elected4ever
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Godrulz
On what scriptural bases do you make this statement? Did God have another plan?
ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1
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Philetus
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Godrulz,
Hold down the fort. I've missed you the last few hours. And thanks for you posts. I've finished Boyd and Sanders. There is a lot for honest consideration there. The God Who Risks is a very good treatment of the question being presented here and you reflect the view well. What an awesome God we are privileged to know and serve.
Philetus
Hold down the fort. I've missed you the last few hours. And thanks for you posts. I've finished Boyd and Sanders. There is a lot for honest consideration there. The God Who Risks is a very good treatment of the question being presented here and you reflect the view well. What an awesome God we are privileged to know and serve.
Philetus
NewStenographer
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Forgive me for not reading the first 98 pages of the thread, but the original post merely asks for my opinion, so I shall now give it.
First, I shall summarize my points, because I know that many will be unwilling to read all of this.
1. The understanding of time that we get from physics falsifies the claim that the future is not real.
2. Relativity accurately states that there is no absolute time, just as there is no absolute length, no "origin" in the universe (Notice that I said "in" and not "of." I use the term in the sense of a coordinate system).
3. Quantum mechanics demonstrates that the future can, through the non-locality of spacetime, influence or "clarify" the past.
Note: You should not expect for these claims to conform to the "common sense" you have formed from daily life. They do not, but they are true nonetheless.
To claim that the future is nonexistent is to reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of time. I regret that I missed out on the absolute time discussion, as my remarks are pertinent to that thread as well.
Einstein's special relativity tells us that the speed of light is invariant in all inertial reference frames -- in all "laboratories" or places that are moving with constant velocity with respect to one another. As a result, we discover that many of the things we once thought were invariant. For instance, SR implies the relativity of simultaneity -- two events that take place simultaneously in one reference frame do not necessarily take place simultaneously in a different frame. Allow me to provide a particularly fun example.
Imagine a train traveling in a certain direction at a certain speed. To amplify the effect, let the speed be a significant fraction of c, the speed of light (say, 0.866c). Now, imagine that there is a light bulb precisely in the center of the train. On each end of the train is a set of photoreactive explosives. The light bulb releases a single pulse of light, which travels outward in both (and all other) directions at c. Alice, who is standing on the train, would see the light pulse hit both sets of explosives at the same time, and she would see both ends of the train explode at the same time. You see, to Alice, the train is not moving, because it is not moving relative to her own motion. Bob, however, is standing on the ground near the tracks, and in his reference frame, the train is moving. Therefore, he sees the front of the train "running away" from the light pulse and the back end getting closer to it. Therefore, he would argue that the back end explodes first, because the speed of light is invariant. Because there are no special or correct inertial frames, both people are right. One cannot categorically state that two things separated by space happen at the same moment in time.
I say all of that to say this: time cannot be absolute. The problems that Mr. Enyart and others have with relativity seem to me to stem from his refusal to abandon absolute time. Let's examine time dilation without clocks, to avoid undue confusion. Muons are a kind of subatomic particle with a certain, very short half-life. That is, it does not take very long at all for them to decay into other, more stable particles. In experiments, scientists have measured this half-life when the particle was at rest in the lab frame. They have also measured the half-life when the particle was moving at very high speeds in the lab frame. They found in all cases that the muons "lived" longer when they were going faster. If you still don't believe me, believe this: the GPS system, which can determine your position within a few meters, takes General and Special Relativity into account in the calculations that govern its operation.
This may all seem to be beside the point, but now we have established, I hope, that we cannot speak of such things as absolute time, and thus what I see as the future is the past to some observer. For further and more lucid discussion of this and more exciting relativistic consequences on a technical level, see any entry-level physics text that includes modern topics. For a lay approach, see The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Elegant Universe, or A Brief History of Time, to name a few.
Even more bizarre is what we learn from quantum mechanics. Let's consider what is widely known as the double-slit experiment. Set up an opaque screen in which two small slits have been cut very close together. Shine light (preferably a laser) at the slits, and you will get an interference pattern -- there will be light and dark regions. Cover one of the slits, and the interference pattern goes away and you get a normal distribution of photon impacts on the sensor. Now, turn down the intensity of the laser so that it is only emitting one photon at a time. When you leave both slits open, you still get the interference pattern. That's right, the photon doesn't just go through one slit or the other, there is interference. Now, add a sensor that does not interfere with the path of the photon but does record whether it travels through one or the other. The interference vanishes. Turn off the sensor, and it reappears. Finally, create an experiment in which sometimes the sensor is on and sometimes it is off. Make sure that the sensor decides this after the light has supposedly passed. If the sensor is on, there will be no interference. If it is off, there will be. Scientists expect that this will hold true, even if the "decision" to go through one slit or the other is made many years prior to the action of the sensor.
The preceding is not intended to be an argument; I am reporting results from actual experiments, as described in FotC. What can we infer from these experiments? The future shapes the present and the past.
Finally, there is the simple fact that time is no more than one of the dimensions of the universe, just like length or width. Therefore, time is a part of the universe. I doubt that anyone here would argue that God is bound by location in space. He is omnipresent. Why, then, should we believe that God experiences time in the same way that we do? He is not a physical part of this universe. He created the universe and time with it (however He chose to do so).
As a final note, many (particularly those who don't really believe in God) claim that things like quantum uncertainty (the fact that it is impossible to know certain related quantities with complete accuracy) suggest that determinism is completely fictitious, that even God cannot know with complete certainty what will happen, although he could know the exact probabilities involved. I do not have a satisfactory answer to this challenge, but I believe there is one, and my belief is not unfounded. There are some scientists who are beginning to wonder whether or not quantum mechanics can be made deterministic again through certain esoteric methods.
First, I shall summarize my points, because I know that many will be unwilling to read all of this.
