Omyo12,
Exodus 32:14 is an
anthropomorphism. It’s not describing literally what God is doing, just explaining it on human terms. If it were literally true, it would be an absolute contradiction with Numbers 23:19 –
“God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.”
Jerry-Jet,
You make it sound as if Exodus 32:14 and Numbers 23:19 can be interpreted in the exact same light and still be seen as only an “apparent contradiction” without being a real one. However, with this strategy in mind – in which, presumably, “X is true and X is false” can be a true statement – how do you ever plan on telling a Protestant that he is wrong in doing something? If you allow contradictions – calling them “paradoxes,” though they are indistinguishable from real contradictions – in your own theology, how can you critique them in other theologies?
Notice what I did above in my reply to
Omyo12. I pointed out that Exodus 32:14 is speaking figuratively (specifically, anthropomorphically), whereas Numbers 23:19 is speaking literally.
I made a distinction to avoid an absolute contradiction.
Keep in mind that even Catholic commentators understand the importance of this distinction. Here is Haydock’s Bible Commentary on Genesis 6:6:
Ver. 6. It repented him, &c. God, who is unchangeable, is not capable of repentance, grief, or any other passion. But these expressions are used to declare the enormity of the sins of men, which was so provoking as to determine their Creator to destroy these his creatures, whom before he had so much favoured. (Challoner) — God acted outwardly as a man would do who repented. (Haydock)
It is not pious to embrace contradictions, as even other Roman Catholics understand. Consequently Calvinists are not being irreligious or unfaithful when they, for instance, deny libertarian free will on the basis of God’s predestinating sovereignty. They are simply trying to be consistent.
They believe that if God predestined After he foreknew then it would diminish God’s sovereignty because God’s choice would be dependent on ours.
Yes, that is what Calvinists believe. To say that God “predestines”
as a reaction to His knowledge of future human actions is to adamantly
deny the pre- of predestination. You yourself posit His predestination as “
after” His foreknowledge! It would be as if you go to a restaurant and pick out what you want to eat, and the waitress, after learning your order, gives you what you chose and tells you that she chose it out just for you. What just occurred is that
your choice was ultimate, not
hers. It cannot be properly said that she chose your meal, because her choice was entirely under the auspices of whatever
you chose. Likewise, when Calvinists read
“he chose us in him before the creation of the world”, we take that to mean that
His choice is ultimate, not
ours. You cannot have both. If they are causally related, then one must be cause and the other an effect. If they are not causally related, then why call it predestination?
God’s choice is the cause.
However if God predestines without FOREknowing then what are we to make of the saying of Jesus–“If the works that had been done here had been done at Tyre and Sidon they would have repented”.
If God were to providentially arrange events in such a way that Jesus’s works were done in Tyre and Sidon, the people there would have repented. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this disproves any Calvinistic principles.
Also, for the record, I believe you are misspeaking when you say that Calvinists deny that God could “foreknow and predestine at the same time.” Certainly whenever God predestines, He also foreknows. If God foreordains something to occur, then He obviously knows what He is foreordaining. This is indisputable.
However, the way you are saying it, you make it sound as if Calvinists (unwisely) refuse to embrace that God’s predestination is
identical to His foreknowledge, or alternatively that His foreknowledge is the
grounds of His predestining. For reasons I gave above (regarding the ultimacy of God’s choice, and how God’s choice and ours are causally related), I must reject this on the basis of Scripture and logic.
Ben
