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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/29/2005 11:35 PM (GMT -6) |   | |
Jeremiah 42.1-10 Then all the army officers, including Johanan son of Kareah and Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached. Jeremiah the prophet and said to him, Please hear our petition and pray to the LORD your God for this entire remnant. For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left. Pray that the LORD your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do. I have heard you, replied Jeremiah the prophet. I will certainly pray to the LORD your God as you have requested; I will tell you everything the LORD says and will keep nothing back from you. Then they said to Jeremiah, May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with everything the LORD your God sends you to tell us. Whether it is favourable or unfavourable, we will obey the LORD our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the LORD our God. Ten days later the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah. So he called together Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers who were with him and all the people from the least to the greatest. He said to them, This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your petition, says: 10 'If you stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you, for I am grieved (lit. "I grieved," past tense) over the disaster I have inflicted (lit. "I inflicted," past tense) on you.
I said Genesis 6.6 and 1Sam. 15.11 were the only two times in the OT where God is described as regretting/grieving his own past choices. I was wrong. Jeremiah also makes this claim (42.10). Check it out Mephi. The Hebrew is clear: כִּי נִחַמְתִּי אֶל-הָרָעָה, אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתִי לָכֶם
But what’s interesting is that where here God grieves אֶל what he did, in Gen. 6 and 1Sam. 15 God grieves כִּי what he did. (No big deal on the Hebrew folks. Sorry for posting it, but it keeps Mephi from having to waste time looking it up.)
And check this out too, Mephi. In Jeremiah God regrets the disaster he inflicted on Israel (though he warned them of it and they certainly deserved it). So he tells the leaders here, “Look, don’t go to Egypt. Stay here. I love you and I’ll take care of you here. But look, if you go to Egypt I’ll kick your butts, pursue you with the sword, and make your life miserable!” But hey, maybe God will regret inflicting THAT disaster on them after a while too and let them settle down happily in Egypt.
Actually I think 2Sam. 24.16 is also an example of God regretting/grieving his own past choices. Look at the passage:
So the LORD sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. (16) When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the LORD was grieved because of the calamity and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, "Enough! Withdraw your hand." The angel of the LORD was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
Question is, what calamnity (lit. Ra'ah, or "evil") did God grieve over? The 70,000 (that's a past, done deal) or the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem (regarding which a change of mind would be perfectly fine on my view). You could argue that it's the latter which God regretted. But given v. 15, it looks more to me that God tells the angel enough because he is grieved over, or he regrets (as in Jer. 42.10, where there’s no doubt about the meaning), the 70,000 that he wiped out.
So we’ve got not two, but four instances of God regretting/grieving his own past choices: Gen. 6.6, 1Sam. 15.11; 2Sam. 24.16; Jer. 42.10.
Still on the journey.
So Mephi. Now Jeremiah is ALSO wrong in his theology too, eh? In the end will there be any biblical authors left who got it right? 
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 8/30/2005 12:33:37 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/30/2005 8:31 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Jeff: The refusal to obey covenant with respect to the Caananites in the land had grave consequences for Israel. So I wouldn't even use the sensibility arguement, here.
Tom: Then that's even worse. If God's regret in this case amounts to a discovery of the providential advantage and wisdom which avoiding Saul's past choices would have had for his plans for Israel (and so the world?) so that God wishes he had not appointed Saul, then God is recognizing his lack of preparedness to fulfill his plans, which undermines your argument that the providential need to know constitutes why and when God actualluy does know. But here God regrets not having prepared providentially. God is regretting the past, remember, not the future. But none of the past choices of Saul's constitutes a grave cosequence for Israel that I can tell. So what major providential concern would you suggest? God tolerates actions on the part of Israels leaders with regard to her neighbors having far greater consequence for Israel than anything Saul did.
Or with 2Sam, when God determines to wipe out 70,000 Israelites AND destroy Jersualem, he really is incapable by nature of forknowing he'll regret doing the former so much that he won't want to continue with the latter?
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 8/30/2005 11:22:35 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 8/30/2005 10:02 AM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...Keith: Knowledge that something can go wrong, that someone can do evil is not a limitation of God's ontology. Jeff: Just a question, Keith. Do you think there are limit's of any human being's non-intellectual ontology that limit what they could know? In other words, are there things about certain human's sensibilities that truly preclude the possibility of them imagining certain things until they learn about them in real time? I think we're ALL like that. I've learned of things that would have NEVER entered my mind had not reality assaulted me with them (or unless I had been desensitized to unfathomable depths). I know at least SOME people are like that. Maybe God is (was?), too.
