One Question

[steve7150]

Does God know the future, and if he does, he knew who would reject him.
If this is true, then God created people who he knew would end up in hell, but he created them anyway.

if this is so, then i see no difference, in the end, between the calvinist view and the arminian view, because in both cases God created some people of whom He knew they would not be saved.






I don't think eternal hell is scriptural since the consummation of the ages is described by Paul, and it only allows for two views CI or CU.
"Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death. For he has put everything under his feet, but when it says "everything" is put under him , it is obvious that he who puts everything under him is the exception. And when EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO HIM who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all." 1st Cor 15.24-28.

So in either case it certainly is understandable from both God's view and man's view why God did what he did. Since God will be "all in all" in the end, hell and evil are gone.

[Sean]

And I don't care what anyone says; if God knows for certain today what someone will choose tomorrow, then the person's choice is not free tomorrow, whether it feels free or not.

TK

Well then it would seem that many incidents in the bible that God predicted beforehand that required overthrowing of entire nations required the lack of free will. Like the fall of Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, Rome, Jerusalem (twice), the fact that Israel would reject God, ask for a king like all the nations, etc. How did God know all these things if in fact there was nothing to know? He sure did a good job of knowing the unknowable.

Also, I believe people's choice is (at least for the most part) free because I believe God's foreknowledge is passive. In some, perhaps a number of times God actively works throughout history to bring about a desired outcome which certainly can and does limit free choices of man. Put another way, I believe God foreknows what men will freely choose. And in some cases He interviens to limit mans choices. He seems to do this whether or not He can know the future.

To make this case I would point out this passage:

1 Samuel 23:9 When David learned that Saul was plotting against him, he said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod.” 10 David said, “LORD, God of Israel, your servant has heard definitely that Saul plans to come to Keilah and destroy the town on account of me. 11 Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me to him? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? LORD, God of Israel, tell your servant.”

And the LORD said, “He will.”

12 Again David asked, “Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me and my men to Saul?”

And the LORD said, “They will.”

13 So David and his men, about six hundred in number, left Keilah and kept moving from place to place. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he did not go there.


But what God said would happen did not occur. Why not? I thought if God knows what will happen then people's choices are not free? You see, if God actually tells you what will happen, you can take that knowledge and change the future! Interesting, but simple. God knows what will happen, if He decides to tell us what's going to happen we can use this knowledge to change what "should have" happened, just as in the case above. If David would have stayed they would have handed him over to Saul. At least it seems that way to me.

[alastairblake]

If God knows what each person will choose, are they not still meriting the end result? is their choice not a reflection of who they are, and therefore what they deserve?

Is God being mean if he allows someone a free choice, and they choose wrongly, when he lets them suffer a consequence? and he still chose to make them?

[TK]

Alastair wrote:

If God knows what each person will choose, are they not still meriting the end result?

My answer is "no." Because if God (being infallible) knows today that a person will make choice A tomorrow and not choice B, how is the person "free" to choose choice B?

TK

[alastairblake]

My answer is "no." Because if God (being infallible) knows today that a person will make choice A tomorrow and not choice B, how is the person "free" to choose choice B?

but could a person not have fully chosen their choice, uninhibited? and therefore what God knew, was only what the person's will was going to choose choice A? I dont see why God knowing what will happen means that the person who did the deciding was constrained or influenced by God.

Maybe im missing something, but i could see more that take with..... a prophecy tied in. but even then, I believe it could all be knowledge on God's part, without determinism.

I dont think God made Judas do anything. if he DID, then Id think God has guilt in the matter. but I dont think he controled Judas' will.

[TK]

Alastair wrote:

but could a person not have fully chosen their choice, uninhibited? and therefore what God knew, was only what the person's will was going to choose choice A? I dont see why God knowing what will happen means that the person who did the deciding was constrained or influenced by God.

Another way of explaining it is that if God knows today what I will do tomorrow, then I am "locked in" to that course of action because God is infallible. Could I, at the very last second, make choice b instead of choice A? Yes, but if God knows the future infallibly then he also knew I would change my mind at the last second, so the problem still remains.

If God is just guessing today that I am going to make choice A and not choice B tomorrow, then the problem disappears. But anyone can make a guess. The whole "paradox" of free will is the combination of God's infallibility and omniscience mixed with the idea that he knows the future perfectly. Because if He knows the future perfectly, then the future will unfold exactly as He knows it, and in no other way.

TK

[jriccitelli]

There seems' to be only two possible answers to 'how' does God know the future;
1. God can 'see' the future, and this supposes 'it' has happened.
2. God can 'predict' the future, this supposes 'it' has not happened.
Number 1. just moves the question back further and further, to did God 'see' that future?
And if a future happened it must still be happening. Illogical captain.
(And I'm positive that 'quantum parallel universes' are science 'fiction')

Number 2. seems much more logical, because;
A. No matter what degree of freewill you add or allow, it doesn't 'change' Gods 'ability' to predict or manipulate history.
B. Only the outcome will determine how much determinism God has used, and how much freewill has been allowed, or not.
C. It is still certainly plausible that God can either know or predict what creation will do, despite freewill, since He created the neuron, synapse and spirit.
D. The Bible often says 'I will' bring it to pass, 'I will' do it, (And who can thwart His will)
So did God take away our freewill by putting the tree in the garden?
Does a test remove freewill? If I tell my kids to not eat the cookies in the cookie jar, yet I know they will, I simply predict their will. As I get older things get much more predictable, wouldn't infinite wisdom be able to do so, and more?
I think God created man knowing that freewills are predicable, and in the 'end' it will be clear 'to all'; that given a free chance to do good, freewills still choose their own selfish destructive purposes, and yet 'even so' God has us outsmarted, outthought and purposed, to create a new man, and for His sake.

