Post Edited (Sahid) : 5/9/2005 9:33:03 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Laika) : 5/10/2005 1:00:24 PM (GMT-5)

Wow! Words flying right and left. Tremendous. Let me dump some of my own on ya!

Nathan: Here, I believe, is demonstrated the difference between the Bible and the Open View. The Bible (Isaiah 40:28) asserts that "His understanding no one can fathom."

Tom: And the open view claims that God’s knowledge can be fathomed? What open theist has said this? None. Open theists can acknowledge with every other Christian that God’s knowledge is unfathomable.

Nathan: There is literally no end to God's knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. There is nothing God does not, cannot, or will not know.

Tom: Really? There’s nothing God doesn’t know? Does God know that I’m a woman? Does God know that 2 + 2 = 5? Does God know that you’re an open theist? Does God know that circles are square? That bachelors are married? That Satan is good? That Bush is a liberal? That there is now a monkey on my back as I write this? Come on, Nathan. There are a lot of things God doesn’t know.

From these sorts of examples (about which everybody would agree God doesn’t know them), how about we get specific about what the word “omniscience” means? What do you think of these?...

An omniscient being knows all truths and believes no falsehoods

or

An omniscient being knows all and only truths (says the same thing as above)

or more formally

For any proposition p, if p is true, then God knows that p is true and does not know that not-p is true.

I think this definition is a definition that Calvinists, traditional Arminianists, Molinists, open theists, and even process theists can affirm.

Whatever truths exist, God necessarily knows them. Whatever truths exist about the past, the present, and the future, God necessarily knows them. I hope this is a basic definition of the word “omniscient” (“all-knowing”) that you can agree to. Let me know.

Now the question becomes: What truths exist about the world, specifically, the future? THAT is where the debate is.

Nathan: On the Open View, God only foreknows parts of the future (or to put it another way, there are parts of the future that God does not foreknow.)

Tom: This is not the case, Nathan. But I don’t entirely blame you for thinking this, because there actually ARE some open theists whose view DOES reduce God to only partly foreknowing the future. I understand Dallas Willard believes God can actually choose to not know some truths about the future (i.e., the contingent future). William Hasker believes there are truths about the future which are logically impossible to know. Sounds confusing. It is. That’s why I hope neither of these views becomes the standard view among open theists.

Fact is, ya’ll, open theists don’t all agree on precisely HOW to best articulate the logic of indeterminacy and that doesn’t help open theism’s popularity at this point because people are looking for “THE” open view ‘view’ on just how it is that God knows what he knows and doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Some agree that future free acts are expressible in terms of “S will [certainly, with a probability of 100%] do Y” but just deny that such propositions are bivalent (viz., either true or false). Such propositions just don’t have a truth value; they’re neither true nor false. So it’s no failure in omniscience if God doesn’t know them as true. I don’t like either of these approaches at all.

It would be nice if open theists came together on this issue and all defended open theism in precisely the same way, but that’s not gonna happen. And if you think the existence of differing opinions among open theists on how best to defend the logic of the open future counts against the truth claim that the future is in fact open in some respects, you’d be wrong. Calvinists disagree among themselves on some things. Molinists disagree among themselves on some things. Big deal.

All of that to say this: An open theist doesn’t HAVE to (and in my view really SHOULDN’T) deny bivalence, or claim that God chooses to not know some truths about the future, or argue that there are truths about the future that are logically impossible even for an omniscient God to know. An open theist really can argue that:

a) Propositions are universally either true or false (bivalence)

b) God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods (def. of omniscience)

c) God knows all truths about the future (from a and b)

d) The future is partly open and known by God as such.

I imagine you can affirm a-c, Nathan, but that (d) just screams out “I’m incompatible with a-c!” But there’s no incompatibility here, provided there are truths positing the indeterminacy of future free acts which are known by God. And that’s precisely the view of Boyd (and many others).

Nathan: This means, going back to your movie show, that God doesn't know every detail affecting the events in the future, but He does know the events (you said that on the whole he determines them despite our choices). So perhaps the movie depicts some horrible event in the next week of your life. You watch it, and decide to change your ways so as to avoid it. Therefore the horrible thing does not come to pass.

