Friday, September 24, 2010

But I Want To Know How

In the comments of my previous post, Arminianism in Time, drwyaman, J.C. Thibodaux, Brennon (Bossmanham), and ἐΚΚΛΗΣίΑ have all weighed in to give Arminian or Molinist responses. (And to give the other side, Dominic Bnonn Tennant has also responded against some of those comments.) Now not all of the Arminians/Molinists listed above have contributed equally, and this post is not a direct response to any of them per se. Instead, this post is making a general response as well as pointing out certain things that I believe have been missed in the discussion. So I’m using them more as a launching pad then a foil.

Once again, I want to examine the counterfactual argument. As I originally put it:
“God knows what a man will freely choose. If the man chooses X, God knows that the man will choose X. But if the man would have chosen Y, then God would have known that the man chose Y instead. Therefore, the man’s choice is still free and self-determined, despite the fact that God knows what it will be.”
The angle I want to approach this issue is slightly different from last time. I want to look into the mechanics of how God knows what He knows. The counterfactual argument is actually making an argument about omniscience, and so looking into this is important. How is it that God knows what He knows?

ἐΚΚΛΗΣίΑ said (although from the way the comment was structured, this may actually be a quote from William Lane Craig—I couldn’t tell):
The point is, that just because something is known to be true, doesn't mean that knowledge itself, makes it true.
Now it is certainly true that just because something is known to be true, that does not mean that knowledge of the thing is what makes it true. However, this type of response is only relevant to time-bound creatures. That is, we understand the truth of this statement because we learn. And we know that how we know something is independent of the veracity of the thing itself.

But this is disanalogous from the way God knows what He knows. First of all, in classical Christian philosophy, God is eternal and omniscient, which means He never learns anything at all. He has eternally known everything that is possible to be known (my preferred definition of “omniscience”). Therefore, right off the bat we’re running into problems with the above argument, as stated by ἐΚΚΛΗΣίΑ.

Suppose that you know a specific fact, but that you never learned that fact. You’ve always known that fact. By what basis do you know that fact? You cannot appeal to “I learned this fact” or “I saw this fact as it occurred” because you’ve always known the fact. Indeed, your knowledge of the fact, in such a structure, must be independent of any manner of learning.

So let’s give a more specific example. Suppose I say, “I have always known, since the instant I became aware of anything, that on September 25, 2010 [tomorrow, at the time I write this] I will eat chocolate chip cookies after dinner.” How would you examine that claim? How would you verify whether what I have said constitutes knowledge or not? I daresay everyone would deny that my statement actually is knowledge, because none of us has the experience of knowing something without having learned it.

But let’s suppose this is a genuine occurrence. How would it be possible? The only way that it would be possible for me to have always known that I would eat cookies after dinner tomorrow is if the basis of my knowledge is coextensive with my own existence. To use truth-maker terminology (although I’m not completely sold on truth-maker metaphysics), the truth-maker that determines my knowledge of eating chocolate cookies tomorrow must exist at least as long as the entire duration of my existence, in order for me to have always known this fact.

The same thing would be true of God. If God knows that I will eat chocolate chip cookies tomorrow (and, if that is a true statement, then God’s omniscience requires that He does know this), then the truth-maker for that statement must be eternal. Why? Because God doesn’t learn. And therefore, the truth-maker for this knowledge must be eternal like God is eternal.

This immediately rules out any created thing or action as being a truth-maker for God’s knowledge. The only option that remains is that God Himself is the truth-maker. Which ultimately is saying, “God knows that X will occur because God is the truth-maker for X occur.
How could that happen? Well, Biblically we know that God decrees what will happen. He foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. He has declared what will happen, and then He does it. In other words, it seems that Calvinism is the inevitable result of a belief in the eternal omniscience of God. The only way to avoid determinism or compatibilism is to assert that God is capable of learning—a denial of omniscience.

64 comments:

  1. If God is in time, and suppose t1 is the present moment, then what is it that makes p, a proposition about what I will do at t2, true? Propositions are true if they correspond to reality; but what reality is that?

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  2. Hi Peter,

    I enjoyed your Arminianism in Time post and agreed with most of it - so I haven't been following the discussion. However, I think this post goes off track.

    "The only way that it would be possible for me to have always known that I would eat cookies after dinner tomorrow is if the basis of my knowledge is coextensive with my own existence."

    Why? Why couldn't the statement "on September 25, 2010 I will eat chocolate chip cookies after dinner" simply correspond with and be based on the event on September 25?

    Worse, if it corresponds with something other than the even on September 25, then it's not knowledge of the event (or a truth about the event). Rather it's a truth about something other than the event.

    In a similar way, God's decree/determinism does not explain how God knows the future. His knowledge becomes of Himself and His plans and power to exicute those plans rather than the future event. You said it yourself:

    This immediately rules out any created thing or action as being a truth-maker for God’s knowledge. The only option that remains is that God Himself is the truth-maker. Which ultimately is saying, “God knows that X will occur because God is the truth-maker for X occur.”

    This sounds like Aristole's concept of god - one in which god cannot know about the world and can only contempate himself.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  3. Dan asked:
    ---
    Why? Why couldn't the statement "on September 25, 2010 I will eat chocolate chip cookies after dinner" simply correspond with and be based on the event on September 25?
    ---

    Show me how anything that exists in September 25, 2010 can be an eternal truth-bearer.

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  4. The predication of God's knowledge is indeed the quickest death blow to Arminianism, Catholicism, Molinism, and many other purportedly Christian systems. If God's knowledge is extrinsically contingent - whether with regards to a choice made in possible world, little old me, or a "Platonic plenum" (as Steve Hays poignantly put it) - He simply cannot be eternally omniscient.

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  5. Peter,

    Let me run and get my time machine. :-)

    Simply put, future events are the only thing that could serve as the basis of truth for propostions about future events. That is self-evident. So the options are 1) deny future tense propostions can be true or 2) allow that future events can be the basis of truth for propostions about future events.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  6. Ryan,

    Peter is implicly saying God can only know Himself and cannot know us. He seem to be the one challanging God's omniscience.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  7. "Peter is implicly saying God can only know Himself and cannot know us."

    I think you need to reread the post. What Peter is saying is quite orthodox:

    //If God knows that I will eat chocolate chip cookies tomorrow (and, if that is a true statement, then God’s omniscience requires that He does know this), then the truth-maker for that statement must be eternal. Why? Because God doesn’t learn. And therefore, the truth-maker for this knowledge must be eternal like God is eternal.

    This immediately rules out any created thing or action as being a truth-maker for God’s knowledge. The only option that remains is that God Himself is the truth-maker. Which ultimately is saying, “God knows that X will occur because God is the truth-maker for X occur.”

    How could that happen? Well, Biblically we know that God decrees what will happen. He foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. He has declared what will happen, and then He does it. In other words, it seems that Calvinism is the inevitable result of a belief in the eternal omniscience of God.//

    If God is eternally omniscient, He is such necessarily because He knows Himself: He knows His own nature, His own capabilities, and His own eternal decree. Only as the ultimate cause of all things - only if God's knowledge is predicated on His nature and will - can He be eternally omniscient.

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  8. To Dan:

    Future events can't be the truth-makers for propositions about your behavior because that requires future events exist and hence the future is real.

    But if the future is just as real as the present moment, then this requires us to think of you as a four-dimensional object.