So in that day we will all know that God alone is to be trusted.

[alastairblake]

Another way of explaining it is that if God knows today what I will do tomorrow, then I am "locked in" to that course of action because God is infallible. Could I, at the very last second, make choice b instead of choice A? Yes, but if God knows the future infallibly then he also knew I would change my mind at the last second, so the problem still remains.
TK

Our wills only operate in the present moment, so even though God KNOWS what I am going to do in the next 5 mins, that does not mean that he has shaped those decisions I was going to make... Why is it not like examples of time machines in movies, where a person goes into the future, observes a situation unnoticed, comes back to the present, and those people he viewed, still made the same decisions 100% on their own wills, without the time traveler's influence?

I just dont see how knowing something about someone else's choices and future does the "locking" into place. God is knowing the future, because the future plays itself out. if the will makes decisions, and it determines the future, it does so with one specific outcome to each action. looking back on what happened in the past does not mean that I influence, or shape, or lock in the past when I actively observe it. (I guess I see God's knowledge as full, and as if he was looking back from the end of time. a hindsight approach, that views what happened, where he was actively and not actively involved/determining things.)

[Paidion]

Well, here's Paidion "chiming in".

The meat of the matter is not God's omniscience, but whether what appears to be statements about the future, have truth value. I may utter the sentence, "I will go to town tomorrow." Does this mean the statement has truth value NOW? Is it either true of false NOW? If the sentence is indeed a logical statement, then it is either true or false NOW. If it is true NOW, then I CANNOT refrain from going to town tomorrow. If it is false NOW, then I cannot go to town tomorrow. In either case, there's something I cannot do. This implies that I do not have the power to choose. But I DO have the power to choose, and this implies that the sentence,"I will go to town tomorrow," does NOT have present truth value. It is neither true nor false. Therefore no one can KNOW that it is true now, nor can anyone know that it is false now. For one of the conditions of knowing, according to epistomology, is that the thing known must be true. For example, if I KNOW that my wife is now upstairs in my house, then she IS upstairs in my house. If she is not upstairs, then I did not KNOW it; I only THOUGHT I knew it. When I uttered the sentence, "I will go to town tomorrow," I was not making a statement about the future. What I was actually doing was making a statement of my intention. Though the sentence, "I will go to town tomorrow," has the FORM of a logical statement (A logical statement has truth value), it is NOT, in fact, a logical statement, but a statement of intention. Or if I utter the sentence, "The Winnipeg Jets will win the game," I am not making a statement about the future. I am making a prediction.

Conclusion: Sentences which appear to be statements about the future, are not, in fact, statements about the future at all. They are either statements of intention, or predictions of the future. Therefore the "meat" of these "statements" have no truth value, and thus cannot be known.

God has made many predictions. Because God is omniscient, He knows ALL the content of reality. But the future is not reality. It does not exist. It cannot be known. There is nothing to know!

[alastairblake]

Well, here's Paidion "chiming in".

The meat of the matter is not God's omniscience, but whether what appears to be statements about the future, have truth value. I may utter the sentence, "I will go to town tomorrow." Does this mean the statement has truth value NOW? Is it either true of false NOW? If the sentence is indeed a logical statement, then it is either true or false NOW. If it is true NOW, then I CANNOT refrain from going to town tomorrow. If it is false NOW, then I cannot go to town tomorrow. In either case, there's something I cannot do. This implies that I do not have the power to choose. But I DO have the power to choose, and this implies that the sentence,"I will go to town tomorrow," does NOT have present truth value. It is neither true nor false. Therefore no one can KNOW that it is true now, nor can anyone know that it is false now. For one of the conditions of knowing, according to epistomology, is that the thing known must be true. For example, if I KNOW that my wife is now upstairs in my house, then she IS upstairs in my house. If she is not upstairs, then I did not KNOW it; I only THOUGHT I knew it. When I uttered the sentence, "I will go to town tomorrow," I was not making a statement about the future. What I was actually doing was making a statement of my intention. Though the sentence, "I will go to town tomorrow," has the FORM of a logical statement (A logical statement has truth value), it is NOT, in fact, a logical statement, but a statement of intention. Or if I utter the sentence, "The Winnipeg Jets will win the game," I am not making a statement about the future. I am making a prediction.

Conclusion: Sentences which appear to be statements about the future, are not, in fact, statements about the future at all. They are either statements of intention, or predictions of the future. Therefore the "meat" of these "statements" have no truth value, and thus cannot be known.

God has made many predictions. Because God is omniscient, He knows ALL the content of reality. But the future is not reality. It does not exist. It cannot be known. There is nothing to know!

Doesn't the Bible give statements of possible consequence, but also of facts of the future?

" if you do this, then this will happen" .... like reactionary statements from God to Israel, or Christians, or anyone else.

but doesn't the Bible also give specific statements, in prophesy, that are not statements of intent, like "I will go to town tomorrow.", but more like "Micah 5:2 But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." which was not a statement of intent, but spoken as a definite future happening?
Stated in a way that implies that it is to be understood as ... for sure?

So God knew that... 700 years before it happened. So, he either determined the things he makes statements on, or he knew that they would happen without determining them?

I guess I just see knowing and actively controlling something as things that can exist separately. and that knowing does not mean you play any part in shaping the thing you know about.