Yep, you did -- and it makes perfect sense to me.
In that other Boyd thread (recently locked until Religion Mod has an opportunity to review it), Boyd draws the critical distinction between ontology and epistemology; but then it seems he lets the epistemological tail wag the ontological dog. I think he got seriously tripped up regarding his idea that God does not possess "exhaustively definite foreknowledge" (EDF) of the future.
Let's consider what that would mean. It seems this would suggest that God is a less than competent creator.
As Aristotle pointed out, no one would do anything unless he had a goal or purpose in view as the end of his action. This is certainly true of humans. But humans do not possess the perfections of God -- Who is absolutely omniscient and omnipotent, and absolutely eternal (wholly outside of space and time as we humans perceive these things).
Thus if God wills toward an end, certainly He knows what that end is; to conceive of it, to speak it, is already to have created it. But from the human point of view, all we can say is "it will come to pass" (note verb tense -- indicating future). From God's "vantage point" of eternity -- where there is no "future," but only Presence (Present), He already knows what that end is, even if we humans cannot; by His willing intelligence it already exists. (D. Bohm referred to the "implicit order," J. A. Wheeler to "pre-space," which to my mind denote the ontologically crucial distinction of timelessness-in-time; I think these concepts are analogous to what we are struggling to grasp here.)
God is First Cause, Prime Mover of creation. The creation itself is what Aristotle called Final Cause -- a cause toward which everything is apparently (from the human perspective) proceeding in time, a cause which does not serve or seek to benefit any particular element or constituent of the “collective everything,” but finally seeks realization of itself for its own sake – that is to say, for God’s sake.
As humans bound to space-time categories, it is extraordinarily difficult for us to comprehend the idea of an Eternal Now -- which is God, and which is with God. From God's point of view, what looks like "future" to us, already manifestly IS.
FWIW. I hope this makes sense, xzins! Thanks for the excellent posts.
First, all of the parties here believe that they are holding to a biblical faith. The question is which of the (two predominate) man-made constructs (both purportedly drawn from that biblical base) better "fit" the data. I have come to believe that the 'open theist' model has the better fit to the totality of the biblical data than the determinist model (which some more accurately describe as EDF- exhaustive definitive foreknowledge).
Now let me turn to a couple of points.
It seems [EDF] would suggest that God is a less than competent creator. As Aristotle pointed out, no one would do anything unless he had a goal or purpose in view as the end of his action.
Assuming arguendo that Aristotle is correct, a 'goal' or a 'purpose' does not necessarily presuppose the 'competence' (more accurately the capability) to ensure the attainment of the goal or purpose,
The writer then moves on to God as an omnipotent Being and makes the leap (an open theist would see the 'leap' as a Biblical omission) to
Thus if God wills toward an end, certainly He knows what that end is; to conceive of it, [and] to speak it, is already to have created it.
I added the 'and' to point to point in the statement where the author made the leap to the determinist presupposition. Obviously, God wills many things and His will has implicit prioritzation. The writer (and the traditional determinist view) simply assumes that God's highest priority at creation was the achievement of a predetermined outcome. Were that necessarily so, there would be no question that the writer's preferred construct would hold.
However, assume momentarily that God's highest priority in creation of His subordinate beings was to create a being which could, but need not, volitionally love Him. Then, God might well have sacrificed His 'knowledge' of the certainty of some outcomes dependent upon that necessary free will, in order to protect the love which He sought as a priority. That indeed is the key concept of the open theists (at least as I understand it): that God intentionally self-limited Himself, by ceding certain important decisions to the free will of His creation -- the very free will which gave rise to the necessity of the death of His Son.
It is no surprise, therefore, that open theism appeals most strongly to those of Arminian persuasion. Their construct of the Biblical data makes the key open theist point quite a natural progression.
Well, what of the 'anthropomorphism' argument? (That is, that Biblical references to God being limited by time, i.e. learning things sequentially, changing His mind, etc, are merely anthropomorphisms intended to speak to us with the limitations of our capabilities as humans.)
It certainly has some appeal. We recognize that the Bible wasn't written just for us, but for generations before us as well. Many of those generations were quite ignorant of philosophical, theological and scientific concepts by our current day standards. Thus, it is quite appealing to simply label (apparently) 'primitive' concepts as a subcategory made necessary by some infirmity of an earlier generation. (Generally, we are assumed to be immune to such 'speaking down' to man, because we can perceive them as such.)
There are two problems with this from my perspective.
One, it is an explanatory tool, not an analytical, one. That is, we only apply it to Biblical statements which don't fit within our construct. So we have to start with the philosophical/theological end we want to meet in order to know when to apply it.
Second, it is a devilish slippery slope of a device. The same device is used by those convinced that the miracle 'stories' of our Lord are merely that, stories, made as such to explain complex events to our limited 'anthropomorphic' minds. Once we start applying the 'explanatory tool' of 'anthropomorphisms' to biblical data, it is hard to know where to stop.
Where does this all end? Well, it really doesn't. Those who are most comfortable in organizing the biblical data in a determinist mold will find the open theist construct model startling, and deeply unnerving. They find great comfort in a belief that, in some wholly inexplicable way, God tolerates (and depending on the view, even helps it along) huge evils 'for our own good'.
Those who are most comfortable in organizing the biblical data in an Arminian and/or open theist mold will find the newer understanding deeply liberating and greatly comforting when confronting suffering and evil.
Ultimately, it is about how we each, internally, organize and make sense of the (sometimes apparently) disparate biblical data. Those who have run into me in the forums previously know that I believe that the key to our markedly different 'reads' of the same data reflect different prioritizations of data, based on something in our experience which is hard to isolate.
BTW, I really like the 'new attitude' at FR.