Did God know adam and eve would sin?

by gavindlt 74 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Ding

  If God didn't know what's going to happen, wouldn't that negate all the foretelling of the future by the prophets?
  
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  ThomasMore

  Long-winded, legalistic essays typically are attempts to wear the reader down. Simple answers on the otherhand are more honest, especially when the scriptures don't provide a clear answer on the matter.
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  MeanMrMustard

  No, the problem I have is simply ... WHY.

  Why did our loving heavenly Father not say to Able "it is a good idea to not go out with your brother today"?

  Here is one logical reason: What if, because He has all knowledge, he knew the worlds in which he prevented the murder of Able also turn out worse - in one way or another. Suppose Able had a son, who had a son, who had a son who killed hundreds of people.

  What if all possible worlds with free will have evil in them, but this world just happens to be the one with the least amount of evil?

  Also, is it really true that we were supposed to be created free from hardship? I know that's the JW doctrine, but I don't think it's the Christian one. Why are we assuming humans were supposed to be created as God's pets?

  What if Able was kept physically alive, and less suffering occurs over time, but less people are "saved" in the long run?

  In short, if you believe in God, as a human, you aren't in a good epistemic position to ask "why".
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  Phizzy

  As the whole Eden Story is a rehash of the Canaanite/Sumerian "Eden" Story, we are presented with a god from a time when the concept of gods was primitive, not as the concept later evolved.

  We must not read such Stories with a 21st Century or especially not a believers "eye".

  The Canaanite gods were never presented as Omniscient, or Omnipotent come to that, hence we see a god who does not know even outcomes that perhaps a perceptive ordinary human could have foreseen.

  As an aside, this very old story was from long before a time when the "Satan" figure had entered Israelite religious thought, and so does not figure in the Story.

  Ancient Texts should be read as they are, and taking in to account what the Writer wished his readers to understand, and what they would have understood his words to mean.

  To approach Scripture in any other way, results in us reading in to the Text what is simply NOT there, a JW org. approach that is both totally wrong, and an insult to both the Writer and his Text.
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  aqwsed12345

  The Deficient Theism of the Watchtower

  Jehovah’s Witnesses are well-known for denying the deity of the Son, Jesus Christ, asserting that He is a created being, often identified with the archangel Michael. However, a deeper question arises: does their conception of the Father, whom they call “Jehovah,” align with the classical understanding of divine nature? This article argues that the Watchtower’s theology presents a profoundly deficient view of God, characterized by an anthropomorphic, finite, and materialistic conception that conflates “spirit” with “energy” and aligns with problematic theological frameworks like open theism and process theology. In contrast, classical Thomistic theism, rooted in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, offers a robust and coherent understanding of God as pure act (actus purus), infinite, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Below, we explore the philosophical, metaphysical, and theological errors in the Watchtower’s doctrine, particularly their misunderstanding of “spirit” and “energy,” and contrast it with the Thomistic vision of God.

  Key Points

  • Watchtower’s Anthropomorphic God: The Watchtower portrays “Jehovah” as a spatially and temporally bound being with a “spirit body,” who learns, changes, and is surprised, resembling a pagan deity rather than the transcendent God of Christianity.
  • Conflation of Spirit and Energy: By equating “spirit” with a form of quantifiable “energy,” the Watchtower reduces God to a material-like entity, contradicting the immaterial nature of spirit in Thomistic metaphysics.
  • Alignment with Open Theism: The Watchtower’s doctrine of selective foreknowledge, where God chooses what to know, mirrors open theism, undermining divine omniscience and rendering God’s knowledge contingent and probabilistic.
  • Contrast with Thomistic Theism: Thomism defines God as ipsum esse subsistens (subsistent being itself), pure act without potentiality, transcending space, time, and change, offering a philosophically and biblically coherent view.
  • Theological Implications: The Watchtower’s finite God cannot sustain the reliability of divine promises or providence, leading to a theology that breeds uncertainty and legalism.

  The Watchtower’s Deficient God

  The Watchtower’s theology presents “Jehovah” as a being who exists within the created order, confined to a specific location (historically the Pleiades star cluster until 1953) and subject to time, change, and limited knowledge. Their publications, such as a 1992 Watchtower article, claim that Jehovah possesses “vast dynamic energy reserves” used to create the universe, implying a finite resource rather than the creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) taught by classical Christianity. This view aligns with a materialistic understanding of God, where “spirit” is misconstrued as a form of energy, akin to science fiction tropes of “energy beings.” Such a conception is not only philosophically incoherent but also theologically inadequate, as it fails to account for the necessary attributes of divinity.

