Several commenters responded to my question about whether God can change the past by saying we would not know it if he did. True enough, I suppose, but that doesn’t answer the question which is ontological rather than epistemological.
Also, several commenters responded by saying that God cannot change the past because he foreordained everything that happened according to his wisdom and therefore would be less than sovereign if he changed it. However, that doesn’t take into account that, in such a Calvinist perspective, my prayer for God to change the past (e.g., the holocaust) might be God’s foreordained means to his foreordained end of changing (undoing) the holocaust. What’s illogical about that? How would that in any way affect his sovereignty? The argument that God cannot change the past because he sovereignly foreordained it could just as well be used to argue that petitionary prayer for the future is an insult to God’s sovereignty–as if we know better than God what should happen. No Calvinist I know believes that, however, arguing that God has foreordained our prayers as instrumental means to his foreordained ends. So why couldn’t my prayer that God undo the holocaust (for example) be just that–God’s foreordained means to his foreordained end of undoing the holocaust? Logically, it seems, that’s possible. So, again I ask, do you pray for God to change the past and, if not, why not?
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