Does God know the future?

[godrulz]

I'm not using it to promote 'irrationality'. In a general sense, this verse does tell us that the way we think logically, and the way God 'thinks' logically are totally different. What applies to us logically may not apply to Him logically.

Is. 55, in context, shows that man fails to love, seek justice, and forgive (in contrast to God's higher ways). Isaiah implores the Israelites to return to YHWH who forgives (unlike humans). Unfortunately, it has been made a proof text as a philosophical timeless truth that God is wholly beyond us to the point we cannot understand Him and His ways (Plato and Philo influenced this idea).

John Sanders in "The God who risks" (some thoughts above also from him):

"This and similar texts refer to character differences between God and humans, not ontological and epistemological differences. For Isaiah, God is incomparable to humans in that he loves those we would not. Thus the real paradox is not between God as the absolute and God as anthropomorphic but between God's grace and human sin."

You go beyond the text to try to say that sovereignty and predestination or exhaustive foreknowledge/free will are beyond our understanding because God's ways are higher. This text is not an excuse for sloppy thinking or condoning inherently illogical presuppositions.

 

[godrulz]

We used to find the earth being round illogical and absurd. We used to find the notion of the earth orbiting the sun an absurdity as well. We obviously do not find these things illogical or absurd now as we have learned more. What new things may one day be revealed to us which we find highly illogical and absurd today? :think:

Critical thinking and sound reasoning with evidence can help us discern truth. Our goal is to accurately represent God and His ways as revealed in Scripture. OVers feel that God has revealed Himself as living, dynamic, responsive, and omnicompetent. The closed view is content to see Him as static with a meticulous control of reality as opposed to a providential sovereignty.

Believing a lie about the shape of the earth came out of ignorance and lack of evidence. God has sufficiently revealed His nature and ways that we can know truth about Him (not exhaustively). If the Bible portrays God as changing His mind and interacting temporally with man, we should not rationalize this away in the hopes that someday we will see things more 'logically' to support our wrong preconceived theologies.

There is a difference between man in an unscientific age believing fairy tales, and NT believers who have the Word and Spirit to know God and make Him known in spirit and in truth.

 

[Clete]

Clete and Dave,

Let me clear up some things that I think you have misunderstood about my take on 'logic'. For one, I am not saying that logic does not apply to us, or that God is 'irrational', like some insane madman whose 'thoughts' (speaking in human terms here) serve no purpose. What I am merely suggesting to Clete is that to study the Bible, and discuss theology, and to learn things about God using logic is fine and dandy. But what really ticks me off and what I believe to be a dangerous road, is to take that same logic that you use to interpret things that you have learned about God, and then say that our ways of thinking about Him also apply to His way of thinking.

There is nothing Biblical to suggest that there is any other sort of logic than what we know as logic. And I'm not talking about wacky man made forms of logic used in computer programming or some higher mathematics; I'm simply talking about the garden variety logic. The sort of logic that said that truths are never self-contradictory; that something cannot be both one thing and not that thing at the same time. I'm not talking about what seems wrong because of some ignorance on our part or anything else like that. When I talk about absurdities, I'm talking about that which cannot be true, not simply that we can't figure out how they could be true but that we can figure out for certain that they CANNOT BE.

In other words, Clete makes the observation that we live in time. We experience a past, and we know that there is a future to come. But to take your conclusion about yourself in time and then apply it to God is, IMHO, wrong. Let me explain....

It makes no difference what you opinion is Z Man. Don't you get it? I'm not talking about what I think might be true or what I want to be true but what HAS TO BE TRUE. Doing things takes time; if God does not experience time then He can't do anything. God does and always has done things and so He does and always has experienced time. There is not one single thing, Biblical or otherwise; that you can present that could possibly refute that. It cannot be refuted without arbitrarily changing the definition of the terms used, which is cheating. So it's not about opinions or beliefs but about truth. If the sort of logic you use is valid we could never know anything for certain, never.

What we experience and learn about God, we do so in our timeline. We receive knowledge about God in a sequence of our own time. We experienced God in our past, are experiencing Him now, and will expect to experience Him in our future. When Abraham received a promise from God, it was about his future. Abraham was not at that time yet to see the full blossom of God's promise, so to Abraham, it hadn't been done yet. Abraham had to put trust and his faith in God in hopes that he would experience God's promise when the time came.

