Let's Cut to the Chase -- Does God Will Rebellion Against Himself?

examiningcalvinism, I've never heard of 'middle knowledge.' Actually I'm not much good at theological terms at all. I do know that God created time and so is outside of it and can see it all, start to finish. I also know that somehow this does not prevent our free will from functioning as His gift to us. I can't pretend to understand it, and that is actually what I would expect, being the created and not the Creator! But I know what the Bible says, and both those things are presented as fact.

I know God knows how much temptation I can handle simply because He knows me. Raising my own children, I pretty much knew who could handle what, too, and that raised some arguments when one child was allowed certain freedoms as thirteen or fourteen that a subsequent child was not. I did not have to be God to know my children well enough for that, only an attentive parent.

But of course I agree with you that His knowledge extends beyond what actually occurs. It covers every 'what if', too.

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I started the above last night, but I have been fighting a round of mononucleosis and evidently fell asleep at the computer and then was migrated to bed by my lovely husband. So although I'm sure there have been other responses in this thread since then, I'll continue with what I am aware of....smile.

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Pastor Larry, you stated, of Revelation 13:8, "Clearly that is a statement of intention, seen as complete in teh mind of God, yet not having taken place yet. This is pretty common in Scripture, particularly in prophetic passages. It is hardly relevant to the question at hand here."

I disagree. The statement is given about Christ in the past tense as an accomplished act, not simply as an intention. It still had to be worked out in time, yes, but that did not make it any the less real in fact. This is the reason Job could state that he knew his Redeemer lived. Redemption was already a fact in eternity.

Thus, although murder was in the hearts of those who hated and crucified Him, you will note that no one had to break His legs to hasten His death. He was already dead, by His own will and power, as He had stated would happen.

npetreley, when God says something never entered His mind, the meaning is not that He didn't know about it or never thought about it, but that He never intended it. This flies directly in the face of Calvinism.

 

There you go, save you checking back.

Is there scripture for this Helen, for these points please. God is outside time. God sees the end and God created time. Thanks.


john.

 

First of all, John, do you really think God is subject to time?

But you asked for Scriptures

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
We live in a time/space/mass continuum. Time cannot be without space and mass in our creation. Thus, all three were created ex nihilo at once.

2. I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
Isaiah 46:9b-10a

3. God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you."
God IS. He is outside of time.

 

Hello Helen.

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
We live in a time/space/mass continuum. Time cannot be without space and mass in our creation. Thus, all three were created ex nihilo at once.

In the beginning doesn't mean time but in the beginning. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and time?

2. I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
Isaiah 46:9b-10a

He knows the end from the beginning, He does not say He knows the end because He has seen it. EPH 1:11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will...
He controls everything thus knows how things will turn out.

3. God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you."
God IS. He is outside of time.

What can happen without time? Nothing. I do not believe God is subject to anything but time must be a part of His Being as life and love and all the rest of Him. He is One.

You have shown no scripture. Where in scripture do you find that you can teach that God is outside time?

john.

 

Really?… It has helped me to develop my theology a lot... a "little" of what I understand about it.

God is both outside and inside of time; time being the creational vehicle that the volition of His creatures within His creation must logically exist, as we know that it is not a lie that God interacts with His creatures which He created in conjunction with time. This is where the systematic theology of middle knowledge comes in with logical explanations that harmonize the Omniscient nature of God and His Omnipotent abilities along with His true nature of Omnibenevalence in that He is NOT the author of sin, a clear contradiction of His true nature, and doing so while addressing the P.O.E. (problem of evil). The alternative to the truths of God’s existence in time in which we DO exist would logically result in belief of God having predetermined all events beforehand, before time and including sin. (the only logical conclusion of Calvinism IMO)

Even most hyperCalvinist while holding to a strict deterministic view should admit that their theology would be fatalistic without a theory of “compatibilism” to free will. The problem is that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive.

Middle knowledge involves a system to explain logically that God has even more knowledge abilities than our finite understanding of simple predetermined foreknowledge and how He accomplishes His will within the truths of His Divine nature, and has the Omnipotent ability to design His creatures as seen in the abundance of scriptures to have a free will, and helps prove that He does in fact divinely interact freely with His creatures in this truth of creation that includes time.

 

Both in and out; in a Trinitarian nature.

(Mar 13:32) But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

 

Helen.

Only if time is not part of God's Being. Otherwise it was the beginning of creation. Everlasting has a time element doesn't it?

I never thought God didn't exist before He created time Helen, thanks, I'll consider the implications of this and get back to you.

Is He subject to Himself? Since I said time is part of His Being then I guess you have hit the nail on the head, He is subject to Himself therefore He is not God.

Exactly. So you say Jesus Christ is not the same yesterday and today and forever. Groovy colours by the way.

I don't understand father christmas either. I'd better start being a good boy.

Take it back before it ruins you. So why do you believe things can happen without time, it isn't normal experience nor even abnormal experience it is just plain fantasy isn't it?

