Trintarian Warfare theodicy

[rkwright]

[quote]That's a form of determinism. Free Will has to be free. There are multiple paths to the same action. Some actions, however, only have one path. It sounds like you are also assuming that God determined that Peter would deny Christ 3 times. Prophecy could be a set causal chain that was set by the person.[/quote]

I would agree, this system of thinking leads to a determinism of some individuals. Christ spoke what would actually happen when Peter would deny Christ. And since (under this way of thinkning) God is 'in our time' because the choices have not been made, yet he already 'knew' this choice, Peter must not have made it. God 'settling', since he is our 'time', prevents Peter's free will. The only way to get around this is to say God is outside time and could see the path Peter would take. And thats Thomas (or at least I think it is).

Lemme restate. Under open theism, God does not know what can't be known, namely our choices. But God knew Peter's choice which to me equals 1 of 2 things. God determined, made the choice for Peter OR God is outside of time and can see the path of history. The former denies free will, the later denies open theism.

[quote]Given their own series of actions they forced themselves down a path that leads to a distant specific action. I like to think that's what happened to Peter, but I could be wrong.[/quote]

is this a bit of soft determinism? Under this idea could our whole lives be made in one choice yet we don't know it? I mean denying Christ is a huge deal, it would seem kinda sad if some choice Peter had made way earlier in his life caused that.

Edited December 2, 2005 by rkwright

[N/A Gone]

I am will post your answer on monday. perhaps a thomist could answer or I will.

but for now, I have tears. How does Joey-o get a "church faithful" when I am the more experienced catholic theologian with double the posts? im gonna go hide in a corner and cry now.

[Myles Domini]

I am currently having two main problems with Trintarian Warfare theodicy:

Princially, in Catholic ontology God is prime mover and hence cannot be said to move. If God is moving and changing then God could not be He who [i]Is[/i]. God has an energetic essence and arising from this God has all perfections. We are not imposing on God a platonic category of perfection, rather from the fact that God is perfect act by nature we attribute to him various perfections. If God's essence truly is energetic then God cannot be moving in changing as Joey and prodeji seem to be suggesting. The idea that God does not know something from eternity makes it appear as if God has some sort of potentiality that is unactualised.

Regardless of whether or not the future as you posit it hasn't happened yet according to what I take from the posts at distance from my stance on this issue God's potentialities are not all in act in the Open Theist worldview. He knows all the possible potentialities but only when the subject e.g. man chooses one does his potentiality to know all become actualised. Open Theism appears to me to say that God moves--how can it not when time itself is a measure of motion?--and that there is motion and/or assimilation in God, which is impossible given that God as prime mover cannot move. If he could move he would cease to be prime mover and hence all would not call this being God.

Secondly I am worried that there are elements of onto-theology creeping into this debate. God's perfection, for instance, is being conceived as being something akin to the perfection of created essence. Whatever similarities we find in the world between ourselves and God always points to an even greater dissimilarity, that is the teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council. Certain posts here have appeared to conceive of God's perfection as being on the same scale of being as created essence's perfection. This is impossible, God doesn't even have being in the strictest sense, what God is, so far transcends the isness of created essence that he wholly transcends such categories.

When we say God has omnipotence and omnibenevolence etc.etc. we are using adjectives to describe what God has by being a perfect act. Never moving or changing but always be-ing. The reality that they describe remains completely unknown to us. We cannot say what any attribute of God actually means or compare those attributes to the perfections of created essence. Uncreated essence is so far dissimilar to created essence that any similiarities are almost nullified. St Thomas Aquinas taught that the only way we could know God was good by reason isolated from revelation was that God is attractive and in created essence everything good is are attractive (people only sin because they mistake good for evil, or rather they choose a lesser good over the heighest good). Simply to conceive of God's perfection in the same way as perfection in created essence, or to concieve as God's knowledge as being akin to ours is to limit the Creator.