1. The understanding of time that we get from physics falsifies the claim that the future is not real.
2. Relativity accurately states that there is no absolute time, just as there is no absolute length, no "origin" in the universe (Notice that I said "in" and not "of." I use the term in the sense of a coordinate system).
3. Quantum mechanics demonstrates that the future can, through the non-locality of spacetime, influence or "clarify" the past.
Note: You should not expect for these claims to conform to the "common sense" you have formed from daily life. They do not, but they are true nonetheless.
To claim that the future is nonexistent is to reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of time. I regret that I missed out on the absolute time discussion, as my remarks are pertinent to that thread as well.
Einstein's special relativity tells us that the speed of light is invariant in all inertial reference frames -- in all "laboratories" or places that are moving with constant velocity with respect to one another. As a result, we discover that many of the things we once thought were invariant. For instance, SR implies the relativity of simultaneity -- two events that take place simultaneously in one reference frame do not necessarily take place simultaneously in a different frame. Allow me to provide a particularly fun example.
Imagine a train traveling in a certain direction at a certain speed. To amplify the effect, let the speed be a significant fraction of c, the speed of light (say, 0.866c). Now, imagine that there is a light bulb precisely in the center of the train. On each end of the train is a set of photoreactive explosives. The light bulb releases a single pulse of light, which travels outward in both (and all other) directions at c. Alice, who is standing on the train, would see the light pulse hit both sets of explosives at the same time, and she would see both ends of the train explode at the same time. You see, to Alice, the train is not moving, because it is not moving relative to her own motion. Bob, however, is standing on the ground near the tracks, and in his reference frame, the train is moving. Therefore, he sees the front of the train "running away" from the light pulse and the back end getting closer to it. Therefore, he would argue that the back end explodes first, because the speed of light is invariant. Because there are no special or correct inertial frames, both people are right. One cannot categorically state that two things separated by space happen at the same moment in time.
I say all of that to say this: time cannot be absolute. The problems that Mr. Enyart and others have with relativity seem to me to stem from his refusal to abandon absolute time. Let's examine time dilation without clocks, to avoid undue confusion. Muons are a kind of subatomic particle with a certain, very short half-life. That is, it does not take very long at all for them to decay into other, more stable particles. In experiments, scientists have measured this half-life when the particle was at rest in the lab frame. They have also measured the half-life when the particle was moving at very high speeds in the lab frame. They found in all cases that the muons "lived" longer when they were going faster. If you still don't believe me, believe this: the GPS system, which can determine your position within a few meters, takes General and Special Relativity into account in the calculations that govern its operation.
This may all seem to be beside the point, but now we have established, I hope, that we cannot speak of such things as absolute time, and thus what I see as the future is the past to some observer. For further and more lucid discussion of this and more exciting relativistic consequences on a technical level, see any entry-level physics text that includes modern topics. For a lay approach, see The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Elegant Universe, or A Brief History of Time, to name a few.
Even more bizarre is what we learn from quantum mechanics. Let's consider what is widely known as the double-slit experiment. Set up an opaque screen in which two small slits have been cut very close together. Shine light (preferably a laser) at the slits, and you will get an interference pattern -- there will be light and dark regions. Cover one of the slits, and the interference pattern goes away and you get a normal distribution of photon impacts on the sensor. Now, turn down the intensity of the laser so that it is only emitting one photon at a time. When you leave both slits open, you still get the interference pattern. That's right, the photon doesn't just go through one slit or the other, there is interference. Now, add a sensor that does not interfere with the path of the photon but does record whether it travels through one or the other. The interference vanishes. Turn off the sensor, and it reappears. Finally, create an experiment in which sometimes the sensor is on and sometimes it is off. Make sure that the sensor decides this after the light has supposedly passed. If the sensor is on, there will be no interference. If it is off, there will be. Scientists expect that this will hold true, even if the "decision" to go through one slit or the other is made many years prior to the action of the sensor.
The preceding is not intended to be an argument; I am reporting results from actual experiments, as described in FotC. What can we infer from these experiments? The future shapes the present and the past.
Finally, there is the simple fact that time is no more than one of the dimensions of the universe, just like length or width. Therefore, time is a part of the universe. I doubt that anyone here would argue that God is bound by location in space. He is omnipresent. Why, then, should we believe that God experiences time in the same way that we do? He is not a physical part of this universe. He created the universe and time with it (however He chose to do so).
As a final note, many (particularly those who don't really believe in God) claim that things like quantum uncertainty (the fact that it is impossible to know certain related quantities with complete accuracy) suggest that determinism is completely fictitious, that even God cannot know with complete certainty what will happen, although he could know the exact probabilities involved. I do not have a satisfactory answer to this challenge, but I believe there is one, and my belief is not unfounded. There are some scientists who are beginning to wonder whether or not quantum mechanics can be made deterministic again through certain esoteric methods.
elected4ever said:
If man never fell, why would He implement a plan of redemption. In Gen. 1; 2 God said creation was 'very good'. He created the potential for a Fall by giving man significant freedom. This also means he had the freedom to walk with God, as he originally did. There is no necessity of a fall. God sets things up so there was no need to fall. His requirements were reasonable, and His resources sufficient. Just because God stayed the course with His project (including other free moral agents capable of going either way) does not mean that God caused or desired the fall. It was only after the Fall in Gen. 3 that God's plan and disposition changed (He was now grieved and changed His mind about creating man...He then wanted to wipe man out...BUT NOAH...again, God changed and decided to save 8 people and promised to never destroy the world again by a flood (rainbow). We see a specific chronology and dynamic responsiveness. This is a reasonable understanding of the biblical evidence (there is not one proof text, if that is what you are looking for), even though it contradicts a specific model of manipulative sovereignty. God's sovereignty is general and providential. Take off your filter and let the narrative speak for itself.
Philetus said:
Sander's section on evil was very good, but I have trouble articulating it in short posts. I do not understand his argument about foreknowledge in all views being consistent with a risk vs no-risk model (especially from a Calvinistic viewpoint).
