If God is outside of time… and the beginning of our space/time and the end of our space/time is all simultaneous… how could God not know how many species of hummingbirds there would be?
Even if he had to recalculate everything all over again … how would he miss that?
Many of these discussions seem to be based on the premise that knowledge as we would understand is the same as “God knowing this or that…” This is clearly wrong. Even statements that we are able to make are derived from biblical statements - human intellect cannot access the essence of God, and can hardly discuss His attributes accept by metaphor and terms derive from our experience/knowledge.
But this is a one-way limitation, don’t you think @GJDS.
It’s one thing to say that we can’t possibly comprehend how God knows such things in all ways, or all things in all ways.
But it takes a certain grim literalism - - and a heap of pessemism - - to then say: "Thus God might not know these things at all, in the sense that humans mean “knowing”.
That is an interesting statement. I think I am one that does kind of believe that. In our sense of knowing, I am not certain God ‘knows’ the future. But you can refer to my first post in this thread for a more in depth delve into that.
To reject the idea that God knows the future is a virtual assertion that God is not outside of time. While this kind of discussion is universally categorized as mystical and beyond human rationality, it is not beyond any comprehension.
Einstein has made it possible for us to grasp the most primitive aspect: to sit on a photon, traveling at the speed of light, is to experience no time.
Yesterday and Tomorrow are simultaneous. The future is now. Yesterday is now. Certainly it is mystical to think a consciousness can grasp such a thing - - but it is not impossible to think God has that ability… once you concur that God is “outside of time”.
not necessarily… The problem, is we don’t really have a word for time that is, only time that is measured. I don’t think God is outside of time that is. But I do believe He created time that we measured. He call the period of light day, He assigned us a way to measure time. Prior to that, things still occurred, but time was not measured.
But if one traveled the speed of light and time measurement/advancement stopped for that person, it would still be occurring for the rest of the world. Time dilation experiments show that only the one who is at increasing speeds does it slow for.
I do believe God can stop or slow time, though I am not sure if He needs to. Like a hummingbird of a fly, can move so much faster than its surroundings, time is in effect slower already. In that sense, I think He is outside of measure time, as in time doesn’t effect Him, He doesn’t run out of time, and can’t get things done. He is able to get done what He wants, but He waits on us, and reacts to that. I don’t think God get knocked on His heels, but again, as above, He is ready in anticipation, waiting for the future to happen. Again, you have to read my first post to see how we influence the future of water, but don’t control it, or ‘know’ it, in the sense that a crystal ball can see what will occur, because time is linear and it has already occurred. I don’t believe that.
I don’t believe that.
I see no scripture to support those beliefs. I see many scriptures that God can influence the future greatly, and He is mighty, He does not get knocked on His heels, but I don’t see scripture saying He knows( crystal ball sees) the details of the future.
I don’t think many people would agree with you that God is "not outside of **Time-that-IS.
I’m not even sure you have a workable definition for what this “Time-that-IS” is.
And I certainly don’t think you have a Biblical warrant for that position.
Perhaps you are just looking for ways to make things more interesting to you?
Isaiah 57:15
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy…
Hebrews 2:10
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist…
@still_learning, does “all things” mean all things to you? Or is it limited somehow?
I know this page below doesn’t offer Biblical citations, but I wonder how you can so cheerfully draw the line on what God knows and doesn’t know:
I do have difficulty explaining it yes. But it makes perfect sense to me. The past already happened, the present is now, and the future hasn’t happened yet. Maybe that should not be referred to as ‘time’, maybe as occurrences. You have things that did occur, are occurring, and things that have not occurred yet.
Then you have ‘time’. How the earth revolves around the sun is 1 year, how the quarts resonates as billionth of a second and how the atom clock words in even smaller amounts of ‘time’. If you were to travel the speed of light, your atoms would stop aging, the process at which they break down would cease. But occurring would not stop. You still learn things, you think things, and the world who is traveling at normal speed is still occurring. And that which has not yet occurred, still has not yet occurred. Time can be slowed, stopped, or speed up, but occurring cannot be changed. That past cannot be changed, and the future has not happened yet.
