Nature of God: Eternal and Omniscient
Mind map examining the omniscience and eternity of God. Including the views of Boethius
- Created by: JMitch
- Created on: 01-06-13 10:59
View mindmap
- God's Eternity and Omniscience
- Unlimited Omniscience
- God has total knowledge of Past, present and future
- 'Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to me' (Psalm 139:16
- 'God has knowledge because knowledge is not physical' (Aquinas)
- God is simple - therefore doesn't gain knowledge just has it - therefore has full knowledge
- Does knowledge of the future compromise Free Will?
- Our choices become necessary rather than contingent - limiting Free Will
- Augustine argues that 'God knows our choices' and is not causal
- Aquinas uses an analogy of a road to show that God can see the whole road and therefore the decisions which travelers will have to make - he has no causal impact
- Limited Omniscience
- God has knowledge of all what is logically possible to know
- Has a perfect knowledge of the past and the present - this means that God's knowledge changes
- This conflicts with the immutability of God
- God as Timeless
- God exists outside of time
- 'Thy years neither come or go; yet ours both come and go' (Augustine)
- Bible suggests God has always existed - God cannot change as the ultimate cause of change so cannot be in time. Also is creator so if he created time he cannot be subjected to it
- This means that God can only be talked of analogically or negatively
- Can't change, therefore couldn't think about creation - therefore eternal creator
- Contradicts Biblical view of God's involvement in creation
- God as Everlasting
- God has always existed, will always exist but moves through time
- 'There was no time at which he didn't exist ... he is backwardly eternal. He also exists at any other nameable time ... He is forwardly eternal' (Swinburne)
- Supports limited omniscience
- How does God remain unchanged if he is within time
- What created time if God is within it
- Does explain the immanence of God
- Boethius' View
- Wrote Consolations of Philosophy whilst in prison - a dialogue between him and Lady Philosophy
- Recognised tension between Free will and omnisceince
- Liberty of Indifference - ability to otherwise - Impossible with omniscience of God as you could not do 'other' of what God has seen
- Liberty of Spontaneity - to choose what to do (May have unknown causes)
- Argued that God only had divine foreknowledge because he saw the whole of time as an 'eternal present'
- Sees history like a line - this doesn't affect the causation of events or ability to do otherwise
- But how can God, outside of time be involved within it?
- Simultaneous History as incoherent: 'The great fire of Rome is simultaneous to all of history. As I type these words now, Nero fiddles heartlessly on' (Kenny)
- Genuine Judgement can only be made if God has middle knowledge, knowing what the outcomes of other choices would have been
- Process theology
- Proposed by Whitehead and Hart Shorne
- Argued God has two poles: Primordial (Eternal/ unchanging) and Consequent (Temporal and of this world)
- Primordial Pole is God's potentiality and the consequent pole is where God is now
- God needs our help to become perfect/ omnipotent - this explains the problem of evil and why God needs human help with creation
- 'He who inhabits eternity' (Iashia 57:15a)
- Unlimited Omniscience
Comments
No comments have yet been made