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From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Divine omniscience
Message-ID: <5013@cbscc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Mar-85 11:19:29 EST
Article-I.D.: cbscc.5013
Posted: Tue Mar 19 11:19:29 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Mar-85 05:55:49 EST
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories <SCCS>, Columbus
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>	As has been argued before, G-D exists in a timeless environment.
> If so there is no past present or future. For G-D to know what I will do
> is the same as to know what I did, because if there is no time there is no
> did or will do.
>
>			Eliyahu Teitz.

Right.  Supposed contradictions between God's omniscience and our free will
arise from the assumption that God must exist within time as we do; that he
knows the future in the sense that a fortune teller might.  A better way
is to think about his omniscience in terms of his perspective on the universe.
For example, a being who has the vantage point of being able to see both
the sun and earth at the same time (without existing at a great distance
from each, of course--God does not exist in space either [omnipresence])
also has a view of the earth's future by several minutes.  If the sun would
burn out he would know it right away, several minutes in advance of those
existing on earth.  Knowledge of the future in this sense does not imply
the knower caused the future event or willed it to happen.

God does not know the future as such.  Time is just another dimension in
his perspective.
-- 

Paul Dubuc 	cbscc!pmd