I make a choice (C). I make this choice for some great good which is my purpose. But my choice entails the possibility of certain evils as well. The outcomes rest partly on me and partly on other persons I create with the freedom to determine themselves with respect to these goods and evils and in so doing to bring about the good I seek and the evil I must risk in seeking.

Let C be my choice to bring about some state of affairs S which entails possible good world w1 and also entails possible evil world w2. I take ‘risking w2 by choosing S’ to mean I bring into being state of affairs, S, that entails “might and might not w2.” I take an ‘acceptable risk’ to mean I bring into being some state of affairs, say S, knowing that S entails “might and might not w2” and valuing the possibility of w1 (the good I desire) over the actuality of w2. In choosing S wisely I choose its entailments. In doing so I deem w1 worth the risk, that is worth risking w2. This, I argue, rules out my regretting, in the event w2 is realized, having chosen to bring state of affairs S into being (for the sake of w1). I can regret w2. But I cannot rationally regret the choice to run the risk of w2. If my risk is an informed one, then running the risk of w2 for the sake of w1 cannot be rationally regretted, for the value of w2 (or lack of value) was taken into account and judged worth the risk. To regret having run this risk (or making choice C to bring state of affairs S into being) is to conclude the desired outcome (w1) is in fact not worth the risk of w2.

Point is, while regretting undesired (but foreknown as possible) outcomes is compatible with running an acceptable risk, regretting having run the risk in response to undesired (and foreknown as possible) outcomes is not compatible with the risk’s being fully informed and and the values being accurately estimated.

Yet this is precisely the problem we face in Gen. 6.6-8. God grieves the sinfulness of humankind. Yes. But God regrets “having make humankind on the earth” (repeated twice in the passage). Presumably, God created knowing evil world w2 was possible and yet considered w1 worth running the risk of w2. But in response to w2 God regrets having taken the risk. THAT, my friend, is huge.

Same thing applies to God’s regret of making Saul king. If God’s choice to make Saul king is informed and good, and the very state of Saul that so grieves God perfectly evaluated and, presumably, deemed worth the risk, then God may regret the state, the outcome, but not having made the risk. Yet God regrets his infallible, acceptable, and perfectly evaluated risk. Or so says the text.

Open theists?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/24/2005 1:37:34 AM (GMT-5)

God chooses (choice C) to create…

He knows that if he creates our world, he creates a set of possible worlds some of which (let’s assume) are good (have no evil in them) and others of which have different levels of evil—some slightly evil, others are Noah’s world.

Let the good worlds be w1-w7 (assuming a finite number of possible worlds, but who knows? So what). Let the evil worlds be w6-66 (had to choose those numbers!).

So…

C ® (¸w1-w7 & ¸~w1-w7) & (¸w6-w66 & ¸~w6-w66)

Also…

All God’s choices are infallibly informed (from omniscience) and infallibly evaluated (from omnibenevolence). “Infallibly informed of C” includes knowing all C’s entailments. “Infallibly evaluated” with regard to events means comprehending the relative contribution any event or consequence would make to God’s purposes.

So…

For any divine choice C, C is infallibly informed and evaluated.

Also…

God takes risks. Risks are choices. So any risk God takes is infallibly informed and evaluated and is therefore an ‘acceptable risk’ to God given his purposes.

So, assuming C also entails risks…

For any divine choice C entailing one or more risks, the risks are acceptable given that C is infallibly informed and evaluated.

And…

Regretting risked outcomes that obtain is consistent with C's being infallibly informed and evaluated.

However...

Regretting C in response to the obtaining of some risk whose possibility was entailed in C is incompatible with C's being infallibly informed and evaluated. 

So, EITHER Gen. 6.6's "God regretted having made humankind on the earth" does not depict a real regret of his choice to create and is rather some drammatic portrayal of how unhappy God was, OR God's choice to create was not fully informed and evaluated (either one or both), OR God's choice was fully informed and evaluated but God experience of evil in Gen. 6 contributes something to the equation which even an infallibly informed and evaluated foreknowledge of the possibilities could not provide. What that might be I haven't the foggiest.