You must be a very fast reader :sam:
Newstenographer:
The physical nature of space and relativity theory relates to creation. It does not address the issues of an eternal God before creation. The triune God acted, felt, thought, related, etc. for all eternity because He is a personal God. All of these things require sequence, duration, succession. This is simply time, one of the most fundamental aspects of who God is. God experiences an endless duration of time (from everlasting to everlasting). The 'eternal now' platonic philosophical view of timelessness is incoherent. It is evident that God existed before the creation of the universe. His incarnation and Second Coming were separated by duration (divine and human). Simultaneity of all events, including the future, is incoherent. The "A" theory of time and presentism fits the evidence better than the "B" theory of time and eternalism.
God is revealed as having a history (His Story) and is described as tensed (Rev. 1:4, 8; Ps. 90:2). He is not limited by time. Time is not space, nor is it a created thing.
Relativity theory does not relate to the fundamental aspects of God's eternal nature nor His relations to man and our time (which is concurrent with divine time).
Clete can better explain the limitations of relativity on establishing the nature of God's relations to man. God is spirit, not physical phenomenon. Time is not a thing.
The physical nature of space and relativity theory relates to creation. It does not address the issues of an eternal God before creation. The triune God acted, felt, thought, related, etc. for all eternity because He is a personal God. All of these things require sequence, duration, succession. This is simply time, one of the most fundamental aspects of who God is. God experiences an endless duration of time (from everlasting to everlasting). The 'eternal now' platonic philosophical view of timelessness is incoherent. It is evident that God existed before the creation of the universe. His incarnation and Second Coming were separated by duration (divine and human). Simultaneity of all events, including the future, is incoherent. The "A" theory of time and presentism fits the evidence better than the "B" theory of time and eternalism.
God is revealed as having a history (His Story) and is described as tensed (Rev. 1:4, 8; Ps. 90:2). He is not limited by time. Time is not space, nor is it a created thing.
Relativity theory does not relate to the fundamental aspects of God's eternal nature nor His relations to man and our time (which is concurrent with divine time).
Clete can better explain the limitations of relativity on establishing the nature of God's relations to man. God is spirit, not physical phenomenon. Time is not a thing.
elected4ever
New member
That is what I am asking you. What other plan did God have?godrulz said:
seekinganswers
New member
Godrulz,
I continue to have qualms with Open Theism because it continues to understand God from the perspective of the Creation. You continue to speak of a "personal" God, and that troubles me for a single reason: everyone wants a personal God. You continue to talk about the ancient and modern cultures and their views of the gods as being "impersonal," because their gods are a bunch of egotistical maniacs. I would have to agree with your assessment of their gods, but I do not agree that these gods are "impersonal".
You see, the gods of the ancient middle-east were some of the most personal gods around, because they would flock around their respective peoples and serve as patrons to them. And the people would serve them, not always out of fear, but because their patron god offered protection, gifts, and prosperity. The personal god becomes a god who relates to us on our terms.
The problem I have with this idea of a "personal" god is that it ultimately leads to idolatry, for the god who is intelligible to us is a god like us, a god made in our image. So when you talk about the "personal" god it makes me uneasy, because this language inevitably leads down the road of idolatry (and if Israel could engage in idolatry in its understanding of God's revelation to them, then we had better believe that it is a danger for us as well). Idolatry isn't simply setting up images of your god and worshiping the images; idolatry is an ideology of relationship between the gods and humanity, where humans define the relationship.
As soon as you define God as "personal," you are making an assumption that God could be something else. You see, in your descriptors of God you are fashioning the God who best serves you, molding him into shape until he is the perfect match for humanity. This would be great from an anthropologist's perspective (for he or she assumes that "God" is and has always been a construct of the human intelligence) but for a Christian this is horrific. If God is merely the object out of which we form an image of God, then our God is nothing more than an idol; he may not be fashioned from stone or wood, but he has become an idol nonetheless.
My answer to it is let God be God. Do not attempt to fashion an image of him, or to use his revelation to us in order to pin God down. God is God, and he remains a mystery to us. Those who attempt to understand God will ultimately engage in idolatry, and this is not acceptable. We must worship God in "spirit and in truth;" we do not worship the God who we understand.
Now you assume that because I have rejected Open Theism there is only one more option, and that is Calvinism. But I tell you, Calvinism is no better in its understanding of God, for it too has latched on to an idol of its own making. As I said before the god of our making, the god of our understanding is a god who is ultimately an idol. When we define the relationship, then it is idolatry, plain and simple. Calvinism has once again done that, for they have tried to understand God from the posibilities of Creation. Our God must be in control, and we see things that seem out of control, hence the things we see must be from God. It is wrong. To understand God based on the control God has over us, is like evaluating God as a king, and seeing wheather the king is truly king based on his control of his people. If God were like a human king, then we would be in trouble. But I know God does not rule like any other king, because the king is revealed in Christ, and he ruled like no other (from a cross).
You see, Godrulz, you are understanding God through the presence of evil (and I have read the first few pages of Sander's book The God Who Risks, and I see him doing the same thing. There is evil in the world and now we must understand God in terms of what we see. And because we understand freedom from liberal demacracy, we assume that a God who controlled evil would not be loving. Though I understand your outcries against the Calvinists and their "all-powerful" God, I hardly see your understanding of God as being any better, for you started in the Creation and then went to God. If you define God by the Creation, then you engage in idolatry. The Calvinists do the same.
So what is the option for us? What else can we do? Well its simple; we start with God. And that means God remains a mystery to us. As he says to Moses on the Mount from the midst of the burning bush "I am whoever I am." God remains real, everything else is a lie. That means we can forget ourselves, and we can forget the evil we see around us; God is God, everyone else is a liar. If anything, God is going to define us; we are not going to define God. And what do you know, this God must be the God of Creation, for without this God, "nothing that is would ever have been." And if we look to the creeds, suddenly it makes sense! "We believe in God the Father, maker of the Heavens and the Earth." What do you know, the the holy catholic and apostolic church knew what they were talking about! We aren't going to define God, but God will define us.