Well, Jeff, I don't think it's logical to conclude that just because we humans may have certain limitations we can therefore conclude that God must also. Where it can be shown that God is limited, despite what limitations we humans have, well, that's worth looking at. I just cannot conceive, at this moment, however, that one of those limits God has is that He couldn't have fathomed evil or how evil things could have gotten just because of ontological issues. And because I hold to the concept of omniscience that says God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods—this not contributing to or taking away from God's ability to know about evil and the depths to which evil can go (in context to whatever God creates)—I'm still hold'n to the interpretation that Gen 6 (God regrets) is nothing more, nothing less, than the author saying God was really...REALLY grieved. The grieving is the experience of the knowledge God always had.
Later gator,
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/30/2005 4:35 PM (GMT -6) | | Keith, at this point, your view is the only metaphorical view that I can conceive of. I can't get a good feeling for it because if God PERFECTLY knew that those conditions were WORTH it to Him, His supposed grief would seem to be non-analogous to ours. And if the analogy fails, then the metaphorical language seems to, also. Then comes the logical consequence, as Meph has so brilliantly articulated. For if the language is not conveying any meaning we can grasp by analogy, then the Calvinist is on the SAME ground as Tom is.
Maybe it does make sense to you analogously, but not to me. I can not conceive of grieving over what I ABSOLUTELY knew was worth it to me. Say, e.g., a king counts the cost of a war perfectly and then goes to war. Say his son dies because of the war. Then the king grieves that he had started the war. How does that make since if he, in PERFECT cognizance of that very consequence, began that war? If he grieved THAT his son died, FINE. Maybe even grieving that the war became a necessity. But grieving that he WENT to war?? That's the part that I, and I think Tom, can't understand, analogically. And what is metaphorical meaning with no analogy to reality?
Post Edited (jefscott) : 8/30/2005 6:56:16 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/30/2005 4:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: But, Jeff, what action of Saul's was so horrendously insulting to God's sensabilities that God couldn't, by nature, foreknow the possibility of before appointing him king?
Jeff: I thought you had already conceded that Doc's argument worked for THAT one case. Did I misread you? Here's what you said:
(3) Greg says that given the same scenario he’d do the same thing (about the car). But given the same scenario when starting all over again with Noah’s family God DOESN’T do the same thing and that’s part of the problem. God takes specific measures (limiting human length of life) to avoid a repeat of evil generation X.
Were you not conceding that the car scenario could work since it was not analogous to the Gen. passage?
Tom: then God is recognizing his lack of preparedness to fulfill his plans, which undermines your argument that the providential need to know constitutes why and when God actualluy does know.
Jeff: Not necessarily. Insomuch as God KNOWS he can try again, Doc's view might work in this case. Maybe He preferred to not do a slam dunk on the first try by exercising pure brute LFW-trumping force, which of course He could have done.
Tom: But here God regrets not having prepared providentially. God is regretting the past, remember, not the future. But none of the past choices of Saul's constitutes a grave cosequence for Israel that I can tell. So what major providential concern would you suggest? God tolerates actions on the part of Israels leaders with regard to her neighbors having far greater consequence for Israel than anything Saul did.
Jeff: Toleration and CHOICE are two different things. God can regret the choice in the way Doc explained, if I remember correctly. God regrets the SPECIFIC selection of Saul, not SELECTION, per se. He couldn't have known the SPECIFIC LFW choices of Saul until they occurred.
Tom: Or with 2Sam, when God determines to wipe out 70,000 Israelites AND destroy Jersualem, he really is incapable by nature of forknowing he'll regret doing the former so much that he won't want to continue with the latter?
Jeff: Don't follow: was there regret language about these things?
Tom: But what’s interesting is that where here God grieves אֶל what he did, in Gen. 6 and 1Sam. 15 God grieves כִּי what he did. (No big deal on the Hebrew folks. Sorry for posting it, but it keeps Mephi from having to waste time looking it up.)
Jeff: Well, the difference in words might make all the difference, eh? I can't imagine anyone having trouble understanding, analogously, that God would merely GRIEVE over having to judge His people. But regret THAT He judged them with PERFECT foresight of all contingencies? One might grieve over disciplining his children, but would they regret THAT they disciplined them? All the difference in the world, to me.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 8/30/2005 7:03:31 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/31/2005 1:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Thoughts...
1) If God is not omniscient, then God cannot be assured of God's omnipresence.
If you think about it, omniscience and omnipresence affect each other in a particular way. God's omnipresence ensures that God's presentist knowledge truly does encompass all that exists, because God IS wherever existence is. God's awareness of God's own presence and it's environment ensures knowledge of all non-God existence. There is no place where God is not.