    But if you're a four-dimensional object, with temporal parts, then you can't be said to have free will. A thing has free will (at the very least) if it can act; but a four-dimensional object doesn't act.

    Its temporal parts, perhaps, may be said to act; but you can't be one of those temporal parts because you would only exist at one time then. If anything, you would be the whole collection of temporal parts; but then it makes no sense to say that you have free will.

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  9. Ryan,

    Saying God knows Himself is OK - saying He can only know Himself and cannot know things outside of Himself is not.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  10. Steven,

    Future events can't be the truth-makers for propositions about your behavior because that requires future events exist

    I don't think there's a need for such as strick interpretation of truth-makers. But if we go with that, we must also deny future tense propostions can be true.

    I am not very optimistic that a conherent B-theory of time can be articulated. But if one gives up on coherence, why not just say the B-theory of time is in conflict with LFW and yet they co-exist?

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  11. GODISMYJUDGE SAID:

    “Worse, if it corresponds with something other than the even on September 25, then it's not knowledge of the event (or a truth about the event). Rather it's a truth about something other than the event.”

    Dan is simply recycling the same discredited argument he’s been pedaling for years.

    To know the future is to know what will happen. That’s the relevant correspondence.

    I’ve corrected Dan on this years ago. But because he doesn’t have a decent argument for his position, he argues in bad faith.

    “In a similar way, God's decree/determinism does not explain how God knows the future.”

    Of course it does. It explains how God can know what will happen. And that’s what it means to know the future–knowing what will happen.

    But Dan cuts corners on the truth because he lacks an honest argument for his position. His overriding objection is to reject Calvinism by any means necessary.

    “This sounds like Aristole's concept of god - one in which god cannot know about the world and can only contempate himself.”

    To the contrary, The Bible itself grounds God’s knowledge of the future in his foreordination of the future. Even a major Arminian commentator admits that connection:

    “There follow in these two verses [Isa 46:10-11] a series of three participles that both substantiate the claim to uniqueness and, at the same time, flow from that claim…Here the three participles make a direct link between predictive prophecy (declaring the outcome at the start) and divine intervention in history (calling from the east a bird of prayer)…As several commentators (e.g., Young) have noted, the three participles move from general to particular to specific. In the first instance, God tells in general what will happen in the future. He can do so because the future is fully shaped by his own plans and wishes. This is the same point that was made in ch. 14 concerning Assyria 9vv24-27). Assyria’s plans for Judah were really of little import. It is the Lord’s plans for Assyria to which that great nation should have paid attention (see also 22:11; 37:26)…The repetition [46:11] serves to emphasize the unshakable connection between promise and the performance, between divine talk and divine action…This parallelism underlines again that the reason God can tell what is going to happen is that what happens is only an outworking of his eternal purposes,” J. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66 (Eerdmans 1998), 236-37.

    But Dan doesn’t really care what Scripture says. Dan begins with his hatred of Calvinism, then works back from that.

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  12. "I don't think there's a need for such as strick interpretation of truth-makers. But if we go with that, we must also deny future tense propostions can be true."

    I know; but what's your point? You said a future proposition must have a future event as a truth-maker. Of course, if it is true, it has to stand in a relation with some truth-maker; if it is true *now*, then it has to do that *now*; but if the future event doesn't yet exist, then there is nothing to make it true.

    "I am not very optimistic that a conherent B-theory of time can be articulated. But if one gives up on coherence, why not just say the B-theory of time is in conflict with LFW and yet they co-exist?

    I don't know why B-theory is incoherent, but forget about that. You can't just say that eternalism and LFW are both compatible. I gave you an argument that they're not.

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  13. To know the future is to know what will happen. That’s the relevant correspondence.

    The relevant correspondence? Your abandoning the correspondence theory of truth - the very basis of your criticism of other positions.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  14. Steven,

    You simply repeated yourself.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  15. it was written:

    The same thing would be true of God. If God knows that I will eat chocolate chip cookies tomorrow (and, if that is a true statement, then God’s omniscience requires that He does know this), then the truth-maker for that statement must be eternal. Why? Because God doesn’t learn. And therefore, the truth-maker for this knowledge must be eternal like God is eternal.

    I will relate a true series of events now that I experienced many years ago. It was 1982. I was attending a conference with other men from around the Unites States and other parts of the world and some of these men had unique spiritual charism in evidence at work within their spirits.

    From within my organization about 16 months earlier a man, one of our elders in Guatemala was elevated to that nation's presidency. His name, Ephraim Rios Monte. In attendance at this conference were his secretary of State, Chief of Staff and his Pastor. These three men were in transit to Washington D.C. to meet with President Reagan. They were invited to come to this conference first and speak to this gathering of men.

    At the end of their speaking, my Pastor asked these men and their wives to come to the front of the room and then asked all the other men to gather around so a group prayer could be prayed with the laying on of hands in sending them in God's Name to Washington.

    As we gathered around a man spoke up and said he had a "Word" of God for these three men and more particularly for the President they represented and for the Nation of Guatemala. Silence filled the air as he was then allowed to speak his prophecy. During his speaking a man standing not 6 inches from me began to tremble. He then asked the man to be silent as he too had a Word of God for the President of Guatemala.

    The first man's words went something like this: "God is about to bring peace and prosperity and blessing upon the nation".

    The second man stopped the first man from speaking and then said, first, he does not speak for the Lord and second, this is what the Lord says that "I see", "I see bloodshed, I see men dying on the steps of the Palace and it is being surrounded by men with weapons of war!"

    Immediately there fell a deep sorrow over my heart and soul. It was thick in the air. My Pastor then looked to several prophets of my organization and each of them then spoke similar Words of the Lord.

    We began weeping and there was some deep uttering going on as we prayed for these men and their mission to Washington.

    About six months to the day, one of the men in attendance at that conference and I were traveling together. We stopped at a private club where we could play racket ball and spend some time sitting in a steam sauna and get refreshed. During our time in the sauna I got up and went out to get some cold sodas for the both of us. I did. As I stood at the front counter waiting for the drinks I looked up at a T.V. set that was hanging up high and out from the wall. CNN was operating and this was the channel that was on. There was breaking news coming over the wire at that moment and then there was a live feed to a reporter who was reporting live from Guatemala City. I stood there looking, listening and watching this live feed as it came over the T.V.. I could see this man was standing from a position down the street from the Presidential Palace in Guatemala City. It was a familiar site to me as I had been down there myself at that very location; and I was stunned "to see" every one of those words of Prophecy I heard just 6 months earlier come to pass and it was happening right before my eyes!

    Five men spoke that day at the conference when we were gathered around those men and their wives praying for them sending them out as we laid hands on them when praying. One spoke peace and safety about theses men's futures and the futures of the President of Guatemala and that country. Four other men spoke from the Heart and Mind of “omniscience” His Truth making!

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  16. Dan, I misunderstood what you wrote in your post; that is my mistake, and my excuse is that it was early morning for me.

    A second try:

    "I don't think there's a need for such as strick interpretation of truth-makers. But if we go with that, we must also deny future tense propostions can be true."

    You're right that if the B-theory is true, then there can't be tensed propositions. But that seems to be an uninteresting problem to bring up; why does this matter exactly? To say that future tensed propositions don't exist is not to say that there are no propositions which are true about the future relative to now.

