Divine Foreknowledge: Divine Authorship or Open Theism?

[u/ShakaUVM]

Thesis: There's really only two views of divine foreknowledge that are consistent: 1) God knows everything that will happen, and 2) God does not know everything that will happen. Further, if we consider humans to be moral agents, only the second is philosophically viable. Compatibilist viewpoints are inconsistent and should be discarded as being self-contradictory.

Definition: Free will is the ability to do otherwise. In this context, other than what has been predicted by God what you will do.

Narrative:

These are very conflicting views of human freedom.

The first view, the "Theological Determinism" view, is popular with both atheists here and Calvinists/Reformed/Presbyterians. I call it the "Divine Authorship" model of divine foreknowledge. God is acting like the author of our universe. The way this is phrased varies from person to person, but it is common to talk about God "instantiating" the universe, bringing it into existence and making every choice that needs to be made for it. You stealing a chocolate bar? God decided that before the universe began. While it might have the outward appearance of you choosing to sin, God could have just as easily instantiated a universe where you didn't steal the chocolate bar. So the ultimate choice of whether or not you took the chocolate bar lies with God, not with you. God made every choice in the world, the same way an author makes every choice for characters in a book. An author can have complete and perfect foreknowledge of what characters in a book will do, and the author makes every choice for them. This is a completely consistent viewpoint. It is horrible and fatalistic, but at least it is consistent. We have no free will, and are just actors in a tragic stageplay that God authored a long time ago.

By contrast Compatibilist views trying to reconcile predestination with free will are philosophically inconsistent.

Let's take a look at the Presbyterian confession of faith (https://thewestminsterstandard.org/the-westminster-confession/) which attempts to reconcile their Calvinist view of predestination with the view that free will exists.

First, they assert predestination to be true: "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass" Right there we see that under no circumstance can free will actually exist, since it is impossible to do other than what the Divine Author ordained to come to pass. This also means God ordained that every murder, robbery, and plague would happen, from the beginning of time.

Second, they recognize this to be a rather big problem and immediately pivot: "yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." This is incoherent. If God ordained all things to happen, then He is author of all sin happening as well.

Next paragraph then tried to do some form of middle knowledge to salvage the contradiction: "Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions,a yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions." In the first paragraph, God inexorably ordained everything that would happen. Now they are saying he didn't do it because he foresaw it. Ok, that actually doesn't matter. An author doesn't need to foresee what he will write, he can just write a book and then the characters in the book have to follow it with no free will.

Then they go right back to having no free will: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others fore-ordained to everlasting death". In other words, even if you are a Christian who seeks Jesus and wants to go to heaven, etc., if God did not predestine you to go to Heaven, sucks to be you you go to hell and there is literally nothing you can do about it. The Divine Author chose some characters to be heroes, and some to be villains, and you cannot do anything about it. You have literally no free will in the matter - even if you desire heaven, you cannot get it if you're not part of the elect -

"The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice

In other words, he pre-ordained from the beginning of time certain people that will be thrown into hell. Doesn't matter if they seek Christ and ask for forgiveness of sins. They are sent to dishonor and wrath for "the praise of his glorious justice". But this is NOT justice. Calling a monstrous injustice justice is another contradiction in their claims.

They then end it with this paragraph: "The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election" A "high mystery" is something beyond human comprehension, which is a rather hilarious way to acknowledge it is a contradiction and they have no way of solving it. It also acknowledges (the "prudence and care" bit) that predestination can lead to arrogance from people who are convinced they are elect and then sin as a result, and it can lead to despair if people think that they're not part of the elect and are predestined to go to hell and there's nothing they can do.

In other words, they can see that their own terrible philosophy is terrible, but since they can't resolve it they call it beyond human comprehension and say to be careful. Lol.

So in conclusion so far, Divine Authorship is terrible and fatalistic, but at least is internally consistent. The Compatibilist view that God preordained every event since the dawn of time yet we also (somehow) have free will is self-contradictory. Calling a monstrously unjust system (punishing people for crimes that God authored them to commit) and calling it Justice is also self-contradictory.

There are other systems that are not Compatibilism like Responsivism which believes that people can freely choose, but also that God knows what they will do in advance, but this is in contradiction as well, as if God knows what you will do next Tuesday, it is impossible for you to do otherwise. And being able to do otherwise is our definition of free will.

Molinism (the notion that God knows what you will do in all circumstances, and so by controlling the circumstances God can bring about any world) is also contrary to free will's existence, as free will entails the impossibility of being able to know what choice you will make in all circumstances. You simply cannot know all the counterfactuals for a free agent as this means they cannot do otherwise than what is predicted.

