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JCsites.com
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 169
| Posted 1/20/2003 3:40 PM (GMT -6) |   | O.k., so I just learned I've had it wrong about OT. I kept thinking the idea that God partly knows the future meant that He chooses to know parts of it. Quite a jump in logic. Assumptions, you know what they make ;-)
Anyhow, so now I know that God Pre-Ordains parts of the future, but other than that, God doesn't know what's going to happen. This gives us complete free will, awesome love with him, etc...
So here's my next question...
What about car crashes, i.e. auto accidents. Assuming that God does not pre-ordain car crash A, then that means God did not know crash A was going to happen. But it did.
So are we really that un-protected in this universe as believers? (why do I feel like I've been here before?) I mean, can we pray before a cross country car trip, that God will protect us from car accidents? If he doesn't know the fact of a car crash to change time and protect us, or if he doesn't know if one will come, how can he truly protect us when we pray that?
Perculiar concept but here goes...
I've always thought that God was so perfect in every way, omnipotent, ect. that I liken His battles with Satan to be like The Oakland Raiders (God) against the Cincinatti Bengals (Satan). (give me some slack folks) Hardly a challenge for God. But now I'm wondering, if God doesn't know the future, then doesn't that make it more like the Oakland Raiders vs. the Kansas City Chiefs (Satan)? i.e. quite a challenge for God but he still wins?
In otherwords, doesn't OT lessen God's supremacy if he doesn't know the future?
I once had a conversation with Paul Eddy where I recall he said most people when they are beginning to learn about OT, have a tendancy toward All or None thinking. Eddy said that doesn't really apply here. Is that what I'm doing here, doing all or none thinking?
It's really mind boggling for me to wrap my brain around the idea that God doesn't know the future, but yet is so powerful it's like Satan has zero chance in every conflict with God.
Hope I'm making sense, and thanks to any who choose to try and teach me, or clear up my mis-conceptions about OT. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a friend to OT, but obviously I have yet to really understand it.
Maybe I've got my priorities out of whack! Instead of reading God of the Possible, I keep spending time trying to get a stinkin' job! 
JCsites guy.
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 1/20/2003 3:56 PM (GMT -6) | |
JC. can we pray before a cross country car trip, that God will protect us from car accidents? If he doesn't know the fact of a car crash to change time and protect us, or if he doesn't know if one will come, how can he truly protect us when we pray that?
Doc: If he knows with absolute certainty you'r egoing to get in a car crash, what good is praying that you won't. It seems praying for protection only helps if God knows you might get in a car crash and if he allows prayer to exercise an influence in what will come to pass. What you're looking for is a God who sees future possibilities and can respond to prayer to bring about some possibilities rather than others. And that my friend, only the Open View offers.
JC. In otherwords, doesn't OT lessen God's supremacy if he doesn't know the future?
Doc: Nope. If God were like us, as many seem to believe, then it would lessen his supremacy. We loose power as we consider possibilities rather than cerrtainties, for we have an FINITE amount of intelligence we have to fraction out over the possibilities we have to consider. Hence, we are less confident playing chess than we are working on a Ford Assembly line. With the Assembly line, we KNOW what's coming. With a chess match, we don't.
But God isn't limited like we are. He can anticipate each of a trillion trillion possibilities as thought each one were a certainty, for he doesn't have to SPREAD THIN his intelligence to cover them. Whatever comes to pass, it is, for God, as thought it was THE ONLY THING that could come to pass. It is AS THOUGH ALL of his intelligence were focused on this one possibility. It's just that, God is soooooo smart, we'd be saying the exact same thing WHATEVER possibility came to pass..
Only an anthropomorphized limited deity NEEDS to KNOW what actually is going to happen to perfectly anticipate a response to what will eventually happen.
Finally, ironically, if God simply KNOWS what is going to take place, he's disempowered to CHANGE what's going to take place, hence he's not SUPREME over what takes place.