    And I don't know what you mean by "strick interpretation of truth-makers". Truth-making is a relation between a proposition and some concrete thing; if there is no concrete thing in existence that makes a proposition true, then it isn't true by truth-maker theory. What "looser" interpretation are you suggesting?

    "I am not very optimistic that a conherent B-theory of time can be articulated. But if one gives up on coherence, why not just say the B-theory of time is in conflict with LFW and yet they co-exist?"

    I don't see what is incoherent about a B-theory of time like eternalism. I am also not suggesting one "give up" on coherence.

    I said that if propositions about the future are to be true, then there must be some future fact that exists that makes them true. If this is so, then this is inconsistent with our having free will.

    I'll note also that the B-theory is not the only sort of view where the future is real; there are A-theories according to which the future is real (shrinking block theory) but in any case, my point was that *any* view where the future is real requires us to think of concrete particulars as space-time worms, and that is inconsistent with free will.

    I am not sure where you response to my general argument is supposed to be.

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  17. "...saying He can only know Himself and cannot know things outside of Himself is not."

    To what statement do you refer?

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  18. Peter said "However, this type of response is only relevant to time-bound creatures. That is, we understand the truth of this statement because we learn. And we know that how we know something is independent of the veracity of the thing itself."

    Peter, this is an Epistemological claim that is certainly not without controversy in its own right.

    The assertion was: P knows Q to be true -> Q is true is the fallacy of modal logic. The presupposition you reject is that it is a fallacy whether or not P is God.

    Your point about temporal beings raises a couple of interesting points though:

    *How do we (temporal beings) 'know' sound reasoning from unsound reasoning (fallacy)?
    *Is the character of God exempt from 'our' understanding of fallacies (presumably because his ways are not our ways)?
    *How do YOU know that that this type of logic is only relevant to time bound creatures?

    This last issue, in particular, is subject to the same criticism that you suggest: Do we know that this type of logic only applies to time bound creatures because we LEARN it?

    In response, perhaps an Epistemological position might serve to further discussion. Being consistent with William Lane Craig since that was the context of the original post:

    All logic and reason exists apart from man, objectively in the mind of God; he is the source of all reason. Accordingly, our common recognition of sound an unsound reasoning is God given. [James 1:17]

    This means that when we assert, for example, P cannot equal not-P we haven't obtained knowledge by experience (how do we know that for example? Isn't it self evident?).

    Granting your implication that God is not temporal, that He is not bound by time, and that His knowledge is perfect; it has not been shown that because of God's perfection and atemporality, we should start to treat even a single fallacy as a non-fallacy just because we are considering God. (A married batchleor is as much a contradiction where God is concerned as man).

    (Offering a single comment on the hiddenness of God: the God of the Bible is not the hidden God of the mystery religions of Baal, Persia or Rome. Rather he is decidedly the opposite; the God of revelation, whose properties can be known in all that he does, his creation, expressed in the character of his only begotten Son (who supremely exhibited logic and reason)).

    Accordingly, if we try to understand his character despite our limitations, it is legitimate to concluded that when the Bible says of Him that he is without shade or variation [James 1:17], that property is true within time, outside of time, and between temporality and atemporality.)

    For the sake of argument, lets say that although you might grant that this fallacy of modal logic applies even to God (knowledge of the truth condition of X does not establish the necessity of X being true), but are still bothered by the claim God's foreknowledge is not the cause of X being true (perhaps because of a very high view of God's sovereignty), it does not mean that X cannot be true for a thousand other reasons, such as God decreed X to be true.

    It only means that foreknowledge itself is not what establishes the necessity of the truth condition. This is really the crux of the debate, for it is a much stronger statement to say that "God purposed X to be true -> X is true" (substituting "purposed" for foreknew).

    This last argument isn't a fallacy but its theological basis is much more controversial, far less evident, and likely impossible to sustain without an entirely new systemic theology.

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  19. Peter wrote:
    "Now it is certainly true that just because something is known to be true, that does not mean that knowledge of the thing is what makes it true. However, this type of response is only relevant to time-bound creatures. That is, we understand the truth of this statement because we learn. And we know that how we know something is independent of the veracity of the thing itself.

    Peter, with the utmost respect, surely you're not saying that there is more than one type of truth; truth as it applies to mortals, and truth as it applies to immortals?

    This statement above is an epistemology statement that is hardly itself certain.

    For example, what does it matter that we learn to understand the truth any statement; we either arrive at a right knowledge, or our knowledge is defective, however we arrived at it.

    Because we learn to recognize fallacies, is our knowledge of them defective? Why would this one not appliy to God? How are we to understand the truth of your own statement above, also through learning?. Does that change the nature of it's truth?

    Though God's ways are not our ways, [James 1:17] suggests that the God who has revealed himself in creation, and in the expression of his Son, is without shade or variation, temporally, atemporally and between temporality and atemporality.

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  20. GODISMYJUDGE SAID:

    "The relevant correspondence? Your abandoning the correspondence theory of truth - the very basis of your criticism of other positions."

    Are you responding to me or Steven Nemes?

    And how does my statement abandon the correspondence theory of truth? To begin with, there are variants on the correspondence theory, but one way to put it is that God knows the future if God's belief about the future matches a fact about the future or something "real."

    If we operate with that definition, then God knows the future because what he believes will happen will in fact happen. Moreover, his belief is grounded in a causal connection between the reality of the decree and the decreed outcome.

    Seems to be right in line with the correspondence theory to me.

    I also notice that you disregard my exegetical argument.

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  21. Steven,

    Me: "I don't think there's a need for such as strict interpretation of truth-makers. But if we go with that, we must also deny future tense propositions can be true."

    Thee: You're right that if the B-theory is true, then there can't be tensed propositions. But that seems to be an uninteresting problem to bring up; why does this matter exactly?...

    My statement was broader than that. If future events cannot serve as the basis of truth for propositions about future events, then propositions about future events cannot be true.

    And I don't know what you mean by "strict interpretation of truth-makers". Truth-making is a relation between a proposition and some concrete thing; if there is no concrete thing in existence that makes a proposition true, then it isn't true by truth-maker theory. What "looser" interpretation are you suggesting?

    One in which future events may serve as the basis of truth for propositions about future events.

    I don't see what is incoherent about a B-theory of time like eternalism.

    Eternalism uses the relations of past, present and future while it undercuts the only basis for such relations: an absolute now. Additionally, they say the future exits but does not exist - without a coherent distinction.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  22. Ryan,

    Generally, the last 4 paragraphs of the opening post, but specifically this: This immediately rules out any created thing or action as being a truth-maker for God’s knowledge.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  23. Steve,

    In the correspondence theory of truth, truthbearers correspond to truthmakers and truthmakers logically precede and are the basis for truthbearers. But you deny anything external to God may logically precede or be the basis for His knowledge so you implicitly deny anything external to God may be a truthmaker. Thus propositions about things external to God are not true do to their correspondence with things external to God.

    You could say they are true in some other way, but in that case you would have abandoned the correspondence theory of truth.

    God knows the future if God's belief about the future matches a fact about the future or something "real."

    I am not sure which specific fact you are referring to. God’s decree? If so, God’s decree is not *about* the future – it’s about multiple possible futures. If I talk *about* an elephant and call him grey, the elephant logically precedes and is the basis for the truth of my statements. God’s decree isn’t about the future in this sense; it’s not like there is one and only one future that logically precedes God’s decree. Rather God’s decree is about multiple possible futures (which do precede His decree).