The stars were put there for us to measure it's passing wasn't they? The stars were not put there to cause time. and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years

As He says and that is it isn't it? He necessarily invented time is your necessary invention.

Space, time and matter were created at the same time so say the false prophet cosmologists and you agree with them? Nothing happens without time and that is what we know, reason and logic and plain science demands us to believe nothing can happen without it.

john.

 

I get tired of people putting down science and scientists! They are not stupid people! Many are believing Christians, as well.

John, go ahead and measure time without space or matter. That's a challenge.

In the meantime, you are saying time is part of God. That is your imagination, and not anywhere in the Bible.

What I will say I find fascinating is that although time as we know it is necessarily a part of this creation, it is clear in Revelation that sequence occurs and that is something we associate with time! The River of Life flows, the Tree of Life bears fruit in season....

So there is a different time than the time we know now. This now has a beginning and an end, and God doesn't.

So all I can personally do is be curious...

But I do know that time as we know it in this creation is an ex nihilo creation of God's along with space and mass.

Benjamin, thank you for your response. That was interesting. I do know that in Jesus Christ, God entered time and divested Himself of His divine nature in order to do so (Phil. 2). But then He has returned, to share the glory He had before the beginning (John 17). God bless.

 

True Jesus returned, but still exists in a Trinarian Divine Nature which may be "how" God interacts with His creatures having volition within time.

 

We are swinging way off topic here, but don't you think that the way God interacts with us now is through the indwelling Holy Spirit?

 

Yes, And I probably better shut-up as I don't have "time" to start this now!

Of course, through the HS and in Christ, "the Way".

 

Oh yeah, forgot about you might be trying to slip in dispensationalism on me :laugh:

Better not go here either BUT David was imploring God not to take the HS from Him in Psalms 51. :smilewinkgrin:

 

If you are referring to me please show me where have I done this?

Just where do you suggest I do that? I'll have a go, 1CH 16:36 Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Then all the people said "Amen" and "Praise the LORD."

I did it! Thank you Helen you're such a good teacher.

My imagination is as good as yours isn't it? I've got from everlasting to everlasting what do you have but mere speculation and some sums?

Sequence occurs because time is now and that is all time is. The past does not exist nor does the future. The past is dead and gone and the future is not yet.

I'm sure God and time is not the same as man and time as God and life is different from man and life. This 'now' is God being, I don't see scripture telling me there will be an end of time. Jesus is the same tomorrow.

It is hard wired for us to be curious. ...fill the earth and subdue it. Gen 1:28 Is a command for man to invest in science. It is a promise that nature can be controlled, ergo, the secrets of nature are for finding out. I knock speculators that have allowed the general public to think they know something when they are just speculating.

Yes, you keep saying. You don't know that, that is just your scripturally unscriptural belief. You can't claim to know can you? That is not the scientific way, one must prove it.

Jesus wouldn't be God divested of His Divinity would He? Where is the scripture that says Jesus wasn't God please. JN 8:58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I Am!" He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ~Galileo

I like that Benjamin. Both in and out of time you say?

john.

 

Jesus wouldn't be God divested of His Divinity would He? Where is the scripture that says Jesus wasn't God please. JN 8:58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I Am!" He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Please read Philippians 2.

 

Oh, you mean Phil. 2:6 (ESV) - "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped."

Now, whatever we want to say about the second part of this verse, we know from the first part of this verse that Jesus did not divest himself of his divinty. He voluntarily divested himself of certain rights of his divinity, but he was no less divine on earth than he is now. To say otherwise is to invite heresy.

 

Helen.

Of course I did that before I answered you. I always check the scriptures partly because I often cut'n'paste the verse(s) under discussion. What?

What would you say to this?

If Jesus wasn't God then the Sanhedrin did no wrong in executing Him as He would have been a Blasphemer. John's testimony convicts Christ, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Is that why you don't believe Jesus was murdered?

john.

 

I understand your point and agree with it. Jesus was God, is God. However, like so many others, you stopped the quote before the period at the end of Paul's sentence. Here is the entire sentence:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

To go back to the thread, Jesus is God entering time, our time, in the Incarnation. His sacrifice, however, was a fact outside of time, ref. Revelation 13:8. So, first of all, no one killed Jesus although the desire is held against them in Acts as murder. Jesus stated plainly that He had the authority/power to lay down His life and to take it up again. That is exactly what He did. Second, the fact of the sacrifice existed from the foundation/creation of the world and therefore was a fact outside of time. It was then carried out IN time.

So yes, God is both outside of time, as its Creator, and inside of time, as our Redeemer. But time is not intrinsic to God. He IS. He is the I AM. There is no past, present, or future associated with that. It is a permanent state of being. The best word we have for it is 'eternal.' But eternity is not time never ceasing, it is, rather, the absence of time as we know it.

 

I think the answer is the man makes his own decisions but God decides the consequences. Therefore, there is NEVER a decision that God doesn't have "control" of.

skypair

 

Allan, pass me some of that popcorn and I'll join you in watching the show..dog.good thinking:wavey: