I thought we are meant to be the proof of our faith by the way we act
I don’t think it’s mostly atheist that use that concept but Christians who see the theological work done by open and process theology. Or work done on things by scholars like how it seems El and Yahweh were two separate beings who were merged into one overtime. Some scholars suggest evidence seems to show that the angel of the lord slowly overtime was converted to Yahweh and then Yahweh was absorbed into El.
What fundamentalist tend to get confused about is a single verse. They see someone use one or two verses, and the fundamentalist thinks anyone who disagrees with it must not be a Christian. It’s happened just recently in here. Someone ignored everything I wrote, decided disagreeing with their interpretation means not believing, then throws out immature stupid things ( which seems to be their go to move honestly ). Which is why I don’t take them serious enough to even really answer. Just agree with them and carry on.
I’ve noticed a lot of people , even in places like this, are afraid of how god is really presented in the Bible. They hide behind accomondationism to gloss over anything that is not all powerful, all loving, all knowing and so on. Many people are so scared of dying they create these fantastical ideas to latch onto in order to justify the lives they live of unhappiness and fear. They speak about a concept that they were taught as babies, always assumed was true, read the entire Bible in that way and have never read opposing views. Echo chambers.
To say, as I did, that “natural regularities that allow for correct predictions - in other words, for predictions that get empirical confirmation - constitute a degree of order” is more about the word usage. That is to say, “a degree of order” is defined as the presence of natural regularities allowing for predictions that could be checked and get empirical confirmation. I don’t see why this usage of the word “order” contradicts its established meaning.
Certainly, there can be no religion without subjective participation, subjective adherence, subjective commitment! But why should anyone be interested in a religion unless it gives an access to something quite different and independent from our own values, choices, preferences, experiences, and so forth? If there were no access to this really real reality, one would better be consistent, call a spade a spade, and say, “I choose these existential stances and moral values just because I feel so”, without disguising these stances in the religious idiom.
That said, it is entirely wrong to impose Christianity on anybody by force. Those who did it have directly contradicted the example and teaching of Jesus Christ.
Different people are driven by different motives. As for me, the perspective of personal immortality has never cheered me in earnest. Nonetheless, the New Testament writers have consistently claimed that God is the perfect Love who promises to put an end to every wrong and to heal every wound in creation. At the same time, God is the perfect Power who is able to fulfill this promise. Of course, our God is also humble, patient, meek, suffering - but there is no contradiction here: the all-powerful creator of everything has never had any need to fear anybody, to subdue anybody, to fight for dominance, etc.
For God, the absolute power over everything is the very starting point - and the manner of divine action is to endow creatures with agency, to let them be, to patiently endure the consequences of natural processes and sentient beings’ deeds, and, in the end, to redeem and heal everything and everyone who would not ultimately reject the Redeemer.
The book contains a number of perspectives. E.g., Ian Barbour defends the process theology, whereas John Polkinghorne promotes the proper kenotic creation thought (surely, these two approaches share some common ground - and yet they are different). I suppose that it would be much easier for you to agree with Polkinghorne than with me - not because I’m a nonentity, while he was a prominent physicist and theologian but because of his concept of God not knowing the future. In this regard, I would definitely prefer Wolfhart Pannenberg’s point of view.
Formally, Pannenberg - a renowned theologian who has also paid great attention to Christianity’s interaction with philosophy and sciences - was not in the kenotic creation camp, although he approached it pretty close at times.
Cf.: “… as Creator, he stands by his responsibility for the work that he has made. Evil is thus real and costly enough for God himself as well as for creatures”. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Systematic Theology, Vol. 2. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 169.
And: "If the Creator willed a world of finite creatures and their independence, then he had to accept their corruptibility and suffering, and the possibility of evil as a result of their striving for autonomy. He also had to accept the concealment of his own deity in his creation, its covering over and questioning by the independence of his creatures”. Ibid., 173.
I can dwell on this issue more and more because it’s my main field of interest; but the post will get unreadable, I’m afraid. Besides, it would make little sense to give lengthy quotes from my own draft paper.
P. S. I hope that I don’t violate any community rules by giving the link to the file that I’ve hung out on Academia - but if I’m wrong, I’ll eagerly comply with the rules.
Thanks. I downloaded your paper on an interesting topic to me too (it may take awhile for me to have the time to ingest the whole thing )
Personally, I find the idea of Open Theism attractive (a la Greg Boyd), which seems to avoid the heterodox problems of Whiteheadian Process Theology. As I understand things, at least one view of Open Theism would word things to say that God remains omniscient…only the nature of the future is that it exists as a realm of possibilities, not of an established fact that is available to know. In other words, God knows everything there is to know about the future…which exists as a myriad of scenarios contingent on past and current events. And, like the master chess-player, he knows how he will react in every possible scenario (so he’s never unprepared), he just does not know exactly which detailed trajectory will occur until it happens. The working-out of exact trajectories he leaves (at least in part) to the free-will decisions of other actors (and probably to a “hands-off” process of evolution).
