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An interesting or I thought interesting question came up during a discussion with a couple of my good friends.
While discussing Calvinism, Armenianism and Open Theism one of us asked if God can change the past? Now the context is that I am Armenian, but do lean towards Open theism. My one friend is soundly in the middle and the other is Armenian, but leans pretty well to the Calvinist position in many ways.
So one asked if God can change the past. I had been arguing the Open position that God cannot "know" the actual future because it doesnt exist. Time is not a literal, tangible contruct. It isnt a linear "string" with any actual points on it that can be visited. So, according to the Open Theism position, God knows every possible outcome and every possible consequence of every possible choice we can make in every situation...but cannot know the actual choice itself that we will make because until it is made...it has not happened. There IS no future yet that can be known. The lone exception, as any Open theist would readily admit, is in the instances of actual prophecy where God essentially just asserts His absolute will and demands an outcome.
While my one friend was disagreeing, the other asked "can God change the past". His point was that if we come to the conclusion that God cannot change the past because there actually IS NO past to change, then how can we then say God can know the actual choice we will make, and therefore know the actual future and not just every potential future. If the past is not tangible in a sense, like a point on a string behind us, then why do so many assume the future is tangible in a sense? If the string behind us doesnt really exist, then why do we assume the string in front of us does?
It mostly would make time merely a series of "now" where the past and future are NOT actually places but merely constructs of our memory and recorded history. You wuldnt be able to go back to yesterday because yesterday doesnt actually exist. All yesterday is is a series of moments that we lived and happen to remember. It cannot be gone to becuase it never really was a place.
So if that summation is incorrect in your opinion, then can God actually change the past? Can God go back to yesterday and change what you were eating or dinner? Or if a loved one died tragically, can God go back and prevent it? If you say yes, then wouldnt that require God to re-write all of reality, time and space and our memories from the moment of change forward? God would have to erase the butterfly effect right?
Or is God unable to change the past? And if He cannot change the past, then why is the future any different assuming the nature of time itself is constant?
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