The Thomist way of conceiving of time does not impair man's freedom. Man is free, as far as he can be, to choose for himself and God simply watches/has watched what each person will do. The only way one could say the Thomist is a determinist is if they concieve of God's perception of time as being like our own i.e. I will do it because God knows it and thus I cannot do anything other and hence I am determined. This again does I opine does not show a [i]right[/i] appreciation of Lateran IV's teaching on the analogy of being. In reality, God knows it because I have chosen and God couldn't know otherwise because its my choice even before I have made the choice.

This appears contradictory at first but only when you think of God as moving. Since God is not moving and time is an observation of motion this places God supra-time. God sees all that is, was and will be from His vantage point. God's knowledge though is contingent upon what I will do (from my perspective) or have done (from God's perspective). Had I have done something else God would've known that something else because His transcendence of motion and time would've allowed Him to see it from eternity. But it would've remained my choice. Only if you stop trying to conceive of God's experience of time in your own terms will you apprehend how all-knowledge doesn't constrain man's freedom. God knows it because you chose it, before you were born to choose it, you existed in the Divine Logos where He could see exactly what you had done in life before you'd done it according to your own freedom. God does not have foreknowledge, God does not know things before you do them, there isn't a before for the perfect act that is God. God just knows everything and because He knows everything you cannot act outisde of His knowledge.

INXC
Myles

[rkwright]

[quote name='Myles' date='Dec 3 2005, 02:50 AM']God does not have foreknowledge, God does not know things before you do them, there isn't a before for the perfect act that is God. God just knows everything and because He knows everything you cannot act outisde of His knowledge.
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oooo wow
see now that just goes down so easy...

[The Joey-O]

[quote name='rkwright' date='Dec 2 2005, 06:50 PM']I would agree, this system of thinking leads to a determinism of some individuals.  Christ spoke what would actually happen when Peter would deny Christ.  And since (under this way of thinkning) God is 'in our time' because the choices have not been made, yet he already 'knew' this choice, Peter must not have made it.  God 'settling', since he is our 'time', prevents Peter's free will.  The only way to get around this is to say God is outside time and could see the path Peter would take.  And thats Thomas (or at least I think it is).
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Remember that God knows all the possibilities. If he looked down the possiblity chain and saw that one of the possibilities was Peter denying Him 3 times, then he could have prevented all the other possibilities from occuring. This, in effect would be God forcing Peter. However, if Peter at that point had put himself on a path that would lead him there, and God looked down the possibility chain and saw that all of them led to Peter deny Christ 3 times, then that's what would happen. Peter would have put himself on a road that led to that very action. God doesn't need to force an action for prophecy to work.

[quote name='rkwright' date='Dec 2 2005, 06:50 PM']Lemme restate.  Under open theism, God does not know what can't be known, namely our choices. 
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He knows all the possibilities, but not which one we'll choose.

[quote name='rkwright' date='Dec 2 2005, 06:50 PM']But God knew Peter's choice which to me equals 1 of 2 things.  God determined, made the choice for Peter OR God is outside of time and can see the path of history.  The former denies free will, the later denies open theism.
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See above.

[quote name='rkwright' date='Dec 2 2005, 06:50 PM']is this a bit of soft determinism?  Under this idea could our whole lives be made in one choice yet we don't know it?  I mean denying Christ is a huge deal, it would seem kinda sad if some choice Peter had made way earlier in his life caused that.
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It's possible, but unlikely that something small would cause our whole lives to move differently. In Peter's case, he had to make the choice to be impulsive somewhere down the line and not work on self-control (Scripture doesn't explicitely say that he is, at least not that I know of, but he certainly does seem that way), Peter's also still under the assumption that Christ is a military figure. Remember, he draws the sword at Gethsemone? Since he is still unable to recognize the type of Christ that Jesus is, it is likely that during his trial, he'll deny him for not fighting (doubting, basically). There could be other vices and variables at play that have led up to this moment.

