A reforming Calvinist's corporate elction questions

[Singalphile]

PJ wrote:

...since I took the time to list these (from the top of my head) for you to deal with some or most of them so others can judge (like SinglePhile) for themselves...

I’m sorry I did not mean to reply that ‘Open Theists don’t read their Bibles’ its people like SinglePhile who are being influenced by ‘Open Theism’ who have not spent 40-years reading and studying the Scriptures.

I have not read anything by you or anyone that refutes the idea that God chose to create an "open future" for us vis-a-vis Himself. The first part of mattrose's last post is a reasonable and adequate response to your previous posts, IMO. I'm not aware of any Biblical text that proves that all of what we call "the future" is a part of everything that God knows and that He knows it the same way that I know my name (like it's just there in my mind and I can't do anything about it).

PJ wrote:
Well I’m not going to play Clinton’s “is” game,...

You may not agree, but I think this discussion about God's nature and reality is kind of a game. This is interesting and thought provoking, but it is, IMO, actually impossible for us to understand how God thinks and experiences our reality. (I emphasize that sentence b/c it is the only opinion of mine in this post that I really believe and would argue to be true.) We can't fully comprehend the "mind" of God just as a dog can't comprehend our minds (and vice versa). God isn't like some really, really smart man like "the Mormon God", as you say.

You might respond, "Yes, but we do know for sure that God knows everything about everything that we call the future." Well, perhaps, but I don't yet see that as necessarily true based on Scripture.

From my limited human perspective, it would be a horrible existence to "know" (without having to think about or turn my attention to) every detail about everything that will ever happen. From my perspective, that would mean never having a real relationship or interaction with anyone, never being able to learn something or be pleasantly surprised or entertained by something or someone, and so on. It would mean that I "knew" a long time ago everything everyone else will ever say or do, which would mean that I "knew" a long time ago everything that I will ever say or do. How boring! And it doesn't make a lot of sense from our perspective. Right? Or is that just me?

Of course, there are lots of things that I believe to be true even though I don't understand them and they don't make sense to me. That's okay.

But it makes me think that maybe God chose to create us for the purpose of having a real relationship like the kind that we think that we have with Him, and maybe that involved Him in some way creating an open future that even He does not ponder unless He wants to as He chooses at any time. Sounds reasonable to me. It doesn't limit God. He can know (or perceive, understand, come to know, realize, etc.) anything He wants to when He wants to, I think. We humans are not able to do that, but far be it from me to conclude what all God can or cannot do.

All acknowledge (I think), that God acts and expresses Himself in the Bible as if He is actually responding and relating in an "open" fashion with people.
Yeah, I suppose He (or the Biblical writers) might just be pretending or dumbing it down for our sake, but that strikes me as a pretty lame explanation in most of the many passages where it must be used.

PJ wrote:
I just want to make it clear to people like SinglePhile that it is not possible to interpret Scriptures several different ways, ...

That has not been made clear to me.

[PapaJ]

I was surprised to see you replied so quick with so much to say and it sounds like you have had a bit of time to think through some of these questions or that someone have spent a lot of time convincing you of this perspective. Sorry for taking so long to get back on this with exception of the last paragraph I wrote the rest back in October. I’ve been working 60 to 80 hours per week in Oct and Nov. I’m up working in Paso Robles and it’s a rainy day.

Before I started understanding Calvinism from their perspective I had never thought through many of the points you have brought up. I would say some three years into my transforming journey I was very convinced the Calvinist TULIP was correct, so I guess I was a junior Calvinist for a period of time and it sounds like you might be at that place with Open Theism or farther.

Let me say first I’ve never before arriving here wrote anything against Open Theism, since I’ve never had a face to face conversation with anyone about their Open Theism. It is why I asked Matt to deal with specifics, not in generalities. I want to see what he has since this is a theorized concept that the Scriptures do not directly deal with. For that reason the things I wrote do not speak directly to a theory constructed to refute another erroneous theory. Hey I’m not even sure what IMO means.

This is what I liked about Steve Gregg, since he did not learn the Scriptures from a structured organization that developed its existence from ideas in the Bible it misunderstood. This is why I developed an example from a Biblical misunderstanding that can be logically thought through. If we don’t come to the correct conclusion we end up creating unnecessary solutions to problems that do not exist.

