How bout then YANKEES!!!!
Sorry, I promise the adults will now be posting for the duration.
tee hee hee
Ahem.... really.
So the question was how can a man's will be free if God is sovereignly overruling all of creation. First off I think it is important to say that by overruling I mean that God rules over creation not that He capriciously overturns all of our intentions for His own will. However, in that God does rule over Creation we must ask the question is God's knowledge causal to our actions? I think the answer is no. And for the explanation I will turn to C S Lewis.
In Mere Christianity Mr Lewis spoke of not of the means by which God relates to creation but the manner in which God relates to creation. He said that the first thing we must grasp is that God is timeless. This does not mean that God lives forever and ever and ever, it means that God's existence is separate from time itself. I know that may seem like a strange proposition but I feel it is important to understand. First off we know that time is a part of the physical universe (Einstein) and that time is relative to everything in the universe (Einstein) and therefore time must not be thought of as universal constant but rather as dimension by which we measure our existence. It is not only that time is not constant for us it is that the way by which we experience time is such that it only applies to us and if there are little green men on the other side of the universe they may experience time in a totally different way. But they do experience time because they exist inside the universe.
However God does not live in the universe. The universe is created by God, upheld by God, and yet is not God. And neither is it like God. God is not physical (Augustine did not get it and neither do I, the Bible tells us that God is spirit and thus non-corporeal and I don't know what that means exactly) and does not live in the physical universe. However God is not separate from the physical universe either. For example, let us take the idea of God in the box. If we assert that God is everywhere and we have a box then is God in the box? Yes. However, if God is everywhere and we have a box is God only in the box? No. So how can this be. I think the answer, and btw so does Lewis, rests in the understanding that God's existence and His knowledge are simultaneous. The idea being that while I know myself, my knowledge is lacking and therefore I cannot truly say that I know myself exhaustively. As such, sometimes the things I do seem startling even to me, and the outside world is often just abjectly shocking. God however knows everything not in its totality as though He were some store house library in the sky, but perfectly. That is there is no knowledge which God lacks. So if I have a box, does God know that box perfectly? That is does God know its size, physical properties, the way it smells, is it held together by glue or tape, what is in the box, is the box empty, the chemical composition of the box, everything. God knows the box totally and exhaustively and with a perfect knowledge that neither lacks nor can lack anything which could be known about the box. In that sense God is in the box. However God is also non-corporeal and therefore is not locally in the box.
The way by which God relates to the box is by His knowledge. The way which a timeless God relates to temporal me is by His knowledge. God knows me exhaustively. He knows all of my thoughts, words and deeds, but also he knows my will, knowledge and motives. In fact God knows these things infinitely more than I do. Why? Because God knows them perfectly while I know them partially, and the difference between 1 and -1 if only zero may be added or subtracted to either figure is infinite. God cannot know me less than perfectly and neither can I know myself perfectly and therefore the gap in my knowledge is not small but infinite.
But that is not all that God knows about me. Because God is not only perfect in His knowledge He is also timeless. Therefore God knows what will become of me tomorrow not because He is instructing the fates to lift and set my feet each step of the way but because God is already in my future. He is already there. God is here with me, in the past with me, and in the future with me, because (Augustine) to be perfect in being means that time never perishes for God and neither is it future to God. The future need not kill the present and neither does the present need to be buried in the past, but rather all time exists simultaneously for God who exists perfectly beyond this physical universe and its temporal dimensions and yet knows all things in that temporal universe and governs them second by second by His knowledge of them.
So God does not have to try and guess what I will do because He knows me perfectly. God need not try and guess how those around me will react to me because He knows them perfectly. And God need not try and guess how we will affect each other because He knows us perfectly and our reactions to each other are a temporal causal chain. This is what it means to say that volition is free and yet shaped by forces within and without. A man's dislike of tomatoes causes him to not eat tomatoes. He does not eat them because he does not want them. His dislike causes him to not eat them. God knows that a man does not like tomatoes and thus is not surprised when he orders his chicken sandwich without the tomatoes.
But what about the future?
Lets roll dice.
Let us assume that we are throwing craps in Vegas and our mark if eight and we are trying to roll a hard eight. If we knew the exact physical properties of the dice, table, backboard, velocity of the thrower, angle of throw, air pressure, electro magnetic influence, temperature, elasticity, position of dice in thrower's hand, etc, we would know to an absolute certainty that a shooter was going to get hard eight or not. And we would know one hundred percent of the time. That is perfect knowledge allows us to predict what will happen, and God can do this with us.
But it is more than that.
Now let us assume that we not only can predict with perfect certainty and already exist ten seconds into the future and as such have already experienced the hard eight, then we would not only know in the sense of predictive prophetic certainty, but also in the sense of experiential knowledge which is absolute in its certainty. God knows my tomorrow because He is experiencing it right now.
So does this knowledge violate my volition?
