Septextura
Well-known member
How do you maintain libertarian free will if God's providence has accounted for the acts of every creature?
Foreknowledge: How Does God Know?
- Thread starter Sketo
- Start date
How do you maintain libertarian free will if God's providence has accounted for the acts of every creature?
Septextura
Well-known member
He's probably trying to say God's will is immutable and His decrees noncontingent. They don't depend on the creature's will or anything for that matter. He doesn't need to "look in the corridors of time" to plan His moves. God does what He wants perfectly as a Sovereign. Does the potter ask the clay anything?
T
TomFL
Guest
What do you mean by accounted for ?
I believe he knows How he knows I don't know . I do not imagine any puny mortal could explain God
However In case you forgot just a couple of weeks ago you were calling me a Molinist now you swing 180 degrees in the opposite direction
sounds like throwing something against the wall to see what sticks
T
TomFL
Guest
Sketo has given previous rational for a belief that he may hold that god cannot know what he hasd not determined
and he is not alone
Septextura
Well-known member
It means your free choice, unless allowed, will be annulled by some other act from providence in order for God to steer history where he wants it. For example, you want to rob a bank and live comfortably. God won't change your mind and violate your free will, but He will have a car on the next street crossing cripple you for the rest of days, bound to a motorized wheelchair. That way you won't hurt the bank teller who's pregnant with a baby that God has foreseen to become a great Christian preacher.
You said you hold to Middle Knowledge. I assumed you owned it and embraced Molinism, which sits in the middle between Calvinism and OT.
Septextura
Well-known member
Sounds like a a badly worded rebuttal against claims of God's decrees being contingent on the free will of created beings. Or that Multiverse theory.
God is not limited to His Creation.
T
TomFL
Guest
Middle knowledge is a small piece of Molinism
Septextura
Well-known member
I assume it means God didn't calculate potential outcomes of a free will creature and decided to act providentially by allowing or going against them. God doesn't need to know potential outcomes (contingencies) because everything absolutely everything that happens has been preordained to be so before the foundation of the world.
Lamentations 3
37 Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?
38 Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?
ReverendRV
Well-known member
Fair enough; you got me on that one...
brightfame52
Well-known member
You are misrepresenting the poster. He affirms everything God knows,God determined, and there is no such thing as God knowing something what He has not determined. Thats your belief, that God knows things He did not determined, which is a false belief and makes Gods Knowledge ,at least some of it, learned from His creature.
preacher4truth
Well-known member
This is where the rubber meets the road: either we trust GOD (think of that everyone, we are talking about GOD) and that HE is in complete control, being GOD...or we DON'T.
Many today spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to emasculate and domesticate very GOD and cannot accept or believe that as GOD HE is in control of everything, something and someone that they should completely trust!
Septextura
Well-known member
But Flowers said a great God would let creatures have LFW. A small God would predetermine everything. By that logic Open Theism has the greatest God.
preacher4truth
Well-known member
Yes, and who is he to place criterion on God in order for God to be God, or a good God, or a small God or a big God?
Oh, that's right, I keep forgetting, it's the Romans 9:20-21 man.
T
TomFL
Guest
He believes God cannot know what he has not determined
That is the rationalism of open Theism
I believe you might have a similar belief
Well is it so ?
Bob Carabbio
Well-known member
preacher4truth
Well-known member
We do know in all actuality, it's that we cannot comprehend it.
How does God know the future? He lives both inside and outside of time, and has revealed His knowledge of all things past, present, future; Isaiah 46:10.
What is the ground of God's knowledge? His omniscience, His Person. Many have drawn out this doctrine for us, yet we cannot comprehend it, but, we go by what He has revealed.
How does God know what He knows? Because of His eternality, righteousness, perfection, glory, and attributes.
T
TomFL
Guest
So are you going to spoil that by saying there are some things God does not know
I wouldn't
preacher4truth
Well-known member
Your antagonism and straw man arguments are callow behaviors.
I'm not going to be drawn into a long, silly, asinine, day by day by day argument with you the heretic as others are on here. It's not worth my time, go find another cove to troll in.
Septextura
Well-known member
There's nothing else to know regarding the creation other than what God decreed and created. There are no contingencies due to creatures doing what they want. There's no plan B. God doesn't learn anything new from the creation. It is exactly how He wants it to be. Literally as a potter making a clay pot. Really simple.
God cannot know what he has not determined.
The wording can come off confusing but actually we are overthinking it.
T
TomFL
Guest
Except your idea that God has determined all the sin in the world is totally unbiblical
James 1:13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
James 1:14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
James 1:15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
James 1:16 ¶ Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
1Cor. 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
1John 2:16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
Jer. 19:5 —ESV
“and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind—”