God gives Adam a teachable moment
Because you say so?
Genesis 2:19 does not say God brought the animals to Adam as a “teachable moment.”
It says He brought them to Adam “to see what he would call them.”
That is the reason the text gives.
You don't get to change the reason to suit your beliefs.
followed immediately by the creation of his wife and the creation of his wife was predetermined,
Because you say so?
God saying, “I will make him a helper comparable to him,” proves God intended to make Eve.
It does not prove God eternally knew every future free choice Adam would ever make.
God knowing what He Himself intends to do is not the same thing as exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free act.
you think God didn't know the future
God knew what He wanted to do.
God is wise enough to make plans, respond to events, judge men, test men, warn men, bring His purposes to pass, and deal with men according to what they actually do.
What I deny is your claim that every future free choice already exists as a settled fact before the person makes it.
You keep confusing God having plans with every future act being exhaustively settled.
Those are not the same thing.
so the open theist wants us to believe God was prophesying his own sacrifice for the sin of the world without knowing whether Abraham would do it. Genesis 22:12 ,Revelation 13:8
Do you think God is impotent that He couldn't bring about His redemption of the world without Abraham's commitment to giving up his son?
In other words, was Abraham's offering up of Isaac necessary?
And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for
now I know that you fear God,
since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me. ”
And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
www.biblegateway.com
“Now I know.”
You keep trying to erase that.
Abraham’s offering of Isaac was a type and shadow of what God Himself would do through Christ.
It does not follow that God had to eternally know Abraham’s every future free choice in order to have a plan of redemption.
God can have His own purpose, His own plan, His own Son, and His own power to bring redemption to pass.
Genesis 22:12 still says, “now I know.”
you only like open theism because you like denying scripture.
Derf already gave the perfect response to this, so all I'll say is that the only one denying scripture here is you.
When Scripture says something that fits your system, you take it literally.
When Scripture says God repented, relented, tested, saw, investigated, or said “now I know,” suddenly it becomes a “teachable moment.”
That is not exegesis.
That is your system protecting itself from the text.
The group is identified.
Not every individual future choice of every individual in the group.
Delta can know that a scheduled flight will go from Dallas to Atlanta without knowing every individual who will end up on the plane.
Likewise, God can declare what will happen to a corporate group without that requiring exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free decision made by every individual in that group.
men who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent
Within a vision.
And again, it describes a corporate group. It does not name every individual, nor does it require your doctrine of exhaustive divine foreknowledge.
Refer back to the Delta flight analogy.
A known corporate outcome does not require exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice of every individual involved.
we're still here , God didn't change his mind
So was God telling the truth when He said:
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created...
www.biblegateway.com
Did He mean what He said?
Or was He only speaking as though He was grieved, sorry, and repentant?
The word translated “was sorry” there is
nacham. It means to repent, relent, be sorry, or be grieved.
So the text says God saw what man had become, was grieved in His heart, repented of making man, and said He would destroy man from the face of the earth.
And He said it twice.
So which is it?
Did God really repent of making man?
Or was God only pretending to be sorry?
At minimum, your position seems to require the second option.
Foreknowledge is not possible for a being that is outside of time.
“Fore” means before.
A timeless being has no before.
And even if I granted you the word, it still would not get you where you need to go. Knowing something beforehand does not automatically mean exhaustive divine foreknowledge of every future fact, every future choice, and every future event.
You are smuggling your conclusion into the word.
Already addressed.
A prophecy that God will bring about His own stated plan is not proof that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
(Revelation of John 13:8) And all dwelling on the earth will worship it, those whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain, from the foundation of the world
This passage doesn't say what you want it to say.
Let's break this down.
Who is this verse talking about?
"All dwelling on the earth . . . Those whose names have not been written"
Where were their names not written?
"In the Book of Life"
Who does the Book of Life belong to?
"The Lamb slain"
Now this last part of the verse always confuses people, and you seem to have been confused as well.
The next question is NOT "Since when was the Lamb slain".
The next question is:
From what point have the names been written in the Book of Life?
The answer is:
"From the foundation of the world."
We could rearrange the verse, without changing the meaning, like so:
"And all dwelling on the earth will worship him, those whose names have not been written from the foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain"
In other words, names have been written in the Book of Life since the foundation of the world. Not everyone's name has been written in the book.
Those who have not had their name written in the book, since the foundation of the world, will worship the beast.
Revelation 17:8 confirms this interpretation:
The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
www.biblegateway.com
Notice how clear that is.
It is not “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
It is “names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world.”
But you didn't quote that passage, because it utterly destroys any notion of Revelation 13:8 being any sort of support for your position.
redemption was always the plan
Yes.
Open Theists believe God is capable of making plans and bringing them to pass.
You believe God cannot accomplish His plans unless He has exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
That is not a higher view of God. It is a weaker one.