    This should be especially clear, given your denial that future events may be the basis of truth for propositions about future events.

    God knows the future because what he believes will happen will in fact happen.

    Maybe you meant something other fact besides God’s decree because this seems to contradict your view that future events cannot be truth makers.

    I also notice that you disregard my exegetical argument.

    I thought you were just pointing out that some Arminians agreed with you (i.e. just noting his opionion).

    Oswalt’s conclusions seem just barely beyond the text.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  24. GODISMYJUDGE SAID:

    "Thus propositions about things external to God are not true do to their correspondence with things external to God."

    Of course they're true to their extramental referents. They are true beliefs about the extramental referent, and, what is more, they ensure the outcome.

    "I am not sure which specific fact you are referring to. God’s decree? If so, God’s decree is not *about* the future – it’s about multiple possible futures."

    Wrong. God's *omniscience* is about multiple possible futures (among other things), but his *decree* is about one possible future to the exclusion of all others–the possible future which he chooses to realize.

    "If I talk *about* an elephant and call him grey, the elephant logically precedes and is the basis for the truth of my statements."

    God's exemplary idea of a gray elephant is true to the elephant, for God thinks of that color in relation to that elephant.

    And if God has a belief about a concrete gray elephant, that belief is true because the referent will match the belief.

    Keep in mind, too, that while God has beliefs about the future, future events aren't future to God (ontologically speaking).

    "I thought you were just pointing out that some Arminians agreed with you (i.e. just noting his opionion). Oswalt’s conclusions seem just barely beyond the text."

    To the contrary, he explicated the connection between God's will and God's foreknowledge in the Isaian text.

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  25. "My statement was broader than that. If future events cannot serve as the basis of truth for propositions about future events, then propositions about future events cannot be true."

    This is not true. Any fact can do the truth-making job, just so long as the existence of the is logically prior and entails the truth of the proposition. It doesn't need to be what the proposition is "about", really. I wanna hear an argument from you.

    "One in which future events may serve as the basis of truth for propositions about future events."

    I don't see how that's supposed to be a "looser" interpretation of truth-maker theory.

    Also, you do a good job of avoiding the real arguments and following pointless rabbit trails. I've proposed an argument to the effect that if future events serve as truth-makers for propositions about the future, and hence are real, then there is no free will because four-dimensionalism is true. Rather than avoid my argument, where is your response to it?

    "Eternalism uses the relations of past, present and future while it undercuts the only basis for such relations: an absolute now. Additionally, they say the future exits but does not exist - without a coherent distinction."

    You're wrong about eternalism. Eternalists say that the relations "earlier than" and "later than" hold, but these do not requrie an absolute present.

    Why are you arguing for the incoherence of eternalism when you don't seem to know what the theory consists in?

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  26. This immediately rules out any created thing or action as being a truth-maker for God’s knowledge.

    Indeed—which suggests its truth. If a created thing were a truth-maker for God's knowledge, then parts of God's knowledge would be contingent. That is to say, God would learn about created things only logically after their obtaining.

    That's inconsistent with the orthodox conception of God as wholly non-contingent. Which I thought Arminianism upheld.

    It also logically leads to open theism, since God could not foreknow any facts about the universe logically prior to creating it. If creation itself is the truth-maker for God's (fore)knowledge of creation, then God would have to create the universe before he could foreknow it.

    Is that the orthodox Arminian position? Because I thought that was open theism?

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  27. I don't see why the orthodox conception of God includes his being entirely non-contingent. Does this mean that even his knowledge is necessary? If his knowledge is necessary, then every truth is a necessary truth -- but clearly there are contingent truths.

    Perhaps you are using "necessary" and "contingent" in a different than normal way?

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  28. "It also logically leads to open theism, since God could not foreknow any facts about the universe logically prior to creating it. If creation itself is the truth-maker for God's (fore)knowledge of creation, then God would have to create the universe before he could foreknow it."

    This doesn't follow.

    I take Open Theism (OT) to consist at least in this:

    (OT) For any future-tense proposition about the action of some libertarianly-free agent S, if S acts freely at the relevant time, then God does not know p before that time.

    I don't know how you would derive something like OT from the thesis that God only knows future tense propositions about the contingent universe after creating it.

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  29. Hello again Peter,

    As I alluded to on the other thread, a possible solution is that God created in such a manner that He would have access to our base factors of self-determination abstracted from time. Self-determination in such a scenario would be independent to some degree (libertarian), but still quantifiable by God as to what choices it would result in when instantiated in time (in other words, our chocies would be certain, but not divinely necessary). The "truth-maker" in this case would then be one's own self-determination; it would be a facet of the person that is timeless, though not eternal in the same sense that God is (i.e. uncaused / uncreated), since something being timeless doesn't necessarily preclude a meta-time logical sequence.

    If my self-determination is abstract from time, then God has always (in terms of time) known what I will do and choose in the world He creates; that is to say, there was never a time proper in which He didn't know it, and thus He doesn't 'learn' in any traditional sense as process of time. The ramification of my suggestion is that God's knowledge of what I will do is still based upon my self-determination as a contingent factor(s), and thus would imply God deriving knowledge about me from me, which you indicate is problematic to the idea of omniscience. When the alternative is considered carefully you may see why I disagree:

    If the specifics of God's knowledge are eternal as God Himself and innate to His existence, then such a view really leaves God with no choices between options either. So given the subject of our salvation through Christ for instance, if God's knowledge that we will be saved is innate to His being, then He literally has no choice but to create us and save us -else falsify His eternally innate knowledge. Thus such a view of God's knowledge view would reduce to the Potter having no freedom either. It would also apparently downplay His aseity as well, since an essential aspect of His being that even He has no control over (the innate knowledge of man's existence) would be dependent upon man, meaning that He would have need of man existing to truly be God.

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  30. Steve,

    "If I talk *about* an elephant and call him grey, the elephant logically precedes and is the basis for the truth of my statements."

    God's exemplary idea of a gray elephant is true to the elephant, for God thinks of that color in relation to that elephant.

    And if God has a belief about a concrete gray elephant, that belief is true because the referent will match the belief.


    This is my basic point. Your theory of truth is 180 degrees off from the correspondence theory, switching the logical priority of propositions and the referent.

    Anyone who compares Oswalt’s comments to the passage will see he goes slightly beyond the text.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  31. Steven,

    Any fact can do the truth-making job, just so long as the existence of the is logically prior and entails the truth of the proposition. It doesn't need to be what the proposition is "about", really.

    Under the correspondence theory of truth; it does. The truth bearers must correspond to the truth bearers. If you think deduction (or entailment) adds to truth you are heading towards the coherence theory of truth. But in that case you don’t need truth makers.

    I don't see how that's supposed to be a "looser" interpretation of truth-maker theory.

    One theory allows future events to be truth makers, the other does not - so one is looser than the other.

    Also, you do a good job of avoiding the real arguments and following pointless rabbit trails. I've proposed an argument to the effect that if future events serve as truth-makers for propositions about the future, and hence are real, then there is no free will because four-dimensionalism is true. Rather than avoid my argument, where is your response to it?

    My response is (and has been) do deny the version of the truth maker theory you are advocating.

    But I do grant that if it were true, freewill would not exist.

