[xzins]

Boyd argues that God does know all of the possibilities.

I think Alamo-girl's (and marlowe's?) criticisms on the other thread are the best. The problem with Boyd is that he is short-sighted regarding the issue of time and God's timelessness and outside-of-timeness. (Did I actually just write that sentence? :>)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the ping to this thread!

Here are the links to P-Marlowe's post and mine.

The summary of my view was as follows, though it doesn't make much sense unless attached to the previous article (LOL!):

The author does not define time and thus draws his conclusions hastily; since our physical vision and mind are "anthropomorphic" to space/time, it is reasonable to conclude that the Scriptures are also primarily anthropomorphic to space/time.

Thank you so much for all the encouragements on the previous thread! Hugs!

[betty boop]

The problem with Boyd is that he is short-sighted regarding the issue of time and God's timelessness and outside-of-timeness. (Did I actually just write that sentence? :>)

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.