God's Foreknowledge

[Guest]

If you're interested...

A dispatch from Eastern Nazarene College.
John Wilson | June 19, 2007 1:57PM

I wish that many of the combatants in the open theology wars could be sitting in on this conversation at Eastern Nazarene College, which started this week and will run until July 6. Of course, some of them ARE here, not least John Sanders and Greg Boyd, along with a nicely varied group of theologians and philosophers and odds and ends (myself included), invited by Tom Oord of Northwest Nazarene University. It's a conversation mostly between people who to some degree or another are sympathetic to the open view, with some guests who hold other views. Today, for instance, Tom Flint from Notre Dame presented the Molinist ("middle knowledge") position with clarity, humor, and a fine sense of proportion. After all, what we share as believers is more important than what divides us. Tonight he'll debate Bill Hasker on the subject, "Does God Know the Future?" Clark Pinnock (whom I first read when I was in high school) is a participant as well, and it has been a pleasure to meet him and his wife Dorothy. If most of the participants share some affinity with the open view, they nevertheless differ in many other ways. Some are quite sympathetic to--but not uncritical of--process thought. Others--I am one--are allergic to that movement. Vocabularies are quite different too. Can the analytic philosopher and the Wesleyan theologian and the philosopher of science find a lingua franca? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is no mushniness--disagreements may be quite sharp--but neither is there any huffing and puffing. Altogether this is--so far--a model conversation.

[Guest]

Somehow I lost track of this thread..I am working on a response then I am done, thanks.

Mark

[Guest]

Hi Mark,

Quote:
Ah, philosophy. Not just any old philosophy either, but an argument made popular by atheists against Christianity!


I am aware of this. I am just asking. You are the one that says knowledge of future choices precludes freewill. I am just asking why this does not apply to God. I am not sure I see a way out of it.

If we embrace Open Theism, we embrace an entirely different God. Just like the Mormons do for example. They have this god who was created and there is this infinite regression stuff etc.

God created time.

Time is part of creation, but God is not part of time. I am really trying to make this as simple as I can.

Time is like an “eternal now” for God.
For us it is past, present and future.
That means that everything that happens in time operates according to how God creates it.
Therefore God is not subject to time, creation or any concept related therein.

This means that God has a will that is really free.
It was free before He created.
It is free whilst time itself is unfolding, with everything that happens in it.
It is free when God re-creates the New Heavens and Earth and free for all eternity.

No-where does a created thing like "time" put any constraint upon whom created it.

Open Theism has abandoned that God and erected an altogether different deity.
A god who is subject to and constrained by what he has created, including this thing we call time.

Now, your question above is fatally flawed, for your presupposition regarding God is wrong to start with, therefore you entangle yourself up in the implications of the ideas you are accepting.

Just because we are constrained in time by the set laws, boundaries and contingencies that are part of this creation and time, and therefore affects our volition and choices, does not equate to God having to be subject to the same laws inherent within creation.

Such an idea negates the very primary difference between Creator and creature, not to mention the Bible’s epistemology concerning God and creation.

If you are struggling with this, it is not because God is not clear regarding these issues in scripture, but because you are receiving some bad teaching, especially from Open Theists.

In order to hold onto this thing called libertarian free will, there is only really one direction the consistent Arminian can head in, and that is to re-define the very nature of God with regards to His creation.

But it is even more subtle than even that, because this idea cloaks itself under the umbrella of God "self-imposed" constraint, and even tries to use scripture to validate such a preposterous re-defining of the God of the Bible.

No error ever comes blatantly in your face! It always comes hiding in its subtlety, and deceives with a smile on its face, whilst presenting scripture to back up the deception.


More soon.

Mark

[Guest]

Just an after thought.

If I am right to call out this heresy, as I believe I am, then those of you calling me immature and slanderous shall have a lot to answer for.

Needed to be said.

Mark

[Guest]

tartanarmy , I never called you a heretic -- one question, you said:

God created time.

Time is part of creation, but God is not part of time. I am really trying to make this as simple as I can.

That's pretty dogmatic -- what makes you think God created time?

[Guest]

ONE DANGER OF DENYING GOD’S FOREKNOWLEDGE OF HUMAN CHOICES

Undermining the New Covenant

One very old false teaching that reemerges periodically in the history of the church is that God can’t foreknow responsible human choices. The reasoning goes like this: Choices are free and “free” means self-created, and “self-created” means outside of knowability before the choices are created. Not even God can know a “nothing.” And nothing is what choices are before they are made.

The philosophical presuppositions here abound: 1) that freedom means self-creating; 2) that human choices are free in this sense; 3) that an infinite God cannot know the uncreated, and so on. This old false teaching appears to be philosophically driven. It is not biblically demanded. One recent exponent of the old error spoke of “doctrinal moves that logic required and I believed Scripture permitted me to make (Clark Pinnock, The Grace of God, the Will of Man: A case for Arminianism [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990], 18-19, emphasis added). You see the order: logic requires and Scripture permits. Something is out of order here, when logic is the requiring king and Scripture gives yielding endorsement.

