Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Troy Edwards
He is said to see all of the past, present, and future simultaneously. If this is true then He is completely at fault for evil.
If we humans rightfully hold each other accountable for our limited foreknowledge of future events that could be prevented, why do we attempt to vindicate God if He created this universe with the exhaustive foreknowledge that angels and men would fall, bring about much misery, and be eternally damned?
Paul writes, “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children” (Eph. 5:1). God is the example by which we are to pattern our lives after. If God has a law and sets Himself above it, doing things and acing in ways that He prohibits us from doing, then we could not pattern ourselves after Him.
Mimic
Does God have a double-standard? Is He allowed to be negligent while chastising us for negligence?
We have an idiom by which we state that if something is permanent and cannot be changed then it is “set in stone” or “written in stone.” This means that it cannot be altered in any way. If God has exhaustive foreknowledge of the exact future, to include His own “future actions” then the future must already be in existence. That means that it is “set in stone” and cannot be altered.
we find that the universe that God created is nothing like the time travel novels and movies that we have been entertained by. This fact is made obvious by the numerous “if” statements found throughout Scripture.
Therefore, God made no mistake. However, if God knew the future of Saul’s life then He engaged in both negligence and deception. God allegedly engaged in negligence by appointing someone as king that He knew would disobey His commands. God also engaged in deception by claiming that there was an alternate future for Saul when there really was no possibility that Saul’s future would have been any different than what it was.
Jesus actually told Peter that he could avoid falling into this temptation if he prayed:
When Jesus said “lest ye enter into temptation,” He made it clear that Peter’s future was not “set in stone” and was unsettled.
I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early. (Hosea 5:15) Another translation shows us that this desired response is not a sure future thing: “I will abandon my people until they have suffered enough for their sins and come looking for me. Perhaps in their suffering they will try to find me.” (Good News Translation)
God had very much placed Joash’s destiny in his hands. Unfortunately, Joash’s faith was limited and he limited what God could do for him. However, it also clearly demonstrates that the future is not “set in stone”.
God told David that Saul would come and that the people would certainly give him up. Had David been a fatalist who believed that the future was “set in stone” and that God was telling him events as He viewed them in the eternal now, then David would have stayed in Keilah to await his doom. Instead, David and his men wisely left the city and none of the things that God said would take place ever did. David changed his action which, in turn, changed a potential future.
Just like the word given to Ahaziah, there was no hint of contingency in Isaiah’s prophecy. Hezekiah was told that he was going to die and that was the end of that.
Ahab’s future, even one that came via a prophetic word, was not “set in stone”. No future is. Futures can be changed and adjusted because the future is unsettled.
Yet neither do we have the right to believe that we “exalt” God by teaching philosophical views that are inconsistent with His written revelation to man.