Tom: The future as a “movie” is a horrible analogy. Films all exist “as a determinate whole” wound up on a reel, in which every part of the film is equally determinate and only unfolds as we watch it. Bad bad analogy. It’s a good analogy for Calvinists, yeah, but not for indeterminists.

Nathan: On the Biblical view, if the film were to show God's complete foreknowledge, it would show the details of you watching the film, your responses to it, and every other factor that leads to this or that end.

Tom: Well, you’re just assuming the point of debate, i.e., that “the biblical” view is one in which the entire history of the universe is already recorded and on a reel in God’s mind. That’s what we’re debating.

Nathan: This is actually the more plausible scenario; since it actually does take every detail into account -- not just the event, but your knowledge about the event, etc. -- the exhaustive foreknowledge is quintessentially coherent.

Tom: Coherent, yes, so long as you don’t think it’s coherently free. That’s the debate.

Nathan: Because every contingent thing is by definition caused...

Tom: But not every cause is deterministic.

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Sahid: They were allowed a glimpse into the future, specific to a single catastrophe, they earnestly repented, and the disaster did not happen.

and

If it never happened, it was never the future.

Tom: If the catastrophe’s not having happened means it was “never the future,” then how is it that they “glimpsed into the future” to view the catastrophe and so avoid it? And check this out too…

Sahid: The future is what will happen. Maybe other people define it otherwise, but I think this definition is the most straightforward. With this definition the open view says God knows all the future that has been set and all the future possibilities. I think that makes sense. That the future is not fully determined seems to me to be the common sense understanding.

Tom: This really contradicts itself, Sahid. Do you see it? If the future is “what WILL happen” then “the future” IS fully determined, since “will” implies determined. But since you agree God foreknows “future possibilities” then why limit the future to “what WILL happen” and exclude possibilities? Why not simply say that what we refer to as the future is, on the open view, expressible in terms of what WILL, what WILL NOT, and what MIGHT AND MIGHT NOT happen. This takes indeterminacy seriously and gives it an equal place in our ontology alongside determinacy. The future is made up of BOTH what is determinately the case (what “will” and what “will not” occur) and what is indeterminately the case (what “might and might not” occur).

--------------------------

Nathan: I never called it true definite knowledge of the future. I would rather call it "knowledge of the contingent (or possible) future."

Tom: HERE, my friend, you have a doorway open into a bright and shinning world of truth and freedom! Barge in! Give some thought to what’s involved in what you’ve just said and you’re on you way.

Now…

“Knowledge of the contingent (or possible) future” is, as far as I know, something ONLY (believe me, ONLY) open theists believe God possesses. Now such knowledge IS true, genuine, and definite knowledge. You said it wasn’t. But that’s a mistake. What God "knows" he "definitely knows." If God “knows” what’s contingent about the future, what the possibilities are, then that knowledge isn’t LESS than knowledge just because it’s knowledge of contingencies. It still counts AS knowledge, TRUE knowledge. So if God “knows the contingent future” then this is true, or genuine, knowledge of the contingent future.

Here’s the question, though. What does God believe is “contingent” about the occurrence of some future event if God also believes the event “will” occur (i.e., “will certainly”)? You said God’s knowing the event “as contingent” means knowing it “as possible.” Well, what’s that mean? Even non-contingent future events that are determined by God are “possible” events, otherwise God could not have determined them. They’re “logically” possible. So when you link “possible” to “contingent future” you (rightly) mean something MORE than merely “logically possible.” You mean what many of us call “might and might not” as opposed to both “will” and “will not” occur. In saying God knows “possible futures,” then, you’re saying God knows some of the future (what is contingent) as what “might and might not” occur. But Nathan, “might” is the logical contradiction of “will not” as is “might not” the logical contradiction of “will.” So “might and might not” is contrary to both “will” and “will not,” the point being that what God believes “might and might not” occur cannot also be believed by God as either that which “will” occur or that which “will not” occur. And the only people on the face of the planet arguing that God knows, REALLY knows, possible future, contingent futures, as “that which may possibly happen and possibly not happen” (viz., that which “might and might not” happen) are open theists. Once you claim God knows ALL the future exclusively as that which “will” happen or that which “will not” happen, you no longer have room for God knowing contingent events as what “might and might not” happen, i.e., knowing the contingency OF the event.

