Omnitemporal nature of God

Faith & Science Conversation
,
21

I agree. The Historical / Grammatical Method is a method. I feel it is a primary method, but still a method. We are dealing with an infinite God and cannot put Him in a hermeneutical box.

I would disagree with your analogy to a microwave. The HG is not quick and dirty means of interpretation, but can be extremely detailed study. I feel it is also evolving, recently there has been an increased emphasis on leveraging literally structures in the Bible to help in interpreting Scripture. While literally structures are not new to this method, the emphasis is new.

I prefer cooking with a gas stove. You can cook a hot dog over the flame with a fork and not have to wash any dishes, pots or pans

22

The movie Lucy with Morgan Freeman indicates what God might be as the omnipresent and omnipowerful. The only condition I see is why does this omnipowerful allow Our free behavior to continue to do whatever We want. This causes dis-belief amongst many of Us and then to Behavior of no consequence. Of course We try to make laws but then the laws are disregarded, watch Dateline and see the Behavior of I’m not going to get caught. The belief is the Almighty then knows and will punish, I guess if the person doesn’t get caught by Man.

All I know is when I was younger I saw so much free will behavior in the movies and in living this life. My younger Conscience did cringe at like seeing fornication, seeing divorce, no eternal love, the gambling of trying to make money without work like the Lottery and the Stock Market. Now being older I have become comfortably Num(Pink Floyd).

I also saw the movie of Ted Kaczynski and this movie is about Intellect and psychology. It indicates the will can be broken and converted by whatever means. It does not indicate any existence of a God and man is the only thing in control.

I will say that The New Testament of Christ existence is trying to tell us We need to go back and be Born Again as a Child of Our Father God and have this Conscience again. It is difficult to be of the Young Conscience even though I am Born Again and I still see what I saw when I was Young.

23
  • Shawn, I agree that claims about God are subject to logical evaluation. But haven’t you’ve made two different claims here: first, that the traditional divine attributes are logically problematic, and second, that churchmen invented them to exercise power over humanity?
  • The concepts underlying omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence are already present in the Hebrew Scriptures, long before there was a Christian Church. But leaving their history aside, can you identify a specific logical contradiction entailed by any one of these attributes? Something that we cannot presently comprehend is not necessarily something that is logically impossible.
3 Likes
24

Consider:

  • Omniscience: Psalm 139:1–4 describes God’s intimate knowledge of human thoughts and words.
  • Omnipresence: Psalm 139:7–10 asks where one could flee from God’s presence.
  • Omnipotence: Genesis 18:14 asks whether anything is too difficult for the Lord; Jeremiah 32:17 similarly speaks of God’s unlimited power.

These passages do not, by themselves, establish the precise philosophical definitions of the three attributes. Nevertheless, they make it historically untenable to suggest that Christian churchmen simply invented the underlying concepts to consolidate ecclesiastical power.

2 Likes
25

Coming from a scientific background, I did let one aspect of logic interfere with my acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God. I was letting aspects of the Bible that I did not understand get in the way of what I did understand.

Taking note of what you don’t understand and moving on and accepting what you do does not work well in a scientific discipline. If I were to stand in front of an FDA auditor and explain what in our processes I did not understand, it would be a short and catastrophic audit.

I have found the opposite to be true with the Bible. There was clear consistency in message, enormous amount of fulfilled prophecy that go beyond what human authors could ever put together, yet I was letting what I didn’t understand get it my way. The book of Zechariah took me over the hurdle to accepting the Bible as the Word of God. As I have continued my detailed study of the Bible, the number of aspects I don’t understand or have been able to reconcile has become less , but I view these shortcomings as an issue with my ability and not an issue with the Bible

I do think the Bible is written as logical statements that can be understood using hermeneutical methods taken in the context of the entire bible. I was surprised in my detailed studies how little is actually new in the New Testament. As long as we don’t let what we don’t understand get in the way of what we do.

1 Like
26

I agree with everything you wrote. Atemporal is absolutely the better word but omnipresent is okay in one limited sense. I think maybe we could describe it analogically and relationally as something observed on our end but not something we should tie directly to the nature of God. It would be like a Cambridge change.

Because certainly there is no moment of time that God is not aware of or sustaining. We envision all these moments occurring in some sort of an eternal now for God. Certainly we also believe in a timeless, simple and immutable God that has relations with the world. Again, changes on our end. We would say God doesn’t change by entering time but rather, the temporal world changes in its relation to God. This is like my relationship to a pole I am standing in front of changing. If I move to the right of it my relationship has changed but the pole has not. Or me moving from sunlight to shade. The sun has not changed but my experience or relation to is has.

So calling God omnipresent to me is like saying God “wants” us not to sin. The language of either is imperfect but both are expressing deeper truths analogically from an anthropomorphic perspective.

Vinnie

1 Like
27

The divine attributes come straight from the arguments for God’s existence. The hierarchical cosmological argument requires all potentialities to actualized at their base by something devoid of potentiality. In other words, by Pure Act. Since God actively sustains every object in existence at all times (ex nihilo) in no sense can we say God is not omnipresent. Deductive arguments tell us if God exists, God is omnipresent. Other versions of God are generally more akin to flights of human fancy.

But here is the classical rub: God eternally knows everything that exists because He intimately knows His own essence as the sustaining cause of all things. God is not a brain in the sky surveying things, taking in information. God doesn’t learn because God is Pure Act.

Vinnie

1 Like
28

Very good! Virtually all of classical theism’s divine attributes are found in scripture, including the Old Testament. There is also a more anthropomorphic lens running along side it. The omnis are certainly not Greek corruptions of early Christianity or Judaism. They are simply precise formulations of them using metaphysics and deductive arguments for God’s existence (the light of natural reason).

The reality is scripture describes God from a personal perspective and from a classical perspective and we all have to deal with them (e.g does God repent or change his mind?). I understand the more primitive and anthropomorphic language as teaching things analogically. It’s a description of things on our end. For me, the metaphysics and larger picture of God throughout the entire narrative of scripture supports to classical attributes.

Vinnie

1 Like
29

Yeah, a Bird of Paradise, not to mention humanity.

They didn’t need that, they just needed to monopolise Scripture and how to understand it.

Knowing is not controlling. The more pertinent doctrine would be the one that claims God has a long term plan that He has put into practice. That would seem to be much more insidious.

I have no problem with God knowing what I will do as long as it is not written in stone before I do it.

I am happy to be called non-conformist, the difference being I do not impose it on anyone else or criticise others who do not see my viewpoint.

An alternative to logic? That would be Faith.

Ah the vagaries and misinterpretations of analogies. Would you have preferred me to suggest a “Crock Pot”? I was not interested in how long it took, only that the same process is not universally effective.

You mean by incremental deviations.

:innocent:

Limiting Scripture to its component parts is limiting Scripture, period.

Textural criticism has a tendency to concentrate too much on individual words and meanings. The whole Original Sin from Paul is just that: taking one phrase out of a long discourse and emphasising it beyond its intent.

Scriptural understanding has got so minutia focussed it doesn’t see the forest for the leaves. All this emphasis on Genesis 1-11 ignores the whole principle of learning and revelation by assuming the first understanding was correct. The Disciples couldn’t do it in three years yet people seem to think that humanity was wise and perceptive from day 1. (sorry day 6)

Now there is a wise thought, but it sort of ignores the possibility that human logic may never suffice or comprehend the Divine one.

Richard

30

Don’t forget, the Jewish clergy created many doctrines, and their religion was corrupt after the exile in the city of the devil.

God gave all of his created beings free will, and although God can have knowledge of our thoughts, he doesn’t know exactly what we’re going to do, otherwise he would’ve just created a bunch of puppets.

Each and every one of us carries a spark of life which God gave to us, and therefore we cannot be lost to him because he can always find us, but that does not mean he is personally always present with us, but he did give each of us a guardian spirit, so through his enormous network of angels, we are connected to God and his presence. In other words his angels are with us.

And yes, there is nothing that God cannot do, but as we see in 543AD Justinian removed the logical restriction that God puts on himself and that is he has chosen to be good and he chooses not to be evil. And what the church men have done by removing God‘s ability to be evil, it allows them to do whatever they want to do in his name.

31

You make DTS sound great! What do you mean they believed “there is no conflict with evolution and Genesis”? Are they YEC or some other position on the issue? Might be interesting to hear that one!

32

The bird of paradise evolved on the Hawaiian Islands, far from any predator. Its feathers grew longer and longer until it could not fly, but it still had no predator until man came to take its feathers.

33

Speaking as an ornithologist… No. Birds of paradise did not evolve in Hawaii, they are endemic to New Guinea and Australasia. Many species have long tail feathers but they certainly can fly!

1 Like
34

That’s quite a claim, Shawn, let me tell you.

That’s quite a claim, Shawn, let me tell you (part II).