We of course can regret "having made certain decisions" because our decisions are never maximally and infallibly informed and our valuations are never perfectly loving and good. We can have a child and love that child but regret having had the child if the child overwhelmes us and the world with evil. If I were Hitler's Dad I would regret having brought him into the world (just like God regretted having brought the world into existence). But I find it impossible to account for this feeling where I contemplate having fully surveyed the possibilities in the sort of infallible detail an omniscient knower would undertake the survey with. So how is it God "regrets having taken the risk" to create us?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/24/2005 2:06:44 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Starkman) : 8/24/2005 9:04:04 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/24/2005 10:48:28 AM (GMT-5)

Mephi: 1) So, EITHER Gen. 6.6's "God regretted having made humankind on the earth" does not depict a real regret of his choice to create and is rather some drammatic portrayal of how unhappy God was.

Can't go this way. This would be to play into the hands of claiming a rather DEEP example of anthropopathism...that would end up compromising the open theist's main hermeneutical heuristic: taking the text for what it says as being representative of what is actually the case. If the text says "God regrets X" but we decide philosophically that God CANNOT really regret X, and is just expressing Godself the best way God can...then how can we NOT allow people to say the same about God changing his mind...or God "testing" someone like Abraham? See the problem?

Tom: Sort of. But there are figures of speech we use non-literally which do convey meaning and God is free to speak this way. For example, Doc points to God’s use of “it never entered my mind” (said in response to the excessive wickedness of Israel) that Israel would do such-and-such a thing. Well, I actually CAN make sense of this non-literally. I don’t think it’s literally true that what Israel did never entered God’s mind. But as a figure of speech it does make sense—what you’ve done is so preposterous and I just never gave your actually doing it much consideration (though of course it registers on the log of my infinite intelligent catalogue). I don’t have a problem with this. So I wouldn’t agree that open theists NEVER take language metaphorically or symbolically or as figures of speech whose meanings are NOT found in the literal meaning of the words taken by themselves. I don’t agree that the open view hermeneutic is undermined by our agreeing that God sometimes uses such figures of speech. And if a plausible explanation of Gen. 6.6 could be given I’d like to consider it, but the problem is I don’t know HOW to do this with “I regretted having made you.” Hasker wrote me and said this is what he does with v. 6. It’s just a dramatic portrayal of how unhappy God was.” But HOW does one do that? How does one get from the words to that meaning? Is there some established common use of the phrase as a figure of speech? That would help. But it doesn’t look like interpreting the phrase this way is anything but a leap in the dark.

Mephi: 2) OR God's choice to create was not fully informed and evaluated (either one or both)

Can't go this way. Total compromise of God's infinite intelligence.

Tom: I agree.

Mephi: 3) OR God's choice was fully informed and evaluated but God experience of evil in Gen. 6 contributes something to the equation which even an infallibly informed and evaluated foreknowledge of the possibilities could not provide. What that might be I haven't the foggiest.

This would be a huge, but ultimately futile stretch. Even if we were to say that God's experience of a completely anticipated event does "add" something to (or detract from) God's aesthetic appreciation of reality, this is still definitely NOT the same thing as what WE understand that idea of "regretting something" to actually mean. This collapses back into the anthropomorphism/anthropopathism issue.

Tom: Maybe. My head hurts. Gotta run my girls downtown Minneapolis right now. Can’t play here anymore. See ya later!

Tom

TGB: And if a plausible explanation of Gen. 6.6 could be given I’d like to consider it, but the problem is I don’t know HOW to do this with "I regretted having made you." Hasker wrote me and said this is what he does with v. 6. It’s just a dramatic portrayal of how unhappy God was." But HOW does one do that? How does one get from the words to that meaning?

JET: Say I’m the world expert on horse racing. I go to the race and bet on horse A based on all the information that’s humanly possible to know. I know I made the absolute best bet that is humanly possible to make. When horse A loses the race, I say: "I wish I didn’t bet on horse A." Now, from this statement, would you assume that I think I made a bad bet? Why would I think that? I know for a fact that I made the best bet that is humanly possible to make. When I say "I regret having bet on horse A", all I’m really saying is that I’m unhappy with the result. I’m not second guessing my choice to bet on horse A. It’s a figure of speech.

