Post by tbxi on Nov 18, 2007 18:07:52 GMT -5
admin said:
Do you think that God, in the classical view, does not also know hypothetical possibilities about the future?
Possibilities can only exist within an open system. Possibilities consist of only what is possible. And if it is possible, then it must be open. But within a settled system, there can be no possibilities but only certainties. If all is foreknown as certain, then all is settled, and if all is settled, then nothing is possible or open.
You are equivocating on the terms "possible" and "hypothetical". They do not have the same meaning. There is indeed no contradiction between God meticulously ordaining the entire future and God knowing what would have happened if He did things differently.
If God, from all of eternity, foreknew every event as a certainty, then there have never been any possibilities but only certainties. Eternal foreknowledge of all events as certainties means all is certain. And therefore nothing contrary is possible.
More of the same.
God could neither make plans, change plans, or even have possible plans. Everything was predetermined, without God, from all of eternity. Because if God foreknew all events as certain, from all of eternity, then there was never a time in which God could have planned or predetermined it. If all events are eternally intuitive to God, God is an eternal observer but not a dynamic director.
Begging the question based on your finite, unscriptural understanding of God and time. You have done this before and I've pointed it out - your argument basically reduces to "if God was outside of time, then His existence would not be fully comprehensible to time-bound creatures (which is the same thing as when you try to prove by contradiction that God resides within time), and therefore God must not be timeless." It is an example of circular reasoning.
But in the bible, God makes plans (which presupposes openness), changes plans (which presupposes openness) and is capable of making possible plans (which presupposes openness).
And it says God has physical body parts, too. But I guess we'd only end up being Mormons if we really read it with such a shallow hermeneutic and if we completely ignored the concept of anthropomorphism/anthropopathism.
God made plans when He predetermined Christ should be crucified. This presupposes that it was not determined until God determined it.
More question-begging. If God was *eternal* in the classic sense this would simply be Him "stepping into" and interacting with our universe in a temporal sense, there is no problem.
God changed plans when He repented of destroying Nineveh. This presupposes that God's mind is not eternally and exhaustively settled since He changes His mind sometimes.
Begging the question
And God is capable of making possible plans since Christ said all things are possible for the Father and He could pray for 12 Legions of Angels and they would come if He wanted to.
I have responded to this many times and my response is never actually tackled. Sigh.
But if God foreknew all events as certain from all of eternity, God could neither determine nor avoid. He could not determine any plans because they were already foreknown from all eternity past. And He could not avoid them because He accurately foreknew them from all eternity past.
Do you have a text file where you keep a bunch of sound-bite arguments and just copy and paste them into these threads? This is not interaction with Calvinist arguments. Comments like this betray a lack of understanding of the Calvinist perspective. God foreknows the future because it's predestined - it is an "if and only if" relationship. You don't have the one without the other, and since my view would hold that God is timeless, there is no problem, and your attempt to say that God would be somehow frozen by His own choices doesn't work.
Very plainly, the logical conclusion of exhaustive eternal foreknowledge is an incompetent god who isn't able to make or modify any plans, who has no control over the course of history, and is rendered absolutely powerless and is therefore no god at all.
A hasty and blasphemous conclusion, reached by means of many fallacious arguments stacked on top of each other, all of which have already been dealt with on different occasions. There is nothing new here.