Denying God’s foreknowledge of responsible human choices has never been affirmed by the church as a legitimate part of historic Christian orthodoxy. Both Calvinists and Arminians historically have affirmed God’s exhaustive, definite foreknowledge. John Calvin wrote, “[God] foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take place: (Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 23, 6). Jacobus Arminius wrote, “[God] has known from eternity which person should believe…and which should persevere through subsequent grace” (Carl Bangs, Arminius [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971], 219, 352). Denying God’s foreknowledge of human choices has not been part of Christian orthodoxy.

Among the many reasons to avoid this old error is that it tends to undermine the foundations of the new covenant. The new covenant was predicted by Moses and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It was inaugurated and purchased by the death of Jesus (Luke 22:20). And Paul was a “minister of the new covenant” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

The essence of the new covenant is that God undertakes to see that the people of the covenant fulfill its conditions of faith and obedience. In the Old Covenant of the Law given at Mt. Sinai, grace was offered (Exodus 34:6-7) and the obedience that comes from faith was demanded. But to most of the people, no transforming grace was given. “To this day the LORD has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4).

But in the new covenant the promise is, “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart…to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). “I [the Lord] shall give them one heart, and shall put a new spirit within them. And I shall take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances, and do them….And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:27, emphasis added). “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it” (Jeremiah 31:33). “I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me” (Jeremiah 32:40 emphasis added).

In other words, the new covenant is the basis of our hope that—frail and fickle as we are—we will indeed persevere in faith and be saved. It is our ground of assurance that God will “keep [us] from stumbling, and make [us] stand in the presence of His glory, blameless and great joy” (Jude 1:24).

But consider what becomes of this precious hope of the new covenant if God cannot foreknow responsible human choices. The entire fabric of the Covenant unravels. The foundations of it crumble. The new covenant is the promise that God will work to secure the holiness of his people. He is at work in us to will and to do his good pleasure; and he is “working in us that which is pleasing in His sight” (Philippians 2:13; Hebrews 13:21). But the old error undermines this very hope by saying God cannot do that, for if he did, he would foreknow our choices, which, it is claimed, he cannot.

Therefore, since our final salvation hangs on the fulfillment of new covenant promises, and since the blood of Jesus purchased the fulfillment of these promises, the undermining of the new covenant promise is an injury to the cross of Christ and a weakening of the work of the Spirit in our lives. May God protect us from the revival of old error and help us cherish the precious, empowering promises of the new covenant.

Taste and See, pp.211-213, John Piper

and yeah, God created time.

Blessings in Christ,

Haas

[Guest]

Man, I thought all professing xtians believed that!
I could be casting pearls here it seems.

Mark

[Guest]

Man, I thought all professing xtians believed that!
I could be casting pearls here it seems.

I don't say it out of disbelief, and am no swine, sir! However, if one makes a dogmatic statement that is at the heart of his premise, one should be free to ask politely for an explanation of why he believes his premise. One should have reasons for his Faith even back to his main premise. For example, the naturalist's biggest problem is his lack of answer for the first cause question. If you honestly believe something, you must deal with your first cause or main premise.

I ask because your view of time and understanding of exactly what the future means is at the root of the open vs. closed future debate, and if Scripture answered that question without resort to philosophy I would be most interested in that scriptural evidence.

A seeker of truth with honest questions is not a swine.

Darin

[Guest]

mark-

when i presented CS Lewis's view (somewhere up there) that God is "outside time" and therefore the past present and future is "now" to Him, you poo-pooed that idea (see your 6/13, 10:10 am post)

Now you seem to be accepting it. What gives?

TK

[Guest]

Time is part of creation, but God is not part of time. I am really trying to make this as simple as I can.

Thanks bud. I'm a pretty simple guy.

Time is like an “eternal now” for God.
For us it is past, present and future.
That means that everything that happens in time operates according to how God creates it.
Therefore God is not subject to time, creation or any concept related therein.

Does God make decisions? I am assuming you think that He did. Like how He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, etc.

Did He know that He would make said choice before He made it?

If so, then how was His decision free? (according to your presupposition about foreknowledge).

The bible show God acting in time. He often sets conditions for His decisions. If you repent x will happen, if not, y will happen.

Does He know in this scenario whether or not these people will repent? Of course. So He acts in time, to punish or reward these people. According to your presuppositions, His knowledge of this action, in time, means that He does not have free will.

I'm not saying that I have the answer. I don't think that it's open theism, but like many things regarding God's nature, I am afraid it's a mystery. And that's fine by me.

By the way I'm not arguing for open theism here. You seem to imply that I am "embracing" it, when it hadn't even crossed my mind.

God bless,