Thanks for your thoughts Paidion. I think myself that time is a created “thing” but that God takes part in it with his creation. Indeed, this is simply the way in which he’s able to interact with us. But I think we can speak of a “before time” - in a causal sense. Of course, I don’t think there could possibly be a temporal sequence of events before or outside of time. But I do think there could be an “eternal” relation - that is, one of logical, if you will, or relational, sequence - between the Father and the Son. Hence one can still be a trinitarian and an open theist.
But I can simply make no meaning of the idea of an eternal being relating and interacting with temporal creatures. All out acts are in temporal sequence. Unless God comes into this sequence, I don’t see how he can really interact with us.
What do you think of WLC’s stance that annihilationism (is that what you’re arguing for when you cite “conditional immorality”?) is more philosophically plausible than universalism, yet thinks that annihilationism and universalism aren’t Biblically supportable? It seems that you’re arguing that annihilationism is Biblically supportable?
Hi, take a look at the post I linked to and the article of Dr. Glenn Peoples.
Like many Evangelicals, Craig read into the Old Testament an immortal soul at places it is conspicuously absent.
In fact, there are quite a few passages denying an eternal life, leading critical scholars to conclude that it is a later theological development in the Torah.
Now, it is of course possible that the writers of the OT were wrong about that, but this is not a step a Conservative Evangelical could take.
I take a view that combines the two in a way. God is paradoxical. He’s grace and wrath, mercy and justice, love and hate, glory and humility. God is a mixed blessing. All opposites are held together in Him. Therefore, He is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. At the cross some were saved through a faith union with Christ. The old self is crucified and risen to new life. God’s wrath and grace intertwine at the cross. Well, it’s the same for those in the Lake of fire. God’s wrath, love, mercy, justice are all mixed together. Those in hell experience the destruction of the old self as they are purified and risen to new life. It will be a time of sorrow and rejoicing when God’s holy love works to reconcile all to Himself. Glorious indeed.
Yes, it seems that this idea of an immortal soul was an import into later Judeo-Christian thought via Greek philosophy. IIRC, this was a problem that Sir Isaac Newton had with the idea also. I agree that the idea of an eternal life (at least, after this one) was more or less conspicuously absent from the OT. But that makes sense in a way; the world had not experienced the death and resurrection of Christ, which made resurrection possible, since death had been defeated. Any immortality we might posess seems to clearly be something that is granted by God rather something intrinsic to how we were made.
[size=130][God] alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. (1 Tim 6:16 ESV)[/size]
But God will grant immortality to those privileged to share in the resurrection of the righteous.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (I Cor 15:51-54)
Catching up on prior posts at last! I’ll start by picking up a late spare:
I don’t know about Brendan, but on my account of theology the existence of free will is the key distinction between a theistic and atheistic reality; therefore this is also the key distinction between a creation being a child of God (Who is the Father of spirits) and being a puppet, even if the puppet is set loose to ping-pong around doing various things like an earthworm.
Free will is also a decisively huge factor for morality on my theological account, although I haven’t gotten to that yet in my description above.
Consequently, free will is a huge factor for soteriology on my theological account. But I don’t think a creature’s free will to rebel counts as much as God’s free will to save rebels from rebellion, and that’s a big difference from the type of Arminian account where God is forced to quit because He’s beaten at last by evil. The type of Arminian account where God chooses of His own volition to quit even though He could feasibly continue until He wins, is a more properly theocentric soteriology than the anthrocentric version popularized (I’m sorry to say) by Lewis – but then (as Lewis very well knew) that other type of Arminianism denies trinitarian theism and the essential existence of God as an active love in other ways.
I’ll start back here, and hope (for sake of relative brevity) that I’m addressing subsequent comments and questions as I go.
The simpler problem first: if God sees the present, that doesn’t contradict the concept of free will – we’re still freely choosing to do something if someone sees us doing it. Omniscience and omnipresence simply extends this knowledge of present events to all space-time in a transcendent “present” for God.
