ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 2

[Ask Mr. Religion]

These topics need not be diffilcult.

We don't need to "theologize" everything we discuss. We don't need big words, we don't need dry scholars and white papers. All we need is God's word and and humble attitude toward it.

Yes, I believe this is simple enough for school children to understand. So sue me! :idunno:

With all due respect I have been dealing with this argument almost non-stop for the last 10 years and one of the most common mistakes that settled viewers make is to confuse the measurement of time (that can be effected by physics) with the concept of time (which cannot be effected by physics).

In fact the common-ness (is that a word??) of this error can be proved by your own mistake just a couple posts ago.

I have yet to run into a settled viewer who hasn't made the same mistake. Therefore, I conclude this error is very common.

I see. So the "typical" mistake is made by over a billion classical theists while the "correct" assumption of a few thousand, (ok, before you get started, even a few hundred thousand) open theists is the correct one. Please explain that to the school children.

How about this: "The common understanding from classical theism is that time is a property of the created universe. On the other hand, open theists assume time is related to the sequential progression of events and is unrelated to the created universe."

Does this statement work for you? Start with something like this and you can avoid muddying the waters with wholesale dismissals of what is typical and what is atypical. We can all be on the same page. Later if you want to rant about what is typical, you can more clearly state, "the assumption that time is somehow related to the created universe is an assumption typically made by classical theists." Again, we will then understand the polemic and be better able to respond.

You are not a careful man with your words. Your words must stand for themselves since there is no sense of face to face communications for the subtle interpretations that would clarify meanings. Thus, what a person receives as your message is your message, even when you did not intend as much. In other words, the message received is the message sent, so we must be careful when we throw a few sentences together and release them into the wild, lest we be misunderstood. I struggle with these issues often, especially in such an adversarial environment such as TOL. All the more reason you and others should do the same.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

I see. So the "typical" mistake is made by over a billion classical theists while the "correct" assumption of a few thousand open theists is the correct one.

Apparently so.

Since when is the majority right?

I could make that same argument to you regarding Catholic theology and you would have to respond likewise.

How about this: "The common understanding from classical theism is that time is a property of the created universe. On the other hand, open theists assume time is related to the sequential progression of events and is unrelated to the created universe."

Time is sequential because God is a rational being and experiences one event after another. God is the Living God.

You are not a careful man with your words.

Guilty as charged.

I am just a man.

I do not consider myself a theologian. I will leave all the grey-bearded ramblings to others. From me, you will get nothing but brevity, it is my gift and my curse.

Your words must stand for themselves since there is no sense of face to face communications for the subtle interpretations that would clarify meanings. Thus, what a person receives as your message is your message, even when you did not intend as much. In other words, the message received is the message sent, so we must be careful when we throw a few sentences together and release them into the wild, lest we be misunderstood. I struggle with these issues often, especially in such an adversarial environment such as TOL. All the more reason you and others should do the same.

Speaking of convoluted messages... you just gave one.

I have no idea what you just said. Was it English? :idunno:

 

[themuzicman]

How about this: "The common understanding from classical theism is that time is a property of the created universe. On the other hand, open theists assume time is related to the sequential progression of events and is unrelated to the created universe."

How about this:

How about this: "The common understanding from classical theism is that time is only a property of the created universe. On the other hand, open theists assume time both is a property of the created universe and related to the sequential progression of events and is unrelated to the created universe."

Muz

 

[Nathon Detroit]

How about this:

How about this: "The common understanding from classical theism is that time is only a property of the created universe. On the other hand, open theists assume time both is a property of the created universe and related to the sequential progression of events and is unrelated to the created universe."

Muz

Excellent! :up:

 

[Clete]

Evo,

Sorry for the delay in response. It seems there has been a lot of ground covered in the last day or two and so this may be irrelevant at this point but then again perhaps not...

Good to see you acknowledge the problem. Now to answer your two questions and then comment on the rest of your post...



Yes. My intention is to show that the God of open theism cannot be the creator of the universe, and I believe that the argument is sound and does that.



Yes. I have heard of Zeno's paradox but I don't think the God of open theism avoids the problem presented in the argument.



Ok, there are several reasons why I believe that what you said does not avoids the infinite regress and thus the problem still remains.

