intro2faith
New member
Billy won't take a bite out of the apple. But it was his choice. God knew it. That's all. 
Does God know the future?
- Thread starter intro2faith
- Start date
:bang: Why are you so afraid to answer the hypothetical?intro2faith said:
Come on now . . . I have been fair with you please be fair with me.
Please answer the question.
HYPOTHETICAL NUMBER ONE:
If God knows (perfectly) that in 1,000 years a child will be born and that child will be named Billy. God knows that in 1,010 years Billy (Billy is 10 years old) will pick up a apple and take a bite out of it.
In this hypothetical God know's all these facts perfectly and exhaustively, currently. God knows all of this 1,010 years in advance.
Tell me . . . does Billy have the freedom to not pick up the apple and take a bite out of it?
genuineoriginal
New member
God does not know the future. This is shown by what He said to Abraham.
Genesis 18:17And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; 18Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. 20And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; 21I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
God says that he knows Abraham's character (v. 19).
God says that he hears reports about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 20)
God implies that he does not know if the reports are true, and says he is going in person to see for himself so he will know (v. 21)
God is able to declare what will happen in the future as shown in his words through Isaiah:
Isaiah 46:8Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. 9Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: 11Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.
God declares things will happen in the future (v. 10)
God will do what he pleases (v. 10)
God will bring to pass all he has spoken (v. 11)
God will do what he has purposed (v. 11)
From comparing these passages, it can be shown that God does not see the future, and make it immutable by seeing it, but that God is powerfull enough to make his prophecies come to pass despite anything else that may happen.
Genesis 18:17And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; 18Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. 20And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; 21I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.
God says that he knows Abraham's character (v. 19).
God says that he hears reports about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 20)
God implies that he does not know if the reports are true, and says he is going in person to see for himself so he will know (v. 21)
God is able to declare what will happen in the future as shown in his words through Isaiah:
Isaiah 46:8Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. 9Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: 11Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.
God declares things will happen in the future (v. 10)
God will do what he pleases (v. 10)
God will bring to pass all he has spoken (v. 11)
God will do what he has purposed (v. 11)
From comparing these passages, it can be shown that God does not see the future, and make it immutable by seeing it, but that God is powerfull enough to make his prophecies come to pass despite anything else that may happen.
intro2faith
New member
Knight said:
I won't answer that question because the bottom line is, God wouldn't KNOW that Billy was going to take a bite out of it if Billy was not going to!
intro2faith said:
I realize the difficulty this hypothetical poses to your theology, therefore I realize why you will not answer the question.
At this point I would like to back track a bit to see if there any way we can salvage this thread.
YES or NO (you can explain the yes or no if you like). Does God know the future exhaustively and perfectly? Does God know RIGHT NOW whether or not there will be a boy named Billy born 1,000 years from now? Does He know whether or not Billy will pick up an apple at age 10 and take a bite out of it?
Does He know whether or not these things will come to pass? We certainly don't know if these events will come to pass but does God know RIGHT NOW perfectly and exhaustively whether or not these events will come to pass?
P.S. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this issue - therefore I am giving you some positive rep!intro2faith said:
intro2faith,
It looks like you and Knight have got a pretty good start going on a terrific topic that seems to keep popping up around here lately. You guys are making some good progress and so I don't want to intrude but I thought that perhaps it would be helpful to define terms.
I know that Knight agrees, at least generally if not completely that to be free is defined as having the ability to do or to do otherwise and he is proceeding in his logic from this premise. Would you agree with this definition? If not, could you offer an alternative?
And there is one last thing I wanted to point out. It might seem like a pretty fine hair to split but it may become important later on.
You said...
Speaking from a strictly logical perspective, something is either knowable or it is not. Just because I am unable to know something is not what makes something logically unknowable. Being unknowable means that it cannot be known at all; not by us or by God, or by anyone else. If anyone at all can know a thing then that thing is by definition knowable. So when we say that God does not know the unknowable we aren’t talking about stuff that is really difficult to figure out, we’re talking about stuff that CANNOT be figured out at all.
Resting in Him,
Clete
It looks like you and Knight have got a pretty good start going on a terrific topic that seems to keep popping up around here lately. You guys are making some good progress and so I don't want to intrude but I thought that perhaps it would be helpful to define terms.
I know that Knight agrees, at least generally if not completely that to be free is defined as having the ability to do or to do otherwise and he is proceeding in his logic from this premise. Would you agree with this definition? If not, could you offer an alternative?
And there is one last thing I wanted to point out. It might seem like a pretty fine hair to split but it may become important later on.
