I found the following argument online
1. God's being omniscient implies that if Jones mows his lawn on Saturday afternoon, then God believed at an earlier time that Jones would mow his lawn on Saturday afternoon.
2. Necessarily, all of God's beliefs are true.
3. No one has the power to make a contradiction true.
4. No one has the power to erase someone's past beliefs, that is, to bring it about that something believed in the past by someone was not believed in the past by that person.
5. No one has the power to erase someone's existence in the past, that is, to bring it about that someone who did exist in the past did not exist in the past.
6. So if God believed that Jones would mow his lawn on Saturday afternoon, Jones can refrain from mowing only if one of these conditions is true:
(i) Jones has the power to make God's belief false.
(ii) Jones has the power to erase God's past belief.
(iii) Jones has the power to erase God's past existence.
7. Alternative (i) is impossible. (This follows from steps 2 and 3).
8. Alternative (ii) is impossible. (This follows from step 4).
9. Alternative (iii) is impossible. (This follows from step 5).
10. Therefore, if God believes that Jones will mow his lawn on Saturday afternoon, Jones does not have the power to refrain from mowing his lawn on Saturday afternoon.
And here's my rebuttal
It is entirely possible to have a coherent picture of an omniscient God who also gives us freedom of choice. The above argument is merely a clever misrepresentation of the real case.
God believes Jones will mow the lawn. Since God's beliefs can never be wrong, Jones can only do what God believes will happen. Therefore, Jones has to mow the lawn, and has no free choice. In other words, God's belief that Jones will mow the lawn forces Jones to mow the lawn. A corollary to this argument must be that God's beliefs about the future are be based on eventualities under his direct control. If we say that Jones is forced into mowing the lawn because God believes he will mow the lawn, then we're also saying that God was controlling the circumstances.
This whole argument is based on one crucial idea: God must always be right
The assumption is that God must always be in control in order to be always right. This assumption makes sense. God's control of the situation clearly explains why he would know everything and always be right. In such a paradigm, the argument holds well, and we either embrace Calvinism or agree that God does not know everything.
My question is this: why can't God relinquish control of something, and still be fully aware of its final outcome? This situation wouldn't be humanly possible, so there's no way to demonstrate its possible validity, but in proposing things about an infinite God, we are allowed to use our imaginations. We are at a cross roads: On one side, we have a mysterious belief produced by imagination. On the other, we have a belief firmly rooted in logic and human experience. Which kind of belief is superior? I believe, in fact, this difference in approach is a key to the difference between Greek and Hebrew thinking, and closer to home, the difference between a lawyer and a scientist. The scientist and Hebrew create an imaginary(or perhaps inspired in the case of the Hebrew prophets) explanation which fully satisfies pre-determined requirements. The Lawyer and Greek scorn pre-determined requirements and the imagination necessary to make them explicable, but rather seeks to navigate uncharted waters with reason alone, with no more burning exigency driving their quest than what reason itself can reveal.
In this case, I'm more scientist and Hebrew than lawyer and Greek. The pre-determined requirements are these
1) God is as big, in every way, as possible
2) God is love, in every way, as much as possible
3)The less God knows and controls, the smaller he is
4) The less God gives us free choice, the less loving he is
Here's the best way to slice the cake
1) God knows everything and controls everything (he's infinitely big)
2) God has given us free will (he's infinitely loving)
God has given us free will, and relinquished his direct initial control over us by doing so. However, the control God ultimately gains through a voluntary love produced by our free will choice is far greater and more comprehensive than tyrannical control produced by subjects in servility. Control gained from those who love outbalances loss of control from those who hate. Furthermore, God is so big that he can still know everything about our decisions even if he has chosen not to control those decisions.
In this context, condition(i) is impossible only because Jones can never decide against what he will ultimately decide to do. The finality of Jones' free will choice doesn't make it any less free. God knows Jones will make this final choice, but it is the finality of the choice itself, not God's knowledge of the finality, which makes it binding. Suppose Jones decides not to mow the lawn, but then mysteriously discovers himself taking out the mower. Does a lack of finality destroy or secure his freedom? No matter how desperately we want to avoid the binding nature of our final decisions, they remain. How can we take this commonplace reality and construe it as a marriage between foreordaining and foreknowledge?
Jones may know ahead of time that God knows what choice he will make, but unless Jones knows what God knows, he can never really be in a restricted position. In other words, a precondition of free will is that we cannot know ahead of time what choice we will actually make (unless we embrace the logically absurd idea that I can know what I will decide before I decide it) In fact, in order to achieve salvation, we must constantly relinquish our free wills to God so that, in Him--and only in Him--we can know for certain that we will choose for Him.
God: I am giving you free will
Jones: Do you know what I'm about to decide?
God: I can't tell you
Jones: Do you know?
God: Yes
Jones: Why won't you tell me?
God: You could never submit to me if I did
Jones: What happens if I submit?
God: We'll be one
Jones: Will you tell me then?
God: Then, and only then, you will already know
Some think that God can't say because he doesn't know. I think God can't say because he wants Jones to keep his free will. I know that for the rest of my future, I will make a very definite set of decisions. There will be no gray area, no wiggle room, and no options for change. That's because at every decision, God will give me the chance to exercise my free will in an emphatic, totally determining manner. Just because God knows that I will make such choices doesn't make them less free.
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3 comments:
Foreknowledge is not equal to foreordination as you have rightly stated. Christ died for the sins of the whole world thus making provision for all to be saved. In that sense all are predestined to be saved. They may choose against this gracious provision freely but their choice against the will of God (see 2 Peter 3:9) is foreknown by Him.
I like how you have laid this issue out and wrapped it up.
As we discussed at Thanksgiving, I think that God the father knows the future, but Jesus does not. I think this resolves some of the tensions you discussed above.
As you rightly point out, logic (lawyer/Greek as you call it) has some limits. We live in a world were 2+2=4, but God may live in a universe where 2+2 can equal anything or nothing. Thus God may know everything about the future and yet know nothing at all.
Yes, I know you'll think the above reasoning is shallow, and it probably is. But I think it has some validity and connection to the matter at hand.
Dad,
Thanks for the Biblical application
Paul,
As a restatement from a different perspective, you're argument is no more shallow than mine.
The key question is whether or not logic, as a universal thought pattern, is limited by the capacity of our human minds. In other words, are there degrees of rationality? Of course, we know there are degrees of information (like the blind men and the elephant).
As humans, our level of rationality cannot construct a scenario in which an all powerful God, creator of all, can know the future without controling it. For us, a higher level of rationality would be extrarational. However for most people, advanced mathamatics is, for all practical purposes, extrarational, yet these same people take its rationality for granted, as if on faith. In other words, it is generally accepted practice to retain faith in the universal applicability of our personal level of rationality, regardless of whether or not everything we percieve appears understandably rational.
Notice that the forknowledge/forordination conundrum is not a logical contradiction, but merely the lack of a satisfactory explanation. We walk down a tunnel, with our current level of rationality, and reach a dead end (reducing God's omniscence is like turning around). In our three dimensional level of rationality, no options are apparent. Given our roadmap coordinates (the known characteristics of God revealed in the Bible) we know the destination is up above on a grassy knole. God, with His extra level(s), or dimension(s) of rationality can walk straight towards the grassy knole. We can't; we have to ride on God's back.
So for me, I guess I believe that 2+2 = 4 is always true. If it appears to equal something else, that's only because I can't see the whole picture (equality and addition might be parts of a larger whole).
As a side note, to say that God knows the laws and predicts the future based on them is nothing more than saying God predicts the future by controling it through the laws he created.
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