Does God Ever Change His Mind?

[SaintOfVirtue]

I would answer that: given God is a spiritual being, He is not limited by the material parameters of space or time. Hence, he occupies all times and all space; not because He is time or space but because He is not held by their restraints.

I've heard it explained in this fashion:
All our human senses can move only forward in time and space. You can see an eye but you cannot see the act of sight because in order for you to "see the act of sight" your eyes would have to occupy the same time and space as themselves. You taste food but you cannot taste the act of tasting, feel but not feel the act of feeling, hear sound but not the act of hearing, and smell but not smell the act of smelling. This is because these senses rely on that which is material and can therefore move only forward in time and space. However, you can think about thought, because that which is spiritual is not limited by space or time, and intellect is one proof of the existence of the spirit. It is the only sense (if it can even be classified as such) which can bend back through time to consider itself and reflect on its own actions. Therefore, if that which is spiritual is not restrained by space or time, and God is truly spirit, then it follows that God is not restrained by space or time. It clearly follows that to restrain God to the limits of time and space would be to make Him less spirit and more material. If God were even slightly material, He would not be eternal; and could not be God.

Further, it is not that the Divine Truths have changed from age to age, but rather that they have become better understood.

[Slappo]

Revprod,

Reading your paper it seems like this is the clause that I would disagree with:

[quote]If God is outside of time, and looking at this dimension of time all at once, then the future, past, and present exist as a determined now. Equal in there exhaustiveness. [b]This directly conflicts with our understanding of free will and determination.[/b] It is also radically different then how we perceive time.[/quote]

I don't see how it conflicts with our understanding of free will and determination. Inside the realm of time there is a real decision that must be made, and inside the realm of time there is a free act of my will to make that decision. Outside of the realm of time that decision has already been made by me. From the perspective of God he isn't seeing what I will choose but what I have already chosen. He sees all the possibilities as being definitively exhausted because he sees the decision as already having been made.

Later in your paper you say there is no reason to see the future as determined. To say "the future" is to already place yourself within time, which I would claim God is outside of. God does not see the future as determined as he is not seeing the future (that would place him inside time). I do not see the future as determined as the future is inside of time like I am, so there are plenty of decisions I need to make in the future.

[CatherineM]

The first thing I thought of when I saw the title was the debate God had with Abraham regarding how many good men needed to be found in order to save Sodom and Gomorrah. Deeper philosophical thought is beyond me right now.

[Oik]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' date='20 April 2010 - 11:59 PM' timestamp='1271825999' post='2097209']
Revprodeji ftw!

I recommend this book:

[url="http://www.amazon.com/Appalachian-White-Oak-Basketmaking-Handing/dp/0870496727/ref=pd_ys_home_shvl_50"]Appalachian White Oak Basketmaking[/url]
[/quote]

That reminds me of our venerable Desert Fathers, especially Abba Pambo...

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Oik' date='21 April 2010 - 01:47 AM' timestamp='1271828821' post='2097225']
That reminds me of our venerable Desert Fathers, especially Abba Pambo...
[/quote]


Do you have any favorite books about the Desert Fathers that you'd recommend?

[Ziggamafu]

If God exists, He must be changeless. Anything that changes cannot be God. I have heard of open theists who insist that God's Incarnation allows for the possibility that, from the point of Christ's Ascension, all of God's interactions with man could have taken place via the Incarnation, and that the human nature of God changed / changes His mind, but always according to the will of the divine nature.

Personally, it seems like an unnecessary (and somewhat silly) thought experiment.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Slappo' date='21 April 2010 - 01:39 AM' timestamp='1271828362' post='2097218']
Outside of the realm of time that decision has already been made by me. From the perspective of God he isn't seeing what I will choose but what I have already chosen. He sees all the possibilities as being definitively exhausted because he sees the decision as already having been made.
[/quote]

Strictly speaking, I think we'd have to see that He doesn't see your decisions as already made, but rather, he sees them precisely as they are being made, in that first moment of the decision's existence.

Anyway, I had a problem with the same thing. To say that just because the past, present, and future are all present to God makes them determined is illogical. What God sees as present is truly future in time. It is truly something I will freely choose to do. To say that something is determined is to say that it has been determined at some point prior to the present or at the very least in the present moment. It is a set course of action that cannot be avoided. If I am a time traveler and come back from the future, I will say, "tomorrow, a cat in a box will die." Does my being in the past while knowing it somehow make it happen? Does my saying it make it happen? Obviously not. To the present moment, it is not determined because it hasn't yet happened. It will happen and I can be sure of it, but that doesn't mean that free will is violated. Rather, because someone exercised their free will, a cat in a box died and people afterward knew of it. What you call a statement of a determined fact of the future could in fact not have occurred without free will (assuming, of course, that humans are involved in the "determined fact" of the future, things that will happen naturally in the future are not the result of free will). To say that because I know the future, I've determined the future is illogical. To say that because I know the future, the future is set, well, that perhaps makes a little more sense, but it still doesn't violate free will. The future wasn't pre-determined, it wasn't decided on before hand; rather, it was pre-known, and only then as a result of the hindsight of a time traveler who looked on from after the fact. So to say that because I know the future, I've determined the future is illogical.

