Exhaustive Foreknowledge

[Van]

Did any prophecy given to us in the Bible require God to update it and modify it based upon Him now having further insight and understanding?

Did anyone see the point of this question? Did I say or suggest prophetic events were simply the declaration of parts of a fixed future? Nope. Does God change events to bring about His prophetic events? Yes. When God responds according to a conditional covenant, i.e. God relents due to human repentance, does that mean God changed? Nope!!!!!!

 

[37818]

. . . how God has exhaustive foreknowledge.

Psalms 90:2, . . . even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

 

[Silverhair]

You still have not answered how God has exhaustive foreknowledge. The future cannot be reliably predicted without either using probability or by making it happen the way you predicted. Unless you attempt to answer that you are just stating your conclusion. Molinism is not the answer because it assumes that God is always reacting rather than sovereignly ruling. But Molinism at least shows an awareness that there must be some explanation of how God knows the future if man really has an autonomous free will.

Do you not understand the omniscience of God. He has exhaustive foreknowledge because He is God. How is that such a hard concept for you to grasp. Do you think God have to learn new things? That would make you a Molinist.

If you hold to the view that God has to predetermine the future or it cannot happen then you have to accept the view that God also causes all the sin. That is the dilemma you are faced with.

I don't run to secondary causes. They truly are part of God's sovereignty. A soldier draws his bow and takes an impossible chance shot. God used that to kill Ahab as he said. God could have directly smote him but used a secondary cause.

But as you just said God has to predetermine the future or He could not predict it. So using your example even the secondary cause had to be determined by God or He could not know that it would happen. And thus we fall back to your view making God the author of all sin even if done by the secondary cause, man.

It need not. If man obeys the known will of God there is no evidence from scripture that God will abuse his will and there is evidence God is very pleased when a man does that. Calvinism has a low opinion of man's will and nature and thus it concludes that without God's intervention none of us would be saved. Those discussions are of a different sort. All we are concerned with here is how God can know the future choices of men and yet these same men always possess an autonomous free will that could have done the opposite. Something has to give.

And again we see the problem you have grasping omniscience and foreknowledge.

The future choices of man are what God knows as His foreknowledge. If the man had chosen B rather than A then that would have been God's foreknowledge and vice versa. Man still had to exercise his free will at the time but God being omniscient would know what that choice would be.

Calvinists want to limit the determined actions of God to only the good and forget that for their system to hold God has to determine all things even though they will deny this fact.

Isaiah says it very well
Isa_46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';

 

[DaveXR650]

He has exhaustive foreknowledge because He is God.

No one disagrees with that. If you aren't interested how that works then you need go no further.

But as you just said God has to predetermine the future or He could not predict it. So using your example even the secondary cause had to be determined by God or He could not know that it would happen. And thus we fall back to your view making God the author of all sin even if done by the secondary cause, man.

Did the soldier truly draw his bow on a chance shot according to his own free will or not? Yet, if that was the method God wanted to use to kill Ahab then did it have to happen as a necessary yet secondary cause. Calvinists say yes to both questions. The only difference is that the scenario, which is obviously what really happened, could not have for sure happened with your definition of free will because the man could have decided not to take the shot up until the time he actually took the shot. According to your system God cannot have it be true that the man must take the shot because that would violate your own definition of free will.

To say that God has exhaustive foreknowledge because he is God is fine if you also allow a Calvinist to say God determines everything yet allows man's free will - because he is God. Don't tear into someone else's statement when you can't defend your own.

 

[Silverhair]

No one disagrees with that. If you aren't interested how that works then you need go no further.

We know how it works, it is not a mystery that you seem to think it is.

Did the soldier truly draw his bow on a chance shot according to his own free will or not? Yet, if that was the method God wanted to use to kill Ahab then did it have to happen as a necessary yet secondary cause. Calvinists say yes to both questions. The only difference is that the scenario, which is obviously what really happened, could not have for sure happened with your definition of free will because the man could have decided not to take the shot up until the time he actually took the shot. According to your system God cannot have it be true that the man must take the shot because that would violate your own definition of free will.

