Does God Ever Change His Mind?

[afro_john]

[quote name='Revprodeji' date='21 April 2010 - 04:37 PM' timestamp='1271882249' post='2097490']
We do? God desires all to be saved. God does not predestine certain individuals to heaven and some to hell.
[/quote]

God desires all to be saved, but there is a distinction made by Thomas about the will of God. If you look at the bulk of scripture it becomes painfully obvious that there are some who simply [i]will not be saved[/i] and it is completely within the realm of God's justice to do so. All that we've merited is damnation, it's only by His mercy that some are chosen to be saved and others not. We don't believe in a double predestination (as I had mentioned earlier) that God willingly acts and pushes people to hell, but He simply removes His grace and leaves them to their natural inclinations (i.e. concupiscence). We don't say God acted to predestine them to hell, He just simply left them to their own devices.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Raphael' date='21 April 2010 - 02:13 PM' timestamp='1271880819' post='2097474']
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/04/molinism-middle-knowledge.html

If I understand him correctly, I would be a Molinist, which Armstrong claims is far closer to the Eastern Fathers and the Western Fathers (except St. Augustine).

I am an admirer of a number of St. Augustine's positions and St. Thomas' as well, but I belong to neither school.
[/quote]
I reject both the Thomist and Molinist positions and hold instead that God predestines all of humanity (i.e., all human nature) to ever-being, while leaving the choice of ever-well-being or ever-ill-being to man's free will in cooperation with, or in rejection of, God's gift of uncreated grace. In other words, I accept the doctrine of three [i]apokatastaseis[/i] as explained by St. Maximos the Confessor, who summarized the position of the Eastern Fathers in the following way:

"The Church knows three [i]apokatastaseis[/i]. One is the [[i]apokatastasis[/i]] of everything according to the principle ([i]logos[/i]) of virtue; in this [i]apokatastasis[/i] one is restored who fulfills the principle of virtue in himself. The second is that of the whole [human nature] in the Resurrection. This is the [i]apokatastasis[/i] to incorruption and immortality. The third, in the oft-cited words of Gregory of Nyssa, is the [i]apokatastasis[/i] of the powers of the soul which, having lapsed into sin, are again restored to that condition in which they were created. For it is necessary that just as the entire nature of the flesh hopes in time to be taken up again into incorruption in the [i]apokatastasis[/i], so also the powers of the soul, having become distorted during the course of the ages had instilled in it a memory of evil, so that at the end of ages, not finding any rest, will come to God Who has no limit. And thus the distorted powers of the soul will be taken up into the primeval [i]apokatastasis[/i], into a merely discursive knowledge of, but not into the participation in, the good things [of God], where the Creator is known yet without being the cause of [their] sin." [St. Maximos, [i]Thalassium[/i] PG 90:796BC]

The first [i]apokatastasis[/i] described by St. Maximos is that of the saints to ever-well-being (i.e., heavenly bliss), who - by the free action of their own wills in cooperation with the divine energy - recapitulated the virtues during their earthly lives and "likened" themselves unto God; while the second [i]apokatastasis[/i] is fulfilled in all men, who are given incorruption and ever-being by the incarnation of the eternal Logos in the general resurrection; and finally the third [i]apokatastasis[/i] is that of the damned, who are restored to the good in the powers of their souls, but who - by their own choice - receive ever-ill-being (i.e., damnation) because they failed to recapitulate the virtues in their earthly lives.

Predestination, according to the Eastern Fathers, applies only to the second [i]apokatastasis[/i].

Edited April 21, 2010 by Apotheoun

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Jon, I've come to the judgment that Open Theism is incompatible with Christianity simply on the basis that it tries to redefine all the variables in order to arrive at its conclusion. I also think it's odd that I'm accused (indirectly) of being irrational for stating something that is contradiction where there is, in fact, no contradiction. Open Theism is a break with the Tradition of the Church and argues something so profoundly novel that I cannot possibly see it as a valid development of doctrine. So I won't spend any more time on that topic because I think it's a waste of time. Sometimes arguments are made that are so outrageous the only real response to give is no response at all - not in the present or the future.

Todd, still researching.