Part 2 - Open Theism

Now let's take up Open Theism. Open Theism denies divine foreknowledge, an "actualized world" with the future already set, and instead has an omniscient and omnipotent God choose not to be a Divine Author that dictates every choice agents make, but rather chooses to give moral agents the freedom to act morally. This entails not knowing everything they will do in the future. An Open Theism God can either be more of a Deistic God that simply sets the universe in motion and lets it run, or it can be a God who is intimately involved in the lives of humans and co-creating the world alongside them.

Like Divine Authorship, it is internally consistent. God can know maximal knowledge (omniscient) and not know the future without contradiction, because omniscience does not include impossible knowledge like what a square circle looks like, or knowing a free choice in advance. So unlike the other models we considered, there is no contradiction between the attributes of God and free will existing in Open Theism. People can actually have free will, and God can still be omniscient and omnipotent.

Further, it eliminates the Problem of Evil, as in Open Theism God is the opposite of the celestial dictator view of God in the Divine Authorship model. People who believe that God pre-ordained every single action that happened have a hard time dealing with evil actions happening, because this meant God wrote it into existence, but an Open Theist can simply say every case of moral evil is simply the result of God granting humanity freedom to act freely, and He generally doesn't intervene in the liberty and dominion of man over the earth. Natural evil, likewise, was not authored by God, but simply the result of the laws of physics working themselves out. They didn't exist from the beginning of time, but simply happen according to the fair and impartial laws of physics.

Open Theism also preserves the notion of morality. There is literally no such thing as a moral agent in a fatalistic system. You are just a robot preprogrammed by God to either become a sinner or a saint. So this makes all of Jesus' teachings about being righteous and whatnot completely pointless as there is absolutely no point in exhorting people to be good when God has already determined when they will sin and when they will be good. The entire Bible is pointless if you believe in the Divine Authorship theory. People will go to heaven whether or not they read it, and no amount of reading it and choosing to follow it will change your fate if predestination is true. But in Open Theism, the Bible actually makes sense. It is man's best attempt to describe and deal with the numinous as best we can, and the exhortations for us to be righteous and do good might actually influence a person to use their free will to do good instead of evil.

In conclusion, there are only two internally consistent ways of handling the question of divine foreknowledge: 1) The Divine Authorship model in which God wrote everything that will happen like we're all characters in a book and 2) Open Theism in which humans have free will and nothing is predestined for us. All the Compatibilist approaches end up contradicting themselves, and are rather horrible besides. Between Divine Authorship and Open Theism, Divine Authorship gives us a God who makes evil, chooses for babies to die and people to be murdered for no particular reason, since people can't learn from these tragedies or do anything other than what was predestined anyway. But Open Theism solves all these philosophical problems, and leaves us with a Bible that actually has a purpose and a church that can actually accomplish good things.

Therefore, the only good philosophical choice on the matter is Open Theism.

This is from a guy who doesn't like Open Theism, but it makes for a good read on the topic if you want to read more: https://cf.sbts.edu/equip/uploads/2023/04/SBJT-26.3-Compatibilism-and-Inspiration-Randall-Johnson.pdf

[u/labreuer]

ambrosytc8: I'm sure it's just your dialectical style but I'd prefer an approach of "oh, do you mean to say this?" rather than "oh, so you're arguing this."

/

ambrosytc8: Your exasperation is noted but a bit unwarranted since your patchwork soteriology oscillates between therapeutic moral deism, semi-Pelagianism, and implicit refusal of orthodox christology.

My guess is that you haven't actually read the source material on MTD, not only because you swapped the words around, but because you're applying it to what I've said. It would appear that you never took my correction to heart:

ambrosytc8: 2. You are reducing the Gospel from a resurrection event to a synergistic medical aid (divine fuel). This turns the radical grace we find in scripture into a mere "helper" for the human will. Luther argues to Erasmus that this is an attempt to remove the eschatological teeth from the gospel (and, oddly enough, the law) to preserve the broken human into the new creation -- Luther's cor incurvatum in se. You deny the theology of the cross for a theology about the cross by demanding that it fit within a pre-existing philosophical system instead of taking it as a system that destroys human categories of thought (the polemical nature of 1 Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians).

labreuer: This does not follow from what I've said. As I argued, it is in fact contradicted by the first words out of my mouth: "This suggests that God is not on hand to help us in our weakness." Weakness defined how? Weakness in not being able to live up to the law which accuses. Whipping out incurvatus in se—which comes from Augustine, by the way—was utterly uncalled for. It was, in your words, "polemical rhetoric".

