Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi → Satan's Last Stand (the Connor series) - Dirk B.
By plot hole within plot hole, I assume you mean the fact that there is no good reason why the Holy Spirit shouldn't know the end date. Even Jesus should know, IMO.
Fortunately, the above plot hole is not mine to close. It's among those questions/mysteries Christians can only speculate about.
My plot hole I can close using the idea I posted in the first "edit" to my previous post. I just have to word it simply enough.
It's the solution where God agrees to forget. The very agreement concedes success much as it does in Chronicles of Narnia I
My solution's really no different than two-thirds of God agreeing to forget/not know the date of the end times. Clearly God can and does do it. My solution doesn't need to state anything as fact, merely a character observing that God can and does do it.
I'm using St. Augustine as the person to whom the hermit with the detailed vision/revelation sends his write up of the revelation. Bishop Augustine forwards it to Rome along with his own strongly worded letter supporting the fact that the hermit/Church scribe is someone who can be trusted, especially after a detailed investigation of the matter.
Naturally, the documented vision and Augustine's accompanying letter to the pope are forgeries, placed directly into the Vatican Secret Archive by Satan after the Vatican and the archive were created.
You have a job interview tomorrow, and your omniscience tells you you got the job. You know if you don't get the job, you'll be shot.
Next day, you find you have blocked off memories of the outcome.
Now, you don't particularly want to get shot, so although you no longer know the outcome, you realize you wouldn't have agreed to an outcome where that was a possibility. It follows that you had agreed to it knowing back then you were going to succeed.
Had you agreed back then and then now fail, you were never omniscient in the first place.
Now the inverse from the villain's perspective:
See, in Narnia, when the lion agrees the villain can go ahead and murder him, it's kinda ludicrous. Who would agree to be murdered?
Any villain worth his evil cackle immediately suspects something's wrong.
Alas, the witch does not, and proceeds to kill the lion, triggering the good guy's trap
Had you agreed back then and then now fail, you were never omniscient in the first place.
Once God agrees, he basically instantly wins (or is imperfect and failed to predict the outcome)
Somehow God already has the ability to do this as I noted above, even though we puny mortals aren't sure how. The hermit, who had the potential to be a brilliant theologian but received a vision to go live and pray in a cave in the desert/wilderness from age 15 on, will be the one who speculates that this is possible, and St. Augustine (see my edits above) will provide credibility for the hermit's theory.
I don't think I need anyone to explain how it's possible, just observe that God already does this. I have a potential explanation for the how, but since I don't need it, I don't have to spend time working out the minutia.
(Emphasis mine)
Somehow God already has the ability to do this as I noted above, even though we puny mortals aren't sure how.
...
I don't think I need anyone to explain how it's possible, just observe that God already does this.
Clarification to this: I wasn't saying it is impossible for him to do it. I was saying that the moment he does so, it means he's determined this is a successful outcome
Don't forget, there are three persons in one God. The Father could be the one to agree to the challenge based on what he foresees (God wins), after which the Holy Spirit walls off the Father's ability to see the outcome (because it may change). The Holy Spirit then goes to Satan and says, the Father's knowledge of the outcome has now been walled off. You're previous proposed challenge would have resulted in us winning, so you don't want to stay with that. Pick a different challenge. I, the Holy Spirit, will know who ultimately wins, but the Father no longer will, and he already accepted the challenge, regardless of what it ultimately ends up being.
While one might argue that the Father would have foreseen what Satan chose even after the Holy Spirit told Satan to change his challenge, clearly the three persons of the Trinity are not individually 100% omniscient, otherwise the Holy Spirit would know the date for the end times. Jesus says only the Father knows. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not 100% omniscient, but God as a whole still is.
Now your see why I don't intend to include an explanation as to the how. In fact, even my explanation doesn't truly explain how. But I've given a proof in my previous post that each person in the Trinity is not 100% omniscient. That's what makes it possible even though I have no clue how the Holy Spirit would wall off the Father's knowledge. But since God is omnipotent, he can do it (as he already has with the date of the end times).
Pick a different challenge. I, the Holy Spirit, will know who ultimately wins, but the Father no longer will, and he already accepted the challenge
When he accepted the challenge, he already knew the Holy Spirit would wall him off shortly after. He also knew Satan would change his pick, and he knew what the new choice would be
Omniscience can be defeated. Perfect omniscience is much harder.