I’m going to have to guess to what IMO means, I think I commented on that abbreviation last time.

Yes it is a sad game when people twist the Scriptures like Clinton did with his word game, but the Scriptures are the mind of God and there are things (including the future of individuals) God does not speak about. The truth is people in general (professing Christians & pagans) don’t want to know God’s Word, they want to know their own future; this is why religious people, including professing Christians are into astrology, man centered religion including churches that claim to be Christian.

Sorry but your reference to b/c also went over my head, I looked back to what we both posted earlier looking for something, but I must have missed it.

Even though I agree with you that we can’t fully comprehend God’s mind, I’m only concerned about what He has revealed instead of theorizing how God would deal with our inaccurate presuppositions about Him or His purpose and plan for His creation. An example would be God’s promises to the descendants of Abraham through Jacob, when God told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations: Dispensational people interpret it one way and Reformed people twist it another way; both spiritualizing the promise by saying they are ‘spiritual Israel’ and the other group spiritualizing with a parenthetical twist, neither taking it literal. Once the Reformed group followed their false presupposition it led them to its natural conclusion that their election had to precede Israel’s election and I hope you would agree with me that their view is not Biblical. I won’t attempt to guess what your understanding of that promise is, but if its interpretation is not what the Bible clearly says, then why substitute the traditional Hebrew understanding for figurative theories. Theorist attempt to replace those promises with a New Covenant twist, but it is interesting that Paul did not clarify any changes when he spoke of his Jewish brethren in Romans 9:1-5 or as he quoted all the OT prophets leading to Romans 11:26, 27.

Actually I’m not saying God knows everything about everything we call the future either, unless the Bible says so. Now I see examples of where God revealed some things to Joseph about his future and it got him in trouble with his brothers then after many years it came to pass, not as one event but for years.

I agree with you that it would be a horrible existence to know every detail about everything that will ever happen for anyone, including ourselves. It’s a good thing that God is God, and not we for He knew all that Jesus would go through before the earth was created and even when He saw the failures of those He blessed, Christ died for our sins, why? Because He first loved us, showing us that love as He gave His life for us. Now when we see the truth He revealed in the OT, with hundreds of years to change His mind it is amazing that He still desires to have a relationship with us. So I will ask Him when I arrive if He ever got bored. I know it does not make sense from our perspective, but we don’t have the mind of God.
Last Paragraph

I might agree with “Biblical writers) might just be pretending or dumbing it down for our sake” but we don’t see that in just one book written by a human author dumbing it down. God had to write it to transcend the time when it was written, for readers hundreds of years ago, and for today and this is what makes the Bible timeless. So I would say it was not lame, but a way to be relevant to and in every generation.

I don’t think I can make this clear to everyone, I think this comes of faith and from that inward revelation of the Holy Spirit.

[Singalphile]

PJ, thank you for the response (despite being so busy!). I appreciate the dialogue and sharing with fellow followers of Jesus here, most of whom - like you - seem to know a lot more than me. That's primarily why I'm here. I hope no one ever loses out on sleep or family-time or whatever because of my little musings.

"b/c" = "because" Example: I ate the food b/c I was hungry.
IMO = "in my opinion" (IMHO = "in my humble opinion")

I don't have a formulated opinion about God’s promises to the descendants of Abraham through Jacob. That is a bit over my head at the moment.

PapaJ wrote:
It’s a good thing that God is God, and not we for He knew all that Jesus would go through before the earth was created and even when He saw the failures of those He blessed, Christ died for our sins, why? Because He first loved us, showing us that love as He gave His life for us. Now when we see the truth He revealed in the OT, with hundreds of years to change His mind it is amazing that He still desires to have a relationship with us. So I will ask Him when I arrive if He ever got bored. I know it does not make sense from our perspective, but we don’t have the mind of God.

Amen and praise God! Then we will know fully. Now we just speculate.

And for the record, I do not call myself an open theist. My whole knowledge of the concept is only Wikipedia-level, after all. I just don't yet know of any major problems with it.