[N/A Gone]

I understand that you see it that way. This is not an official statement from the Church on this matter. I spent a bit of time discussing this issue with that professor I had for the FUS class and he had a very different understanding of its compatibility with Christianity.

How does it "redefine" the variables?

I believe that your understanding of time, predestination and free will is a contradiction that leads to strange language in order that we can apply an ancient weak understanding of Platonic immutability to Christianity. I think many people unfortunately see a God that preordains our actions and we lose our free will.

How is it novel? Is that supposed to be an insult? Because you do not understand it then it must be considered Novel? Because it is different from your experience of the faith then it must be foreign wrong and evil?

The question is important, reconcile how we can have a truly free will and yet God knows everything. Open Theism gives an answer to that which we can justify using our experience of God found in scripture. The tension of a true free will and God's knowledge can cause people to doubt their own freedom, doubt salvation, doubt if they even have the ability to doubt. It can also lead us to wonder if God really cares, if God interacts with us in the relationship of a father or if that is just an illusion. I think this issue is hardly novel and has intense pastoral implications. I have seen this in the baptist arena.

[Winchester]

I like turtles.

[Slappo]

[quote name='Revprodeji' date='21 April 2010 - 03:03 PM' timestamp='1271887432' post='2097537']
I understand that you see it that way. This is not an official statement from the Church on this matter. I spent a bit of time discussing this issue with that professor I had for the FUS class and he had a very different understanding of its compatibility with Christianity.

How does it "redefine" the variables?

I believe that your understanding of time, predestination and free will is a contradiction that leads to strange language in order that we can apply an ancient weak understanding of Platonic immutability to Christianity. I think many people unfortunately see a God that preordains our actions and we lose our free will.

How is it novel? Is that supposed to be an insult? Because you do not understand it then it must be considered Novel? Because it is different from your experience of the faith then it must be foreign wrong and evil?

The question is important, [b]reconcile how we can have a truly free will and yet God knows everything[/b]. Open Theism gives an answer to that which we can justify using our experience of God found in scripture. The tension of a true free will and God's knowledge can cause people to doubt their own freedom, doubt salvation, doubt if they even have the ability to doubt. It can also lead us to wonder if God really cares, if God interacts with us in the relationship of a father or if that is just an illusion. I think this issue is hardly novel and has intense pastoral implications. I have seen this in the baptist arena.
[/quote]


Because God's knowledge does not determine what will happen. What will happen
'determines" God's knowledge. That is, God's knowledge is based on what will happen, not what will happen based on God's knowledge. At least that's how I see it and I think that's in line with Church teaching. (If it's not someone let me know! )

I have knowledge of the past, but my knowledge does not determine the past. The past determined what I know. If WWII never happened, I would not know about it. With God it is not necessary to be in "the past" for him to know it since he is a timeless and eternal being (which in itself is something that we cannot truly comprehend).

Those are my quick thoughts. I haven't dwelt on the topic too much, but this has definitely sparked my curiosity.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Revprodeji' date='21 April 2010 - 06:03 PM' timestamp='1271887432' post='2097537']
I understand that you see it that way. This is not an official statement from the Church on this matter. I spent a bit of time discussing this issue with that professor I had for the FUS class and he had a very different understanding of its compatibility with Christianity.

How does it "redefine" the variables?

I believe that your understanding of time, predestination and free will is a contradiction that leads to strange language in order that we can apply an ancient weak understanding of Platonic immutability to Christianity. I think many people unfortunately see a God that preordains our actions and we lose our free will.

How is it novel? Is that supposed to be an insult? Because you do not understand it then it must be considered Novel? Because it is different from your experience of the faith then it must be foreign wrong and evil?

