RE: [asa] The Fall (humanity source of suffering)

Interesting question. I can think of several answers.

One, for God to act outside of time (for instance, anticipating and
answering our yet-unasked prayers) is not the same as God changing the past.
My parents tell of a time when I was young that one night I prayed that we
would have the money we needed, and the next day an unexpected check arrived
in the main from my grandmother. The prayer was anticipated and answered,
even before asked (or, you could suggest that maybe God moved me to make
that prayer, knowing that he was already providing).

I think the question of God's ability to change time framed around his
omnipotence is misdirected. The philosophers ask the question, "If God is
all powerful, can he make a rock so big that he himself can't move it?"
Either answer seems to prove that God is not all powerful. But the question
is misdirected.

What would be God's purpose for changing the past? Even if God is outside
time, we are inside time. If it doesn't suit our purposes or God's purposes
for us to go fiddling with past events, then the question of "could God do
it" is irrelevant. For instance, in the "New Earth" as you suggested, I
don't see any reason why the Holocaust should be made never to have
happened, but rather that those who survived it (and those who didn't) will
likely have some memory of it, as well as the spiritual consequences; some
may have grown bitter, others may have received the reward of the faithful
in enduring it in patience, others may experience the regret of being on the
Nazi side, while still others may experience the pangs of conscience and
damnation for their part to play. None of those consequences make sense, if
the event in question is later made to have never occurred.

Realizing that time is different from spatial dimensions, still it is a
dimension of our physical reality. Could God "undo" actions that occur in
spatial dimensions, and what would it mean if he did? I realize that
undoing spatial dimensions doesn't make much sense without considering time,
since things move through space over periods of time. But if that is the
case, then does it make any more sense to consider just the time dimension
alone, without considering any other dimension?

Or to take the argument a different direction, if God could change spatial
dimensions, does that put him inside space (as you suggested changing past
time events would put him inside time)? For instance, if God changed
certain aspect of DNA which healed some physical defect or disease, that
would have the effect of changing space (physical structure) as well as
possibly bringing in an element of time (reversing the effect of some
historical genetic mutation). Would I consider that a healing from some
genetic disorder means that God is within the realms of time and space? In
a sense, yes, because he is choosing to condescend to our physical
condition, but really no. God can act within space and time without being
bound by either.

I guess then the question is, what do you mean by God being "inside" time,
and what is the purpose of the original question or speculation on it?

Jon Tandy

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of j burg
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 10:24 AM
To: William Hamilton
Cc: Dehler, Bernie; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] The Fall (humanity source of suffering)

Let me toss a comment into all this.

With the assumption that God is omnipotent, is it possible for God to undo
the past?

That could be something simple from keeping you from stubbing your toe last
month (ouch!) or preventing the recent earthquake in China.

If the answer is "yes," then that may be a possible theodicy solution.
Perhaps, in the New Earth, the Holocaust never happened. Or the Indonesian
Tsunami.

If the answer is "no," then that seems to mean that God is NOT "outside
time."

I tend to think a "yes" answer is not unreasonable.

Comments?

Burgy

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Received on Thu Jun 19 13:08:16 2008