Friday, March 28, 2008

"DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE BIBLE"

That is the title of a fascinating book written by Kenneth C. Davis. I was reading through it today as I indulged three of my favorite activities 1. Reading, 2. Drinking Coffee, 3. Pipe Smoking. These are a few of my favorite things. But back to the book, it really is very interesting and brings up some good questions and then works to answer them in a respectful way. Questions like "Who wrote the Old Testament?" and "Who really killed Goliath?" or "Did Jesus have brothers and Sisters?" These are all interesting questions in that they are not salvation questions but they call in to play what we are taught in Sunday school and in private Christian schools or at church. It really amazes me what people take for granted when they are taught things. I will most likely write more on this book as I move further into it but these were the thoughts in my head as I was reading today.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Divine Foreknowledge/Freewill

I have just been reading Boethius's CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY and if you are at all into philosophy I highly recommend it. But on to the issue at hand. Do we in fact have free will? The deeper question is this one if God knows all that we do and all decisions we make is that truly free will. Boethius argues that we do have free will. He says that God resides outside of time and that for God he sees all possible choices we might make. The thought being that since God is outside of time there is no past or present or future. That for God all these happen at the same time. I would argue that his defense is flawed in that I believe that if we feel that God's knowledge is divine and that he can not make a mistake. Well then if God were to see us do something and then we do something else it brings into question the divinity of God or whether or not he can make a mistake. I think that is the flaw in Boethius's reasoning. I am not sure if I feel one way or the other on this issue. I lean toward the no freewill side of the argument but I feel that while Boethius's defense of it makes some sense. I feel that he makes that one fatal flaw. Thoughts?