There is another explaination that you left out that helps a Calvinist explain his or her belief:

God is not bound by time. Time is bound by God.

God forsees what he planned. The reason God knows that the future holds is because he did it all. Thus time is unalterable, not because God is incapable of acting upon it, but because eveything is already as God wishes it to be.

Reformed theology always falls back on the “His ways are not our ways” explaination to try and overcome the obvious implications of this line of thought, namely that God actually tolerates evil because it was a part of his plan from the beginning. I find this to be very hollow, especially when applied to specific circumstances that are tragic beyond explaination. If a 4 year old child is raped, tortured, murdered, and tossed in a dumpster, try telling the parents that “His ways are not our ways,” and then see if they conceptualize God as a God of all comfort.

I have long held that creativity, surprise, hope, and even the ability to learn are gifts that were imparted to us as creatures made in God’s image. And a future that is open is the only one in which these qualities are authentic.

I will do it once for you… lol.

I find that reformed thinkers usually have it all settled and do not wish to ask questions of what their 3rd grade sunday school teacher told them was true… so while I venture over to reformed blogs when I am in the mood to argue, I do not spend a lot of time there for my own sanity’s sake.

You can only talk to a wall for so long before you lose your mind…

I will comment and see where it goes… But my prediction is by the end of the conversation someone tells me I need to repent and be saved.

Ok I commented, but it is awaiting “moderation.” Thus enters the wall.

Oh, and so no one is confused, those comments were in response to the article found here:

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/11/can-you-marry-the-wrong-person/

Sorry to mix it up in this comment feed…

Actually, they seemed to have ignored them completely… No biggie. Just predictable.

Well put Tammy. You go girl!!

Love you

Sonny,
Trying a different format. Don’t know how to color it so I put my comments in brackets. Sorry for the length but you covered a lot of ground.

