I wonder... does this imply that it is inappropriate to use the term "omniscient" -- in an absolute sense -- to describe God?
I recall that I have heard in the past a theological argument leaning that way. I would have to review the subject.
Would you consider it more appropriate to use the term in a more "relative" sense (something to the effect of: "compared to mankind, God knows so much more as to seem omniscient")?
Statements of the Bible, without question, emphasize that God knows much more than humans. Some of His actions are probably designed to convince us of that. I don't think He needed to in order to convince Himself.
Perhaps unrelated, but interesting to me: in using a description like "the progressive unveiling of ... His nature", which of the following would you say is progressive?
Each individual's personal understanding of this Being
The description(s) of this Being as revealed in the temporal sequence of biblical texts
The Being Himself (i.e. the nature of God may have been different in some sense, depending on when/by whom He was being considered
Any combination of two or more of the above
1.) "Each individual's personal understanding of this Being"
I surely would have to confirm this in the life of Abraham, Sarah, as well as even with Hagar the slave woman, and Jacob and others. Since they are all representatives of common people, it would be true of others as well.
The promise of Jesus that He will manifest Himself to His disciples, I would regard, as not a once for all event. It should be deepening and progressive. The epistles of the apostles point to this and they took the lead in the personal experience of Christ.
"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he is he one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will manifest Myself to him." (John 14:21)
Since
"him" is used in such an individual way, I understand a progressive revelation of Christ to the individual.
The description(s) of this Being as revealed in the temporal sequence of biblical texts
I would not be surprised if one day we could throw our Bibles away, not out of disrespect but because God's manifestation has encreased to a tremendously greater degree. I do not think that time is before the second coming of Christ. But if
"the former things will not be remembered" in the new heaven and new earth perhaps the present day revelation will have been so surpassed that we will not need the Bible:
"For I am now creating new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come up in the heart. But rejoice and exult forever, in what I create ..." (See Isaiah 65:17)
I won't be discarding my Bible on this side of the second coming of Christ however.
The Being Himself (i.e. the nature of God may have been different in some sense, depending on when/by whom He was being considered
That may be too difficult for me to answer briefly or at all.
For the Word to become flesh
(John 1:14) surely reveals God taking upon Himself what He did not previously have, human nature. The incarnation, I think, has to be thought of as change of God.
The last time I spoke this way to a Brethren Bible teacher he questioned "How can there be a change in perfection?" And I had no reply. However I cannot deny that the there are two great becommings in the New Testament:
"The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us ..." (John 1:14)
" ... the last Adam [Christ] became a life giving Spirit" 91 Cor. 15:45)
These "becommings" indicate that something happened to the Divine Being and there was a before that becomming and an after that becomming. Is that a change in God? I am still meditating on that.
Another paradoxical issue to complicate it is that sense God transcends the time element, He appeared as a man in the Old Testament a number of times. This was before the incarnation, ie. before
"the Word became flesh". He could appear to Abraham in Genesis 18 as a man and even have lunch with he and his wife. And He appeared as a man and wrestled with Jacob.
I would like to think more about your last proposition. If I understand you correctly you are speaking about an actual progression in God's Being and nature. We do have:
1.) The eternal God becoming a man in John 1:1,14.
2.) The man becomming a
"life giving Spirit" in First Corinthians 15:45 and John 14.
3.) I would have to add this God imparting His life and nature into all of His redeemed people so as to deify them into a corporate expression of Himself -
"New Jerusalem".
Your way of reading the bible is of course different from that of anyone who does not believe in the God of Abraham and of the Apostles (such as myself).
Of course that is true. But I would not say it is absolutely the case. In the revelation of God, the impression of some passage from the Bible might come across the same way even to an unbeliever as it comes across to a believer. The reaction to that speaking may be different.
"All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" conceivably could hit the atheist the same way it hits the believer in Christ. Yet one may recoil and close up to the Holy Spirit whereas the other may be convicted and open up to the Holy Spirit.
I count this as not different readings of God's book but as different reactions to it.
Your approach to interpreting the text would seem to me to be an ongoing attempt to reconcile the various scriptural depictions into a single coherent entity that you believe surely exists
I think perhaps man does have an innate tendency to want to reconcile differences and to produnce oneness. Robert Govette writes that it is a glory to human intellect to trace different results to one principle. Man aims is to clear up ambiguities. to show how, through varied appearances, one law holds. And Govette says that anything that stands in the way of the completeness of this, he eludes or denies, as something destructive of the glory of the efficiency of his discovery.
So I also have this urge to reconcile Bible passages. However, I think I see that I have that need. And I suspect that Bible's way of putting forth opposing principles is evidence that it is not merely a work of human invention.
Look at the order of God's cretion. The planets are moving in a beautiful order around the sun. But not one force is at work, but two: two forces pulling each particle of matter in two opposited directions at the same instant. If only one force was at work the earth would fly away into infinite space. Let the other prevail and it would be sucked into the furnace of the sun.
So as in creation God's revelation has more than one force operating. We may not always be able to reconcile the differences. I have learned to trust that God has spoken both truths and that I should not use one to fight against the other.
(perhaps because you somehow directly sense its presence), that you choose to worship, and that you feel is the sole provider of tangible and essential benefits for you, and is even aware of (even knows) you as an individual.