Nothing about this contradicts my position in the slightest. You MUST read timelessness into the text or order to get it out of anywhere in the Bible.

But this is our experience with God. I don't think it is correct, or logical, to turn it around and say that God too has experiences with us on a timeline as well. I don't believe that God made a promise to Abraham without knowing that the promise was a reality, not just a future 'hope', or reality to come. To God, it was a reality. It was just a matter of Abraham and his decedents catching up to the point in OUR time that God had ordained the promise to blossom.

There is exactly nothing in the text to indicate this is so! Nothing! Without your theology, you would never get this from the text at all.

My point is, what may be logical to us may not be logical to God.

IMPOSSIBLE! What is self-contradictory is self-contradictory. What is false is false and what it true is true. A lie doesn't magically become the truth just because God walks in the room! The very idea of that is blasphemy. And again, If what you are suggesting here is the way things really are then it is not possible for us to know anything.

We know that it's logical to eat, or else we'll die. We know that it's logical to have a heterosexual relationship in order to procreate, rather than having a homosexual relationship. We know that it's logical to expect the sun to rise in the morning; for us to grow old and die; and for some of our plans to become realized at a point sometime in our future, while others are not. But for us to say that God is contained by the same logic is ludicrous. God does not think it logical for Him to eat. God does not think it logical for Him to have any sort of 'procreating' relationship. God does not think it logical that He will experience a passing of time in which He will grow old and die. And I do not believe that we can say that God think it is logical to expect things to happen in the future, or that He reminisces about His past.

Eating, reproduction, geriatrics, etc all have to do with nature and natural processes. It is not logical to expect a super-natural being like God or the angel or us after we depart this life, to be effected by such natural processes. Nature pertains to the natural not the supernatural. The creature is limited to the creation but the creator is not. I seriously wonder, after reading this, whether you understand at all what logic and reason is. It's no wonder I feel like I am pounding my head against a brick wall with you. You aren't even speaking the same language.

It's simply foolish to believe that God is bound by the same logic as we find to be relevant in our lives. Again:

Isaiah 55:8
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord.

In the first chapter of the very same book of the Bible God says this though...

Isaiah 1:18
“ Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD​

It is not my or anyone's intention that I know of to bring God down to our level. No one is suggesting that we are remotely as intelligent as God is or that we have the ability to process the amount information with the wisdom and clarity that God can. And so yes, for these reasons and many more, God's thought a very much above our thoughts, but they are not lower than our thoughts! Irrationality (which includes all things that are not of sound reason and logic) would not be an improvement in God's thinking, but a failure.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Clete]

We used to find the earth being round illogical and absurd.

No we didn't. People may have accused someone of be absurd as in silly or worthy of ridicule but that isn't what I'm talking about. Illogical doesn't mean outside of what we feel is normal or expected or possible. It is about what actually is possible.

We used to find the notion of the earth orbiting the sun an absurdity as well. We obviously do not find these things illogical or absurd now as we have learned more.

But how have we learned more? By the honest application of logic, that's how. Galileo understood that his observations and Aristotle could not both be right. How did he come to that conclusion? BY LOGIC, that's how. He knew that something was wrong with Aristotles cosmology because what he said CONTRADICTED what Galileo observed with his own eyes. As a result he ended up proving (by means of logic) that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. It isn't logic that has changed but only our knowledge and logic is the only reason our knowlege is KNOWN to be now correct. Logic is the only means we have to confirm or falsify any truth claim, including religious ones.

What new things may one day be revealed to us which we find highly illogical and absurd today? :think:

We will never be capable of doing the logically absurd. Never. To do the logically absurd would be not to do the logically absurd. That's what makes it both logically absurd and trully impossible.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[DFT_Dave]

Ridiculous by what standard? You, here, are basically saying that God is perfectly capable of doing the logically absurd. Do you really believe that? Can God tell a lie and it be the truth, or vise versa? Can God be unjust and remain holy? Can God make perfect spheres with sharp corners?

We used to find the earth being round illogical and absurd. We used to find the notion of the earth orbiting the sun an absurdity as well. We obviously do not find these things illogical or absurd now as we have learned more. What new things may one day be revealed to us which we find highly illogical and absurd today?

