Foreknowledge, freedom, and the future

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2000 by Picirilli, Robert E

I. INTRODUCTION

My purpose in this paper is to respond, from within the Arminian camp, to the denial of the unlimited omniscience of God by Clark Pinnock and others associated with him. A number of Calvinists have criticized his approach; it is time for an Arminian to affirm that God knows all future events and that the openness of the future is not compromised thereby.

Some background is in order. I approach this subject as an Arminian, holding a nuanced form of Arminianism that is different from what is generally understood as the meaning of that term. This is the Arminianism of Arminius himself and of those originally influenced by him-the first generation (and only that generation) of Remonstrants.

Space does not permit elucidation of this, except to say that this is not the Arminianism of Grotius or the Remonstrant Church, nor of many ways of thinking commonly called Arminian in subsequent church history. It is certainly not the position taken by Clark Pinnock in his revisionist theism. Indeed, the "original" Arminianism I hold needs a name: "classic" Arminianism will not do, nor will "Wesleyan" Arminianism-although in many respects Wesley followed this kind of Arminianism. For lack of something better, I will call it Reformation Arminianism.

By this I do not mean to imply that Arminius was one of the magisterial Reformers, only that this proto-Arminianism was directly rooted in the Ref ormation and is truly "Reformed" in the broadest sense of that word. This kind of Arminianism affirms, among other things: that guilt, condemnation, and depravity passed to the whole human race by means of Adam's sin; total depravity; the absolute sovereignty of God; salvation by grace through faith, not of works; that Christ's atoning death was penal satisfaction for sin; that both his penal death and active obedience are imputed to believers; and that apostasy can occur by retraction of faith only, without remedy.

For the more narrow purposes of this paper, I begin by citing Francis Beckwith:

Philosophers and theologians in the Christian tradition as well as those in other traditions have wrestled with the problem of omniscience and free will for as long as people have believed that their Scriptures teach both that God knows everything in the past, present and future and that human beings are free moral agents with the ability to make libertarian choices. Such belief, however, poses a well-known problem. If God has perfect knowledge of future events including human actions, and if God cannot be wrong about what he knows, then all human actions will turn out only one way. But if individuals can make libertarian choices that entail the ability to do otherwise, how can the Christian at the same time affirm that the future will turn out only one way?1

Calvinists appreciate the problem, but they do not shrink from adding foreordination to the syllogism and affirming forthrightly: (1) that God, having foreordained all events, therefore knows the future perfectly; (2) that every action in the future is therefore certain; and (3) that therefore all future actions, including the free, moral decisions of human beings, must be what they certainly will be-else God could not perfectly know what they will be.

Arminians (of whatever sort) also recognize the difficulty. But some Arminians, as we will see, accept the formal validity of this logic and agree that if all future events are certain to be what they will be, freedom of choice is therefore practically excluded. They attack, therefore, not the logic leading to the conclusion but the premise: they deny that God knows everything in the future.

My thesis is that this is a logically unnecessary (not to mention unbiblical) move, based on a faulty understanding of what it means for the future to be certain. To put this positively, I mean to show that there is nothing about the certainty of the future that is in conflict with the ability of human beings to make free, moral decisions. To put this in question form, Does foreknowledge close the future?

II. RELATED THEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS

Before dealing directly with this problem, let me briefly sketch some related theological assumptions which I hold but will not attempt to develop or prove here.

1. God is sovereign, the creator and preserver of all that exists outside himself. That he is sovereign means that no conditions can be imposed on God from outside himself. Nothing other than his own nature limits his absolute freedom to act according to his own good pleasure. That he is creator and preserver of all that exists outside himself means that all that is-including all that happens-is in accord with his will, his plan for the history of the created, subordinate, sustained universe. No force exists except that which is subordinate to God and cannot thwart his will.

2. God is omniscient. Implications include: (a) that before creation he knew all possible contingencies and from all these decided or willed the course of events that actually takes place; (b) that he knows all future events perfectly, including the free, moral choices of human beings.