[The Joey-O]

[quote name='Myles' date='Dec 3 2005, 02:50 AM']Princially, in Catholic ontology God is prime mover and hence cannot be said to move. If God is moving and changing then God could not be He who [i]Is[/i]. God has an energetic essence and arising from this God has all perfections. We are not imposing on God a platonic category of perfection, rather from the fact that God is perfect act by nature we attribute to him various perfections. If God's essence truly is energetic then God cannot be moving in changing as Joey and prodeji seem to be suggesting. The idea that God does not know something from eternity makes it appear as if God has some sort of potentiality that is unactualised.
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In Open View Theism and Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy, God's essence, nature, etc. does not move or change or anything. God isn't bound by time. There is no time. He doesn't move with time, because time doesn't move, because time doesn't exist as an ontological category.

[quote name='Myles' date='Dec 3 2005, 02:50 AM']Regardless of whether or not the future as you posit it hasn't happened yet according to what I take from the posts at distance from my stance on this issue God's potentialities are not all in act in the Open Theist worldview. He knows all the possible potentialities but only when the subject e.g. man chooses one does his potentiality to know all become actualised. Open Theism appears to me to say that God moves--how can it not when time itself is a measure of motion?--and that there is motion and/or assimilation in God, which is impossible given that God as prime mover cannot move. If he could move he would cease to be prime mover and hence all would not call this being God.
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First, on perfection: Gregory of Nyssa states that perfection is an eternal change or progression toward the better. He states that God is infinite and infity demands constant change, constant progression. God is always getting greater and greater. God isn't static. He isn't still. He uses this understanding to show how God can be 3 different persons and yet one God. The three different persons are all the same type of person, but because they are infinite and incorporeal they mix and become inseperable and in many ways indistinguishable. Therefore, we know that in some ways God does change. However, I reassert that his essense, nature, etc. doesn't change. My essense is not effected by time. I change all the time, but I am still human. I am still the image of God, and that is my essense.

[quote name='Myles' date='Dec 3 2005, 02:50 AM']Secondly I am worried that there are elements of onto-theology creeping into this debate. God's perfection, for instance, is being conceived as being something akin to the perfection of created essence. Whatever similarities we find in the world between ourselves and God always points to an even greater dissimilarity, that is the teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council. Certain posts here have appeared to conceive of God's perfection as being on the same scale of being as created essence's perfection. This is impossible, God doesn't even have being in the strictest sense, what God is, so far transcends the isness of created essence that he wholly transcends such categories.

When we say God has omnipotence and omnibenevolence etc.etc. we are using adjectives to describe what God has by being a perfect act. Never moving or changing but always be-ing. The reality that they describe remains completely unknown to us. We cannot say what any attribute of God actually means or compare those attributes to the perfections of created essence. Uncreated essence is so far dissimilar to created essence that any similiarities are almost nullified. St Thomas Aquinas taught that the only way we could know God was good by reason isolated from revelation was that God is attractive and in created essence everything good is are attractive (people only sin because they mistake good for evil, or rather they choose a lesser good over the heighest good). Simply to conceive of God's perfection in the same way as perfection in created essence, or to concieve as God's knowledge as being akin to ours is to limit the Creator.
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Right. I agree. God is so big and vast it is quite impossible for us to adequately explain him. Then let's all give up the discussion, because God is unknowable? Theology is mushy mud pie, because we can't say anything adequately? Who's to say your definition is better than mine? This seems to me to be a very silly point to make. I know theology is basically pointless, because we really can't know.

It's late, I will finish this later.

In Christ's Love,
JoeyO.

[Myles Domini]

[quote]First, on perfection: Gregory of Nyssa states that perfection is an eternal change or progression toward the better. He states that God is infinite and infity demands constant change, constant progression. God is always getting greater and greater. God isn't static. He isn't still. He uses this understanding to show how God can be 3 different persons and yet one God. The three different persons are all the same type of person, but because they are infinite and incorporeal they mix and become inseperable and in many ways indistinguishable. Therefore, we know that in some ways God does change. However, I reassert that his essense, nature, etc. doesn't change. My essense is not effected by time. I change all the time, but I am still human. I am still the image of God, and that is my essense.[/quote]

I agree that God is perfectly in act, I have stated so countless times, however what I disagree with is the notion that God progresses. If God is perfect act how can He progress? Can you add a book to a bookshelf containing an infinite number of books? God has an energetic essence, by nature God is He who is. God is eternally perfectly in motion as the prime mover of all things. He cannot progress from His first (and only) act in being because that act is all-encompassing.