Seems to me, the same would apply to God. We start with our understanding that God knows (infallibly) that God made the best choice and we interpret God’s meaning in light of this understanding. It does not appear to be an arbitrary interpretation. I can make sense of the horse racing expert using a figure of speech in the way described above. So why not God?

Let’s think this through a bit more.

Consider what follows in Gen. 6. God wipes out all humanity except for a single family and then does what? He runs the very same risk. He starts over with a new family facing a future of indeterminate possibilities, both good AND evil. Very evil by the way (Pol Pot, Holocaust, Stalin, etc.). This ought to help us interpret just what exactly is regretted in Gen. 6.6. If God regrets ‘having run the risk’ of things getting this bad when he creates, he obviously repeats a very similar risk in starting all over again with Noah, in which case an unbiased reader would judge God to be an imbecilic nitwit. Who would regret running the risk of Noah’s day, wipe them all out, and then run the risk of the same thing happening again? That’s just dumb.

Here’s Doc’s response (I’m sure he wouldn’t mind; I imagine he’d post it himself if he weren’t tied up)…

Doc: Look, I'm going to buy a car. I'm told there's a risk involved because in 21% of the cases the engine goes capute after 10,000 miles. In 79% percent of the cases it lasts over 100,000. This engine, combined with the total package of the car, makes me think it’s worth the risk to pay the asking price. I buy the car. It quits at 10,000 miles. I regret buying THIS car. If I had known THIS car was going to break down at 10,000 miles, I would not have bought it. But I don't regret taking this risk. Given the same scenario, I'd do the same thing.

So too, God regreted making THIS batch of humans. And God regretted making THIS guy Saul king of Israel.  Neither turned out as he hoped.  But he didn't regret taking the risk. Heck, he immediately did the same thing again (making humans/ putting a different guy in there as king).

Tom: Three things: (1) I honestly don’t know what meaning to give to “I regret buying this car but I don’t regret taking the risk.” To me these are the same. To buy the car IS to take the risk. To buy IS to risk. How do I regret “having bought” without regretting “having risked”? If the risk is logically entailed in buying, and I know this, how does my regret over buying not (by distribution) include regret over risking? Similarly, to create is to risk. Now, Greg concedes that God regretted “creating” but doesn’t believe this involves his regretting “having risked in creating.” I’m thinking, what else is there to regret but the risk?

(2) Greg says God regretted “making [creating] THIS batch of humans.” But God didn’t make this batch of humans what they were. THEY made themselves what they were. I mean, God didn’t create them in the sense of beginning with them. He created other persons whose existence entailed the possibility of THIS batch of humans. So it makes sense to say God regrets how THIS batch of humans turned out, but I don’t understand regretting having taken the risk that humans turn out to be THIS batch of humans.

(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.

Still, we have to figure in what God does afterwards. It’s God’s “having started over” with whatever risks that entailed which ought to help us out:

