...the open view of the future holds that God chose to create a cosmos that is populated with free agents – at least humans and angels (though some hold that there is a degree of freedom, however small, in all sentient beings). To have free will means that one has the ability to transition several possible courses of action into one actual course of action. This is precisely why Open Theists hold that the future is partly comprised of possibilities. While God can decide to pre-settle whatever aspects of the future he wishes, to the degree that he has given agents freedom, God has chosen to leave the future open, as a domain of possibilities, for agents to resolve with their free choices. This view obviously conflicts with the understanding of the future that has been espoused by classical theologians, for the traditional view is that God foreknows from all eternity the future exclusively as a domain of exhaustively definite facts.Here I'll delve into a couple of reasons why this view is epistemologically impossible.
On Open Theism, as opposed to a more mainstream Arminian view, God does not actually know the future because the future does not exist yet, and He cannot know for sure what "truly free agents" will do.
No matter how powerful God is, if He doesn't know the future, God can't say anything is true for sure. God is subject to the problem of induction, and given that fact, the god of Open Theism is open to the same crippling foundational problems as the atheist. Here's why.
The world is now ~8000 years old. During that time, God has discovered trillions and trillions of new facts that He did not previously know. Every moment that passes, God gains in knowledge that He did not possess before. Obviously this storehouse of knowledge that God has gained up to this point is far beyond any possible human comprehension, but we might choose to represent the number of facts that the god of Open Theism knows as, say, one sextillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Just because it's easier to pick a number than not to.
That's 125,000,000,000,000,000,000 facts He has learned per year.
The exact number is not important. What is important is that He is learning, and though what He will learn at any given second, let alone year, is vast, it is also finite.
God does not know that the future will be like the past in terms of who runs the universe, physical laws, and human agents having truly free will. The Open Theist may hypothesise that God thinks it will be and intends to do what He can to keep it that way, but since God doesn't know the future, He could be mistaken. And if He could be mistaken, He doesn't know it. To assert that the future will be like the past because "it has always been like that" is to beg the question.
Perhaps the universe will exist another 5 billion years beyond the year 2014 AD.
Perhaps a whole bunch of fundamental things about the universe will change in the next five seconds.
Perhaps they'll stay that way the further 5 billion years.
If that were the case, whatever God thinks He knows at this moment could plausibly be contradicted by the 5 billion years' worth of contrary evidence that He has yet to learn. He might learn many octillions of more data that lead inexorably to a different conclusion than the mere sextillion of data He learned between Creation and 2014 AD.
So God can't actually know anything at all. He can't know that these changes won't take place. He can't know whether He'll be in a position to resist any possible changes in the future. He may intend not to allow those changes to occur, but He can't know that He will be able to overturn them.
Appealing to an eschaton that comes sooner rather than later does the Open Theist no good here, for it only pushes the problem back one step. Further, the god of Open Theism cannot guarantee that the eschaton will arrive when He is planning. Perhaps something will happen that takes the issue out of His hands. God can't know whether He will lose His power. He can't know that someone else won't beat Him. He can't know that He can keep His promises. He couldn't know that He'd be able to pull off the resurrection of Jesus. He can't know whether the laws of physics will be the same in 10 seconds from now. He can't know whether He'll indeed be able to preserve His people from falling away. Can't know whether He will win in the end. Those prophecies in the Bible are just educated guesses.
Yea, that violates the idea of sovereignty pretty bad.
Of course, this statement from Boyd:
While God can decide to pre-settle whatever aspects of the future he wishes...serves to shoot his position in the cranium anyhow, since if God can decide to pre-settle whatever He wishes, there is no problem in contending that He decided to pre-settle everything. Since pre-settling stuff is fine with God, what's the problem?
Of course, that brings the the argument back to the Scripture, to find whether God did set up the universe that way. Ad fontes, indeed. On those grounds the Open Theism position loses as well. So it loses everywhere.