The question is important, reconcile how we can have a truly free will and yet God knows everything. Open Theism gives an answer to that which we can justify using our experience of God found in scripture. The tension of a true free will and God's knowledge can cause people to doubt their own freedom, doubt salvation, doubt if they even have the ability to doubt. It can also lead us to wonder if God really cares, if God interacts with us in the relationship of a father or if that is just an illusion. I think this issue is hardly novel and has intense pastoral implications. I have seen this in the baptist arena.
[/quote]

I haven't had the time to think through all the nuances here, so I'm just throwing out thoughts. First, I'm not a Thomist, so no one should hold me to his metaphysics. I'm also not an Augustinian, so the same there. Lastly, I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a fan of systematic philosophy because despite all it does for making very orderly arguments, all I see is very confused notions and metaphysics that don't seem natural to me and in many cases seem to have been taken for granted when they really need to be criticized and left behind. I think there are many different ways of addressing philosophy and I hate Aquinas' method, which reduces everything to cold statements almost mathematical in nature. Logic is good, sure, but whenever philosophers are in the room, I feel like I'm on the outside of an inside joke. The worldview doesn't make sense to me. I've tried to read basic beginners stuff and I get lost in all the terminology that seems so artificial and unnatural. I suppose my observations of the world come from a very different worldview. I think I'm probably far closer to being a phenomenologist than anything, simply because they seem much more natural. Their philosophy makes sense.

Anyway, here's what I think (saying this in all submission to the Magisterium if I should be in error on some point I'm unaware of): I reject your view of time. I cannot in any way, shape, or form conceive of their not being a future. I mean, I know that the future doesn't really exist yet. How could it? Yet, to God it must exist, except that it exists as present, just as our past and present do from His perspective. It must exist because God cannot be constrained by time (nevertheless, He may enter time and interact with time, but it cannot bind Him, lest time be God and God be subject to something). I believe there is time because that is our experience. I believe there is time because if there is not, if it is merely a perception, then nothing makes sense. If every moment in human history is present to God, as I argue it must be, then the moment in which I exist now, which was once the future for me, was present to God while it was future to me. Yet that past of mine in which the present was future also had to be present to God.

I believe that human nature has been redeemed. I believe that God wills that all go to heaven knows with "foreknowledge" who will and who will not, not because He sees our futures from a distant past an eternity away, but because He sees us in heaven or hell in His present moment, as well as all the acts we freely chose to get there in accepting or rejecting His grace, also present before Him. I believe that He offers us all sufficient grace for salvation and that grace is rendered inefficacious by our free choice not to cooperate or efficacious by our free participation with the grace itself (in this, I agree with the Molinists). This does make our salvation contingent upon our free will, although it also safeguards the prominence of God's grace in our salvation: His grace pulls at me and I have only to say yes, to let go of myself and submit to the whims of His grace, where He may move my heart, and I may begin to participate more and more fully.

I believe that God sees us as present and knows what we need, providing for it instantaneously (inasmuch as this word could do it justice), so that at every moment we have the help of His grace. I believe that He offers that grace to all, despite His direct and present knowledge that some of us reject it. I believe that because He knows who is damned and who is saved (relative to Himself, these are present realities, relative to us, future realities), He know who is in hell and who is in heaven, but He does not make it so, nor does He withhold an offer of grace simply because He knows that this or that person, offered grace, will reject it. As such, I do not believe that he predestines anyone to hell, although He knows (with regret, if I could make Him emotional) who is in hell.

I think that seeing a variety of possibilities is relative to those who are in time, while I do not believe God sees possibilities, but rather, sees things as they are, as He has made us and interacts with us, as He plans from all eternity and orders things to the highest good He can accomplish in conjunction with all our abuses of His gift of free will. I do see God interacting with us and even stepping into time (while remaining in eternity) in the Incarnation. However, the Divine Nature is immutable.

Lastly, as Slappo said, He knows it because we do it, not the other way around.

[afro_john]

[quote name='Revprodeji' date='21 April 2010 - 06:03 PM' timestamp='1271887432' post='2097537']
I understand that you see it that way. This is not an official statement from the Church on this matter. I spent a bit of time discussing this issue with that professor I had for the FUS class and he had a very different understanding of its compatibility with Christianity.

How does it "redefine" the variables?

I believe that your understanding of time, predestination and free will is a contradiction that leads to strange language in order that we can apply an ancient weak understanding of Platonic immutability to Christianity. I think many people unfortunately see a God that preordains our actions and we lose our free will.

How is it novel? Is that supposed to be an insult? Because you do not understand it then it must be considered Novel? Because it is different from your experience of the faith then it must be foreign wrong and evil?