What might screw things up is if God clearly indicates back in the natural past what He sees someone freely choosing in the future at a particular point of space-time, as that would threaten various causal loops. Prophetic revelation tends to be fairly obscure and poetic on one hand though, or highly generalized without reference to specific points of space-time or specific people. As Jim Goetz points out in his book on conditional futurism, there are also conditional options to a lot of prophecy even when the conditional if-thens aren’t explicitly mentioned.
On top of this, the scriptures seem to indicate that God can and does confirm people temporarily along their freely chosen path in order to accomplish other story goals (so to speak); but that doesn’t obviate free will on important soteriological points since the hardening is only temporary (St. Paul calls it a partial hardening in Romans 11 for example, and he clearly doesn’t mean only part of a group because he expects the eventual repentance of those currently hardened), and based on carrying forward something the person has already chosen anyway.
In summary: the action of God to reveal future events to creatures along a timeline, is the only conceptual threat to free will from God’s (proposed) Boethian omniscience – otherwise we’re only talking about God being aware of all the actual choices of people during their history, which doesn’t threaten free will at all. But revelation in canonical practice has a lot of smudginess to the details; and locking out someone’s free will temporarily based on choices they already made, still respects free will because it’s only temporary, consequently doesn’t threaten anyone’s repentance and salvation.
This is all entirely aside from the question of whether there are positive reasons to believe Boethian omniscience is true in the first place; I’m only answering an objection to its proposal with this post, not providing actual reasons for believing it to be true.
That’ll take a little longer, so for topical convenience I’ll split to a second reply.
My reasons for believing Boethian omniscience to be true are related directly to Paidion’s rebuttal questions about how it could even possibly work, so for convenience I’ll requote those:
Those are all fine questions, and I’ll even say they work fine as rebuttal questions when Boethian omniscience is presented apart from having a very specific place in a coherent developing metaphysical argument – which is how Lewis for example always presented it, and which is how I presented it upthread in order to talk about it in a relatively quick fashion.
Consequently, to address those questions I’ll have to talk about how I infer in favor of Boethian omniscience, to provide a theological “setting” for how it connects in special ways to several other theological topics.
My following discussion is heavily summarized from chapters all across Section Three of Sword to the Heart, which can be found posted here on the forum in ‘bite-sized’ chunks, and also collected in a 3rd edition (which still needs some editing in various ways, but it’s a free download), by following the SttH link in my signature. But that’s a lot of reading even by my standards, so I won’t just point there and say “read that”.
0.) Various preliminary questions (covered in Section One btw) have to be addressed first, including but not limited to whether there is one or more than one foundationally self-existent level of reality. If yes (I answer yes, nicknaming it the Independent Fact or IF for short), then…
1.) Is the IF rationally active or not? (Obviously this requires a lot of discussion of what rationality means compared to non-rational behavior.) If not, then some kind of atheism is true. I inferred I ought to believe yes (in Section Two), so then…
2.) Is the IF statically self-existent (not depending on itself for existence), or actively self-existence (depending on itself for existence)? The former involves a contradiction in the idea of the IF being rationally active, since rational action would be only a secondary property of the ultimate reality; and also the former proposal introduces a schism between being logically caused and logically grounded.
(Describing the result of the argument shortly: “But if privative aseity is true, then we have every reason from its proposed characteristic of ultimate non-behavior, much less an ultimate lack of action, to believe that nothing else exists other than Itself, and that unlike us the IF does nothing. Moreover, there can be no logical relation between propositions, no consequents to grounds. Put another way, if privative aseity is true, we have every reason to believe that we cannot possibly have any good reason to believe anything, including that privative aseity is true!”)
