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yankee
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 22
| Posted 7/4/2002 7:01 PM (GMT -6) |   | Dear Reader,
Hello again to everyone out there. Last night I was thinking to myself about the subject of God's atemporality (timelessness)and the thought occurred to me that if God truly exists outside of sequential time and experiences all of the past and present and future as one great big eternal non-sequential now, then how is it possible for God to foreknow the future before He foreordains some or all of it seeing how He experiences everything simultaniously? Wouldn't a belief that foreknowledge comes BEFORE foreordination rule out a belief in God's atemporality? It would seem to me that the belief that God is atemporal would logically require one to believe that foreknowledge and foreordination are both simultanious events. I know that there are those who believe that God is atemporal and at the same time also believe that God elects and foreordains in response to what He already foreknew. Just some thoughts I've been having. Have a good day.
Sincerly,
Yankee
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 7/5/2002 5:54 AM (GMT -6) | | Interesting thoughts. I know that William Craig, from a Molinist perspective, says that God's Middle Knowledge is "logically prior" (but not temporally prior) to God's creating or ordaining the world we know. So it seems that Craig recognizes the problem. But I haven't read where Craig defends the coherency of the idea of "logical priority" without temporal priority.
Is it coherent to say that foreknowledge or middle knowledge could be "logically prior" (but not temporally prior) to creation?
Is the concept of divine timelessness so intrinsically foreign to us that we should not expect it to be coherent even if it were true?
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yankee
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 22
| Posted 7/5/2002 9:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear JET,
I really cannot answer what you have to say. These things just blow my mind and fly way too high over my head. Great to hear your thoughts though.
Sincerly,
yankee
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Winghead
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 132
| Posted 7/5/2002 6:46 PM (GMT -6) | | Yankee,
What blows my mind is how we -- who are rivited in finitude -- can so easily talk about what it means to be "Omni-" anything, or timeless, or infinite. 
Just going by scripture, we can only infer that before creation there might NOT have been time. But others suggest time or sequence might have always existed. In any case, scripture reveals that God can and does act into time and space events. So, any idea of God being outside of time, must also allow for him to act into time.
Blessings,
Winghead
P.S. Welcome Jet and Yankee to CVM!
"...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 (NLT)
Edited by - Winghead on 07/05/2002 11:47:28 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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yankee
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 22
| Posted 7/6/2002 3:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear Winghead,
Good to hear from you. To be honest, I am not one who believes that God ever did exist outside of time. I do however agree with you that even if He does exist outside of time that the scriptures mandate for us that He can and does act inside of time. When I think of God existing outside of time and acting inside of time I see His actions as something apart from His thought processes. To me it would seem that even if His actions (creating, intervening, demonstrating love and wrath, etc.) are inside of time His thought processes (planning, foreknowing and foreordaining, etc.) would still exist outside of time where God exists Himself that is if He really does in fact exist outside of time. You know I just had another thought. It would seem to me that if one who believes that God exists outside of time and who also understands God's attribute of omnipresence as being a part of God's divinity instead of the result of His divinity and therefore believes that God is obligated by His divine nature to be absolutely everywhere all of the time then wouldn't His concept of omnipresence require of him that He believe that God exists both outside of and inside of time all of the time? Well I just got off of working graveyard not long ago so please forgive me if I,m not making much sense. Perhaps my mind is just drifting way off course now. Anyway, have a good day.
Sincerly'
Yankee
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/6/2002 2:57 PM (GMT -6) | | I guess a question I have is why must it be thought that the future is somehow included in the concept God being outside of time? Everything we know--as far as I am in-the-know--suggests that the future simply hasn't happened yet; therefore, if God is outside of time, what is there for Him to know of the future? It hasn't happened yet in or outside of time.
I've stated this scenario before:
God appears to you, says that He knows what you're going to do in 30 seconds. He tells you, but you do something different because you choose to do so. What can God say? "Oh, I knew you were going to do that?" Well then, at what point in time does something ever become final--other than that which God has decreed will be done? Within a time context where an agent exercises free will, when can it finally be said that the agent's future is determined, be it 30 seconds or 30 years into the future? It can't, other than those times God decrees, but that doesn't fall into the free will issue in this case.