An actual infinite cannot exist in reality

I contend that an actual infinite does not exists in reality and that it only exists as an abstraction or idea. To illustrate, consider this analogy:

Imagine that you have a library with an infinite number of books. Say that you were to gather all of the books in the library, we get Infinity - Infinity = 0. Now, let's say that you were to gather all odd-numbered books, we get Infinity - Infinity = Infinity. Finally, let's say you were to gather all books numbered ten and higher from your library, we get Infinity - Infinity = 9. As you can see, we have here three equations subtracting equal quantities and leading to contradictory answers.

This problem lead a famous mathematician to say: "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite . . . is solely that of an idea . . ." (David Hilbert, "On the Infinite").

As a consequence, mathematicians rule out the use of subtraction and division of infinite quantities. So, even if an infinite series of events could be passed in theory, such a concept cannot exist in reality but only in abstract mathematics. In the real world, there is nothing preventing us from subtracting things, and since the God of open theism is in reality and subject to time and he is not a mere abstraction, there is no reason to think that he is somehow immune to this problem.

Space-time is discontinuous

Your claim that "we move through an infinite series of points in time all the time" assumes that space-time is continuous and infinitely divisible. But we know from science that this is not the case. According to quantum mechanics, space-time comes in quanta or discreet packages, that is, things move by really small "jumps", very much like a frame by frame animation. What this means, in other words, is that the electron is here, then it is there, and there was no in-between. This entails that things in the universe are popping in and out of existence every femtosecond.

So, one does not moves through an infinite series of points in time, but a finite series of points. The limit of the division of space-tme can be found in the planck time / length. Thus we find that "traditional notions of space and time will break down at distances shorter than the Planck length or times shorter than the Planck time" (source).

A further corollary of the above could be that we live in a motionless universe where what we perceive as motion is but a constant re-creation done by God that gives the appearance of motion, that is, motion is an illusion. But that involves something unrelated to what we are discussing, so let's not get derailed into that.

All of the above seems to have been aimed at demonstrating either flaws in Zeno's paradoxes or perhaps to show how the problem of infinite regress is not directly related to Zeno's paradox. If so then you have seriously missed my point. Effectively everything you've said here is entirely irrelevant to our discussion. I don't care anything at all about Zeno's paradox aside from the fact that I think it is fascinating and that I take particular pride in the fact that I, entirely on my own, came up with the idea of quantum motion, quantum time and therefore quantum anything related to either motion or time (i.e. temperature for example) while I was a Junior in Highschool in 1986. What I wouldn't give for a copy of that paper I wrote for my Union High School Astronomy class. Surely it would be worth something to someone! But aside from that the only thing that even keeps Zeno's paradox fresh in my mind is its similarity to the infinite regress problem that Settled View believers seem to continuously bring up.

The point I was making about its similarity didn't begin and end with the notions of infinity and motion but had to do with the paradox's entire history. Especially the fact that some, including Zeno himself actually allowed the reasoning to convince them that motion was an illusion. They ignored their entire lives and every experience that ever had, including the formulation of the paradox itself and allowed themselves to believe that all of it was one gigantic illusion. A point which you seemed to almost endorse in your comments above - just incredible!

As I said before, one must not allow themselves to be stupefied in such a way. You don't conclude that because there is an infinite series of things that much be done in a finite period of time that you therefore haven't really arrived at your current location. Instead you accept that you exist and that there is something you don't understand that has a direct bearing on whatever line of reasoning led you to the conclusion that your existence bears no resemblance to anything you've ever experienced.

In other words, the correct application of the point I was trying to make and that I seem to be endlessly rambling on trying to make again, is that I don't know how history has arrived that the present moment and in spite of the fact that the infinite regress problem would seem to prove that would could not have done so, I choose to accept that in fact we have arrived at the present moment and conclude therefore that there is something about the nature of infinity that we do not sufficiently understand in order to solve the infinite regress puzzle.

That took way too long to make that point. I apologize for putting you through all that! :freak:

God's discursive knowledge

Another issue which is precisely one of the reasons why I focused on God's thoughts and the nature of his knowledge and not time or some other thing when making the argument, is that even if we grant that an infinite series of points are passed between two events, this overlooks the fact that to move across two points entails a thought first, that is, thought is prior to movement. Now, since God's knowledge is discursive as you said, his thoughts are very much like space-time, that is, discrete. Otherwise how would he move coherently from topic to topic? So, unless you want to say that God's thoughts are infinitely divisible (something I think would leave us with anything but a thought), then the problem of an infinite series of thoughts still holds for the God of open theism.