You said...
Knight said that he had no argument with this and depending on what you mean by this, I may not either but if you mean by this that there is nothing unknowable to God then I do not agree and I don’t think Knight would either.intro2faith said:
Speaking from a strictly logical perspective, something is either knowable or it is not. Just because I am unable to know something is not what makes something logically unknowable. Being unknowable means that it cannot be known at all; not by us or by God, or by anyone else. If anyone at all can know a thing then that thing is by definition knowable. So when we say that God does not know the unknowable we aren’t talking about stuff that is really difficult to figure out, we’re talking about stuff that CANNOT be figured out at all.
Resting in Him,
Clete
Knight,
First off I'll say that I believe and have always believed that God knows the past, present, and future. You are, however, certainly making me rethink my stance concerning this.
Does God ordaining that path follow from God knowing it? I'm not sure it does. Things may happen exactly as God forsaw, but I sitll don't think it follows that God ordained things to happen according to that knowledge.
A couple questions...
Rev. 17:8 "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is."....
The phrase "...whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world...." -- I think this can be one of at least 2 ways, maybe you will have more....
I think it can be taken as the names were written in the book of life AT the foundation of the world OR
it is saying that those who didn't have their name written in the book of life at any time between the foundation of the world and now
how do you interpret that verse?
Sorry for butting in this conversation but wanted to throw a couple thoughts in and I wanted to answer your hypothetical situation that wasn't getting answered.
Kevin
First off I'll say that I believe and have always believed that God knows the past, present, and future. You are, however, certainly making me rethink my stance concerning this.
No, if God has full knowledge of the infinite future and that knowledge is perfect then Billy can only act according to 1 set of events. The existence of everything in the universe can only follow one path, the path that God forsaw, but...
Does God ordaining that path follow from God knowing it? I'm not sure it does. Things may happen exactly as God forsaw, but I sitll don't think it follows that God ordained things to happen according to that knowledge.
A couple questions...
Rev. 17:8 "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is."....
The phrase "...whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world...." -- I think this can be one of at least 2 ways, maybe you will have more....
I think it can be taken as the names were written in the book of life AT the foundation of the world OR
it is saying that those who didn't have their name written in the book of life at any time between the foundation of the world and now
how do you interpret that verse?
Sorry for butting in this conversation but wanted to throw a couple thoughts in and I wanted to answer your hypothetical situation that wasn't getting answered.
Kevin
This is a completely random and pretty much pointless post but this topic reminds me of the one scene in the The Matrix, the first and only good one.
The scene I'm reminded of is when Neo first meets with the oracle and she tells him not to worry about the vase, and he says "what vase" and turns as he says it and knocks a vase over and breaks it, then she says what will really get him thinking is if he would have broken it if she hadn't said anything....
anyway, I know it's not a great parallel but I thought of it....
The scene I'm reminded of is when Neo first meets with the oracle and she tells him not to worry about the vase, and he says "what vase" and turns as he says it and knocks a vase over and breaks it, then she says what will really get him thinking is if he would have broken it if she hadn't said anything....
anyway, I know it's not a great parallel but I thought of it....
I'm not Knight but if you're interested in what I think, I would say that the latter is the correct interpretation. It is the only one which would preserve the meaning of our lives, which is to love God. If we cannot choose, we cannot love.kmoney said:
Resting in Him,
Clete
Clete said:
Clete,
sure I'm interested in your thoughts....
I figured that you and Knight and all the open theists would take the latter interpretation because it fits their open theology, but all I have to say is that I said before...
I don't think that our names being in the book of life from the foundation of the world means that we have no free will. I don't believe that God knowing the future means that God predestined the future.
Kevin
kmoney said:
The Matrix is a brilliant movie. Easily the most philosophical movie ever made. There are parallels everywhere in that movie that can be applied to almost any philosophical question, including those we are considering here. The movie could almost be considered a Christian movie as far as I'm concerned. I find it as no small coincidence that they released the movie on Easter weekend.
If you're interested in things of that sort, there have been several books written specifically about The Matrix and the philosophical questions it raises.
The Philosophy of the Matrix by Christopher Gra is a good one that is online.
And a former poster here on TOL named Jim Hilston wrote an interesting blog on the subject that's worth the read.The Matrix & Presuppositional Apologetics
But probably the best work on the subject is The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (Popular Culture and Philosophy, V. 3)
Resting in Him,
Clete
freelight
Eclectic Theosophist
hypothesis
hypothesis
No.