The sense of the Holy Spirit to me is very real. However, He is not always sensed. Like the human body, sometimes you are only really conscience of your body when something is wrong. In a similar way many times I only become aware of the Holy Spirit when something is not right with my walk with Christ. When there is normality, I may not sense the Spirit that much.
Fact preceeds feeling though. I have seen people accept Jesus with strong inner senses at once. I have also seen people receive Jesus with no particular sense of having changed. In some cases a few months passed by before they seemed to ignite with the realization that they have been changed.
The natural life can start very very small. And the divine life in regeneration also can begin very imperceptibly small. A man may pray "Lord Jesus, I receive you as my Lord and Savior". No thunder or lightening. Then a few days latter he notices the color of the grass as he has never noticed before. He realizes "Something has happened to me." He has been reconciled to the heavenly Father.
In contrast, my interpretation of the text is simply an attempt to understand the thoughts and concerns of the people who wrote the text; I have no personal investment or expectations regarding its "factual" value. To me, it is mythology.
I understand. I am happy that you are reading the text. You may still become like me if though.
I recall the experience of a lawyer friend of mine. He's a very smart man. He was a staunch unbeliever. But he went through a very painful divorce. He told me that during the time of his pains he would sit in his motel room. Across the room was a Gideon Bible. He said he didn't read it. He just sat there looking at it, wondering, thinking, feeling his pain, considering whether he should turn to God.
I can see him there just sitting in that lonely room just staring at a Bible on a table. Somewhere along the line, I don't know when, Jesus Christ came into his life. He never opened that Bible but he got saved.
In any case, I think the OP topic might be better served -- even though this might not have been Blzebub's intention -- if you would try to answer this question: Based on your current belief and understanding, do you think God knows the choices you will make in your life, before you make those choices?
I think maybe He does. However, I have no clue as to what my choice will be. And I feel no coercion whatsoever.
Free will and God's foreknowldge must both at work in a way beyond my finite understanding.
I tried to bring this out in my exposition on the very last verse of the Bible
Revelation 22:21 - "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints."
After the future of mankind and the direction of history has been foretold by God, there is no sense that the believers should just fatalistically wait. Rather, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is there to nourish their cooperation, endurance, encouragement, and fellowship with God.
I think that God's desire to put Himself into man is not that much effected by His foreknowledge of possible omniscience. He wants the grace of Christ to be dispensed into the believers. I tend to read the Bible with this focus of God wanting to impart His Spirit into man as the center matter. His foreknowledge, omniscience, predistination, pre-awareness, etc. all seem to be secondary to this.
God asked Cain
"Where is your brother?" A principle is set that He wants Cain's heart of love and harmony. Touting divine foreknowledge seems secondary somehow.
If you say "yes", that constitutes absolute omniscience, and it poses a number of logical difficulties (free will, mercy, and so on).
I don't believe I can eliminate
all "logical difficulties" from the Bible at all. Perhaps I can only show that such difficulties are no insurmountable obstacles in studying what the Bible means in many places.
On the other hand, if you say "no", perhaps that constitutes an untenable degree of ignorance on His part. If you say "it depends", then perhaps this makes God out to be not all that different from people in this respect -- sometimes we can tell what other people are going to do before they do it, and other times we can't.
It is a rather mysterious matter. To repeat, in the life of Joseph, his dream instigated the hatred of his brothers. But their conspiratorial opposition to him, because of his dream, was the very catalyst that caused Joseph's dream to be fulfilled !
Here we have God's foreknowled knowing what is about to happen. And here we also have man's negative reaction to the prophecy actually causing the prophecy to become fulfilled.
You can imagine how frustrated Satan must feel in doing all he can to stop God. It must be like playing chess with an impossibly wise opponant.
Anyway, there is a logical difficulty with the Joseph story and other accounts which are unapologetically written in this Bible. I am suspicious that the writers surely must have realized the tension but wrote them just the same. My belief is they did because the events were true.
They could have easily omitted what they realized were "logical difficulties" involving paradoxical and contradictory details. I suppose either they were going out of their way to give human minds unsolvable puzzles or they were frank and faithful to the details of what actually happened.
I believe the latter to be the case.
If you say "I really don't know", then the next place to go might be to wonder where this notion of omniscience comes from, and how important is it, really? Given that some believers tend to speak often of God's omniscience -- of things being pre-ordained or pre-destined -- is this something that all believers should accept in the same way? Does it matter to you, and how so (or why not)?
As an evangelical Christian, I don't feel as strong a need to defend a creed of omniscience as you might expect. In the final analysis only what the Bible said is the most important thing. Man's theological creeds may be imperfect.
I think the ploy here with some people is to the Christian "Come here and defend the creed of the Omniscience of God. Explain its logical and philosophical problems."
The creed may be of limited help. But what the Bible said is to me more important. I take the creed of the omniscience of God as something theologians invented. It may have limitations.
Now let's set aside creed for the moment. If I am challenged then to explain how the biblical statements can be reconciled logically then. Sometimes I will respond by saying - "I don't know".
Then I hope for an easier question. But I believe the Bible and try to help people to believe it.
I am not sure if my attitude is that much different from that of the scientist. She hopes in the future she will better understand something which she cannot now explain. He recognizes that some things cannot be explained yet, but they are apparently the case.
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