Again, Zeno's paradox was not presented as a solution to the problem of infinite regress as this comment seems to suggest. On the contrary, the problem is very much unsolved but that it does not prove that history had a beginning any more than it proves that God had a beginning which neither of us believes. In other words, infinite regress does not disprove open theism any more than it disproves the settled view! We are both saddled with the problem of infinite regress because we both affirm the notion that God had no beginning. It is a problem for theism in general, not open theism in particular.

God existing outside of time does not solve the problem because all it does it replace on difficulty with a whole series of worse difficulties not the least of which is the fact that existence outside of time is itself a contradiction! You cannot solve a rational problem with an irrationality and then claim to have a rational worldview! And if you are satisfied with having an irrational worldview then where's the need to solve the problem in the first place?

Further, if you, as do most Settled View believers, especially Calvinists, say to me that the notion of God's existence outside of time is a ineffable mystery that we should just take on faith as a fact we must live with then why you do begrudge me of doing the exact same thing concerning infinite regress? If you can say "I don't know how that works." concerning God's existence outside of time, why am I not allowed to say the same thing concerning infinite regress?

I'll take my worldview with the solitary rational puzzle that anyone has yet found within it over your bag full of irrationalities any day of the week and twice on Sundays!

I will simply chalk it up as one of thousands of things about God which I do not yet understand and wait until someone either cracks the puzzle with some bit of knowledge or insight that we do not yet possess or until I find a worldview that has one fewer rational problems than the one I now hold. Should that not be our goal as Christians? To search for the objective truth and cling to the closest thing we've found to it until something better is found? One thing we certainly should not do is to trade a worldview with one problem for another with a whole laundry list of problems a mile long! Progress toward theological truth (or any truth) is made in the other direction, wouldn't you agree? It is precisely in this direction toward objective truth which the Open View seeks to move the church as is communicated by John Sanders in the quote in my signature line.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Ktoyou]

I said this before; God is outside of time, not enclosed by it. Time also may be infinite, as God is infinite, thus both have no beginning. Time many be asymptotic, but God is eternally omnipotent and immutable. If I tried to explain what I mean I would use Venn Diagrams and have a border free surface to represent God and a circle inside it to represent time, but I do not know if I can place the universe inside the time circle as I do not know if all the universe is within time, so part of the universe may be outside of the circle of time, again, I have not a notion which choice is more probable. Had I to guess, I would say time is within the universe, based on differential geometry’s mappings of the fourth dimension and relativity theory. Now this is not the thinking I commonly engage in and critic not at all concerns me. What I believe, but have no great theological proof or lucid argument is the God is beyond time, as humans understand it and if Divine time exists, it would have to follow a human model for me to comprehend it but that does not mean it is of such a nature that humans would understand it.

 

[Lon]

I have an incredibly simply question for you, please answer it directly.....

IF, later this afternoon for some unknown reason the earth exploded into a cloud of dust and it was no more..... would time cease to exist?


Please spare me the "post wasting" answer.... "well it would cease to exist for us because we wouldn't exist". I want to know if the earth didn't exist and there were no days to measure would time still march on for everything else that remained in existence.

No, we'd still have a sun, we'd still have sequences. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around.....time continues in the rest of 'creation.' It is part of all creation.
If however you are pointing to something such as, when man dies, does time cease for him? Yes. I believe so. Time no longer has meaning.

Our concept of 'progression' IS time contrained. There is no difference between the concept of progression and it's measurement. It is the same thing. It is apprehended logically as a measurement, progression, interval from point A to B. It doesn't exist otherwise.

Hence, there is no nonOV mistake.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

when man dies, does time cease for him? Yes. I believe so. Time no longer has meaning.

Huh?

Can you expand on that? In practical terms what would that mean?

Don't you believe we will live forever with God in heaven? If so, how could time stop?

Our concept of 'progression' IS time contrained.

That is a redundant statement. Time is progression.

There is no difference between the concept of progression and it's measurement.

That is simply not true and I can prove it.

When we tip a hour glass on its side and the sand no longer falls from the top to the bottom has time stopped? Or just the measurement of time stopped?

