Post Edited (TGB) : 3/10/2006 10:50:02 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Humphrey Bogart) : 3/11/2006 5:04:45 AM (GMT-6)

We might compare and contrast these two sets of notions:

A. God's "perfect will" and "permissive will" as per however you have
seen/heard the handled...

B. God's "transcendent will" and "permitted" actions by other free agents
(created of course).

The word mystery is much more favorably used on this board than it used to be, seems... And so I wouldn't have tried to use it as an arguement and hope for rejoinder. But it is a good word.

God's will is both revealed in Christ Jesus and also a mystery in itself. God is love, but ESPECIALLY since God is "open" to our having free will the details of his will are mysterious for us. NO ZERO SUM exercises are permitted. But, that is NOT to say that we can't rage against evil. And we are NOT to glibly say that (in zero sum fashion) everything works out, or balances out, etc. Nor are we permitted by our Lord's words to assume that those who suffer deserve it more than the rest of us. Or to propose that God desires that anyone suffer, or that anyone die; scripture clearly says otherwise.

Both the road that leads to saying that God determines evil and the path that accepts evil as part of the fabric of creation are at fighting odds with the view of scripture. Evil entered a good world through man's sin. Evil fights against the world, God's creatures, and God's will. But God does not do as he rhetorically illustrated to Moses -- God does not start over. Nor does God accept evil and fashion it into his creation. God may "use" evil as an element exterior-to his acts (God is known to let evil do its intention--albeit with some meddling, like the enemies of Israel fighting themselves or each other.) So evil is not God's creation, nor is it acceptable. Nor does God's will change to incorporate it.

Instead, something truly radical. God in Christ, through the Cross and the Resurrection, reconciled and is reconciling the World to himself.

God's WILL is revealed in Christ Jesus. God's will is also revealed in the Creation that God through, in and by He made through his Son the Word. Nothing can divert, water-down, or alter God's will. Yet from the genesis of the first ever "moment" when the Word created the beginning of creation God was in that first "there" in the world, revealing his will to be with the world. And with sin came the slowly unfolding plan for God to suffer in the flesh.

A SHORT quote from Hart (pp. 97-98):

... the crude dualism of the Gnostics. . .the failure to see how God's act of being -- through its infinity and transcendence -- can make room in itself for the real being of finite creatures without thereby being diminished, and how therefore God's freedom -- through its infinity and transcendence -- can make room in its determinations for the real freedom of finite rational wills without thereby being weakened or compromised.  . . .  At the moment it is enough to simply to make this point clear: God's gracious will for his creatures -- his willing of all things to his own infinite goodness -- is the creative power that makes all things to be and the consummate happiness to which all things are called; but this does not (indeed, must not) mean that everything that happens is merely a direct expression of God's desire for his creatures or an essential stage within the divine plan for history.

http://www.eerdmans.com/shop/product.asp?p_key=0802829767

The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

by David Bentley Hart

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Maybe call this "wide-openness."

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Lots of great things here to pull out!

Thanks, Tom.

- PoW

http://www.opentheismboard.org/default.aspx?f=9&m=83407

Tom: If you disagree with classical theism that God knows from eternity all that shall come to pass, let's here it.

POW: I'll try. I think it represents what I usually here of the contemporary ilk.

Tom: There are a LOT of theologies that are contemporary. Can you be more specific?

POW: And I wonder whether then I might infer that it is pattered after the "classical" ilk, then.

Tom: I don’t know since I don’t know what contemporary figure you’re comparing?

POW: BUT similiar to what I wrote above is something I asked anothe friend: We might compare and contrast these two sets of notions:

A. God's "perfect will" and "permissive will" as per however you have
seen/heard the handled...

B. God's "transcendent will" and "permitted" actions by other free agents
(created of course).

Tom: You’re losing me, POW. You know me. I just get right to it. And I’m having trouble seeing an answer here. All of this is beside the point. I was just wondering if you agreed with the classical view on THIS ONE THING: God’s knowledge of our future choices. That’s all. You can disagree with the classical view all you want on other things. I was just asking about this one thing.

