Hello all my readers again. We will be going through this section in parts. The first part will be the problem itself of prediction. Can God predict the future of free-will human beings? I think at this time of Ravi Zacharias’s quip of “Prediction is always hard to do. Especially about the future.” Is it hard for God though? Let’s find out. (And of course readers, I am no open theist.)
The first question is how does God know the future. One answer Loftus gives is that he sovereignly decrees or determines what will happen. This is not my worldview so I will not be defending that aspect. If a Calvinist that holds to that wishes to do so, then let them. Already though, I think there could be a sense of hyper-Calvinism here instead.
I would instead hold to a timeless God in eternity. We can’t even say God sees the present from his perspective as Loftus does. God sees all things at once in an eternal now. It is true that 2005 B.C. and A.D. are simultaneous in God’s eyes but not in ours. How is this a problem? We are temporal and so bound by time it is hard for us to see outside of it.
The idea of a timeless God assumes all change is bad or good we are told. We want a watch to change to reflect the correct time after all. Yes. We want it to change to reflect that time. That is a change for the better. If it stops reflecting that time, that is a change for the worse. The change is more continuous in the former, but the watch is still changing.
And if God is completely perfect, then how can he change? Can he gain a perfection he did not have before? Then he was not perfect. Can he go to less perfect? Then he is no longer perfect. Either way, there is no need for change, especially if the case is that God is pure actuality. If he is pure actuality, then he has no potential and is incapable of change.
We are told when God began to create the universe, he changed. This is begging the question. To say that God began to do something is assuming that God is linear and in time. God is eternally creating the universe and eternally judging the world. He is actively doing all things at once in an eternal now. You might say you have a hard time grasping such a thing. Join the club.
We are told that to say that God has no new thoughts, does nothing new, or thinks nothing new has him static. Not at all. He’s totally dynamic. He is constantly in action. That action is simply always ongoing. He need not think new thoughts. He eternally has all thoughts going through his mind. He does not need new thoughts to think. He thinks constantly on all that is knowledge.
The other arguments are views that I do not hold. The first is more open theist and the other is just that God has it innately because he is omniscient. If others hold these views and wish to defend them, fine. Let them do so. I see no need to defend the truth of a view I do not hold. If a view is misrepresented, that is one thing. If not though, then I will not defend it.
We shall see some of how this works on Scripture tomorrow.
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