And so the question then becomes, how is this God revealed to us? How does the Creator enter into the Creation to bring the Creation into the good will and pleasure of the Creator? Well, you see, God the Father acts through the Son and through the Spirit. And what do you know, there is the Trinity. It isn't our attempt to grasp God, but it is our summation of how God has revealed Godself to us, through the Word and through the Spirit. And once again, as we look to the creeds, we find this simple presentation of what God has revealed to us. The "Trinity" and "Creator" are not dogmas by which we trap God into a form that we can understand; they are teachings, by which we transmit to others how God has revealed himself to us, a God who remains mysterious.
And once we are grounded in God (though mysterious he may be), then we can define the Creation. Rather than starting with the Creation and moving to God, we have started with God the Creator and moved into the Creation. And here we find that all that lives is sustained in God. Whether we are good and righteous, or corrupt and sinful, our life is held in God. And both "the righteous and the unrighteous" receive the blessings of God; the rain and the goods of the Creation.
The question becomes, which will be sustained over time. You see, when you say that God allows for evil, I am just as horrified by this God as I am of the Calvinist God, for the God that would allow a man to murder innocent babies, a God who wouldn't stop such an atrocity from happening though he had the power to do so, is not a good God. I have listened to the testimony of a Jewish man who endured the cruelties of the camps of Germany, and he told us of a horror where living babies were brought in by dumptrucks. And the German soldiers proceded to chuck the babies into the air and catch them on their bayonets like it was a game. To pretend that God just allows that to happen like the men have the power to twist God's Creation in such a way as to force God to change his plan so drastically? This is a God who is no God at all. He is simply another power that plays tag with other powers. If these men who treated babies so carelessly truly have a power that can sustain themselves in this Creation; if they are men that are without need of God, then they are a power far greater than the men who had simply been twisted and contorted beyond recognition through their actions. If we limit God based on the actions of these men, then this God is a powerless God, and a God who is no better in relating to the Creation as a bunch of warmongering people trying to relate with one another.
You see, God is a "relational" God, as you say, but he is a God who relates to humanity on God's terms, not on ours. We do not tie the hand of God by our actions. And if we believe we can, then we have become so arrogant as to think that the life we have is ours to live by our own will and desires. We must be shown that we are mortal, and that our life will be taken from us in the end, for those who try to sustain themselves end up loosing their life. Those who try to rise up in this world as if they were a power to contend with will meet their doom. Every Empire has a downfall; every tyrant ultimately dies. And the life they try to create, the distortion they bring on the true life of God, will come to an end. And what will remain is the Creation of God.
You want to see what God does with men who try to kill babies? How about we look at Pharoah. You see, Pharoah had his own will for the Creation, and he saw a threat to that plan when the Hebrews began to multiply beyond his control. And his decrees went out to try to stop this threat. He told the Midwives to kill the male babies; then he told the Hebrews to throw them in the river Nile; finally, he commanded his own people to do the dirty deed. But the great irony of the entire story is that the Pharoah, in his mind bent on war and conquest, had seen the men as a threat to his dominion. What we discover in these beginning words of Exodus is that the women ultimately undermine the Pharoah's plans. First it was the midwives who feared the Lord more than they feared Pharoah. Then it was the mother of Moses and her daughter who worked against his plans. Finally, as if to created the greatest of ironies, the Pharoah's own daughter pulls Moses out the river and raises him as her own child (and allows him to be nursed and cared for by his own mother).
You see, contrary to your thinking of God's plans being changed based on Pharoah's whim, God's will continues to be followed in the midst of Pharoah's arrogance. God had willed for the increase of his people, and gosh darn-it, Israel was going to increase. And it didn't matter that they had forgotten the God of their fathers; it didn't matter that Pharoah's will came to odds with God's will. God was going to prevail, and he was going to do so through the people he had called (and through the faithful remnant).
Your view of God forgets that God does choose to work through certain people, and God will not change God's mind based on what the human being desires. As I have read through the stories of all the different people God has called through the history of Israel, I find very few who were willing to accept God's call (Mary and Joseph would be examples of the few); and I have yet to find anyone that was able to resist God's call (for God is quite persistant and very persuasive). God's plans are made manifest in this line of a handful of people, and it was going to come through them whether they liked it or not. I'm still astonished by the Abraham stories, for we couldn't find a man who tried to do more to thwart the will of God to bless him, and yet God to the very end will not relent.
We have to realize that the "will" we give to men is not like the will of God. The will of men can be thwarted, but when God speaks it's gonna happen. Men can attempt to dictate what they will do all they want, but their word does not become material always. But God's will does get accomplished, and in the way that God has ordained it.
We can talk about Adam and Eve, but we have to remember that 'adam is being used in a very overarching manner in those first few chapters of the Old Testament (as are most of the characters), to talk about humanity in general. And in Christ, Adam (the second Adam) like the sons that God chooses throughout the Old Testament, is the one who receives God's favor, and who is truly made in God's image, who is the very image of God. We want to think that the first-born is the one deserving the blessing. God is the one who blesses the least in order that the greatest (from our perspective) might also be blessed. We are just too small to comprehend these great things, and when we are in the thick of things, we don't see it. But God does, and he is overjoyed when people will faithfully live according to his will, and not according to the will of others.
Peace,
Michael
I continue to have qualms with Open Theism because it continues to understand God from the perspective of the Creation. You continue to speak of a "personal" God, and that troubles me for a single reason: everyone wants a personal God. You continue to talk about the ancient and modern cultures and their views of the gods as being "impersonal," because their gods are a bunch of egotistical maniacs. I would have to agree with your assessment of their gods, but I do not agree that these gods are "impersonal".
