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leth
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2002
Total Posts : 26
| Posted 7/9/2002 1:23 PM (GMT -6) |   | Timlings: Ok, rephasing there. Perhaps God doesn't actually need to hold all of the information in the world in his mind at once. As a speaker I heard once said, God doesn't need to walk around going 'the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the sqaure of the other two sides.' God can focus his mind on stuff. Like with Sodom and Gomorah, where God sends down an Angel to see how things are going on. Didn't he know already? And what about Satan and Job? God asks Satan what he's been up to. Would God already know?
Leth:
Perhaps I am not certain of the extent to which you suggest we might adopt this doctrine, but I do believe that non-ambiguous passages of Scripture set limits for any pursuit of it.
Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."
What is necessary for this promise to be kept? If you take this to imply that in this particular situation his presence or participation is in some manner different than it is when there are less than two or three gathered in his name, then he must be aware of all cases of, "...two or three coming together in my name." It could be that two or three gather in his name for only a minute, and they could do so nearly any place on the planet.
Not to mention:
quote:
Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. 30And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
1John 3:19 This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Timlings: And this explains the whole thing about God not remembering our sins any more. Perhaps...he actually does not remember our sins! If you asked him about something he'd forgiven you, he would not remember it. God has that much control over his mind.
Leth: Truly, he would not remember it even if we asked him? Suppose that a man has murdered a child's father. Shortly after realizing what he had done, the murderer asks God to "forgive" him. Supposing that this is in fact how it works, God would now not know at all what the man had done. If the child prayed to God for comfort asking why Bill (or whatever his name was) had killed her father, God would have no idea what she was talking about. If there were court or police documents detailing the crime, God could not know of them. Further, suppose that a sibling of the child went to the prison and asked Bill why he had murdererd. God could see this sibling as nothing short of a false accusor, suggesting that an innocent man had committed murder.
Edited by - leth on 07/09/2002 6:25:37 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Mephi2K
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713
| Posted 7/12/2002 9:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Let's try this one..
Tom:
quote:
First, to answer Mephi—No, I don’t see that the authors of the OT believed in the “complete autonomy of nature.” It’s difficult to avoid concluding that they believed God could and did unilaterally intervene to do the miraculous (pillars of fire, parting the sea, manna, etc.), that God was Lord over nature and responsible for the seasonal cycles and regularity of the laws of harvest, etc.. But it seems difficult to affirm this with them if we also believe that God directly controls everything in nature. If the formation of every cloud and the trajectory of every falling drop of rain are directly and immediately decreed by God (that is, if they do not in some meaningful sense of the word come about independently as a consequence of the laws of nature), then ALL natural phenomena are equally the result of God’s direct unilateral control and intervention and are thus ALL equally miraculous. Unless nature is endowed (like us!) with a measure of (finite, mind you) autonomy, then God cannot really be said to “intervene” at all. The author of Genesis might not have been prepared to articulate himself as sophisticatedly as we, but I don’t think he failed to recognize the distinction between God’s role in the rising and setting of the sun and the seasonal rains on the one hand and God’s role in the parting of the Red Sea on the other.
If you notice my question again, I asked if you would honestly think, given the biblical data, that the biblical authors thought that God LARGELY controlled and dictated weather patterns. In other words, I was not disputing that there is SOME autonomy to weather. What I was saying was that I think that they believed that BY AND LARGE many of the weather patterns WERE done by God. One of the things to here would be to do a word search on rain in the OT. How did they LARGELY conceive of rain and how it came and went? Did they LARGELY consider rain to be a NATURAL phenomenon that God SOMETIMES decided to control, but mostly left to it's own devices...or did they LARGELY consider rain to be something that God have a LOT of direct influence over when it showed up? I would say the latter. Seriously. Do the word study. I think you may come to the same conclusion.
Now, let's take it back to Genesis 9:14. Looking at the MAJORITY way that rain, clouds, and stuff like that seem to be attributed to God's control in other OT passages, how should we interpret the author's probable intention in that passage?
