Today we have a Friday Flashback fist published 20 years ago (!) The artist notes, “Bad pun. Sorry!”
The theological conundrum here is real, but of course theologians have weaseled their way to an answer (see here, for example). Mo tacitly admits, though, that there’s something to determinism.
Love it!
OMG! I can’t help it either!
Seems to me that God couldn’t break out of that predetermined future either.
All-Knowing vs All-Powerful.
Back in 2022, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre sparked a controversy at the University of Notre Dame when he argued to the standing-room-only crowd at his lecture closing a ethics and culture conference that when we say God is omniscient, we mean that he knows all that can be known, which excludes what he called “contingent singularities.” He used the examples of Hamlet and E=mc2. If Hamlet is really the work of Shakespeare, God cannot “know” about it “in advance” or the work isn’t really the Bard’s, it’s God’s; E=mc2 is a real insight, not just Einstein parroting God’s knowledge at the right time and place.
I was at this lecture, and found it fascinating. I’m a Byzantine Catholic with a deep commitment to Universalism (of the Gregory of Nyssa variety), so I’m already open to divergent theologies. I noted in the buzz after the lecture that those who were the most open to MacIntyre’s ideas were younger, including some of my young cousins in attendance, ND student (I’m 59). The baby boomers were incensed and began wringing their hands. Within hours, a rebuttal had been posted on a popular Catholic website.
I think a lot of the debate on this point suffers from the way we tend to think of knowledge today — as a key to power. The main thing about “God” is power — God as creator, God as moral authority, God as punisher, God as judge, God as the one who sees all, who knows just what you’ve done.
But that’s not the “main thing” about God you actually find in the New Testament, where the focus isn’t God’s power, but his love and mercy. Jesus uses his mysterious healing power to cure losers and outcasts, usually without them even asking. In the Gospels, God’s knowledge isn’t directed towards power and control, it’s directed towards serving others, especially the despised. Knowledge is the key to understanding, connecting, helping.
That view doesn’t resolve all the paradoxes, of course, but it recontextualizes the discussion, I think.
“While humans interpret God’s foreknowledge as knowing the future in advance, from God’s perspective, all times are equally real, leading some theologians to assert that it’s merely knowledge to God and not foreknowledge.”
A quotation from “Catholic Answers” – in the link you provided.
Hahaha – an example of religion twisting itself into pretzels attempting to explain the unexplainable. (Actually, the non-existent.)
Also, how the hell do theologians know what “God’s perspective” is”. Again, hahaha.