    Eternalists say that the relations "earlier than" and "later than" hold, but these do not requrie an absolute present.

    It’s true that’s what they say, but do they make sense to you? They don’t to me. Please provide a cohearent basis for the distinction between earlier and later other than an absolute now.

    Why are you arguing for the incoherence of eternalism when you don't seem to know what the theory consists in?

    If it’s incoherent, no one is going to understand it.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  32. Dan:

    I'm going to drop the talk of eternalism for now, though I will say that I disagree with you on it.

    I am confused as to your understanding of the correspondence theory of truth.

    You think there are some truths about the future free acts of God's creatures; what do these true propositions correspond to if not future events?

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  33. What the events will be.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  34. "What the events will be."

    What do you mean?

    ReplyDelete
  35. The future. The events that will happen. Peter on September 25 eating cookies....

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  36. "The future. The events that will happen. Peter on September 25 eating cookies...."

    Are you saying they correspond to future events? Are you saying they correspond to events that do not obtain but would obtain in the future if they obtain at all? What are you saying?

    ReplyDelete
  37. Yes. No. If propostion about future events correspond with those future events, then they are true.

    Perhaps some of the confusion here is that you seem to be thinking of the propostions as at one point in time and the events in another. To solve it you suggested moving the events back in time (or removing them from time altogether).

    I am suggesting removing the propostions from time, rather than the events.

    God be with you,
    Dan

    ReplyDelete
  38. "I am suggesting removing the propostions from time, rather than the events."

    Okay, so you think of propositions as timeless entities. If they are timeless entities, then they are true or false timelessly -- they don't change truth values.

    You would also think that propositions are not tensed, then; if it is going to be timelessly true, then it can't be a tensed thing. Steven will eat cheese on Sept 30 can't be timelessly true, because when October 1 comes around, it doesn't seem like it should still be true. Rather, you'd have to think of propositions as tenseless: Steven eats cheese on Sept 30.

    Now, if propositions are timeless entities, and their truth values don't change, then eternalism must be true. This is because the proposition must always correspond with one thing that would end up accounting for why it is true; if it didn't always correspond to one thing, then it would change and hence not be timeless.

    If the proposition Steven eats cheese on September 30 is true, and hence has "always" (tenselessly) corresponded to one thing, then that would just have to be the event of my eating cheese on September 30. But if it corresponds to something, that something has to be real. Hence the future would be real, if propositions are timeless.

    Hence eternalism is true, and no free will.

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  39. Steven:

    Perhaps you are using "necessary" and "contingent" in a different than normal way?

    My apologies for the ambiguity. You are right, of course. I was using the word "contingent" to indicate where God's knowledge would be predicated on something other than himself.

    (OT) For any future-tense proposition about the action of some libertarianly-free agent S, if S acts freely at the relevant time, then God does not know p before that time. I don't know how you would derive something like OT from the thesis that God only knows future tense propositions about the contingent universe after creating it.

    I was actually thinking less of free will decisions, and more of God's inability to foresee the results of the universe he created; his inability to contemplate all possible worlds, and choose to instantiate one particular one. Which I thought was another important aspect of open theism. But perhaps that's merely a coincidental similarity between it and the issue I'm talking about. If so, I'd merely observe that it's not integral to my argument that Arminianism be shown to logically lead to open theism. I just need to show that Arminianism logically leads to non-Arminianism, which I believe I've done.

    JC:

    As I alluded to on the other thread, a possible solution is that God created in such a manner that He would have access to our base factors of self-determination abstracted from time.

    But you still haven't explained what this even means. You've given no details that could allow us to actually test the cogency of this notion. How does God "get access" to our self-determination "abstracted from time"? Since our decisions are predicated on events which occur in time, it's prima facie incoherent that there exists a sense in which we can make those same decisions absent the conditions on which they're predicated. The burden is on you to make some sense of your suggested solution.

    Morever, as you've admitted, it doesn't avoid the issue at hand, which is that God's knowledge can't be predicated on his creation if you want to uphold an orthodox view of omniscience and aseity.

    If the specifics of God's knowledge are eternal as God Himself and innate to His existence, then such a view really leaves God with no choices between options either.

    Even if this were true, which I'm not going to concede as I've just above indicated that God can have innate but contingent knowledge, the alternative is that God has to create people before he can know what they will do. That brings us back to Peter's original "time traveler" argument. That argument puts paid to Arminianism, whichever way you look at it.

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  40. "My apologies for the ambiguity. You are right, of course. I was using the word "contingent" to indicate where God's knowledge would be predicated on something other than himself."

    So you are suggesting the orthodox view was that God doesn't know things about the world by "gazing upon" the world; he knows them by knowing himself, viz. his will and his decisions.

    Why is this view orthodox? Probably something like this has been a popular view in the past, given wide-spread acceptance of divine simplicty perhaps, but why is it the one required by scripture?

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  41. Steven, it's required by Scripture for the reasons Peter and myself are espousing re God otherwise being reduced to a "time traveler".

    ReplyDelete
  42. Dominic,

    @You've given no details that could allow us to actually test the cogency of this notion.

    You've not even quantified how you would 'test' it.


    @it's prima facie incoherent that there exists a sense in which we can make those same decisions absent the conditions on which they're predicated.

    Which I never said anything about, indicating that you're simply making things up to try and put words in my mouth. Let me know when you get around to reading my post rather than thoughtlessly skimming it and drawing incoherent conclusions.


    @How does God "get access" to our self-determination "abstracted from time"?

    As soon as you can explain in exhaustive detail how He creates matter out out of nothing. Such desperation tactics betray the weakness of your retort.

    ReplyDelete
  43. @Morever, as you've admitted, it doesn't avoid the issue at hand, which is that God's knowledge can't be predicated on his creation if you want to uphold an orthodox view of omniscience and aseity.

    That statement is ridiculous, how does God's knowledge of His creation being dependent thereon violate omniscience (since He does know everything) or aseity (since the creation isn't necessary to His being)?



    If the specifics of God's knowledge are eternal as God Himself and innate to His existence, then such a view really leaves God with no choices between options either.

    @...as I've just above indicated that God can have innate but contingent knowledge

    Well if God is eternal/unchangeable/immutable, and His knowledge is innate to Him, and therefore just as eternal/unchangeable/immutable as He is, then conceptually how can His knowledge be contingent in any sense?

    @That brings us back to Peter's original "time traveler" argument.

    Which isn't an argument if God is time-transcendent.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Dominic Bnonn Tennant said: "I just need to show that Arminianism logically leads to non-Arminianism, which I believe I've done."

    Not convincingly.

    (said with the greatest respect, and without committing myself to defending Arminianism)

    ReplyDelete
  45. JC:

    @You've given no details that could allow us to actually test the cogency of this notion.

    You've not even quantified how you would 'test' it.


    Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that's because before one can quantify a way of testing a hypothesis, one must first have enough relevant details about the hypothesis to understand it.

    @it's prima facie incoherent that there exists a sense in which we can make those same decisions absent the conditions on which they're predicated.

    Which I never said anything about, indicating that you're simply making things up to try and put words in my mouth. Let me know when you get around to reading my post rather than thoughtlessly skimming it and drawing incoherent conclusions.


    You're right; I apologize. I have found your explanations thus far to be quite unenlightening, and so drew the wrong idea out of them. Perhaps that is my fault. However, allow me to point out another issue.