To SOTZ and Z Man,

As new to this website, I want to tell that I am enjoying these debates. I am very gratefull for everyone's participation. I believe debate is vital to our understanding of truth. Our rhetoric may at times seem very adversarial, but the spirit in which we debate, I believe, is our attempt to help each other.

I see at this point we are not on the same page in our understanding of logic. I hope a comparison of these two quotes demonstrate this. Clete, godrulz, and I are using the word "logic" differently than you are. While it is true that the earth being actually "round" was in contradiction to the view that it was "flat", we are using the law of noncontradiction to mean that the earth cannot be both flat and round at the same time and, in the same relationship to the definition of both.

We have to agree on something's, especially our definitions. Here is what I think you are misunderstanding. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Z Man, you have stated,

"My point is, what may be logical to us may not be logical to God. We know that it's logical to eat, or else we'll die. We know that it's logical to have a heterosexual relationship in order to procreate, rather than having a homosexual relationship. We know that it's logical to expect the sun to rise in the morning; for us to grow old and die;"

But for us to say that God is contained by the same logic is ludicris.

God does not think it logical for Him to eat.
God does not think it logical for Him to have any sort of 'procreating' relationship.
God does not think it logical that He will experience a passing of time in which He will grow old and die."

Here is an error you have made; you have switched the subject of your argument.

"We think it logical that we must eat or die." The correct analogy should be;

"God thinks it logical that we must eat or die". You have have stated correctly;

"We think it logical that we eat or die" but incorrectly substituted Him for we.

"God does not think it logical for Him to eat or die."

When we say our logic and God's logic is the same, we would argue that;

"It is logical to God and to us that we must eat or we will die. It is not logical to God or to us that God should eat or he will die."

What I think you were trying to say is,

"It is logical to us that we must eat or die, but not logical to God that we must eat or die.

This is an irrational statement, but I think it is the one you were trying to make. I hope you see the fallacy of your argument.

--Dave

 

[Johnny]

Stop building your house on logic. Faith is logically absurd.

 

[Delmar]

Stop building your house on logic. Faith is logically absurd.

Not if you use God's definition of faith!

Hbr 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

 

[Johnny]

That doesn't change a thing.

 

[Agape4Robin]

Stop building your house on logic. Faith is logically absurd.

:thumb:

 

[Turbo]

Stop building your house on logic. Faith is logically absurd.

How do you figure?

 

[Clete]

Stop building your house on logic. Faith is logically absurd.

This statement is logically absurd, that's for sure. But I would sooner be eaten by wild dogs that to accept the Christian faith as an absurdity. Your proclamation that it is absurd will land you in Hell if you do not repent.

Biblical faith is built upon substantive evidence...

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.​

Indeed, according to this verse, faith itself is substantive evidence of the existence of God, and indeed it is. The point here though is that there is nothing you can present in your one or two sentence posts that could possibly demonstrate that faith is logically absurd. Your best effort could only serve to condemn you further.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Agape4Robin]

Stop building your house on logic. Faith is logically absurd.

I think he means that to those who do not understand the meaning of faith, it's absurd. I could be wrong here, but that's how I read it.:think:

 

[Clete]

I think he means that to those who do not understand the meaning of faith, it's absurd. I could be wrong here, but that's how I read it.:think:

I don't disagree that people may misunderstand or may not comprehend something but I'm talking about absurdity in the sense that it cannot be true because it is self-contradictory or in some other way commits some fallacy of logic. Our faith does not do that.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Agape4Robin]

I don't disagree that people may misunderstand or may not comprehend something but I'm talking about absurdity in the sense that it cannot be true because it is self-contradictory or in some other way commits some fallacy of logic. Our faith does not do that.

Resting in Him,
Clete

:thumb:

 

[Z Man]

Eating, reproduction, geriatrics, etc all have to do with nature and natural processes. It is not logical to expect a super-natural being like God or the angel or us after we depart this life, to be effected by such natural processes. Nature pertains to the natural not the supernatural. The creature is limited to the creation but the creator is not.

Clete,

I tried to do a search, but for some reason, it doesn't work for me (help, Knight?). Anyways, I was looking for a post by you in which I am about 99% sure that you stated that time was a natural process; as natural as eating to stay alive and such.

