Divine compatibilism

Icthus wrote on a tread:
“Predestination is compatible with free will, because (as I said earlier) God transcends time.”

O- The relation of God to time is worth studying, but apparently God has to put up with Time and does as he does to account for Time. He cannot go back in Time. For those who say He transcends Time, I ask that they explain that. The question is: Could God have gone back in time and changed His creation? The Lord is grieved and laments His own creation but cannot but accept it. Erasing His creation means another act following subject to the arrow of time. God acts in the future time and never in the past. So how does God transcends Time when He, no less than us, must act in the present and future? He, like us, makes prediction of what He will do and not do, but cannot undo what is done. Death is the exeption? He undoes death? No. He can resurrect a dead body again, in the future without altering the past fact that it died. He cannot go back in time but mend what happens in Time in the allowance of Time.
Time is like the fabric out of which God created. The architect creates the building in time that preceeded him and with materials he found at hand. Likewise God separated and gave order to what already was there with Him.

“He takes requests. Though the past, present, and future are fixed from our perspective, He is intimately involved at every step.”

O- In the present and in the future. The past is lost to Gods and men.

“A possible analogy is a movie production. In your DVD player, the movie is fixed (every time you watch it, it never changes). During production, however, the end product is rarely the same as the original script – both producer/director (God) and actors (we ourselves) have made revisions. Only – in the case of the universe – the revisions and the original script are identical, because God gets it right the first time.”

O- Which an argument as to why the past might as well not be bothered with God. But if He got it so right, why does He have to interfere with Perfection so very often? Perhaps Freewill prevents the director from ever having a final product and remains forever in the editing room trying to accomodate the capriciousness of His creation?

“That means we had/have a part in planning the original script… but only as far as we willingly participate with God in that endeavor. Otherwise, we’re just part of the script.”

O- If God got it right then what participation is left for us? How can we contribute to perfection? During a movie, to use the analogy, editing, revisions and the like are used to polish and better the end result. Watch the deleted scenes section in a DVD and the director’s commentary is about why the movie is better because of the cuts he made or why he had no choice but to make those cuts despite the artistic superiority of their content. Whichever the case, a contribution, change, in the original cut (director’s) presupposes the need to do so. The director may not find the words to explain a change but it is hardly out of capriciousness. He has a vision that needs deliver and the changes made polish that product closer to the vision. Each change then presupposes a lack of polish, a distance between vision and the director’s original cut. But being that God had the right sccript set from the beginning (“the revisions and the original script are identical, because God gets it right the first time”) then no real vacuum exists to permit the genuine creation in the part of the actor, ourselves. Willing or unwilling, each suggestion posted by the actor has to comform to a predetermined equality between revised/changed and original script. How what is equal also admits of difference, even in value, is beyond me.
Now, Clint Eastwood recently released a movie about the Battle of Iwo Jima. His cast was japanese. In the DVD it is said how he took suggestions from his lead actor. Suppose the same applied to God’s creation. Would we then have to admit, as with Eastwood, so with God, that the director lacked some knowledge? That he was incomplete and that He was benefitted by us as Eastwood was benefitted in his production, by Wanatabe?

But I’ll go to the rim with you.
Maybe the script was complete, but by virtue of that compleatness, it was rendered imperfect? God created Heaven and also Hell and the completeness of Eden is finalized by the venom of the Serpent in Eden…but it was complete- He rested. Upon completion His creation is imperfect and thus it requires the intervention of God who sets down His command. Now, is it imperfect because He grants us Freewill? No. It is imperfect because He grants us Freewill in a Garden furnished with the lying serpent- the combination of circumstances leaves little doubt of the outcome.