It takes a lot of twisted explanations and mental gymnastics in order to reconcile Scriptural teachings about God’s acts with the “eternal now” philosophy. As a matter of fact one must not only disregard the simple and clear Biblical revelation of God but one must also suspend common sense. Yet,
Winkey Pratney in his book, “The Nature and Character of God” writes, “One thing is certain, before Augustine, the Eternal Now concept is almost unknown in the church; after him, it becomes a dominant doctrine.”3
.... nowhere does the Bible indicate that time is a thing created as part of the universe. One would be hard pressed to discover any statement in the Bible that even alludes to the idea that God created time, unless Platonic or Aristotelian presuppositions linking time to the motion of created objects are first brought to the text. In spite of this, a primary foundational assertion of Augustine and many later Christian theologians is that time is a created part of the material universe.6
In order to make this philosophical idea appear to be Biblical, theologians such as Augustine synthesized these pagan philosophical ideas about God’s “timelessness” by redefining a Biblical word used throughout the Scripture. They gave a pagan definition to the word “eternity” by describing it as timelessness rather than the way Scripture defines it, which is “endless duration.” For example, Isaiah wrote: For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the
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Cullmann writes: “Thus in the New Testament field it is not time and eternity that stand opposed, but limited and unlimited, endless time.”7
Some tell us that God had to “step into time” to create. Then at what point did He create time? Did He have to “step into time” in order to create time? It requires a sequential experience in order for God to “step into” something. That means that if God prepared to step into something in order to create (be it “time” or the universe) then that “stepping in” was future to Him. When God completed the creation process and “stepped back out of time” then that was past to Him. Therefore, technically speaking, God simply cannot exist in an eternal now. Can you yet see the absurdities that are
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The non-Calvinist “eternal now” believer has a real philosophical conundrum because he or she has a God who is able to observe all that happens in time but is unable to change any of it. Furthermore, the non-Calvinist “eternal now” advocate is unable to tell us who put in place the past, present and future events that God observes in His “now”. If all of these time periods exist then how did they come to be? If the non-Calvinist says that God created time itself did He know that the moment He created time that tremendous evil would occur within the time periods that He created? At what point
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Of course some “eternal now” advocates found in the Augustinian-Calvinist camps run to Romans 9 in their attempts to dispute the idea that God desires the salvation of all men. Yet Calvinists ignore the fact that God is “longsuffering” to those this camp usually refers to as the reprobates and endures them: What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory (Rom. 9:22-23) If God had
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When we couple Romans 9:22-23 with 2 Pet. 3:9 then we have more consistency. God endures with “longsuffering” the vessels of wrath because He is not willing that any of them should perish but that they should all come to repentance. It really is that simple.
There is nothing that says that a person’s name was blotted out in eternity past or that the name was never written in the book. It talks about a blotting out and a taking away that happens in real time. Therefore,
If “time” had a “beginning” then how can its beginning be measured with a time in which it began?
Heavens and the earth. Therefore, 2 Timothy 1:9 and Titus 1:2 would be better translated, “….before the ages began” as some of the more literal English translations render these passages. An “age” represents an epoch, era or specific period of time within human history. Therefore the plans and promises in Christ alluded to in these passages can easily be understood to have happened before the era or period of human history without the implication that God existed outside of time and later created time. God has always been and always will be but there was a period before the creation of man
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How can time be done away with if “months” will still be measured during the period in which God will reign forever? Here again man-made ideas about God’s timelessness simply cannot be supported by Scripture. On the contrary, Scripture refutes the very idea of a timeless eternal now.
All miracles that were performed by Jesus was done through Him by the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:26-28; Luke 4:18-19; 11:20; John 5:19; 14:10; Acts 2:22; 10:38). Therefore, while on earth, Jesus was completely dependent upon the other members of the Triune Godhead when it came to the supernatural. This is important due to the fact that some theologians, in their attempts to defend the deity of Christ, use much semantical language to show that Jesus even resided in the “eternal now” while still walking the earth as a man.1 The claim is absurd in and of itself, but worse,
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Galatians 4:4 says, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son.” Such language is incompatible with the idea of a God who lives in an eternal now. The inspired Scriptures tell us that at some particular point in time, God sent Jesus. Furthermore, Jesus proves that the Godhead, as a whole, has sequential experiences within time:
If the language here is meant, as some eternal now proponents claim, to be an adjustment to man’s finite mind, then we will also have to conclude that God did not literally speak “in divers manners.” In other words, for consistency’s sake, we will have to run to the theological experts to determine which parts of the Bible we take seriously and which ones were only meant to accommodate our limited understanding.
The Unlocked Dynamic Bible translates Hebrews 1:5, “You are my Son! Today I have declared to all that I am your Father!”
These facts are also supported in Romans 1:4: “And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Also, in Acts we read:
The Church shews that she understood the word “to-day” to apply to the Resurrection by appointing the second psalm as one of the special psalms for Easter-day.4
Further proof found in Psalm 2 that the Godhead experiences succession of moments is in the fact Jesus must ask the Father to fulfill His covenant promises. In this case, even with Jesus, the future is contingent upon a willing performance.
