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| Question of the Week: If God has Foreknowledge, Doesn't that Mean that Everything is Pre-Determined/Fated? |
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If God has Foreknowledge, Doesn't that Mean that Everything is Pre-Determined/Fated? The allegation that whatever God foreknows determines the unfolding of only one possible history is grossly misguided. Even some Augustinian-Calvinists accuse non-Calvinists of inadvertently affirming determinism on the basis of God's foreknowledge. Non-theists and skeptics use divine foreknowledge as a situation where God's characteristics are incompatible with the reality of libertarian free will. Such arguments typically go like this: p1: Necessarily, if God foreknows X then X will occur.
p2: God foreknows X.
C: Therefore, X will necessarily occur. This commits a classic modal fallacy (specifically, confusing the necessity of consequent with the necessity of consequence). It cannot be the case that the necessity of a conditional situation ends up proving the necessity of the consequent ("X will necessarily occur"). The problem is further seen in the fact that certain subjunctive counterfactual statements are tenable for p1. A proper understanding of foreknowledge is that whatever occurs is what God foreknows. In this situation, X can by anything and that will constitute God's foreknowledge. If S will do A in circumstance C, then God would know that. If S were to do ~A in circumstance C instead, then God would have foreknown that instead. It is curious indeed that the Christian should surmise that God's foreknowledge is what causes or ensures some designated action. Instead, it is the action itself that constitutes God's foreknowledge. But such an allowance for counterfactual statements is a far cry from ceding determinism. |
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Hey SL, now this is a thinking man's blog! If you're saying what I think you're saying, I agree! lol |
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Point taken!! :) I suppose the underlying point is that it isn't God's foreknowledge that causes future events, it's the future events that constitute God's foreknowledge. How's that for a bumper sticker? ;) |
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PARoss |
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June 22, 2008 at 1:31pm |
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So, what you are saying is that causation is not a two-way street, that causation only goes one direction, from the cause to the effect, not from the effect to the cause. The trick, then, is to determine which is cause and which is effect.
To the traditional Calvinist/Arminian dispute regarding cause and effect, whether salvation causes belief or belief causes salvation, can we suggest that the Bible teaches that there are (at least) two elements involved in salvation: justification and sanctification. And that belief takes a middle position to link them, such that salvation causes belief, and belief causes sanctification with the end result being salvation? |
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If we suggest that salvation is logically prior to one's belief, this would be to suggest that one is saved apart from belief. Belief must serve as the antecedent to salvation because "whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3.16; cf. 2 Thess. 1:10). The problem as to how God can have an "elect" that are chosen, yet those individuals freely come to choose that salvation, engenders a great deal of controversy. I have offered a recently revived solution to this dilemma (see my article on this subject by clicking here). In the Molinist model, the concurrence of personal decision-making and divine sovereignty remain intact. Thank you for the question! |
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PARoss |
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June 27, 2008 at 3:40pm |
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I'm not saying that one is saved apart from belief, but that one is saved for (or into) belief. Salvation cannot be separated from belief. Rather, the key is understanding that salvation is a process that exists in time (for us) and out of time (for God). For us salvation takes time, but God compresses the time into an instant. So for Him time is irrelevant. Consequently, His justification and our sanctification are instantaneous (for Him). But for us sanctification is a process. But no matter how you cut it, God's action is always logically prior to our response.
Definition of terms is so important. For instance, are we saying that "belief" is ours as a natural phenomenon (that we can get it without God giving it) or a supernatural phenomenon because God must give it in order for us to have it?
When you say that belief is logically prior to salvation you are siding with the Remonstrants and against Calvin. The solution (above) honors the logic of both Calvin and Arminius, without taking a Calminian (mixed) position. Rather than positing a middle ground of God's knowledge, I am suggesting that the middle ground is better understood as time.
John 3:16 and 2 Thess. 1:10 do not address the causality of salvation, but only note that believers are saved, with which everyone agrees. The "whoever" is not because God doesn't know, but because we don't know. And more importantly, it is a call or invitation to exercise belief ourselves. So, if the reader does not know him or herself to be saved already, it serves an a goad for salvation.
I'll have to look at your Molina article, and comment on it there.
Are you familiar with Cornilius Van Til (www.vantil.info)?
