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Pseudo-Intellectual
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58

Posted 8/1/2001 3:10 AM (GMT -6)

God knows all that is able to be known. Future free will decisions are not able to be known because they do not exist BUT possiblities do exist.

my question is whether it is possible for something to exist that is still unable to be known. is existance a sufficant condition for knowablitiy? couldn't there be things which do exist but can't be known? could some possiblities be in this catagory?

dudechild

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 8/1/2001 5:51 AM (GMT -6)

Hey dudechild:

And thanks for your ever-hopeful signature phrase.!!! The "rainbow" for the new millennium--God will keep popping up Kleenex. ("If I go down to Sheol, you are there.") Cool.

Where does this fit in relation to your question: "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face." God knows us better than we know ourselves, thankfully.

Is it a different sort of concept from yours? On this site the favorite concern is often predicability; and "knowability" can be used to describe that issue. Similar is the matter whether a cake not made yet is knowable, or in what manner it could be describes as such... Is yours like that.

My quote from Paul and the issues I see surrounding it trace two dualities: between creator and creature--which is a real duality and not a "dualism"; and between the now and the not-yet of eschatology. (Oh happy day!)

Applied to your query, something capable of being known might not be knowable by me...not without a change in me. I was just trying to read the spelling of Sheol in the a concordance and these weak glasses (read: my eyes) wouldn't let me. The words are there, and they are correct. They exist, but can't be "known" by me.

**********************

Here's my stream-of-a-new-thought:
The phrase: "God knows all that is able to be known. Future free will decisions are not able to be known because they do not exist BUT possibilities do exist." Is true with the caveat that it is an expression FROM OUR perspective. It is constructed to use and to be apprehensible with building blocks that are rational and concrete.

BUT another true statement can also be made:

There is such a thing as what God "purposes"--avoiding to define that--and our free actions can be evaluated with respect to that.

But just as some hold that the local council's splitting of Real and Symbolic into separate things to be chosen between was a bad idea, in a similar way Nominalizing God's will--as seems the fashion in such terms as "permissive" and "perfect" can often make our apprehension of this all worse instead of better.

PotOnWheel

GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 8/2/2001 1:52 AM (GMT -6)

Pseudo: I have elsewhere argued (Trinity and Process) that all reality is by definition known. (This isn't original with me. Josiah Royce at the beginning of this century first came up with the argument. Charles Hartshorne perfected it, in my view). I'll just give the basic thrust of the argument here, from several directions.

* An "unknowable" reality is inconceivable, by definition. To think about reality is to conceive of it. So, the idea of an unknowable reality is intrinsically contradictory.

* Royce argued that all recognitions of partial knowledge presupposes a tacit awareness of exhaustive knowledge. To say (for example) that a glass is only half full has meaning only if you have some conception of a full glass. So too, to say we (or God?) have only partial knowledge of reality presupposes that SOMEONE has full knowledge of reality.

* If you believe God is omniscient, this MEANS all-knowing. To say that some reality exists that is not known to God is to deny his omniscience. This in turn would imply he is not Creator (unless one held that God could create a reality he didn't know or remember). It would also deny God's omnipotence, for it postulates that God IS NOT ABLE to do something (unless one wanted to argue that knowing all of reality is a logical contradiction, for the only thing an omnipotent being "can't do" is a logical contradiction. but good luck trying to prove that omniscience is internally contradictory!).

Let me know what you think.
Interesting question.
Blessings

Doc

"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." C.S.Lewis

Edited by - GregBoyd on 08/02/2001 06:53:38 AM

Pseudo-Intellectual
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58

Posted 8/2/2001 3:11 AM (GMT -6)

okay Doc youv'e convinced me. here's my next question.

is it possible that some possiblities do not exist in reality? wait i said that poorly. is it possible that possiblities are not eternal (at least some of them)? I have a feeling that you are going to say that all possiblities exist in reality from all eternity but for some reason i don't want that to be the case. oh well.

dudechild

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe

GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 8/2/2001 5:04 AM (GMT -6)

empirical, possibilities come into being, but not logical possibilities. For example, until recently it was not empirically possible to clone people. Now (or soon) it is. But it was always, from all eternity, logically possible that humans might acquire this empirical possibility.

If God knows all, and he does, then he knows all logical possibilities. He thereby knows all the empirical possibilities that might (or, in some cases, shall) come about in the course of history. For he delimits all logical possibilities to a range of empirical possibilities in deciding to create this possible world from among an infinit y of other logically possible worlds.

Does this prospect bother you?

Doc

"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." C.S.Lewis

Pseudo-Intellectual
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58

Posted 8/2/2001 5:15 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Does this prospect bother you?

Doc

it makes sense when you say it like that but it still bothers me for reasons i'm not quite aware of. i guess i feel a little bit like i'm limited if possiblites are eternal. sort of like, in a way, Plato's view of the pre-existance of soles. i always thought that that was wrong, but in a way its right. i always thought my soul (and everyone elses) was special, really new, something God created and broke the mold. but it seems like he was only 'borrowing' the mold from a set of possible logical molds out there in reality land. i mean lets face it, reality bites. unreality is always a bit more exiting to me. imposiblity thrills me much more than possiblities. maybe its just a romantic idea to still want god to be able to do the impossible

this is all just a syptom of my nerosis. nevermind it at all

dudechild

dudechild

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe

Triskal
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 198

Posted 8/2/2001 6:22 PM (GMT -6)

Doc,

when we leave this life, what happens to possibilities? Does the limit on them cease to exist and all things open up as completely possible and most certainly do-able?

In His Grip,
Matt

"In Him we live and move and have our being" - Acts 17:28

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 8/3/2001 5:53 AM (GMT -6)

Dudechild: I think its cool that you evaluate God's "special" attention to you in terms of the novel creativity he used in putting you together. Often people mistakenly think they are less valuable to God if he wasn't certain they'd exist, just as they are, from all eternity. You are bothered by anything close to this prospect for the same reason! You definitely march to the beat of a different drummer. I like it.

But the fact that God eternally knew all the possibilities that went into you being you doesn't at all undermine the creativity and novelty he employed in putting you together. Look, your an a sculpturer, right? You make novel works, right? And they are special precisely because they are novel. Yet, their possibility was always there in the clay. The fact that the clay contained the possibilities of being shaped in novel ways doesn't undermine the novelty of what you make. It just forms the presupposition of this novelty.

Doc

"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." C.S.Lewis

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