I can’t really follow that logic. Even if a soul is supernatural, either it responds to events in the past or it responds in a random fashion with no reference to events in the past.
Perhaps the soul is affected by events in some external, spiritual realm, but surely God can see those events too. Omniscient, you see.
I like this idea a lot. St Augustine was on the ball.
Of course, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, that suggests that She can foresee all the bad things that might happen, and She could change things for the better, but She chooses not to. Omnipotent, but stubborn, it seems.
If a roll a die, I can see all the things that can happen - the six possibilities of the face that shows up. That isn’t close to omniscience relative to the die. God must be able to see what is going to happen to be omniscient. (And if she isn’t, she should stay away from inspiring prophecy.) But if she can see what happens, her vision would be incorrect if she changes things, either for the better or the worse.
Now people have the illusion of free will, and the illusion of choosing, and I’m fine with God knowing their free choices. We’re finite. That doesn’t solve the problem of pre-destination at all.
C.S. Lewis (who is just some guy that thought about God a lot) says in response to this that God exists outside of time. He doesn’t foresee things, he just sees them. Whatever you do, he sees you do it and that’s how he knows. When you try to put God’s knowledge into a timeline, you are bound to arrive at a distorted understanding.
Let’s say I’m writing a book. The main character embodies righteousness, according to me. As the author, I already know which people will shun my main character. I have always known thus, from the moment I wrote each character. I reward and punish my characters as I see fit. The rewards and pubishments, like everything else in the book, are predetermined. Does that make it pointless for me to write the book? Are the supporting characters superfluous because I, the author, have always known their ultimate fate? Is a book pointless because its author knows the ending?
I agree with what others have said. Just because God knows what choices you make doesn’t mean you didn’t have the free will to make those choices. You make the choices and God observes it. God observes things so well, he’s even able to observe them before they happen.
An omniscient being would already know what the consequences of ‘changing things’ would be. Omniscient, you see.
Every possible universe, every possible timeline, whether She ‘intervenes’ or not, all of them are already existing inside Her timeless memory.
We just seem to be stuck in one of the versions where there is little or no ‘intervention’.
Just so I understand, for those people who aren’t saved, God creates them, knows the choices they will make, observes them make them, and then damns them to an eternity of torture?
To the pre-destined crowd, yes, this is how it works. My view is that if it’s pre-destined, then everything is pointless and cruel, as it’s already known.
Maybe God only knows everything in the present and past, not the future. As far as we can tell, due to quantum uncertainty, the future is unknowable even in principle. That is, even if we could make a computer big enough and took a snapshot of the universe as it is, that computer couldn’t predict the future.
I don’t see an issue with omniscience meaning knowing all things that are knowable. God doesn’t know the last digit of pi because there isn’t one. God can’t know how to square a circle because that’s impossible. If the future is unknowable, add it to the list of things that God doesn’t know, along with resolutions of paradoxes, etc.
Yeah, the calling is a weird part of the equation that we generally don’t like as it doesn’t seem to fit our sense of fairness. God outright says He does what He wants to do. How God selects that calling, I’m sure a lot would want to fit it into fairness, something like that person was already on their way to God, but it’s not something I have studied in the Bible.
‘In the beginning’ God works on creation. Days 1, and 3-5 are said to be ‘good’. God does not comment about day 2 either way, however on Day 6 God says it was very good. And due to the Sabbath rest that God takes it does imply that God knows the ending and it is how God wants it to be and everything is in place for that to happen.
We also know from the words of Jesus that the Father knows things that the Son does not. This is specifically referring a day and time of an event. Now that could because the Father will order it, so perhaps not predicting.
So while the above does in itself prove or disprove God knows all things about the future it seems to imply that God known plenty enough about it. I have to admit that both cases are subject to ‘interference’ by God to make things happen.
Which I think brings me back to my original point, that is everything was made by Jesus, for Jesus and everything will be reconciled to Jesus. This seems to be enforced by the Father, and while we can’t know if He can predict everything, He has the ability to make the future what He wishes. And if the Father can make the future as he wishes and does do so, I guess that would include predicting it.
I have found in life that the case against predestination is the strawman people create because they do not understand it. According to them God decides at your birth whether you are going to Heaven or Hell regardless of what choices you will make.
I’m not sure that it’s theologically correct to say God creates each individual person in the same way that God is believed to have created the universe or created the human race. I think the common Christian belief is that God directly created Adam and Eve but after that people were “created” from other people without God’s direct involvement.
So when, for example, Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, he was created by Alois and Klara Hitler not God. God was aware that little baby was going to grow up to kill millions of people but he didn’t make Hitler commit genocide; that was a choice that Hitler would make of his own free will. Alois and Klara made the choice to have a child and Adolf made the choice to kill people and God knew they would someday make those choices long before they actually made them. But the choices were still theirs not God’s.
It is not a rare belief among Christians that God breathes life into embryos (at various stages according to various sects) and that this is what gives us life.
So I’m a Lutheran and it is said that Luther believed in single predestination rather than Calvinist double predestination. Namely that God predestined those for salvation, but not damnation - granted Luther likely believed in an eternal torment Hell, but his view tends (IMO) opens up wide the idea of universalism. If God predestined all for salvation than God does not have to predestine anyone for damnation.
In the Lutheran tradition it is God who does all the work. We do not choose God. God choses us. We cannot do anything to earn this salvation and even the faith that saves us is a gift from God, not something from ourselves. Luther probably would say he has no idea why God would only give that gift to some (Luther was very clear that if we don’t know something, then we don’t know - we can’t reason our way into understanding that haven’t been revealed). But, as I noted above, I think it trends toward because God’s gifts are for us all.
Ah, the faith of my forefathers! Fortunately dad thought it was BS and ended up agnostic.
Calvin’s TULIP with its emphasis on pre-destination:
Total depravity asserts that as a consequence of the fall of man into sin every person is enslaved to sin. People are not by nature inclined to love God, but rather to serve their own interests and to reject the rule of God.
Unconditional election asserts that God has chosen from eternity those whom he will bring to himself not based on foreseen virtue, merit, or faith in those people; rather, his choice is unconditionally grounded in his mercy alone. God has chosen from eternity to extend mercy to those he has chosen and to withhold mercy from those not chosen. Those chosen receive salvation through Christ alone. Those not chosen receive the just wrath that is warranted for their sins against God.
Limited atonement asserts that Jesus’s substitutionary atonement was definite and certain in its purpose and in what it accomplished. This implies that only the sins of the elect were atoned for by Jesus’s death.
Irresistible grace asserts that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save (that is, the elect) and overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to a saving faith.
Perseverance of the saints (the “saints” being those whom God has predestined to salvation) asserts that since God is sovereign and his will cannot be frustrated by humans or anything else, those whom God has called into communion with himself will continue in faith until the end. Those who apparently fall away either never had true faith to begin with or, if they are saved but not presently walking in the Spirit, they will be divinely chastened and will repent.
My relatives still mostly embrace this Calvinistic view of things. I found it unbelievable from the get-go. I never felt I really had to make a ‘case’ against it; it seemed to require just too much rationalization and fancy idea-twisting to have much merit. But then so does the concept of the Trinity for me.
That really does put the responsibility back on God. It’s saying that God has the sole power to decide who is saved and who is damned and humans can do nothing to affect the decision.
I prefer the doctrine that says God has the power to create a route to salvation and then people have the choice of whether or not they follow that route.