jonw@azure.UUCP (02/23/84)
From Paul Dubuc: ...The simple statement David Norris was trying to make is that precognition is not the same as predetermination. God's foreknowledge does not make him responsible for man's choices, nor does it require Him to intervene and change the outcome. After all, the God we are speaking of has free will also. The notion of free will (whether from God's perspective or ours) is not irrelevant in the face of the omniscience of God. As long as man has the ability to freely choose right from wrong, God is in no way responsible for that decision. I must say, this is starting to get a bit repetitious. For the umpteenth time, unless you can explain how God can exist in the future without having already created it, you have not resolved the omniscience/free will contradiction! Jon White [decvax|ucbvax]!tektronix!tekmdp!azure!jonw
pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (02/25/84)
>[from Jon White] > unless you can explain how God can exist in the future without having already > created it, you have not resolved the omniscience/free will contradiction! I disagree. I think the problem is one of perspective--ours versus God's. God exists outside of time. We exist in it. When is the future in God's perspective? Going back to David Norris' remarks on God having "created" an infinite number of possible futures for us; from our perspective we have an infinite number of choices and it matters not that God knows which one it will be. (As I said before, precognition does not imply predetermination.) As far as freewill is concerned, it is only our perspective that really matters. That is the only perspective that we can really experience or comprehend fully. I don't find it suprising that there are some things about the nature of God that are beyond my complete comprehension. If the God of the Bible is who he says he is, I would expect that. Being able to grasp what it would be like to exist outside the realm of time and space falls into that category. Space and time are so much a part of our exsitence... only death will separate us from them and give us that perspective. Paul Dubuc