If the future isn't determined for us, (other than that portion God has determined), why must we think that God being outside of time, if He is, makes any more concept of a future exist?
Well, that's about it for my brain on this,
Starkman
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leth
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2002
Total Posts : 26
| Posted 7/8/2002 11:13 AM (GMT -6) | | StarkMan: If the future isn't determined for us, (other than that portion God has determined), why must we think that God being outside of time, if He is, makes any more concept of a future exist?
Leth: First, if God "exists outside of (any) time", then assumption is generally that God can not change; God is immutable. If there is change, then there is sequence. If there is no sequence, then for that observer, there is no time. If God exists outside of time, God can not change.
Yet if it is as you suggest, by observing first yesterday (once our present), and then today (now our present), the set of all elements representing God's knowledge has changed. That is, unless God can not distinguish between, "I see their yesterday," and "I see their today", or unless God lacks any knowledge at all about us, then God changes. Since there is change, there is sequence. Since there is sequence, there must be time.
By definition, "God exists outside of time", is intended to mean that God experiences all time at once, and performs all interactions in a single and constant thrust. There is nothing else to the statement.
To counter the suggestion that God exists outside of time, perhaps the most effective means would be to point out the origins of the concept.
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Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116
| Posted 7/22/2002 11:05 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Dear JET,
I really cannot answer what you have to say. These things just blow my mind and fly way too high over my head. Great to hear your thoughts though.
Sincerly,
yankee
:)
I would state this a little differently. I would say, they are irrational ideas. (See my subject on time.)
All these came from the Greeks painting an irrational picture of the head of the pantheon they referred to as the "ultimate being." They unilaterally decided that a "perfect" anything must have a certain form and the ultimate being must be all the perfect forms wrapped up together. Those forms could not change or they would no longer be “perfect.” So, this "ultimate being" couldn't move, learn, think, act, change, and therefore did not need time.
As I remember it was Origin in his letter to the Ephesians who first mentioned timelessness of God within the church. Many more Greek taught scholars helped the idea become established in the church, especially Augustine, then Calvin and Beza, and here we are today.
If God were outside of time, then the entire operation would be kind of like a painting where God could see it, future or past, but we would experience it as if it were sequencing. The trouble is that no one can explain how this could be true.
In Starkman’s quote above, the future hasn’t happened but the past has, this is true, but if God is outside of time, then it is, again, more like the painting and all of it can be “seen” at the same time because it is already there for God to see. This, of course, prevents him from acting on it so he is a static God like the Greeks described, but if he could act, like Kinkade painting, or even retouching his painting, so God could too.
OK, if you swallow that, he can repaint what hasn’t happened yet, then we have lots of problems, 1) he can’t know absolutely what he may decide to change, 2) you don’t have any choice for any action because it is foreknown by God and certainly you can’t change what God knows, 3) he would be equally able, like Kinkade altering what he has already painted, to change the past (then pray God would not allow the judge to release Hitler from jail, pray my dad would not have died from cancer), and 4) he is fully responsible (like Kincade) for creating that which is absolute and immutable about the future including all evil and horrors of life, and the judgment. This god would be one who creates things in order to send them to hell. When he had the ability to change all the evil in the world he said “it is very good” and left it that way including my sister and her daughter’s rapes, my friend’s and my dad’s terminal cancer, et al, ad nauseum. Is this the god you worship? Not I.
We don’t have a world like that do we? We have a world of cause and effect. What we do has consequences for the future and can change what happens by the decisions we choose. This is the basis for judgment because it is not God who chose these things, it is us.
Does this “limit” God? Not more than any other thing you can say about him, but it frees him to respond to us in real time when we pray.
Blessings.
Ronald A. Newcomb
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/22/2002 6:11 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
...if God truly exists outside of sequential time and experiences all of the past and present and future as one great big eternal non-sequential now, then how is it possible for God to foreknow the future before He foreordains some or all of it seeing how He experiences everything simultaniously?
Yankee-
I'll try a to-the-point quick answer: You're exactly right Yankee. Timeless knowledge is of no providential advantage to God whatsoever. God could not access knowledge gained from the events themeselves (timelessly viewed) in order to determine his own prior actions. The reason is obvious--timeless knowledge would include God's own actions as well. By the time (as we might say) God knows that Hitler kills six million Jews it's too late for him to do anything to prevent it. What is timelessly foreknown is infallible, not even God can change it. Nor could God use such knowledge in bringing about what he desires (to predict future events, for example).
