Originally posted by Clete Pfeiffer
SOTK,
I've already responded to much of this in my previous post to you but I just saw this so I'll add a bit to what I said...
Originally posted by SOTK
The Open View theology does seem to place limits on God's power. You many not want to admit it, but it does. The Open View states that God can't know the future. As Clete said, God can make educated guesses. I choose to believe that God doesn't guess at anything.
Well it's more than a guess because God isn't just sitting idly by watching things happen. He is intimately involved and is able to influence and even manipulate individuals in order to bring about that which He desires to have happen. It's not like the weather man making educated guesses about something over which he has no control whatsoever.
Calling knowing the future "illogical" because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't wash with me either. I don't compare human logic to God at all. The Open View theology seems to want to do that.
There is no such thing as "human logic"! This is a very important point. Logic is logic, something is either logical or it is not. Something is either contradictory or it is not, something is either knowable or it is not. It makes no difference whether a person is human, Martian, Vulcan, or divine, if something cannot be know then it cannot be known. If God knows it, then it is knowable. If humans cannot know it but God can, then it is still knowable. Logic is as logic is; the person using it is irrelevant.
Besides that, the fact that the future doesn't exist is not really the best reason to give as to why God cannot know it exhaustively. The reason why He cannot know it is because of free will. If we cannot choose to do or to do otherwise then we are not free. If the future is known by God (or by anyone else for that matter) then our ability to do otherwise is an illusion at best and so, therefore, is our freedom. If we are not free, and God punishes or rewards us for actions we did not choose to do, God is unjust. God is not unjust! Therefore, we must be free and our future actions must be unknown and unknowable, even to God.
Resting in Him,
Clete
