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rossfadeinout
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 428

Posted 10/18/2003 5:52 PM (GMT -6)

Hey all,

I have really enjoyed the discussions that I have looked into and participated in on this board. I have learned that open theism is not what its opponents portray it to be. So here is where I am at; I have still not come to a final conclusion whether God knows the future as possible, or whether God's knowledge is timeless (the position that CS Lewis defends in Mere Christianity and Miracles)

And I found someone who seemed to be in my position at one time in their life-- Bill Hasker. I was reading Hasker's Metaphysics textbook the other night and it seems that he was arguing for the coherence of both of these views. Actually, I remember him footnoting an article that he wrote which from the title seemed to defend a timeless view of God's knowledge.

So I guess I'm wondering when Hasker changed views, and maybe where I can find a statement of the reason that he changed his mind concerning the timeless view of God's knowledge. I was also interested to know what is Doc's history on the foreknowledge subject. I seem to remember him mentioning somewhere on the board that he at one time held the Molinist position.

Thanks in advance,
Ross

"Let us remember how common the folly is of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite." -Thomas Reid

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 10/18/2003 8:46 PM (GMT -6)

Hi Ross-

Hasker still defends the coherence of divine timelessness though he disagrees with it. Maybe it's to his credit that when he describes a view at its best and is arguing its intelligibility he makes you think it's his view, but it's not. I got that feeling reading his God and Time when he argue for the coherence of divine timelessness. But then he started to critic it. Boom. No doubt there. He doesn't embrace the view. Whether he ever did or not I don't know.

So, you can be an open theist and agree that the timeless view of God and God's knowledge is coherent (most views you disagree with are coherent and intelligible views), but I you can't embrace the view of timeless knowledge and remain an open theist. Is that what you're hoping to do?

Tom

rossfadeinout
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 428

Posted 10/19/2003 1:00 PM (GMT -6)

Hey Tom,

Thanks for your response. I guess that where I am at is that I'm not sure what to call myself Eyebrow

. I believe that in my (limited) understanding of the two positions both seem coherent to me. And I also agree that (as you have argued before) there is no providential advantage to the theory of divine timelessness versus and open view. I'm just trying to figure out what reasons Hasker opts for the open view rather than the divine timeless view if he finds both coherent.

BTW, I have my copy of Hasker's metaphysics with me now. The title of the article that he footnotes is "Concerning the intelligibility of 'God is Timeless' " William Hasker The New Scholasticism Spring 1983.

Doc, if you get a chance I'm still wondering about your history on the subject.

Ross

"Let us remember how common the folly is of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite." -Thomas Reid

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 10/19/2003 8:15 PM (GMT -6)

A view or claim can be logically coherent but incorrect. If a view is logically incoherent, or unintelligible, then it's obviously not true (as far as I know!). But just because a claim posits a logically coherent, or logical state of affairs doesn't mean that state of affairs accords to reality. It could be wrong.

Yes? No?

Tom

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 10/19/2003 9:56 PM (GMT -6)

In response to Ross' question:

The first time a really took a stand on this topic was in a Calvinist direction. This began around 78, but I didn't really commit to Calvinism till I discovered Barth around 80. I was uncomfortable with aspects of the position, however, not so much as Barth lays it out, but as Calvinist lay it out. Between 82 and 83 I played around with the Molinist view -- though at the time I thought I was just thinking novel thoughts -- I didn't know the position had been round 400 years. Dead

I never committed to this view, however. I began to consider the openness view around 84. I firmly embraced it around 86, though I still held to a Calvinist soteriology for about a year.

On the timelessness deal, I don't think I seriously quesitoned the view till I began to toy with Molinist ideas in 82 or 83. I didn't explicitly abandon the view till I became resolved that the future was partly open in 86.

There's my history. Big Smile

Doc

"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10.

might-be-don
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 830

Posted 10/20/2003 1:44 AM (GMT -6)

A humble apology to the Calvinists...

It was my job to watch Doc from '82 to '85 , I failed in my task to keep him a devout Calvinist. In fact, looking at me may have convinced him that God really could change his mind.

peace , don

geebob
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 94

Posted 10/22/2003 2:25 PM (GMT -6)

The issue with Hasker is not that he rejects timeless foreknowledge but rather he rejects timelessness period. It isn't timeless foreknowledge that he criticizes but the notion that the biblical God is timeless.

He refers to a very influential essay by Nicolaus Wolterstorff entitled something like God Everlasting. ONe of the main claims here is that a timeless God cannot redeem and forgive. For God to forgive, he must have something against us at first and then change his attitude towards us in one of mercy. This is hopelessly temporal. Is the slaight really clean? Has God really forgotten our sins (even in a metaphorical sense)? If timelessness is true, then you can't say that God has really fully forgiven us but rather that God is eternally angry with our sins in what is our past and he is eternally not angry with us after our repentence and submission.

Here is some further thinking by Wolterstorff:

quote:
from Wolterstorff on God, time, and the future from "God and time: Four Views".

What about the future? Are future events likewise components of facts and can we refer to them? Tense theorists divide on this point. My own view, which I won't defend here since it won't make any difference in what follows, is that only when an event is occuring or has occured can it be a component of facts and can it be referred to. There are lots of general facts about the future, but no facts having particular events as constituents. (pp 196-197)

This episode stands out as one of the great numinous episodes of the biblical narrative. But it's representation of God as having a history, which can be narrated is not exceptional but typical of Scripture's representation of God: God responds to what transpires in human affairs by performing a succession of actions, including actions of speaking. An implication of this representation of God is that there's change in God's life; if a person does one thing at one time and different thing at another time, then there's change in that person's life. Behind the change in action, there is, in turn, a change in knowledge: God's successive responses to Moses were motivated by God's knowledge, each time, of Moses' new protest; the changes in God's knowledge tracked the changes in Moses' protest. These, I say, are implications of how scripture represents God: God has a history, and in this history there are changes in God's actions, responses, and knowledge. These I say are implications of how scripture represents God: God has a history, and in this history there are changes in God's actions, responses, and knowledge. The God of scripture is One of whom a narrative can be told; we know that not because scripture tells us that but because it offers such a narrative. I hold that an implication of this is that God is in time. If something has a history, then perforce that being is in time.

(taken from God and Time: four views, pg 188)

As you can see, the rejection of timelessness is not on the basis of that with the incompatibility with free will as in other views of foreknowledge but rather it is for biblical reasons. And that is where Hasker is coming from.

I will gladly pay you teusday for a hamburger today.

-Wimpy

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