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Tom:
quote:
Secondly, on "presentist omniscience," I’m inclined to disagree that God “needs” to be reminded of past promises and covenants because he “forgets.” How does a memory that requires correcting from the outside not imply imperfection? Does not omniscience entail, among other things, complete memory retention? If what happened in the past constitutes part of the reality which is the present, then how would perfectly knowing the present state of reality not also entail perfectly knowing the past at every given point in time? For example, doesn’t the proposition “John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963” (or the proposition, “When the flood ended God made a promise not to destroy the world again by water”) describe a present reality? And aren’t you really claiming, Mephi, that God can now NOT know the truth of this present tense proposition and still be “omniscient”? So, I don’t find it the easiest explanation at all to say that God makes covenants, forgets about them over time, and needs to be reminded of them. Is this really the best way to account for passages like these (Gen 9, Isa. 62, and Ex. 6 and 23 which you mentioned)?
Ok. We have to go to Payaso's point:
Are you suggesting that someone could not retain a memory of something while still possessing knowledge of it, in a presentist sense?
Yes, I am. Let's think about it. What is "remembering"? Think about YOUR BRAIN. It's pretty much the case that your brain "remembers" EVERY experience that you experience, even some of which you are not aware. The fact of the matter is that your brain HAS information of which you may not be consciously aware. Some things may occur that can bring some of this information to the conscious state of your mind, thereby allowing you to "remember", right? And what happens many times when you remember? The "Oh, yeah...THAT'S right" feeling that comes from the recognition that you "KNEW" that information already but had placed it low on the totem pole of your consciousness. So, would you say that you didn't KNOW something simply because it was not in your conscious state of cognition at the time? Nope. Would you say that you didn't KNOW your wife's birthday if you had just FORGOTTEN it perchance? Nope.
So, why is it NOT possible that God could be the same way? Hmmm...
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Tom:
quote:
Thirdly, the idea that the Hebrew zakar (often translated “to remember”) by definition requires the subject to first have “forgotten” what is specified as the object of the verb is simply not true. (We talked about this before I think.) It need mean nothing more than "calling to mind," "mentioning to one's self," or "bringing to the forefront of one's attention." It can even mean simply to “keep one’s promise.” Even in English we use “remember” this way. My wife says, “Tom, Hunny, you remembered our anniversary!” Does this imply my having forgotten our anniversay? Not really. All it need mean is that I “kept the appointment,” which actually implies my NOT forgetting. This fits quite well with the passages Mephi mentioned (Ex. 6 and 23) that describe God remembering his covenant with Abraham.
Entreaties addressed to God that he "remember the oppressed" (Ps. 10.12), for example, need mean nothing more than "Do not fail to act on the behalf of the oppressed!" If not, do we really want to argue that this prayer asks God to do nothing more than simply "remember"? Does the psalmist not in fact want God to DO SOMETHING on behalf of the oppressed? Doesn’t this “doing” constitute God’s “remembering”?
If we argue otherwise, would we not also be required to insist on the basis of passages like Lam. 5:1 (“Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace!”) that in addition to having a poor memory, God has bad eyesight as well? The parallel is identical. If God’s “remembering” implies his having forgotten, would not this context require God’s having to “look and see” to imply that his knowledge of present reality is less than complete? (Gee whiz, I sound like Ware! ) All I’m suggesting is that open theists can be hermeneutically consistent (at LEAST as consistent as Ware, maybe more so) without having to go down this road. Ware is claiming that “God changed his mind” cannot mean God changed his mind without “God remembered” having to mean “God forgot.” Mephi wants to concede Ware’s point and agree that God forgets things (right?). But I don’t think Ware’s point follows at all, AND I think (in agreement with Starkman) that if Ware IS correct then he stands to suffer as much as open theists.
So, all in all I’m inclined to understand God’s “remembering” his covenants in passages like Lev. 26.40-45 and Ezek 16.59-60 and those you mentioned (Ex. 6 and 23) as covenantal language for determining to act in the interest of “keeping” those covenants? This is perfectly analogous to how we sometimes use the word “remember.”
