To godrulz:
YOU WROTE
Your analogy about the child is consistent with the Open view. God knows the past and present perfectly. He knows all future possibilities and contingencies. He would be able to predict the child would eat the cookie. However, there is a possibility that the house would burn down as mom left, the child would have a seizure, or Dad would come home at that moment. The child would normally eat the cookie (probable), but under those possible scenarios, he might not have the opportunity
MY RESPONSE
In my post, I said that the mother was quasi-omniscient, unlike God Who is omniscient, Who is infinite knowledge. If as you and I believe that God is the creator of all that was, is or will be, God has knowledge of what God is creating AND its effects. Infinite knowledge does not mean that God only knows the temperature and salinity of every drop of water in every ocean on this planet, but on all planets, and that is just one microscopic aspect of infinite knowledge. Christ put it succinctly and simple for all to understand, not just the intellectuals:
“Mt: 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge.”
They do not fall without God’s knowledge. God knew before they fell. And again in Matthew:
“10:30 Even all the hairs of your head are counted.”
And again in Luke:
16:15 And he said to them, "You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.”
How does God know our innermost feelings and thoughts? Because of infinite knowledge. Nothing, absolutely nothing can be hidden from God, not the past, not the present and not the future. Infinite knowledge has no limitations, otherwise it is not infinite knowledge. Dancing around this attribute to satisfy and tickle the ears of those who do not want to face God’s reality regarding the nature of God, only satisfy those who bathe in false pride. They are so proud that they know more about God than God knows about God’s being.
YOU WROTE
Exhaustive foreknowledge of future free will contingencies is logically incompatible with free will (incompatibilism is the theology; you believe compatibilism). Calvinists get around this by claiming God predestines everything. This would solve the problem, but at the expense of genuine freedom. Your view is simple foreknowledge and is not explainable. It must assume that the future is already there to know.
MY RESPONSE
Again, you are confusing omniscience with pre-ordaining. For example, God does not pre-ordain evil. Evil exists because God truly gives us freedom of the will. God is infinitely good and is infinite love. God wills to propagate goodness (Godness), but if God pre-ordains everything, then God pre-ordained nothing but robots. Robots do not have free will, creatures do. Free will is God’s precious gift to us, given to us so we CAN share in God’s infinite glory, the purpose of our existence, whether or not we believe it, whether or not we choose to. It is there as Christ exemplified it in the parable of the weeds among the wheat in Matthew:
"13:30 Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn." "
Very simply put regarding free will, there are those who righteously exercise free will, and those who wrongly prefer to do evil. That simple parable explains that God gives us free will to choose good or evil. There is nothing in the parable that denotes any pre-ordaining. Again, it is a parable, meant to explain a divine truth to many people, most of whom were illiterate.
YOU WROTE
This also less obviously negates freedom or it is impossible to explain how God knows the future that is not there to know.
MY RESPONSE
You want to know “how God knows the future that is not there to know.” It is not there to know - for whom? For you and me. So because you and I don’t know the future, you would reduce God to a creature who doesn't know the future. Creatures are creations of God, right? So now you want God to have creature attributes. We do not have God’s knowledge, we reason discursively, but God as I repeat again, is pure act, and to say that God is waiting to see what happens is derogating God's attribute of omniscience.
Because God is infinite love, God would love to create beings identical to God, but that would be impossible because as much as God would love to, God cannot create another innascent being, God cannot create another infinite and eternal being. By definition alone, by understanding the true nature of God, we cannot compare creature knowledge with God’s knowledge, or what is even worse, we cannot create a model based on creature knowledge, and then propose you have created a model of God's mind.
YOU WROTE:
You beg the question by assuming that omniscience means knowing the future as an actuality. Omnipotence is not limited by God not being able to do logically contradictory or absurd things. Likewise, omniscience (we both defend omniscience, but understand it differently) is not limited by God not knowing a nothing or something not logically knowable. Either you must give up genuine freedom, or exhaustive foreknowlege.