  Thomistic Theism: God as Pure Act

  In contrast, Thomistic theism, as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas, defines God as pure act (actus purus), devoid of potentiality, and thus immutable, eternal, and infinite. God is not a being among beings but Being itself (ipsum esse subsistens), whose essence is identical to His existence. His omniscience is not a process of learning but an eternal, simultaneous knowledge of all things. His omnipresence is not spatial diffusion but the metaphysical reality that all things exist by participation in His sustaining act of being. This view, grounded in both reason and Scripture (e.g., Psalm 139, Ephesians 1:3-11), provides a robust framework for understanding God’s transcendence and immanence.

  Philosophical and Theological Errors

  The Watchtower’s theology shares similarities with open theism and process theology, both of which posit a God who is mutable, learns, and is affected by creation. Their doctrine of selective foreknowledge—where God chooses what to know to preserve human free will—implies a contingent deity who cannot guarantee the fulfillment of His plans. This contrasts sharply with Thomism, which holds that God’s knowledge is perfect and unchanging, encompassing all possible and actual events without compromising human freedom. The Watchtower’s God, reliant on angels for information and subject to surprise, resembles a mythological figure rather than the Creator of all reality.

  Conclusion

  The Watchtower’s conception of God is philosophically and theologically deficient, reducing the divine to a finite, anthropomorphic entity that cannot fulfill the role of the ultimate ground of being. By conflating “spirit” with “energy” and embracing a view akin to open theism, the Watchtower undermines the classical attributes of God—omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Thomistic theism, with its emphasis on God as pure act, offers a far more coherent and biblically faithful understanding, affirming a God who is worthy of worship and trust.

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  Detailed Analysis

  Introduction

  Jehovah’s Witnesses are widely recognized for their rejection of the deity of Jesus Christ, asserting that He is a created being, often identified with the archangel Michael. However, a more fundamental question emerges: does their conception of the Father, whom they call “Jehovah,” meet the classical criteria for divinity? This article contends that the Watchtower’s theology presents a profoundly deficient view of God, characterized by an anthropomorphic, finite, and materialistic conception that conflates “spirit” with “energy” and aligns with problematic theological frameworks such as open theism and process theology. In contrast, classical Thomistic theism, rooted in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, offers a robust and coherent understanding of God as pure act (actus purus), infinite, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. This analysis explores the philosophical, metaphysical, and theological errors in the Watchtower’s doctrine, particularly their misunderstanding of “spirit” and “energy,” and contrasts it with the Thomistic vision of God, addressing their alignment with open theism, process theology, and the implications of their denial of divine omnipresence and selective foreknowledge.

  The Watchtower’s Anthropomorphic and Materialistic God

  Spatial and Temporal Limitations

  The Watchtower’s theology portrays “Jehovah” as a being confined to a specific location within the created universe. Historically, their publications, such as The Golden Age (1924), claimed that Jehovah resides in the Pleiades star cluster, a belief they held until 1953 (Watchtower, November 15, 1953). Even after abandoning this specific claim, the Watchtower maintains that God exists in a particular “place” in heaven, with a “spirit body” that precludes omnipresence (Aid to Bible Understanding, 1971, p. 665). This doctrine suggests that God must rely on angels to communicate across distances, requiring time for these messengers to travel (Golden Age, August 15, 1925, p. 755). Such a view is strikingly anthropomorphic, resembling pagan mythologies where gods, like those on Mount Olympus, are localized and limited by spatial constraints.

  This spatial limitation is compounded by the Watchtower’s assertion that God exists within time, not as eternal (outside of time) but as “everlasting,” subject to temporal sequence (Watchtower, February 15, 1981, p. 6). Their God can change, learn new information, be surprised, and even regret decisions, as evidenced by their interpretation of passages like Genesis 22:12 and Exodus 32:14. This temporal and mutable conception of God aligns with process theology, which posits a God who evolves with creation, and open theism, which denies absolute divine foreknowledge to preserve human free will.