Ooooh, Tom. First of all, where in the world did I say that the word "zakar" by definition necessitates some type of forgetfulness? This is what I wrote...
Example: What does this mean?
Exo 23-25
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered (from zakar)his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exo 6:4-5
I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
Just by my reading it seems like things went like this:
1.Israelites cried out.
2.God heard it.
3.REMEMBERED his covenant with Abe (and the things within)
4.BECAUSE OF THAT REMEMBERING, looked at the Israelites with care.
Now, what other way should this be read, Tom. Help me out. Wouldn't the EASIEST way be to say that God made the covenant, forgot about it over time, and the crying out of the Israelites REMINDED him of the covenant....like so..
"What's that cry I hear? Hmmm...the Israelites. Boy, they're really going through it. Hey, WAIT. I made a covenant with their ancestor, Abraham. Actually, I told Abe that all this was going to happen....them being made captive and all. AND I told Abe that I'd punish those oppressors too. So, let me go ahead and see what's going on."
Call me crazy but this seems like a pretty natural rendering. A God that is reminded of things. Again, Tom, help me out.
I placed the zakar notation in there, gave what I thought to be the more natural reading of the text, all things considered...and then asked you what other way should it be read. How did this translate into me saying that zakar BY DEFINITION requires forgetfulness when being used? I'd be some type of idiot to say this...especially looking at all the ways the word "remember" is used in the Old Testament (which you note) I'm thinking that you far too quickly read me INTO Ware on this one, buddy. 
Now let me show you something. And let's use YOUR terms. You said zakar could mean:
--"calling to mind,"
--"mentioning to one's self,"
--bringing to the forefront of one's attention."
--"keep one’s promise."
Ok. Let's do some substitutions:
Exo 23-25
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he called to mind his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exo 6:4-5
I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have called to mind my covenant.
Ok. Just me, but this sounds a lot like what I described as "remembering" earilier with presentist omniscience. Doesn't it seem that way to you?
Exo 23-25
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he mentioned to himself his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exo 6:4-5
I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have mentioned to myself my covenant.
Ok. What is the mentioning to himself for? Did anything precipitate the mentioning? I'm having problems with this one...
Exo 23-25
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he brought to the forefront of his attention his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exo 6:4-5
I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have brought my covenant with them to the forefront of my attention.
Ok. What would it mean for God NOT to have something in the forefront of his attention? Are we talking PRIORITIZATION here? Basically that God knew about the plight of the Israelites AND his covenant...but only upon hearing THIS groaning decided to make looking upon them a priority? I suppose this is possible. But it could be noted that bringing things to the forefront of one's attention sounds an AWFUL LOT like how we human beings "remember" things.
Exo 23-25
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he decided this was the time to keep the promise of his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exo 6:4-5
I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have decided this was the time to keep the promise of my covenant.
This would be like the one above. Basically, God was completely aware of the situation with the Israelites and the "groaning" was nothing more than an "alarm clock" of sorts to let God know that it was time to keep his promise and make this a high priority. Again, I suppose we could stretch it and let this work. But honestly, I have problems with it.
So, from using your stuff it seems to me that we could possibly come to the conclusion that God basically used the groaning of the Israelites to detail to himself that it was time (at last) to start promoting his salvific plans for the deliverance of the Sons of Israel. He simply decided that it was time to move it's priority up some. The "alarm clock" approach. If you want to work it this way, that's all you. But it really does seem like a stretch to me personally. It seems to work out much more naturally to me to say that God "forgot" the covenant then RECALLED IT TO MIND when he heard the groans. The only way that I see someone having problems with this is to say that God CANNOT, by definition, forget things. I would really love to see some biblical evidence that supports that the Biblical God cannot forget ANYTHING.
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Tom:
quote:
Fourthly, about Gen. 9.14. Mephi, can’t this fit into the both/and of God’s providential sustaining of the universe I mentioned above? I don’t see that v. 14 requires a direct unilateral intervention of the laws of nature. I’m still trying to track you here, though. Are you claiming v. 14 requires the view that God unilaterally, that is, apart from the (however relatively independent) operation of the laws of nature, decrees all cloud formation and all rainbows?
