Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
In contrast to the theology held by other Jewish thinkers, Jewish theologian Louis Jacobs argues, Gersonides held that God does not have complete foreknowledge of human acts. "Gersonides, bothered by the old question of how God's foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom, holds that what God knows beforehand is all the choices open to each individual. God does not know, however, which choice the individual, in his freedom, will make."[5]
Another neoclassical Jewish proponent of self-limited omniscience was Abraham ibn Daud. "Whereas the earlier Jewish philosophers extended the omniscience of God to include the free acts of man, and had argued that human freedom of decision was not affected by God's foreknowledge of its results, Ibn Daud, evidently following Alexander of Aphrodisias, excludes human action from divine foreknowledge. God, he holds, limited his omniscience even as He limited His omnipotence in regard to human acts".[6]
"The view that God does not have foreknowledge of moral decisions which was advanced by ibn Daud and Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom) is not quite as isolated as Rabbi Bleich indicates, and it enjoys the support of two highly respected Acharonim, Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz (Shelah haKadosh) and Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (Or haHayim haKadosh). The former takes the views that God cannot know which moral choices people will make, but this does not impair His perfection. The latter considers that God could know the future if He wished, but deliberately refrains from using this ability in order to avoid the conflict with free will."[7]
Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz explained the apparent paradox of his position by citing the old question, "Can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot pick it up?" He said that we cannot accept free choice as a creation of God's, and simultaneously question its logical compatibility with omnipotence.
Gersonides - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
except since God is outside of time, the future does exist for Him. past, present, and future exist as one eternal “now” for Him.
There are two assumptions you are making here, that God exists outside of time, and that a future which hasn't happened yet and therefore doesn't exist is knowable. I would like to please again say this does not place a limitation on God any more than God's inability to create a rock so big that even He can't lift it.
no assumptions on my part at all. that’s what has been revealed to the Church.
this might be your belief, but this isn’t what the Church teaches. we would absolutely say this limits God.
any Patristic support to back this?
OK then... Can God create a rock so big that even He can't lift it? You're forcing me to ask this question.
that implies a God whose divinity is material, since only material things are bound by things like weight. since the Divine Nature isn’t material, the question is based on a false assumption that the Orthodox Church theologically rejects.
Does the fact that God cannot do impossible things, like create a rock so heavy that even He can't lift it, negate His omnipotence? If not, how would it limit God's omniscience if God is unable to know things which are, by definition, unknowable? Since the future hasn't happened yet it, by definition, doesn't yet exist.
It seems to me that you already *know* the answers to the questions you ask. By now you must know that they do not match what we all here agree the teaching of the Church to be. So you have to decide whether you will follow a religion of your own making that pleases your sense of what is good and right, or whether you will accept an Authority with the power to teach and correct your ideas.
no, because God’s omnipotence is bound by what is natural to Him. the question assumes a God Who (in the premise of the question) isn’t God, or a rock isn’t a real rock (in the premise of the question) or both.
the future does exist to a God Who is outside of time. the future is not by definition, unknowable. unknowable to us, but not to Him.
again, this has not been revealed to the Church.
yeah, but Mormons do the same. just because you have a huge list, does not mean much. heretics used Scripture a lot to justify their heresy.
yes, what pretty much all of our saints say about God’s divine name He gives to Moses.
According to open theism, God's relationship to time is that He's never-ending and never-beginning, rather than outside of time. I have shared an exhaustive list of Bible verses on God's relationship to time. When God said to Moses, "I AM," that meant God had no beginning and will never end, not that He's outside of time.
So far, I have presented medieval Jewish philosophers, Sergei Bulgavov, and an exhaustive list of Bible verses in support of open theism. None of the evidences or arguments so far have been directly addressed.