    You said: "Self-determination in such a scenario would be independent to some degree (libertarian), but still quantifiable by God as to what choices it would result in when instantiated in time (in other words, our chocies would be certain, but not divinely necessary)."

    Ignoring the "abstracted from time" element at the moment, I take it you're suggesting the mere existence of a self-determinative faculty constitutes a sufficient condition for grounding God's knowledge of how that faculty will be used under any given circumstances. So, within the faculty itself is some kind of governing principle that God knows, which can be "plugged into" any set of conditions he chooses to contemplate, and result in a definite outcome. So my timeless self-determinative faculty, F, when encountering a specific set of circumstances, C, would always produce a particular outcome, O.

    But how is that a libertarian view, then? You seem to be saying that O follows inevitably from the conjoining of F & C. In other words, O is determined. This precludes any kind of indeterminism. But isn't indeterminism necessary to your view of freedom?

    @Morever, as you've admitted, it doesn't avoid the issue at hand, which is that God's knowledge can't be predicated on his creation if you want to uphold an orthodox view of omniscience and aseity.

    That statement is ridiculous, how does God's knowledge of His creation being dependent thereon violate omniscience (since He does know everything) or aseity (since the creation isn't necessary to His being)?


    I take God's aseity to entail that there is nothing about him which is dependent. If God's knowledge of creation is dependent on the existence of creation, then aseity is violated by definition. Furthermore, if God's knowledge of creation is dependent, he could not contemplate all possible worlds and then instantiate this one, because there is nothing actual for him to know until after he has created. That violates the traditional view of God's omniscience, which holds to his foreknowledge of the world logically prior to its creation.

    On the other hand, if you wish to argue that God did know all possible worlds, and then chose to instantiate this one, it follows that his knowledge of the world cannot be dependent on it. Which puts paid to Dan's arguments in this thread, and indicates that in fact God foreknows what will happen in creation precisely because he decrees it; and not because he merely "gazes upon it" in advance.

    @That brings us back to Peter's original "time traveler" argument.

    Which isn't an argument if God is time-transcendent.


    I'm not sure what you mean. One of the points of Peter's argument is that God's transcendence over time does not save him from the "time traveler" problem, if in fact Arminianism is true.

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  46. JC:

    @You've given no details that could allow us to actually test the cogency of this notion.

    You've not even quantified how you would 'test' it.


    Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that's because before one can quantify a way of testing a hypothesis, one must first have enough relevant details about the hypothesis to understand it.

    @it's prima facie incoherent that there exists a sense in which we can make those same decisions absent the conditions on which they're predicated.

    Which I never said anything about, indicating that you're simply making things up to try and put words in my mouth. Let me know when you get around to reading my post rather than thoughtlessly skimming it and drawing incoherent conclusions.


    You're right; I apologize. I have found your explanations thus far to be quite unenlightening, and so drew the wrong idea out of them. Perhaps that is my fault. However, allow me to point out another issue.

    You said: "Self-determination in such a scenario would be independent to some degree (libertarian), but still quantifiable by God as to what choices it would result in when instantiated in time (in other words, our chocies would be certain, but not divinely necessary)."

    Ignoring the "abstracted from time" element at the moment, I take it you're suggesting the mere existence of a self-determinative faculty constitutes a sufficient condition for grounding God's knowledge of how that faculty will be used under any given circumstances. So, within the faculty itself is some kind of governing principle that God knows, which can be "plugged into" any set of conditions he chooses to contemplate, and result in a definite outcome. So my timeless self-determinative faculty, F, when encountering a specific set of circumstances, C, would always produce a particular outcome, O.

    But how is that a libertarian view, then? You seem to be saying that O follows inevitably from the conjoining of F & C. In other words, O is determined. This precludes any kind of indeterminism. But isn't indeterminism necessary to your view of freedom?

    @Morever, as you've admitted, it doesn't avoid the issue at hand, which is that God's knowledge can't be predicated on his creation if you want to uphold an orthodox view of omniscience and aseity.

    That statement is ridiculous, how does God's knowledge of His creation being dependent thereon violate omniscience (since He does know everything) or aseity (since the creation isn't necessary to His being)?


    I take God's aseity to entail that there is nothing about him which is dependent. If God's knowledge of creation is dependent on the existence of creation, then aseity is violated by definition. Furthermore, if God's knowledge of creation is dependent, he could not contemplate all possible worlds and then instantiate this one, because there is nothing actual for him to know until after he has created. That violates the traditional view of God's omniscience, which holds to his foreknowledge of the world logically prior to its creation.

    On the other hand, if you wish to argue that God did know all possible worlds, and then chose to instantiate this one, it follows that his knowledge of the world cannot be dependent on it. Which puts paid to Dan's arguments in this thread, and indicates that in fact God foreknows what will happen in creation precisely because he decrees it; and not because he merely "gazes upon it" in advance.

    @That brings us back to Peter's original "time traveler" argument.

    Which isn't an argument if God is time-transcendent.


    I'm not sure what you mean. One of the points of Peter's argument is that God's transcendence over time does not save him from the "time traveler" problem, if in fact Arminianism is true.

    ReplyDelete
  47. JC:

    @You've given no details that could allow us to actually test the cogency of this notion.

    You've not even quantified how you would 'test' it.


    Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that's because before one can quantify a way of testing a hypothesis, one must first have enough relevant details about the hypothesis to understand it.

    @it's prima facie incoherent that there exists a sense in which we can make those same decisions absent the conditions on which they're predicated.

    Which I never said anything about, indicating that you're simply making things up to try and put words in my mouth. Let me know when you get around to reading my post rather than thoughtlessly skimming it and drawing incoherent conclusions.


    You're right; I apologize. I have found your explanations thus far to be quite unenlightening, and so drew the wrong idea out of them. Perhaps that is my fault. However, allow me to point out another issue.

    You said: "Self-determination in such a scenario would be independent to some degree (libertarian), but still quantifiable by God as to what choices it would result in when instantiated in time (in other words, our chocies would be certain, but not divinely necessary)."

    Ignoring the "abstracted from time" element at the moment, I take it you're suggesting the mere existence of a self-determinative faculty constitutes a sufficient condition for grounding God's knowledge of how that faculty will be used under any given circumstances. So, within the faculty itself is some kind of governing principle that God knows, which can be "plugged into" any set of conditions he chooses to contemplate, and result in a definite outcome. So my timeless self-determinative faculty, F, when encountering a specific set of circumstances, C, would always produce a particular outcome, O.

    But how is that a libertarian view, then? You seem to be saying that O follows inevitably from the conjoining of F & C. In other words, O is determined. This precludes any kind of indeterminism. But isn't indeterminism necessary to your view of freedom?

    @Morever, as you've admitted, it doesn't avoid the issue at hand, which is that God's knowledge can't be predicated on his creation if you want to uphold an orthodox view of omniscience and aseity.

    That statement is ridiculous, how does God's knowledge of His creation being dependent thereon violate omniscience (since He does know everything) or aseity (since the creation isn't necessary to His being)?


    I take God's aseity to entail that there is nothing about him which is dependent. If God's knowledge of creation is dependent on the existence of creation, then aseity is violated by definition. Furthermore, if God's knowledge of creation is dependent, he could not contemplate all possible worlds and then instantiate this one, because there is nothing actual for him to know until after he has created. That violates the traditional view of God's omniscience, which holds to his foreknowledge of the world logically prior to its creation.