Some people will find everything I said in my last post repulsive and heretical. [As long as you are using the Bible for your foundation you are not heretical. It is not heretical to question the meaning of the Bible. God doesn’t call it heretical. When the prophets had questions, when John the Baptist had questions, when Job had questions God did not call it heretical.] The very idea that I would try to limit God is intolerable and immediately calls into question my trust in the Bible. [God himself claims he is limited. For example, He says he cannot lie.] I want to assure all that the Bible is first and foremost where I go to find wisdom and understanding.
What I do not find particularly trustworthy is the traditions of man. [I agree.] We all seem almost incapable of leaving our preconceived beliefs out of our discussions and interpretations. That includes me. [I would say it is absolutely impossible to even think without preconceived ideas.] But some will say, who are you to question the conclusions of the great theologians of the past such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, etc. [I would venture to guess that they would all have differences of opinion from each other so of course we can question them. We know they can’t all be right about everything if they don’t agree among them selves about everything.] Even the most prestigious contemporary scholars such as Sproul, Piper, and McArthur hold to the view of absolute exhaustive foreknowledge. Although that is not the terms they would use. So who am I? [Who is to say that they are the “most” prestigious? There are other prestigious contemporary scholars who do not believe in absolute exhaustive foreknowledge.]
These theologians have concluded that God is so far above us and different from us that the views I am bringing to the discussions here are seen as simply trying to bring Him down to my level. [And there are other theologians who do not have this viewpoint.] But ask yourself this.
When God said let us create man in our own image, did we or did we not inherit emotions or states of mind such as wonder, surprise, excitement, awe, hope, optimism, and other positive human qualities? These good qualities had to come from God; we did not develop them ourselves. [Of course these qualities came from God but it does not follow that all our qualities are just like God’s. He created us and gave us all these qualities. But we did not inherit in the sense that a child inherits mannerisms, features, etc. from a parent through his genes. God could have created us with qualities that were different from his. God may have some qualities that he chose not to create in us. Actually, we know we are not exactly like God so it is obvious that our qualities are different. He could have created in us some qualities that he does not have. Actually, we know this also because we have the capacity to lie and God does not.] Therefore, what is so illogical about a God who also gives himself the luxury of experiencing awe, wonder, surprise and hope? [It is not illogical to say that God gives himself any luxury. But it is not a logical necessity that God’s experience of awe, wonder, surprise, and hope is exactly like ours. It is in fact almost certainly not exactly like ours.] Or is our God a being that has always been devoid of surprise, wonder, and exploration? As naturally He would if He already saw everything. [I don’t find where God is surprised in the Bible. You can show me if I missed it. If your point is that we are surprised and therefore God must be surprised, that does not follow. I can be pleased when I surprise someone with a gift without being surprised myself. It seems possible that God would be able to give us the ability to be surprised for his enjoyment, not because he himself was capable of surprise. It is certainly not a logical necessity that God must have the capability to be surprised in the same way we are surprised.]
In a view that holds to God having to react to our choices we see a God that loves and enters into a relationship with us. In a view that holds to God being outside of time and far away and already knowing everything before it happens we actually place limits on God that the Bible just does not show us. [These are not the only two choices. For your first choice, you say God “has” to react to our choices. That, by definition, limits God and I know of no scripture that says God is limited that way. It may or may not be true that God is limited in this way but you can’t claim that one choice limits God while the other does not. We have already seen that God does indeed have limits so an attempt at a theological view that does not limit God is doomed to failure. As to your second choice, I don’t know that the Bible says that God is outside of time. I know of no reason to say that God must be outside of time and cannot choose to be in time. I don’t recall the Bible making that claim. As to being “far away”, the Bible specifically says God is near. The Holy Spirit lives in us. When you say that we “place limits on God” I suppose you mean that we claim that God has limits that he does not have. We, of course, cannot actually limit God. We can limit what God can “do” in certain instances. We know that God wants everyone to be saved. We know that not all will be saved. Therefore God is limited by our actions. The second view as you stated it is obviously in contradiction to the Bible.
There is another view that is not covered by your two choices. The view that we have free will and that God can know what we will do with our free will. I think I remember that you said that God cannot know something that does not exist and that the future does not exist. This seems to imply that God cannot know the future. However, the Bible is very plain that God does indeed know many things about the future. God’s test of whether a prophet is a prophet of God is that they know the future without error. He said if they make one error that implies that they are not speaking for God. By definition, the future does not exist. Then God must know that some things will happen before they happen.
There is a problem with holding to the view that we cannot have free will if God knows what choice we will make. The problem is that God does indeed know a lot about the future. I don’t know that the Bible makes the explicit claim that God knows every detail about every thing. But the Bible does make it plain that God knows many things about the future. Your position holds that if God knows what choice we will make, free will is impossible. But God has said that most people will not go to Heaven. “Straight is the gate…” Does that mean that most people do not have free will to choose God? If foreknowledge precludes free will that would seem to be the case. There are multitudes of prophecies where God displays his foreknowledge of future events. It was prophesied that Israel’s kings would be bad for Israel. To hold your position it seems that you have to say they did not have the free will to choose to be good. You say that since God foresaw what they would do, they had no choice. These kinds of prophecies are all through the Bible. You will have to say that a huge number of people did not have free will. This contradicts the scriptures that say we do have free will. If you say there is even one who does not have free will then how do we know that we are not one of the ones who does not have free will. One scripture says that the things in the New Testament were written that we might “know” we have eternal life. If there are some who do not have free will because God happens to know what choice they will make, then you can’t say that we “know” based on scripture. We can then only hope that we are not one of the Unchosen.]
Taking the idea of absolute exhaustive foreknowledge at face value, let’s go farther back in time, even before any being in any world, or even in heaven, existed. Only God exists. God sees everything happening.
Can God do anything different than what God foresees happening? [Can God see a ball and it not be a ball? Of course not. It is a ball and God sees that it is a ball. But if it wasn’t a ball, then God would see that it wasn’t a ball. Can God see what choice we will make in certain circumstances? Let’s assume he can. Then the reason he sees it is because that is the choice we made. If we made a different choice then that is the choice God would see.
