ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 1

[God_Is_Truth]

So you also agree with Clete that God is not sovereign. God is not in control. God does not know. God can be tricked and surprised. God has to respond to man and change his mind and make less than perfect decisions.God acts spontaneous out of love or anger so his decisions are tainted. Waite a minute, are we talking about God or Zeus or some other mythical god. You OVers are pathetic.

Ironically, it is the greek concepts (zeus was a greek god) that are so classically held by theologians. things like strict immutability, impassibility (which i know you don't hold to), strict omniscience, omniopotence and omnipresence, and the like all originate in greek thinking, and not the bible.

 

[godrulz]

Sovereignty =Completely independent and self Governing. Any entity that has anything less than complete control over their affairs is not sovereign.

Immutability = Not subject to change. If something changes then it is not Immutable.

Omniscience = Having total knowledge. Having a lack of knowledge is not Omniscience

omnipotence = Unlimited Power. If power has a limitation then it is not omnipotence.

Impassibility = Not subject to suffering or pain. No where do I see that God is impassive. Quite the opposite is true.

Sovereign: God is independent and in control of His affairs. This does not preclude creating significant others that have genuine freedom to decide what to eat and wear without God's meticulous control or intervention. The fact that the world and individuals are such a mess shows that the perfect God choses not to control every mundane and moral choice in His creatures.

Immutability: Even classical theologians are recognizing the difference between strong/absolute immutability and weak immutability. A clock is perfect because it changes, otherwise it would only be correct twice a day. God's essential character/nature/attributes do not change, but His relations and experiences can and do change because He is personal and in relationship to a dynamic creation. The incarnation is proof that God changes in some ways, but not in other ways.

Omniscience: Open and Closed theism affirm the omniscience of God but differ on the nature of the future. The past is fixed, the present is now, the future is not yet. This is the type of creation God wisely chose and He knows it as such, correctly distinguishing contingencies, certainties, actualities, necessities, and possibilities. God knows all that is knowable. The future is simply not there yet to know as certain. It is merely potential now and correctly known as such (though some of the future is settled and known by God...the mistake is to extrapolate this to wrongly conclude that He controls and knows all of the future in advance).

Omnipotence: This does not mean that God always uses all of His power all of the time. He can chose not to exercise His all power. This is a self-imposed limitation that does not negate omnipotence. Likewise, God cannot create a rock too heavy to lift. This is not a limitation on omnipotence, but a logical absurdity. The uncreated God cannot be a created creature from all eternity. This is not a limitation, but a non-starter as a concept (the incarnation is another story).

Impassibility: This usually is bundled with traditional concepts. If you can see the incoherence of this in a personal being, then there is hope that you will see the incoherence in some of the other doctrines that have been tainted by Greek philosophy and perpetuated by Augustine and others (e.g. the Calvinistic emphasis on hyper-sovereignty distorts a proper understanding of the love and holiness of God).

 

[godrulz]

So you also agree with Clete that God is not sovereign. God is not in control. God does not know. God can be tricked and surprised. God has to respond to man and change his mind and make less than perfect decisions.God acts spontaneous out of love or anger so his decisions are tainted. Waite a minute, are we talking about God or Zeus or some other mythical god. You OVers are pathetic.

What scripture did Clete quote that God did not know from the beginning as to what would happen and make part of His plane from the beginning? When God reveals Himself to man through the scripture he communicates that revelation in terms that man can understand. How does this detract from God and make hem less than He is and that those who clam to be His children assign Him a status no higher that any pagan god. Such a God as you describe I wont no part of. Such a god as you describe cannot be trusted to keep his word. It all terns into myth and our hope is in vain and all this is good to you. You can have your mythical god. As for me I will trust the only true God for He is able to keep all that I have committed to His.

Straw man caricature. The fact you think that God cannot be trusted in the Open view shows your complete ignorance of the view since we espouse the faithful vs fickle God. I would also reject your straw man view. The Living God of the Bible bears no resemblance to Zeus and is not identical to the traditional understanding of some of His attributes. An absolutely immutable god would be impersonal. A personal God can change His relations, mind, will, and thoughts. He would not be Living nor sovereign if He was less free and dynamic than His creation.

 

[elected4ever]

Sovereign: God is independent and in control of His affairs. This does not preclude creating significant others that have genuine freedom to decide what to eat and wear without God's meticulous control or intervention. The fact that the world and individuals are such a mess shows that the perfect God choses not to control every mundane and moral choice in His creatures.

Immutability: Even classical theologians are recognizing the difference between strong/absolute immutability and weak immutability. A clock is perfect because it changes, otherwise it would only be correct twice a day. God's essential character/nature/attributes do not change, but His relations and experiences can and do change because He is personal and in relationship to a dynamic creation. The incarnation is proof that God changes in some ways, but not in other ways.

