Question Concerning The Plot
- Thread starter docrob57
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So then why doesn't He?docrob57 said:
Have you read the story?docrob57 said:Right, He saw that they did what He know they would do. They could have done otherwise. But God was right again!
Nineveh wasn't overthrown!
docrob57 said:
Your assumption may have some validity for proximal vs remote knowledge i.e. God knows the past and present perfectly. He can see our hearts and motives before we chose. This is a far cry from available knowledge in eternity past before we existed or formed our character/habits through a life time of unique choices and contingencies. There is a difference between God knowing what I will likely do tomorrow based on my life, and what I will eat Feb. 1/2009 trillions of years ago. There is no object of available knowledge to God in eternity past to foreknow remote details about non-existent beings with non-existent choices. To make any sense of simple foreknowledge, one must wrongly assume that the future has already happened and is fixed like the past.
Genuine freedom and contingencies logically precludes exhaustive foreknowledge. What can be foreknown is either based on high probability due to specific past/present knowledge, or it is things determined and brought to pass by God's ability (explains the settled aspects of the future, but cannot be applied to things that are logically unsettled= future free will choices). Once something is foreknown (since it is not actual/certain/real yet), there is no possibility of things being different or God is not believing truth. This logically removes contingency and free will (unless the future has happened, which it has not). The open, unsettled motif about the future cannot be pitted against those things that goes settles and closes. The mistake is to think all things are settled and closed.
Joshua 3:9 So Joshua said to the children of Israel, “Come here, and hear the words of the LORD your God.”docrob57 said:
Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites:
Knight said:
Now would be a good time to bring up Hezekiah. God said that he would surely die. Later, in response to prayer, God changed His mind and added 15 years to his life. God is not a liar. He made truth statements, but the future was unsettled and open until it happened. There was a conditional element to God's pronouncement (though not explicit) since God must have known of the possibility of His plans changing if circumstances changed.
Knight said:
I know, that was in the tape too. But, again, the argument made in the tape is that the promise was conditional. The Isrealites were disobedient, so God didn't do it.
I'll tell you why this is important to me. Personally, I don't care a lot about the open future stuff. I do care a lot about the law vs. grace arguments, which can be made without an open future. I think this is extremely important, and I am inclined to accept this teaching. It obviously is tremendously important in trying to understand the scripture and explain it to others. But, it is a decidedly minority position, and I want to have confidence in it.
I didn't see any flaws in the law/grace part of the argument. But it seems there are tremendous flaws in the God doesn't know what will happen argument. So I become concerned that there are flaws in the other part that I just haven't realized. I will study it myself, but I am just at the beginning of the process.
docrob57 said:
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If the future is partially open, exhaustive foreknowledge becomes a logical contradiction. What knowledge existed a billion years ago for God to know who would win the Superbowl in 2010 at that point in eternity past?
God does not look down the corridors of time to see the future. There are no corridors and there is nothing to see. Knowing a nothing is a bald contradiction. To not know a nothing is not a deficiency in omniscience. He knows all that is logically knowable. Future free will contingencies and exhaustive foreknowledge do not mix. Your ideas may only apply once God sees and knows you in reality. Even then, we could do things out of character. I might eat an earthworm for breakfast tomorrow. Until I wake up, there are a number of possibilities in what I will eat. If I am truly free, God could not know for certain what I would eat millions of years before my existence. Is this not self-evident? The future has not happened yet in reality/certainty, so it cannot be known exhaustively (unless you negate contingencies/freedom).
What "tremendous flaws" do you perceive?docrob57 said:
Also....
Why would God interact with Israel using a conditional warning and or prediction? What would be His motivation?
Isn't the very point of a "conditional" that two truly possible outcomes will follow?
EXAMPLE:
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
TRULY possible outcome . . .
Nineveh will not repent and therefore Nineveh will be overthrown.
TRULY possible outcome . . .
Nineveh repents (BECAUSE of the warning itself), and therefore Nineveh is not overthrown.
Don't BOTH outcomes have to be actually possible at the time of the warning for the warning to have any truthful meaning whatsoever?
Knight said:
No offense, but I have stated them ad nauseum, and really am not up to rehashing at this time.
To change their behavior or to change something about them.
Yes, you are the one that argues that foreknowledge negates the possibility of two truly possible outcomes, not me. This is a fundamental problem.
Yes
Let's assume God is successful in changing their behavior. Did God's foreknowledge (even millennia's ago) contain the changed successful interaction?docrob57 said:
I asked....
EXAMPLE
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
TRULY possible outcome . . .
Nineveh will not repent and therefore Nineveh will be overthrown.
TRULY possible outcome . . .
Nineveh repents (BECAUSE of the warning itself), and therefore Nineveh is not overthrown.
Don't BOTH outcomes have to be actually possible at the time of the warning for the warning to have any truthful meaning whatsoever?
And you answerd...
How can two outcomes be actual possibilites if God has known for an eternity which outcome would become an actuality?
docrob57 said:
But as (the TOL poster) Nineveh pointed out, God decided not to destroy Nineveh after they repented:
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented* from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. Jonah 3:10
Here is where God lays out the principles for prophecies being conditional:
The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent* of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent* concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it. Jeremiah 18:7-10
It doesn't sound like God knows beforehand with absolute certainty that His warning will definitely bring about repentance, does it? If it did, He wouldn't say that He thought He would bring about the disaster.
Also, what about the reverse case (v. 9-10)? Does God know with absolute certainty when he promises to bless a kingdom that they will definitely rebel against Him and that He will therefore not bless them? If that's the case why does God make such promises to begin with?
*What NJKV has translated as relent is actually the Hebrew word for repent.
reiterating the last point from the previous post
reiterating the last point from the previous post
reiterating the last point from the previous post
But if God knew for certain that Israel would be disobedient and therefore He would not drive out the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites, why did God emphatically promise that He would?docrob57 said:
Knight said:
Okay, first off, I'm sorry I brought this up because, as before, this is quickly becoming a pointless discussion. I am listening to the Tree now, which, again, the same generous TOLer sent me, and all these teachings are so important and interesting I am just going to forget about the foreknowledge thing for now.
Nevertheless, I will try one more time to offer an analogy to explain my position. This will not convince you. I will just try to explain why the contradiction you continue to assert does not exist, at least from my perspective.
I have a child. I know that when the child is 15 he will become overcome with lust for pretty girls that he knows. When he is 10, I tell him, "Son, when you are 15 I am going to throw you out of the house." "Why?" my son asks, reasonably I think. "Because, you are going to be overcome with lust for pretty girls and you will violate one and that is not acceptable, so you will have to leave."
Now, I "know" that my son will not want to be thrown out of the house. So I "know" that he will not violate a girl and I will not have to throw him out. I don't say this, because it would look like a willingness to compromise, and I am not willing to do that.
My son turns 15. He meets Becky, a major hottie. He burns with lust. However, he makes not attempt to violate her, because he remembers my threat. He behaves, and is able to continue living at home. So I was right.
Now, could my son have violated Becky? Of course. If he had, would I have thrown him out of the house? Of course. Was my warning false? No. Did I have to act on it? No.
Did I know what the outcome would be? Not as surely as God knows, because I am not God. But in human terms, yes? Did my FOREKNOWLEDGE cause the outcome to occur as it did? No.
That is my position. I think it is pretty plain. I understand that you don't accept it. Which is okay by me! In the grand schene of things, I don't think it matters a lot.