This author also argues that if God has foreknowledge of everything then there is no such thing as libertarian free will:
“One of the biggest problems facing the traditional Christian believer is to explain how human beings can have free will given that God has perfect knowledge of the future. If God already knows what you are going to do tomorrow, then how can the decisions you make be free? It seems the only thing you can possibly do is what God already knows you are going to do – and if so, then you cannot have what philosophers call libertarian free will, the kind of freedom that most Christians, and in fact most people, believe human beings possess.”
“Not all Christians face this dilemma. Calvinists avoid it by rejecting the traditional (libertarian) concept of free will, while so-called “open theists” reject the idea that God knows everything about the future. But for those in between these two extremes – which is the majority of believers – the problem remains.”
All of this time and all of these words and now you finally say what I have been saying all along, in contrast to your initial claim that it was a determination by God that Nineveh be destroyed from the beginning!
This is what you said in your very first post, in disagreeing with me. “God repented… He had such a change of mind it affected a change of heart causing Him to change his decreed or determined actions.”
As you just said (correctly) in the present post, God did not change His mind. He did not change his determined action.
You have an amazing way of reading back into things what isn’t there. God had determined a course of action should they not repent… that course of action was changed due to their response. Their response changed God’s mind about what He formerly was going to do. From WHAT was God relenting if not the calamity forecast through Jonah?
Oh come on now! Your quoting me was placed in the context of your beliefs as if my thoughts had changed to jibe with your beliefs.
There was no changing of God’s mind. God’s mind was already made up to follow one of the two alternatives.
I already discussed this above. God lets up or slackens (i.e., relents) from the threat of destruction (one of the two outcomes). But that is not a change in a determination, as you, initially at least, claimed, because there were two outcomes in God’s plan from the beginning.
If one insists on couching this story in a determination context, one might view the story as a realization of the determination that one or the other outcome would occur.
It seems odd that God would say that He would bring calamity on the Ninevites, and then didn’t do it unless He changed His mind. Also if it had been His plan all along not to do it, then He would have lied in saying that He WOULD do it. You believe that it was a conditional statement. But there is no indication of this. Why didn’t He say through Jonah, “If you don’t repent, then in 40 days Ninevah will be overthrown”? Instead it was an absolute prophecy, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Jonah certainly didn’t see it as a conditional prophecy. He waited outside the city watching, fully expecting it to be destroyed, and becoming very angry when it didn’t happen.
Here is another example:
“Ahhh…” you may think, “Just what I was saying all along. The prophecy is conditional.” But IS it? God said that He had INTENDED to bring disaster upon it. He wouldn’t have had that intention unless He had expected them NOT to repent. And if God believed that they would not repent, then He must not have known that they WOULD repent. The choices of free will agents cannot be known in advance.
But that translation to “God changed His mind” in Jonah 3:10 is one of the issues open for debate here. The word nacham, as you recall, has various translations, including “relent,” which can have a different meaning, i.e., “let up” on the threat, that is more compatible with God not changing His mind.
No, that’s not what I am saying. I am saying it had been His plan all along to either do it or not do it, depending on the behavior of Nineveh. It was His plan to have two alternatives.
No, I don’t believe He lied, and yes, I believe it was a conditional, based on the rule in Jeremiah. He did not lie because He would do it if Nineveh did not repent.
What? You’re placing such significance on the distinction between shall vs. will here??? You seem to be implying that if the word were will then you would agree that it was a conditional statement. OK, then here is Jonah 3:4 in various Bible versions that indeed use the word will.
NLT On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!
NIV Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown."
CSB Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!"
NASB Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown."
NET When Jonah began to enter the city one day’s walk, he announced, “At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”
I don’t think one can read too much into the distinction between the use of will or shall in this verse.
You make two questionable assumptions here: one small and one big. The small assumption is the true meaning of these verses is expressed using the words “change my mind.” But as I have shown, not all Bible versions say that. An alternative translation says “relent,” which has a different denotation, i.e., “let up,” and connotation than “change my mind.” But the big assumption is what you state is the relationship between omniscience and free will. As I suggested to you earlier, not all knowledgeable people about the subject think that the “choices of free will agents cannot be known in advance.” Bill Craig, theologian, philosopher, and author of scholarly works on the very subject of omniscience and free will, is one of them. (I linked to his work and a brief video presentation of his view on the subject in my first reply to you.) I don’t think one can build a convincing argument on the assumption that God cannot know the choices of free will agents in advance when that assumption has such a shaky foundation.
It does seem hard (based on the text) to come to any other logical conclusion. Little wonder Israel experienced so much judgment in their history given they, unlike Nineveh, must have treated such divine warnings as apparent cheap idle threats (the obvious implications of the alternative position positied) whereby they could expect God to slacken off… “let up and relent”. So what we are left with is God basically telling porkies to try and elicit a response. Nah I don’t think so, for as you point out… there is no conditionality here but rather, direct and absolute prophecy.
Origen, you are using an over-used technique. If anyone indicates a literal understanding of a passage, bring out a few examples of passages that are clearly figurative, thus suggesting that the one who indicates a literal understanding has no knowledge of any use of the figurative in the Bible.