You see, the gods of the ancient middle-east were some of the most personal gods around, because they would flock around their respective peoples and serve as patrons to them. And the people would serve them, not always out of fear, but because their patron god offered protection, gifts, and prosperity. The personal god becomes a god who relates to us on our terms.
The problem I have with this idea of a "personal" god is that it ultimately leads to idolatry, for the god who is intelligible to us is a god like us, a god made in our image. So when you talk about the "personal" god it makes me uneasy, because this language inevitably leads down the road of idolatry (and if Israel could engage in idolatry in its understanding of God's revelation to them, then we had better believe that it is a danger for us as well). Idolatry isn't simply setting up images of your god and worshiping the images; idolatry is an ideology of relationship between the gods and humanity, where humans define the relationship.
As soon as you define God as "personal," you are making an assumption that God could be something else. You see, in your descriptors of God you are fashioning the God who best serves you, molding him into shape until he is the perfect match for humanity. This would be great from an anthropologist's perspective (for he or she assumes that "God" is and has always been a construct of the human intelligence) but for a Christian this is horrific. If God is merely the object out of which we form an image of God, then our God is nothing more than an idol; he may not be fashioned from stone or wood, but he has become an idol nonetheless.
My answer to it is let God be God. Do not attempt to fashion an image of him, or to use his revelation to us in order to pin God down. God is God, and he remains a mystery to us. Those who attempt to understand God will ultimately engage in idolatry, and this is not acceptable. We must worship God in "spirit and in truth;" we do not worship the God who we understand.
Now you assume that because I have rejected Open Theism there is only one more option, and that is Calvinism. But I tell you, Calvinism is no better in its understanding of God, for it too has latched on to an idol of its own making. As I said before the god of our making, the god of our understanding is a god who is ultimately an idol. When we define the relationship, then it is idolatry, plain and simple. Calvinism has once again done that, for they have tried to understand God from the posibilities of Creation. Our God must be in control, and we see things that seem out of control, hence the things we see must be from God. It is wrong. To understand God based on the control God has over us, is like evaluating God as a king, and seeing wheather the king is truly king based on his control of his people. If God were like a human king, then we would be in trouble. But I know God does not rule like any other king, because the king is revealed in Christ, and he ruled like no other (from a cross).
You see, Godrulz, you are understanding God through the presence of evil (and I have read the first few pages of Sander's book The God Who Risks, and I see him doing the same thing. There is evil in the world and now we must understand God in terms of what we see. And because we understand freedom from liberal demacracy, we assume that a God who controlled evil would not be loving. Though I understand your outcries against the Calvinists and their "all-powerful" God, I hardly see your understanding of God as being any better, for you started in the Creation and then went to God. If you define God by the Creation, then you engage in idolatry. The Calvinists do the same.
So what is the option for us? What else can we do? Well its simple; we start with God. And that means God remains a mystery to us. As he says to Moses on the Mount from the midst of the burning bush "I am whoever I am." God remains real, everything else is a lie. That means we can forget ourselves, and we can forget the evil we see around us; God is God, everyone else is a liar. If anything, God is going to define us; we are not going to define God. And what do you know, this God must be the God of Creation, for without this God, "nothing that is would ever have been." And if we look to the creeds, suddenly it makes sense! "We believe in God the Father, maker of the Heavens and the Earth." What do you know, the the holy catholic and apostolic church knew what they were talking about! We aren't going to define God, but God will define us.
And so the question then becomes, how is this God revealed to us? How does the Creator enter into the Creation to bring the Creation into the good will and pleasure of the Creator? Well, you see, God the Father acts through the Son and through the Spirit. And what do you know, there is the Trinity. It isn't our attempt to grasp God, but it is our summation of how God has revealed Godself to us, through the Word and through the Spirit. And once again, as we look to the creeds, we find this simple presentation of what God has revealed to us. The "Trinity" and "Creator" are not dogmas by which we trap God into a form that we can understand; they are teachings, by which we transmit to others how God has revealed himself to us, a God who remains mysterious.
And once we are grounded in God (though mysterious he may be), then we can define the Creation. Rather than starting with the Creation and moving to God, we have started with God the Creator and moved into the Creation. And here we find that all that lives is sustained in God. Whether we are good and righteous, or corrupt and sinful, our life is held in God. And both "the righteous and the unrighteous" receive the blessings of God; the rain and the goods of the Creation.
The question becomes, which will be sustained over time. You see, when you say that God allows for evil, I am just as horrified by this God as I am of the Calvinist God, for the God that would allow a man to murder innocent babies, a God who wouldn't stop such an atrocity from happening though he had the power to do so, is not a good God. I have listened to the testimony of a Jewish man who endured the cruelties of the camps of Germany, and he told us of a horror where living babies were brought in by dumptrucks. And the German soldiers proceded to chuck the babies into the air and catch them on their bayonets like it was a game. To pretend that God just allows that to happen like the men have the power to twist God's Creation in such a way as to force God to change his plan so drastically? This is a God who is no God at all. He is simply another power that plays tag with other powers. If these men who treated babies so carelessly truly have a power that can sustain themselves in this Creation; if they are men that are without need of God, then they are a power far greater than the men who had simply been twisted and contorted beyond recognition through their actions. If we limit God based on the actions of these men, then this God is a powerless God, and a God who is no better in relating to the Creation as a bunch of warmongering people trying to relate with one another.
You see, God is a "relational" God, as you say, but he is a God who relates to humanity on God's terms, not on ours. We do not tie the hand of God by our actions. And if we believe we can, then we have become so arrogant as to think that the life we have is ours to live by our own will and desires. We must be shown that we are mortal, and that our life will be taken from us in the end, for those who try to sustain themselves end up loosing their life. Those who try to rise up in this world as if they were a power to contend with will meet their doom. Every Empire has a downfall; every tyrant ultimately dies. And the life they try to create, the distortion they bring on the true life of God, will come to an end. And what will remain is the Creation of God.