Omniscience: Open and Closed theism affirm the omniscience of God but differ on the nature of the future. The past is fixed, the present is now, the future is not yet. This is the type of creation God wisely chose and He knows it as such, correctly distinguishing contingencies, certainties, actualities, necessities, and possibilities. God knows all that is knowable. The future is simply not there yet to know as certain. It is merely potential now and correctly known as such (though some of the future is settled and known by God...the mistake is to extrapolate this to wrongly conclude that He controls and knows all of the future in advance).

Omnipotence: This does not mean that God always uses all of His power all of the time. He can chose not to exercise His all power. This is a self-imposed limitation that does not negate omnipotence. Likewise, God cannot create a rock too heavy to lift. This is not a limitation on omnipotence, but a logical absurdity. The uncreated God cannot be a created creature from all eternity. This is not a limitation, but a non-starter as a concept (the incarnation is another story).

Impassibility: This usually is bundled with traditional concepts. If you can see the incoherence of this in a personal being, then there is hope that you will see the incoherence in some of the other doctrines that have been tainted by Greek philosophy and perpetuated by Augustine and others (e.g. the Calvinistic emphasis on hyper-sovereignty distorts a proper understanding of the love and holiness of God).

Can't you do anything but cut and past?

 

[elected4ever]

Ironically, it is the greek concepts (zeus was a greek god) that are so classically held by theologians. things like strict immutability, impassibility (which i know you don't hold to), strict omniscience, omniopotence and omnipresence, and the like all originate in greek thinking, and not the bible.

On the contrary, All the things that happen in the open view also happened to the immortals. They were nothing akin to God.

 

[elected4ever]

An absolutely immutable god would be impersonal.That is a ridiculous notion

 

[godrulz]

An absolutely immutable god would be impersonal.That is a ridiculous notion

By definition, a personal being has will (acts), intellect (thinks), and emotions (feels). These experiences require sequence/succession/duration and involve change. God experiences joy and delight when His children obey. God is grieved when man fell and Hitler slaughtered Jews. These are changes in the inner disposition of God. The incarnation involves change. If God could not change in any way, He could not create, incarnate, nor relate within His triune being. The creature is not greater than God. We are free to think, act, and feel. God can think new thoughts, change His intentions (Hezekiah; Jonah; the Flood), see the Superbowl unfolding in real time, etc. A static, impersonal god does not change and is a stone idol. The Living God is shown to walk through history experiencing changing thoughts, feelings, and actions (the resurrection is a change...He is not perpetually dead nor perpetually risen from eternity past). This does not mean that He changes in His essential character, so you need not fear that He is untrustworthy. He is dynamic, responsive, providential. He is not aloof and experiencing everything in one unchanging 'eternal now' moment (this would negate incarnation and creation). "Eternal now" is a bizarre philosophical concept. The proof texts used by Calvin and others to show that God is strongly immutable merely show that He is not capricious and fickle like humans or that in that specific instance He will not (vs cannot) change His mind. Other contexts explicitly say that God does change His mind. There is no contradiction and we do not have to resort to dismissing these as accommodations. They reveal something true about a personal God. Why are you defending the indefensible? Even classic, traditional theologians like yourself are starting to see that the traditional understanding is tainted by Greek philosophy and the attributes should be revisited to return to a proper biblical understanding.

 

[godrulz]

Can't you do anything but cut and past?

How is this cut and paste? I used your single word headings and suggested another way to understand them.

 

[godrulz]

On the contrary, All the things that happen in the open view also happened to the immortals. They were nothing akin to God.

An isolated similarity does not equate to identical in every way. The Greek gods thought and acted. The biblical God thinks and acts. Does that mean that God is a Greek god? (review your knowledge of logical fallacies and the fact that just because dogs and cats have 4 legs does not mean that a dog is a cat).

Give a specific example of what you are talking about so we can clear up your distorted view.

 

[Clete]

e4e,

Do you know how to make a Biblical argument? You rail against positions that none of us hold and think you've really done something. That's insane.

How does it follow that since God isn't utterly incapable of change, as you suggest, that He is therefore untrustworthy? Are you suggesting that if God were in any way mutable that it would only be a matter of time before He would become evil? If that's is what you believe then I ask you why? God is not a man, nor is He weak like a man with a propensity toward sin. Why isn't it possible that God is holy not simply because He has no choice but to be holy but rather He is holy specifically because He does have a choice and that He chooses by His own will to be holy?
You know it's not as if God has been holy for a week or a few years or some relatively short period of time. God has always existed and He has always been holy and I believe that He has been so by an act of His will not because there was no other option. I therefore have every imaginable reason trust God completely! Not just because God is holy, just and loving but also because those terms actually mean something when applied to God because even with Him they are volitional.
Further, if things are as you suggest, what meaning would there be in anyone trusting God in the first place? Don't those who trust Him only do so because He caused them to? If a man does not trust by an act of his own will, what meaning is there to it? Does it mean anything to say that a puppet obeys every command of the puppeteer? Is the puppet to be commended and rewarded for such obedience and trust? Don't you, in order to be consistent, have to admit that I believe in open theism because God predestined that I would and in fact caused me to do so?

