Reflections on Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views

The topic of God’s knowledge of the future and human free choices has been around for a long time and will continue to be a matter of considerable debate. The fact that this remains a hot point of contention within Christian thought should give us a few reminders. First, given that this is essentially an in-house debate issue, there is solace in knowing that there is room for disagreement on certain details while still maintaining Christian orthodoxy (right belief). Indeed, most disagreements among Christians – Protestants and Catholics particularly – usually involve differences of interpretation and explanation of certain key doctrines that all of us hold in common.

For example, everyone believes that God is eternal. Eternity is considered to be a necessary or essential attribute of God’s nature. An essential attribute or property is an attribute that something or someone cannot lack and still be what it is. So with the issue of eternity, theologians and philosophers disagree on God’s relationship to time, which is part of the issue of divine eternity. Some think that God is outside of time and hence sees all events at once (i.e. Augustine of Hippo) whereas some hold that God is in time and only causes events that are presently occurring, not events that will occur (i.e. William Lane Craig). So as I said, there is room for dispute on the question of whether God is in or outside of time.

The second reminder that I think would be beneficial is that even though this issue involves much complicated terminologies and concepts, it has great practical importance for living life as Christians. All Christians educated and uneducated, live their lives based on certain theological formulations they have developed in certain ways. So theological and philosophical reflection on deep, mind-expanding issues can be a way of helping us grapple with how we live life in light of certain beliefs we hold.

Another point is that this discussion helps us fulfill a central command from Scripture that Christ gives to us in Matthew 22:37: Jesus said to him, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ The Christian life is not entirely about displaying acts of kindness, compassion, mercy, graciousness, concern for the afflicted, or engaging in prayer and evangelism. Though all those areas are absolutely crucial for a vibrant Christian life devoted to the Lord Jesus, they are not the only areas of how a Christian life should be lived. Christians are called to develop their minds or intellects as a way of exemplifying love to Jesus Christ. If we want to honor God with our minds, then we are obligated to do all that we can to sharpen and improve our minds in two key areas.

The first area is in critical thinking. God is not impressed or honored by sloppy ways of reasoning. We need to learn how to recognize truth from error and correct principles of reasoning from fallacies. This is not something we will automatically learn from Scripture. Why is that? Because (1) Scripture is not a text on logic or reasoning although it contains areas where that is accomplished and (2) a person may not improve in his or her reasoning skills no matter how much Scripture he or she memorizes or studies. God has given us resources outside of Scripture that can help us in this area. The second area is in seeking to increase in knowledge and learning. The ability to gain knowledge is a deep component of the human nature. Since we are called to mature and develop ourselves as the Holy Spirit enables us, increasing in knowledge and learning is a great example of how that can be manifested.

On the third point of discussion, the issue I am raising has some apologetic value. One of the central problems that are pressed against Christians concerning the problem of evil is the issue of reconciling divine foreknowledge with human freedom. Many atheists no doubt would think that the Christian’s inability to solve the vexing apparent outright contradiction in affirming a strong notion of divine foreknowledge and human freedom serves as a sufficient reason not to believe in Christianity. Sure some Christians might retort and say that atheism implies mechanical determinism in which every decision we make (physical, mental, etc.) is causally determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. Of course that could imply that rationality itself would be a farce. How would one ever rationally affirm atheism if atheism implies the absence of rationally guided processes? In any case, this area of exploration deserves much attention from Christians. If we are going to build any worthwhile bridges in reaching our culture, then we are going to need to do some serious homework. With that in mind, I will briefly summarize the contents of the book and give some feedback of my own.

Summary

There are four sections to the book in which each contributor lays out his case: Open-Theism, Simple-Foreknowledge, Middle-Knowledge, and the Augustinian-Calvinistic view. After a contributor presents his case, the three remaining contributors offer critiques of his case in the 3 subsequent chapters. Since my primary concern here is a brief explanation of the different views articulated in the book, I will only focus on the cases that are presented and leave it to the reader to examine the critiques in the book.

