Mutcer
August 29, 2014, 5:42am
21
Moreno:
Mutcer:
Moreno:
Oh come on, Christians do not do this. What, do they all have theology picnics or something? Very few Christians have ever had a thought like this. Some if pressed might spit out, for the first time, something similar. Some that is. But to refer to Christians as positing this is just silly.
I’ve asked several Christians how they reconcile the problem of free will. E.g. if God knows what you will do tomorrow and you do something different, then what does that do to God’s foreknowledge. They reconcile this by asserting that God is outside of time and observes all events in time simultaneously. But if we look up the definition of ‘God’ in the dictionary, we don’t see any mention of his being outside of time or transcending time.
And we don’t see it there because it isn’t a necessary part of the beliefs. I have met a good share of Christians and I almost never heard this explanation - which is clearly problematic, since it simply explains how God can know what is going to happen in the future and does not eliminate determinism. And while many Christians can and do defend their ideas with poor arguments, I am still very skeptical that it is consensus theology for Christians, even less so that most Christians on the ground think this way.
How many Christians have you asked to reconcile the problem of free will? I ask many of them, and that probably explains why I hear that explanation more frequently than you do. I’d guess that you don’t ask as many Christians how they reconcile the problem of free will. So it’s an invalid comparison to evaluate by the absolute quantity of Christians who have used this explanation if we’re talking two people who ask different questions.
And as I said in a prior post, I don’t think we can rule out the possibility of something being outside time, given our limited perspectives. It’s fine to try out our logic on such an issue, but any conclusions should be treated as seriously speculative.
If something were outside of time, how would we know it was outside of time?