Should we not attribute passages like Mat 5.45 (“God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”) to the general playing out of the laws of nature which bring warmth and good harvests to good an evil people indiscriminately? (Note: Jesus doesn’t say here that God “makes” his flood rains drown babies; there’s plenty of room here for the idea that the natural order is a war zone as Doc argues. All that’s said here is that when nature works right, when it’s cooperative and good to us, God’s the one to thank.)
What I'm saying is that v.14 gives the indication, all things considered, that God (at least the one represented in the OT) LARGELY controls cloud formation and rain. Again, try the word search thing.
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Tom:
quote:
Lastly, how does this fundamentally effect how we understand Gen. 9? If rainbows form autonomously on the basis of physical laws God created, then rainbows still provide an opportunity for human-divine experience as I’m suggesting. On the other hand, if God decrees each rainbow as an individual creative act, then rainbows still function the same way. I can go either way, but recognizing some level of autonomy in nature makes more sense to me.
Ah. Don't forget the problem of evil, my good man! Have you never seen a rainbow form near a devastating tornado? I have. Have you ever seen a rainbow form in the midst of some monsoon type weather? I have. Now if God is bringing together these clouds and rain to make EACH rainbow, wouldn't God be somewhat responsible for the sometimes devastating results of "bringing the clouds together"? It would seem so to me. Here's the bottom line:
[Get this, everyone!!!!]
Open view theism (along with process theism) assumes a LOT of autonomy for NATURE as well as for sentient moral beings. I think that many times we don't want to admit that this comes in DIRECT CONFLICT with some of the ways that the Old Testament authors saw weather phenomena. I believe that the authors of Genesis thought that God had MUCH MORE control over weather phenomena than some OVTers would allow for. What I see happening is people READING IN open view cosmology INTO Old Testament understandings about weather. I'm crying foul. Let's just go ahead and say what we are doing: reinterpreting the text in light of our worldview, trying to make it work.
Just my opinion.
If this is scattered, sorry. I'll try to make it better later.
Edited by - Mephi2K on 07/12/2002 2:25:40 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/15/2002 8:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi all-
Mephi: Now, let's take it back to Genesis 9:14. Looking at the MAJORITY way that rain, clouds, and stuff like that seem to be attributed to God's control in other OT passages, how should we interpret the author's probable intention in that passage?
Tom: I’m not sure about this hermeneutical step: Count how many times “rain” appears in the OT, decide whether or not God’s involved, then bring this back to Gen. 9. This is thread all by itself. Let me toss out a couple of thoughts—
First, since you and I both agree that God is Lord of nature and that he can and does intervene into nature, it shouldn’t surprise us if we find this mentioned in the OT. But then it shouldn’t surprise us to NOT find OT authors affirming every time they observed a phenomenon of weather they believed was nothing more than the result of regular natural laws God established. It’s difficult to arrive at conclusions based on statistical word studies on this since it’s a given that only natural events already believed to have some direct divine involvement attached to them would event get mentioned.
If the authors of Scripture did in fact believe that God directly brought about the vast majority of weather phenomena, then I’d be inclined to disagree with them. This leads me, secondly, to say that I don’t think it follows that all beliefs rightly attributed to an author of Scripture based on implications from their writing necessarily are authoritative in themselves. It wouldn’t be difficult I don’t suppose to conclude that the authors of Scripture believed a great many things along with the people of their day and culture in which they were mistaken. Inspiration doesn’t mean THAT does it? I don’t think so. One has to demonstrate that the belief in question is necessary to the point the author is believed to be making in the text. You probably think Gen. 9 is a case in point. I’m not so sure.
Payaso: Are you [Mephi] suggesting that someone could not retain a memory of something while still possessing knowledge of it, in a presentist sense?