Non-predestinarians generally have a problem with respect to God's foreknowledge, as they have no substantial ground for how God can know the future. The predestinarian grounds God's knowledge in God's predetermination of what shall come to pass. For the non-predestinarian who wants to maintain God's perfect foreknowledge (such as your run-of-the-mill quasi-Arminian Evangelical), this foreknowledge must be grounded in something petty and vacuous, such as "God knows the future because He knows all things." But this simply reduces to "God knows because He knows," which is hopelessly circularly and devoid of substance.
ReplyDeleteIn such cases, it is better to leave the irrational behind and simply declare that there is no ground of God's foreknowledge, and thus, that God does not have knowledge of the future. But in that case, one cannot maintain any rational notion of God's sovereignty, as you have shown here.
So, you can either have a sovereign God who predestines all that shall come to pass, or a non-sovereign "god" who has no knowledge of or any real or meaningful control over the future, but you can't have anything in between.
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ReplyDelete/But this simply reduces to "God knows because He knows," which is hopelessly circularly and devoid of substance.
ReplyDeleteI just want to pick at this given I'm an Arminian Molinist amalgam. If God is essentially omniscient, by his very nature, then how isn't that in itself a sufficient explanation to how he knows all things? It's by definition He knows all things. This is like asking how is He all good. It's His very nature.
In fact, the only way you'd seem to need an explanation outside of Himself for his omniscience is if He weren't essentially so. So His omniscience would be contingent. Right?
Well, the OpTh god is not omniscient by his very nature.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I was only responding to Matthew.
ReplyDeleteThere is no self contradiction in Boyd saying that God has ordained some things to happen...so of course He knows what they will be. You yourself do it all the time...you make plans and you leave some things 'Open', can't God do rhe same? You may counter, well sometimes my plans come ary...but you aren't all powerful are you?
ReplyDeleteA God with all power and knowledge of everything that is possible to know, gives me supreme confidence that He can achieve what He desires at any instant.
Thanks,
Tim
Yes, my point was that while the OT god may THINK that he is going to do something in the future, he can't KNOW that he WILL BE ABLE to.
ReplyDeleteSure he thinks he's all powerful now, but he doesn't know that he will be in the future.
God is always and will always be omnipotent - every Open Theist thinks that.
ReplyDeleteI get that you THINK it. I'm interested in whether and how you KNOW it.
ReplyDelete"So God can't actually know anything at all. He can't know that these changes won't take place. He can't know whether He'll be in a position to resist any possible changes in the future. He may intend not to allow those changes to occur, but He can't know that He will be able to overturn them. "
ReplyDeleteWith full respect you veer from talking about Omniscience to making statements about Omnipotence. The one doesn't follow the other at all. God is omnipotent all the time past and present. And will remain so into the future. I KNOW it because that is how God is described in the Bible. (Open Theists believe in the Bible). Now, He may choose to self-limit his power at various times and circumstances, but that doesn't take away His essential self-power.
Saying that God will remain so in the future is a statement beyond your ability to make with any confidence. You're merely begging the question. You don't know the future, so you don't know that part of the future.
ReplyDeleteOTs may think they believe the Bible (except for all the parts about God's divine sovereignty over time, His exhaustive knowledge of the future, the depravity of man, etc), but you don't KNOW that the Bible will remain true in the future.
He may choose to self-limit his power at various times and circumstances
And you don't know when or under what circumstances God may choose to do so. Which means you know even less than you think you do.
bossmanham,
ReplyDeleteI would say that "God is essentially omniscient" is a vague statement, without a notion of how God's essence relates in this respect to things that are distinct from Himself. Knowledge (at least in some sense) is a relation between the knower and the thing known. But unless the conception of essence includes some notion of relating the knower to the thing known, simply stating that knowledge is essential is not an explanation. As such, I would argue that saying "God is essentially omniscient" without a corresponding notion of the relation of God's essence to things distinct from Himself is to basically say "God knows because He knows."
As such, I would agree that God's foreknowledge is essential, but I think that one needs additional principles to actually posit an explanation of how that is the case.