RobE said:
I was just wondering if ...... (1)I dropped a rock and (2)it fell to the ground and (3)I knew it would fall............would Open Theism accuse me of making it fall; OR, would they give me the courtesy of recognizing I only allowed it to fall and let nature take its course?
Rob
A rock (inanimate creation) operates under the law of cause and effect. It is predictable unless operated on by an outside force (gravity is constant; friction; acceleration, etc.). If God supernaturally intervenes (or if man naturally intervenes), things can be different than one would normally expect.
This is NOT parallel to animate creation (animals, etc.) which operate under the law of instinct.
Moral creation (man, angels, etc.) does not operate under the law of cause-effect (unless one jumps off a bridge without supernatural intervention). Man is governed by the law of freedom and love.
Hence, the nature of choice is not parallel to the predictable law of cause and effect:
If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contigent, 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; andif uncertain, it must be unknowable.
A certain event will inevitably come to pass, a necessary event must come to pass, but a contigent (free choice) event may or may not come to pass. Contingency is an equal possibility of being and not being.
The future choice of holiness (moral vs cause-effect) or sinfulness is, therefore, a thing now wholly undetermined, and hence an unknowable thing. And being an unknowable thing, its prescience (foreknowledge) involves an absurdity, and hence ignorance thereof necessitates no imperfection in Deity.
A future free act is, previous to its existence, a nothing; the knowing of a nothing is a bald contradiction.
As omnipotence is limited by the possible (see Aquinas who proved this), 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.
Hence, the exhaustive foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is a logical absurdity or contradiction.
Based on past and present knowledge, God or anyone can predict what will happen to the rock WHEN it is dropped. This is different that predicting when and if someone will drop a rock at time x at place y from trillions of years ago. There is nothing causative that would allow foreknowledge of this event before it is contemplated. When things are set in motion, then it becomes a possible object of knowledge.
The future is not there yet. It was not possible to know, trillions of years ago, that I would do this:gijegh0hj]tpawoknssz*9å*åbekjbhjd bnj JIJIJJIIJJI. This was random and unpredictable. Now that the keys are mushed, it is an object of knowledge. Before I did this (out of character), it may be known as possible, but not certain/actual (unless you assume the future is like the past and has already happened...nope). God certainly knows all future possibilities, but in light of His omnicompetence, it is needless for Him to know all future actualities.
Time is the actualization of the potential future into the fixed past (presentism). God is not an 'eternal now' simultaneity. He experiences endless time (duration, sequence, succession). This is one root of the Platonic error that has confused Christian doctrine.
Someone rep me for my effort