What d'ya think? It's a HUUUUGE reason for dumping simple foreknowledge. It explains nothing, nada, zilch, nich, naught, zero.
You're right on.
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde
Edited by - TGB on 07/22/2002 11:14:33 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/22/2002 7:46 PM (GMT -6) | | Yankee-
Couple more things...
This is exactly what I've been discussing with a friend of mine who affirms simple foreknowledge. When confronted with the uselessness of such knowledge he simply insisted that since God is infinite and we are finite, and since the Bible (as far as he can tell) leads us to conclude that God simply foreknows past, present, and future, we ought to affirm this self-contradiction and trust God.
Secondly, Middle Knowledge fairs only slghtly better than simple foreknowledge. Craig agrees that simple foreknowledge would be useless to God. But he, I think, involves himself in a difficulty of a different sort by insisting that the logical possibilities which God knows logically prior to creating the world consist ONLY of what free agents WOULD do. Possibilities are recognized by Craig only as having been forever excluded from reality (never as what might be). What eternally grounds these "would-counterfactuals"? Craig doesn't say.
Blessings,
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde
Edited by - TGB on 07/23/2002 12:50:21 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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yankee
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 22
| Posted 7/22/2002 10:13 PM (GMT -6) | | Dear Starkman, Leth, Newcomb, and TGB,
Good to hear from you guys.
Starkman,
It would seem to me that if God was to tell me what I was going to do in the next thirty seconds He would end up having to exercize a high enough level of sovereign control over my will to choose in order to guarantee that I would do as He has said. Personally I do not believe that the future exists right now. I do believe that the future will come into existance at the time when we arrive at that future point of time and those things that God foreordained and foreknows will come to pass as He has foreordained them.
Leth,
I cannot think of anything to add to what you have said. Seems logical to me.
Newcomb,
I am sorry to hear of the tragedies that have occurred in your family and your friends tragedy. I also do not believe that God causes everything that ever happens to happen. I do believe that God works with tragedies to bring good out of them. I also believe that God does not owe any of us even one more heartbeat and that if He decides to take any of us home early He is still doing that which is rightfully His to do. God took the life of king David's infant son by way of illness. I do have a real problem with believing that God would micromanage every thought inside of a man's head to the point that it would become impossible for him to choose NOT to rape a woman. I do believe that we live in a world where pointless evil and pointless tragedies do occur. The cancer cases of your friend and father were probably not what God intended for them but I can't guarantee that. Only god knows the answer to that for sure.
TGB,
Regarding the providential uselessness of timeless knowledge I would have to say that it never ceases to amaze me how that some classical theists who affirm that foreknowledge comes before foreordination can be so quick to accuse the open view of limiting God and yet at the same time be so blind and totally unable to see how their own beliefs impose limitations on God. By affirming that foreknowledge comes before foreordination we end up with a God who sits on His throne and who cannot do anything to prevent what He knows is about to occur because if He does intervene then He renders His own foreknowledge imperfect. He sits with His hands tied behind His own back with chains He is powerless to break because His freedom and sovereignty is made subservient to His foreknowledge.
To anyone else reading this thread,
I would like to focus some attention to something I brought up earlier in this thread that pertains more closely to the thoughts expressed in my first post on this thread. Does it make sense to say that God's actions inside of time would include the thought process actions of foreknowing and foreordaining while God Himself exists outside of time? I can understand how some might think that God exists outside of time while maintaining that He acts inside of time but it is difficult for me to understand how one could believe that God foreknows and foreordains inside of time while existing outside of time. What do you think?
Sincerly to all,
Yankee
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/23/2002 3:37 AM (GMT -6) | | | Rule of thumb: Don't freeze God "within" time; but don't keep God out of time either. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/23/2002 4:39 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Rule of thumb: Don't freeze God "within" time; but don't keep God out of time either.
We've DEFINITELY met before! 
One question: Why should this be a rule of thumb?
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde
Edited by - TGB on 07/23/2002 09:40:45 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/23/2002 5:14 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom: One question: Why should this be a rule of thumb?
@: In the summer I can count on my toes as well. | | Back to Top | | |
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