ARCHIVE: Open Theism part 3

[Nang]

Since God dose not cheat

Agreed. God does not cheat.

God has no need to "cheat" to accomplish His will; neither does God depend upon any such things an earthly sports win to prove His omniscience of all things . . . what we mortals conceive as past, present, and future.

The argument of the OV against God's omniscience, is not whether all things favor God, but rather, whether all things are "knowable."

Does any Christian really believe that the promises of God are contingent (or depend) in any way, shape, or form on SuperBowl wins?

Gads!!!

(Or on whether God "cheats"" according to His knowledge?)
:noway:

Nang

 

[Nang]

You say that because I would not agree with what you said previously:


According to you we do not believe to get saved!

Evidently you believe that the Philippian jailer was given the wrong answer when he asked what he must do to be saved:

"And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16:30-31).

Lon says we do not have anything to do with our own salvation and you say that we believe because we have already been saved.

This is a perfect example of the confusion among the Calvinists. They fail to understand even the most simple things revealed in the Bible.

Faith (belief) is the evidence of salvation, not the means.

The means of salvation is the grace of God that grants repentance and provides faith to sinners; enabling them to believe in the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Therefore: Regeneration (being born from above by the Holy Spirit of God) precedes any human demonstration and execution of faith.

Nang

 

[Arthur Brain]

Since God dose not cheat

I'm no Calvinist but how would it be 'cheating' to know the future be it the result of a football match or anything else? Is God restrained by our own notion of 'time'?

 

[DFT_Dave]

The verse tells us that "time" is irrelevant to Him. After all, if there is a speeding up of time with Him while there is a slowing down of time there can only be one conclusion--he is the Master of time and therefore He is not constrained by time as we are.

God can relate to man in "time" but that does not mean that time masters Him and that would have to be the case if He exists in "time."

Time cannot master God because God is omnipotent, time exists for God because he is intrinsically free. God does not have to do everything he is capable of doing all at once. God would be a machine if he were not free, and so would we.

How could time master God anyway? Did time master Christ? When Jesus said he would rise from the dead did "time" say "no, I won't allow it". Explain how you imagine "time" would restrain God. You're giving time a power it doesn't have. Time means a sequence of events or the measurement of the duration of an event.

How does time restrain us? Our restraint is that we are "finite", limited in what we can do, God is "infinite", unlimted in what he can do. Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying , All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

--Dave

 

[godrulz]

Romans 11:33-35 still stand even though the open veiw trys to claim other wise. You over thought this one by a few leaps and bounds, kind of like your pentacostal pretending which shows your not honest with the facts, you know those small things like raising the dead and blind eyes opened ect..............................

Grace, Zeke.

This verse is not contrary to OVT.

Other verses also say it is the glory of a king to search out a matter, come and reason with God, love Him with our whole mind, etc.

Why believe an unbiblical, incoherent view when we can embrace a true one and worship in spirit/truth?

 

[godrulz]

You say elsewhere that God knows all things knowable, but not the unknowable.

Since when are football scores "unknowable?"



Nang

They are logically unknowable from trillions of years ago if the players are playing the game and are not absolute puppets of God. They are fully knowable after the fact (read a newspaper).

 

[DFT_Dave]

Of course not. Dave doesn't want anything else. There are times you engage me and think about what I'm telling you and then there are times where you turn it off and return to old addages uncritically. Why? You don't want to let go of the OV, no matter what. You've found your golden toy and will not depart from it, even if it has dead batteries.

The contradiction is against your pet project, not against scriptural revelation or your intellect. You already said yourself two posts ago that God is relational to and unconstrained by time (albeit for different reasons), Dave. You can't agree and then say it is a 'huge contradiction' in the next breath. You are the one looking illogical here, not me.

I did not agree with your reason and it is your reasoning that is at fault, I am not contradicting myself and you're not responding to my argument, again. Referring to my arguments as "old addages, golden toy with dead batteries, and pet project" is just your way of sayng you have no answer. You have no answer not because you're not clever enough to come up with one, but because there is no answer. In chess we call it "check mate", in basketball a "slam dunk", in baseball a "walk off home run".

--Dave

 

[godrulz]

I'm no Calvinist but how would it be 'cheating' to know the future be it the result of a football match or anything else? Is God restrained by our own notion of 'time'?

God experiences duration (time), but it is endless, unlike ours. Timelessness is a nonsensical concept.

 

[Arthur Brain]

God experiences duration (time), but it is endless, unlike ours. Timelessness is a nonsensical concept.

Can you imagine time without a beginning? Who are you to say how God 'experiences' duration? What may be nonsensical to you, or to other humans hardly applies to an omniscient God.

 

[godrulz]

Can you imagine time without a beginning? Who are you to say how God 'experiences' duration? What may be nonsensical to you, or to other humans hardly applies to an omniscient God.

Just as love is eternal in the experiences of the triune God, so is duration/sequence/succession (time). A personal being must have this aspect if He is to think, act, feel. Every page of Scripture shows chronology in God's experience and never hints at the Platonic/Augustinian philosophical concept of timelessness. A vs B theory of time can be defended logically and is also consistent with the face value reading of Scripture.

 

[Arthur Brain]

They are logically unknowable from trillions of years ago if the players are playing the game and are not absolute puppets of God. They are fully knowable after the fact (read a newspaper).

