God's omniscience and the existence of the future

[Richca]

I have been wondering about this: If God’s omniscience meant that He sees the past, present, and the future in the same instance, does the future, in some way, exist now? If this isn’t so, how can He see and know the future that doesn’t exist yet?

The future in time exists in God’s mind or intellect as present from eternity before it exists outside his mind in time, in creation, and in its own being. God’s knowledge is eternal as his being is eternal so whatever he knows, he knows from eternity and as present to his knowledge. Each one of us, the whole of creation and the whole of time, God has known from eternity in his intellect and knowledge. So, future time, indeed, the whole of time exists in God’s eternal knowledge before it exists in its own being outside of God’s own eternal being and knowledge. In fact, God’s knowledge of things in his own intellect is the cause of the things he brings into being apart from himself. In other words, God knows what he creates and causes in creation. He doesn’t derive knowledge from the things he creates and causes after he creates or causes them, but rather the eternal knowledge in his intellect of what he creates and causes is the cause of things having their own being and existence apart from God and his eternal knowledge of them. Analogously, a builder forms the idea and plan of a house he wants to build in his mind and puts this idea down on blueprints before he forms and builds the actual material house which is built according to the form or idea in the mind on the blueprints.

 

[Gorgias]

Well, since the word “knows” is undefined in your post

That’s because I discussed it way back up the thread.

God’s knowledge is simple and eternal. God knows. Period. Full stop.

God’s knowledge is different in nature than human knowledge (hence my attempt to get you to think about the differences between human and angelic modes of knowing).

God does not know by experience or observation or ratiocination (as humans do). He. Simply. Knows. He is existence itself, and so He knows His creation immediately (i.e., without the mediation of anything or anyone else).

Hope this helps.

 

[Wesrock]

Richca:

Analogously, a builder forms the idea and plan of a house he wants to build in his mind and puts this idea down on blueprints before he forms and builds the actual material house which is built according to the form or idea in the mind on the blueprints.

This kind of analogy would only be applicable for a deterministic creation, without the ability to have free will. The creation would be just a bunch of puppets on some strings, playing out the God’s plan.

A lack of free will only follows on certain conceptions of nature.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

Analogously, a builder forms the idea and plan of a house he wants to build in his mind and puts this idea down on blueprints before he forms and builds the actual material house which is built according to the form or idea in the mind on the blueprints.

This kind of analogy would only be applicable for a deterministic creation, without the ability to have free will. The creation would be just a bunch of puppets on some strings, playing out the God’s plan.

The form or idea of a house in the human builder’s mind is an analogy of the form or idea of the entire universe in God’s mind which includes human beings with free will. Obviously a house taken literally produced by human beings is not an animate being with free will nor are human beings the Creator or Designer of the entire universe.

 

[Richca]

No, it is an analogy. Human beings are not God but creatures of God infinitely distant from God yet made in God’s image and likeness with intellect and will and totally dependent on God as well as the whole of creation at every moment for their existence and preservation in existence including the existence of all their actions.

 

[Thom18]

I have been wondering about this: If God’s omniscience meant that He sees the past, present, and the future in the same instance, does the future, in some way, exist now? If this isn’t so, how can He see and know the future that doesn’t exist yet?

It exists for God right now, who is an outside observer of time, but for us who are within time, it doesn’t exist.

 

[Wesrock]

Thom18:

It exists for God right now, who is an outside observer of time, but for us who are within time, it doesn’t exist.

So for God, the future already exists. You’ve already read this, and chosen how to respond. So is God right? The obvious answer is yes. For God, the future already exists, and it’s only for us and our limited perspective that it doesn’t. But in reality, it actually does exist. Nothing could be more real than that which is real to God.

Sort of… God and our temporal moment of reality are not parallel.

I’ve stated that all moments of are present in God’s eternal now, but it might help (?) to say God’s same eternal and unpassing now is present to all moments of temporal reality as they occur, when for the fleeting moment that moment does exist… and then doesn’t.

 

[Wesrock]

Gorgias:

Actually, philosophers disagree on the proposition that God’s omniscience includes counter-factuals. So, you can’t really use that claim to disprove God’s omniscience.

Hmmm, if God doesn’t know counterfactuals then God doesn’t know what would’ve happened if Christ hadn’t died on that cross.

I’m not in the “God doesm’t know counterfactuals” camp myself, but in such a scenario God would at the least know what would not possibly occur. So being that a square circle is an impossibility in the natural order, he would know that there is no possible counterfactual in which there is one. And, likewise… he would know that no man could turn to God without God freely giving him the grace to do so, and no man could avoid sin without God giving him special privilege. Though we’re getting into some Christian beliefs about human nature.

 

[Gorgias]

Hmmm, if God doesn’t know counterfactuals then God doesn’t know what would’ve happened if Christ hadn’t died on that cross.

I think you just moved the goal-posts, there! Let me explain why I’m saying that…

When we talk about ‘counterfactuals’, we’re talking about things that do not exist. So, the claim that those who want to exclude counterfactuals from the definition of God’s omnipotence would say is that God does not know that which does not exist. As an example: we could ask the question of the color of the eyes of my grandchild born to a child that I never had. That grandchild never exists… so the color of his eyes is unknown and unknowable.

Now, you just moved the discussion from ‘things with existence’ to ‘events’. That’s a whole 'nother ballgame, and not the one we’re playing at the moment. However, we would say that God fully knows all of creation and fully knows Himself, so it seems to me that we would say that He does know what the Incarnate Jesus would have done if He didn’t allow himself to be crucified.

What we would say that God doesn’t know (if we want to argue for the counterfactual position) is the height and weight of the child that Jesus never had with Mary Magdalene.

Can you see the difference there? God knows all that is real, and He knows it fully – so, we’d say that He does know what you’re suggesting He does not. If we want to argue that counterfactuals aren’t part of omniscience, then we’d have to talk about something that never exists. (If we wanted to use the example you attempted to posit, I think we would have to say something like “God wouldn’t know what Jesus would have done if Jesus hadn’t become an incarnate human”, since that speaks to the counterfactual (Jesus did become incarnate, after all).)