ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

godrulz

Well-known member
Hall of Fame
Jerry Shugart said:
JS: First of all,"with God all things are possible"(Mt.19:26).

RULZ: This does not mean that God can do the logically absurd like creating a rock too big to lift.

JS: And secondly,if the future cannot be known how do you explain the following?:

"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure"(Isa.46:10).

The Lord can declare "the things that are not yet done" because He has a foreknowledge of those things.The verse does not say that He can declare the end from the beginning because He can see some of "the things which are not yet done".

RULZ: This is a favorite verse of Open Theists like Gregory Boyd. Is. 46:11 goes on to say that He will bring about what He has planned....that will I do. He knows some aspects of the future because of His omnicompetent ABILITY, not His foreknowledge. He is able to predetermine and foreknow some things, because He intends to bring them to pass apart from other free moral agents. It is wrong to extrapolate that He brings ALL things to pass or that He knows the future exhaustively. In this context, and for this particular prophecy, He knows because He brings it to pass. Many other moral and mundane things are unknowable and unsettled until man makes an actual choice.

cf. Is. 48:3 "I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I ACTED, and they came to pass."

The context is about proximal prophecies relating to Israel and judgments. It is not a proof text for exhaustive foreknowledge of future contingencies from trillions of years ago. The verse has God's ABILITY, not foreknowledge in mind as the mechanism for how He can know SOME (not all) things about the proximal future. It is illogical for God to know exhaustively every chess move Fisher and Spasky would make zillions of years before they even existed as objects of knowledge. The only way to have this would be a sheerly deterministic universe. It is self-evident that we have genuine freedom to make alternate choices. This is part of what it is to be in the personal and moral image of God.


JS: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?"(Ro.12:33,34).

The Open Theologists claim that they know the mind of the Lord and that they know the ways of the Lord even though Paul says that that "his ways are past finding out".The Open Theologists use verses that are in regard to a narrative in order to attempt to prove their theology despite the fact that their interpreation of those verses directly contradict verses that are in regard to the very nature of the Lord.

RULZ: God wants us to know Him personally and intimately. We cannot understand everything about the infinite God with finite minds, but His revelation does communicate truth about His nature and ways. It is the glory of a king to search out a matter. Calvinism has much to say about who God is and what He does. Open Theism seeks the same thing: to understand God and His ways within the parameters of His knowable revelation in His Word. We do not fully understand the triune nature of God, but we are expected to worship Him in Spirit and truth. Calvinism distorts the revelation of God and makes Him responsible for heinous evil and the damnation of most of the human race that He could save if He would only chose to. A caricature of God is a stumbling block and a barrier to faith for those who are thinking and seek to love and serve a God who is not arbitrary and evil. The problem is not with OTs interpreting verses in a contradictory manner. The problem is that some classical theists are forced to take some straightforward passages figuratively because it contradicts a preconceived theology.

There is a difference between questioning God and His ways in certain circumstances when we see through a glass darkly, and claiming we cannot know basic things about His character and attributes. We know He is loving, faithful, personal, omnipotent, etc. It is not wrong to speculate on the nature of the future and how the eternal God relates to His temporal creation. Open Theists do not claim to know about God exhaustively, but desire to know what is knowable truthfully. If Augustine was unduly influenced by Platonic ideas, we want to get back to solid biblical ground. This is our responsibility. The verse is not a proof text to justify sloppy theology, the Queen of sciences. The study of God is paramount. Sovereignty is rarely mentioned in the Bible, yet it is the crux of Calvinism. The concept is certainly in the Bible, but the definition of how God is sovereign is what is debated (providential vs meticulous control).
 
Last edited:

Agape4Robin

Member
Just because God has Omniscience, does not make Him responsible. Foreknowledge is not pre-determination. God has the vantage point of all eternity, He can see past the limitations of time.
God's "tests" aren't about Him learning about us, but us learning about Him and learning about ourselves in the process.
 

godrulz

Well-known member
Hall of Fame
Agape4Robin said:
Just because God has Omniscience, does not make Him responsible. Foreknowledge is not pre-determination. God has the vantage point of all eternity, He can see past the limitations of time.
God's "tests" aren't about Him learning about us, but us learning about Him and learning about ourselves in the process.


Simple foreknowlege (Arminian) is still problematic from a logical, philosophical viewpoint.

"If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contingent, it may or may not happen, or it may be one of many possibles. And if it may be one of many possibles, it must be uncertain; and if uncertain, it must be unknowable."