Anyway for various reasons (related to topics from Section Two), I conclude I ought to believe the IF actively self-exists (positive aseity) not statically self exists (privative aseity). If so, then…
3.) At this point the next logical topic would be whether the positive aseity of the IF (the active self-existence of God, i.e. God is eternally self-begetting and eternally self-begotten) means there are (at least) two distinct Persons of the one and only God Most High. Although I answer yes, and this discussion factors into other topics later, I’ll skip over it for the sake of non-trinitarians in the thread and move along to…
4.) Does anything not-God exist? If not, then some kind of naturalistic theism (aka pantheism) is true. If so, then some kind of supernaturalistic theism is true (for example, nominal deism, or one of the Big Three Theisms, along with some other possibilities like various non-trinitarian Christianities, since strictly speaking ortho-trin could be true and yet Jesus might not be the incarnation of the 2nd Person of God any more than Elijah or Moses was, or the angel sent to John by Jesus toward the end of RevJohn to give a more provocative example.) I infer I myself am not-God, so I answer yes, and so move to…
5.) Is the evident reality I (the not-God entity) exist within God or not-God? If so, then practical pantheism would be true (Nature is God) even though strictly speaking some kind of supernaturalistic theism would still be true (since I am not-God). At this stage the most I can infer is that Nature doesn’t tend to behave the way I would expect from a rationally active fundamental reality, so Nature isn’t likely to be God; so I put a decisive belief on that question to the side for a while and moved on to the next very big question:
How can God effectively create something not-God? And especially, how can God effectively create a not-God person like me?
It should be obvious that there isn’t any point even asking those questions unless and until the other topics get this far. But answering those questions turns out to have a huge bearing on how God’s omniscience and omnipresence works (if this theology is true). So please bear with this exposition a little longer.
On the theology developed so far, there can be no overarching reality within which God and something not-God already exists; and a proposal that God and a not-God system both independently exist would not only involve them being unable to affect each other (although God could choose to voluntarily let the not-God reality affect Himself), but also would end up implying a shared overarching reality. So there is no use proposing some sort of void ‘outside’ God, into which He can create.
God can only create not-God realities, therefore, by voluntarily choosing to cease generating Himself in some way, while still remaining eternally self-generating. The choice to do so is itself an action, but the action is a choice to not take some other action.
Whether that could make any sense in a more basic supernaturalistic theism I don’t know. But if at least binitarian theism is true, then such an action wouldn’t be an utterly new thing within the self-consistent active self-generation of the Unity; because (on this theology) the 2nd Person of the Unity (God self-begotten, or analogically speaking ‘the Son’) must, as a Person, make a constant corollary choice whether or not to surrender to the Unity as the ‘Unity’ instead of trying to go ‘His own way’ or to do ‘His own thing’.
This leads to a number of interesting and (later) useful notions about what we may call the highest death and how not-God creatures would be expected to join with the 2nd Person in submission to God. But leaving aside the binitarian details, the point is that any not-God system of reality can only exist by God’s eternal action of self-abdication.
That would include Nature if Nature (not just myself) is a not-God reality; and I’ll skip over a bunch of analysis here concluding that created persons like myself would need some kind of not-God spatio-temporal system in which to exist.
So now we’re up to God continually acting (in a self-abdicating way, similar to but distinctly different from the self-abdicating action of God self-begotten if binitarian theism is true) to keep Nature in existence at all points of space-time. Somewhat similar to how a running electrical current continually generates a magnetic field at an infinite number of right angles to itself, or vice versa. (There are big differences, too, of course.)
{inhaaaaaaalllleeeeeee!!!}
And at long last now we’re at the theological setting for Boethian omniscience and omnipresence (and omnipotence – they’re all just about the same thing on this account).
On this theory, God is directly and intentionally acting to keep all points of space-time in existence with various properties and (via God’s voluntary self-abdicating self-sacrificing action) their own not-God behavior. God is consequently omnipresent and omniscient concerning all points of created space-time at the most intimate possible levels. It isn’t like Nature is impenetrably not-God and so repels or makes it difficult or limits God’s ability to get accurate information about it: God omnipresently knows all the facts directly, as well as (by corollary) all hypothetical possibilities (which God may or may not act toward enactualizing in multiple natural systems, each of which contains a whole natural universe of whatever size.)