In chapter one Greg Boyd builds his case for Open Theism. Open Theism (hereafter OT) says that even though God is perfectly omniscient (perfectly knows only and all truths), He does not know certain events that will occur in the future because He has decided to let the future remain “unsettled”. On Boyd’s view, if God exhaustively foreknows all future events, then they are settled and hence cannot fail to occur. Boyd believes this would be incompatible with human freedom in the libertarian sense. Libertarian freedom basically says that an agent A does action X freely if and only of A can choose not-X or simply refrain from doing X. To affirm exhaustive foreknowledge would be to deny human freedom and would seem to explain away many passages that depict God as “changing his mind” or “regretting some actions He did in the past” as anthropomorphic (attributing human qualities to God). Boyd argues that the only way to preserve libertarian freedom is to deny exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

In section two David Hunt argues the simple foreknowledge view that really states that God “simply” knows the future. One of the problems that Hunt tries to address and adequately deal with is the problem of human free choice. The problem is similar to what Boyd explicates in his chapter on OT, namely that, if God infallibly foreknows what I will do tomorrow, then I cannot refrain from doing that which God foreknows what I will do. It is what we could call an inescapable fact. Hunt thinks that divine exhaustive foreknowledge is compatible with libertarian freedom based on two considerations. First, Hunt rejects the idea that one cannot be free if he or she cannot choose contrary to what he or she has actually chosen. He believes this is an unwarranted assumption. Second, Hunt thinks that even if one cannot choose contrary to what he or she has chosen, that does not prove that he or she was forced to choose. So Hunt believes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with being free even though human freedom does not entail the possibility of choosing to the contrary.

In the third section William Lane Craig argues the Middle-Knowledge view. This is the one I have been mostly exposed to though my knowledge of it is still surface level. The basic idea is that God has three kinds of knowledge prior to creating the world: natural, middle, and free. Natural knowledge is knowledge of all necessary truths (truths that could not have been false) like 2+2=4 or all bachelors are unmarried and so on. Middle knowledge is knowledge of counterfactual statements, which take the form “if…then…” An example would be “If Ben had not met with Chris Daniel, then he would not have received the internship.” Or “If Pontius Pilate were governor of Judea in 30 A.D., he would have freely crucified Jesus.” Middle knowledge includes counterfactual truths of free decisions by human beings. Free knowledge is God’s knowledge of the world He has actually created. So what does this mean? Well a few things.

First, Craig believes that middle knowledge can explain how God’s knowing the future can safeguard human freedom without obliterating it. Since Molinism, the view being articulated here, affirms that God knew these counterfactual truths of creaturely freedom before He created the world, these counterfactual truths could not have been determined or been what they are because of God’s will. They are in essence independent of His will just like the truths he knows by virtue of his natural knowledge. Second, Craig believes this can also provide an adequate account of how God can have a strong providential control over history that is usually attributed to Calvinism while affirming libertarian freedom usually affirmed by Arminians. Since God’s decision to create this world was based on His middle knowledge – which already includes future free undetermined decisions – and not His divine will, God is not responsible for the sin in the world but rather was “forced” to deal with the cards of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom he was dealt.

Lastly we have the Augustinian-Calvinistic perspective. Paul Helm argues in three ways that Christians should give up the libertarian freedom view and adopt a compatibilist view of human freedom. Put simply, compatibilism states that being causally determined to do what you do is compatible with your doing it freely. What are his three arguments? He argues from divine efficacious grace in the context of salvation, divine perfection and principle of simplicity, and the logical inconsistency between affirming an exhaustive account of foreknowledge and libertarian freedom.

The first argument states that if one exercised his or her freedom to accept God’s saving grace, then he must have done something to merit salvation. Since freedom involves actions of the will, and an act of faith is allegedly an exercise of our wills, it follows that faith has to be a gift from God and not something we exercise on our own. From divine perfection and simplicity, Helm says that if knowledge of only necessary and future truths is sufficient to provide a rich concept of divine omniscience, then it becomes futile to add middle knowledge to the collection. And lastly from the logical inconsistency between affirming an exhaustive account of foreknowledge and libertarian freedom, Helm is essentially arguing the same conclusion that Gregory Boyd articulated in his chapter on Open Theism.

Some Feedback

To be brief, I found the book to be extremely stimulating and mind expanding. The authors I find to be equally brilliant and intelligent in their articulations and critiques of each other’s works. In going back to my intro, I think this book needs to be read and discussed by Christians who are concerned about this problem. This book has challenged me to consider other points of view that I did not really take very seriously before. This book also showed me that no view is closed to critique or criticism. While every argument in philosophy will always have critics on the other side that does not mean that all objections are equally valid. Some objections might completely miss the mark and some are somewhat on point and others are head on. I do not know if this is an area where I will conduct serious reading and research. I have to be really sold on an idea before I launch into an in-depth analysis and examination of that area of thought. With that being said, I have enjoyed this book in many ways and will probably read it many times in the future to improve my understanding of the issues involved.