Think about it.
in his love
Greg
I once had a conversation with Paul Eddy where I recall he said most people when they are beginning to learn about OT, have a tendancy toward All or None thinking. Eddy said that doesn't really apply here. Is that what I'm doing here, doing all or none thinking?
It's really mind boggling for me to wrap my brain around the idea that God doesn't know the future, but yet is so powerful it's like Satan has zero chance in every conflict with God.
Hope I'm making sense, and thanks to any who choose to try and teach me, or clear up my mis-conceptions about OT. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a friend to OT, but obviously I have yet to really understand it.
Maybe I've got my priorities out of whack! Instead of reading God of the Possible, I keep spending time trying to get a stinkin' job!
JCsites guy.
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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SIM
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2002
Total Posts : 90
| Posted 1/24/2003 7:03 AM (GMT -6) | | Dr. Boyd,
What do you do with the FACT that science is progressively and cogently supporting the traditional concept of God's timeless, uncaused, simple, independent, necessary and transcendent existence? (See quote below),
This is what a confirmed "atheistic" scientist says:
"My agreement with theism runs deeper: I agree that there is a cause of spacetime’s beginning to exist. Further, I agree with many theists that a simple being caused space- time, where “simple” means here “has no parts.” (Note that “simplicity” is used in many different senses and that I later use it in a different sense, a sense where “simplicity” expresses a property of hypotheses, not of concrete particulars.) I also agree with some theists, such as Brian Leftow, that the cause of spacetime exists timelessly. And I agree with theists that the cause of spacetime is essentially uncaused and exists a se (i.e., is not dependent upon any concrete object). And I agree with Plantinga and most other contemporary analytic theists that the cause of spacetime has a metaphysically necessary existence. I also share the view of these theists that this metaphysically necessary being contingently causes spacetime to exist (such that this necessary being exists in some merely possible worlds where it does not cause spacetime). I further agree with theists that the act of causation is a case of singularist causation that relates a necessary being to a contingent being, spacetime. Moreover, I agree with theists that the cause of spacetime is transcendent, at least in the sense explicated in this passage from Plantinga: “Perhaps we can also give an explanation of what it is for a being to be transcendent: such a being transcends the created universe; and a being transcends the created universe if it is not identical with any being in that universe (if it is not created) and if it depends on nothing at all for its existence.” Note that a being is transcendent, by this definition, only if it transcends the created universe, such that a being can possess the property of being transcendent only in the possible worlds where there is a created universe. Thus, the property of being transcendent is possessed contingently by the necessary being that causes spacetime, but it can be possessed by a being that does not cause spacetime, such as an abstract object, assuming abstract objects do not depend on God for their existence. (http://www.qsmithwmu.com/time_began_with_a_timeless_point.htm)
Interesting that in spite of Dr. Smith's recognition of scientific discoveries, he continues to refuse to consider that the "Creative Force" is Personal.
Thank you,
SIM
"Looking for God--or Heaven--by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters..."
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/24/2003 7:32 AM (GMT -6) | | SIM: What do you do with the FACT that science is progressively and cogently supporting the traditional concept of God's timeless, uncaused, simple, independent, necessary and transcendent existence?
Tom: I missed that. I was under the impression that timelessness has been steadily abandoned by theologians on both sides of the isle, Calvinist and Arminian.
Tom
Love never ends | | Back to Top | | |
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SIM
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2002
Total Posts : 90
| Posted 1/24/2003 8:50 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
SIM: What do you do with the FACT that science is progressively and cogently supporting the traditional concept of God's timeless, uncaused, simple, independent, necessary and transcendent existence?
Tom: I missed that. I was under the impression that timelessness has been steadily abandoned by theologians on both sides of the isle, Calvinist and Arminian.
Tom
Love never ends
Would you have an internet article that I could read about this?
Thanks,
SIM
"Looking for God--or Heaven--by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters..."
C. S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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