You want to see what God does with men who try to kill babies? How about we look at Pharoah. You see, Pharoah had his own will for the Creation, and he saw a threat to that plan when the Hebrews began to multiply beyond his control. And his decrees went out to try to stop this threat. He told the Midwives to kill the male babies; then he told the Hebrews to throw them in the river Nile; finally, he commanded his own people to do the dirty deed. But the great irony of the entire story is that the Pharoah, in his mind bent on war and conquest, had seen the men as a threat to his dominion. What we discover in these beginning words of Exodus is that the women ultimately undermine the Pharoah's plans. First it was the midwives who feared the Lord more than they feared Pharoah. Then it was the mother of Moses and her daughter who worked against his plans. Finally, as if to created the greatest of ironies, the Pharoah's own daughter pulls Moses out the river and raises him as her own child (and allows him to be nursed and cared for by his own mother).
You see, contrary to your thinking of God's plans being changed based on Pharoah's whim, God's will continues to be followed in the midst of Pharoah's arrogance. God had willed for the increase of his people, and gosh darn-it, Israel was going to increase. And it didn't matter that they had forgotten the God of their fathers; it didn't matter that Pharoah's will came to odds with God's will. God was going to prevail, and he was going to do so through the people he had called (and through the faithful remnant).
Your view of God forgets that God does choose to work through certain people, and God will not change God's mind based on what the human being desires. As I have read through the stories of all the different people God has called through the history of Israel, I find very few who were willing to accept God's call (Mary and Joseph would be examples of the few); and I have yet to find anyone that was able to resist God's call (for God is quite persistant and very persuasive). God's plans are made manifest in this line of a handful of people, and it was going to come through them whether they liked it or not. I'm still astonished by the Abraham stories, for we couldn't find a man who tried to do more to thwart the will of God to bless him, and yet God to the very end will not relent.
We have to realize that the "will" we give to men is not like the will of God. The will of men can be thwarted, but when God speaks it's gonna happen. Men can attempt to dictate what they will do all they want, but their word does not become material always. But God's will does get accomplished, and in the way that God has ordained it.
We can talk about Adam and Eve, but we have to remember that 'adam is being used in a very overarching manner in those first few chapters of the Old Testament (as are most of the characters), to talk about humanity in general. And in Christ, Adam (the second Adam) like the sons that God chooses throughout the Old Testament, is the one who receives God's favor, and who is truly made in God's image, who is the very image of God. We want to think that the first-born is the one deserving the blessing. God is the one who blesses the least in order that the greatest (from our perspective) might also be blessed. We are just too small to comprehend these great things, and when we are in the thick of things, we don't see it. But God does, and he is overjoyed when people will faithfully live according to his will, and not according to the will of others.
Peace,
Michael
elected4ever said:
Are you saying there was no other plan? I agree that this was the only plan that God formulated before creation. When the Fall became actual vs possible, He implemented the plan (after, not before the Fall). His plan was perfect, but was not a foregone conclusion to be implemented. If it was, then either God is responsible for the Fall or He has simple foreknowledge and sees contingent, possible events as actual before they become actual (logically indefensible).
If the Fall did not happen, the plan would not have been implemented, though it was formulated. I base this on the chronology of events and God's reactions to them. If Adam did not fall, then eventually someone else probably would have (though that was not necessary either). At that later point, the same plan would be implemented. Christ was not literally slain before the foundation of the world. He was slain in space-time history around 30 A.D.
Some suggest that if there was no fall, then God may have still incarnated without dying on the cross.
seeking:
All Christian theologians recognize that God is a personal being (Father) as opposed to an impersonal force (Star Wars). He has will, intellect, and emotions (clearly revealed about God, Father, Son, Spirit...the Spirit is a person, not a force).
I was not talking about God being our personal buddy in our back pocket like we control Him.
Platonic views of God make Him static, unchanging, sheer essence. They negate His dynamic, loving, relational nature.
Your post is too long to follow or respond to for most of us. This is not the forum for doctrinal theses.
All Christian theologians recognize that God is a personal being (Father) as opposed to an impersonal force (Star Wars). He has will, intellect, and emotions (clearly revealed about God, Father, Son, Spirit...the Spirit is a person, not a force).
I was not talking about God being our personal buddy in our back pocket like we control Him.
Platonic views of God make Him static, unchanging, sheer essence. They negate His dynamic, loving, relational nature.
Your post is too long to follow or respond to for most of us. This is not the forum for doctrinal theses.
seekinganswers
New member
godrulz said:
If I thought my last post were doctral thesis, I would jump on the chance to get a doctorate. Believe me, doctral theses do not come so easily.
My view of God does not come from Plato as much as it comes from Augustine and a little from Aristotle. When I speak of God as being the reality, and everything else a lie, it is not to talk about the world of ideas being more real than the actual world. Nor am I speaking of some force that lies in the Creation. God is the Creator who has a will, and who accomplishes that will in the Creation. Another influence would be Tolkein, from his beautiful Creation poem found in the Silmarillion.
It is a poem that pictures the event of Creation as a song, and God teaches the song to those who act in the Creation. But one tries to corrupt the song by making a song of his own. In the end the will of this dissentor becomes the harmony and discord to compliment the greater song of God. So though this one had a will to thwart God, his actions were only able to augment the very work of God.
You see, God is the Creator, and though there are those who seem to think they better at it than God, they are all a bunch of fools. They attempt to make things on their own, and in the end can do nothing more than bring distortion (discord) or compliment God's Creation (harmony). God is the foundation for this relationship that takes place, and so is not thwarted by the actions of those whom he is relating with. God is sustained in Godself (the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit being the glue) and God teaches the Creation to be brought into that existing relationship within the Trinity. God doesn't need a free agent for love to be real. Love is already held in God. And God's desire to bring the Creation into that love reveals that God is not a tyrant in God's greatness, but is gentle and good.