If I understand you correctly, you’re arguing that the Church claimed an authority over humanity that Christ never granted her. The very same Christ, mind you, who gave Peter (a man, last time I checked) the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and declared that whatever he bound or loosed on earth would be bound or loosed in heaven.

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.” (Matthew 16:9)

You’re certainly entitled to your opinion that God gave His Church no authority over humanity, but I’m not sure that position doesn’t fail on logical grounds very quickly.

35
  • First, my statement does not ignore that possibility. The word “presently” leaves open the possibility that human beings may never comprehend certain things. I made no claim that everything presently incomprehensible will eventually become comprehensible.
  • Second, you appear to conflate logic with comprehension. Logic concerns the validity of reasoning and the consistency of propositions. Comprehension concerns our ability to understand something. They are related, but they are not interchangeable.
    • For example, we might never comprehend how God could exist without a beginning. That limitation does not establish either that God’s beginningless existence is logically impossible or that God operates according to a different logic.
  • Your reference to a possible “Divine” logic also raises a question: Do you mean that God knows truths and relationships beyond our intellectual capacity, or that contradictions in human logic might be true in divine logic? Those are substantially different propositions.
    • The first is entirely compatible with my observation. The second requires an argument, not merely an appeal to divine incomprehensibility.
    • The central point: Our inability to comprehend something is not evidence that it violates logic. Nor is it evidence that logic itself ceases to apply.
1 Like
36

You keep making rather extraordinary claims, Shawn, yet you offer neither extraordinary evidence nor even the most modest evidence to substantiate them.

There’s a fundamental difference between saying that God could lie, deceive, or commit evil but always chooses not to, and saying that God cannot do these things because they are incompatible with His nature.

And the Bible is explicit about which of these two positions is correct.

Hebrews 6:18: “God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.”

The Bible doesn’t say that God doesn’t want to lie, or that He has decided never to lie. He says that lying is impossible for God.

Now, lying is obviously a form of moral evil, so we already have an explicit biblical example of something morally wrong that God is incapable of doing.

Then there’s James 1:13: “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone”.

There’s an obvious difference between being susceptible to temptation but always resisting it, and being incapable of being tempted by evil in the first place.

Scripture attributes the latter condition to God.

But I think the argument becomes even stronger when we consider what Scripture says about God’s very nature.

In 1 John 1:5, we read: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

John doesn’t merely say that God acts like light. He says that God is light, and that there is absolutely no darkness in Him.

In the context of the passage, light and darkness clearly carry a moral significance, referring to holiness, sin, and fellowship with God, so God’s goodness isn’t presented merely as the result of an uninterrupted series of morally correct decisions, it is connected to what God Himself is.

37

I would say there is scriptural backing for such a remark.

Also with Scriptural Backing

but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles

The logic or the Passion would defy most human logic.

i never said that they were interchangable.

However, in terms of understanding, our minds have to join the dots in a way that our minds will accept. Somethings are incomprehensible because we cannot put ourselves in that position or, more often do not see the logic or reason to do so. There would seem to be a difference between what you call logic, and the thinking process, or maybe you are denying that our reasoning or understanding can be devoid of all logic. Even Faith has a logic of its own ut it denies material or scientific logic. However materialistic or Scientism are not the only valid logical reasonings.

I have a feeling that you cannot see the logic of much of my posting, but concentrate on the minutia or contradictions to your own views, knowledge and logic.

Richard

38
  • You say Scripture supports the proposition that contradictions under human logic might nevertheless be true under divine logic. What specific logical contradiction do you believe Paul establishes in 1 Corinthians 1:23?
1 Like
39

Agreed.

We do not know what time “is”, but we can say a few things about it. It marks the ratio of physical events, one lifetime to seventy orbits, a gazillion electron energy state transitions to a standard second. It has direction at the macroscopic level from cause and effect and entropy. It’s pace varies under gravity and runs slower on your floor than the tabletop. It’s passage does not agree between observers moving relative to each other.

These are counter to the phenomenological intuition of a universal clock, but are attributes which are strictly physical. There is no concept of time that exists independent of the material. Thus, the temporal cannot apply to a view of God as transcendent and immaterial, because time has no meaning in a realm beyond creation.

2 Likes
40

I think you meant Matt 16:19. This is adjacent to my point. The Roman popes have claimed to be the vicar of God, and committed atrocities in His name, tell their followers to do it in the name of god. Yes, they bound on earth many things which remain bound in heaven. Jesus told us to be wary of the priests who lead us away from heaven. (Matt 23:9-13) He tells us to love our enemies, not kill them.

2 Likes