Response to Query on God and Time 2

Continuing on Michael's comments:

Michael's fourth point is that IF God does not already know the future, then all He has is "educated guesses" about the future. I do not think this is a problem. Recall yesterday we pointed out that God's knowledge is beyond our understanding. He is not simply the smartest guy you'll ever meet; His intellectual insights are not just different in degree from ours but also different in kind. The human insight into the future (the capacity to predict) can be pretty accurate. Read some of the recent findings in the field of Economics. Humans are predictably irrational as one author has boldly written. We can "know" the future without having seen it, in many cases. Once, as a child, I poured salt into water. My mother told me that I would not like it, and she was right. She was also right about Underwoods Deviled Ham. In fact, there were countless times that I wanted something and she told me that I would not like it and she was right. So the future is NOT an impenetrable thing. We can project with some accuracy.

God's insights are based on an amount of data which we cannot imagine. He probably sees endless possibilities. I find it impossible to think and write about. But there are millions and billions of 'moving parts' involved in creating the future. Quantum Physics postulates an eternal number of parallel universes springing out of the possibilities. Mind boggling stuff there. At any rate, because God can make predicitons about the future (based on His knowledge of the present and past) and those predictions are often spot on we can assume that He is trustworthy. This is, I think, the reason why there are so many biblical quotes about God knowing the future. He can be confident in saying what will happen. It is why things often happen in accord with those words.

Some may notice that I said "often" rather than always. One disturbing aspect of the OT is that things do not always end up happening the way a prophet says that they will. This is a gnawing, worrisome aspect of Bible study. One way to deal with it is to simply place it under the rubric of "not yet, in the future." I think this is accurate, but I do not think it is a fair reading of  the text. I believe that there are times where the promises do not materialize for other reasons. Some day God will recreate all things (after the final judgment) and all will be in accord with His promises. Right now, our role as co-creator of the future impacts how things turn out. [Alert: God could do it differently but has chosen not to!] Many unfulfilled promises will be fulfilled once God changes things.

I am not sure how it will all come to pass. The nature of time is much more complex (circularity for example) than we can know. In the end, it is each of us struggling to make sense of things, here and now, and using them as a basis for trusting (or not) that there is a God and that that God means us well. Reflecting on things beyond our capacity reminds us why God is awesome and worthy of praise!