[quote]Right. I agree. God is so big and vast it is quite impossible for us to adequately explain him. Then let's all give up the discussion, because God is unknowable? Theology is mushy mud pie, because we can't say anything adequately? Who's to say your definition is better than mine? This seems to me to be a very silly point to make. I know theology is basically pointless, because we really can't know.[/quote]

Its a different thing to discuss God and then to discuss God under the categories of being. A theological discussion that doesn't aptly conisder the doctrinal teaching of Lateran IV on the analogy of being between created essence and uncreated essence risks becoming a philosophical discussion. This has been the great fear of the Greek Church towards the Latin Church since the start of the scholastic period. I am not advocating a retreat into agnosticism but trying to remind the participants of this discussion that its subject matter deamnds the real distinction between created and uncreated essence be respected, cherished and hallowed.

We can have katabatic knowledge of God through his energies nobody doubts this. However, via those energies we can see that God's essence is energetic. By nature God [i]is[/i] and in Him no potentiality is unactualised. Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy seems to me to be saying that there is unactualised potentiality in God. Indeed, I cannot see how saying that God knows all possibilities but doesn't which choice man will make can be reconciled with God being perfect act.

This is not a discussion about the nature of time. This is a dicussion about motion and how the neo-molinist position can be reconciled with the doctrine of God's essence being energetic/active from eternity. If God is by His isness perfect act how then can He not know what I will do? You're saying that He knows all the possibilities but possibility introduces unactualised potentiality. God would move from indefinite knowledge of man to definite knowledge of man. This contradicts the notion of God as perfect act because God's perfect act is all-encompassing and leaves no potentiality unactualised. If it exists potentially it is actualised in God, if there is a potential to know what I will do then that potential is actual in God.

INXC
Myles

PS) What does St Gregory of Nyssa mean by 'mix'? Is he talking about perichoresis? I know the doctrines of Sts John Damascene and Palamas better than the earlier Greeks.

[Laudate_Dominum]

I've been reading the very long series of posts that summarize open theism and the same thing keeps striking me again and again: God is being cast in a temporal mode a being. In other words, God is treated as a diastemic being rather than the transcendent God that He is.

I'm sorry to say that I think the idea of me ever accepting open theism is an impossibility. Although, I admit I should like to read a great deal more before making a complete judgment.
My impression thus far is as follows:

I am becoming convinced that open theism is at least proximate to heresy. If one understands this theory in such a way that God's transcendence of time is denied (which is how I currently see it), it is in fact formal heresy.

A denial of any of the following propositions would constitute explicit heresy:

- Time had a beginning
- Time has an end
- God transcends being and time

To deny these statement would be at least proximate to heresy depending upon the precise sense of the denial:

- God knows the future as perfectly and absolutely as He knows the past; this certainly includes all free acts of creatures.
- Time is an actual reality

Molinism is not heretical, or per se proximate to heresy, because its theory of scientia media (middle knowledge) is in the realm of God's providence and does not in any way constitute a denial of scientia simplicic intelligentia or God's sovereign knowledge (of all history) and transcendence.

And I like that you alluded to St. Gregory of Nyssa, but let's not forget that, along with the Fathers in general, Gregory held that, "God knows the future just as well as the past", and this includes our free actions, not just the future as an indeterminate array of possibility.
And I would not be so eager to use St. Gregory unless you are willing to adopt an apophatic context which would certainly do violence to open theism. God's inner life is dynamic, but this inner life is utterly transcendent. Besides radically transcending the diastemic order, God is even beyond God. God transcends His Essence. This does not mean that Theology is impossible, it only means that it is limited and incomplete and always will be. I personally have no problem with this and would consider an affirmation of the contrary to be a sign of a perspective worthy of incredulity.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Myles' date='Dec 3 2005, 04:46 AM']PS) What does St Gregory of Nyssa mean by 'mix'? Is he talking about perichoresis? I know the doctrines of Sts John Damascene and Palamas better than the earlier Greeks.
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From the looks of it, that statement was not a Nyssa quote. Those weren't his words to be sure.