 

[Lon]

Except that God says 'start measuring here ... now … (first)'. Just because something is immeasurable by our little tapes, doesn't mean it doesn't have dimension. Just because God has no beginning and no end doesn't mean God doesn't experience duration of time. I really don't care what God did or didn't do before creation. I don't even pretend to have a clue as to how far or how long His past is or His future is ... everlasting to everlasting does it for me. I'm just going on the evidence God has provided from the instant He said "Let there be ..." right up to the present, and living in hope of the future. THAT IS MEASURABLE!
Incorrect, if it cannot be measured, it is measureless. It would be infinite. God is infinite (measureless). Sure, discount the Ephesians or Job passage. Toss them out and rip them out of my Bible as well, and then we can say unequivacally "You're right!" Scripture disagrees with you. God cannot be measured (no malice here, I'm trying to use a little bit of line of reasoning to follow to the problematic).


One thing this thread has made clear … Calvinism renders God as impotent as it renders mankind unable. In Calvinism there can be no actual ‘other’ because for their god to create ‘other’ god would have to give up some of ‘himself’ to allow the other to even exist. Must be hard for them to reconcile the concept of God ‘giving’ anything … I mean if God ‘gave’ wouldn’t that mean that God lacks something that he previously had? He can’t even create something ‘new’ that he didn’t previously have just to give it away so that after he gave it he could be back where he started … but then, who would he give it to? There is really no concept of the ‘other’ in Calvinism. Creation (if it even exists in the Calvinistic view) is all a melodrama in the mind of god.

No, scripture revelation renders man as impotent and his logic as finite (there is a 'stopping' point). God doesn't 'give up' to create, it proceeds from Him. Ex Nihilo means 'out of nothing' (Genesis 1). Colossians 1 expounds our understanding that what is created draws from, is contained in, and is for Him.
He 'still' has it. All belongs to Him. The pot cannot tell the potter anything (Romans) for He owns it all.

 

[godrulz]

Knight,

All the songs that will ever exist have already been written; just because you have not heard all of them, does not mean God does not know them.

This is like saying all cars already exist for God, but in reality, they do not exist (contradiction).

Failing to distinguish past, present, future (even for God) leads to nonsense. All things do not already exist in reality, or creation becomes co-eternal with uncreated Creator.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

Failing to distinguish past, present, future (even for God) leads to nonsense. All things do not already exist in reality, or creation becomes co-eternal with uncreated Creator.

Which points us back to a question that was asked earlier that seemed to get lost in the shuffle....

Was the physical existence of creation new to God when He created it?

Muz

AMR, Nang, Lonster.... care to take a stab at muzicman's question?

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

I could make that same argument to you regarding Catholic theology and you would have to respond likewise.

Er, no. I would not. You assume that because I follow the Reformed faith that I am, therefore, anti-Catholic. I am not. I differ on several points with the Catholic faith, but agree with more than those that I disagree. The Reformation was a fine-tuning of Catholic doctrines, not a wholesale re-write...unlike open theism. But this is a topic for another thread, some of which already exist.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

How about this:

How about this: "The common understanding from classical theism is that time is only a property of the created universe. On the other hand, open theists assume time both is a property of the created universe and related to the sequential progression of events and is unrelated to the created universe."

I can live with your agreement of this as a starting point, but can you. You have now doubled the dilemmas you now have to wrestle with.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Since when is the majority right?

I recognize that history and its accompanying popularity does not determine doctrine. Yet, both provide powerful benchmarks against which to measure our exegesis. Open theist Gregory Boyd acknowledges that one must have compelling reasons to move outside the scope of historical theology. Even so, open theism has taken a cavalier view of historical theology in that it not only steps into a new arena of thought, but in so doing it destroys a view continuously held throughout history. It is one thing to reformulate a doctrine, incorporating new insights that are compatible with historical orthodoxy (e.g., dispensationalism). It is quite another to smash a tenet of historical orthodoxy and replace it with a novel idea. The open view of divine omniscience has done the latter.

 

[Nang]

AMR, Nang, Lonster.... care to take a stab at muzicman's question?

[/B]

I have been "stabbing" at Muz's questions for a couple of years.

Did he ask a new one, or repeat an old one?

Nang
(Lost in the thread . . .)

 

[Lon]

Was the physical existence of creation new to God when He created it?

Muz

Already answered this: "new" is a temporal finite term.

It can have only meaning for us. It measures, and God is measureless.

You are asking for a starting point (new, now). God has no starting point. He is eternal in past.

