open theology

[EchoPneuma]

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God has perfect forknlowledge of all events.

Job 37:16
Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?
Acts 2:23
This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
Isaiah 46:10
I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.


So if God is PERFECT in knowledge and has FOREKNOWLEDGE....then that means His foreknowledge would have to be PERFECT as well....otherwise He wouldn't be perfect in His knowledge. He makes known the beginning from the end and from ancient times He knows what is still to come. That means that He has to inhabit ALL of time. Nothing takes Him by surprise.

Yes That is what the Bible shows us

Gen6:5 Then *the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

You really think this all took God by surprise? Then how come the bible says that the Lamb was slain BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE EARTH?? God has foreknowledge and always knew these things would happen. He simply adjusts His "reaping and sowing" law based on man's freewill. These things are described in anthropomorphisms.

and there is no reason to belive God does not experience all of it in order

You didn't answer this question:

What are you asking here? I didn't say that GOd was limited in any way. I said that Paul said that all of existence (which would include the dimension of time) are WITHIN God Himself....so therefore how could He be bound by it or be within time, if it is within Him?

 

[ramled]

Job 37:16
Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?

this is present tense and is not nessisarily talking about the futre since the future does not yet exsist.

Acts 2:23
This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

I do not deny God has forknowledge of many future events. This passage, however does nothing to show that God has forknowledge of all future events.
Isaiah 46:10
I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. [/quote] I do believe that

So if God is PERFECT in knowledge and has FOREKNOWLEDGE....then that means His foreknowledge would have to be PERFECT as well....otherwise He wouldn't be perfect in His knowledge.

now you are reaching

He makes known the beginning from the end and from ancient times He knows what is still to come. That means that He has to inhabit ALL of time. Nothing takes Him by surprise.


You really think this all took God by surprise? Then how come the bible says that the Lamb was slain BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE EARTH?? God has foreknowledge and always knew these things would happen. He simply adjusts His "reaping and sowing" law based on man's freewill. These things are described in anthropomorphisms.




You didn't answer this question:

What are you asking here? I didn't say that GOd was limited in any way. I said that Paul said that all of existence (which would include the dimension of time) are WITHIN God Himself....so therefore how could He be bound by it or be within time, if it is within Him?

I told you what I believe time is. If God, in reality does one thing before he does another then time is a reality even for God. Why you think this represents a limitation I don't really understand.

 

[EchoPneuma]

this is present tense and is not nessisarily talking about the futre since the future does not yet exsist. I do not deny God has forknowledge of many future events. This passage, however does nothing to show that God has forknowledge of all future events.

Now you are reaching. You admit that God has foreknowledge of SOME events, yet not all. Where do you get that? Why if He knows SOME future events, would He not know ALL future events? Are you putting some arbitrary limit on His foreknowledge? Why do you say it is limited?

Isaiah 46:10
I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. I do believe that now you are reaching I told you what I believe time is. If God, in reality does one thing before he does another then time is a reality even for God. Why you think this represents a limitation I don't really understand.

You said that you believe God experiences time just like we do.....that He is bound by time. That is a limitation. I said that He is NOT bounded by time and sees all of time as a whole from beginning to end.

You say that God is somehow limited in His knowledge and I say that God has PERFECT knowledge, and foreknowledge is part of His knowledge, so it would have to be perfect too. Yet, you say that's not true, with absolutely no scriptures to back it up.

You say that something man does could take God by surprise. Which would mean that God didn't know in advance that man would do it. That cancels out His foreknowledge which the bible clearly says He has.

 

[newyorksaint]

I'd say God knows all possible futures, but, being Whom He is, He also knows which future will occur, which choices we will make. He alread knows Whom will worship Him, and Whom won't. It's still our free choice, but He can see which choices will be made.

 

[EchoPneuma]

I'd say God knows all possible futures, but, being Whom He is, He also knows which future will occur, which choices we will make. He alread knows Whom will worship Him, and Whom won't. It's still our free choice, but He can see which choices will be made.