When we see evil as a threat to God, that is only because we perceive evil's threat to our own life. Evil can distort us; evil can bring our life to an end through death. But God is not so threatened by evil. And God's allowance for evil is not a powerlessness, nor is it a cruelty; God's defferance to evil only shows that evil has no power over God, and that God is not going to act according to what evil dictates. Evil will always depend on the Creation to have an ontology, and can, therefore, be nothing more than a compliment to God's own work (or an attempt at destroying it).
Peace,
Michael
P.S. - Why do you engage in discussion at all if all you're going to do is remain on a superficial level? I could sit here and talk about my opinions on the matter all day and we could go back and forth that way till God's Kingdom comes. What is the good in it? My post is long, I will admit, but it's hardly a scholarly work. It's just a move beyond the superficial discussion that we could find in the oppinion sections of the newspaper (in fact, the newspaper has even longer discussions). The early church wrote letters to one another. They were hardly the image of scholarship of their time, but they were pretty lengthy works. What I have written doesn't even come close to Paul's letter to the Romans. And we have many other letters written between churches that are much more prolonged than my little post. If you want shorter posts, then we need to break up the issues into managable bite-sized pieces. But that is never going to happen with threads titled "Open Theism". I've tried to start posts myself that are more directed and confined in their scope with a direction to progress, but no one seems interested in engaging in those types of discussions. So I am at a loss.
Does anyone else find seekings' posts hard to follow and hard to respond to?
#1471 is my quick response to elected's Subscriber only POD...I cannot post there, which is convenient. Birds of a feather flock together.
Augustine was influenced by Greek philosophy. Open Theism endeavors to establish a biblical position apart from Augustinian and Platonic influence on classical doctrines.
#1471 is my quick response to elected's Subscriber only POD...I cannot post there, which is convenient. Birds of a feather flock together.
Augustine was influenced by Greek philosophy. Open Theism endeavors to establish a biblical position apart from Augustinian and Platonic influence on classical doctrines.
logos_x
New member
godrulz said:
This is where it all breaks down for all veiws I'm reading about...the idea of "people freely chosing to reject God".
Slaves to sin do not "freely" choose anything. Without God's saving grace, people can't even SEE it...much less choose it. Unless this aspect of reality is acknowledged you are not being very biblical in your theology.
Joh 6:43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves.
Joh 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Joh 6:45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
Open theism would accommodate this better than any other position...but they seem to want to overlook it in their arguments. They want to argue too strongly for "free" will...or seem to at least.
godrulz said:
The fact that Augustine was influenced by Greek philosophy is one of the weakest arguments that open theists use. There are any number of pagan philosophies that share some points in common with Christian thought. By this reasoning, we should be suspicious of any element of Christian doctrine that has these commonalities, rather than simply receognizing the phenomenon as something akin to a stopped clock being right twice a day.
seekinganswers
New member
godrulz said:
Godrulz,
You forget that when Augustine was baptized he rejected the Greek philosophy he had embraced before (i.e. neo-platonism), and went on to openly refute the very Greek philosophy he had embraced. If you would actually read some of his works you would see that. He did not embrace Greek philosophy but entered fully into Christianity. Most of his writings are deeply grounded in the scriptures. His masterpiece (The City of God) finds its roots in the book of Revelation, and I think is a much more faithful reading of Revelation than any of the garbage produced by our present day evangelical Revelation "scholars".
And what I have pulled from Augustine has much to do with the City of God, which has taught me to read the book Revelation much more faithfully than what I had been taught by my evangelical brothers and sisters (who read the book of "Revelations"). It is this reading of Revelation that I speak of as being the influence on me, not a general theology of Augustine.
This is a an ad hominem argument by which you dismiss what I say based on my association with certain people. It is not a proper reason for dismissing my post.
Peace,
Michael
docrob57 said:
The pagan connection is not meant to be an argument against truth, but an observation of influences on people's thinking away from Scripture. Since Greek philosophy had some things correct, I would not expect a commonality with Open Theism in some areas to undermine the common truths. If the Greek philosophy was unbiblical and false, then discerning the influence on Augustine is helpful to expose areas of unbiblical thinking. Platonic ideas of perfection influenced early Fathers. The Platonic idea is indefensible, so a return to a biblical position through sound exegesis and biblical philosophy is paramount.
seekinganswers said:
We are all influenced by someone or something. It is hard not to have a bias. I agree that our ideas stand or fall on their own merits. Saying I have trouble following your posts is an observation and deficiency on my part, not a personal attack on you. Perhaps getting Augustinian ideas second hand through you is not as clear as reading them first hand.
We can line up Augustinian ideas after his conversion with Greek ideas and find significant (but not absolute) parallels. He stated and admitted their influence on his theology and that he wanted to reconcile the two. I think Bob Hill has documentation for this. If the Greek ideas are true (some are), then there is no problem. If they are questionable, then these false ideas are smuggled into Christianity. This is the danger of allowing one man's views to dominate Catholic or Reformed beliefs.
Does Augustine take an allegorical approach to Revelation? Is He a preterist? Could you summarize his hermeneutic and beliefs about the book in general? Is he amillennial?