Exhaustive foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is a logical contradiction or absurdity. It is not a limitation on omniscience to not know a nothing (the future is not there yet to know). "Eternal now/timelessness" is incoherent. Everlasting duration is the biblical view of eternity. Time is not a thing or a line that can be viewed all at once. Time is unidirectional moving from the potential future into the fixed past through the actual present.

Calvinism is more logical in that determinism would make something knowable and foreknowable in advance. It is problematic in that it negates self-evident libertarian free agency and makes God responsible for heinous evil.
 

lee_merrill

New member
godrulz said:
Calvinism is more logical in that determinism would make something knowable and foreknowable in advance. It is problematic in that it negates self-evident libertarian free agency and makes God responsible for heinous evil.
And there is no responsibility when God sees an evil act about to be commited, and chooses not to stop it? For a greater good, that he sees?

That is the Calvinist view, too...

Blessings,
Lee
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
lee_merrill said:
And there is no responsibility when God sees an evil act about to be commited, and chooses not to stop it? For a greater good, that he sees?

That is the Calvinist view, too...

Blessings,
Lee
This may be what Calvinist say they believe but their theology teaches that God doesn't simply see an evil act about to be committed, He makes that evil event take place by His soveriegn decree as does He decree the so called greater good, which is meaningless because there was never any other possible outcome in the Calvinist world view.

In short, this is not the Calvinist view; their declarations to the contrary not withstanding.

Resting in Him,
Clete
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
Agape4Robin said:
Just because God has Omniscience, does not make Him responsible.
That depends on what is included in that Omniscience.

Foreknowledge is not pre-determination.
Logically it is. With freedom comes the ability to do or to do otherwise. Foreknowledge would eliminate the ability to do otherwise and thus detroy freedom. The result is pre-determination.

God has the vantage point of all eternity, He can see past the limitations of time.
Says who? You? Aristotle? Plato? Who, exactly says that God sees "past the limitations of time"?

God's "tests" aren't about Him learning about us, but us learning about Him and learning about ourselves in the process.
Again, says who? The text says the exact opposite of this? Where are you getting these ideas from? Not the Bible! That much is certain.

Resting in Him,
Clete
 

Delmar

Patron Saint of SMACK
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Clete said:
Says who? You? Aristotle? Plato? Who, exactly says that God sees "past the limitations of time"?


Clete
Don't you watch Star Trek?
 

ChristisKing

New member
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChristisKing

What caused Esau to be hated by God before he was born?

Clete said:
He didn't. He simply loved Jacob more than He loved Esau.

Hmmm....that's not Scriptural:

ROM 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
ChristisKing said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChristisKing

What caused Esau to be hated by God before he was born?



Hmmm....that's not Scriptural:

ROM 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
As I explained it is a figure of speech!

What, did you read that one sentence and completely ignore the whole point, or what?

Do you hate your mother and father?
Do you hate your siblings?
Do you hate you wife and children?
Do you hate yourself?

Yes or no, please.

Resting in Him,
Clete
 

godrulz

Well-known member
Hall of Fame
lee_merrill said:
And there is no responsibility when God sees an evil act about to be commited, and chooses not to stop it? For a greater good, that he sees?

That is the Calvinist view, too...

Blessings,
Lee


There is a difference between delaying justice in His sovereign wisdom, and being the one actually culpable as a perpetrator of evil. Creating free moral agents with the potential vs necessity for evil and not dealing justice the instant evil happens (this would terminate the entire race...game over) is within His sovereign right.
 

godrulz

Well-known member
Hall of Fame
ChristisKing said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChristisKing

What caused Esau to be hated by God before he was born?



Hmmm....that's not Scriptural:

ROM 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

Word studies and IDIOMS must be based on the historical, cultural context of a usage. Your wooden literalism is not the intended meaning of the original writers under the inspiration of the Spirit.
 

ChristisKing

New member
Jerry Shugart said:
ChristisKing,

As you correctly point out we must examine the "context" in order to determine the meaning of the term "all men".

I'm glad you can see the importance of context. In all the examples I gave you from Scripture where the term "all men" was used only 10% meant every single person on earth, the vast majority or 90% represented a very select group of people.

Therefore assuming "all men" represents every single person on earth every time you see that term in Scripture is a very bad assumption. It reminds me of the premill-dispensationists who brag that they take the entire bible literally except when it's not literal... :chuckle:
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
deardelmar said:
Don't you watch Star Trek?

:doh:
Of course! I forgot all about Mr. Spock's "fling around the Sun at high warp" time travel maneuver!