I agree. That is what it means to have foreknowledge. God knows in advance all knowledge....His knowledge is PERFECT therefore nothing can take Him by surprise.

I wouldn't want to trust my soul to, and have faith in, a God that could be taken by surprise or who didn't know what was going to happen. It's by the very fact that God is omniscient and omnipotent that we can completely trust our souls to Him and have faith in His guidance and provision. It's what makes Him God. His trustworthiness.

(How about that....a Mormon and a Southern Baptist agreeing on something about the nature of God )

(did hell freeze over? ) hahahaha

 

[newyorksaint]

I agree. That is what it means to have foreknowledge. God knows in advance all knowledge....His knowledge is PERFECT therefore nothing can take Him by surprise.

I wouldn't want to trust my soul to, and have faith in, a God that could be taken by surprise or who didn't know what was going to happen. It's by the very fact that God is omniscient and omnipotent that we can completely trust our souls to Him and have faith in His guidance and provision. It's what makes Him God. His trustworthiness.

(How about that....a Mormon and a Southern Baptist agreeing on something about the nature of God )

(did hell freeze over? ) hahahaha

I think Screwtape just became a Hockey coach.!

One thing I love about God, is that He knows what we will choose, but still allows us to make our own decisions, make our own mistakes. He loves us that much, that He cannot force us to choose Him, unwillingly. But, I agree, if God wasn't able to have the ability of foreknowledge, that would make Him not God-He wouldn't be Omniscent (pardon spelling-'All Seeing'), which is one of the necessities of being the Almighty.

 

[ramled]

Now you are reaching. You admit that God has foreknowledge

yes I admit that God being all powerfull decided certain things would be true before creation

of SOME events, yet not all. Where do you get that? Why if He knows SOME future events, would He not know ALL future events? Are you putting some arbitrary limit on His foreknowledge?

I am not putting a limit on God . Since God is all powerfull any limit on God would be self imposed. God could know the enttire future if he decided to controal every acton of every created being. He decided instead to create beings that could make real choices.

Why do you say it is limited?

would you agree with me that God is real rather than fiction, or are you not willing to limit God in that way?

You said that you believe God experiences time just like we do.....that He is bound by time. That is a limitation.

I didn't use the term boud by time and I don't belive it! Rather I believe God is real and only operates within the real of what can be. He can not make a square circle. He can not make a rock so big that he can't lift it and he can not destroy somthing before he created it!

I said that He is NOT bounded by time and sees all of time as a whole from beginning to end.

You say that God is somehow limited in His knowledge and I say that God has PERFECT knowledge, and foreknowledge is part of His knowledge, so it would have to be perfect too. Yet, you say that's not true, with absolutely no scriptures to back it up.

I gave you quotes from Jer 18 and Gen 6 and you did not address them

You say that something man does could take God by surprise. Which would mean that God didn't know in advance that man would do it. That cancels out His foreknowledge which the bible clearly says He has.

 

[EchoPneuma]

I think Screwtape just became a Hockey coach.!

And Wormwood is selling sno cones....

One thing I love about God, is that He knows what we will choose, but still allows us to make our own decisions, make our own mistakes. He loves us that much, that He cannot force us to choose Him, unwillingly. But, I agree, if God wasn't able to have the ability of foreknowledge, that would make Him not God-He wouldn't be Omniscent (pardon spelling-'All Seeing'), which is one of the necessities of being the Almighty.

We agree again. Geez....this is getting scary

 

[EchoPneuma]

yes I admit that God being all powerfull decided certain things would be true before creation I am not putting a limit on God

That's exactly what you're doing. By saying that something can take God by surprise and He doesn't know EVERYTHING, that is a limitation on His knowledge. His foreknowledge is also a form of knowledge. It's knowledge of things in advance of them happening. But it is still KNOWLEDGE. The bible says He is PERFECT in knowledge. That would have to include His foreKNOWLEDGE. You are saying that His foreknowledge isn't a part of His knowledge of things. You're saying that His knowledge of things present is perfect, but His knowledge of things in the future is limited. But that contradicts the bible, that says He is PERFECT in knowledge. It doesn't say He is perfect in His "here and now" knowledge and imperfect in His "future" knowledge. But that is what you're saying. It isn't biblical.