Divine accommodation is a theme in the scriptures, perhaps the primary example being how Yahweh in the Old Testament period appears off and on in the form of a man. It is also seen in the fact that the Spirit inspired men not to write in some heavenly language with heavenly forms of literature but in the very language and forms of literature the people would recognize. Jesus even points to it when He explained that some commandments were given due to the hardness of people’s hearts.
The Incarnation demonstrates accommodation; Jesus didn’t hang onto Hid divine prerogatives but “emptied Himself” as Paul puts it.
The Old Testament definitely portrays God’s knowledge of the future as non-absolute. The whole situation where David asks what will happen if he does such-and-such shows that the future is contingent because we see that something God said would happen doesn’t happen, which indicates that future events depend on our choices.
But it also portrays Him as less than (the philosophical definition of) omniscient: it firmly asserts that He knows our hearts, but repeatedly shows Him as needing to “inquire”, which I take to mean He needs to focus on things in order to know them.
Yes, its interesting, isn’t it. Certainly in the OT, God is portrayed as very relational…as sometimes changing his mind based on the actions of people. A real relationship based on communication between two “free-will” agents.
I think Jesus emptied himself of “omniscience” when on Earth. As to God the Father’s omniscience…I’m not sure but its an interesting question. The “search me and know my heart” language of the OT may be poetic? Not sure that means that God needs to put in mental effort to “inquire” about one’s heart/feelings. But if future events aren’t really there until they happen, and we are acting as free agents, it seems that God would not know our thoughts until we actually thought them. (Although if he knows all past and current events, and all our past actions…he might have a pretty good guess what we would do/think as we tend to be creatures of habit
I’m blanking on the passage just now, but there’s at least one that explicitly says He knows our hearts. To me that makes sense since the whole point of Creation was for Him to have a family, so it seems right that He would keep tabs on us all. On the other hand, as far as our thoughts I could make a case that God knows the thoughts of believers, but even that isn’t very strong since David at least considered it necessary to invite God to search his mind.
Though modern neurology seems to indicate that our thoughts are actually formed before we’re consciously aware of them, so God make know befiore we do!
I consider the Psalms to be poetry genre–David’s (and other humans’) experience of God. As such, it likely contains a mix of both true and clouded/faulty pictures of God’s character and intent. Anyways, I’m hesitant to base firm theological conclusion about God based only on an expressions in a Psalm, personally.
It’s a rabbit hole, but just for interest, the original experiment that purported to show that one’s decisions occurred before one was conscious of making a decision has been much disputed among scientists. I’m not totally up on the most recent experiments in the field (the jargon and methodology gets deep and complex quickly). But the Wikipedia article on “neuroscience of free will” provides a history of the back-and-forth debate, and links to the original science journal articles for those who want a deeper dive.
I am an open theist also, and very opposed to Whitehead.
Another way of looking at it is in terms of quantum physics, its not that He cannot know what will happen, but that He can choose not to. Like a quantum measurement, to know the future is to create that future. I don’t think the people in a world like that is any more alive or conscious than the characters in a book. And for a God involved in the world, absolute foreknowledge not only turns us to characters in a book he has written, but Himself as well. I don’t think this is compatible with theism – its more like pantheism.
No, it wasn’t “disagree with me and you are not Christian.” It was because you stated you didn’t really care what Jesus said and implied his thoughts were stupid.
“And guess what. Let’s say Jesus does not want me to save up money. I don’t care. I’ll continue to do it because I’m not stupid.”
A self- identifying follower of Jesus not caring what Jesus said.
Vinnie
Yes, I’m aware of this view; John Polkinghorne, as far as I understand him, was of the same opinion. And that’s the point where I disagree: this concept presupposes some “absolute time” not created by God; on the contrary, God and creatures would alike exist “within” this time - so that the past would be behind them and the future would be ahead of them.
I think that this idea is wrong both theologically and scientifically. It is wrong scientifically because time is not absolute but was proven to be a dimension of the universe; and it is wrong theologically because God is the creator of time.
Let me quote the aforementioned paper of mine - just to avoid retelling it.
“Polkinghorne’s premise – “the future does not yet exist” – is of particular interest. It’s obvious that the future does not yet exist for humans. But stating that it does not yet exist for God, one implies that God renounced eternity and is present only at some particular time.