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[elected4ever]

e4e,

Do you know how to make a Biblical argument? You rail against positions that none of us hold and think you've really done something. That's insane.

How does it follow that since God isn't utterly incapable of change, as you suggest, that He is therefore untrustworthy? Are you suggesting that if God were in any way mutable that it would only be a matter of time before He would become evil? If that's is what you believe then I ask you why? God is not a man, nor is He weak like a man with a propensity toward sin. Why isn't it possible that God is holy not simply because He has no choice but to be holy but rather He is holy specifically because He does have a choice and that He chooses by His own will to be holy?
You know it's not as if God has been holy for a week or a few years or some relatively short period of time. God has always existed and He has always been holy and I believe that He has been so by an act of His will not because there was no other option. I therefore have every imaginable reason trust God completely! Not just because God is holy, just and loving but also because those terms actually mean something when applied to God because even with Him they are volitional.
Further, if things are as you suggest, what meaning would there be in anyone trusting God in the first place? Don't those who trust Him only do so because He caused them to? If a man does not trust by an act of his own will, what meaning is there to it? Does it mean anything to say that a puppet obeys every command of the puppeteer? Is the puppet to be commended and rewarded for such obedience and trust? Don't you, in order to be consistent, have to admit that I believe in open theism because God predestined that I would and in fact caused me to do so?

Resting in Him,
Clete

You guys clam that by God showing emotion constitutes change. I think that God is the same today, yesterday and forever. You guys say that God changes his mind because of some of His responses to given situations and I say that God responds to garner a change in man, not Himself. God is bound by His word regardless of any emotion that may be exhibited by Him in scripture. This is not change. God says that He is the beginning and the ending and all in between. God is all and in all. Now what God means by saying those things is not fully comprehended by man. Not by you and not by me but to limit God to a particular set of theories is wrong unless God has given specific revelation to the contrary. To confine God by human reasoning or to instruct God by telling God that there was a better way to do something is the hight of human arrogance. This is what I see exhibited in the Open view. To me the open view is an attempt to make God into the product of human reasoning.

 

[Lighthouse]

Nice costume.

Do what?

 

[Clete]

You guys clam that by God showing emotion constitutes change.

Not exactly. Showing one emotion at a particular time and then another emotions on some other occasion constitutes change. Not change in who God is but simply in His emotional state of mind.

I think that God is the same today, yesterday and forever.

God is the same person but that doesn't mean He doesn't do different things at different times. The same Bible that says that God is the same yesterday, to day and forever also says that God repented from having made man upon the Earth and that it grieved Him at His heart.

You guys say that God changes his mind because of some of His responses to given situations and I say that God responds to garner a change in man, not Himself.

We simply quote the Scripture; nothing more. The Bible plainly states that God has repeatedly repented from His stated course of action and explained specifically why.

God is bound by His word regardless of any emotion that may be exhibited by Him in scripture.

Scripture is His word! This sentence is self-contradictory, or do you deny that Scripture is God's own word?

This is not change. God says that He is the beginning and the ending and all in between. God is all and in all. Now what God means by saying those things is not fully comprehended by man. Not by you and not by me but to limit God to a particular set of theories is wrong unless God has given specific revelation to the contrary.

Precisely! The Bible, God's specific revelation, says contrary to your theory! We aren't just making this stuff up as we go. The Bible itself is where we get the idea that God changes by doing things like becoming a human being, dying and raising from the grave, etc.

To confine God by human reasoning or to instruct God by telling God that there was a better way to do something is the hight of human arrogance.

Where has anyone said anything like that? I've never said that God should have done something differently than He did, nor would I say anything like that.

This is what I see exhibited in the Open view. To me the open view is an attempt to make God into the product of human reasoning.

The open view is nothing like that at all. It might be characterized more accurately as an attempt to reconcile all of the available Biblical data in a logically coherent manner rejecting interpretations that rely on such concepts as antinomy. That's by no means an exhaustive description but it is certainly more accurate than your wildly inaccurate caricature of it. If you're going to reject something then you aught to at least attempt to have an accurate idea of what it is you're rejecting. Such blatantly intentional mischaracterizations do nothing but entrench yourself in potential error. That is to say, if your theology is factually correct then rejection of such caricaturistic descriptions of competing views is all together unnecessary. What you should do instead is to make an effort to understand the competing view and deal with it head on and if you find that you cannot do so then deal honestly with what, if anything, such an inability would imply about your own theology. Put another way, God is more interested in what He is doing in you than He is interested in what He is doing through you, and thus you should be more concerned about whether your own theology is correct than you are about the accuracy of someone else's.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Lighthouse]

Go Clete!

