God, Time, and Eternity X, Part 2

How are we to understand God's ability to react to events in time or does God react? What do we make of God's person hood as we try to answer this question?

Can an atemporal being know what time it is in a time laden world? Feinberg seems to think that any answer that maintains atemporality will be dubious. Atmeporalists maintain that this question is not relevant because God's activities are timeless and then has the effects of his activity occur within time and with perfect precision. Feinberg insists that this answer makes no sense. I have to say that I think that this hardly constitutes throwing out the Atemporal position. There are many matters in Theism that I can not exhaustively understand, but I do not discount them. If Feinberg was sighting a contradiction then I would be more inclined to follow his position, but that is not what he is doing; he is saying that the atemporality doesn't make sense. But is this true? If God is not burdened by time, acts within time, yet remains outside of time, then while I must admit that I can't comprehend exhaustively the nature of this relationship it does not follow that the position is nonsensical. This may be a good discussion point, but I find this opening part of the argument unpersuasive. As we move along we will find that the argument does get better, but the foundation seems weak to me.
Does not God have to respond to things in time that affect him? Does this present a problem for the Atemporalist? The example used is 1 Kings 21. God responds to Ahab by telling Elijah to prophecy disaster. Ahab repents and God postpones the disaster. How does this make sense if God is outside of time? Feinberg quotes a theologian named Sturch who expresses concern that God has the ability to react to every possible decision man could make (anyone want Ritz Crackers with their Molinsim, anyone?). Feinberg expresses concern over the use of Anthropomorphism at this point, but I would like to stress that one can be an Atemporalist and not hold to Middle knowledge (for those who may not know Molinism and Middle Knowledge are the same thing, and assert that God reacts to every possible decision and scenario man is involved, so man is free to act and God is sovereign. Often times it is used as a theodicy to explain how God cold put someone in a place where they can not hear the gospel and still be held accountable for not accepting it. If God knows every possible decision, then he knows that they will use their freedom to reject the gospel. Thus, he can put them in a part of the world where they will not hear the gospel because they wouldn't believe even if they were in a part of the world where they could hear it. Clearly this is a inter mural controversy within Theism that is outside the scope of this post).
Feinberg does a good job picking up on Sturch's Molinism. My problem with Sturch and Feinberg is this assumption that God is a person in the temporal way that we are persons. Why must God react to be a person? Can his person hood be maintained without all the elements of person hood found in us? I think the answer is: of course. As I stated in the earlier post, we believe that zygotes are a collection of cells that constitute humanity and being and yet they do not have every characteristic sited for person hood in this section of Feinberg's book. The same goes for mentally handicapped. Being is simply not subject to a quantitative catalogue of attributes. I think God can be a being and do greater things than humanity such as create with his spoken word, interrupt cause and effect, and exist outside of time. If I have overlooked something please let me know, but I think these first and second sections of the first argument for God's temporality seem erroneous.

Philosophy and Theology

I apologize for the short post. I was going to continue with God and Eternity but yet another curve ball has come my way, effectively cutting my time from an hour and twenty minutes to merely twenty minutes. This is not nearly enough time to tackle the issue the way I would like to so I will make another attempt tomorrow.

This is a basic question that I have been thinking of for a long time and am looking forward to some counter perspectives. I will frame the question based on Millard Erickson's "Christian Theology" text.

1)Revelation, rather than philosophy, determines our theology
2)Due to this our ontology is informed by revelation rather than philosophy (example: I don't believe in reincarnation because scripture clearly teaches otherwise. An Eastern philosopher may have many philosophical arguments to the contrary, but I do not consider them valid, even if the argument is good, because God has revealed the true nature of reality).
3)No commitment to one philosophical system is necessary even though philosophy is employed in systematic theology.
4)Erickson insists that theology is autonomous from philosophy.
(I highly recommend reading Erickson's text, especially in this section that starts on page 56.)

Even though there is no singular commitment to a philosophical system, does that mean that systematic theology is truly autonomous from philosophy?
Certainly we are not going to check with Sarte to see if we have it right. However, is there some sense where philosophy could fall under the heading of general revelation provided that it does not contradict scripture and that we do not except a philosophical system over a theological one that is rooted in scripture?
There can be no doubt that some of the discoveries of the Greeks were amazing in the sense that they confirmed what scripture had been teaching for thousands of years before them and they didn't have the benefit of scripture to influence them. In "Twilight of Idols" Frederich Nietzsche accuses Plato of going to Egypt and being trained by Rabbinic scholars because his thoughts were so close to what scripture teaches.
Your thoughts?