The question is important, reconcile how we can have a truly free will and yet God knows everything. Open Theism gives an answer to that which we can justify using our experience of God found in scripture. The tension of a true free will and God's knowledge can cause people to doubt their own freedom, doubt salvation, doubt if they even have the ability to doubt. It can also lead us to wonder if God really cares, if God interacts with us in the relationship of a father or if that is just an illusion. I think this issue is hardly novel and has intense pastoral implications. I have seen this in the baptist arena.
[/quote]

The fact of the matter is this: the question of predestination and God's providence and how it interacts with human freedom is ultimately a mystery. Couple that with the fact that the idea of freedom that we hold on to today is a libertarian idea of freedom ("I choose whether I will act this way or that way") which is not in line with the historical, classical idea of freedom (Augustine says that freedom is "the ability to do the good"). We can't know the mechanics and the ins and outs of the Providence-Human Freedom relationship because it's a mystery. This is in the same category of the question of evil, it simply cannot be understood using our limited human capacities.

[afro_john]

One of the major declarations on the Church's view of predestination is in the canons of the [url="http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/canons_of_orange.html"]Council of Orange[/url] this was not an ecumenical council, not carrying the weight of such a council on its own. However, following the council the pope of the time proclaimed the findings of the council to be true, thus solidifying it as doctrine.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

The following is a quote from Wikipedia. I'm am arguing against it on the assumption that it is correctly stating the position of Boyd's Open Theism.

[quote]Gregory A. Boyd claims that "open theism" is an inappropriate term since the position posits more about the nature of time and reality than it does about God itself. This is to say that open theists do not believe that God does not know the future, but rather that the future does not exist to be known by anyone. For the open theist the future simply has not happened yet, not for anyone, and thus is unknowable in the common sense. Thus, to say that God does not know the future is akin to saying that he does not know about square circles. In this understanding, it could be technically wiser to refer to the view as "open futurism"[/quote]

Here's how I would argue from my own perspective of time: the problem I have with this view is that there are things in the future are not known by God. True, the future does not exist for any human to know, but if we place that condition also on God, then we make Him subject to time. He will 'later' know something He doesn't 'now' know. This limits God's omniscience because it limits his omnipresence. The future is not present to Him because He is subject to time.

Now, trying (perhaps feebly) to step into Boyd's understanding of time, the future does not exist. If time does not exist, then I must exist as both having made a decision and has not (yet) having made it. Either I am one being that travels through time in a forward direction making decisions as I go or I lose my point of reference that allows me to change. For instance, if you remove a timeline from, say, the first Superman movie, all the clips collapse in on each other. This results in a few possibilities: 1) the point of reference becomes the characters, such that Clark Kent is both an infant and an adult, both fully powerful and fully crippled by Kryptonite, etc. (the clips interpenetrate one another and happen in the same 'moment'), 2) the point of reference becomes the clip itself, such that the Clark Kent in one is not the Clark Kent in the other (the clips are independent of one another and are isolated realities). In either case, this creates a problem for theology, not just temporal physics. If #1 is true, then this is even more predestination-prone than my own understanding. My character is intrinsically tied to certain actions. I suspect that you don't agree with #1 because it would require that I am defined by my future decisions, which don't exist. If #2 is true, then I am affected by a different version of myself, the victim of an infinity of other men's choices. This makes major problems for the idea of salvation: the me in heaven is a me that did none of the work on earth to get there, did not practice any sort of faith or virtue, and is enjoying the fruit of my labors.

Now if God knows all the possible outcomes and that's how His omniscience is preserved, I still have major problems, especially that He, although all-knowing, doesn't know which outcome is true.

