MODE OF DIVINE KNOWLEDGE IN REFORMATION ARMINIANISM AND OPEN THEISM, THE

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2004 by Studebaker, Steven M

Picirilli also points out that God's foreknowledge of events is analogous to human knowledge of past events. Human knowledge of past events does not cause events, but rests on the fact that they occurred. Likewise, God's knowledge is not causative, but rests on the occurrence of events (Picirilli, "Foreknowledge, Freedom, and the Future" 263). Picirilli further applies this logic to the relationship between foreknowledge and predestination. God predestines, because he foreknows those who will accept Christ. In other words, the order is the person's decision to accept Christ, God's foreknowledge of that choice, and predestination. Predestination presupposes God's fore-knowledge of the decision to accept Christ, and foreknowledge presupposes the person's decision to accept Christ (p. 267).

12 Ibid. 263 and Picirilli, "An Arminian Response to Sanders" 473-75 and 477. Picirilli's notion of the consequential and historical nature of divine knowledge in regard to events linked to libertarian freedom is not unusual in the Arminian theological tradition. For instance, not only did Arminius affirm it (The Works of Arminius 2.368 and 3.65), the contemporary Arminian theologian Jack Cottrell does as well. Cottrell teaches that "it is part of the self-limitation of the Creator that his own knowledge of his creation is in a sense derived from the creation. Even though his knowledge is eternally the same we may say that his knowledge of the contingent events of his creation is logically dependent on their actual occurrence" (Cottrell, What the Bible says about God the Creator [What the Bible Says; Joplin, MO: College Press, 1983] 285 [emphasis added]). Cottrell's notion that God's knowledge is "derived" and "logically dependent on their actual occurrence" reflects a consequential and historical mode of divine knowledge. Thomas Oden also affirms the consequential nature of divine knowledge in The Living God: Systematic Theology: Volume One (Peabody, MA: Prince, 1987) 71. Thus, Picirilli's theory of the mode of divine knowledge stands in continuity with Arminian theology past and present.

13 Picirilli, "Foreknowledge, Freedom, and the Future" 265-66. Note that Picirilli misunderstands the relationship between foreknowledge and foreordination in Calvinism. He states that Calvinism "makes foreknowledge and predestination synonymous and thus makes foreknowledge an active cause" ("Foreknowledge, Freedom, and the Future" 266). On the contrary, Calvinists do not conceive foreknowledge and predestination as synonymous concepts nor do they attribute causality to foreknowledge. In Calvinism, foreknowledge is the product of the divine decree and predestination and, therefore, foreknowledge is a distinct theological concept. Moreover, fore-knowledge is not causal, but rather the effect of the divine decree or will. The divine attribute that exerts causal influence in historical events is not divine foreknowledge, but the divine will.

14 Picirilli misinterprets Sanders as teaching that proponents of simple foreknowledge believe that foreknowledge is causative ("An Arminian Response to Sanders" 472-73). However, Sanders expressly points out that simple foreknowledge is not causal (John Sanders, "Why Simple Fore-knowledge offers no more Providential Control than the Openness of God," Faith and Philosophy 14 [1997] 37). The non-causative nature of foreknowledge in Arminian theology is widely noted: i.e. William Hasker, "A Philosophical Perspective," in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (ed. Clark H. Pinnock et al.; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity, 1994) 149; Oden, The Living God 71; and Richard Rice, "Divine Foreknowledge and FreeWill Theism," in The Grace of God and the Will of Man (ed. Clark H. Pinnock; Minneapolis, MN: Bethany, 1989) 125.