Stop looking at that silly time period
The limited time period expressed in Exodus and the specificity of Ezekiel indicates to me that God* planned for this transition in the relationship which needed to be explained to man per Ezekiel.
This time thing is getting ridiculous.
On the one hand, someone once mentioned that God doesn't hold grudges; I guess several generatons is only an instant to the eternal, so it doesn't seem like several human lifetimes is that much of a grudge.
But I disagree about a point. I believe that God is saying that all sinners would be punished to the fourth generation. I do not believ that God is saying that for the next four generations, He will visit the iniquities of the fathers onto the sons.
If the plan which God* designed included certain transitions in the developing relationship with man, then God's* knowledge and will are not transitional in nature.
That's why Perfect Knowledge and Immutable Will were so darn important to the Catholic scholars; they realized that without those two attributes of God, the redemption scheme was bunko.
Take the christos, for instance: Why was his part necessary? Is it because God set it up so that humans should require redemption? Once again, we find ourselves back at Eden, wondering what the whole point of the fruit episode was.
It sounds like you're saying that God planned around the failures of his creations. If nothing is impossible with God, that failure of the creations can only be by His will.
Will the Devil be redeemed? (That's a yes or no answer, not a conditional one unless you plan to rewrite the tradition of the Devil in order to make the condition possible.)
Did God, then, know that Job would fail? Is that why He assigned the Devil the task of tormenting Job?
These may seem like irrelevant issues, but they are issues that arise in the rest of the Christian theology and faith once we accept the planned transitions you're asserting.
I must admit that I really do enjoy exploring these neo-theologies that attempt to settle the questions of old by changing the subject of questioning. It really does seem that just about any Christian has a "hidden" idea up his sleeve, an idea that, while perfectly acceptable to most outside the faith sphere, is unusual within that range. Time limits on God's law, and now the flexibility of God's knowledge and will. It isn't that they're unacceptable within the theistic realm, but that they're deviations from the traditions of Christian theology. That's well and fine, I say truly. But this is where doctrine and dogma come from: when people insist on varying interpretations of the Bible, some of those interpretations create circumstances contrary to the asserted faith. It's what I mean when I call Christianity a
do-what-thou-will religion. Despite "God's Law" and all of these firm ideas, it pretty much seems like people enact whatever part of the religion already reflects their personalities. These louder, ugly fights that have been going on around here? They're not particularly bothersome in the sense that I've known such conditions ever since the beginnings of my Christian-related memories. I'm actually quite used to Christians saying just about whatever justifies their faith for the moment, and it's one of the reasons I hounded
KalvinB about "limiting the terms of debate". Like those theological questions above: if we separate each difficult issue of faith, then each can be reconciled independently of the other, and nobody needs ever look at whether the puzzle pieces fit together and form a picture. In other words, by dismissing contradiction after contradiction, one need never make sure that Resolution A doesn't contradict Resolution B or Bible quotes C, D, or E because we should only look at these thngs one at a time. I just want to make sure these resolutions you offer are really the ones you want to put forth. After all, you've shot a few holes in other parts of the faith, but I would not be surprised if you had a rabbit in the hat for those ones, too. But if I chase down every one of these ideas, and months later am pointing back to the transitional plan of God while you're arguing on behalf of a more fixed idea, then what have we achieved in the intervening time? I wouldn't worry about wounding Catholic theology; in general, it's wounded enough. But in the modern Protestant and post-Christian faiths, there exists a large portion of the theology that is, essentially, as Catholic as the wounded Catholic theology. To unfix God's will to be transitional according to the plan alludes to the idea that God is either unable or unwilling to create humans
correctly the first time. If God is unable, well ... there's a big theological conundrum right there. If God is unwilling, that pretty much states the case that Christianity is a scam.
Mind you ... I'm trying to explain why I'm so fixated on what exactly the proposed resolutions equal. I'd rather avoid the vagaries of a tit-for-tat did-not-did-too fight, as some posters have pretty much sickened me by repeatedly denying that they wrote words that were cited in their own posts. It's not that I won't accept them, but that I'm unsure of whether or not you realize that little red "Resolve" button also drops a neutron bomb into the middle of the theology upon which Christian faith depends.
thanx,
Tiassa
