These three things are the essentials. These three are all we really need to know to stay on mission. The rest of the bible can be seen as instruction on understanding and learning to apply these three.Subservient To Time?
Some people will find everything I said in my last post repulsive and heretical. The very idea that I would try to limit God is intolerable and immediately calls into question my trust in the Bible. 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. We all seem almost incapable of leaving our preconceived beliefs out of our discussions and interpretations. That includes me. 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. 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?
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. 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. Therefore, what is so illogical about a God who also gives himself the luxury of experiencing awe, wonder, surprise and hope? 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.
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.
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?
Foreseeing everything that will happen, how can God choose to not create the angels and especially Lucifer?
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?
At this strong, absolutely knowable future level, then even God doesn’t have a choice in creating what He has foreseen. Does it really make sense for God to create all the pain? 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.
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.
Do you see how in the theodicy problem, responsibility has to be placed on God if He knew exactly what was to happen?
Do you see how making God know the future absolutely makes God a slave to the stream of time as well?
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. It is very similar to Calvinism, although you will never hear one admit it. 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.
In the classic science fiction series, Dune
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?
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.
Love you all
Tags: Aquinas, Augustine, Belief, Calvin, Calvinism, Creation, Discussion, Dune, Faith, foreknowledge, Free will, God, Interpretation, Knowledge, limits on god, Lucifer, McArthur, Paul Atreides, piper, Richard Rice, sproul, traditions