(I Peter 1:19-20) [19] but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; [20] indeed having been foreknown before the foundation of the world, but revealed in the last times for you,
Yes, Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world.
That does not prove exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
It proves that Christ was central to God’s plan from the beginning.
No Open Theist denies that.
God planned redemption.
God promised victory.
God brought Christ into the world.
God raised Him from the dead.
God will finish what He started.
None of that requires your doctrine.
yes, why nothing from the sea?
... Because God didn't bring him any creatures from the sea...?
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
www.biblegateway.com
It specifies beasts of the field and birds of the air.
Not fish.
So the “why nothing from the sea?” objection is not an objection at all.
The passage tells you what God brought to Adam.
And putting the obvious aside for a moment, Ezekiel, within a passage that describes Lucifer and his fall in the Garden, tells us that the Garden of Eden was on "the holy mountain of God":
You were in Eden, the garden of God;Every precious stone was your covering:The sardius, topaz, and diamond,Beryl, onyx, and jasper,Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipesWas prepared for you on the day you were created. “You were the anointed cherub who covers;I established you;You were on the holy mountain of God;You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The sardius, topaz, and diamond, Beryl, onyx, and jasper, Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes Was prepared for you on the day you were created. “You were the anointed...
www.biblegateway.com
So, to answer your question, "why nothing from the sea?"
Because Adam was in Eden, not Atlantis.
The objection answers itself.
Genesis says God brought Adam the beasts of the field and birds of the air. Ezekiel describes Eden as being on the mountain of God.
There is no reason to expect fish or sea creatures to be involved in that naming event.
(Genesis 2:18) And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him
Another passage that better fits my position than it does yours.
God sees that His creation is missing something, and responds by creating something else to resolve the problem.
you think God didn't know the future
Why does He have to?
That is the question you keep avoiding.
You assume God must know the future exhaustively, then reinterpret every contrary passage to fit that assumption.
But the Bible repeatedly shows God testing, responding, relenting, grieving, investigating, and saying “now I know.”
So the question is not, “Why don’t you accept exhaustive foreknowledge?”
The question is, “Why do you keep forcing it onto texts that do not teach it?”
Nineveh will be destroyed, is that where it ended or was there more to the book
I was using your own logic against you.
You said that if God declares something, then it is settled exactly as stated.
Fine.
Then by that logic, Nineveh had to be destroyed in forty days.
But it was not.
Why?
Because the threat was conditional, even though the stated warning did not explicitly include the condition.
That is my point.
would Nineveh repented without being told, no, God's foreknowledge
(Jonah 3:4-5) [4] And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown! [5] And the people of Nineveh believed God. And they called a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
No, that is not “God’s foreknowledge.”
That is God warning people, people responding to the warning, and God relenting from the disaster He said He would bring.
The book explicitly says that.
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
www.biblegateway.com
You are skipping the verse that directly explains what happened.
God did not say, “I always knew they would repent, and I was only pretending to threaten them.”
The text says God saw what they did, and God relented.
And the word translated “relented” there is the same word from Genesis 6:
nacham.
So in Genesis 6, God
nacham concerning making man.
In Jonah 3, God
nacham concerning destroying Nineveh.
Same word.
Same basic concept.
God saw what men did, responded to it, and changed course accordingly.
You do not get to quote Jonah as proof of exhaustive foreknowledge while ignoring the verse where God does the very thing Open Theists are pointing out.
God said Nineveh would be overthrown.
Nineveh repented.
Then God repented/relented.
That is the text.
And they did not repent of their deeds.
(Revelation of John 16:9-11)
they will not do otherwise
Repeating your conclusion as though it has not already been addressed does not prove it nor is it going to convince anyone that your position is right.
It just makes you look like a retard who can't actually make a good argument for his position.
The passage says what they did in the vision.
It does not say that every individual future free choice was eternally settled in the classical-theist sense.
You keep treating a revealed outcome as though it automatically proves exhaustive foreknowledge.
That is the leap you have not justified.
you guys brought up the phone challenge, I just applied it to this:
(Revelation of John 9:20-21)
No, you changed the category.
The phone challenge is about a specific future free choice of a specific individual.
Revelation 9 and 16 are corporate judgments in an apocalyptic vision.
Those are not the same thing.
Knowing or declaring what a group will do under judgment (and in a vision, no less) is not the same as knowing every future free choice of every individual in history.
You're trying to use the former as evidence for the latter. It doesn't work.
(Revelation of John 16:9-11) [9] And men were burned with great heat. And they blasphemed the name of God, He having authority over these plagues. And they did not repent in order to give Him glory. [10] And the fifth angel poured out his vial on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom became darkened. And they gnawed their tongues from the pain. [11] And they blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores. And they did not repent of their deeds.
yes it does prove exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
No it does not and saying it doesn't make it so.
I just demonstrated otherwise.
What it proves is that God revealed a future judgment scene in which the wicked, under those plagues, refuse to repent.