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Van Til was a presuppositionalist philosopher who took on Reformer sympathies. His work has greatly contributed to apologetic outreach and influenced fine minds such as Greg Bahnsen and John Frame. I'm not a presuppositionalist myself, but I admire his allegiance to Scripture and God's priority in our lives. This view about the temporal "compression" of sanctification in God's realm seems to rest on a static theory of time (the so-called B-Theory). I would have difficulties with this position on this issue alone, but nevermind. Even in a B-Theory of time I don't think the idea of the simultaneity of God's justification and our sanctification is resolved. We still have the problem of logical priority - and this gets down to your latter question about whether "'belief' is ours as a natural phenomenon (that we can get it without God giving it) or a supernatural phenomenon because God must give it in order for us to have it?" I believe that it is a combination. We are not isolated from the influences and impulses granted by God but neither are we coerced into belief - so we freely choose whether to either follow the Spirit's nudging or turn a blind eye toward it. Since God knows what grace is sufficient for each person to freely respond to the Gospel, then God simply supplies that amount of grace for that person. The "whoever" passages simply reflect the material conditional that if one believes, then one can be saved. Nobody doubts that only God Himself is privy to which persons actually do so. |
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Eric |
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June 28, 2008 at 7:22pm |
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A couple of questions: 1) It appears you are affirming a deistic God that winds up the universe and sits back collecting knowledge of man's free will choices. His prophecies, then, are really nothing more than just knowledge of future choices of men. God doesn't therefore work out anything according to HIs will, He just simply regurgitates future events to people before they occur. Am I understanding correctly on this? 2) Why do you presuppose the "reality of libertarian free-will"? |
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Psa 37:23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.
The word good was added as the translator's had to stay within the beliefs of the common day.
It should read "the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord".
Every step good or bad. Jesus was not accidentally crucified by some angry mob.
Every step has a string attached to it by the higher above. God is the only being that has a free will. All other thinking is by influence of cause and effect. (Causality)
Kw. |
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Peace be unto you!
The mystery of God and his righteous work, in that he is the one directing all things, is just that, a mystery, until the manifestation of the wisdom of God, which is denoted in Revelation 5: 5 and 10: 7. Come hear what the Spirit (Luke 21: 34-36; John 16: 13) is saying to the churches: for of these things, the Apostle Paul knew not (Hebrews 9: 5).
Eternal love! |
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PARoss |
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June 30, 2008 at 8:19am |
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You make it sound as if Van Til added Reformation theology to his philosophical system, but that constitutes a reversal of the facts. He was from the beginning a Dutch Calvinist who became a Christian apologist. His system is primarily theological because it comes straight from Scripture, and secondarily has philosophical applications and implications.
I said nothing about temporal compression, and I'm not a B-theorist. "Those who wish to eliminate all talk of past, present and future in favour of a tenseless ordering of events are called B-theorists." (from Wikipedia).
Just because God sees justification and sanctification as instantaneous does not mean that they are compressed in time. In fact, they are not. Justification is an act of God that takes an instant, but sanctification, the human response to God's justification, takes more than a lifetime. I'm saying that these two things together constitute salvation and cannot be separated. The language of "instantaneous" is time bound from my (human) perspective, not God's. We could just as easily think of it as a logical or necessary relationship (between justification and sanctification) rather than instantaneous. In fact, because God is outside of time the whole idea of time compression does not apply to His perspective. God honors time (He created it!), but He has a different (and humanly unknowable) perspective about time. I, too, have difficulties with the idea of time that you introduced and attributed to me. (Your presupposition about what I am trying to say is wrong.)
The theory that I proposed provides a simple explanation for the "combination" (of God's action and human action in salvation) in which you said you believe. It also maintains the logical priority of God's sovereignty in salvation without denying the necessity of human response-ability.