Now, somebody said this (I think it was you): "But if you mean ‘a future can't have been known in the past because it hasn't happened yet’, you are just confusing epistemology with ontology."

I hear this a lot. Open theists conflate epistemology and ontology (as if it’s not also a confusion to claim that God can believe about contingent events that it’s determinately the case that they will occur). Well, we certainly don’t want to confuse ontology and epistemology. But it’s no confusion of these categories to insist that omniscience means God knows (epistemology) all reality (ontology) AS IT IS, not as it isn’t. After all, it’s what is ontologically the case that God is supposed to know. So it follows that if indeterminacy is a genuine, ground-floor, feature of the real world, then indeterminacy is ontologically real and not just a state of mind. So historical contingency, or indeterminacy, is on the ‘ontological’ side of things, in which case there’s an ontological distinction between determinacy (what “will” happen) and indeterminacy (what “might and might not” happen). And if God is omniscient, Nathan, then God knows the ontological state of reality as it is, which means God makes (i.e., knows) the distinction between what is determinate about the future and what is indeterminate about the future. This all means God recognizes the distinction between what “will,” “will not” and “might and might not” occur in the future. The future is exhaustively describable (and knowable) then, in terms of the truth about what it is the case about the future, which includes truths of three sorts:

X will occur

X will not occur

X might and might not occur

So by all means, let’s not confuse or conflate epistemology with ontology. But let’s at least insist that omniscience means God’s epistemic states (beliefs, knowledge) infallibly reflect the reality of the world (the ontology of the world). What amounts to a confusion is to claim that indeterminacy and freedom are real, ontological features of the world but that God’s epistemic states NEVER reflect this which is what YOU are left with.

So show us how in your view the indeterminacy of future contingent events is infallibly reflected in God’s beliefs about those events? It’s contradictory to say God knows that X ‘will’ occur (with a probability of 1) and also claim that God believes X’s occurring is indeterminate, for it's occuring indeterminately requires an objective probability of greater than 0 and less than 1...

...THAT'S WHAT IT MEANS TO SAY INDETERMINACY IS (ONTOLOGICALLY) REAL!

In my view, open theism is the only way indeterminists can avoid confusing epistemology and ontology.

Nathan: Of course, labeling something that won't actually happen "future" is what I see open theism doing with its dicta about "God does know the future: just as a few actualities and a lot of possibilities."

Tom: I have the gun to my head. Can somebody pull the trigger for me?

Nathan, dude, it’s not that difficult, really. No open theist (as in “NO” open theist) argues God knows future “actualities.” Actualities are, by definition, present. There are no “future actualities.” There are present actualities that render determinate the future occurrence of some states of affairs (that is, render the probability that an event occurs 1, or 100%), in which case God knows “X will occur.” There are also present actualities that render determinate the future non-occurrence of some states of affairs (that is, render the probability that an event occurs 0, or 0%), in which case God knows “Y will not occur.” But if you’re an indeterminist, i.e., if you believe indeterminacy is a REAL, ontological feature, of the world, then you believe (and hopefully admit!) that there are sometimes present actualities that render indeterminate the future occurrence of some states of affairs (that is, render the probability of an event’s occurring greater than 0 [in which case saying it “will not” occur is false] and less than 1 [in which case saying it “will” occur is false]), in which case God, if he’s omniscient, knows the event might occur and might not occur.

Think well, sleep well,

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 5/10/2005 8:14:32 PM (GMT-5)

If Nathan was refering to my movie illustration (God's Grand Theater), to which Tom stated was a bad illustration, I need to ask why it is a bad illustration? The concept of "film" is perfect in a deterministic framework, because, indeed, like images captured on film, the future—every single last iota of it—is already settled and, thus, captured on film.  Further, I can fast-foward the film well into the future and see what I'm going to do. Finally, I simply do not have to do what I see. Pretty plain and simple if you ask me.

So, I'm lost as to why it's a bad example. Do tell!

Okay, the meatloaf's done; time to eat!

For...meatloaf!

Starkman

Post Edited (TGB) : 5/10/2005 8:16:41 PM (GMT-5)