However, God doesn't actually know the future. He knows what we perceive as the future, but He knows it as the present. We speak of God's "foreknowledge," but this is really just a human perception designed to explain in our terms how our future is present to God. Even as I speak to Him now, my voice reaches Him from the entire span of my life. My life lays open like a book before the eyes of God. He doesn't know my future, He knows my present, which is my whole life into eternity, but which I experience as a sequence of past, present, and future. So, in fact, there isn't any foreknowledge in God. Thus, there isn't a contradiction. For God, it's all present. My current moment, in which I exercise my free will, is as present to Him as my past (in which I did exercise it) and my future (in which I will exercise it).

This is why I say that the issue is not just about time, but also about God; to say that God "foreknows" something and really mean it (rather than just as an analogy) is to place God within a timeline. I can't really say, "well, back when I was a kid, God knew me." Strictly speaking (sorry grammarians) it would be more accurate to say, "back when I was a kid, God knows me." Perhaps this goes some distance to explain Christ's apparent bad grammar, "before Abraham was, I AM." He made a theological statement about God's being present to all time. He didn't say, "I was." He said, "I AM."

[quote name='CatherineM' date='21 April 2010 - 01:41 AM' timestamp='1271828495' post='2097220']
The first thing I thought of when I saw the title was the debate God had with Abraham regarding how many good men needed to be found in order to save Sodom and Gomorrah. Deeper philosophical thought is beyond me right now.
[/quote]

While it was a real dialogue between Abraham and the Ever-Present God, I would argue that as the outcome of that dialogue was as present to God as the beginning of the dialogue, it was both a real dialogue and a pedagogical approach by God, who, knowing what Abraham would do, let Him on to ask for greater and greater mercy.

[afro_john]

The important thing it seems with open theism is that our relationship with God is only within a "shared context." It is precisely because of this shared context that the relational, reactional view of God's providence is taken. God foreknows, true, but His plan is open for input from us. Open theists often point to the story of Hezekiah in Isaiah 38 or (as noted earlier in the thread) the story of Abraham pleading with God to spare Sodom. The difference between a classical view of God's providence and the open theist interpretation is that the classical view would hold that God already foreknew and preordained the outcomes of those exchanges, the open theist would say that God left the specific outcomes of those encounters "unsettled" out of his [i]relational, loving[/i] relationship with His creation.

The problem that open theists react against is the notion of predestination as is presented in a more fast-and-hard sense by Augustine and Thomas. The argument is not for a sovereign God that ordains everything, but for a God who is truly relational. They don't argue that God [i]is not capable[/i] of being entirely sovereign, but as is witnessed by the incarnation, God chooses to keep His plan open as a means of Divine condescension, out of love for His creation.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Raphael' date='21 April 2010 - 10:36 AM' timestamp='1271857003' post='2097293']
Strictly speaking, I think we'd have to see that He doesn't see your decisions as already made, but rather, he sees them precisely as they are being made, in that first moment of the decision's existence.

Anyway, I had a problem with the same thing. To say that just because the past, present, and future are all present to God makes them determined is illogical. What God sees as present is truly future in time. It is truly something I will freely choose to do. To say that something is determined is to say that it has been determined at some point prior to the present or at the very least in the present moment. It is a set course of action that cannot be avoided. If I am a time traveler and come back from the future, I will say, "tomorrow, a cat in a box will die." Does my being in the past while knowing it somehow make it happen? Does my saying it make it happen? Obviously not. To the present moment, it is not determined because it hasn't yet happened. It will happen and I can be sure of it, but that doesn't mean that free will is violated. Rather, because someone exercised their free will, a cat in a box died and people afterward knew of it. What you call a statement of a determined fact of the future could in fact not have occurred without free will (assuming, of course, that humans are involved in the "determined fact" of the future, things that will happen naturally in the future are not the result of free will). To say that because I know the future, I've determined the future is illogical. To say that because I know the future, the future is set, well, that perhaps makes a little more sense, but it still doesn't violate free will. The future wasn't pre-determined, it wasn't decided on before hand; rather, it was pre-known, and only then as a result of the hindsight of a time traveler who looked on from after the fact. So to say that because I know the future, I've determined the future is illogical.

However, God doesn't actually know the future. He knows what we perceive as the future, but He knows it as the present. We speak of God's "foreknowledge," but this is really just a human perception designed to explain in our terms how our future is present to God. Even as I speak to Him now, my voice reaches Him from the entire span of my life. My life lays open like a book before the eyes of God. He doesn't know my future, He knows my present, which is my whole life into eternity, but which I experience as a sequence of past, present, and future. So, in fact, there isn't any foreknowledge in God. Thus, there isn't a contradiction. For God, it's all present. My current moment, in which I exercise my free will, is as present to Him as my past (in which I did exercise it) and my future (in which I will exercise it).

