Most Christians will talk about “Gods Plan”. Which makes sense to me, the Christian God is omniscient and omnipresent so he could have a super well laid out plan for every micro second of human history.
But like, doesn’t this kind of defeat the purpose of prayer? Like if a family member gets sick, what’s the point to praying to God about it. Whatever happens is part of his “plan”, so there really isn’t any chance you’re going to change his mind on whether Grannie is going to pass.
Same with things “going against Gods Plan”. Gods plan should have every contingency accounted for, so it really shouldn’t matter what anyone does. Is there a chance that if too many people are gay that will derail Gods plan and everything will be fucked? Or did Gods Plan account for me being a big gay commie? Is the idea that you can’t fuck up Gods master plan, but if you do a bunch of weird crap God doesn’t like it will throw things off slightly and God will have to compensate which he finds really annoying?
I am actually genuinely curious if there’s any theological theory on this. I supposed it would have been better to post this to the religion instance for that kind of response but was worried this post would come off a Reddit atheist “owning fundies” if I did that.
One theory is that of the “Happy Fault” (Felix Culpa). That is, sin, the fall etc were intended and in some sense “good”, in that they allow for a process of repeated breaking and reconciling with the godhead, each time reconciling with greater and more sophisticated knowledge of the divine will.
Prayer and its effects act as a facilitator for this process, ie. God intends for the process of prayer to happen as it is a process of introspection and reconciliation, and as one reconcilies with the godhead, so does ones desires reconcile with the plan of god.
It’s always a hard line to walk, especially if you’re trying to avoid a shitshow in the comments.
I don’t have much patience with academic theology because of how much of it was used to waste my time growing up, but my impression from that time is that there’s no shortage of theological theory on any topic. My experience was “non-denominational”, which in practice meant the standard Evangelical, non-codified biblical literalist, calvinist, Pentecostal mysticist suite
So for that particular allegedly-decentralized kind of Christianity, basically all theology was acceptable by default unless it bucked a core part of our orthodoxy such as mandatory queerphobia
Yeah, there have been theologians for hundreds of years and some of them have talked about exactly this issue! I even read some in school, but, of course, I don’t remember who it was because it’s been a decade and I’m an atheist.
So I’ll give a list of theologians that I know I’ve read, and that at least will give you a starting point for who to look at if you’d like to do more research and maybe find some passages.
St Thomas Aquinas is possibly the most famous theologian ever. I kind of hate him though and wouldn’t really suggest him except as a last resort.
St Augustine I really, really liked. He is the theologian who was closest to convincing me to convert to christianity. He’s very approachable.
St Anselm I think was the guy who came up with an absolutely ridiculous “proof” of the existence of god that I still sometimes think about and chuckle. The “ontological argument” I think it’s called. But I seem to remember he’s a bit of a one-trick pony, so probably he didn’t write anything on the omniscience of god.
Montaigne, Pascal, and Descartes aren’t exactly theologians, but they all wrote about religion, and in a very specific “enlightenment man of science” kind of way that’s pretty interesting.
Spinoza was fun, but I remember him being rather confusing. He was also more into politics than purely religion, if I remember right.
Kierkegaard was also really, really interesting. His thoughts on the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac were fascinating, and might be relevant to this question, actually.
And then there’s Paradise Lost, which is fiction, but a very philosophical kind of fiction. It’s extremely misogynist, like, I’m talking, Eve can’t understand cosmology unless Adam is the one explaining it to her misogynist. Adam and an angel talk for hours while Eve wanders around preparing food for them, it’s kind of gross. But, the bits where Lucifer is talking about his fall were super duper interesting, and possibly relevant here. Did god know what Lucifer was thinking and planning? If so, why did god let him go through with it? If not, is god really omniscient? And, another little wrinkle, some theologians and philosophers (I don’t remember if Milton is in this camp) think humans have free will, but angels do not. Which is, well, huh, I don’t even know what sentience looks like without (apparent) free will, you know?
I don’t know if any of these suggestions help! But know that you’re not the first to be very confused by god and his omniscience. It’s an interesting philosophical problem, absolutely. (Of course, the atheist answer is extremely easy: god doesn’t fucking exist, there is no greater “plan”, each of us must find our own path through life and imbue that path, and that life, with meaning ourselves.)
Huh, I much prefer Aquinas to Augustine. Augustine always comes across as a self hating misogynist asshole.
For a more modern Catholic perspective, De Chardin has become widely accepted, at least at the core, by Catholics both conservative and progressive
Oh, is Augustine a misogynist too? The self-hatred I picked up on, the misogyny I missed, because I was much, much less sensitive to it a decade ago. Ah well, live and learn, and maybe don’t read Augustine after all!
I’ve never heard of De Chardin, I think he must be too recent for the school I went to. It’s one of the real downsides of doing a “classics” or “western cannon” sort of program, you never get to read anything from the last 50 years or so.
De Chardin gets a lot of traction in transhumanist circles since he helped develop the concepts of the Noosphere and the Omega Point. He’s in some ways the Catholic counterpart to Russian Orthodox Cosmists.
Unfortunately none of them read him and those that did misinterpreted his entire thesis far too literally
Spinoza is a wonderful philosopher, if you don’t read him directly as a first approach. His formatting is weird, and doesn’t quite follow a through line. Reading philosophers who have read all of Spinoza and can write about the key concepts, or how they are present through his work is a much better way to get to know him.
My recommendation to get started is Arne Naess’ writings on Spinoza and Ecology.
I’d bet that the catholic church has something on it. They have the most continuous study of Christianity. IMO, catholicism tends to be more sourced than protestants or evangelicals.