Surely you will agree that God can know with certainty what choice we would make in certain circumstances. God surely can know that we will not choose to rob a bank tomorrow if circumstances do not change and present some unusual reason to do so. We can choose to but we won’t. God can know we won’t. We still have the ability to choose. We have the free will to choose to rob the bank but we won’t. Just because God knows we won’t doesn’t remove our free will.]
Foreseeing everything that will happen, how can God choose to not create the angels and especially Lucifer?
[God could have chosen (and I believe he did choose) to create everything as he did knowing that many would choose to turn away of their own free will. Do you think that God thought that maybe everyone would choose to obey and worship him? If so, he was really wrong there. There is no logical inconsistency in God creating something or someone with the ability to turn away. God could have planned to have the greatest future imaginable (even beyond our imagination) for those who accept him. Paul says it is a great thing that God has prepared. God says that all are without excuse. That pretty strongly implies that all have the free will to choose. Romans 8:18 “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Some things we will never understand in this life as to why some suffer so. That is one of the messages of Job.]
So what is in control, time or God? Prescience or God?
Do you see how a known future seems to force even God under its determining flow? [This is what is wrong with your view. We do know that God knows many things about the future. You have to say from your perspective that time and prescience are in control of all the things that God does foreknow and that God is forced under its determining flow.]
At this strong, absolutely knowable future level, then even God doesn’t have a choice in creating what He has foreseen. [This does not follow. If God decides to do a certain thing and knows the consequences if he does that certain thing that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have done it differently.] Does it really make sense for God to create all the pain? [Does it? We know that in certain circumstances pain is beneficial. This life is a vapor compared to the eternal life after this one. Job is a classic case of suffering. But when it was over he did not complain about the pain. His story ends in victory and he is made better for the suffering. Would he have sought God as he did if everything had kept going as normal? Probably not. God knows the end and we don’t. But we can get some clues as with Paul’s writing and with Job’s example. We can’t know pain is bad in the final analysis. We do know that pain is good for us in certain circumstances. Did God create all the pain? He created the possibility and man chose to rebel. This caused more pain than there would have been if man had not rebelled. Eve’s pain was increased in childbirth because of sin but “increase” implies that there would have been some pain without the rebellion.] When you really think about it, in this scenario, how can we not argue over foreknowledge while the rest of the world wonders why we bother? It must have been foreseen. [Foreknowledge is not the same as pre-determinism.]
Here, some of you may say, “that is just the mystery of salvation,” but when one confronts the true horror of unnecessary human suffering repeated billions of times through earth history, a God who knew it all along, even before Lucifer, becomes either despotic or controlled by time itself. [Again, do you think that God, being pretty good at predicting things and knowing human nature (he did create it), would not have some idea that at least it was a possibility? That would seem to make him just as guilty. If the goal is to relieve all human suffering, God is guilty. But how can we say the goal is to eliminate suffering? We know suffering plays a part in some people deciding to come to God and in return receive life everlasting. We cannot make a blanket statement that the relief of suffering is the ultimate goal and God failed.]
Do you see how in the theodicy problem, responsibility has to be placed on God if He knew exactly what was to happen? [If God is very good at predicting and knew that it very likely would happen, what is his responsibility? Do you think God just didn’t have a clue that all this would happen? He didn’t have to have foreknowledge to be responsible for the suffering. If God was just pretty smart and he knew suffering was possibly going to happen and if it was wrong to create all the suffering, then God is still responsible, maybe even more so for playing around with people’s lives when he didn’t know what he was doing. Do you think he just didn’t know and just messed up?]
Do you see how making God know the future absolutely makes God a slave to the stream of time as well? [We don’t make God know the future. He either knows it or he does not. The Bible says he knows many things about the future. Even if he does not know everything about the future, according to your point of view, if God knows some things about the future, he is a partial slave to the stream of time. God claims to know that most will not choose him. That does not make God a slave. It just shows that God knows what most people will choose. You can’t get away from the fact that God does indeed claim to know many things about the future. By the way, you seem to be implying that there is a difference in knowing the future absolutely and knowing the future. It seems to me that if God knows that most people will choose not to be saved that it is the same thing as knowing “absolutely” that most people will choose not to be saved.]
All of this comes from the Greek deification of time itself, as Chronos, and making the gods and themselves dependent on Fate. This is fatalism. [Knowing the future and being subservient to it are two different things. I can know what I will do tomorrow but I could have chosen to do differently.] It is very similar to Calvinism, although you will never hear one admit it. [I believe everyone has free will. You believe that some do not have free will if God decides to know in advance what they will choose. (such as Esau who was prophesied to be subservient to Jacob) If I believe all have free will and you do not, it seems to me that you are the closer to Calvin.] Richard Rice said the following in a book called The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God …
“If at creation God knew with absolute certainty that man would fall, He was not risking the moral harmony of the universe in making man: He was simply sacrificing it.”
And that sacrifice is not the one shown to us in the Word of God. Instead we see a different sacrifice because of the fall, the sacrifice of Himself.
If God does truly, absolutely, foreknow all that is ever to happen, I simply cannot see that true free will is possible. And the thought of having no free will would make me kiss Christianity good-bye. [If there actually were no free will you would not have a choice. But you do have a choice because God said so. These two verses prove to me that I do have free will to choose or reject God. 2 Peter 3:9 “…not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”]
In the classic science fiction series, Dune , the complete story is about a family who gain the power to predict the future, but discover that they are in fact creating the future. Their prescience actually created and they are then trapped in their creations. The first in the line is Paul Atreides. He seeks the power of prescience but, when he obtains it and has it long enough to realize the nature of it, he just wants to die. But he can’t until it is the right time to die. Which will be when he foresaw it. [This story line is a little crazy. If his prediction creates the future then why doesn’t he just predict “happily ever after”?]
The last “god emperor” of Dune decides to breed people whose actions cannot be predicted so no one will ever gain this power again. The thing he ultimately craves is someone who will surprise him.
How else can God truly delight in us if not in our ability to “surprise” Him with our right choices? [I delight in my children when they make the right choices even when I am not surprised. I would actually be the most delighted if I knew they had progressed enough that they would always make the right choices. How can you say that the only way for God to delight in us is for us to “surprise” him? That is a claim that God has a limit that the Bible does not ascribe to him.]
Pro 12:22 …but those who act faithfully are his delight.
Jos 24:15 …choose this day whom you will serve, …
It seems Joshua believed, as I do, that we have a choice.
[Great scriptures!]
Love you all
[Love you too]