I'm curious to know more detail on what that was supposed to convey as well.

Oh, and please be sure that I intend no derogatory connotation when I use the word "heresy". I simply mean it in its technical sense as a doctrine or proposition that is incompatible with the Catholic Faith.

[Laudate_Dominum]

Basically, it is Christian truth that everything which is not God, was created out of nothing. This includes temporality which is a constituent of finite being. This can be affirmed regardless of how one conceives of time, so long as this conception recognizes the difference between finite or contingent being, and eternal, infinite being. In other words between Creator and creation.

Despite all of this, having read that the inspiration for open theism was largely exegetical, and that the philosophical argumentation (which has yet to impress me) was an afterthought. I'd be interested in checking out the exegetical basis of this approach. The brief indication of it that I read previously in this thread did not strike me as even remotely convincing, but to be fair I should like to read more.

And I'm bothered by how God's all embracing knowledge (omniscience) is repeatedly equated with retroactive causality. Where has this equation been justified philosophically? From what I've read so far on this thread its just repeatedly asserted or assumed. Sorry if I've just missed something.

[Laudate_Dominum]

It is beginning to seem to me that perhaps the basic problem here has to do with the nature of the future.

The key question that I see is whether the future is knowable. In my estimation open theism would say that the future is unknowable even to God. God is wise enough to play a darn good guessing game, and there may be some deterministic factors involved to make such an idea seem feasible.

Would someone like to explain to me the philosophical basis of the claim that the future is unknowable to God? I'm sorry but I simply do not see how this is a necessary presupposition. I realize there is some attempt to save free-will. But the perceived tension between omniscience and free-will is perhaps inherent to protestant theology (I think of the Calvinist/Arminian dispute), but it is foreign to my Catholic sensibilities.

I apologize if anyone feels like they are repeating themself ad nauseum, but again, the necessity of this theory is not hitting home with me.

[Laudate_Dominum]

btw, by "Time has an end" (from a couple posts ago) I mean time as we know it. The same as saying that history has closure and the destiny of man is a mode of being that transcends this one. That statement ought not be understood as a denial of the eternal destiny of persons, but rather as implying a difference between the temporal and eternal orders.

[rkwright]

[quote name='The Joey-O' date='Dec 3 2005, 04:29 AM']However, if Peter at that point had put himself on a path that would lead him there, and God looked down the possibility chain and saw that all of them led to Peter deny Christ 3 times, then that's what would happen. Peter would have put himself on a road that led to that very action.

In Peter's case, he had to make the choice to be impulsive somewhere down the line and not work on self-control (Scripture doesn't explicitely say that he is, at least not that I know of, but he certainly does seem that way), Peter's also still under the assumption that Christ is a military figure. Remember, he draws the sword at Gethsemone? Since he is still unable to recognize the type of Christ that Jesus is, it is likely that during his trial, he'll deny him for not fighting (doubting, basically). There could be other vices and variables at play that have led up to this moment.
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Well I'm left with the same feeling as I posted above. Under this system, Peter unknowingly made one choice years ago that took away any later choices. He chose unknowningly to pick a 'chain' that led him to deny Christ 3 times. But that seems to deny Peter's free will at the time of the action. He couldn't not deny Christ because he unknowingly had picked this chain many years ago. If this whole theory was supposed to reconcile man's free will, it just took most of it away from Peter. How can I be held responsible for any sin I commit years down the road if I unknowningly already chose my path.

[jmjtina]

Knowing what our choice will be is not the same thing as forcing us to make that choice.

open thesim is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Laudate_Dominum, thanks for the insight.

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

[QUOTE][b]The writers in favor of free-will theism differentiate their views from those of Roman Catholicism[/b], Lutheranism, Arminianism, Eastern Orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, and Islam, [b]all of which—differently from one another, but similarly over against open theism—assert that God has a certain knowledge of all aspects of the future.[/b]

hmmmmmm........