This is why I say that the issue is not just about time, but also about God; to say that God "foreknows" something and really mean it (rather than just as an analogy) is to place God within a timeline. I can't really say, "well, back when I was a kid, God knew me." Strictly speaking (sorry grammarians) it would be more accurate to say, "back when I was a kid, God knows me." Perhaps this goes some distance to explain Christ's apparent bad grammar, "before Abraham was, I AM." He made a theological statement about God's being present to all time. He didn't say, "I was." He said, "I AM."



While it was a real dialogue between Abraham and the Ever-Present God, I would argue that as the outcome of that dialogue was as present to God as the beginning of the dialogue, it was both a real dialogue and a pedagogical approach by God, who, knowing what Abraham would do, let Him on to ask for greater and greater mercy.
[/quote]

[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RQEW5FB6L._SL500_AA300_.jpg[/img]

Edited April 21, 2010 by Brother Adam

[afro_john]

We as Catholics have to hold to predestination, that is, God chooses to save some and allows others to be damned (not double-predestination that's advocated by Calvin). I guess the biggest concern in modern thought with all of this is that anything we do that is good, is brought about by the grace of God, the question becomes "how do we interact and truly partake in the good things we do?" Open theism is attractive to many because it makes for a personable, loving God as opposed to a distant, divine foreman that some within the tradition have painted God.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='21 April 2010 - 11:25 AM' timestamp='1271863533' post='2097328']
[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RQEW5FB6L._SL500_AA300_.jpg[/img]
[/quote]
Is this a support of my post or a negation of it?

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Raphael' date='21 April 2010 - 12:59 PM' timestamp='1271865597' post='2097350']
Is this a support of my post or a negation of it?
[/quote]

A support of authentic Catholic orthodoxy regarding God's nature, knowledge, and predestination. Father Most is an excellent scholar and right up there with Newman and Ratzinger. I am not an expert in open theism or would I call myself even competent in this protestant developed doctrine. From what I have read though it is difficult to even specifically define open theism according to evangelicals because they have different ideas of what it is. That's like putting a group of Protestants from different denominations in a room and asking them to define "Eucharist". In some ways open theism is compatible with Catholicism depending on how it is used and explained, in other ways it is heretical. The only thing I know for sure is most simple remarks regarding it have typically been off base which is why I haven't personally commented on it yet.

Edited April 21, 2010 by Brother Adam

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='afrojohn' date='20 April 2010 - 10:02 PM' timestamp='1271815329' post='2097123']
I'm working on a massive paper for my theology seminar on nature, grace, free will and predestination. Part of this seminar is that I need to write a 10-12 page paper regarding the teaching of open theism. For those who don't know open theism claims that God, being in relationship with us, truly acts and does things in response to our prayers, thoughts, actions etc. This is in stark contrast to the classical view that holds that God is immutable, impassible and timeless (more Thomistic/Augustinian view). I'm trying to articulate a Catholic response to this, does anybody have any suggestions?
[/quote]

What books are you using if I may ask? Just curious.

[IMG]http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h119/NoonienSoong_2006/Trek/spacehippies.jpg[/IMG]

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='21 April 2010 - 06:12 AM' timestamp='1271851974' post='2097278']
If God exists, He must be changeless. Anything that changes cannot be God. . . .
[/quote]
God is changeless as to His nature, and yet He can change through His interaction with His creation.

Is God always creating? If He is always creating the universe it follows that creation is eternal, and yet this proposition is condemned as heretical by both the Eastern and Western Churches.

Edited April 21, 2010 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='afrojohn' date='20 April 2010 - 08:02 PM' timestamp='1271815329' post='2097123']
I'm working on a massive paper for my theology seminar on nature, grace, [b]free will and predestination[/b]. . . .
[/quote]
East and West understand free will and predestination differently. The East holds that all men at the level of nature are predestined to redemption through the incarnation of the eternal Son of God. In other words, through the incarnation of the uncreated Logos all of nature has been freed from corruption and the dissolution into non-existence brought about by Adam's fall from grace, and has been given the gift of redemption to everlasting existence. But salvation, on the other hand, concerns the integration of the human person ([i]hypostasis[/i]) with his natural virtues through the power of God's uncreated energies and the activity of his own created free will. Salvation requires that a man enact his will through grace in doing good and avoiding evil. If a man lives a good life through the power of his will restored by grace, he may enter into the vision of the Tri-hypostatic God, but if he fails to integrate his natural virtues into his person ([i]hypostasis[/i]), he damns himself. Thus, in Eastern theology predestination is the universal redemption of all men and of the whole of creation itself from corruption and non-existence, while salvation involves the integration of man's natural virtues with his personal ([i]enhypostatic[/i]) existence through the power of God's uncreated energies and his own free will.