I'm sorry, but here's what I see: anti-Catholic scholars with a misguided intention to rip Christianity away from its Greek philosophical roots take modern quantum physics on multiple realities (all of which happen on a timeline, btw) and eliminate time as a dimension in order to reverse the traditional understanding of God's relationship to time. In Open Theism, rather than our past, present, and future being present to God, God is present to each of our choices, but only the ones we are aware. The problem is that at one point, there comes a me who is aware of more choices. To which me is God present? Which set of choices does God know? Does He know the smaller set of choices or the larger set of choices? It cannot be argued that He knows both, because that would mean that relative to the me who has made fewer choices God knows the choices I haven't made. It can't be argued that He knows only the smaller set of choices because that would keep Him only in my present, subjecting Him to time. It can't be argued that He knows only the larger set of choices because that would mean that He is not present to me, but to a version of me that has made more choices. The only way, it seems to me, to avoid all of these is to remove all of us from the timeline, but then we would need an explanation of why we experience things as time, why I'm not knowledgeable about the decisions I make at different points, etc.

This is why I don't think it's a tenable position: it makes no sense with our experiences of time. It seems based in an ideology motivated by anti-Catholicism and post-modernism, but not at all based in reality. The reason I don't want to debate it: it uses theories so unfathomable that anyone arguing in favor of it could simply say, "well, you just don't understand it." I'm very reluctant to accept an argument that is so complicated as to confuse people (and uses that confusion to prove itself) when common sense says that it is illogical just by looking at it. This doesn't jive with the common human experience, so I can't accept it's premises or foundations.

[Slappo]

[quote name='Raphael' date='22 April 2010 - 08:35 AM' timestamp='1271950554' post='2098016']
The following is a quote from Wikipedia. I'm am arguing against it on the assumption that it is correctly stating the position of Boyd's Open Theism.



Here's how I would argue from my own perspective of time: the problem I have with this view is that there are things in the future are not known by God. True, the future does not exist for any human to know, but if we place that condition also on God, then we make Him subject to time. He will 'later' know something He doesn't 'now' know. This limits God's omniscience because it limits his omnipresence. The future is not present to Him because He is subject to time.

Now, trying (perhaps feebly) to step into Boyd's understanding of time, the future does not exist. If time does not exist, then I must exist as both having made a decision and has not (yet) having made it. Either I am one being that travels through time in a forward direction making decisions as I go or I lose my point of reference that allows me to change. For instance, if you remove a timeline from, say, the first Superman movie, all the clips collapse in on each other. This results in a few possibilities: 1) the point of reference becomes the characters, such that Clark Kent is both an infant and an adult, both fully powerful and fully crippled by Kryptonite, etc. (the clips interpenetrate one another and happen in the same 'moment'), 2) the point of reference becomes the clip itself, such that the Clark Kent in one is not the Clark Kent in the other (the clips are independent of one another and are isolated realities). In either case, this creates a problem for theology, not just temporal physics. If #1 is true, then this is even more predestination-prone than my own understanding. My character is intrinsically tied to certain actions. I suspect that you don't agree with #1 because it would require that I am defined by my future decisions, which don't exist. If #2 is true, then I am affected by a different version of myself, the victim of an infinity of other men's choices. This makes major problems for the idea of salvation: the me in heaven is a me that did none of the work on earth to get there, did not practice any sort of faith or virtue, and is enjoying the fruit of my labors.

Now if God knows all the possible outcomes and that's how His omniscience is preserved, I still have major problems, especially that He, although all-knowing, doesn't know which outcome is true.

I'm sorry, but here's what I see: anti-Catholic scholars with a misguided intention to rip Christianity away from its Greek philosophical roots take modern quantum physics on multiple realities (all of which happen on a timeline, btw) and eliminate time as a dimension in order to reverse the traditional understanding of God's relationship to time. In Open Theism, rather than our past, present, and future being present to God, God is present to each of our choices, but only the ones we are aware. The problem is that at one point, there comes a me who is aware of more choices. To which me is God present? Which set of choices does God know? Does He know the smaller set of choices or the larger set of choices? It cannot be argued that He knows both, because that would mean that relative to the me who has made fewer choices God knows the choices I haven't made. It can't be argued that He knows only the smaller set of choices because that would keep Him only in my present, subjecting Him to time. It can't be argued that He knows only the larger set of choices because that would mean that He is not present to me, but to a version of me that has made more choices. The only way, it seems to me, to avoid all of these is to remove all of us from the timeline, but then we would need an explanation of why we experience things as time, why I'm not knowledgeable about the decisions I make at different points, etc.