    On the other hand, if you wish to argue that God did know all possible worlds, and then chose to instantiate this one, it follows that his knowledge of the world cannot be dependent on it. Which puts paid to Dan's arguments in this thread, and indicates that in fact God foreknows what will happen in creation precisely because he decrees it; and not because he merely "gazes upon it" in advance.

    @That brings us back to Peter's original "time traveler" argument.

    Which isn't an argument if God is time-transcendent.


    I'm not sure what you mean. One of the points of Peter's argument is that God's transcendence over time does not save him from the "time traveler" problem, if in fact Arminianism is true.

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  48. J.C. THIBODAUX SAID:

    “As soon as you can explain in exhaustive detail how He creates matter out out of nothing. Such desperation tactics betray the weakness of your retort.”

    If you can establish by sound exegesis that Scripture teaches creation ex nihilo, then that’s sufficient warrant to believe it. No independent argument is required.

    However, you can hardly transfer that argument from authority to your Arminian case for God’s foreknowledge. For you are attempting to defend your belief in God’s foreknowledge consistent with man’s libertarian freedom by providing a rational explanation for how God’s foreknowledge is consistent with your philosophical action theory.

    That, however, is not a datum of Scripture. If you proffer a rational explanation, then your explanation is subject to rational scrutiny. Dominic can evaluate your explanation on the same level as the nature of the proffered explanation.

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  49. J.C. THIBODAUX SAID:

    “As soon as you can explain in exhaustive detail how He creates matter out out of nothing. Such desperation tactics betray the weakness of your retort.”

    And suppose Dominic (or Steven Nemes) said they don’t have to explain how a "causally determined" sinner can be culpable unless and until you exhaustively explain creation ex nihilo?

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  50. @However, you can hardly transfer that argument from authority

    I wasn't employing argument from authority, but appeal to God's creative power and ingenuity in my assumption that He's capable of doing something similar to what I described.

    ReplyDelete
  51. JC:

    @You've given no details that could allow us to actually test the cogency of this notion.

    You've not even quantified how you would 'test' it.


    Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that's because before one can quantify a way of testing a hypothesis, one must first have enough relevant details about the hypothesis to understand it.

    @it's prima facie incoherent that there exists a sense in which we can make those same decisions absent the conditions on which they're predicated.

    Which I never said anything about, indicating that you're simply making things up to try and put words in my mouth. Let me know when you get around to reading my post rather than thoughtlessly skimming it and drawing incoherent conclusions.


    You're right; I apologize. I have found your explanations thus far to be quite unenlightening, and so drew the wrong idea out of them. Perhaps that is my fault. However, allow me to point out another issue.

    You said: "Self-determination in such a scenario would be independent to some degree (libertarian), but still quantifiable by God as to what choices it would result in when instantiated in time (in other words, our chocies would be certain, but not divinely necessary)."

    Ignoring the "abstracted from time" element at the moment, I take it you're suggesting the mere existence of a self-determinative faculty constitutes a sufficient condition for grounding God's knowledge of how that faculty will be used under any given circumstances. So, within the faculty itself is some kind of governing principle that God knows, which can be "plugged into" any set of conditions he chooses to contemplate, and result in a definite outcome. So my timeless self-determinative faculty, F, when encountering a specific set of circumstances, C, would always produce a particular outcome, O.

    But how is that a libertarian view, then? You seem to be saying that O follows inevitably from the conjoining of F & C. In other words, O is determined. This precludes any kind of indeterminism. But isn't indeterminism necessary to your view of freedom?

    @Morever, as you've admitted, it doesn't avoid the issue at hand, which is that God's knowledge can't be predicated on his creation if you want to uphold an orthodox view of omniscience and aseity.

    That statement is ridiculous, how does God's knowledge of His creation being dependent thereon violate omniscience (since He does know everything) or aseity (since the creation isn't necessary to His being)?


    I take God's aseity to entail that there is nothing about him which is dependent. If God's knowledge of creation is dependent on the existence of creation, then aseity is violated by definition. Furthermore, if God's knowledge of creation is dependent, he could not contemplate all possible worlds and then instantiate this one, because there is nothing actual for him to know until after he has created. That violates the traditional view of God's omniscience, which holds to his foreknowledge of the world logically prior to its creation.

    On the other hand, if you wish to argue that God did know all possible worlds, and then chose to instantiate this one, it follows that his knowledge of the world cannot be dependent on it. Which puts paid to Dan's arguments in this thread, and indicates that in fact God foreknows what will happen in creation precisely because he decrees it; and not because he merely "gazes upon it" in advance.

    @That brings us back to Peter's original "time traveler" argument.

    Which isn't an argument if God is time-transcendent.


    I'm not sure what you mean. One of the points of Peter's argument is that God's transcendence over time does not save him from the "time traveler" problem, if in fact Arminianism is true.

    ReplyDelete
  52. J.C. THIBODAUX SAID:

    "I wasn't employing argument from authority, but appeal to God's creative power and ingenuity in my assumption that He's capable of doing something similar to what I described."

    i) To say it's "something similar" is an argument from analogy minus the argument. At a minimum you need to supply a supporting argument to show that the two claims are indeed parallel at the relevant points of comparison.

    ii) Moreover, your response to Dominic is a backdoor admission that you really don't have a rational explanation, so you invoke a deus ex machina to salvage your position. However, omnipotence can't perform a pseudotask. Omnipotence can't change the past (to take one example).

    Your position has objective implications. Those implications can't be suspended by a vague appeal to divine omnipotence/transcendence. Either your explanation works on its own terms or it doesn't.

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  53. @Those implications can't be suspended

    No specifics are cited.


    @To say it's "something similar" is an argument from analogy minus the argument

    That doesn't even make sense given my statement.


    @is a backdoor admission that you really don't have a rational explanation

    You don't grasp the logic: Given that God is all-powerful and all-wise, and there's no apparent logical/conceptual problem with Him doing a thing, then there's no rational reason to assume He can't do so.

    ReplyDelete
  54. J.C. THIBODAUX SAID:

    "You don't grasp the logic: Given that God is all-powerful and all-wise, and there's no apparent logical/conceptual problem with Him doing a thing, then there's no rational reason to assume He can't do so."

    You don't grasp the issue: the very question at issue is whether God can still be "all-wise" given the constraints which the libertarian is placing on God.

    And of course there's an "apparent" problem. Even libertarian theologians and philosophers recognize an "apparent" problem, which is why they devote so much effort to resolving the problem as best they can. Why they try out so many different strategies.

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  55. i) Put another way, you can't invoke the presupposition of divine omniscience as an explanation for how God could know future contingents when the very issue in dispute is the compatibility of divine omniscience with future contingents.

    ii) Likewise, what you're doing is no different from Catholic apologists who assure us that since God is omnipotent, he can empower Mary to process millions of prayers a day.

    You can't use the divine omnis to rubberstamp whatever you believe.

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  56. @You don't grasp the issue: the very question at issue is whether God can still be "all-wise"....

    A rather acontextual assertion, since my suggested solution pertains directly to that very issue.


    @Even libertarian theologians and philosophers recognize an "apparent" problem...

    ...which misses the obvious reference to apparent problems with the scenario I put forth. As it appears I won't be getting any substantive reply, I'll take my leave. Nice herring from you Steve.