Any true freedom of will granted to conscious beings by divine Providence by institution modulates or limits the perfect omniscience of God. Perfect, exhaustive foreknowledge allows no room for true free will liberty.
This supports the beauty, wonder and eternal progress of an open-ended Universe......wherein Man and God coordinate their wills(hearts & souls) to engage in a never-ending creative journey of living within the Infinity of the LIFE that God IS.
God therefore envisions, wills, plans and purposes the desires of His Heart....and allows free will creatures the privilege/opportunity to share in these plans and dreams. God knows what He desires for the future experience of the whole of the Universe....yet these are always 'open' to endless possibilities within the parameters of free will contigencies. This is the beauty of our co-operation and partnership/marriage to the ONE, the All. This allows for novelty, creativity, variation and other enjoyments of spiritual evolution to be realized thru-out the Whole of Creation.
At last as shared already here....God can only know what is knowable...and cannot know what is unknowable. If some things are truly 'unknowable' then God is not truly omniscient by traditional definition. However, because God is OMNI (nothing that exists exists outside of the Totality that God IS - His divine Mind, Body, Spirit....He being the ONE, the All)...He can be said to be omniscient..in that his knowledge certainly encompasses an infinite vastness that human minds can barely contain or comprehend.
I tend to agree with Knights logix on certain points in this subject although mine are laced with other dimensional insights borrowed from other schools.
paul
hypothesis
No.
Any true freedom of will granted to conscious beings by divine Providence by institution modulates or limits the perfect omniscience of God. Perfect, exhaustive foreknowledge allows no room for true free will liberty.
This supports the beauty, wonder and eternal progress of an open-ended Universe......wherein Man and God coordinate their wills(hearts & souls) to engage in a never-ending creative journey of living within the Infinity of the LIFE that God IS.
God therefore envisions, wills, plans and purposes the desires of His Heart....and allows free will creatures the privilege/opportunity to share in these plans and dreams. God knows what He desires for the future experience of the whole of the Universe....yet these are always 'open' to endless possibilities within the parameters of free will contigencies. This is the beauty of our co-operation and partnership/marriage to the ONE, the All. This allows for novelty, creativity, variation and other enjoyments of spiritual evolution to be realized thru-out the Whole of Creation.
At last as shared already here....God can only know what is knowable...and cannot know what is unknowable. If some things are truly 'unknowable' then God is not truly omniscient by traditional definition. However, because God is OMNI (nothing that exists exists outside of the Totality that God IS - His divine Mind, Body, Spirit....He being the ONE, the All)...He can be said to be omniscient..in that his knowledge certainly encompasses an infinite vastness that human minds can barely contain or comprehend.
I tend to agree with Knights logix on certain points in this subject although mine are laced with other dimensional insights borrowed from other schools.
paul
Well that's not what we are saying. God's foreknowledge does detroy freedom because it means that God predestined everything, it detroys freedom because it removes our ability to do or to do otherwise, which is the very definition of what means to have a free will.kmoney said:
Resting in Him,
Clete
Clete said:
Clete,
This is going to be a very loose parallel, but.....
have you read any Nietzchse? specifically his idea of Eternal Recurrence? In short this is what ER is....we have lived our lives an infinite number of times before this life and an infinite number of times after this life. As far as his stance on free will vs. determinism he is in the middle. He is against the notion of complete free will, but he is also against what he calls "unfree will", which is the opposite of free will.
Anyway, if ER is true than one way you could look at it is that you are programmed to follow a specific path in this lifetime and can do nothing else because you are living a life that has been lived before. therefore you have no free will. Nietzsche, however, doesn't follow this belief. He doesn't take all free will away. The fact that this life is just one link on an infinite chain of lives has no consequence when it comes to you making choices. I know that can be hard to understand and can seem quite contradictory, but I don't believe it is.
Now, for the belief that God exhaustively knows the future....
I brought up Nietzsche's concept of ER for this reason....If God knows the future than it is as if you have lived it before as God forsaw your life. Yes, there is only one way to live your life because if God knows the future and that knowledge is perfect than there is only one path you can take, but I don't think you can take that and jump to not having free will.
Like I said, that parallel is not very great, but I threw it in here.
Kevin
intro2faith
New member
Clete said:
Well said :BRAVO: I just meant that God knows what man doesn't. That's all
intro2faith
New member
kmoney said:
Hey that's GOOD! :BRAVO:
intro2faith
New member
Yep, I think that may be it! :BRAVO:nancy said:
Foreknowledge:precognition: knowledge of an event before it occurs
predestination:previous determination as if by destiny or fate
YEP I think you found the problem Nancy!