.

Since God is all powerfull any limit on God would be self imposed. God could know the enttire future if he decided to controal every acton of every created being.

Now you're just looking at it all wrong. Just because God knows in advance what a person will choose, DOES NOT mean that He has chosen it FOR them. His foreknowledge allows for the free will of man to function and yet ultimately for GOd's plan to prevail....that could not be so if God did not know in advance all that there is to know.

He decided instead to create beings that could make real choices. would you agree with me that God is real rather than fiction, or are you not willing to limit God in that way?

You're building a strawman. Of course God is real. And men have real free will. BUt God also knows in advance what all men will do....which, in no way, means that He chose it for them. It means He is sovereign and His plans will prevail.

I didn't use the term boud by time and I don't belive it! Rather I believe God is real and only operates within the real of what can be. He can not make a square circle. He can not make a rock so big that he can't lift it and he can not destroy somthing before he created it!

WIth God nothing is impossible according to the scriptures. You are again putting God in a box. He can do whatever He wishes and whatever pleases Him at any time and in any way He chooses. Who's going to argue with Him?

I gave you quotes from Jer 18 and Gen 6 and you did not address them

Yes, I did. I said they were anthropomorphisms.

 

[freelight]

This is no scripture that says "Thus saith the Lord, I am outside of time".

But there are many places that say that God is the Alpha and the Omega...the beginning and the end...that He knows the beginning from the end that He has foreknowledge, perfect knowledge. etc. The only way these things could be true is if He inhabited all of time as a whole....meaning He lives in the eternal present....above time if you will....He inhabits all of time at the same time...not being confined to either past, present or future but looking at it all as a whole....not in a linear fashion as we do.

That is what I mean by Him being "above" time. Since Paul said that "IN HIM we live, and move and have our being".....then all of human existence and time as we know it must be IN HIM. Eternity and existence is within God Himself, hence He would not experience time as we do. We view it as a linear dimension that we experience one moment after the next....He would view it as a whole, being both at the beginning (the Alpha) at the end (the Omega) and everywhere in between.

Greetings all,

This is a wonderful topic worthy of research. Certain aspects of my metaphysical sense/perspectives agree with Echo's post above relative to God encompassing the whole of time and eternity in His Infinite BEING. The phrase of God being 'outside of time' in my understanding infers to the non-linear Presence or Being of Deity that is before, behind and beyond all linearity or relativity - which is a space of Existence independent of time.

I also agree with some aspects of ramled's logic favoring the Open View(OV). - this perspective being more time-dependent or conditioned. Actually I would work towards a Holism of all valid perspectives to form an integral View of God...in the Absolute and the Relative domains of existence. With the OV....I concur that the future does not yet exist as an actuality but only as potentiality.

I am also fond of some aspects of Process theology as it relates to the dual aspects of 'Be-ing' and 'Be-coming'...as I see Life as evolutional and the process of creation as going-on eternally. Therefore....God is 'always be-ing and be-coming' all that He ever wills/desires in the unfolding of creation.....unto Infinity.


I'd like to explore Echo's cosmology a little more and ramleds OV sentiments. On a non-linear frame of reference....time may be irrelative.....yet in the linear world of time-space creation....time seems innate within all relativity. All time and eternity, All That IS....exists in God....as God who is OMNI includes the totality of Existence. Gods omniscience includes all that is knowable....and the OV admits that perfect exhaustive knowledge of the future cant be known...because it does not exist as fully actual-ized. It is yet to unfold, be-come.