Knight, for one who says we confuse these two, I'd say you are stuck to your tape measure.

 

[Delmar]

I have been "stabbing" at Muz's questions for a couple of years.

Did he ask a new one, or repeat an old one?

Nang
(Lost in the thread . . .)

Are you really that loopy? In the same post where Knight asked you to "take a stab at the question" he quoted the question that he wanted you to respond to! :bang:

 

[Clete]

I said this before; God is outside of time, not enclosed by it.

I said this before; saying it doesn't make it so.


"God is (i.e. God exists) outside of time" is a contradiction. Existence implies duration and duration is time.

 

[Nang]

Are you really that loopy? In the same post where Knight asked you to "take a stab at the question" he quoted the question that he wanted you to respond to! :bang:

You are quite right . . .I blanked over the question, I suppose, seeing it as the repetitous, same ol' same ol' Muz response; invalid, vapid, as not a new or fresh or genuine inquiry.

Call it a jaded on my part . . .but Muz (and his simplistic arguments) get really old and extremely boring.



Nang

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Was the physical existence of creation new to God when He created it?

Any creation of God's is not "new" to God. For it would mean that God did not know this new creation. Yet we know that an effect pre-exists in the mind of its efficient cause. Hence, whatever exists must pre-exist in God, who is its efficient cause.

The Bible begins, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," Gen. 1:1. The bible was addressed by God to all classes of people, therefore it employs the ordinary language of daily life, and not the technical language of philosophy.

The Hebrew term bereshith (lit. "in beginning") is indefinite, so naturally it gives rise to the question, "In the beginning of what?" It would seem best to take the expression in the absolute sense as an indication of the beginning of all temporal things and even of time itself; but some hold that it refers to the beginning of the work of creation. Technically speaking, it would not be correct to assume that time was already in existence when God created the world, and that God at some point in that existing time, called "the beginning", brought forth the universe. Time is only one of the forms of all created existence, and therefore could not exist before creation. For that reason it would be more correct to say that the world was created with time than to assert that it was created in time.

The significance of the opening statement of the Scriptures lies in its teaching that the world had a beginning. Scripture speaks of this beginning also in other places, Matt. 19:4,8; Mark 10;6; John 1:1,2; Heb. 1:10. That the world had a beginning is also clearly implied in such passages as Ps. 90:2, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."; and Ps. 102:25, "Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands."

To get to a plausible solution we need to establish the proper idea of the relation of eternity to time. A great deal of the difficulty encountered in these sort of discussions is no doubt due to the fact that we like to think of eternity too much as an “indefinite extension of time”, as, for instance, when we speak of the ages of comparative inaction in God before the creation of the world. God's eternity is not indefinitely extended time, but something essentially different, of which we can form no conception.

God’s is a timeless existence, an eternal presence. The ageless past and the most distant future are both present to God. He acts in all His works, and therefore also in creation, as the Eternal One, and we have no warrant to draw creation as an act of God into the temporal sphere. In a certain sense this can be called an eternal act, but only in the sense in which all the acts of God are eternal.

They are all as acts of God, works that are done in eternity. Theologians generally distinguish between active and passive creation, active denoting creation as an act of God, and passive creation, its result, the world's being created. Active creation is not, but the passive creation is, marked by temporal succession, and this temporal succession reflects the order determined in the decree of God. As to the objection that a creation in time implies a change in God, creation is not the Creator's but the creature's passage from potentiality to actuality.

Let's summarize a few points. God's eternity may be defined as that perfection of God whereby He is elevated above all temporal limits and all succession of moments, and possesses the whole of His existence in one indivisible present.

God is infinite in relation to time. Time does not apply to God. God was before time began. God is not restricted by the dimension of time. That God is not bound by time does not mean that God is not conscious of the succession of points in time that He has created. God knows what is now occurring in human experience. God is aware that events occur in a particular order. God is equally aware of all points of that order equally vividly. God is aware of what is happening, has happened, and what will happen at each point in time. Yet at any given point in time God is also conscious of the distinction between what is now occurring, what has been, and what will be.

There is a successive order to the acts of God and there is a logical order to his decisions, yet there is no temporal order to God’s willing. God’s deliberation and willing take no time. God has from eternity determined what He is now doing. Therefore God’s actions are not in any way reactions to developments. God does not get taken by surprise or have to create contingency plans.