anything...

NOTE EDITED: I did define Omniscience above. I agreed with your definition.