How so? How is knowing an outcome of future events interfering with it?

 

[Arthur Brain]

Just as love is eternal in the experiences of the triune God, so is duration/sequence/succession (time). A personal being must have this aspect if He is to think, act, feel. Every page of Scripture shows chronology in God's experience and never hints at the Platonic/Augustinian philosophical concept of timelessness. A vs B theory of time can be defended logically and is also consistent with the face value reading of Scripture.

What you insist "must" apply simply isn't necessarily so GR. Verses already show that time as we understand and experience it don't apply, else when was the last time you had a day that felt like a thousand years? You haven't no matter how bad a day you were having. You're simply putting your own limits on what God must experience. Why on earth should I listen to that? You're just a human dude as am I.

 

[Nang]

How so? How is knowing an outcome of future events interfering with it?

It isn't.

I have trouble believing godrulz is not smart enough to see what you easily see, Arthur.

Knowing outcomes is not necessarily controlling or determining outcomes.

God has delegated secondary causes to man, who affect their own lives and environs and sport scores.

God knows all the results, and hardly has to read the newpaper to find out what man has achieved (or lost) for himself, but such does not mean that God predetermines Super Bowl winners.

Godrulz and others have redefined omniscience to equal absolute determinism, which is the philosophy of fatalism . . . not the Christian belief of Reformers.

Nang

 

[Arthur Brain]

It isn't.

I have trouble believing godrulz is not smart enough to see what you easily see, Arthur.

Knowing outcomes is not necessarily controlling or determining outcomes.

God has delegated secondary causes to man, who affect their own lives and environs and sport scores.

God knows all the results, and hardly has to read the newpaper to find out what man has achieved (or lost) for himself, but such does not mean that God predetermines Super Bowl winners.

Godrulz and others have redefined omniscience to equal absolute determinism, which is the philosophy of fatalism . . . not the Christian belief of Reformers.

Nang

Except God does 'rig' the game under your theology Nang. God sets the 'winners' and 'losers' before the stadiums even been built....

lain:

 

[Nang]

Except God does 'rig' the game under your theology Nang. God sets the 'winners' and 'losers' before the stadiums even been built....

lain:

You forget that all men were known losers until God chose some to be winners, in His Son.

What could you have against that?

 

[Arthur Brain]

You forget that all men were known losers until God chose some to be winners, in His Son.

What could you have against that?

Well you've only gone and underlined my point. God chose who to 'save' in your theology, so all those who aren't have been decreed to miss the 'field goal' beforehand. Therefore the 'game' is rigged....

God not only knows the future but sets it out in such a way as it's pleasing for Him to not only have eternal suffering but who to send to such also. How loving....

lain:

 

[godrulz]

How so? How is knowing an outcome of future events interfering with it?

If an agent, such as a sports player, is the one playing, then the actions do not exist in reality as an object of knowledge until they exist and play. Knowledge cannot proceed the existence of the event by the agent (it could be known if the agent was deterministically manipulated with no free will like a toy soldier).

You are assuming simple foreknowledge? timelessness/eternal now? but these cannot be demonstrated to be more than assumptions without evidence. The issue is the nature of creation and the future which is non-deterministic and non-existent (anticipatory vs actual).

This is common sense, but technical proofs are also available in the literature (modal logic, etc.).

 

[godrulz]

What you insist "must" apply simply isn't necessarily so GR. Verses already show that time as we understand and experience it don't apply, else when was the last time you had a day that felt like a thousand years? You haven't no matter how bad a day you were having. You're simply putting your own limits on what God must experience. Why on earth should I listen to that? You're just a human dude as am I.

The Petrine verse (1000:1) is not mathematical, but perception. For a being who has endless years (Ps. 102:27), a 1000 years is like a moment. For finite creatures like us, 100 years seems like an eternity. The statement is metaphorical, not scientific (2 Petern 3:8-9).

 

[Nang]

Well you've only gone and underlined my point. God chose who to 'save' in your theology, so all those who aren't have been decreed to miss the 'field goal' beforehand.

All losers who miss the goal, fell when their representative (Adam)lost the game in the garden.

Therefore the 'game' is rigged....

Not by God.

By Adam.

God overrules the errors that caused the loss, by saving some from the loss.

You are just angry because God did not decide to let the entire team off the hook for their failures.

God not only knows the future but sets it out in such a way as it's pleasing for Him to not only have eternal suffering but who to send to such also. How loving....

lain:

Oh please. "God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked."



Nang

 

[Nang]

If an agent, such as a sports player, is the one playing, then the actions do not exist in reality as an object of knowledge until they exist and play.

Correct. For the human agent and for the human grandstands.

But God is elevated in smarts and knowledge above the average sports player and sports fan, you know.

Knowledge cannot proceed the existence of the event by the agent (it could be known if the agent was deterministically manipulated with no free will like a toy soldier).

You are using the limitations of human knowledge to argue the extent of Godly knowledge. Silly, illogical, unbiblical, and insulting to your Maker, who knows a lot more than you, because He is not a finite creature like you.

You are assuming simple foreknowledge?

I assume nothing. I attribute infinite knowledge to infinite God. For such is the God revealed in Holy Scripture.

You are His creation and He made you with limited knowledge.

Why do you then think God has to be like you?

That would be like declaring me no smarter than the chicken I cooked for dinner this evening.