Mephi: Yes, I am….The fact of the matter is that your brain HAS information of which you may not be consciously aware. Some things may occur that can bring some of this information to the conscious state of your mind, thereby allowing you to "remember", right? So, why is it NOT possible that God could be the same way?
Tom: So, God has a “sub-conscience.” Cool. I’d like to see this explicated. I doubt though that it would present us with a picture of God that was not still finite. Assuming God does have a sub-conscience, it still seems to me that his “needing” help (prods, reminders, cue cards) to draw out information from his sub-conscious divine mind would still, I think, imply imperfection, for it asserts that God cannot perform internally (i.e., remember things) without help from outside himself. Is there no interpretation of Gen. 9 that is better than this? Do you really wanna go here?
Mephi: Ooooh, Tom. First of all, where in the world did I say that the word "zakar" by definition necessitates some type of forgetfulness?
Tom: Didn’t mean to imply you Bro. I believe I had Ware in mind. He certainly does arguing that if open theists are consistent in understanding “God remembers” they’d have to take this passage literally and assert that “God forgets.”
Mephi: Exo 23-25 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he called to mind his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. Exo 6:4-5 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have called to mind my covenant.
Ok. Just me, but this sounds a lot like what I described as "remembering" earlier with presentist omniscience. Doesn't it seem that way to you?
Tom: Not exactly. What I’ve been understanding you to be saying is that God’s having made this covenant is a fact which the passing of time pushed into God’s sub-conscious mind with the result now that God is unable to recall this information without help from outside himself.
Mephi: So, from using your stuff it seems to me that we could possibly come to the conclusion that God basically used the groaning of the Israelites to detail to himself that it was time (at last) to start promoting his salvific plans for the deliverance of the Sons of Israel. He simply decided that it was time to move its priority up some. The "alarm clock" approach. If you want to work it this way, that's all you.
Tom: I confess that the “prioritizing” approach makes a lot of sense to me. But I wouldn’t call this an “alarm clock” approach because that presupposes God was sleeping on the job! [:] I think “alarm clock” might work better for what you’re suggesting, would it not? God “forgets” his promises and is incapable of remembering them apart from external “alarms” (groans, rainbows, etc.). On what biblical basis would you then argue against (if you would argue against it) that even after the groans and rainbows God might still not remember having made a covenant? Could information in his subconscious mind ever become permanently irretrievable? Why not? My hunch is that your reasons for arguing such a thing could not happen with God would be the same as, or close to, my reasons for arguing that God could not stand in need of an external apparatus to recall information from his subconscious mind to his conscious mind (if it’s true that God has a subconscious). So, on what basis would you argue that God is incapable of permanently forgetting something since the analogy you depend on in arguing that he can temporarily forget is us humans? How do you biblically draw the line here between “God forgets and needs to be reminded” (which leaves omniscience in tact) and “God forgets, needs to be reminded, but is capable of sometimes not remembering even when he’s reminded” (which I presume is not consistent with omniscience)? I’m not sure how opening the door to the first (which I understand you’re doing) doesn’t open the door to the second (viz., that God may permanently forget something). Weren’t the Jews in Egypt “groaning” for hundreds of years? Did God only remember his covenant after 400 years?
Mephi: Ah. Don't forget the problem of evil, my good man! Have you never seen a rainbow form near a devastating tornado? I have. Have you ever seen a rainbow form in the midst of some monsoon type weather? I have. Now if God is bringing together these clouds and rain to make EACH rainbow, wouldn't God be somewhat responsible for the sometimes devastating results of "bringing the clouds together"?
Tom: I suppose so, but then I don’t argue that God “brings together clouds and rain in order to make each rainbow. I don’t see God saying to himself, “I need to remember my promise not to wipe humanity out again, let’s bring in a killer storm.” Wouldn’t this amount to circular reasoning? God remembers his promise and so creates a rainbow to remember his promise. This is not what I’ve been arguing.
