Vincent Kundukulam’s write-up on the Doctrine of Predestination in the February 16-28, 2017 issue made interesting reading. It gave in a nutshell all that was said about the brain-teaser throughout many centuries. It is important to know that all the great minds like Clement of Alexandria and Augustine, who contributed to it, were trying to catch fish in the sand dunes of the Sahara desert.
The kingpin of Predestination is God’s pre-knowledge. Would someone explain to me how we can apply the concept of time to God? God “has” not existed and He “will” not exist; He just “exists.” God “did” not know and “will” not know; He just “knows.” So God has no foreknowledge of anything. The definitions of God is I AM WHO AM. Past and future are not applicable to God. Time and space are applicable only to material things. God is pure spirit. Therefore, the very concept of Predestination is an ontological fallacy. You are arguing on a non-issue.
In the Middle Ages, theologians entertained themselves trying to calculate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, little realising that angels and pinhead are ontological mismatches. Angels are spirits; the concept of space as represented by the head of a pin cannot be applied to them.
Actually, Einstein also proved that time and space are not in themselves absolute concepts. What we have is a space-time continuum, which is applicable only to matter. Most of the so-called theological mysteries are actually ontological fallacies that the human mind has created by talking of God in human terms. We cannot describe anything except by applying space-time, which is not applicable to God. It, therefore, follows that we cannot truly describe God, who is pure spirit. So Indian philosophy says that the only description of God that we are capable of is Neti…Neti… (not this or that or anything we possibly can think of).
Paul of Tarsus also slipped into an ontological fallacy when he said that, after we rise again, ours will be a spiritual body. You can be either spirit or matter; you can never be spiritual matter. That is an ontological impossibility, just as two and two cannot add up to three. It may be argued that matter and spirit could co-exist, as the soul and the body are believed to co-exist in man, but you cannot have spiritual matter.
Thomas Muttamthottil