I stand corrected! :bow:





:chuckle:

Resting in Him,
Clete

OH! And umm, Live long and prosper!
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
ChristisKing said:
I'm glad you can see the importance of context. In all the examples I gave you from Scripture where the term "all men" was used only 10% meant every single person on earth, the vast majority or 90% represented a very select group of people.

Therefore assuming "all men" represents every single person on earth every time you see that term in Scripture is a very bad assumption. It reminds me of the premill-dispensationists who brag that they take the entire bible literally except when it's not literal... :chuckle:

And yet that is precisely what you insist must be done with the word "hate"! :think:
 

godrulz

Well-known member
Hall of Fame
ChristisKing said:
Or in other words, uncomfortably inconvienent from your arminian perspective... :chuckle:


The issue is about the sovereign choice of nations for a purpose. You have wrongly extrapolated it, beyond the context, to include election and reprobation of individuals and salvation to support your preconceived theology.

Clete will object to being called an Arminian. He is an Open Theist. I see some aspects of Open Theism as a sub-type of Arminianism, while some aspects of Arminianism could have similarities with Calvinism.
 

Jerry Shugart

Well-known member
godrulz said:
It is illogical for God to know exhaustively every chess move Fisher and Spasky would make zillions of years before they even existed as objects of knowledge.
So it is "illogical" in your mind that the Lord could possess an exhaustive foreknowlege.How "logical" is it that the Lord Jesus Christ is fully and completely Man but at the same time He is fully and completely God?

The Scriptures reveal that the Lord does transcend all the natural laws of man's existence:

"Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off...Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there"(Ps.139:2,7,8).

"Thus saith the LORD; Thus have ye said, O house of Israel: for I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them"(Ez.11:5).

But you believe that the Lord is constrained by "time"."Time" is a law of our being,but there is no Scriptual evidence that the Lord Himself is somehow constrained by "time".
The only way to have this would be a sheerly deterministic universe. It is self-evident that we have genuine freedom to make alternate choices. This is part of what it is to be in the personal and moral image of God.
There is no evidence that the Lord's foreknowledge somehow constricts man's free will.
"If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contingent, it may or may not happen, or it may be one of many possibles. And if it may be one of many possibles, it must be uncertain; and if uncertain, it must be unknowable."
Your conclusions are true according to the wisdom of "finite" minds operating in an environment where "time" is the law of our being (the "condition" under which all created things exist).However,the "eternal" state is the Lord's domain.Therefore it is that His judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out.For eternity is not unlimited time,but the antithesis of time.

No matter how much we might attempt to imagine a state where time does not exist we find that it is futile.Therefore,we cannot make informed judgments concerning the laws in existence in the eternal state or the ways of an eternal God.
God wants us to know Him personally and intimately. We cannot understand everything about the infinite God with finite minds, but His revelation does communicate truth about His nature and ways.
Yes,but I have already conclusively demonstrated that the verses that the Open Thesists use to attempt to support their ideas are in direct conflict with the truths that the Lord reveals to us about HIs nature and ways.
It is the glory of a king to search out a matter. Calvinism has much to say about who God is and what He does. Open Theism seeks the same thing: to understand God and His ways within the parameters of His knowable revelation in His Word.
Within the parameters of His Word?

In fact,the literal interpretations that the Open Thesists put on the anthropomorphic verses directly contradict what the Lord says about HIs very nature.So it is not true that the Open Thesists base their understanding of the Lord's ways within the parameters of His revelation.
We do not fully understand the triune nature of God, but we are expected to worship Him in Spirit and truth. Calvinism distorts the revelation of God and makes Him responsible for heinous evil and the damnation of most of the human race that He could save if He would only chose to.
It seems as if the Open Thesists make the Lord the author and cause of the most evil crime committed by man in history.

You say:
cf. Is. 48:3 "I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I ACTED, and they came to pass."

The context is about proximal prophecies relating to Israel and judgments. It is not a proof text for exhaustive foreknowledge of future contingencies from trillions of years ago. The verse has God's ABILITY, not foreknowledge in mind as the mechanism for how He can know SOME (not all) things about the proximal future.
If it was the Lord's acts that brought the prophecies concerning Israel to fruitation,then He is resonsibe and guilty for the death of the Lord Jesus upon the CRoss:

"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain"(Acts3:23).

It was not the Lord's ability that brought about this wicked act.Instead,He foreknew that it would happen.The guilt belonged to those who crucified the Lord of Glory and not to God.The murderers of Christ were acting in fulfillment of prophecy,and yet their deeds were absolutely their own.Theirs were "wicked hands".and guilt supposes the action of an independent will.