  Conflation of Spirit and Energy

  A critical error in the Watchtower’s theology is their conflation of “spirit” (spiritus) with “energy.” A 1992 Watchtower article states, “Jehovah has vast, dynamic energy reserves” used to create the universe (Watchtower, February 1, 1992, p. 9). This implies that God’s creative act was not creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), as taught by classical Christianity, but rather a transformation of His finite energy resources. In modern physics, energy is quantifiable and interchangeable with matter (E=mc²), making it part of the created, material order. By equating God’s spiritual nature with energy, the Watchtower reduces God to a material-like entity, akin to science fiction “energy beings,” rather than the immaterial, transcendent Spirit of biblical and Thomistic theology.

  This conflation is not merely a semantic error but a metaphysical one. In Thomistic metaphysics, matter (including energy, as it is quantifiable and changeable) is the principle of potency, capable of receiving different forms and undergoing change. Spirit, however, is the principle of actuality, free from potentiality and thus immutable and indivisible. God, as pure spirit, is actus purus—pure act, without any potentiality for change or limitation. The Watchtower’s “spirit body” doctrine, which posits God as a localized, energetic entity, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of spirit and aligns with materialistic and occultic views, such as those found in Johannes Greber’s Communication with the Spirit World of God (pp. 260-265), which similarly describes God as a “personality with form.”

  Selective Foreknowledge and Open Theism

  The Watchtower’s doctrine of selective foreknowledge further undermines their conception of God. They assert that God possesses the “ability” to know the future but chooses not to exercise it fully to preserve human free will (Aid to Bible Understanding, 1971, p. 595). This view, akin to open theism, posits that God’s knowledge is contingent and probabilistic, as He learns new information through angels or human actions (Awake, August 22, 1963, p. 28). For example, they claim God did not know Adam and Eve would sin until after the fact, only then planning the redemption (Watchtower, January 15, 1964, p. 52).

  This doctrine is logically incoherent. As Robert Morey notes, for God to choose what to know, He must already know everything to make an informed choice (Battle of the Gods, p. 68). Without comprehensive knowledge, God’s selective foreknowledge becomes arbitrary, akin to “rolling the dice” to decide what to know. This undermines divine omniscience, rendering God’s knowledge akin to human guesswork, as Duane Magnani describes in The Heavenly Weatherman (1987, pp. 197-287). Such a God cannot guarantee the fulfillment of His promises, as His plans could be thwarted by unforeseen events, stripping passages like Romans 8:28 of their assurance.

  Thomistic Theism: God as Pure Act

  God as Ipsum Esse Subsistens

  In contrast, Thomistic theism, as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas, defines God as ipsum esse subsistens—subsistent being itself, whose essence is identical to His existence. This doctrine of divine simplicity means that God is not composed of parts, such as a “spirit body” or “energy reserves,” nor are His attributes (knowledge, power, presence) separate from His essence. All that is in God is God, making Him immutable, eternal, and infinite.

  God’s omniscience is not a process of learning but an eternal, simultaneous vision of all things—past, present, and future—in His own essence. As Aquinas argues in the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 14, a. 5), God knows all things because He is the cause of all things, and His knowledge is not discursive but immediate. His omnipresence is not a spatial diffusion but the metaphysical reality that all things exist by participation in His sustaining act of being (Acts 17:28). His omnipotence is not the ability to do logically contradictory things (e.g., lie or create a rock too heavy to lift) but the power to actualize all that is possible without contradicting His nature (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 25, a. 3).

  The Nature of Spirit

  In Thomistic metaphysics, spirit (spiritus) is immaterial, indivisible, and free from the constraints of space, time, and change. God, as pure spirit, is actus purus—pure act, without potentiality. This contrasts sharply with the Watchtower’s “spirit body,” which implies a material-like entity subject to spatial and temporal limitations. Angels and human souls are also spiritual, but as created beings, they are finite and dependent on God’s sustaining act. The Watchtower’s conflation of spirit with energy aligns with occultic views, such as those in Greber’s work, which describe God as a “personality with form” reliant on external sources for knowledge (Communication with the Spirit World of God, pp. 260-265).

  Alignment with Open Theism and Process Theology

  The Watchtower’s theology shares significant parallels with open theism and process theology, both of which reject classical divine attributes. Open theism, as critiqued by Bruce Ware in God’s Lesser Glory (2000, pp. 156-159), posits a God who does not know the future exhaustively, as human free will introduces unpredictability. Similarly, the Watchtower’s selective foreknowledge doctrine suggests that God limits His knowledge to allow human freedom, but this creates a God who is reactive rather than sovereign. Process theology, which views God as evolving with creation, also resonates with the Watchtower’s mutable God, who changes His mind and learns from events (Watchtower, January 15, 1964, p. 52).

