From: Keith Miller (kbmill@ksu.edu)
Date: Fri May 16 2003 - 23:01:42 EDT
>
> If, as these people hold, that the only way an infinite and omnipotent
> being can be omniscient is to be the cause of every event, then the
> deity is the immediate source of every evil and sin. Since this would
> make him more like the evil counterpart of Manicheism, etc., they deny
> his omniscience and omnicompetence, and place God in time (or some
> temporality connected to, but not identical with, time in the
> universe). A deity which cannot know the future but is involved in its
> ongoing causation is subject to surprise. Deterministic chaos
> (science) or complexity theory (mathematics) then requires the
> possibility (essentially necessity in infinite time) of catastrophe,
> with no assurance that there is a way to rescue anything from the
> resulting mess.
I have read very little on this, but some that I have read in Pinnock
et als. book "The Openness of God" would suggest that God need not be
powerless in the face of the future even if that future is open and not
preknown in its details. The idea as I understand it is that God is
omnipotent in the sense that the ultimate fulfillment of God will for
the Creation is assured. When God states unconditionally that a
particular outcome will occur, God has the power to assure that
outcome. It is just that God has chosen to give His creatures real
choices that are not predetermined or preknown. We can truely grieve
God and oppose his will, but we cannot thwart God's ultimate purposes.
The authors argue this much better than I can.
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
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