If you've said that, then you've contradicted yourself here. Either time is natural or it isn't. I wholeheartedly agree with your above statement, and that is why I reject the false notions that God lives on the same timeline we do. Like you said, nature pertains to the natural, not the supernatural. The creature is limited to the creation, but the creator is not.

Amen Clete. I think I can say that this is the first time that I agree with you 100%. :thumb:

 

[Clete]

Clete,

I tried to do a search, but for some reason, it doesn't work for me (help, Knight?). Anyways, I was looking for a post by you in which I am about 99% sure that you stated that time was a natural process; as natural as eating to stay alive and such.

If you've said that, then you've contradicted yourself here. Either time is natural or it isn't. I wholeheartedly agree with your above statement, and that is why I reject the false notions that God lives on the same timeline we do. Like you said, nature pertains to the natural, not the supernatural. The creature is limited to the creation, but the creator is not.

Amen Clete. I think I can say that this is the first time that I agree with you 100%. :thumb:

I am quite sure that I would never have said time was a natural process. I don't even believe time is a real thing aside from being a useful concept by which we keep track of duration and sequence. Like I said, it takes time to do things and so timelessness would make it impossible for God to do anything, including the creating of time.

I am glad, however, we have found something allong these lines upon which we can agree. There is of course much we agree on, like the diety of Christ, the incarnation, the death burial and resurection of God in the flesh, etc it's just we never discuss those things. I suppose that if we made an exhaustive list, we'd find that we agree on more than we disagree. It helps to remember that sometimes, doesn't it?

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[SOTK]

No we didn't. People may have accused someone of be absurd as in silly or worthy of ridicule but that isn't what I'm talking about. Illogical doesn't mean outside of what we feel is normal or expected or possible. It is about what actually is possible.

We, I think, are also talking about perspective. Do you think that 2000 years ago the people of that time thought it would be possible to fly to the moon? Or, how about just to fly in general? You can't tell me that they didn't think something like that was absurd, irrational, or illogical.

But how have we learned more? By the honest application of logic, that's how. Galileo understood that his observations and Aristotle could not both be right. How did he come to that conclusion? BY LOGIC, that's how. He knew that something was wrong with Aristotles cosmology because what he said CONTRADICTED what Galileo observed with his own eyes. As a result he ended up proving (by means of logic) that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. It isn't logic that has changed but only our knowledge and logic is the only reason our knowlege is KNOWN to be now correct. Logic is the only means we have to confirm or falsify any truth claim, including religious ones.

Can you confirm or falsify the truth claim, using logic only, that God exists?

We will never be capable of doing the logically absurd. Never. To do the logically absurd would be not to do the logically absurd. That's what makes it both logically absurd and trully impossible.

Resting in Him,
Clete

The key word you used above is we. Again, I'm attempting to argue with perspective in mind. For example, creating something from nothing seems logically absurd to me yet God did exactly that when He created the universe.

 

[SOTK]

I am glad, however, we have found something allong these lines upon which we can agree. There is of course much we agree on, like the diety of Christ, the incarnation, the death burial and resurection of God in the flesh, etc it's just we never discuss those things. I suppose that if we made an exhaustive list, we'd find that we agree on more than we disagree. It helps to remember that sometimes, doesn't it?

Resting in Him,
Clete

:thumb:

 

[Clete]

We, I think, are also talking about perspective. Do you think that 2000 years ago the people of that time thought it would be possible to fly to the moon? Or, how about just to fly in general? You can't tell me that they didn't think something like that was absurd, irrational, or illogical.

They may well have thought it but again, I am not talking about what people think.

Let me ask you a question.

Can anything be known to be false? I don't mean believed to be false, I mean can we KNOW that something is false?

Can you confirm or falsify the truth claim, using logic only, that God exists?

Interesting question.
Logic itself does not work unless the existence of God is presupposed. God's existence is the very foundation of logic. Thus God must exist because of the rational impossibility of the contrary.

The key word you used above is we. Again, I'm attempting to argue with perspective in mind. For example, creating something from nothing seems logically absurd to me yet God did exactly that when He created the universe.

For you, as a natural creature, to create something out of nothing would indeed be a logical absurdity. But there is no such logical contradiction implied when God, who is not limited by the laws of the conservation of matter, creates 'ex nihilo'.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[DFT_Dave]

Clete, STOK, Z Man did you see my post #1665 ?
--Dave