That is not the same thing as proving exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
You are trying to get an entire philosophical system out of a passage that does not state it.
it was settled when God wrote it that they would not repent
It was revealed when God gave the vision.
That does not prove your doctrine.
God can bring about judgments.
God can harden rebels who have already chosen rebellion.
God can give a prophetic vision of a corporate outcome.
God can know the present character of men and nations and declare where their path leads.
None of that requires exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
God’s belief does not cause the choice, God simply knows it certainly.
“Yesterday, God infallibly believed T.”
That dodges the problem.
If yesterday God infallibly believed that tomorrow I will do T, then tomorrow I cannot do otherwise.
Not because God causes it, but because God’s infallible belief cannot be false.
So my future choice is fixed before I make it.
Calling it “knowledge” instead of “causation” does not solve the problem.
It just moves the problem.
open theism seeks to make God in their image , really good guesser
No.
Open Theism says God knows reality as it is.
The past is settled.
The present is actual.
The future includes things God has determined, things God has promised, things God can predict with perfect wisdom, and things that remain genuinely open because free creatures have not made those choices yet.
That is not making God a guesser.
That is refusing to pretend that non-existent future free choices are already settled facts.
“Yesterday, God infallibly believed T.”
kinda like exhaustive foreknowledge is taught in the bible
No, it is not.
That formulation comes from philosophical theology, not from the Bible.
The Bible says God knows.
The Bible says God declares.
The Bible says God plans.
The Bible says God predicts.
The Bible also says God repents, relents, tests, investigates, responds, grieves, and says “now I know.”
You accept the first set literally and explain away the second set.
That is the problem.
Classical Theism, its there you just don't like it
Of course, if you're constantly eisegeting Classical Theism into the text, then you'll see it there.
But in reality, it isn't.
The Bible does not teach divine timelessness, absolute immutability, exhaustive definite foreknowledge of every future free choice, or the idea that all of history is eternally settled.
Those are philosophical commitments brought to Scripture.
“Yesterday, God infallibly believed T.”
you paint Classical Theism makes us all robots
No, I am following your own premise.
If God infallibly believed yesterday that I will do T tomorrow, then I cannot refrain from doing T tomorrow.
If I can refrain, then God’s belief could be false.
If God’s belief cannot be false, then I cannot refrain.
That is the issue.
You do not escape fatalism merely by saying, “God does not cause it.”
God knew the answer to all 3 questions
God knew where Adam was
God knew they ate from the tree
God knew the all the sin of sodom
Then, again, your position makes the text misleading.
God asks Adam where he is.
God asks who told him he was naked.
God asks whether he ate from the tree.
God says He will go down and see whether Sodom has done altogether according to the outcry.
Your answer is that God already knew all of it and was just asking “teachable moment questions.”
But that is exactly my point.
Whenever the text does not fit your theology, you turn it into theater.
teachable moment questions
That is not an argument.
That is a label you attach to passages you do not want to take seriously.
Sometimes questions are rhetorical.
Sometimes questions are confrontational.
Sometimes questions seek information.
You do not get to declare every inconvenient divine question a “teachable moment” just because Classical Theism needs it to be one.
How?
If one man repented, how exactly would that change the passage?
Revelation is describing a large group of surviving rebels under judgment. It does not identify every individual by name, and it does not say, “not one individual exception is possible.”
You need the passage to prove exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice.
But all the passage actually says is that the surviving wicked, as a group, did not repent.
Those are not the same claim.
and what does it say about those people
(Revelation of John 9:20-21) [20] And the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and golden, and silver, and bronze, and stone, and wooden idols (which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk). [21] And they did not repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
It says that the rest of the men who were not killed by those plagues did not repent.
Again, that is a corporate description in an apocalyptic vision.
It does not say:
“God has exhaustive foreknowledge of every future free choice of every individual who will ever exist.”
That is your addition.
God's a good guesser (⊙_◎)
who enacted the death penalty for false prophets.
no
On the other hand, if God exhaustively foreknew exactly what every false prophet would say, exactly when he would say it, exactly who would believe it, and exactly what damage it would do, then the warning itself becomes strange.
God would not be warning Israel about a genuine danger that could be avoided.
He would be warning them about a scripted event that He eternally knew could not happen otherwise.
But Scripture treats false prophecy as a real moral act, committed by real rebels, with real accountability.
The false prophet is not condemned because God failed to guess correctly.
He is condemned because he spoke presumptuously in the name of the Lord when the Lord had not spoken.
That is the issue in Deuteronomy.
Not whether God can make good guesses.
The issue is whether the prophet spoke from God.
And if he did not, he dies.
That does not prove exhaustive foreknowledge.
It proves that God holds men accountable for lying in His name.
The test is not, “Did God guess correctly?”
The test is, “Did the prophet speak from God?”
If he claimed to speak for God when God had not spoken, he was a false prophet.
That is moral guilt, not a problem for Open Theism.