POW: The word mystery is much more favorably used on this board than it used to be, seems... And so I wouldn't have tried to use it as an arguement and hope for rejoinder. But it is a good word.

Tom: You’re losing me. ;o)

POW: God's will is both revealed in Christ Jesus and also a mystery in itself. God is love, but ESPECIALLY since God is "open" to our having free will the details of his will are mysterious for us. NO ZERO SUM exercises are permitted. But, that is NOT to say that we can't rage against evil. And we are NOT to glibly say that (in zero sum fashion) everything works out, or balances out, etc. Nor are we permitted by our Lord's words to assume that those who suffer deserve it more than the rest of us. Or to propose that God desires that anyone suffer, or that anyone die; scripture clearly says otherwise.

Tom: You’ve lost me. POW, I just want to know whether or not you think God eternally knows all the choices I shall make. You know what I’m asking. Could you do me just this one favor and answer “Yes, God knows those choices” or “No, he doesn’t”?

I’m not upset or anything. I just don’t have a lot of time to research your posts and guess as what your answer might be.

POW: Both the road that leads to saying that God determines evil and the path that accepts evil as part of the fabric of creation are at fighting odds with the view of scripture. Evil entered a good world through man's sin. Evil fights against the world, God's creatures, and God's will. But God does not do as he rhetorically illustrated to Moses -- God does not start over. Nor does God accept evil and fashion it into his creation. God may "use" evil as an element exterior-to his acts (God is known to let evil do its intention--albeit with some meddling, like the enemies of Israel fighting themselves or each other.) So evil is not God's creation, nor is it acceptable. Nor does God's will change to incorporate it.

Tom: You could just say God eternally knows everything that’ll ever happen or God doesn’t eternally know everything that’ll ever happen. Is there a third option I’m missing? The only thing here that gives me a clue as to your answer is that God’s changes of mind (with Moses for example) are “rhetorical.” God never “starts over.” Now that does give me a clue as to how you might answer the question of God’s knowledge of the future. I think you’re saying God does eternally know all that’ll ever happen. So you agree with the traditional view on this.

POW: Instead, something truly radical. God in Christ, through the Cross and the Resurrection, reconciled and is reconciling the World to himself.

Tom: Great. But that’s not what I asked about.

POW: God's WILL is revealed in Christ Jesus. God's will is also revealed in the Creation that God through, in and by He made through his Son the Word. Nothing can divert, water-down, or alter God's will. Yet from the genesis of the first ever "moment" when the Word created the beginning of creation God was in that first "there" in the world, revealing his will to be with the world. And with sin came the slowly unfolding plan for God to suffer in the flesh.

Tom: I’m not following ya, but I gather from “nothing can divert or alter God’s will” that you’re far closer to the classical view than I am ON THIS POINT, for I rejoice that God is able and free to change his will and mind.

Hart: …the crude dualism of the Gnostics. . .the failure to see how God's act of being -- through its infinity and transcendence -- can make room in itself for the real being of finite creatures without thereby being diminished, and how therefore God's freedom -- through its infinity and transcendence -- can make room in its determinations for the real freedom of finite rational wills without thereby being weakened or compromised.

Tom: I don’t know what he’s saying. So many very complicated high-end theological concepts. I’m lost. I just spend $12.00 on his book though. If he does this for 100 pages I’m gonna be spittin mad!

My guess is he just combines the freedom and openness in the created order (the libertarian sort) with the belief that the whole of it, from beginning to end, is already known to God. Changes for us and our world, yes. But no changes for God. No different than determinism on this specific point. Differences in rationale, in view of God’s purposes, and in many foundational things, yes. But no difference that I can see on the question of God’s belief states regarding the world.

Hart: At the moment it is enough to simply to make this point clear: God's gracious will for his creatures -- his willing of all things to his own infinite goodness -- is the creative power that makes all things to be and the consummate happiness to which all things are called; but this does not (indeed, must not) mean that everything that happens is merely a direct expression of God's desire for his creatures or an essential stage within the divine plan for history.

