Predestination and Free Will - Part 4
Open Theism
As we wind through our discussion of predestination and free
will, we have already looked at the Reformed view of
predestination and some of the problems that stem from that
view. (To read these past issues, you may point your browser to http://www.comereason.org/newsletters
and view them online.)
Because of those problems, some Christians have opted to
abandon determinism all together and are embracing a type of
indeterminism known as Open Theism. Open Theism is a view that
basically says God has the ability to do anything logically
possible and know everything there is to know but undecided
future events cannot be known. The main proponents of this view
are Clark Pinnock, Gregory Boyd and William Hasker.
Basic Views Of Open Theism
1. - God does not have to control everything to be sovereign
All Christians agree that God is sovereign. But does this
necessarily mean that God has to control every detail of His
creation to be sovereign over it. Bruce Reichenbach writes
"To be sovereign does not mean that everything that occurs
accords with the will of the sovereign or that the sovereign can
bring about anything that he or she wants. The ability of the
sovereign to determine the outcome depends, in part, on the
freedom granted to the governed."
Reichenbach notes that sovereignty requires two classes: the
governor and the governed. He then goes on to argue that while
the sovereign has the power and authority to control all aspects
of the governed, he also has the power and authority to grant
them some autonomy. "And the more freedom the sovereign
grants his subjects, the less he can control their behavior
without withdrawing the very freedom granted."
2. - True free will is contrary to determinism.
An important point in the position of indeterminism is the
idea that free will necessarily entails agents to be able to
choose a path other than the one that was actually chosen. If
God determines you to do X, and everything that God decrees must
come to pass (He is God after all), then you must do X and you
are really not free to choose another option. (For more on this
see our article "Objections
to Determinism"). Therefore, in order for a person to
be free, God cannot determine all of that person's future.
Reichenbach writes, "Freedom is not the absence of
influences, either external or internal. ...Rather, to be free
means that the causal influences do not determine my choice or
my actions." He then says "where we are free, we could
have done other than we did, even though it might have been very
difficult to do so."
3. - God cannot know certain things.
Christianity has always held that God is omniscient and
omnipotent (all knowing and all powerful). However, this has
never meant that God could know or do what is illogical. For
example, God cannot create a square circle because a square
circle is a contradiction. Also, He cannot tell you what color
unicorns are since they don't really exist.
Similarly, open theists maintain that if God would want to
create a world where truly free beings exist, He has the power
to do so. However, in order to do so it means that God must
limit Himself, like the sovereign mentioned above. He must
voluntarily give up the ability to know the future decisively.
According to open theism, because free will means that
choices become real only at the time of the choosing, it would
be impossible for God to know what that choice will actually be.
Hasker states "So if God knows such a choice, it is the
actual choosing itself that he knows, and nothing else. But if
the choice is never in fact made, then there is no 'actual
choosing,' and thus nothing for God to know."
Gregory Boyd supports this point when he writes, "One is
not ascribing ignorance to God by insisting that he doesn't
foreknow future free actions if indeed free actions do not exist
to be known until free agents create them."
4. - God experiences the future with us.
Because choices don't exist until the chooser makes them,
open theism holds that God experiences and adjusts to events as
they happen. Boyd tells us, "The Lord frequently changes
his mind in the light of changing circumstances or in the light
of , he expresses regret and disappointment over how things have
turned out, he tells us he's surprised at how things turned out,
for he expected a different outcome, and in several passages the
Lord explicitly tells us that he did not know that humans would
behave the way they did."
Clark Pinnock concurs: "God gives us room to make
genuine decisions and works along side us in the temporal
process. What we do matters to God. God responds to us like a
dancer with her partner..."
Conclusion
The open view of God argues for God being omniscient of all
there is to know. However, those holding the open view maintain
that requiring a God who granted true freedom to humans to know
what they're going to choose is contradictory to that very
freedom. Next month we'll examine the objections to the Open
view. In the following installment we'll begin exploring the
third alternative - Middle Knowledge. I pray God will bless you
until then. |