So.... in the Absolute Realm of Reality I hold that God is All, the One, the Totality.....therefore is completely omniscient being All (God is the Light of all knowing....He Being LIGHT....the Light encompassing, pervading all)......yet I also hold to the logic of the OV when seen in the sequential context of linear time. (that God can only know the knowable and cannot know what is not knowable - there being a realm of unknowability in that spacial dimension of darkness or chaos where all potentials are turning into actuals).

All is perspective/perception relative to context in any given purview.




paul

 

[freelight]

God could know the enttire future if he decided to controal every acton of every created being. He decided instead to create beings that could make real choices.

Indeed,....the OV position holds that if God had perfect exhaustive knowledge of the future this would annul or disqualify the true liberty of free will. - therefore there are contingencies that do not allow God to have perfect knowledge of the future in every minute detail - He appears to have willingly given up a certain supremacy of His Sovereignty or omniscience in this respect. He still however maintains Ultimate Sovereignty nevertheless where his power cannot be abridged or resisted.





paul

 

[ramled]

Yes, I did. I said they were anthropomorphisms.

saying it don't make it so.

 

[EchoPneuma]

saying it don't make it so.

But you said that I didn't even address it.....and I DID. That you don't AGREE with it, is another thing altogether.

THere are many anthrpomorphisms in the bible, that if we took them literally, God wouldn't be any different than us. He's spoken of as having hands, nostrils, arrms, a face. Of getting angry, being jealous, repenting etc. Of having to "come down" to see what man is doing on the earth....of having a shadow. Of being a "fortress". Yet, God is none of these things in reality. He is a spirit and Has perfect happiness and peace. He's described in these ways so that WE will have a frame of reference to understand the unknowable.

He's also described as having wings and feathers. Are we to assume He's a great chicken?

 

[EchoPneuma]

Freelight
Why don't you start another thread to discuss your thoughts...

 

[ramled]

Indeed,....the OV position holds that if God had perfect exhaustive knowledge of the future this would annul or disqualify the true liberty of free will. - therefore there are contingencies that do not allow God to have perfect knowledge of the future in every minute detail - He appears to have willingly given up a certain supremacy of His Sovereignty or omniscience in this respect. He still however maintains Ultimate Sovereignty nevertheless where his power cannot be abridged or resisted.





paul

I would say you stated that fairly well.

 

[freelight]

Freelight
Why don't you start another thread to discuss your thoughts...

Hi Echo,

A thought,...it seems though that this thread is best to center in on 'open theology' in general. I was just touching on things relative to your views and adding my own perspectives.

We can look at God as existing thru-out an endless duration of time as well as see God as somehow existing before, behind and beyond the definitives of 'time' as we know it from a finite, temporal, human perspective. God appears to have existence before time and thru-out time being Eternal as 'always existing'. Time comes into being as referential wherever there is relativity. - I tend to take a view that creation is an eternal generation taking place in God as 'on-going' - when scripture speaks of a 'in the beginning'.....it references the beginning of this local universe or planetary beginning pertaining to us. (however creation may be eternally transpiring witin the Being/Mind of God infinitely...manifesting in finite worlds/realms without end). Time is only 'relative' within the relationality of eternal creation taking place within the Infinity of Space.

But back on the OV and omniscience.......while Gods sovereign knowledge is so much more than we could ever imagine concerning future realities and probabilities....the novelty of wonder would still appear to exist to God as far as the unfolding of things in their creativity and the allowance of influencing factors that affect outcomes....as potentials become actuals. There is a certain space in this transfusion....where the element of unknowability exists until all potentials are exhausted at the point where an actual comes into being.

Also lets consider that as long as we bring 'time' into the equation we are automatically already conditioned by time in our dialogue unless we acknowledge that a state exists that is not so bound by the definitives of 'time'. IF there ever was a time that no relativity/creation existed....and there was only the Absolute BEING of God existing as the One, the All, the Only.....being the ground and expanse of Infinity and all potentiality...then we could say in this Absolute Realm of pure Being...there is no time....but only a state of 'always being'. Only when relativity of any kind comes into the picture...as in creation (space/matter formations, distance, discernable events/relations, etc.) does time come into being as a referential. If these did not exist the definitivity of time would be more obscure or meaningless.