On this theory God isn’t determinately directing everything around, but still retains (and occasionally enacts) the ability to direct, create and annihilate particles, injecting events into the not-God system, which the system naturalizes (so to speak) in reaction. Derivative rational spirits, brought into existence by a synthetic union of God and not-God Nature, have vastly much more limited capabilities of the same sort, even in the best circumstances (and those circumstances would be further limited by rebellion against God); and meanwhile God can see what we’re doing and what we’re thinking with our derivative freedom of introducing events into Nature which Nature of its own particular characteristics would not produce.
I’m not quite sure how to describe how the ontological relation of not-God nature with God solves this problem, but I know it does. It would be an incomprehensible smear to us, or to any created entity, but our relationship to a natural system (or any historical process within any natural system) is only slightly related to God’s relationship to Nature.
Similarly, even though as author of a story I can check in on any point of its invented space-time whenever I want, my relationship to the story is only faintly similar to the utter intimacy of God’s relationship to Nature (and to us rational creatures within Nature). So even though I’m ‘outside’ my story (and can introduce effects, including my own persona if I want, inside my story) in a faintly similar way with a couple of relevant parallels, I’d still be unable to know all events in my story simultaneously, even if I could be omnisciently aware of them somehow (which I cannot). If my relation to my story was the same as God’s relation to our Nature, that wouldn’t be a problem – but I’d have to be actively generating the reality of my story at all points of its reality in continuous continuity (so to speak). Which I can’t do (and can never do) because I’m only a creature.
Even so, I can be aware of a temporal sequence of events within my fictional story, despite my extremely limited ontological connection to it: e.g. first Portunista fights off Gemalfan, then she gets his notes, then studies his notes, then discovers the location of the Tower of Qarfax, then travels there, then invades it, then conquers its security, then fights off three other small armies trying to get the Tower, then packs up and marches to the city of Wye, etc. etc.
If my relationship to my story doesn’t increase, then my ability to know my story will begin to oversaturate from being unable to process the details; but the more my relationship to my story increases the more I can keep in mind about my story at-once. But my story and I are both creatures within an overarching reality (or actually within two overarching realities, one dependent on the other), so there are necessary limits about how far I can relate to my story.
The problem, as I see it, has never been how God knows the future on Lewis’ model. He simply “sees” it all at once. The problem is how he interacts with his creation. Because presumably, there is still a logical relation inherent within this eternal “now” of all space-time. For instance, I’m here because my parents procreated; the grass grows because of the rain; etc. What this means is that the very temporal sequence of events must itself be logically dependent on itself. In other words, God cannot “predict” with certainty an event at point space-time1 that has not yet logically (not temporally) happened yet. He cannot interact with point 1 in such a way that involved what happens in point 2 because it hasn’t happened yet. 2 is dependent on 1, not vice versa. What I’m trying to say is that I can’t see how God’s interaction, which is occurring at all moments of space-time on the eternal view, can interact within that meshwork in such an illogical, non-sequential way. If his all-sustaining power is generated at the big bang logically speaking prior to his power as it interacts with Feb. 6 2014, it seems irrational to me to say that he can somehow base the former on the latter. This is further complicated by the fact that free creaturely choices are made which affect God’s interaction.
But it’s all a very muddled concept to me. I do agree with Lewis in that we should always take the practical approach to how we live our daily life based on the thought that our future is NOT “settled” and is “open”.
I wonder if this is mitigated somehow by the very nature of God and his unique relationship to time. I’ve mentioned this before; but time is a relative construct (We experience it linearly, but I’m not so certain that God does) and If God is light in something of a literal sense, then again from our physics perspective, He can be everywhere in the universe at once. Hence, from His perspective it takes no time to get from point A to point B. I wonder if there is some principle like this at work with respect to time, where He in effect from His perspective experiences everything at once in a similar fashion. I also wonder how “In Him we live and move and have our being” factors into this. Just kind of thinking out loud here.