John 17:5 is also informing us that Jesus possessed something in the past with the Father that He did not possess in His incarnation. Furthermore, we are told that both the Father and Son possessed something together during a period of time (before the world was or before it was created) that they no longer shared at the time. Due to our Lord’s prayer He will come
This means that the future is opened for the church in Ephesus. They can make a choice that will determine how their future goes and Jesus will react to their choice. This being the case then the future for this church is just as unsettled for Jesus as it is for them.
But, as we have seen in the previous chapters, the future is not set in stone and it is no inditement against the God who created all things to say that He does not have knowledge of something that He never brought into existence.
being the infinite resourceful being that He is, He is able to deal with any contingency or challenge that could possibly attempt to hinder His plans.
This being true, it takes a much greater God and a greater wisdom and knowledge for Him to carry out His plans than One who may have exhaustive knowledge of a future set in stone. As a matter of fact, if the future is already in existence
then there really is no need for God to make plans and there is no need for Him to exercise any wisdom or kno...
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There is no reason to take two similar statements by the same Biblical writer and attempt to come up with two different ideas unless one has a biased theological agenda.
He wants as many saved as possible and, therefore, continues to delay the time. Hence, even the second coming of Jesus, when studied fully, proves that the future is not “set in stone” and God’s plans are open for adjustment and change based on His love and wisdom.
The Holy Spirit would not reveal anything about God that he did not think men could handle.
God knows everything. But when we say that, we mean simply that He knows everything which can be the object of knowledge. He knows all things as they are. He does not know them as they are not. The very perfection of His knowledge consists in its exact correspondence with the nature of its object. If an event is certain, fixed, and foreordained, then God knows it as certain, fixed, and foreordained. If it is contingent upon the free, self-determining, preferential action of a human will, then God knows that it is contingent, for He Himself has foreordained that it should be so.5
It is claimed by some that, to God all time is one “eternal now;” that to him there is no past, no future; therefore his “prescience is eternal and universal.” It seems very strange that any careful thinker could come to such a conclusion, if he paid much attention to his Bible and the dictates of common sense.1 – Miles Grant (1896)
I find it highly suspicious that our translators would interpret the word proginosko one way when it is used of God and then in a completely different manner in relation to men. There seems to have been a biased agenda with an attempt to promote an idea about God that would never work if it was known that men, who are created in God’s image and likeness, possessed the exact same attribute.
Over one hundred years ago, Walter Arthur Copinger, commenting on Romans 8:29, explains the first two understandings, but offers us a better one: The word “foreknown” has three significations. One is general, importing simply a knowledge of things before they come into existence; the second signification is knowledge accompanied by a decree, for whatever God decrees shall be, He necessarily foresees will be; the third signification of the word is taken for a knowledge of love and approbation. It is in this last sense that the word is used in the passage under consideration.3 (Emphasis are
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Copinger tells us that in Romans 8:29, proginoskos is a reference to love and approbation (approval and recognition). Also concerning this passage as well as 1 Peter 1:2, Abraham Scott, says that “the foreknowledge of God” referenced in them: .... must therefore be a knowledge of approbation that is here intended; as where it is said, that God knoweth the way of the righteous; that is, approves of it.
To the wicked he says, I know you not; that is, he does not approve of them. Christ says, I know my sheep and am known of mine; that is, I approve of them, and they approve of me; for in any other sense of the word, he knows other sheep as well as his own. Therefore, when know and foreknow, in these places, are made to signify simple prescience, the sense is perverted.4 John Goodwin agrees with both Copinger and Scott. He writes: It is not to be denied, but that the Scriptures do attribute προγινώσκω, or foreknowledge unto God in several places, as Acts ii. 23; Rom. viii. 29; xi. 2; 1
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