There is no such thing as time travel. Science has not and will not discover it, and the Bible has no mention of it.
I am aware that many don’t agree with me, but I know many also don’t agree with the Christus victor model I subscribe to either. That doesn’t make it wrong.
Why? Name a single verse that speaks against this.
And be careful not to chose a verse that speaks of a generality, but one that uses specifics.
From before the world began, I believe that Jesus was coming to show us the love of God. Before the sun was formed, I believe God was building/growing the universe to amazing precision to allow human life. I also know that tomorrow I will take a shower. It isn’t because I know the future, but because I have great influence over smaller aspects of life and I can influence my life so that occurs.
I know God has un-fathomable influence over the universe, so when He has a goal, or a will, you can bet your dollar that it will be done. There are many verses that support that view.
But are there any verse that say God know/sees through a crystal ball the actual details of events occurring in the future? I don’t see any verses that claim the future is known in that sense, only known as what the ultimate picture will be.
But don’t just berate me, provide me with verses that can correct my thinking.
What if I gave you the keys to my car and said you can go “anywhere”. Can you go anywhere? Can you go to the moon? Was I lying? The same with all things.
I have not been one to subscribe to the ‘omni’ titles of God. No verses from God claim that. This isn’t to say He is weak or I am limiting Him in any way. But I can only claim that which He says. He doesn’t use those terms. He is very powerful, knows more than we can comprehend, but not omni.
Eternity means always has existed, is existing, and will exist. This shows nothing of being able to change the past, or know the future? Other than again, knowing that one will still exist in it, which is more of an influence of the future, rather than crystal ball knowledge of the exact future.
I did provide verses. You must have been eager to read the image of the book page that I posted with them!
What does it mean to “inhabit eternity”"?
I think we posted them seconds apart, but I saw after posting, and edited my post a bit to address a few verses. See above for edit.
Christy, you have clearly expressed the reasons I consider myself fortunate to have chosen a career in science. I believe it was the “way of learning” best suited for me (after having been given a foundation in the Christian Faith) to become closer to God. For you, the best “way of learning” evidently has been a deep and open-minded study of Scripture and the inspiration given to our forebears. Of course this Forum can succeed only if each method complements the other.
As I get closer to the end of my earthly sojourn, the only real regret I have is not making better use of “my human way of learning” to gain more knowledge about my Creator. I can’t help hoping that what awaits me is some form of incarnation–perhaps ‘embodied’ on some other beautiful planet and capable of having experiences that bring me closer to God than those I have enjoyed in this life. This is an unorthodox hope, I know. But is it wrong or sinful?
Al Leo
You seem to deny God the functional capacity to experience time the way a single photon might… and I dare say, you would probably insist that God made that photon.
You are giving “Time” quite a construct … as though it were more real than God.
I have no struggle with the idea that God created the Universe in an instant, containing all the Instants of His creation, having the beginning and the end all held within His perception and His embrace.
I am convinced that Einstein held this view as well.
Your informal description of his limitations makes your version seem more like Zeus than like Yahweh. And even the pagan Hellenistic culture had Aion:
who controlled time and was above the limits of Time.
Ultimately, Christianity took hold of this Aeon (notice the convention of “Aion” to Aeon):
I have a differing opinion on an extremely insignificant issue that you say may or may not be relatable to Zeus. Zeus doesn’t even begin to compare with Yahweh, the King of Kings, the Creator and Provider of man. The love and compassion, mercy, grace, and goodness of God doesn’t sound anything like Zeus.
I don’t even know if time/occurrence is a construct. We can’t measure it, affect it, we have no proof of it ever being affected, there is no math for it. So I don’t even think it is a thing for God to be confined by, it just is what it is. The past happened, the present is now, and the future hasn’t occurred yet.
There are verses like Exodus 32:10 “Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened”
and then
Psalms 106:23 “So he said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.”