1 God creates

2 Creating entails the risk of evil generation X

3 Evil generation X obtains

4 God regrets…what? (This is what needs to be answered)

5 God wipes out evil generation X

6 God recreates (or “starts over”)

7 Recreating entails the risk of…?

Now, in starting over (7) God takes risks. But check this out. They’re not the same risks. After the flood God limits the longevity of human life to 120 years. Why? The point seems clear. God wants to prevent a repeat of evil generation X. What’s that mean? It means that “evil generation X” is now (after the flood) an unacceptable risk. God rules it out by limiting the life span of human beings. They just can’t become THAT evil again. But this presents a new dilemma. If evil generation X is an unacceptable risk after Noah, why wasn’t it an unacceptable risk the first go around? The only logically possible answer (if we’re assuming omniscience and omnibenevolence) is: the desire good outcomes have changed. That is, God’s purposes have been tweaked. That’s one option. Since God’s purposes and the potential good outcomes are what the value of potential evils are measured against; they’re what determine whether a risk is acceptable or not, it’s logically possible at least that whatever possible good outcomes required the risk of evil generation X the first go-around, God’s modified them to exclude the acceptability of running that risk again. But this is problematic too. If potentially good outcome Y is no longer worth the risk of evil generation X the second time around, it shouldn’t have been worth it the first time around. I think Jeff has pointed this out before. An omniscient God who at t1 reasons that potential good outcome Y is worth the risk of evil generation X at t5 would presumably include the reasoning behind God’s change of plan after the flood, say, at t6. All the t6 reasoning would have to figure into the t1 reasoning that justifies creation in the FIRST place. There’s no wiggle room in infinite intelligence to allow justifying the sort of changes God makes after the flood to prevent a repeat of evil generation X. If X is an unacceptable risk at any time (and it seems to be an unacceptable risk for God given his ruling it out after the flood) then it’s an unacceptable risk at all times IF (important if) what determines risk-acceptability is the value of the potential evil visa-a-vise God’s nature and purposes. But we assume that God’s nature and purposes are unchanging, so there’s nothing new in God or his purpose that determines the value of X which would explain why X was an acceptable risk to God at one time but unacceptable at a later time.

The open view still makes better sense of more of the evidence that any other view, but it’s got some holes people. We gotta work it more. My sense is that the Hebrew doesn’t require God’s regretting “having created/risked at all,” I wanna check it out more.

Tom

(Didn't read your post yet Jeff!)

JET: Say I’m the world expert on horse racing. I go to the race and bet on horse A based on all the information that’s humanly possible to know. I know I made the absolute best bet that is humanly possible to make. When horse A loses the race, I say: "I wish I didn’t bet on horse A." Now, from this statement, would you assume that I think I made a bad bet?

Tom: I’d want to ask you just what you meant. “I wish I hadn’t bet on horse A” can mean either:

(A)   I wish I had bet on some horse other than horse A.

or

(B)   I wish I hadn’t bet at all.

The regret of (A) is, I think, consistent with a perfectly informed and evaluated bet. It amounts to regretting that horse A lost and wishing it was the case that things had turned out differently (i.e., that horse A had won or that you had bet on the winning horse). That's cool. God can wish things had turned out differently.

But the regret of (B) is, I think, inconsistent with a perfectly informed and evaluated bet. Were you to say after losing on horse A, “I regret having bet at all. Wished I hadn’t done that,” I would respond with, “Silly! Didn’t you count the cost? Didn’t you appraise the risk? You knew this might happen and still you ran the risk.” If it’s true that you really regret having placed any bet at all, I could only assume that either your knowledge of the risks involved or your assessment of their value (or both) was less than adequate. But in the case of God was have to assume that knowledge and valuation are always perfect. However, it looks to me like (B) is the sort of regret being attributed to God in Gen. 6.6.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/24/2005 5:46:52 PM (GMT-5)

Tom: I agree.

Jeff:  And we know God is infinitely intelligent how??

Meph: There is at least one strong case where a crucial OVT biblical heuristic must be negated in order to preserve the overall system.

Jeff:  Agreed.  This one seems crucial to me because of it's more obvious relation to the problem of evil.  That's why I have brought it up at least twice so far, myself.  But I don't see that it must be negated.

My take is that God is speaking of a combination of sentimental AND intellectual regret - to this effect: "This is a kind of world that I neither INTENDED nor ANTICIPATED.  INDEED, I will NOT tolerate it, for I regret it's very existence.  Had I anticipated this as the FINAL end of the creation, I would have never created it.  HENCE, I will wipe it out and start anew, EVEN KNOWING that it will culminate in world-wide evil, again.  But never fear, the SEED OF THE WOMAN, yet in the loins of Noah, will prevail in due time!  The First-Born of creation will YET have His inheritance!"

This way, God is truly expressing bona fide regret.  For since I don't think He necessarily foreknew how bad it would get, even as a possibility, He simply had to DEAL with it to presevere with history.  Otherwise, His purpose would have been utterly frustrated.  (God is LONG-suffering, NOT eternally forebearing - "My Spirit will not strive with man ALWAYS."  Love suffers LONG, not ETERNALLY.)