Likewise, God's omniscience assures that there is no place that God is not aware of. In other words, if God knows all truths, then God would know all spatio-temperal realities or "places" that exist.
What this means to me is that to say that God is omnipresent just because God believes God is doesn't make sense unless God is omniscient, meaning that God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods. If God is not omniscient, he may well be wrong about his being omnipresent...because there could be some spatio-temporal reality of which God is not aware.
What this means is that if God is not omniscient, any biblical claim that God is omnipresent can only be taken as true on faith in the strict sense. That is, we cannot assume God's claims of omnipresence to be true just because God says so.
2) God cannot be omniscient if God is not infinitely intelligent.
Simply. If truths encompass all realities (both possiblity and actuality), then God can not be omniscient unless God knows every possibility (as possibility, of course) that is able to be conceptualized by God. In other words, God has to know God's own knowledge capacity to truly be all-knowing in any meaningful sense. But the only logical way for God to know that capacity would be for God to be aware of any and all possibilities that God could know. This would lead to God eternally being aware of all possible worlds that could ever come into being...and all possible choices that could occur in those possible worlds. This would include a possible world where human beings fall into gross sin after being tempted by a fallen arch-angel.
To say that God doesn't know God's own knowledge capacity is to say that God is fundamentally IGNORANT of Godself...which would, in point of fact, deny God not only omniscience, but also a great deal of self-awareness as well.
3) God cannot be omniscient and "operate on the fly"
Any rational being who completely knows all truths and knows no falsehoods would not have the requisite "epistemic distance" to make random "shot-in-the-dark", uncontemplated type decisions. It would be analogous to an omnipresent being trying to "get lost"! A being has to have some space of which they are not aware in which to get lost.
God cannot make uncontemplated decisions, because of God's knowledge of all realities. To affirm that God can "operate on the fly" in an uncontemplated way is to DENY God's omniscience.
4) If God is not omniscient and can genuine make errors of deliberation, we cannot know how much of Creation's ills are God's mistakes...or God's attempts at covering up God's mistakes. We can only assume that they exist.
This would be HUGE for theodicy. How many mistakes were made during the Holocaust? Sept. 11th? The Tsunami? The implications are endless.
Lastly...
If God is not omniscient, inerrancy and infallibility ultimately have no ground of assurance.
A person could believe in the inerrancy or infallibility of scripture on an ad hoc basis or simple-minded fideism. However, they couldn't deny the possibility that God may have made mistakes in scripture...and they would have no way to adjudicate where those mistakes may have taken place. Real problem for those people.
So...who wants to toss the idea of omniscience?
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
Post Edited (MephEternal) : 8/31/2005 1:43:32 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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selah
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 8/31/2005 7:36 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Tom, you're so funny! Between this post and the one where you're throwing dust you've had me laughing out loud all morning...
Btw, it's been very hard to avoid posting on this thread~!!~@!~@!!@##$#@%Q#@$%^$
love
selah
ps. John, I thought about the universal salvation thing too. What's to regret? ;) Gee, one step forward and two steps back... guess I'm not there yet, right meph?!
TGB said...Starkman- Rest my son. Eat not thou maggots for they shall cause thee regret and show forth to all that thou art finite and unwise. Rest I say. Trouble not thyself with thoughts of the divine one. Rejoice I say in the Lord. Whenst thou bringest thyself to my abode and consumeth libations unto the Lord, we shall reveal all truth to you. Lotus Master
Post Edited (selah) : 8/31/2005 9:59:55 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/31/2005 10:14 PM (GMT -6) | | Something else to lose your lunch over...
I've always pondered this from the Hebrew but never mentioned it. But I've recently had other much more capable in Hebrew than I tell me it's how they read the Hebrew.
Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
The "waw" that begins v. 8 may very plausibly be an adversative and not a conjunction, that is, it means "but." In short, the idea is that God really DID give up on humankind so that when God says "I will blot out humankind whom I have created, human and beast...etc" it really means just that. God intended to bring the project to an absolute end, finito, finis, over, kaput, no more. It's Noah who "changes" this, thus "BUT Noah" and not "And Noah." See the difference?
Freaky. You know what? I'm game for anything. You only live once. Let's all forget the safety of waist-high water where we've spent our lives and swim out farther.
Tom
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/31/2005 11:31 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Something else to lose your lunch over...
I've always pondered this from the Hebrew but never mentioned it. But I've recently had other much more capable in Hebrew than I tell me it's how they read the Hebrew.
Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
The "waw" that begins v. 8 may very plausibly be an adversative and not a conjunction, that is, it means "but." In short, the idea is that God really DID give up on humankind so that when God says "I will blot out humankind whom I have created, human and beast...etc" it really means just that. God intended to bring the project to an absolute end, finito, finis, over, kaput, no more. It's Noah who "changes" this, thus "BUT Noah" and not "And Noah." See the difference?