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  57. Steve said: "..the very question at issue is whether God can still be "all-wise" given the constraints which the libertarian is placing on God."

    I missed this argument, what constraints exactly is the libertarian placing on God?

    ReplyDelete
  58. Steven,

    You would also think that propositions are not tensed, then; if it is going to be timelessly true, then it can't be a tensed thing. Steven will eat cheese on Sept 30 can't be timelessly true, because when October 1 comes around, it doesn't seem like it should still be true. Rather, you'd have to think of propositions as tenseless: Steven eats cheese on Sept 30.

    Sort of. Tensed propositions logically depend on tenseless ones.

    The statement Steven will eat cheese on Sept 30 is somewhat underspecified and normally we would understand that statement as really saying “*as of now or from now till Sept 29* Steven will eat cheese on Sept 30”. Fully specified, the proposition is eternally true.

    Now, if propositions are timeless entities, and their truth values don't change, then eternalism must be true. This is because the proposition must always correspond with one thing that would end up accounting for why it is true; if it didn't always correspond to one thing, then it would change and hence not be timeless.

    I agree with your second sentence (I think), but I don’t see how eternalism follows. If you mean the statements have to correspond with reality at all points in time then I don’t agree but I also don’t know why you would think that. Events at any point in time would seem to be sufficient to support an eternally true proposition.

    If the proposition Steven eats cheese on September 30 is true, and hence has "always" (tenselessly) corresponded to one thing, then that would just have to be the event of my eating cheese on September 30. But if it corresponds to something, that something has to be real. Hence the future would be real, if propositions are timeless.

    I agree with your first and second sentence, but your third one does not follow.

    God be with you,
    Dan

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  59. ἘΚΚΛΗΣΊΑ SAID:

    "I missed this argument, what constraints exactly is the libertarian placing on God?"

    You need to bone up on the history of the debate. For starters:

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

    http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/foreknowledgefreedom.html

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  60. Steve said: "You need to bone up on the history of the debate. For starters:".

    Ok.

    Steve said: "http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

    The fallacy is embedded in premise 4:
    4) Necessarily, if yesterday God believed T, then T. [Definition of “infallibility”]

    If P is "God believed T"
    and Q is "T"

    Premise 4 can be written as:
    (P->Q) ∧ (Q->P)

    Q->P no one refutes.
    P->Q is a form of the fallacy known as Fallacy of Modal Logic

    PROOF
    P is not independent of T (which is represented as Q) so we can rewrite this dependance as:
    B(T)->□T (which says “God's belief in T implies the necessity of T”)

    This fallacy is taking the necessary condition of belief to be necessary on its own whereas the necessity was actually between T and the belief in T.

    Here is an example: A flying plane loses all of its engines. An astute witness on the ground sees the plane. Prior to the crash, during the crash and subsequent to the crash the observer believed the plan was going to crash (the belief was so strong the observer was certain, both in the future, present and past tense).

    Clearly the observer's belief did not make the crash necessary at any point in time, beforehand, during and after the fact. Confusing the necessity of belief in X with the necessity of X itself its the fallacy.

    Since the premise (P->Q) ∧ (Q->P) contains the fallacy (P->Q) it is also a fallacy.

    Steve said: "http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/foreknowledgefreedom.html/

    Here the fallacy is in premise 1. There are a couple of ways this can be shown, if premise 1 indeed imparts past, present, and future to God than it presumes God is creature rather than creator as time is a component of creation being indistinguishable from space.

    Even so, for the sake of argument presuppose God does indeed have past, present and future, premise 1 commits yet another form of modal logic that equivocates between necessity within tenses. This is best illustrated again with the example above.

    Was the belief in the plane crash (in the future tense) distinguishable from the belief in the plane crash (in the past tense)? Clearly, but then God's timelessness cannot be used to prop up the fallacy by asserting God is outside of time thus removing the distinction between tenses.

    The unfounded presupposition that the libertarian places any constraints on God whatsoever, so far is unconvincing.

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  61. ἐκκλησία

    I have a question and I hope that it makes sense, what happens with what God knows?

    I understand that knowing does not make it necessary, but what if any wrinkle is added when we look at what happens with that knowledge?

    Example, God knew that Joseph would be sold into slavery and He used it to further His plan. If I have knowledge of something and incorporate that knowledge into my plan does it change the necessity of that knowledge being actualized?

    Hopefully that makes some sense because I doubt I can clean it up to make more sense.

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  62. ἐκκλησία
    I have a question and I hope that it makes sense, what happens with what God knows?

    I understand that knowing does not make it necessary, but what if any wrinkle is added when we look at what happens with that knowledge?

    Example, God knew that Joseph would be sold into slavery and He used it to further His plan. If I have knowledge of something and incorporate that knowledge into my plan does it change the necessity of that knowledge being actualized?

    Hopefully that makes some sense because I doubt I can clean it up to make more sense.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Mitch said: "I have a question and I hope that it makes sense, what happens with what God knows?"

    Mitch, this is a very good question, and I won't presume to know the mind of God [Rom 11:34][1 Cor 2:16]. Even so, God as the source of reason, is not irrational.

    By analogy, what happens with what we ourselves know? We act or don't act upon knowledge based upon our purpose right? I presume God does the same, but perhaps not in a sense we recognize.

    Here are some of the things we know about God:

    *He is eternal
    *His purpose is eternal
    *He can make both good and evil serve his purpose (having choice ultimately has no power to constrain God)
    *In Him there is no shade or variation
    *God's intent for creation was to be acceptable in his sight (and to glorify Him)
    *God's creation perfectly reflects His righteousness, but that ability is diminished by sin
    *He is sovereign
    *Creation will ultimately end up as God eternally intends

    So if God is eternal, unchanging and without variation and Man is creature, who exactly is the agent of change?

    How you answer the above question answers your own about what God does with what he knows.

    This poses a dilemma:

    How can an eternally unchanging God (who exists outside of time), and exhibits no variation in being or in purpose, fix (or change) what man has broken (or caused to change with God's allowance) without going against His very nature?

    One possible answer (and the only way I can see in my limited vision) is for that timeless unchanging God to effect change by 'entering time' and becoming Himself an agent of change.

    By entering time and remaining consistent with both his eternal nature and with the nature of His creation, God embodies the perfect covenant because he fulfills both the unconditional terms posed by creator, and as creature he faithfully fulfills all of the conditional terms stipulated in the covenant itself for eternal inclusion.

    It could even be reasonably argued that He needed to do nothing more than be born, life a life consistent with his eternal unchanging nature (without spot or blemish) and die a victim to effect this change. God's knowledge that the mere circumstance of creation not recognizing its creator could be sufficient enough to serve his eternal purpose.

    I don't know with certainty, but if it is true than it suggests that just as Jesus's death was necessary for the atonement of the elect (particular atonement), Jesus's birth and life was necessary for the general atonement of all creation.

    In living the perfect life God has reconciled even unsaved man to Himself in the sense that unsaved man is permitted to continue existing through to a natural death though he is an anathema in his sinful state. Again this show's God's infinite patience.

    Creation currently exists in a temporary state apart from God's eternal purposed state so that He can show all of creation His unlimited patience (as he does to Paul in [1 Tim 1:16]). Even so as the first born of all creation God does not purpose His workmanship to be marred eternally.

    I'm not sure if I've answered your question, but consider the possibility.

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