While scripture is a medium thru which we can study and keep things within a contextual field of supposed inspiration...we must also acknowledge that scripture does not contain the totality of all info./data/knowledge about any given subject so we must use every field of science at our disposal and our soul faculties in researching truth. Since God and subjects of Mystery are not wholly knowable we must see where our knowledge ends and where mystery begins riding that dimension where new discoveries are fertile...allowing for light and revelation.




paul

 

[EchoPneuma]

Hi Echo,

A thought,...it seems though that this thread is best to center in on 'open theology' in general. I was just touching on things relative to your views and adding my own perspectives.

We can look at God as existing thru-out an endless duration of time as well as see God as somehow existing before, behind and beyond the definitives of 'time' as we know it from a finite, temporal, human perspective. God appears to have existence before time and thru-out time being Eternal as 'always existing'. Time comes into being as referential wherever there is relativity. - I tend to take a view that creation is an eternal generation taking place in God as 'on-going' - when scripture speaks of a 'in the beginning'.....it references the beginning of this local universe or planetary beginning pertaining to us. (however creation may be eternally transpiring witin the Being/Mind of God infinitely...manifesting in finite worlds/realms without end). Time is only 'relative' within the relationality of eternal creation taking place within the Infinity of Space.

But back on the OV and omniscience.......while Gods sovereign knowledge is so much more than we could ever imagine concerning future realities and probabilities....the novelty of wonder would still appear to exist to God as far as the unfolding of things in their creativity and the allowance of influencing factors that affect outcomes....as potentials become actuals. There is a certain space in this transfusion....where the element of unknowability exists until all potentials are exhausted at the point where an actual comes into being.

Also lets consider that as long as we bring 'time' into the equation we are automatically already conditioned by time in our dialogue unless we acknowledge that a state exists that is not so bound by the definitives of 'time'. IF there ever was a time that no relativity/creation existed....and there was only the Absolute BEING of God existing as the One, the All, the Only.....being the ground and expanse of Infinity and all potentiality...then we could say in this Absolute Realm of pure Being...there is no time....but only a state of 'always being'. Only when relativity of any kind comes into the picture...as in creation (space/matter formations, distance, discernable events/relations, etc.) does time come into being as a referential. If these did not exist the definitivity of time would be more obscure or meaningless.

While scripture is a medium thru which we can study and keep things within a contextual field of supposed inspiration...we must also acknowledge that scripture does not contain the totality of all info./data/knowledge about any given subject so we must use every field of science at our disposal and our soul faculties in researching truth. Since God and subjects of Mystery are not wholly knowable we must see where our knowledge ends and where mystery begins riding that dimension where new discoveries are fertile...allowing for light and revelation.




paul

I pretty much agree with everything you said. Especially the last sentence. We must always allow ourselves to be humble enough to say that we just don't know some things and therefore be teachable enough that God can enlighten through personal revelation of the truths that He wants to reveal to us. It's the person who thinks that they already KNOW something, and know that it's absolutely the way it is, that God can't reveal something new to. He can't show them they're wrong because they believe they are so right that they're not open to correction.....even from God.

Paul put it like this....

1 Corinthians 8:2
The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.

So many Christians THINK they KNOW something...and their "knowledge" puffs them up....like it says in verse 1 of that passage. But Paul says if a person THINKS they know something, they DO NO YET KNOW as they ought to. This is a very important statement by Paul. It should be a warning to all Christians who are so quick to put down and condemn other's beliefs....because they just KNOW they are wrong.

 

[myways]

He's also described as having wings and feathers. Are we to assume He's a great chicken?

Been listening to Hank Hannegraff lately, I wonder??

Dave