  These frameworks contrast sharply with Thomism, which reconciles divine omniscience with human freedom through the concept of primary and secondary causation. God, as the primary cause, knows and wills all things without negating the freedom of secondary causes (human agents) (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 22, a. 2). The Watchtower’s God, reliant on angels for information and subject to surprise, resembles a process-theological deity who is in a reciprocal relationship with creation, rather than its transcendent cause.

  Biblical Misinterpretations

  The Watchtower often cites Scripture to support their view of a limited God, but their interpretations rely on a literalistic, anthropomorphic reading. For example, Genesis 22:12 (“now I know that you fear God”) is taken to mean God learned something new about Abraham. However, as Ware argues, this is an anthropomorphic expression of God’s eternal knowledge, affirmed by passages like 1 Chronicles 28:9 and 1 Samuel 16:7, which state God knows all hearts (God’s Lesser Glory, pp. 67-74). Similarly, Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5, and 32:35 (“it never entered my thoughts”) are interpreted as divine ignorance, but these express God’s moral disapproval, as earlier warnings in Deuteronomy 12:31 and 18:10 show God’s prior knowledge of such sins (God’s Lesser Glory, p. 79).

  In contrast, Scripture affirms God’s omniscience and transcendence. Ephesians 1:3-11 describes God as working all things according to His will, predestining salvation before creation. Isaiah 40:13-14 rhetorically asks who could instruct God, implying His complete self-sufficiency. Psalm 139 and Isaiah 46:8-11 further confirm God’s exhaustive knowledge and sovereignty over all events.

  Theological and Practical Consequences

  The Watchtower’s deficient theism has profound implications. A God who is finite, mutable, and reliant on external sources cannot guarantee the fulfillment of His promises, undermining the assurance of passages like Romans 8:28. As Ware notes, a God who second-guesses His actions or regrets decisions is “unworthy of devotion, trust, and praise” (God’s Lesser Glory, p. 159). This theology fosters anxiety and legalism among Jehovah’s Witnesses, as their God’s providence is uncertain, leading to an obsession with performance to secure divine favor.

  Moreover, the Watchtower’s alignment with occultic views, as seen in parallels with Greber’s spirit-guided teachings, raises serious concerns about the spiritual origins of their doctrine. Magnani’s The Heavenly Weatherman documents how the Watchtower’s God resembles a “heavenly weatherman,” making educated guesses rather than possessing certain knowledge (1987, pp. 197-287). This diminishes the divine character and aligns with pagan and science fiction tropes, such as ancient astronaut theories, which view gods as advanced beings within the universe (UFOs in the New Age, William Alnor, 1992).

  Comparison with Classical Theism

  Aspect	Watchtower Theology	Thomistic Theism
  Nature of God	Finite, with a “spirit body” and “energy reserves”; spatially and temporally bound	Pure act (actus purus), ipsum esse subsistens, immaterial, infinite, eternal
  Omniscience	Selective foreknowledge; learns through angels, can be surprised	Eternal, simultaneous knowledge of all things; no learning or surprise
  Omnipresence	Localized in heaven; not omnipresent, relies on messengers	Metaphysically present to all things by sustaining their existence
  Creation	From finite “energy reserves,” not creatio ex nihilo	Creatio ex nihilo, by divine will, without limitation
  Theological Alignment	Open theism, process theology; anthropomorphic and pagan-like	Classical theism; biblically and philosophically coherent

  Conclusion

  The Watchtower’s theology presents a deficient and incoherent view of God, reducing “Jehovah” to a finite, anthropomorphic being who is spatially and temporally bound, reliant on angels for knowledge, and limited by “energy reserves.” By conflating “spirit” with “energy,” they align with materialistic and occultic views, echoing open theism and process theology. This conception fails to meet the classical criteria for divinity and undermines the reliability of divine providence. In contrast, Thomistic theism offers a robust vision of God as pure act, infinite, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, aligning with both Scripture and reason. The Watchtower’s God is not the God of the Bible but a diminished, pagan-like figure, unworthy of ultimate worship. The Thomistic vision, rooted in the transcendence and immanence of God, remains the most coherent and faithful account of the divine nature.