So they who crucified the Lord were fulfilling a divine purpose all the while acting in direct antagonism to the divine will.

No wonder Paul exclaimed:

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?"(Ro.11:33,34).

The Open Thesists think that they know the depth of the Lord's knowledge,and they do not think that it is deep at all.
The problem is that some classical theists are forced to take some straightforward passages figuratively because it contradicts a preconceived theology.
Opponents of the ideas of Open Thesists no not take straightforward passages in a figurative way because they contradict preconceived theology,but instead they do not take verses that are clearly anthropomorphic in a literal way because a literal interpretation of those verses directly contradict what the Lord tells us concerning His nature.
Open Theists do not claim to know about God exhaustively, but desire to know what is knowable truthfully.
The "knowable" which the Open Thesists claim to know about the ways of the Lord directly contradict what the Scriptures reveal about Him.I have already demonstrated that the teaching of the Open Thesists concerning Abraham and the command to slay Isaac is in direct opposition to what the Scriptures say about His nature and abilities.

In His grace,--Jerry
”Dispensationalism Made Easy”
http://midacts.net/studies/shugart-dispensationalism_made_easy.html
 
Last edited:

Jerry Shugart

Well-known member
ChristisKing said:
I'm glad you can see the importance of context. In all the examples I gave you from Scripture where the term "all men" was used only 10% meant every single person on earth, the vast majority or 90% represented a very select group of people.
ChristisKing,

You failed to address the "context" of the verse that says that the Lord would have "all men" to be saved.Here is the most immediate context in regard to the verse we are discussing:

"Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time"(1Tim.2:4-6).

He gave Himself as a ransom for "all" men.But you might ask,How do we know that this is not saying that He gave Himself a ransom for "all types" of men.

To answer that,please consider the following verse:

"Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life"(Ro.5:18).

The words "all men" in the first part of this verse means every single person,and I do not think that you will argure with that.Therefore,the ame words in the second part of the verse must mean the exact thing--every single person.A "free gift" came to every single person,and the results of receiving that free gift is justification before God.

And it is not difficult to understand what this free gift is.It is "reconciliation":

"For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son"(Ro.5:10).

The death of the Lord Jesus paid the ransom for all men:

"And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven"(Col.1:20).

It is "reconciliation" that has been obtained for "all men",and it is "reconciliation" that is the "free gift" that comes upon all men unto justification of life.

Of course all men do not receive the intended result of the free gift,and that is because some men will not come within the reconciliation.That is why we as Christains are to tell men to be reconciled to God:

"Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God"(2Cor.5:20).

The free gift of reconciliation has been provided for "all men" by the Cross,but in order to come within that reconciliation the sinner must believe the gospel of Christ.That is why Paul says that "the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men"(Titus2:11).

The Lord gave Himself a ransom for "all men",and therefore it can be said that the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.

The death of the Lord Jesus provides a propitiation for the sins of all men,and not just the sins all "all types" of men:

"And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world"(1Jn.2:2).

In His grace,--Jerry
”Dispensationalism Made Easy”
http://midacts.net/studies/shugart-dispensationalism_made_easy.html
 

godrulz

Well-known member
Hall of Fame
It is illogical for an omnipotent God to be able to create a rock so heavy He cannot lift it. This is not a deficiency in omnipotence, but a stupid proposition that is illogical and self-contradictory.

"As omnipotence is limited by the possible, so omniscience is limited by the knowable...We do not limit omnipotence by denying its power to do impossible or self-contradictory things. Neither do we limit omniscience by denying its power to foreknow unknowable things."

Saying it is a mystery is lazy thinking.

"A future free act is, prior to its existence, a nothing; the knowing of a nothing is a bald contradiction."

It is simple, once you see it. Until then, the constraints of a one-sided indoctrination make it difficult to work through this. Revelation> reason/logic.
 

ChristisKing

New member
godrulz said:
The issue is about the sovereign choice of nations for a purpose. You have wrongly extrapolated it, beyond the context, to include election and reprobation of individuals and salvation to support your preconceived theology.

Clete will object to being called an Arminian. He is an Open Theist. I see some aspects of Open Theism as a sub-type of Arminianism, while some aspects of Arminianism could have similarities with Calvinism.

The issue is about God's election of individuals, and as Paul says it doesn't matter anymore what nation you are from. It is the exact opposite of what you are saying, nations are no longer the issue at all:

ROM 9:23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
ROM 9:24 Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

You are twisting these verses to mean the exact opposite of their intent in order for them to fit your doctrine.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top