Here’s another way to put the problem. If God knows for certain what I will do, in some sense, I must have already done said action. How else could God know a contingent act without observing it, and how could he observe me doing it unless I’ve already done it? Yet clearly, I have not yet done said act, seeing as I don’t yet exist in such a future state to do it (the comparison here to the past doesn’t hold, since I have already existed in the past and done such and such.) So, if I haven’t done the act, how can God know it, since he does not determine contingent events but rather influences them and observes?
What divine timelessness/Lewis’s view seem to imply is that the knowledge of a free act is somehow logically prior to that act being done. But I find this simply impossible. Is it not a contradiction to say that certain knowledge can be had of a free act determined by nothing but myself before I actually perform the act?
That’s why I talked about God’s active upkeep of creation at all points of space-time. But even if that wasn’t true, when God “sees” an event at point space-time1, He doesn’t have to “predict” it’s going to happen He just sees it, even though it’s in our future temporally. He also sees all the rational and non-rational causations which contributed to the event, including His own contributions (starting with the generation and upkeep of Nature as an operational entity-system with its own characteristics.)
As Lewis pointed out, even in our extremely limited analogy of plot writing, we can interact as authors with points of the narrative outside the internal narrative flow: just like I have an idea in mind that I’m writing toward, once the event is written I can go back and adjust prior events to synch up better (if I’ve made a mistake building to that point) or to provisionally alter the character or characteristics of the event. I have to shuttle back and forth on the fictional timeline and make adjustments, but God’s relation to real natural history (or histories) is maximally intimate.
That being said, because of the self-abdicating characteristics of the 2nd Person, I would actually expect Him (especially if ever incarnate) to be self-limiting in various regards in relating to Nature, and in any case to only have whatever is given Him by the Father including knowledge of events. The Son might therefore shuttle back and forth in time more like a human author making adjustments; and even if He doesn’t have to do that, I still expect this self-limitation (especially via incarnation) accounts for all the oddly humanistic behavior of YHWH in the OT, thus also accounting for the data which open theists appeal to for their scriptural case (where poetic expression doesn’t account for it).
There’s a distinction however between causal relations and logical relations. Both do have to apply to events (especially if any rational argument can be true, as Lewis came to see and to argue in the pivotal chapter 3 of MaPS), but natural history behaviors of themselves don’t provide the necessary connections between the two categories of relation. Only if fundamental reality is both a causal and logical ground, essentially in and at its own level of self-existence, can human rationality even exist much less reach true conclusions. (I talk about this quite a bit in one of my chapters, and it’s one of my arguments for positive instead of privative aseity: God must be actively self-causing and self-grounding, not uncaused and/or ungrounded.)
Anyway, my point is that God being able to see and rationally understand (to the fullest possible extent) those events, doesn’t undermine the logical relationship of those events nor the causal relationship of those events. He sees (casually) that the grass grows because of rain and you’re here because your parents procreated, and understands (logically) why those events happen and the principles they express.
Certainly not. The very temporal sequence of events is ontologically dependent on God; therefore also logically dependent on God, and also causally dependent on God. God’s self-abdicating action is how that would avoid being utter determinism. (In Biblical language the Lamb is sacrificed not only from but as the foundation of the world.)
Then you’re turning around and denying the eternal action (and self-existence) of God in relation to those events, and positing Him fundamentally into the natural system, being thus necessarily dependent on the expressions of the system’s historical operations.
Immanence is great and important, but ontological transcendence is important, too. Both together (I was arguing) are why “It hasn’t happened yet” applies to us but not to God in relation to Nature at the level of God’s own self-existence. God is omnipresent at all happenings, not only in the sense of being there for them (although that, too) but in the sense of them all times being in the divine present. Points 1 and 2 exist at all because of the ongoing omnipresent action of God (even though that action is also self-abdicating for the sake of the existence of not-God realities); God is already always interacting with points 1 and 2; and Himself provides (“providentially” we might say) for all the relationships between what happens in point 1 and point 2.
Any proposal of God less than that, and we aren’t really even talking about theism anymore as a philosophical category; we’re only talking about a natural god, perhaps on the Mormon plan, and probably within a practical or actual atheism.