Polkinghorne’s insistence that God renounced eternity is particularly startling because the renowned physicist turned theologian has acknowledged that the classical Augustinian vision of God’s relation to time is reinforced by the modern scientific understanding of space-time. “Since Augustine, theologians have understood the created nature of time, so that the universe came into being cum tempore, not in tempore. The modern scientific insights of general relativity, linking together space, time, and matter, have given endorsement to this view, some fifteen centuries after Augustine” (Polkinghorne 2001, 102).
Here Polkinghorne is explicitly pointing at Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which demonstrated the interdependence between the geometry of a space-time and the characteristics of energy and momentum inside this space-time. It means that space and time are nothing else but the dimensions of the world. There is no space beyond the world and no time before or after it …
As God creates and sustains the entire created world, one should infer that God creates and sustains the whole spread of space and the whole length of time. God is the First and the Last (Revelation 1:8).
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1994, 37) outlines this idea very clearly. “As an eternal act of the eternal God, creation cannot be restricted to the beginning of the world. It is contemporary with all created time. It does not take place in time. Time itself came into existence with the creatures.” Consequently, God is present at every moment of time, and every temporal creature is present before God …
One could have been afraid for human freedom before an all-pervasive God – but it is a misplaced fear. A temporally or spatially restricted agent would have no other way to ensure the desired outcome of the cosmic history but to subdue all the other forces and agents in the world. Therefore, conceiving of God – not of the human embodiment, but of divine essence – inside the space-time, a theologian creates a false dilemma: one has either to stop expecting salvation from this “God” or to await salvation from a ruthless tyrant. A postulate that the entire space-time continuum is embraced by God removes this false dilemma. God takes care of creatures by giving them space and time to unfold their potential. At the same time, God observes and knows that the outcome has been already achieved “and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis1:31 NRSVue).”
I agree but only partially. My interpretation is that both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ roads are both realistic alternatives and the way how God communicates depends on which road the person is. God does not change His mind but the location of the person changes and that changes the message of God. OT uses antropomorphisms to describe God and the antropomorphic expressions should be understood as a way to accommodate the message to human understanding, rather than assuming that God is like a human.
I readily believe the opposite (Gen 1:27).
We all have our interpretations and they may be correct or at least partly false. I am not an Open Theist. Instead, I believe that free will and God knowing everything are compatible concepts.
God seems to have given humans at least some amount of free will. Knowing what a human chose is possible if we look backwards in time, towards the apparently closed history. If God is, He is present at all moments. Therefore, He can simultaneously be present at the current moment and see our choices from the future, as history. In this way, God can know our every choice, even if we have some amount of free will.
Your interpretation seems to assume that the concept ‘image of God’ tells about physical or emotional similarities between God and humans. IMHO, the ‘image of God’ means something else. It tells about the task or position God gave to humans within the creation, the temple or domain of God.

Instead, I believe that free will and God knowing everything are compatible concepts
Hi, I know people in the reformed tradition claim this, i.e. “compatibalism”. But some philosophers say this is illogical and I agree. I’ve read a few philosophical papers (in secular and theological journals) which argue that there is no logical possibility that omniscient, omnipotent being can create a truly free world.

OT uses antropomorphisms to describe God and the antropomorphic expressions should be understood as a way to accommodate the message to human understanding, rather than assuming that God is like a human.
I note that traditional theists in the reformed tradition are quick to claim such passages are just anthropomorphisms, and then write them off. But why assume this? How do you know you aren’t just making the text fit your own preconceived philosophy? Just because scriptures do contain some anthropormorphisms, does it mean that every description of God that doesn’t fit a pet-philosophy must also be an anthropormorphism? Just throwing it out there.
Hi, Thanks for the information. I’m no physicist and am not familiar with the details of Polkinghorne’s view of time and space to know whether you are understanding his view accurately, so I won’t comment further and and will take your word for it at this point. But I’m curious whether you’ve read this book about the nature of time by R.T. Mullins and if so, what do you make of his argument?
Here are the liner notes:
The claim that God is timeless has been the majority view throughout church history. However, it is not obvious that divine timelessness is compatible with fundamental Christian doctrines such as creation and incarnation. Theologians have long been aware of the conflict between divine timelessness and Christian doctrine, and various solutions to these conflicts have been developed. In contemporary thought, it is widely agreed that new theories on the nature of time can further help solve these conflicts. Do these solutions actually solve the conflict? Can the Christian God be timeless? The End of the Timeless God sets forth a thorough investigation into the Christian understanding of God and the God-world relationship. It argues that the Christian God cannot be timeless.