To say that God has exhaustive foreknowledge because he is God is fine if you also allow a Calvinist to say God determines everything yet allows man's free will - because he is God. Don't tear into someone else's statement when you can't defend your own.

The text says " Now a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel in a joint of the armor." 1Ki 22:34 Do you not believe this? The question you have to answer is did God foreknow that the man would do such a thing. The answer is YES. Did God's foreknowledge cause that to happen the answer is NO.

The man could have not taken the shot but he made the free will choice to take the shot which is just what God's foreknowledge of the event would actually be. If he had chosen not to take the shot then that is what God's foreknowledge would have been. So God could know it to be true because of the foreknowledge that you do not seem to be able to grasp.

Free will is the capacity for agents to choose between different possible courses of action (aka choosing “otherwise”). This does not require the person to be able to choose anything, nor does it require the absence of other influencing factors. It only requires the ability for a person confronted with a decision to be able to choose from among one or more possible options.

To say God foreknows all that will happen and man has a free will is logical but to say God determines all things yet man has a free will is illogical, it is an argument that I have seen many times from calvinists but it does not hold any water.

If you want to say God determines everything than accept the logical end of that view, He is responsible for all the sin as He determined that it should happen.

You may not like what I have said regarding free will but you can not say it is not defended.

The bible gives clear evidence of man's free will so what better defense do you need?
We are told to choose Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Joshua 24:15

We can resist or even reject God’s grace Acts of the Apostles 7:51, Hebrews 3:15

Salvation requires an act of faith John 1:12, Romans 10:9-10

We can seek and find God Jeremiah 29:13, Acts of the Apostles 17:27

 

[DaveXR650]

. So God could know it to be true because of the foreknowledge that you do not seem to be able to grasp.

If you think foreknowledge explains this sufficiently then there is nothing I can say. What I'm saying is that examples like this prove an active sovereignty which cannot be explained as coming together at a certain time - and after being foretold, by simply knowing of a set of circumstances would come together. In addition to that for some reason you, if a Calvinist says it, won't even allow for free will if it might be part of their explanation of things. God makes requests of men and also watches as men do their natural living. Calvinists say over and over that when God uses the obedient choices of men or uses the free routine choices of men to serve his plans everyone is happy. The Bible even says God uses the disobedient choices of men to accomplish his will and plans. But when God says something is going to happen, even the free will choices of the men involved must be according to God's plan or else God may end up being wrong. There is no way around it.

The man let go an arrow in the general direction of Ahab. Whether God directed the arrow personally, or calculated the position of the chariot, the armor, the wind, the weight of the arrow, the pull weight of the bow, the release of the man's fingers, the speed of the horses or however it was done, do you not see that the only way for all this to come together and come together at that precise time, to that precise person, was for God to sovereignly make it so. And as for the archer, while he wanted to shoot the arrow, all that he was involved in was predetermined by God. Robin Hood could not even have duplicated that with an English longbow.

Free will is the capacity for agents to choose between different possible courses of action (aka choosing “otherwise”). This does not require the person to be able to choose anything, nor does it require the absence of other influencing factors. It only requires the ability for a person confronted with a decision to be able to choose from among one or more possible options.

That gets into another aspect of all this. You have stated a Calvinist argument for the way free will and God's sovereignty both can be in effect at the same time. Basically it says that if a man's free will choice is to be sitting in a chair at a certain future time and that is part of something that God has predicted, then since it is predicted to be that way it therefore must be so. But has the man lost his free will since now he cannot do otherwise than what God has predicted? Not at all, they say, for the man had a "potency" to be able to stand up all the while and the fact that God has ordained he must be sitting at that future time in no way infringes upon the man's freedom.

Obviously, these types of discussions have limited usefulness. They serve to keep me thinking so that senility doesn't come faster than necessary. So as I have said before I in no way think that how you see this has anything to do with anything really. Certainly it is not a matter of importance in one's walk with God. If it makes no sense feel free to reject it. I might even change my mind. Or at least forget which position I took.

 

[Scarlett O.]

Thread has reached 10 pages. Closed.