His power (if any kind of philosophical theism is true) isn’t “generated at” the big bang; His power is self-generating at the level of His own active self-existence. God sustains and generates the Big Bang (whatever the Bang actually was/is), and all other points and events of space-time. The logical relationships all connect back into God’s ontological reality.
For this purpose free will behaviors make no more difference than non-rational behaviors (whether random or determinate). God’s action is already always fundamentally upkeeping, and so fundamentally related to, both kinds of behaviors – in self-abdication so that they can be somewhat different kinds of not-God behaviors. God’s interaction (in several senses of that term) provides the situations for us to rationally (and sometimes irrationally and non-rationally) operate in, making contributions. We only affect God’s interaction in that God first and foremost voluntarily chooses to allow us to.
The priority of action at any point of any Nature has to always be first God for any actual situation (or even possibly hypothetical situation, not counting impossibly hypothetical ones); then creatures in response (whether rational contributions or non-rational reactions and counter-reactions).
The special case category exception to that (which isn’t really an exception because the other is still always happening), is when God manifests for operation within Nature, which would also include incarnational purposes. But (and this is important to my argument’s progression) the self-begotten action of God is already always abdicating more fundamentally in self-existence, and also introducing voluntary limitations more extensively for the creation of not-God reality at all, than any limited particular actions God may directly manifest in Nature.
I don’t want to sound like I’m copping out, because I hate how people often appeal to paradox to avoid having to deal with intellectual difficulties; but when we’re talking about the fundamentally self-existent ground of all reality, we do have to be prepared to accept and deal with paradoxes that are non-contradictory simultaneous truths which simply would not apply to any creature. Those can be tough to identify, but the transtemporal omnipresent active reality of God in relation to any system of Nature is (I’m arguing) one such paradoxical relationship. If supernaturalistic atheism was true instead, most of the system-relational paradoxes (minus those involving rational action) would still apply. If naturalistic theism or atheism was true instead, relevant relational paradoxes would still apply. (I say that to illustrate I’m not trying to make an ideological special pleading for supposed “paradox” as a shelter from criticism.)
Of course – from our perspective the details of our future aren’t “settled yet” at all, so far as we or other creatures have anything to do with them, because we and other creatures aren’t “there” yet; but even if we’re building natural contributions toward the shape of a particular future God may still bring about something else. The natural contributions we make aren’t something apart from God’s contributions at any point of space-time, primarily because God’s active ongoing (and even self-sacrificial) contribution is why we exist and have any points of space-time to make our own voluntarily (but still derivatively) free contributions at all.
When we’re talking about soteriology, though (as with most other theological topics), primarily we’re supposed to be talking about God’s intentions and actions, not primarily about ours even though we include rational creaturely actions in the account (since God certainly doesn’t have to save Himself from being a rebel!) I can be more certain that God will eventually save me (and everyone else) from my sins than I can be certain about most future details about how He’s going to bring that about, because I’m talking primarily about the transcendent (as well as immanent) transtemporal God, not primarily about some events within Nature.
Thanks a lot for your response here Jason. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
But it all seems to boil down to this. If God knows my future free acts perfectly, and if he knows this by observation, it seems to me this means that there is some level of reality in which I’m actually doing those acts. But how can I do those things, when I haven’t done them yet? And what could it possibly mean to assert that I AM doing them at some level of reality, whenever I have not yet existed in the future to do them? To say that God can know my act before I do it is to say God sees my act before I do it. But it is my very act that is seen. And I haven’t yet done it!
That’s really the best way to put the logical problem of God “seeing” acts that have not yet causally or logically occurred.
I also don’t agree that supposing God does not know the future free acts of his creation is equivalent to a functional atheism or Mormonism. If you think the future is already “there”, then I could see how that would follow, because then there is some sort of reality the existence of which is not dependent on God. But, if you suppose God is actively creating reality now, and sort of taking the past up into himself and pushing his creation forward through “time”, then the future you’re thinking of does not yet exist, and so no problem arises.