The only reason why I think we could claim to know God must have infinite intelligence during the existence of our created order, is to sustain the hypothesis of the providential minimizing of evil at every instant of time.  But I'm not convinced of that hypothesis.  I believe Meph's previous arguments about the butterfly effect, etc. make it too hard to prove.  And God's POWER, together with His AWESOME (yet finite) knowledge, is sufficient to explain what I understand of His providence.  I don't assume what I don't see as necessary to assume.  And, thus, the verse is intelligible to me in the true sense of the OV.

Tom, even IF God knew that the world was on it's way to utter corruption LONG before if happened, that doesn't PROVE that He knew it before creation or during creation.  The fact that God's resolve to start over with Noah occurs in the same context as God's expression of regret for man's very creation, suggests that God's INTELLECTUAL regret is referencing God's anticipation at the TIME OF CREATION.  No doubt God saw the corruption coming long before it happened.  And that is ALL that is required for an omnipotent God to work providentially. 

ORIGINAL intention and risk OF CREATION is where the problem of evil is most pertinent.  Even Meph has agreed, I think, that the problem of evil is unsolvable, rationally.  I absolutely agree with that, if one takes that view of creation.

Meph, you talk about being tired of hearing people whine about trying to resolve this or that in such and such a manner.  Frankly, I'm perplexed when I hear you keep asserting your supposedly preferential way to see God in a manner supposedly more benevolent than virtually all humanity has recognized, WHILE starting with a view of creation and anticipated natural evil (even beyond what a soul-making theodicy can account for!!) that is less benevolent than most of Christendom has accepted.
 

Post Edited (jefscott) : 8/25/2005 7:02:18 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/25/2005 10:21:19 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Starkman) : 8/25/2005 2:49:20 PM (GMT-5)

Hey Mephi-

I’m trying to concentrate on this, but prepping for courses has my head elsewhere. Sorry. I’m trying to obsess on this but my schedule won’t let me! I did have a look again at the Hebrew and checked out a few commentaries in the library today. It’s pretty straightforward.

What’s interesting about this is that nacham (to grieve, regret, etc.) is often used looking forward to the future. God will “repent” of future plans to judge if people turn to him. God will also “repent” of plans to bless if they turn from him. This can hardly mean “regret” in the sense we’ve been meaning.

The only two cases in the Bible where God expresses nacham (if you will) over the past is over decisions he made. We’ve already mentioned them: Gen. 6.6-7 and 1Sam. 15.11, where God nachams (I’m gonna say it this way for now, OK? The “s” on the end is not part of the Hebrew, it’s the 3^rd person singular present in English) over “having made humankind on the earth” and over “having made Saul king.”

Here’s some of what’s going on in my head. Let’s do regret over Saul at this point. If this expression means what you and I (I’ll include myself for now) suspect, then we have this:

God made Saul king and in so doing took the risk that things would end up exactly as they did. God foreknew this possibility, weighed the options, and evaluated the impact and consequences against his purposes, and said, “Making Saul king is worth the risk.” Things go bad (as God knew they could) and God says, “I nacham making you king.” This certainly looks like God is saying, “I regret having taken the risk involved in making you king.” OK. But Mephi, look at what follows. God turns around and appoints another king, David. David is obviously more promising, but we can hardly claim that David doesn’t bring his own set of contingencies and risks to the office. Look at this, Mephi. What God supposedly regrets having done with Saul God immediately turns around and repeats by taking the risk again with another libertarian agent as king. Come on. Are we really going to say David couldn't possibly have turned out to do equally bad things as Saul? This has got to influence how we understand nacham.

It could be that the author of 1Sam believes not only that God is less than omniscient and good so that his risks are not fully informed and evaluated, but that God is stupid, for he has God moving directly from regretting having taken the risk in making Saul king to taking the risk of making David king. Not only is God uninformed enough to make risks he later regrets, but he’s incapable of learning from his mistakes. I just don’t see how you can choose to say the author is mistaken. It’s one thing to say authors make mistakes or have some bad ideas. But this? Come one. Do you really want to claim the author was THIS off? THIS mistaken? That he thought God was a nitwit? Or that he was THIS careless a writer? I can't stretch that far. Authorial error is not an option for me.

