God's control

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MarkRA

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I don’t know if this really counts as philosophy, but it’s bugging me like a philosophy question so here it goes:
If God knows we are going to sin and fall away from him (such as with Judas) why does he create us in the first place? Are some people just examples for others? Not to be offensive to anyone sharing my own religion, but it almost seems like God doesn’t control how he creates us Himself, seeing as he knows we will fall away but he wants us to love him but he knows it won’t happen.
 
ok…the other thread was not helpful, the guy was just getting half answers. however, i walked to the ymca and worked out and came back home and now i think i have an answer. if this is wrong please comment since it’s sorta way out there but… essentially what i realized was that time doesn’t work the same for God. when we live our lives, we look back, in the present, and in the future. However, God’s time is different, and instead of using time, God just is, and he looks back, now, and forward all at once. When he creates us, he has this sort of mind, and so when we fall away, to him we fall away in that same now, then, and later fashion and so knowing we are doomed doesn’t really come into play because that’s just looking into the future. really…i’d like comments because that sounds pretty funny
 
I don’t know, but God wants man free-to have free will-and free will, most would agree, is a good thing, as is our existence. But when you mix free will with anything inferior to God (such as His creation), it would seem that fireworks are inevitable. 🙂 We’re either free to oppose His will-His*** control***- or there is no such thing as human free will at all. JMO
 
MarkRA said:
ok…the other thread was not helpful, the guy was just getting half answers. however, i walked to the ymca and worked out and came back home and now i think i have an answer. if this is wrong please comment since it’s sorta way out there but… essentially what i realized was that time doesn’t work the same for God. when we live our lives, we look back, in the present, and in the future. However, God’s time is different, and instead of using time, God just is, and he looks back, now, and forward all at once. When he creates us, he has this sort of mind, and so when we fall away, to him we fall away in that same now, then, and later fashion and so knowing we are doomed doesn’t really come into play because that’s just looking into the future. really…i’d like comments because that sounds pretty funny
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Your thoughts seem to be getting close to the mark, Mark.

The problem you pose seems to be saying that God’s foreknowledge seems to exclude any good reason for making someone who will choose to sin against him, even mortally.

As far as I can tell, the traditional answer seems to be that any perceived problem is due to us attributing a too-human conception of foreknowledge to God. I’ve heard the analogy that time with regards to God is like an eternal now. I think that insight is a very helpful way to think about the situation.

The problem of Divine Foreknowledge is usually put in terms of free-will vs. determinism. The argument goes that if God knows that something will happen, then it will necessarily happen (otherwise God wouldn’t be all-knowing). But if something will necessarily happen, how can I use my free-will to change it?

One of my professors didn’t think the idea of an ‘eternal now’ fixed the problem. He summarized the argument this way:
  1. Necessarily, if God knows that p, then p.
  2. Necessarily God knows that p.
  3. Therefore, necessarily p.
    You can see that 3, the conclusion, does not follow from both premises. Basically, the “necessarily” in premise 1 surrounds the whole if/then statement. Premise 2 instantiates the if/then statement of premise 1, but 3 is not the result of the instantiation. The actual result would be just p, and not necessarily p.
I contend that my professor is right, and that the conclusion doesn’t follow. However, I think that the idea of an ‘eternal now’ gets us closer to the vital insight that what determines the truth-value about our actions are the actions themselves, and not God’s knowledge.

So perhaps we do not understand Divine Foreknowledge completely, but it at least doesn’t seem to be incompatible with human free-will.

Anyways, back to your post. It seems that you allude to Judas being in hell. I would contend that we do not know if that is the case or not, even if we knew that he fell away from Christ by betraying him.

The basic answer I would give to the reason why God would create someone, knowing that they will betray Him, is the same reason why He creates any human being at all, regardless if they betray him or not–it is irrelevant.

Good question. Ask questions where I don’t make sense.
 
I always imagined the foreknowledge of humans and how it differs from God’s by picturing a mountain with us at the bottom and God and the top. Now because of our view point we cannot see things that well happen to us or the stuff we will encounter in the future. Yet for God this is not the case because by being at the top of the mountain He see’s everything happening in now like state: there is nothing obstructing His view, there is nothing that is unseen even though it is unseen to you.
 
Astonishing though it may seem if we choose hell it is God’s Will that we choose hell!
The reason if that He wants us to choose for ourselves even if it is not in His interest or ours. :confused: Does that make sense! Yes, when we realise that without the power of choice we are incapable of love - which is more important than anything else. We have to be out of God’s control to be genuinely in control of ourselves. And there is no half-way stage between love and evil…
 
MarkRA said:
If God knows we are going to sin and fall away from him (such as with Judas) why does he create us in the first place?
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It depends on what kind of knowledge you talking about

Freewill fulfills Gods theoretical reasons for creating us. In theory, a person with freewill, could choose to go to hell insofar as he or she rejects Gods eternal love. But theoretical knowledge does not determine or necessitate that any particular human will choose to do so.

However, Gods “actual knowledge” is something different. If you are asking why did God creates us with the “actual knowledge” of our demise, then we must look to and understand the relationship between the existence of that event and Gods knowledge of it.

The problem is simply this. God cannot stop something he has “actual knowledge” of. Actual knowledge by my definition is “having knowledge of that which exists”. Gods actual knowledge is eternal; it does not change, and thus time for God is more like coordinates rather than events. If he eternally knows that you tripped over a singularity, its because it truly happened, not because it might happen. Its a logical impossibility for God to have eternal actual knowledge of that which might not happen, unless we are not really taking about Gods actual knowledge. God knows that you are going to hell only because there is a you that goes to it, because God created you. It would be contradictory for God to have actual knowledge of a being he never created or something which never happened. His actual knowledge of your demise presupposes the fact that God has created you, that you exist; for he does not have “actual knowledge” of that which will never exist.

Thus the issue you speak of is only a problem if you believe in a God that can have actual knowledge of that which has no existence and never will have actuality.
The fact that God does have knowledge that you are in hell, is only because he created you. Gods creative act and knowledge is one and the same in the sense that God eternally knows what he eternally creates; its not something that is separate or changes or can be changed.
 
MarkRA said:
I don’t know if this really counts as philosophy, but it’s bugging me like a philosophy question so here it goes:
If God knows we are going to sin and fall away from him (such as with Judas) why does he create us in the first place? Are some people just examples for others? Not to be offensive to anyone sharing my own religion, but it almost seems like God doesn’t control how he creates us Himself, seeing as he knows we will fall away but he wants us to love him but he knows it won’t happen.
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St Catherine of Siena in her Little Talks with God has something to say in particular about
Judas. These talks took place between God and Catherine. The following is about the
person at the very end of life. In particular about the fact that the person judges its sins to be greater than God’s mercy would every forgive.

“This is the sin which is pardoned neither here nor there, because the soul cannot be pardoned that disparages my mercy. Therefore this last sin is graver to me than ALL the other sins that the soul has committed. For this reason Judas"s dispair displeased me more, and was graver to my Son, than his betrayal of him.”

“So it is that these are rebuked of their false judgement that their sin is greater than my mercy.” P.43

His heart offers everyone, no matter what, the extension of his mercy. And that this is
far greater than anything(s) they might have done. From this we know he only wants their
eternal happiness no matter what if they will only take it. This is the God of love. If they
don’t accept his forgiveness, then it is their judgement of him that prevents it, not His judgement of them.
 
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