Tom: Says absolutely nothing in the way of an answer to my question. But that’s OK. He’s not addressing my question.

POW: Maybe call this "wide-openness."

Tom: It looks as closed as anything I’ve read in Calvin or Arminius with regard to the point about which I’m inquiring. The openness I’m asking about POW is not the openness of God’s grating us freedom, not his making room for us, not the openness of creation, none of that. I’m being VERY specific in my question—it’s about the future being epistemically open for God. It’s about the content of God’s knowledge with respect to the future. It's about whether or not God's knowledge of this open and changing world IS AS OPEN AND CHANGING AS THE WORLD. 99.9% of what you said had nothing to do with answering THIS. .1% only possibly had anything to do with answering it.

Gotta go sleep.

Peace,
Tom

You’ve lost me. POW, I just want to know whether or not you think God eternally knows all the choices I shall make. You know what I’m asking. Could you do me just this one favor and answer “Yes, God knows those choices” or “No, he doesn’t”?

I’m not upset or anything.

I know you're not upset, and thanks for saying it. 

I really do have to say that your question is not one that is on the road map of getting-from-here-to-there for me. So, can you first suggest to me why it is a question that you want to ask?

If I begin to address it, immediately I begin making distinctions between what knowing me and knowing what I'm doing is. And distinctions between what I think reality is based on an accumulation of items versus what the meaning of what I'm doing is. And before you know it I'm wading through the cast-offs of a history of western philosophy that I never even studied -- not pleasant.

I believe God really does know me, and that I can really know God. And based on that I'm not going to get lost in particulars that may or may not be correct apprehensions, and may or may not be true.

So, what kind of framework are you fitting into your question of "“Yes, God knows those choices” or “No, he doesn’t”?" What is it connected to?

If you ask whether God "knows all the choices I shall make" I have to probe further to ask you to think about whether by "choices" you mean the action of deciding, or the descriptions exteriorally of what was done -- they are different.

I'd answer that I DISAGREE with the "classical view" on the matter of "God’s knowledge of our future choices." Yet I do embrace that God forknows all -- in my father-in-law's phrase, that "God does not wear a watch" -- in his infinity -- that is NOT to say that God wears an infinite number of watches ( ! ).

So, I observe, that the "classical" and "open" views BOTH share core assumption or framewords, and both are different from a "traditional" biblical view. They emerge in history as echoes from the past, but are not elements of a continuous tradition within the faith. Bottom line is the the OV needs to dig deeper, and to shed some of the framework from the CV...imho.

.

As per this:

POW: BUT similiar to what I wrote above is something I asked anothe friend: We might compare and contrast these two sets of notions:

A. God's "perfect will" and "permissive will" as per however you have
seen/heard the handled...

B. God's "transcendent will" and "permitted" actions by other free agents
(created of course).

What I see in "A" is that when people have been using these terms in comparison, to my ears the two "PWs" are handled as if they are on the same level. You could use them as a ruler of an either-or and calibrate by degrees how much something is an expression of one or the other. BUT, what I see in "B" is to un-like things. One has the noun "will" and is OF the Creator-God, and the other has the noun "action" and is BY a creature-person. They are different in level, while the former set can be handled as on the same level. (Close enough.)

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/13/2006 5:52:35 PM (GMT-6)

Lacking.

P2: To alot "open" to knowledge only is evidence of a reaction to…

Tom: It certainly is a reaction to other views. Any view, even yours, stands in relation to other views that make contrary claims. So I don’t mind reacting/responding to views I don’t believe in. But it’s not JUST reactionary. It’s also motivated positively by Scripture, worship, reflection.

P2: The psudo-classical view talks in such a way as to put God outside creation.

Tom: I insist on including him, which is why I’m an open theist.

P2: But creation is filled with the Spirit of God.

Tom: Another reason for why I’m an open theist.

P2: "Open" also seems to put God outside of creation. Creation is so "other."

Tom: The intention is to do quite the opposite.

P2: Traditional modesty leaves room for the imminance of God better.

Tom: Traditional modesty?

P2:  I chose that word to reflect what seems to be the advertizement -- that God does not know something.

Tom: Of course there are things God does not know. He doesn’t know falsehoods for example. He doesn’t know that my name is Frank or Sue. Because I believe God never believes what is false, is never ignorant of the truth, and because knowledge of the truth about an indeterminate temporal contingent world (as far as I’m able to make out) is by definition also contingent, I’m an open theist. I don’t see any other way to affirm both God’s real relatedness to the contingent changing world and his infallible knowledge of its truths. If this seems other than ‘humble’, not ‘traditionally modest’, I totally understand. We’ll just leave it at that.

P2: And just what that unknown is, and why that might be important is part of what I'd like to ask you.

Tom: Now you’re asking good questions! What’s “unknown” in open theism are “falsehoods.” It’s important that God not be attributed knowledge of falsehoods because to do so amounts to a denial of omniscience. There’s no question (in my mind) that God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods. The only question is what the TRUTH is about the future, my future choices, your future choices. I agree that whatever the truth is about those choices, God knows it. If you can mount an argument for the unchanging nature of God’s knowledge of such truths, I’m all ears.

[Added Tuesday AM in blue] Now, take the claim, in the year 500 BCE, "Tom [that's me!] will marry Anita and become a missoinary." What does God think the truth-value of this proposition is in 500 BCE? Given my cosmology and view of freedom, it's clear FALSE, in spite of the fact that I married Anita and became a missionary 2,500 years later. And since it's FALSE, God knows it's false. What TRUTH does God hold to? What's he KNOW? He knows that "Tom might and might be born, might and might not marry Anita, and might and might not become a missionary." That's a TRUE statement the reflects the way the world is in 500 BCE, and in my view God would be ignorant if he believed anything else. I don't want to attribute ignorance to him, so I'm an open theist. If you know of a successful way to a) affirm the indeterminacy of a temporal world and b) God's infallible knowsledge of that world, without ending up in open theism, I'm be very interested.

Note also that for me, God is temporal, period. No above and outside of time lingo going on. Since the creation, he's flat out temporal. In my view this has to be the case. It's the only way I know to continue affirming both in the real temporal nature of creation and its truths and in God's relatedness to that world and knowledge of its truths.

I think our biggest difference, POW, is right here. I posit conditionality and contingency in a temporal God. As far as I know you do not. All our other differences follow from this one disagreement.

And God loves us both!

P2: Is there an avoidance of something…

Tom: Yes. I want to avoid the conclusion that God is a) outside our temporal world (which he would be if he were not temporally related to it), and b) ignorant of temporal truths (which he would be if he were not temporally related to the temporal world).

P2: …to get God off of some hook or away from some blame. And is THAT the secret root of the "open" view. Seems to have been the main point at one time.

Tom: No, no. None of that. That’s the biggest misunderstanding going around. Open theism offers nothing new in the way of a solution to the problem of evil. My being an open theist is not motivated in the slightest by a desire to get God off the hook. Open theism is just a version of the greater good argument. Nothing unique there.

You seem to be laboring under the impression that there’s a unique open view theodicy or that such concerns necessarily figure into arguments in favor of the open view. That’s not the case. A lot of people embrace the open view because they believe it fixes the problem of evil. It doesn’t. That doesn’t make it wrong. It just means it has nothing to contribute to theodicy.

P2:  My answer is that I can't know "God's knowledge" and don't even know what that is.

Tom: On the contrary, you seem very certain about what God’s knowledge is like (atemporal, exhaustive, infallible, unchanging, etc.), enough to know that what I’m saying about it is wrong.

P2: But I do know that all things are subject to God. You will agree too. Good.

Tom: All depends on what you mean by “subject to.” I can think of some understandings of it I would not agree with.

P2: How can we know "God's states of mind?" Slip in humility?

Tom: Yeah, it’s just my pride I guess.

P2: Thanks for the conversation.

Tom: You bet.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 3/14/2006 7:56:42 AM (GMT-6)