I think the answer is no. And Lewis explains why. He said that since God is already in our tomorrow He does not need to lead us by the hand to wait on us around the corner. While God knows our actions because He knows us, He also can be with us always because He is with our future even before we experience it. This knowledge, while certain, is not causative in that it does not compel us to act other than in that way which we choose to act. Our will is only violated if God turns us left when we would have turned right, but (Edwards again) God need not force us to change our mind by compelling us left against our wills, He need only change the things internally which shape our volition and thus affect a change in our affections about left. That is we go left because we want to and no because we are compelled. And God does not have to force us left to know it will happen, and neither does His knowledge compel us left against our will. And if are more bent to the right, God does not need to change the shape of the road, He need only change us.
This is what it means to be saved by Sovereign choice and free will. If God changes m,y affections by changing my heart (making that which is dead alive Ephesians 2 Romans 8) and thus I see God in a way which I never saw Him before and I change my bent by my choice because He changed me and not my direction. I cannot choose Him without Him, but with Him I will not choose other.
God does not need to turn the world over and shake it to cause me to arrive at where He knows I'll be and neither does He need to drop a map from Heaven. Imagine the great Celestial chorus following us around yelling "LEFT LEFT LEFT!!!!!" No rather God need only whisper to that part of us that is us and we turn because we are truly starved men and He is truly the Oasis of Rest Everlasting.
He does us no violence and yet overrules us by His knowledge and presence with us.
So what about pain?
Later
Still Thinking
Hal Wrote
ReplyDeleteOne thing that HAS to be addressed is that SCRIPTURE says, about God, is that He is the one "in whom we live, and move and have our being." I would say that although this does not contradict the idea that he is "outside the box," it sort of dovetails into the fact that He entered into the box, when He walked the earth as a man. Other than that,we are pretty much on the same page,concerning God being outside of time. When we enter into an eternal existence, (eternal life), though, does that mean that we are no longer "in the box," ourselves? is GOD the universe, or is it in Him? I think the latter. Because God is timeless, He is in the eternal NOW. When we are with Him, in the NEW heavens and earth, it seems to me that we will also be in the eternal now. That means a huge change in our nature and our perceptions. What we are talking about, in this time-restricted now, will be swallowed up in a glorious eternal now, and will probably be seen in the same way that Mr. A Sphere was teaching A. Square, when letting him know about the third dimension. A Square had the illusion that there were only 2 dimensions, when a 3 dimensional being would know that the 3rd dimension would HAVE to exist in order for the other two to be there. Not considering time, for the moment, (hmm, that is contadictory), we have found, in particle accelerators, that a 4th spatial dimension exists, with objective proof being shown. The multidimensionality that is present in eternity, will be one we probably experience as a reality, as well, if we have eternal life, which it seems to me, is simply a contingent form of what God enjoys, with no contingency, because He is the Uncaused Cause.
I like tomatoes on my chicken sandwich.
I see the internal change spoken of in man's desires, as being AFTER permission is given by man, to change his nature. I see the phenomena of man's self-ordained experiences as the reason WHY he chooses to allow God to change him. We inevitably make a mess of our lives, whether we realize it young or old.Young change is less painful, but submitting one's will is still painful on it's own, when you see the train coming,and KNOW that it is going to be a disaster,if you don't change. Fear is an effective early motivator, as scripture says, "the beginning of knowledge." The history of the world is something that is useful, for teaching. God uses the world as goads. It is all under His authority.
Yup,yup.
Hal
The universe is neither in God and God is not part of the universe. Scripture clearly states that God has made all things, and those things bear his imprint and image, but are not in themselves God. To say other is pantheism.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with the assertion that we give God permission to change us that Scripture makes mockery of that notion over and over again.
First off it clearly sates that we, apart from God, are dead. All of Eph 2 makes this clear. Rev 3:1 makes it clear that a Church without the Spirit is dead. Eph 2 and Rom 8 both clearly state that we are saved by grace only and have no room at all to boast or claim for ourselves participation. And the reason why is that we are dead. Prior to regeneration, or quickening as the Scripture calls it, we are dead and beyond help. It is by the act of sovereign mercy that God chooses from among his enemies some to be saved by His grace.
He does not save all, but as all are enemies and "children of wrath by nature" Eph 2, God is uner no obligation whatever to save any. If God saved none, none would have received injustice. But because God saves some then some receive mercy others justice.
Paul does say that Creation is evidence of God and His power and that man is guilty for not worshiping God on the strength of that evidence alone, but even so man is still beyond help because whether he cannot or will not it makes no difference. As St. Augustine said, "What a man will not do he cannot do," and if we are by nature children of wrath then we cannot choose God, but we also will not choose God and therefore have no excuse as Paul said.
And as far as thinking this to be unfair, I defer to Paul Rom 9: 14-24, when he anticipates this very argument and declares it unacceptable under the Inspiration of the Spirit. Therefore we who might desire to raise the same objection are obligated to surrender it utterly and never voice it again or else we make Scripture a liar and ourselves judges of God.