The question I ask you, since "we freely choose whether to either follow the Spirit's nudging or turn a blind eye toward it," is why do some people choose to follow God and some do not? Since "God simply supplies that amount of grace for that person" ("God knows what grace is sufficient for each person to freely respond to the Gospel"), and therefore every person then has adequate grace to respond favorably to the gospel, why don't some people make that choice? Is their free will greater (stronger, more powerful, more free, etc.) than God's grace? Keep John 12:40 and 1 Corinthians 4:4 in mind. |
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PARoss: To affirm that temporal events are simultaneous in God's frame of reference is to "elinimate all talk of past, present, and future." It is a common feature of such static theories of time that past, present, and future are merely an experiential phenomenon. Of course this is still a perfectly acceptable position for Christians to hold, but I find it lacking for philosophical reasons. My real interest is the response of the individual to God's grace. Why do some choose and others do not? Well, it would only be speculation on my part why those who reject the Gospel stubbornly do it except to generally affirm (with you) that all people are suffering from human depravity and "love the darkness more than light" (John 3:19). It isn't that somehow one person has "greater" free will but that the proportion of light they receive may differ from what others receive - as long as they receive just the amount necessary for them to affirm salvation. Lastly, I never suggested that Van Til added his theology to his philosophy - only that I don't completely agree with his apologetic approach (presuppositionalism). Eric: (i) I'm not affirming Deism here, only that God's foreknowledge does not entail fatalism (which is sort of the polar opposite of Deism). But to add to this, I would emphasize that God certainly acts within human history to bring about His will. This is consistent with all Christian views on the human will (libertarian or not). (ii) I affirm libertarian free will because (a) the Bible signals that people genuinely have the ability to choose salvation or not, (b) philosophically, if no lilbertarian free will existed then people would not be responsible for their own actions - a position seemingly inconsistent with moral culpability and biblical judgment (Ezekiel 18:20). I hope this helps! And good to see others engaged in this. I feel this has been a deficit in modern Evangelicalism to avoid issues that require more thought. Praise God for Christians who continue to think in this way! |
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Eric |
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June 30, 2008 at 10:10pm |
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A couple of more thoughts: 1) I'm failing to see how it is philosophically tenable for God to bring about His will in human history and at the same time each human has a libertarian free will. The only conclusion I would think one could draw from this is that God's will is that human's have libertarian free-will. In fact, this would override all His other desires. Biblically, this is shaky ground. Consider if no human on the face of the earth ever used their libertarian free-will to follow Christ. Would this be God's will, that His Son failed to save even one human? Did God breathe a sigh of relief when He looked down through history and found that in fact man did follow His Son's teaching so that it wouldn't be all for not? 2) Concerning libertarian free-will in response to a) Romans 9; John 6:44, 65; Acts 13:48; Ephesians 2:8,9 just to list a few verses suggest anything but libertarian free-will. Also, historically Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism was long held to be heretical throughout the history of the church. I fail to see how libertarian free-will falls outside these teachings. In response to b) The Bible tells us that God is incapable of sin and evil. So why does He deserve our praise? If we can't be judged unless we are free to do otherwise, why are we required to praise God when He can't do otherwise? God's Soveriegnty, man's inability, and man's responsibility are not mutually exclusive by any means. Pharoah had his heart hardened by God. God turns the wills of kings like water in His hands according to Proverbs. Jacob was chosen over Esau before they were born and had done anything. But why does He still blame us if we can't do anything good - including come to faith - unless He chooses to act for us? Paul takes the discussion right to this point and had every opporturnity to set the record straight that we have complete ability to choose freely: "One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?" (Romans 9:19- 21) |
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PARoss |
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July 01, 2008 at 3:06pm |
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God gives us impossible conundrums in order to show us our own folly, weakness and inability. Once we understand that we can't understand everything about God, we can then surrender the effort to try to understand, an effort that leads us deeper into self and pride. We are so committed to ourselves that we often have to invent explanations of things that are simply beyond us and suit nothing but our own pathetic minds (hearts and desires to justify our sin). Once the efforts of self-explanation or self-justification are surrendered, we are then able to drop our self-made presuppositions and read Scripture without the lens we have heretofore imposed upon it, in faith. But this faith is not mine or yours, as if it wells up inside of us. Rather, it is God's faith in Jesus Christ, which has been imposed upon us through regeneration.
I'm not arguing for mysticism, Scripture has plenty of mysterious depth within the bounds of human intelligibility. We don't need to speculate beyond what Scripture tells us.
Scripture does not speak in terms of simultaneous events, at least I can't think of an example of it. But Scripture does speak about past, present and future as if the relations between them and God's decrees are fixed, as if the certainty of history fulfilling God's decrees will unfold without modification of its purpose.
"Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,' calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it." (Isaiah 46:8-11).
God doesn't flatten time out, nor should we (whatever that might mean). Time is a tool in the hands of God. It is real, and objective, not merely subjective. I'm not suggesting that time is merely subjective. It can't be because God controls it.
Actually, we don't have to speculate about why people choose or don't choose to respond to God. Scripture tells us: He hardened Pharoah's heart, and many others. We did not choose Christ, "but (He) chose (us) and appointed (us) that (we) should go and bear fruit" (John 15:16). We are not to trust ourselves, our own understanding of things (Proverbs 3:5, etc.), but we are to trust God and His understanding (Scripture).
So the only real freedom available to anyone in this sin-drenched world is obedience to God through Christ, which is only possible through regeneration. Through regeneration we are given new hearts and minds and desires. Following regeneration we want to live in obedience to God. And when we then live in obedience to God and Scripture, we contribute to God's will, which is the only free will in the universe. In obedience to God we freely add our wills to God's free will. Our only freedom is being caught up in God's will.
But the rejection of God comes entirely out of our own personal will because it is not God's will that we reject Him. God's will is that we live in obedience to Him, so rejecting Him means rejecting the only real free will in the universe, and defaulting to the slavery of our own narrow, limited, personal will. How can we not be responsible for what we personally choose to do? Unrepentant sinners are personally responsible for their rejection of Christ. But repentant sinners understand that they have been saved apart from their own will, apart from their own ability or understanding. Repentant sinners thank and praise God for imposing His free will upon them, because they know that apart from God's imposition they would be just as lost as everyone else. Apart from obedience to God (by grace through faith, of course) our lives and our world are bound for death and destruction.
The key to understanding this is realizing that we are not in an independent, objective or neutral position to begin with. It is not that we are born into some neutral situation, and then can choose good or evil. It is that we are born sinners awash in a world that is hell-bound for the pit. We are born on a locomotive heading full steam toward the cliff. That's where we start from. God is not engaging us in a philosophical discussion about reality. He's on a rescue mission, and time is important to the success of His mission. God may be engaged in spiritual triage for the sake of humanity.
So, God treats these two classes of people (sheep and goats) differently. Why? Because He is just and justice demands different treatment for the obedient than the disobedient (or the faithful and the faithless). Just like on earth, those who obey the law are treated differently than those who don't. And that difference is called justice, though the disobedient always want another definition of justice. Everything is different for these two groups of people. Why? Because Jesus Christ makes a real and an important and an all-encompassing difference. If God were to treat these groups the same, then Jesus Christ would make no real difference in their lives or in history. So, because Jesus Christ is real, God treats believers differently than unbelievers.
Which group enjoys real freedom? |
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PARoss: Very well articulated. Since the direction here is veering off into more of a discussion about whether some form of Augustinianism/Calvinism, simple Weslyian-Arminianism, or Molinism (my view) is true I'll simply let you have the last word on this here and suggest that interested readers investigate works such as Beilby & Eddy, Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views; Basinger & Basinger, Predestination and Free Will: Four Views. In this latter work Norm Geisler defends the "simultaneity" of human decision-making and divine sovereignty viewpoint. That might parallel our discussion here. Eric: We might be (once again) entrenched in the ancient debate about the concurrence of free will and divine sovereignty. Rather than afford a complete refutation of determinism here, I'll refer the reader to my debate critiquing this view (see my debate with Calvinist Peter Pike). Eric, I see in your response a simple affirmation that determinism is true and that libertarian free-will is false. I found no argument present in your response and only mere disagreement. The only objection that seemed to have support was the claim that the Old Testament set precedent that (apparently) shows that people do not have libertarian free will. But it's merely a storytelling device when the Old Testament authors use expressions of "God heardened Pharaoh's heart" in order to convey the sovereignty of God. Clearly Pharaoh chose his actions. The question is - How are these two events concurrent? But if one were to suggest that God made Pharhaoh do what he did, then he didn't freely do it. Contrary to your bald claim that these things aren't mutually exclusive, these things are logically incompatible - if you freely do something, then you couldn't have been made to do it. |
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