Total Depravity

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
37,951
13,615
113
Omniscience means knowing all truth. If the future is a series of probability functions that only collapse into certainty when they become the present, that is how God would know the future: as uncertain possibilities. God does not know things as true that are not now true. But since God is perfectly good and powerful, I can trust Him, even if the future is largely uncertain to Him. Of course, anything God determines ahead of time to make happen, he can bring to pass by applying His omnipotence and ingenuity to circumstances.
De Broglie waves collapse when an intelligence observes them.

nothing is hidden from His sight, says the scripture.

neither life, nor death nor principalities; things present, nor things yet to come.

He did not create blindly - He knows what He has made.

He told Abraham "I have made you father of many nations" thousands of years before it began to come to pass.
the Greek tense is perfect past completely fulfilled action. the "ignorant god" position has no argument against this, as previously discussed. it cannot be correct, or scripture must be thrown out.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
37,951
13,615
113
De Broglie waves collapse when an intelligence observes them.
one interesting result of the observer effect in quantum theory is that the physical universe has no past unless God exists to have observed it. the very existence of the universe proves there must be an universal conscious Observer, and the double slit experiment proves that The Universal Observer also observes the future.

thanks for bringing it up, @PaulThomson, though i doubt you knew the full implications of quantum theory when you did ;)
they utterly defeat your position here.
 
Last edited:

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,505
468
83
This is not just directed to you....


Take a good look at Saul of Tarsus.
He was murdering and rounding up Christians....

Now...with that in mind?

Go and create some formula as to how we can know who are sheep and goats before salvation.
Well, according to Jesus, the goats treated Christians badly,

Mt. 25:41 Then shall he say also to them on the left hand (the goats) , Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was hungry, and you gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and you visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to you?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into aeonous punishment: but the righteous into aeonous life.
 

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,505
468
83
I'm not assuming anything. Look at the outcome for each group. In John 10 Jesus says He gives His sheep eternal life. In Matthew 25, the sheep receive eternal life. No doubt that they are Christians.
Jesus does not say that He gives only His sheep aeonous life. The negative inference fallacy rides again.

Also, you haven't defined "aeonous life" (zOEn aiOnion).
 

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,505
468
83
You could trust that God as much as you could trust yourself because you have Him functioning as a man. If He doesn't know, He can't be right, at best He can only take a good guess.

Omniscience means knowing all things always.

Isaiah 46:10
Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’
You can't trust someone who is omnipotent and perfectly good? I feel sorry for you.
 

Cameron143

Well-known member
Mar 1, 2022
20,075
6,882
113
62
Jesus does not say that He gives only His sheep aeonous life. The negative inference fallacy rides again.

Also, you haven't defined "aeonous life" (zOEn aiOnion).
And you haven't shown where any goats have received eternal life.
Jesus defines eternal life in John 17:3.
 

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,505
468
83
they are the ones He knows, He seeks, He calls, He saves, and He does not lose. He separates them from the goats.

honestly don't think i have ever in my life heard anyone claim the sheep are the unsaved??
"THE sheep" has a definite article "THE", so refers to some particular sheep. Which particular sheep are you thinking I am saying are unsaved.

Also you are equivocating, regarding "unsaved", since you are not defining "saved/unsaved" in that sentence, and showing that I am claiming the sheep mentioned in Matt 25 judged after the resurrection are saved in the same sense as those who believe in Jesus before the resurrection are saved.
 

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,505
468
83
And you haven't shown where any goats have received eternal life.
Jesus defines eternal life in John 17:3.
Do you not think the unglorified survivors of Christ's return living under the reign of Christ and the saints will personally know Jesus during that time?

Saul of Tarsus was uncompassionate towards persecuted Christians and changed to one deeply compassionate towards Christians. According to the description of sheep and goats in Matt 25, that looks like a transformation to me of a goat into a sheep.
 

Magenta

Senior Member
Jul 3, 2015
61,137
30,282
113
Well, according to Jesus, the goats treated Christians badly,

Mt. 25:41 Then shall he say also to them on the left hand (the goats) , Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was hungry, and you gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and you visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to you?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into aeonous punishment: but the righteous into aeonous life.
Are you adding to Scrpturre again? (Yes, that was another rhetorical question.)

Please put this in the dossier of you adding to Scripture.
 

Cameron143

Well-known member
Mar 1, 2022
20,075
6,882
113
62
Do you not think the unglorified survivors of Christ's return living under the reign of Christ and the saints will personally know Jesus during that time?

Saul of Tarsus was uncompassionate towards persecuted Christians and changed to one deeply compassionate towards Christians. According to the description of sheep and goats in Matt 25, that looks like a transformation to me of a goat into a sheep.
He was a lost sheep and I think your eschatology is poor.
 

PaulThomson

Well-known member
Oct 29, 2023
3,505
468
83
He was a lost sheep and I think your eschatology is poor.
Which one metaphor applies to you? Are you a sheep, or a living stone, or a caught fish, or a blade of grass, or smoke, a slave, a son/daughter.... ? Are you really that naive as to think that someone who is at one time described by metaphor as a goat, cannot at another time and in another context be described by metaphor as a sheep, or a stone or a pillar or a fish?