I don’t think God’s character ever changes, and again, I don’t think God was caught on His heels unexpectedly by Moses. I think the opposite, I think God ‘saw the pitch’ and was hoping Moses would 'hit the ball that way" like a shortstop on his toes waiting for the ball, ready to jump in front of it. Nothing gets by God, but I still think like a dad, trains their children, hopes/expects them to act a certain way, but is prepared for when they don’t, and will help train/discipline them and prevent serious harm from them from making bad choices.
I see God as being intimate with us, living with us in the present. There is no scripture that God has changed the past, there is no scripture that God knows (crystal ball) the future. Maybe He does know the future, or could actually change the past…His ways are higher than ours, we can’t know Him. I am simply stating that the scriptures doesn’t say that He has ever changed the past or knew the future.
Jonah 3:10 “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.”
Surprised means, caught off guard and unaware, which God is never surprised. Though anticipating and waiting for us to make a choice, with hopeful expectations, I think would be more accurate.
That is the only claim I am making, not what God can or can’t do, but that I don’t see in scripture claims of Him doing such.
This does not make sense - we can only say we “know” by intuition, sense responses, and analytic - we comprehend objects and nowadays we use a method to test what we think we know. This knowledge cannot be the same as divine “knowing” - we cannot make God an object for analysis, nor decide on what God does/knows under our scrutiny.
I cannot make this point any easier to understand - the negative terms all stem from human fallibility and limitations ONLY.
I wrote:
"But it takes a certain grim literalism - - and a heap of pessimism - - to then say: “Thus God might not know these things at all, in the sense that humans mean “knowing”.”
@GJDS writes:
“This does not make sense - we can only say we “know” by intuition, sense responses, and analytic - we comprehend objects and nowadays we use a method to test what we think we know.”
I think, maybe, you are misinterpreting my tone. The sentence I wrote above is an opinion I reject. It was an opinion offered by another writer who is concluding that God doesn’t know some things.
When you write “This does not make sense”, I can only concur.
in our society the judge is an executor of the law, not its creator. Only in God judge and creator are unison. The law on which all existence is spoken is unsurmountable. And unless the creator of that law does not submit himself to his own law he is impotent as he can not even follow his own will himself. That is a problem left to us humans to fail to follow our own will to perfection.
The law for ordered existence is to love thy neighbour like thyself. All systems that fail on that collapse on them-self or get eliminated from the other parts of the superior system to prevent it from being destabilised. Thus any element can do what it wants, but if it does not follow the law it is erased. It is the ingenuity of that word on which hang all the laws and the prophets to be the ultimate truth of our existence. As by the constraint of logic, all effects that we see must be a consequence of the first cause, thus they are all included, or known to the first cause. Those events that rebel against the logic just delete themselves from the gene pool (in the long run)
I’m sorry, but can you dumb that down a little? And maybe quote what you are replying to? I have no clue what any of that means or is trying to convey, way over my head.
it’s not over your head,it’s just clumsily expressed 
The mail should actually appear in thread as to your comment about God not being subject to the law. He actually invented it and practices it. The fundamental law as Jesus explains is that demand to love thy neighbour like thyselves. The key understanding is that it is a third person rule, e.g. thy neighbour like thyself as narcisism was frowned upon in those times and the ultimate act of love, e.g. to lay down ones life for those who are your family, e.g. thyselves, shows that it can not mean “yourself” as to sacrifice yourself is not an act of love for personal self but for the self you identify with like your wife and your family. So in Jesus he shows that he submits himself to that law. Understanding that automatically clarifies that this is not a sacrificial death of a narcistic God who has himself killed to please himself,but he dies for us that we can understand that as he lives on in us we live on in him.
God never says he is going to kill us for our sins as he submits us all to physical death but he states that in eating from the tree of self realisation we will suffer death as the logical consequence of wanting to hold on to a material self. Thus the explanation that God is killing himself to please himself is what makes atheists to refer to God as a wanker, and it is based on an incoherent interpretation of the gospel that is unfortunately shared with a lot of Christians who.also are confused about that.
I am sure I confuse you even more with what I say but that’s the fun of the debate. We are all after understanding the truth and we allmake it rather complicated trying to put it in language
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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