I see it alright. Yessir.
And if anyone can explain to me how a truly all-wise, omniscient being would have gotten to this point of 1) wishing he hadn't taken the risk of creating human beings such that 2) he was genuinely willing to kill em all off (Gen 6:6-7), please do so. Cause it seems straight unlikely to me.
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Tom:
Freaky. You know what? I'm game for anything. You only live once. Let's all forget the safety of waist-high water where we've spent our lives and swim out farther.
I don't know, man. To walk with someone like me and you'll need some scuba gear. 
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 9/1/2005 6:05 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom: The promise of a seed could be conditional, like so many other apparently conditional declarations.
Jeff: It could be conditional, I suppose. But it's easier to make the case when the text makes it "apparently" conditional.
Tom: The "I will not always strive with humankind" can easiliy mean "I'm not putting up with this any longer" and so support the idea that God had decided to end the project, at which time he'd deal out to the fallen angels whatever fate would have been theirs had the project continued...
Jeff: Except that God "apparently" didn't end the project. So are you saying that the "repented" language is telling us that God momentarily contemplated ending the project, but went on anyway?
Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/1/2005 8:45:45 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2005 11:35 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Right, except there's no telling how momentary it was. It may have been a settled intention but then Noah (a beautifully righteous man in a sea of depravity that God was ignorant about, along with other things he didn't and doesn't know) popped up somehow on God's radar screen. Though I'm not necessarily arguing the point myself. I was just pointing out that there are some who do. I did consider it a couple years ago but just didn't follow it up. I think the implications it has for God's knowledge (viz., he'd be on par with your average middle schooler) steered me away from it.
So what IS your take right about now?
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/1/2005 11:39 PM (GMT -6) | | Ya know, Tom. Perhaps we should think about God maybe not being omniscient...and a bit slow on the uptake. Regreting decisions and all. Don't you think it'd explain a lot of things, Tom?
I could see this messed up world being partly the outcome of a God who makes hella mistakes. Couldn't you?
The almost powerful God of the "whoops"
Whaddya think?
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/2/2005 7:21 AM (GMT -6) | | I don't have a take right now, Mephi.
But if God were ignorant ahead of time of all the horribly sinful events that happen it definitely would explain a lot. But then there are some consequences too. I just cannot posit an ignorant God. Whatever happens is possible before it happens. That's undeniable. And that it's true at all times before it happens to say that it might/might not happen is undeniable as well. There's no reason I can think of why God should not be able to countenance these possibilities and good reasons to believe he would. Jeff's concern with morbidity in God was blasted to kingdom come a year ago.  So that's not an issue for me. What other reasons are there for believing God should be ignorant of such truths? Texts like these? Come on. That's it?
Still on the journey,
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 9/2/2005 4:20:28 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/2/2005 8:55 AM (GMT -6) | | Dragon Chaser:
I see where you are coming from, and to tell you the truth, the whole story of the flood is nonsensical, in my opinion. But, doesn’t it concern you that the council may consider you a heretic if you implement this belief?
Who ISN'T considered a heretic in some area nowadays?
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Tom:
I don't have a take right now, Mephi.
You are SUCH an INTP, Tom. (Myers-Briggs) With an emphasis on the P!
www.typelogic.com/intp.html
www.bestfittype.com/intp.html
FYI, I am an ENFJ with a highly developed Introverted Thinking element, hence my obsession with consistency and coherence in theology.
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Tom:
But if God were ignorant ahead of time of all the horribly siful events that happen it definitely would explain a lot. But then there are some consequences too. I just cannot posit an ignorant God. Whatever happens is possible before it happens. That's undeniable. And that its true at all times before it happens to say that it might/might not happen is undeniable as well. There's no reason I can think of for why God should not be able to countenance these possibilities and good reasons to believe he would. Jeff's concern with morbidity in God was blasted to kingdom come a year ago. So that's not an issue for me. What other reasons are there for believing God should be ignorant of such truths? Texts like these? Come on. That's it?
Which view is more explanatory of the TEXT? That God would regret making human beings, plan to annihilate them all, but luck up on Noah and change his mind. Does this look like the activity of an omniscient being?
Isn't your journey becoming at least a LITTLE more determinate? Possibly in the direction that the text doesn't represent divine reality? C,mon...you philosophical theologian, you!
PS: Oh, by the way, I spoke to you know who, and that stuff I said about "infinite intelligence" being much more PHILOSOPHICALLY justifiable than BIBLICALLY, they ended up agreeing with that. Just so you know.
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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