I believe Revelation is Christocentric and has much to say to believers of all generations who await His glorious coming. If we use the literal, grammatical, contextual, historical, cultural, theological hermeneutic, we will not end up with amillennialism. Christ, not man, will usher in the City of God in the future. He rules our hearts now, but will not set up a literal kingdom until He visibly returns (still future).
http://www.lamblion.com/articles/prophecy/viewpoints/Views-03.php (con-Augustine)
http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/royaltyr/augustine.htm (pro-Augustine)
(quick google, so not the best articles)
I would not be quick to dismiss works like this due to extreme prophetic speculations that float around evangelical circles...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0310308909/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-2817252-2681706#reader-link (click next page for contents)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0802473091/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-2817252-2681706#reader-link
(warning: literal pre-trib. pre-mill. view....allegorical Augustine is not the way to go).
seekinganswers
New member
godrulz said:
I have looked at the links you provided, and your sources from google aren't all that great. My first qualm is their use of modern categories to place Augustine in a modern context of Revelation studies. This is an absurd thing to do, as the second author shows us that the categories don't fit Augustine (and yet he still uses them, which is mind-boggling to me).
Now it is clear that Pentecost is influenced by some sort of dispensationalism, because it is quite obvious in how he structures his writting. He is a very thorough author, however, and I am sure is very capable in his area of study. But I am not so comfortable with the structure he takes. Of course I have not read the introduction to the book and have not heard his defense of the structure he uses, but you and I both know that the structure he takes is not sacrosaint, but is drawing from the very categories that are available to him in his field of study and what is necessary for it to be received by the readers as well.
The problem with all of these writers is that they are hopelessly grounded in categories given to them by modern biblical study. Words like pre-trib, and post-trib, pre-millineal, post-millineal, and a-millineal are not words that were used in Augustine's time, nor were they even categories for consideration. These are all developments of the liberal protestant scholarship of the last few hundred years. And they can only be taken as categories if you make the same assumptions about the scriptures that the liberal-protestants do, which is to take the scriptures as an historical document, a literary document, or house it within some other supposedly "unbiased" field of study. And this is the problem. The scholars of these fields have no steak in the scriptures, and approach the texts from the bias of the liberal project of the Enlightenment, that is the development of a liberal nation-state. They are not members of the church, most of them, which makes it sad that we would take on their assumptions about the world.
They assume "religion" to be a construct of humanity (or of some supernatural being) that has no real applications to the physical world, and therefore must be set aside to make way for liberal politics (democracy) and economics (laizze-faire capitalism). I refuse to accept the categories they have given us, simply because I have seen what those assumptions do to people around us. And they remove the church from the works of mercy, reforming those works in a most twisted manner. They will set up a driving force in the Creation that is distinct from and opposed to God's own will for the Creation and they will believe that God can do nothing to stop that impulse from unfolding; they will believe that human drive outweighs the drive of the Creator with regards to the Creation. And seeing how I know the narrative of the Exodus to be true, I will not allow these assumptions to reign over my views of the scriptures. God's desire for Creation prevails, even now, through the faithful witness of the few who follow Christ, fearing the Lord more than they fear men, as the midwives did the same in Pharoah's time.
Though Augustine will submit to a view of Revelation that is admittedly futuristic, he also knows that the future of the world is held in the parousia of Christ, and that Christ in coming the first time assured his second coming. So even though revelation looks to the future, the future has already come near in Christ. The Kingdom of Heaven (the establishment of God's rule on the earth) is a future event; but even as a future event, Christ has already begun to usher us into that future. As he proclaims to the people, "The Kingdom is coming"; "the Kingdom is not yet," but at the same time he proclaims, "The Kingdom has arrived," and "the Kingdom has come." For in Christ both the beginning and the end are held together. The Word was the arche (the beginning, the head, the outflow) and through that word all things were made; and the word is in the end; the word is the telos, the culmination of all things. So in Christ the whole of Creation is held, and being brought to completion, even as in Christ's resurrection it has already been brought to culmination (Christ as the first fruits). Christ's resurrection is the beginning of the end.
The Jews of Jesus' time thought the Kingdom's coming would usher into a complete disolving of the "present evil age" and right into the full entrance of the Kingdom. But in Christ that Kingdom has begun to come in this present evil age. The ages overlap one another. So the beginning of the eschaton was in Christ's death on the cross, where, as Paul puts it, "God nailed the powers of evil to that same cross." And in that defeat of the powers, a faithful people who live in this present evil age can rise up and worship the Father in spirit and in truth, a people who will not be corrupted by the powers, for the power of sin is defeated. And Paul is so rich in this kind of language throughout his letters, so that the church (the ekklesia of God) is the locus of this Kingdom's work in the present evil age, so that we as the people of the church are called to a faithful life in Christ even now, not simply in the life to come.
Empire is fading, as far as Paul is concerned. Though the Empire and the powers of the world think they have won as they parade Jesus and even Christians in the march of defeat, we know better, for through Christ's and our faithfulness God has in fact led the powers in a march of defeat.
Peace,
Michael
RobE said:
As for me, I can honestly say that I had not previously answered you questions because I had not seen you ask them. I apologize for having not paid closer attention to every post on this thread. I've had to let some of the threads I'm subscribed too drop on my priority list because of a severe lack of time.
Impossible to answer except to say that it would vastly better than it is today.
How do you know He didn't?
It is my belief that Lucifer tempted Adam and thus fell himself. When we want to go and discover any information at all about when sin entered into the universe, the only place we have to go is Genesis chapter 3. If Lucifer hadn't yet fallen it would explain his access to God's perfect garden.
Why does God allow the human race to exist when He could wipe out the whole thing? Mercy. That is the only answer. If God wanted to stop all the evil in the world He would have to end the world, which He will do in time, of course, but mercy stays His hand for the time being.
Because if a decision is known it has been made. If a decision is made before I make it then I didn't make it. If God punishes me for a decision I did not make then God is unjust.
In a manner of speaking this is true but words have a range of meaning and this takes the word predict in a too woodenly literal way. The weather man makes predictions about the weather every day, some times he's right and some times he's not. If you want to insist that he didn't predict it when he got it wrong then I suppose you could but it would be missing the point and I believe intentionally so.
Luke 12:47 And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. 48 But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.
Our God is a just God. This is a primary pillar and premise of open theism.
Excellent questions! I can't wait for the follow ups!
Resting in Him,
Clete
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