MY RESPONSE
We think discursively. No food in the house, so now I must go shopping. God as I mentioned is pure act - no discursiveness in God. God creates out of God’s infinite love. We think discursively, but God creates and propagates love in a simultaneously whole act, by that I mean that God simply IS, not God WILL BE, or God WILL DO, or God WILL KNOW something new to God, and most importantly as I mentioned, there is no discursive in God. Absolutely nothing is new to God, else God would not be God. If you are of Heaven, that is, if you know God as God truly is, God’s will would be the only consideration uppermost in your being. No one can understand the mind of God, unless they had a mind that was greater than God’s infinite mind. But of those things that are knowable of God, we should not confuse or sidetrack our purpose in acquiring knowledge of God’s attributes. The purpose of knowing more about God is to grow in wisdom, age, and grace, not to puff ourselves with false pride. I am not judging one single person, but merely making a note of caution for all of us to bear in mind.
YOU WROTE
To make this philosophical discussion a salvific issue shows a lack of understanding of biblical salvation. We are saved by faith in the person and work of Christ, not profound theological insights (a minimum level of understanding of God's nature/attributes, Christ's Deity, etc. is essential).
MY RESPONSE
Christ’s mission was to teach what he knew about God from his studies in the Jewish temple and elsewhere throughout his life. For example, in Matthew 22:34 - 40::
“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them (a scholar of the law) tested him by asking,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."
Where did Jesus indicate that you must lobotomize your gift of reason? On the contrary, you must love God with all your mind, not just a part of it.
YOU WROTE
Who do you say Jesus Christ is? Your answer will determine whether you are a Christian. Philosophical concepts about God as 'pure act' is not the ultimate issue.
MY RESPONSE
These questions are pharsaical. You answer one, then you have to answer another, then another, until you lose track of the purpose in life. Who do YOU say Muhammad was, who do YOU say the Buddha was, who do you say Mahatma Ganhi was? I’m not going down any of those roads, but I can tell you all I know about God - and Jesus was right on track, if you LISTEN with an open mind. LISTEN to what Christ said were the two most important things in life. If you truly believe in Christ’s teachings, then they have to be put in practice. Practice makes perfect, or as close to perfection as we are able to willingly cooperate with God’s grace. I consider myself a true Christian, one who truly desires to follow Christ’s teachings, esp., the two most important commandments.
YOU WROTE
If an act be free, it must be contingent (equal possibility of being and not being). 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.
MY RESPONSE
At the risk of sounding repetitious, there is no discursiveness in God, there is no potentiality in God, and obviously there are no contingencies in God. God is simultaneously whole, God is pure act, and if this were not so, God would not be God. Your arguments fail to acknowledge the meaning of “infinite”, they fail to acknowledge the meaning of “eternal”. Understanding these two basic attributes, precludes us from going down these dead-end roads, sapping our intellectual energies.
YOU WROTE
This is sound reasoning about free moral agency that we both agree on. It is the nature of the type of creation God made. An acceptance of this self-evident truth precludes exhaustive foreknowledge and is not a denial of omniscience (knowing everything logically knowable; we both believe in infinite knowledge, but in my view God correctly distinguishes possibilities/probabilities from certainties/actualities).
MY RESPONSE
Not true. Again you are confusing foreknowledge with pre-ordaining. Because God knows there will be 5,000 wanton murders next year, does not equate with God pre-ordaining evil. It equates with God’s giving free will to those murderers. Was the psunami pre-ordained? Give me infinite knowledge so I could know the mind of God and I will answer that. We can hypothesize what an infinite mind causes, or doesn’t cause, and we will go to our deaths angrily because we could not understand the mind of God. That is not our real purpose in life
Once we know God with our entire being (mind, heart and soul) Who God really is, then we should go to the second most important commandment. True followers of Christ try to do this daily. Then again, there are many who will debate open-end theology, free will vs. predestination, without regard to the two most important commandments. Maybe I’m too pessimistic about the future of Christianity, but I am very optimistic that Christ’s real message is taking root among non-Christians as well. The Dahli Lama gave a beautiful lecture in London regarding the Sermon on the Mount. Is the Dahli Lama a Christian? If someone propagates Christ's message as a lof of his "apostles" are supposed to, then if he acts like a Christian, walks in God's ways as a Christian, then he must be a Christian calling himself a Buddhist. Calling ourselves Christians without regard to Christ’s basic message, does a disservice to all those who truly love God with all the strength in their hearts, minds, and beings
Regarding these debates, I don’t think it serves a useful purpose to continue engaging in circular arguments, like the dog chasing its tail. We are simply going round and round with the same arguments. You have made your points, I have made mine. Seems as though East is East and West is West and never the ‘twain shall meet.
My best to you and yours,
Airy