Still trying to clarify what you believe. You said in this post, “And He has a perfect knowledge of what He is going to do, or bring about,
or purpose.”
In the previous post you said, “Do you see how a known future seems to force even God under its determining flow?”

It sounds like you are saying that God knows what he is going to do and that forces him into doing that very thing and he has no choice if he knows what he is going to do. I am not trying to use trick words. I am just trying to understand what you are saying. Tell me how else to reason the two statements you made. I think God has free will and he can choose to do whatever he wants, even if he knows what he will do. Just because he knows what he is going to do, does not mean he does not have free will now. I assume this is what you really believe. Or do you really believe that God cannot choose any differently if he knows what he will choose? If God can know what he will choose and he still has free will, why can’t God know what we will choose and we still have free will?

Do you really believe that God has perfect knowledge of what he is going to do and the known future forces God under its determining flow?

I am sure I missed something there but I don’t know what it is.

You say that, “the most predominant view of His foreknowledge does enslave Him to this foreknowledge”.

You have missed my point entirely. I am not arguing for someone’s incorrect view of foreknowledge. My point is that God does have foreknowledge (meaning he correctly knows specific things that will happen in the future) as clearly indicated in the Bible. I am not arguing that foreknowledge enslaves him to this foreknowledge. You are the one that says foreknowledge enslaves God to the foreknowledge. I say it does not. Are you saying that the Bible does not tell us about any of God’s foreknowledge? That seems to run counter to the many specific prophecies in the Bible. Do you say that the Bible does not have any prophecies about the future? If it does, are you saying that God is a slave to that foreknowledge? My whole point is that God does have foreknowledge and we have free will, therefore we can still have free will even if God knows what we will choose. With which part of this statement do you disagree?

I commented that, based on my understanding of your view, if God knows some things about the future, he is a partial slave to the stream of time. You responded “You seem determined, maybe even predetermined, to imply that I mean something that I don’t. These words you say I said are not what I said. I have stated my view that He knows some things, no, probably a lot of things. It is just not because He “foresaw” them.

I think it is predetermined that the doctrine of predeterminism is incorrect. I couldn’t help myself from saying that.

I am not trying to imply that you mean something that you don’t. I am saying that the logical implication of holding the two views that it seems that you hold (1. God knows some things about the future; 2. Knowing things about the future makes God a slave to the stream of time) is that God is a slave to the stream of time. I don’t believe God is a slave to anything. I don’t think you believe that God is a slave to anything. But I don’t see how you get around the implication of your two views.

You said, “I have stated my view that He knows some things, no, probably a lot of things. It is just not because He “foresaw” them.”

It sounds like you are saying that this whole issue is one of semantics. Are you saying that “knowing the future” and “foreseeing the future” are different? I don’t think you were saying that because one of the things you pointed out was that the “known” future forces God under its determining flow. You didn’t say “foreseen” future.

I have tried to quote you accurately. What did I say you said, that you did not say?

Concerning the use of absolutely, if God knows that it will rain tomorrow, will it rain? Are you sure? If God knows absolutely that it will rain tomorrow, will it rain? I am absolutely certain that there must be a difference there that I do not see. My point in bringing the issue up was that I am trying to understand your point of view. It appears that you are making a distinction between foreknowledge and absolute foreknowledge. I cannot imagine what that difference is. If you think there is a difference then of course I don’t understand your point.

You said, “You seem to be saying God has absolutely foreseen all that is ever to happen and that makes you the Calvinist, which I know you are not”.

I have been very careful to make sure I did not say that God has absolutely foreseen all that is ever to happen. I am making one point. God does know at least some things about the future. All men have free will. Therefore, God’s foreknowledge does not negate man’s free will.

You said, “I HAVE NEVER SAID WE DO NOT HAVE FREE WILL”.

I thought you said one time that you thought that in certain cases when God did in fact know something about the future or had specific plans about the future that he may override man’s free will. Did I misunderstand?

I have to go to work now. See you soon.

Sonny, I have a new post up that relates to this topi… what are your thoughts?