Dogmatic Theology Quote

[thebiblicalway]

Mom's comment to me yesterday morning: "Good morning, bushy!" It's probably time for a haircut. =)

~~~

Here's an awesome thought I was reading about today from a book entitled, Dogmatic Theology by William Shedd.

"We must negative from God, not only all limits of time, but time itself

Comments

[narnian_warrior]

Your posts always make me think! :-/ (thinking face, not a disagreement face)

"We must negative from God, not only all limits of time, but time itself." Wow...very, very deep. This post helped a lot!
Sometimes people think that if something hasn't changed by so-and-so time, then it is never going to change - prayers for a person's change of faith, for example. My dad isn't a Christian, and we've been praying for him for a LONG, LONG time....and he still hasn't seemed to change yet :(

Q: What does 'Dogmatic' mean?

Have you ever met Richard Hollerman?

[thebiblicalway]

My dad isn't a Christian, and we've been praying for him for a LONG, LONG time....and he still hasn't seemed to change yet :(

I'm very sorry to hear that. I'll pray for him, too.

Dogmatic, in this case, means approximately: pertaining to "doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner." That's partly a dictionary definition of it. I'm not sure why the book has that title, really.

No. I don't think I've heard of Richard Hollerman. Who is he?

[narnian_warrior]

Thanks!!

Ah. I guess that word fits in pretty well with the title of the book - "partaining to...faith."

Richard Hollerman is this guy that my mom knows who thinks a lot about/walks with God.

[amqu]

The schoolmen explain by saying that God, by reason of his eternity, has a simultaneous possession of his total duration. The creature comes into possession of his total duration gradually, and piecemeal. The whole of the Divine knowledge and experience is ever before the Divine being, so that there are not parts succeeding parts.

What scriptural evidence do they provide for this?

There's no past, present, and future for His perfect existence. It's no wonder (as I'm sure you've thought about before) that God says He is the "I Am."

I have thought about it before, but that's not the conclusion I came to. Why does perfection necessitate having no past, present or future? What is your rationale for that?

[thebiblicalway]

Those are certainly some good questions to consider.

Well, theologians often take bits of scriptural evidence and apply vast amounts of reasoning to them in order to attain a better understanding of God. Sometimes they may go too far into the arena of speculation, but in this case I doubt it.

My answer to your first question is that God is omniscient, and omniscience dictates that He have perfect possession of the entirety of His existence and knowledge. That God is omniscient is evident from these passages (among others):

“Known to God from eternity are all His works” (Acts 15:18). Since He is an eternal God, and He knows all of His works throughout eternity, that requires an infinite amount of knowledge.

“...For I am God ... declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done...” (Isaiah 46:9-10). We can only declare the end when we reach the end, but God knows the end of things before anything happens (from our perspective in time).

“He counts the number of the stars; He calls them

[amqu]

My answer to your first question is that God is omniscient, and omniscience dictates that He have perfect possession of the entirety of His existence and knowledge.

God is also omnipotent. However, simply because he has the power to do everything and anything doesn't mean he uses all that power at any given moment. He has control over his power; that is one aspect of his omnipotence. From that you could extrapolate that he has control over his omniscience as well. He has the ability to know everything and anything, but that doesn't mean he has to know it all at any given moment.

“Known to God from eternity are all His works” (Acts 15:18).I think the context of this shows that the Gentiles didn't have to worry about becoming Jews (and becoming circumcised) because God had clearly prophesied in Amos that He would take out a people for his name from all the nations, not just the Israelites. Most Bibles translate this scripture as "that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who

[thebiblicalway]

Interesting thoughts. I'll try to address the questions you raised.

He has the ability to know everything and anything, but that doesn't mean he has to know it all at any given moment.

Having the ability to know everything is a far cry from actually knowing everything, like having the ability to run a marathon is a far cry from actually running one. Either God knows everything or He doesn't; there's no almost-knows-everything point.

You are saying in essence (correct me if I'm wrong) that God can willfully choose what He knows and what He doesn't know. One problem with that is that if you don't know everything, then you don't necessarily know what you might want to know about. This implies that God may be unwittingly ignorant of certain things, which certainly wouldn't be a perfect existence.

Now tell me, is there a single verse in the Bible that says that God did not know something? There are verse as mentioned that strongly suggest that He does know everything.

If God doesn't know everything all at once, but rather grows

[purpleluvr85]

You are forgiven. ;) Increase in LJ activity? YAY!

[thebiblicalway]

=) Thank you.