This is why I don't think it's a tenable position: it makes no sense with our experiences of time. It seems based in an ideology motivated by anti-Catholicism and post-modernism, but not at all based in reality. The reason I don't want to debate it: it uses theories so unfathomable that anyone arguing in favor of it could simply say, "well, you just don't understand it." I'm very reluctant to accept an argument that is so complicated as to confuse people (and uses that confusion to prove itself) when common sense says that it is illogical just by looking at it. This doesn't jive with the common human experience, so I can't accept it's premises or foundations.
[/quote]


What he said

.

In all reality I think I have to agree with Micah on this 100%.

If God's omniscience meant that he exhaustively knew all possible decisions, then since the decision has yet to be made, God would have to know all of the possible outcomes that would come of each individual decision.

There is a fork in the road, I choose to walk left. God however, would know every possible decision and every possible outcome of my entire life according to if I had chosen to walk right instead of left. Each decision I make after walking left would then have an increased number of variables. Basically the math would come to this:

X = every single decision in my life including such small things as to if I am going to pick my nose this very second or not. If I will fix a typo before posting on phatmass.

God would have to know X to the X power for every single person. Of course add on all the decisions that affect other people, such as if I fix my typo or not effects every single person that will ever read that post. God's knowledge would have to extend to a seemingly infinite amount of [b]possible realities[/b], but He would not know which of those possible realities were true until those decisions were made. That is completely crazy thought.

Edited April 22, 2010 by Slappo

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='21 April 2010 - 01:44 PM' timestamp='1271871841' post='2097412']
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.
[/quote]

Incorrect. Change is a measure between two points. Change did not start until time/space was created. At that point, the change was in Creation, not in God. God did not change in the act of creation, Creation did. God is pure act.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I would like to add further that if there is a me who has made fewer choices and a me who has made more choices, we cannot be the same person without time, since we would be two different things in the same instance.

If I, in my identity, am the me who has made more choices and the me who has made fewer choices, then which of these is the real me? Let me put it to you another way: which is the me God knows? God knows truth, but He doesn't know falsehood because falsehood is a negation of truth and not an essence on its own. Either only one of these versions of me is real or both are real and known by God, but then this would make a contradiction in God, since he would know two contrary things to be real. To avoid that contradiction, there would also have to be two gods, each of whom knows something different. However, neither of them would be able to prove to the other which is true, they would be two equally authoritative gods, each omnipotent, yet opposed. Enter an impossible dualism whereby one god by logical necessity would have to be caught in battle with the other god. Neither of these is truly God.

It really makes no sense outside of a timeline. The whole reason timelines make sense isn't because we don't belong to a gnostic sect that somehow knows the real secret of time; rather, the reason timelines make sense is because they are practical. They allow the statement "Micah has made 3 decisions" to co-exist with the statement "Micah has made 5 decisions" in the same universe. Without time, we're either talking about two different Micah's (option #2 from above) or we're admitting a contradiction (option #1 from above) or we have multiple universes, which is really just another way of saying we have two different Micah's (option #2). Time as a dimension exists and is commonly experienced. The same way that the stapler on my desk, if squeezed from 3-dimensions into 2-dimensions could not exist because it would mean multiple objects in the same space (3-dimensional object in a 2-dimensional plane), so the various differences between how many decisions I've made can't be squeezed from a 4-dimensional space-time into a 3-dimensional space-without-time. They cannot occupy the same instant. Nevertheless, as a 4-dimensional being can interact with things on the lower dimensions, so God who is beyond dimension can interact with our space-time without Himself being changed.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='22 April 2010 - 02:20 PM' timestamp='1271960401' post='2098100']
Incorrect. Change is a measure between two points. Change did not start until time/space was created. At that point, the change was in Creation, not in God. God did not change in the act of creation, Creation did. God is pure act.
[/quote]
Will. Action indicates effort. Will is a better term.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Winchester' date='22 April 2010 - 02:50 PM' timestamp='1271962213' post='2098117']
Will. Action indicates effort. Will is a better term.
[/quote]
I don't think action necessarily indicates effort. Denotation, not connotation.