 

[elected4ever]

Go Clete!

If God goes not know then God is an unreliable souse of information and He can change his mind about you and me and we can have no confidence of anything. So be careful what you say amen too. God may say Oops I made a mistake.

 

[God_Is_Truth]

If God goes not know then God is an unreliable souse of information

no, to be unreliable you would have to unjustly lie or somehow be mistaken when one ought to have known. God never tells falsehoods and never doesn't know something he ought to know.

and He can change his mind about you and me and we can have no confidence of anything.

no, that is a matter of character. open theists agree that God's character does not change.

So be careful what you say amen too. God may say Oops I made a mistake.

God doesn't make mistakes, at least as i understand them.

 

[elected4ever]

no, to be unreliable you would have to unjustly lie or somehow be mistaken when one ought to have known. God never tells falsehoods and never doesn't know something he ought to know.



no, that is a matter of character. open theists agree that God's character does not change.



God doesn't make mistakes, at least as i understand them.

That is not the open theism propagated on this board.

 

[godrulz]

That is not the open theism propagated on this board.

The Bob Enyart Open Theism is not identical to the mainstream version, but you misunderstand what they mean by 'mistake' (or they poorly word what they are trying to communicate...I agree with Clete below).

 

[Clete]

That is not the open theism propagated on this board.

Yes it is. If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention.

GIT said nothing that I nor open theist that I know of would disagree with.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[elected4ever]

Yes it is. If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention.

GIT said nothing that I nor open theist that I know of would disagree with.

Resting in Him,
Clete

So let me restate your question into its historical narrative. Earlier, Judas had left the upper room after finding out that Jesus already knew about his betrayal. In the evening after dinner the Lord took the eleven for a walk over the Brook Kidron and up the side of the Mount of Olives to Gethsemane. And in that garden, the Lord spoke the most mournful prayers ever uttered, about the dear cost of our salvation. And now watch what Calvinists think is their greatest nightmare, and see what Openness possibilities would look like actually playing out in human history. As Jesus is praying, the traitor appears, but not with a cohort of temple guards. He comes alone. And he stumbles, and falls at the feet of his Lord. “Master…, I…, I…,” but he can’t stop crying. “Master…, Master…,” his words not able to break through his sobs. Peter stirs, and awoken by the wailing, comes to see what is happening. He has a weapon, but does not need to draw his sword. For no guards were there. And Malchus was still back at the high priest’s courtyard, warming himself at a fire of coals. Peter sees his fellow disciple, Judas, prostrate and consumed in tears. He was pleading with the Lord, for something Simon couldn’t understand. Judas was overcome with grief, and the sound of wailing brings James and John, who see Jesus put his arms around Judas’ head. And the Lord cleans his nose and eyes with the edge of His robe. Then the Lord asked him, “Who are you seeking?” And Judas couldn’t answer. And so He kissed him, and said, “I know, Judas, I know.”

“I forgive you.”

Sam. Consider the entirety of who Judas was and ever will be. What could he ever have done that could have glorified God more than to repent in Gethsemane? If Judas had repented, as did Nineveh after God promised destruction in forty days, God would not cease to be God. Rather, He and the angels in heaven would rejoice. The Evangelists would not feel defeated, but they would glory recording such an event in their Gospels, as does the Scripture when Nineveh repented and avoided God’s prophesied destruction forty days later. Jonah lamented that God’s mercy superseded His prophecy (though it did!). And Settled View proponents seem to suggest they would do likewise. Calvinists always bring up Judas, suggesting that God could not be God if Judas had repented, but He survived Nineveh. Actually, God wanted to be wrong about Nineveh, because love influences Him. And God could have survived Judas also. If Judas had repented, Christ might have given Matthias a different task, of engraving this story into the walls of the New Jerusalem [Rev. 21:14] just beneath the name of Judas Iscariot. Calvinists do not lament the fact that Nineveh repented (true?). And it would be EXACTLY the same situation if Judas had repented.

Non-Prophecies Bob Enyart

The fact is Judas did repent but was not forgiven and his guilt overcame him and he committed suicide.Jesus said that He picked Judas on purpose that Judas was a deceiver and He picked a deceiver to do a deceivers work. Did Jesus love Judas? I think he did but that did not save Judas. Why ? dare I say it , predestination from the foundation of the world. :shocked: