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still_unsure
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 54
| Posted 7/22/2001 5:09 AM (GMT -6) |   | I once read in a thread here (I think it was Mephi) that Arminianism is inconsistent in it's belief of free will AND an exhaustively foreknown future. Could someone clarify this for me (I admit to being a bit dense when it comes to theology). Does this relate to the problem of a "necessary being" creating a contingent world?
Keith Ward-
"First of all, if God really is self-sufficient, as the axiom of intelligibility seems to require Him to be, how can it come about that He creates a world at all? It seems an arbitrary and pointlee exercise. On the other hand, if God really is a necessary and immutable being, how can He have a free choice; surely all that He does will have to be done of necessity and without any possibility of alteration? The old dilemma- either God's acts are necessary and therefore not free(could not be otherwise), or they are free and therefore arbitrary(nothing determines what they shall be)- has been sufficient to impale the vast majority of Christian philosophers down the ages."
Schubert Ogden-
"Theologians usually tell us that God creates the world freely, as the contingent or non-necessary world of our expererience discloses it to be...At the same time, because of their fixed commitment to the assumptions of classical metaphysics, theologians usually tell us that God's act of creation is one with His eternal essence, which is in every respect necessary, exclusive of all contingency. Hence, if we take them at their word, giving full weight to both of their assertions, we at once find ourselves in the hopeless contradiction of a wholly necessary creation of a wholly contingent world."
I know that Process Thought escapes this problem by positing a dipolar God. Is this a necessary conclusion for the Open Theist as well?
just wondering
Rob
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Modes of Thought
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 7/22/2001 12:15 PM (GMT -6) | | Actually this is covered quite well on the website under the philosophical section of the Open View Theism link from the front page. The gist of it is, if God's knowledge is both perfect and definite with regard to a future action. That action cannot at the same time have the necessary "openness" needed to be determined by a libertarianly free agent.
The question raised by your quotes is distinct from that: It asks what the relation between God and world is and whether that relation is necessary or contingent.
Edited by - ModesofThought on 07/22/2001 5:18:14 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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