Way to blow up a solution. Fortunately, like I said earlier, I don't have to solve it. The following took half a [censored] day, but I think it's as simple and short as I can get it:
One part of the hermit's vision on which I will comment personally concerns whether it is at all possible for the Father to not know something while our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit do. I believe the answer is yes. We already know the opposite is true: In Matthew 24:36 of the Gospels, the Lord told his disciples only the Father knows when the end will come, indicating that neither he nor the Holy Spirit have that answer.
Since all three persons — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who comprise God are each considered to be all-knowing and all-powerful, the only way one of them cannot know something that the others do has to be voluntary. So, if the Son and Holy Spirit know something the Father does not, then the Father must have voluntarily excluded that information from his all-knowing vision for whatever purpose and length of time he chooses.
How God might accomplish this is beyond the scope of this letter. Clearly, he can do so since he has already done it, leaving only the Father with the knowledge of when the end will come. It should come as no surprise that an all-powerful being can do this.
Overcoming perfect omniscience so that Satan has a fair chance is a [censored]. I mean, according to Revelation, God has already won, so why would he participate in something that could make him lose big? Even if one assumes that God can ensure that the challenge is executed fairly (so Satan could win), why risk so much? As it says in my content summary blurb, what is so important that he would risk it all? Even if the rescue mission became all important to God, there are other ways he can accomplish that without risking so much. Heck, even if he wanted to rescue every soul currently in hell (he doesn't), he still wouldn't need to take such a grave risk to accomplish the same thing.
What if Satan wanted to issue the challenge but only if it's fair. God could tell him that due to God's omniscience there's no way Satan can win, but God wants to do the challenge anyway (for a higher purpose), and he offers to reduce Satan's punishment (and that of others?) if he participates, without telling him why?
Problem is, that makes God responsible for the conspiracy and all pain and suffering that stems from it.
Problem is, that makes God responsible for the conspiracy and all pain and suffering that stems from it.
Or at least as culpable as the pain & suffering in Job's life. I mean Job got a happy ending, but those sons and daughters that got killed in the process probably weren't as enthused.
In my main series, when K@jo gets into the angels story-world, he immediately looks up God and challenges him to chess, figuring if he can hold his own against the creator of the universe for a few dozen moves, he's on good footing. God proceeds to trounce him in a 1-move checkmate, the impossibility of which turns the board into a thermonuclear chain reaction.
Noting this. Omnipotence is also hard to write
I think I need a Kobayashi Maru for Satan. No matter how unlikely he is to win, he still has to try or fry in the lake for sure. Ideally, in some way that leads him toward the particular challenge covered in the rest of the book. It's so long-term (two millennia) and complex, and God wants to be able to use it for his purposes too.
So, what would drive Satan toward that particular plan? It needs to be irresistible. Perhaps he believes he'll win if he follows that course, whereas there should be a twist at the end, where it turns out he was architect of his own doom. He is anyway, but I'd love it if he followed instructions from someone unknown on how to execute the conspiracy.
Perhaps a document comes into his possession with a lot of the details. Written by an Old Testament prophet looking to destroy him? Or perhaps a person joins him, giving him that guidance over two+ millennia.
Of course, this also means I make no attempt to explain why God isn't being more fair about the challenge. Maybe because he needs Satan to do the things he'll do throughout the trilogy for the divine purpose mentioned in the new epilogue.
And I would still need a simple explanation for why events in the story don't match the Bible. My main options are 1) a supernatural Bible that is identical across all timelines, even though it was only written for ours, or 2) the dual timeline explanation, which probably won't be that simple.
Another option is stray from the Bible. I mean, wait, isn't Revelation inerrant? Or is it interpretive? (https://www.missioalliance.org/why-bibl … esnt-work/)
Furthermore, God may simply change his mind like he did after the Flood or in the inception of the NT to replace the OT. Who's to say there won't be some newer testament (3T) down the road?
What I mean is, you're not necessarily shackled to the scripture if you have to make an alternate timeline anyway.
Thanks for the link. That's a terrific article but not an argument I'd want to make in the book because Catholics consider it inerrant too. It'd be the same problem I have now, which is that story events contradict the Bible, and since the events are real to the characters in the story, the Bible would have to be wrong. Yikes!
