Originally posted by STONE
There are aspects of classical Judaism that resemble Calvinism; if you had studied classical Judaism you would know they believe:
*Everything in the universe is under God's control -- from the quantum to the cosmic. And if God knows and controls everything, then history is a controlled process leading to a destination.
*Everything in the universe was created by God and only by God. Judaism completely rejects the dualistic notion that evil was created by Satan or some other deity. All comes from God. As Isaiah said, "I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I am the Lord, that does all these things." (Is. 45:6-7).
*God knows all things, past, present and future. He knows our thoughts.
*God transcends time. He has no beginning and no end.
Much of this doesn't have to be interpreted as teaching a timeless God, first of all, but even if it did where are you getting this from (as godrulz has already asked)? Please site your source.
Early eastern religions talk about a timeless spirit and predate Greek philosophy by nearly 1000 years.
Early Egyptian religion may even predate the eastern religions in this idea by 500-1500 years.
I knew that you were going to say this! This is unbelievable!
Please site one single historical link that anything Eastern or Egyptian has to Christian theology. You can draw a line by connecting the historical dots from Calvin to Luther to Augustine to Plato (with a few minor connections in-between), but no such connection can be made to anything Eastern or Egyptian, especially when working backward from reformed theology. No such historical connection exists.
The simple fact is that you cannot quote any source that is not pagan that accounts for the idea that God exists outside of time. I personally don't know of any at all that predate Plato and Aristotle. I suppose that it is possible that Aristotle picked something up from Eastern philosophy or from Egyptian belief systems but if he did there is no record of it that I've ever heard of, and even if there were record of it, it wouldn't help your case any.
The bottom line is that the idea of timeless existence is a logical incoherent, rationally impossible concept and so it really makes zero difference who came up with the notion first. It's a matter a simple logic… That which must be false, cannot be true.
God's existence itself is an event. It is an event of eternal duration and every other event has been subsequent to His existence. And so there is both duration and sequence (time) associated with that event, that's what make it a real event. Without duration or sequence an event is not a real event, the event does not exist in reality. Existence presupposes duration at least, and if there is another event then sequence as well.
It is logically inescapable that anyone or anything that is real, including God, has been real for some duration of time. Therefore the idea that God is timeless is not true because of the rational impossibility of the contrary.
It seems that OV'ers deny anything and everything as an defensive tactic for their view.
Stone, come on now. I used sarcasm in my previous post to make a substantive point and tried my best to communicate to you that I was not trying to attack you personally and you still managed to take it personally, at least to some degree and so I will avoid sarcasm with you in the future. I have not engaged you in a debate before now and so I'm still trying to get a good read on where you stand and on your style of debate. My contact with you in the past has given me the impression that you are both intelligent and articulate. You ask really good questions and don't seem to get needlessly emotional and that is all really good, but you are going to go down hill really fast if you persist with this sort of nonsense.
I, for one, deny nothing. If I make a statement that is wrong, correct me. If I make a good point, respond to it or admit that you cannot. Just because I make a point that you can't respond to, doesn't mean you have to suddenly drop everything and instantly become an Open Theist, but arguing just to argue or making silly statements like this one just won't cut it. Statements like this are obviously untrue to begin with, and only serve to make you look desperate (not that you actually are) and weaken your position. Emotional arguments are fine as long as they have some substantive point to make. Emotional pot shots only serve to erode your own credibility.
Resting in Him,
Clete