If we don’t want to believe the author believed God was a nitwit, and we don’t want to believe the author was a nitwit, then we have to, as in ‘have to’, find some other plausible way of understanding “God nachamed making Saul king.”

OK, about your criticism that Greg uses the “What if God really wanted to tell us he changes his mind about the future? How else would he tell us?” when objecting to criticisms of his literal reading of open texts, you’re perfectly right. If God wanted to tell us, “I really regretted having taken the risk to…” then I suspect this is exactly how he’d say it. But that’s not all there is to it. Even when Greg uses this objection to open view critics, it’s not an argument FOR reading the texts in open fashion. It’s only an argument for the POSSIBILITY of reading the texts in open fashion. The bigger part of why the open texts shouldn’t be anthropomorphisized away (in my view) is that metaphorical (which I agree is the default reading) readings of the texts in question do not convey truth about God. They’re vacuous. God says, “I thought Israel would return to me.” Determinists say this is an anthropomorphism, that God cannot literally believe Israel would return only to be disappointed. So what’s it mean then? What truth about God do the words convey if figurative? It’s here where the figurative falters and we’re at least strongly encouraged to opt for the literal reading.

Now, if the words “I nacham that I made Saul king” cannot possibly be understood as meaning anything other than “I regret having taken the risk of making Saul king,” then we have problems. So though I agree that if God (or the human author) really wanted to tell us that God actually regretted having taken the risk he’d say it this way, this doesn’t rule out the possibility that the words may NOT mean that. What I’m asking is if they may be understood as not entailing regret over “having taken the risk.”

And as I said, authorial error is not an option here. I can’t be convinced that the author believed God was so uninformed of the risks that he unknowingly took a bad risk thinking it was a good risk and then turned around and repeated his stupidity in taking another risk with another libertarian agent who was, what, a teenager at that time? Come on. You have to rule authorial error out. Whatever truth about God is being here claimed IS the truth about God.

This is why I think we HAVE to find some plausible way to read this expression that doesn’t imply that God makes less than perfectly informed and evaluated risks (which by definition cannot be regretted).

Mephi: 1) Affirm God's infinite intelligence and say the text is flat out wrong...and in no way represents reality in God's mind.
2) Affirm the text are being literally true and deny that God has infinite intelligence.
3) Affirm that the text is true, but only in an anthropomorphic or anthropopathic way such that the full implications of the text are NOT APPLICABLE to God's true reality.

Tom: If hope I’ve showed you why (1) is unacceptable. There’s more to saying the author is wrong than you think. It entails attributing beliefs to the author that are in my view impossible to attach to him. (2) is for now impossible for me. I think we have to affirm the truth which these two passages convey about God. But I’m not so sure (3) is the only other option. What about a fourth option?—(4) Affirm the text as literally true but argue that the literal truth does not entail regret over “having risked.” I’m interested in (4). If it can’t possible fly, then some version of (3).

Having said, that…

Mephi: If you pick #3, then please don't try to exegetically argue that "God changing his mind" CANNOT be interpreted anthropomorphically. Why? Because some of those scriptures that OVTers love that speak of God changing his mind USE a version of the Hebrew word NHM.

Tom: Nobody ever tried to argue “exegetically” that the open texts shouldn't be interpreted metaphorically. What I’ve always argued is that IF interpreted metaphorically the consequences are a vacuous text. Interpreted metaphorically, there’s nothing in the language to ground truth about God. That’s not an ‘exegetical’ argument per se. I tried to address this in the paragraph above that begins by naming Greg. 

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/25/2005 10:39:47 PM (GMT-5)

Meph, refering to your last post, there's a big difference between saying:

(A)  “If I could go back knowing what I know now, I’d do something different.”

vs.

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/25/2005 10:50:32 PM (GMT-5)