But I do think it’s a wonderful thing that after the horror of some such storm God chooses to invite those who care to remember that he has promised that such natural disasters will never (again) consume all humanity. This is does by making use of a very natural phenomenon that would have occurred had he never made the promise. If this suggests that the writer wasn’t as steeped in the belief that God directly decrees the vast majority of weather phenomena, then so be it. Do you really feel it’s impossible to make sense of their worldview apart from this belief?
Mephi: Open view theism (along with process theism) assumes a LOT of autonomy for NATURE as well as for sentient moral beings. I think that many times we don't want to admit that this comes in DIRECT CONFLICT with some of the ways that the Old Testament authors saw weather phenomena. I believe that the authors of Genesis thought that God had MUCH MORE control over weather phenomena than some OVTers would allow for. What I see happening is people READING IN open view cosmology INTO Old Testament understandings about weather. I'm crying foul. Let's just go ahead and say what we are doing: reinterpreting the text in light of our worldview, trying to make it work.
Tom: I’d love to hear Doc’s thoughts at this point. To be honest, Mephi, I’ve just gotten comfortably settled into the basic open view belief that the future is partly open. I read through Doc’s SPE once, noted the natural evil stuff, then loaned it to a friend and haven’t gotten it back yet. You’re way ahead of me on the cosmological issues related to the open view. I can, however, engage you on the OT texts themselves in deciding whether or not the writers believed God directly decreed the vast majority of cloud movement and raindrop trajectories. I’m inclined to assume they did NOT assume God was involved in this way. One reason for thinking this would be, as I said before, that it doesn’t leave a lot of room for defining miraculous interventions as anything out of the ordinary. What would be out of the ordinary would be for God to leave nature alone.
I’ll do that word search on rain and see what I come up with!
Love ya,
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 7/20/2002 6:52 AM (GMT -6) | | GREAT discussion. I don’t have much to add, which is good because I don’t have much time at all right now. Here’s a couple of thoughts.
1. I personally have no problem admitting that we are reinterpreting biblical texts in light of our contemporary worldview. EVERYBODY does this, and HAS to do this. No one believes the earth is held up by pillars, surrounded by water, that the sky is hard as molten lava, etc. So I have no problem accepting that Gen. 9 is written in a language that the people of the time could readily understand.
2. As to how autonomous nature is or isn’t, I don’t think it wise to try to ascertain the assumptions that lie behind certain texts (see #1). I feel bound to believe what authors intend to TEACH, not the packaging around this teaching. And no one TEACHES that every thing in nature is exhaustively determined by God (yes, there are a few texts here and there that CAN be interpreted this way. But they don’t NEED to be interpreted this way). Of course, the thrust of the Old Testament is to distinguish creational monotheism (there is one and only one Creator) from polytheism, and so the emphasis is on EVERYTHING being under the authority. In this sense everything comes from him. But I think we are pushing this language too far to conclude that this implies that every drop of rain is controlled by God.
To answer the question of how autonomous nature is from God, I think we need to combine biblical insights with logic, experience and science.
3. I find TGB’s reflections on the covenantal language of "remembering" to be decisive. This is the standard interpretation, and it is as available to open theists as it is to others. The fact that open theists take one category of passages more literally than others doesn’t create a new problem for us, for everybody decides that some things are literal and some things are not. The line of reasoning is the same for everybody: are there literary or theological or rational reasons why this text should not be taken literally (by "literally" I mean "in their ordinary sense")? All have agreed that God remembering is figurative, reflecting covenantal language (but, as Meph has done, its fair game to reconsider this). All (evangelicals at least) have agreed that God being almighty is literal. We (evangelicals) disagree about whether God changing his mind and testing people to know their heart is literal or figurative.
4. Meph, I think your analogy with the human subconscious to God’s remembering with God’s omniscience is clever, but futile. For it is a LIMITATION on our part that we are not aware of all we know. We have "tacit" knowledge only because we are not able to handle it all as "explicit" knowledge. I think Scripture indicates that God’s knowledge is perfect. I also think that a good case can be made philosophical for the view that an omniscient being exists (as you know from Trinity and Process. Hence, I don’t think that God LITERALLY needs reminders.
Good stuff. Doc
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