The alternate timeline allows for differences, but somehow I have to connect it to the real-world Bible. The goal is for my characters to conclude: yes, events differ from the Bible, but the Bible was written for another (real-world) timeline. The question then is, how did it end up in the story's timeline instead of one specific to that timeline. The key difference, of course, is the existence of the challenge, which leads to most other differences.
I definitely rely on some of my own interpretation of Revelation. The book is inspired by Revelation but doesn't follow it 100%. That previous sentence will be included somewhere near the beginning of the book once I publish to keep from pissing off my target audience. Admittedly, they should be able to tell that just from reading the trilogy's blurb on the back cover, but I'd like to minimize negative reviews from people who buy it expecting a more traditional interpretation of the Apocalypse.
Although there are endless interpretations, there is quite a bit of consistency among Catholic interpretations (e.g., the two witnesses represent the Church's testimony about Jesus, not the kooks Moses and Elijah, who I threw in for fun (they're from a common Protestant interpretation); a destroyed/rebuilt Jewish temple is actually Jesus returning from the dead after 3 days; Jesus ruling for 1000 years is actually Jesus in the Eucharist for some "large" number of years (1000 is not literal); no final battle at Megiddo (my final battle is actually between Connor and his father, which is fine); etc.).
My favorite alternate timeline approach is to say that John prophesied events for the timeline he was in (ours, the real world). His vision didn't include the challenge since the moment it happens, my story branches into a second timeline, which didn't even exist until that point. The advantage of that is the second timeline has the same Bible as in the real-world since both timelines started from the real-world timeline. The creation of the second timeline doesn't happen until after the Bible is written, as soon as God accepts Satan's challenge. From the story's perspective, there is no written evidence of when the branching occurred until about the 4th century, so in both timelines, Church leaders will assemble the exact same Bible. The other option is not to branch until after the Bible is assembled, which I may have to do, although that gives Satan four centuries less to run his breeding program to create a super-powered Connor.
Clear as mud?
Dirk
If Romano in the real timeline sins but this one does not, does he still get into heaven?
If both are perfect, do they both get to heaven? Or are there separate heavens for them to go to?
I'm not sure how God handles that. Fortunately, I don't need to answer that in the book, although my own personal answer is: I have no clue. 
So I guess the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics wouldn't sit well with the one Earth/one Heaven/one God/one soul belief in Christianity, huh?
Finally something that came together easily. A bit wordy, but I can trim it once I've written the other sections.
One side effect of the Last Challenge is that, as time goes on, there will be an increasing number of differences between the events of our world and those prophesied to occur in the Bible right up until the Last Day. But how is this possible when we know the Bible to be without error? The answer is, we no longer exist along the same flow of time as the Bible’s authors. It seems there can be many such flows, each of which I refer to as a timeline.
Had there been no challenge, we — humans, angels, demons, even the world itself — would have continued along our original timeline, and events would match the Bible, including, eventually, the Apocalypse prophesied in its Book of Revelation.
However, when Satan issued the Last Challenge and God accepted, it resulted in the creation of a second timeline, where we now find ourselves. The two timelines share an identical history up to the moment the second timeline came into existence. The Bible was written before the Last Challenge, so any prophecies in the Bible are for events along the original timeline, not ours.
For this reason, the Holy Spirit has given me detailed prophecies for our new timeline, which I have included in this document. The most noteworthy difference, one that has left me shaken, is that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will return as a child, not as a man!
He will once again be conceived by the Holy Spirit, be reborn, but grow up in Rome. He will be orphaned at a young age and raised by the Church, and his supernatural skills will become increasingly apparent while he’s still a youth, at which point he will come to the attention of the Bishop of Rome. Soon thereafter, he will remember who he is and who he was, at which point his powers will return in full.
But he will also come to the attention of Satan, the dragon, and the Antichrist, the beast from the sea, who will attempt to prevent him from reaching his full knowledge and strength. They will try to kill him and later, through treachery, seek to bend the young Lord to their will to do their bidding.
The Church must act decisively once he is found to protect him from harm until he once again emerges as the Son of God.
One tweak I need to make here is to remove/rewrite prophecies that suggest Christ will win since (in theory) this document may fall in Satan's hands and God doesn't want him to know his ultimate fate. That avoids me giving away the apparent ending, which of course it isn't, but why let readers think I just did?
Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi → Satan's Last Stand (the Connor series) - Dirk B.