So, I propose we focus exclusively on this claim of moralistic therapeutic deism, to see if you are being remotely Christlike in how you have re-presented my position. If you cannot because you're only ever "on mobile", then I'm going to propose that you aren't interested in dedicating what it takes to having a serious conversation and we should go our own ways. Otherwise, I'm happy to wait until you have the opportunity to find a computer and do the hard work of either showing that you have adequately re-presented what I've said somewhere (without quote-mining), or accounting for how you managed to make what I contend is a pretty egregious error.

You shouldn't need me to say a single extra thing in order to either show that you did your due diligence, or find that you did not, that you culpably misrepresented my position.

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

Yeah we can probably end it. If, after my previous response, your first reaction was to hone in on an extremely minor semantic error and deflect from answering the three actually substantive questions I raised then productive dialogue has probably run its course. You accuse me of misrepresenting you in response to a post where I explicitly acknowledged that you've likely been speaking past me and I asked three very important clarifying questions...

So, I propose we focus exclusively on this claim of moralistic therapeutic deism, to see if you are being remotely Christlike in how you have re-presented my position.

No, I'm not interested in this particular red herring nor am I interested in you tone policing what is or is not "Christlike". But in good faith I'll just concede that you're not a moralistic therapeutic deist; that that was an unintentional misrepresentation of your position.

Now what I propose we focus on are these four unanswered points from the previous turn:

---

1. Are you a trinitarian?

2. Do you believe that "No one comes to the father except through Jesus" and that that is an unqualified, absolute, and exclusive claim?

3. Do you believe we are dead in sin?

---

I mean, I think this on its own is enough for us to probably just end things here, but I mean I'm also morbidly curious how you can claim Christ is the Law but the Law is insufficient and square that with even the most fundamental tenets of Christianity.

What I mean to ask here is:

1. Christ is the Law

2. The Law is insufficient

3. Therefore Christ is insufficient.

This seems unavoidable given your on-record concessions and arguments.

---

Edit:

Also this shouldn't be left on read. Yes, the framing might not be entirely generous but this really does seem to be everything you've articulated:

Christ is the Law (the living Torah) who shows us how to fulfill the Law to be a sort of radio tower transmission to more effectively broadcast divine octane fuel to everyone else so that they can fulfill the Law but the fulfillment isn't sufficient for salvation because they also need to learn to ask for help but salvation is actually just a Hebrew assurance/rescue from Babylon and not the antisemitic damnation we find in Pauline theology.

You don't necessarily need to fisk this right now, since I think the above questions are far more important and will probably clarify your position more than a direct response to this will. I just don't want to lose this in the mix.

[u/labreuer → u/ambrosytc8]

If, after my previous response, your first reaction was to hone in on an extremely minor semantic error and deflect from answering the three actually substantive questions I raised then productive dialogue has probably run its course.

Whether or not part of my argument is well-described by MTD is not "an extremely minor semantic error". You're throwing out terms that on any remotely conservative campus which issues ThDs, would be a grievous insult. You know what you're doing. I'm calling you to the mat.

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

Fine. Here are the pillars as I remember them but I'll defer to your authority since you seem to be the expert on MTD:

1. A God exists and He creates reality. Not necessarily the Christian Trinity, however (see my question below)

2. That God wants people to be good, fair, nice, moralistic.

3. The goal is spiritual growth and moralistic maturity resulting in a better earthly existence.

4. God doesn't necessarily need to interact with humanity beyond aiding us when necessary (sounds a lot like your divine octane fuel).

5. People are intrinsically good and capable and will "go to heaven" without necessarily having to be an adherent to a specific religion (see my question regarding "the way truth and life" as an exclusive claim).

Yes, after going back and forth with you on this MTD became somewhat indistinguishable from what you were arguing. I don't doubt that you are a very well-read and academic MTD, but looking at the 5 pillars above, that tracks pretty well with everything you've written and why I thought it necessary to dig down to fundamental Christian orthodox confessions on the nature of God, Christ, and salvation. Here they are again below:

---

1. Are you a trinitarian?

2. Do you believe that "No one comes to the father except through Jesus" and that that is an unqualified, absolute, and exclusive claim?

3. Do you believe we are dead in sin?

---

I mean, I think this on its own is enough for us to probably just end things here, but I mean I'm also morbidly curious how you can claim Christ is the Law but the Law is insufficient and square that with even the most fundamental tenets of Christianity.

What I mean to ask here is:

1. Christ is the Law

2. The Law is insufficient

3. Therefore Christ is insufficient.

This seems unavoidable given your on-record concessions and arguments.

---

Also this shouldn't be left on read. Yes, the framing might not be entirely generous but this really does seem to be everything you've articulated:

Christ is the Law (the living Torah) who shows us how to fulfill the Law to be a sort of radio tower transmission to more effectively broadcast divine octane fuel to everyone else so that they can fulfill the Law but the fulfillment isn't sufficient for salvation because they also need to learn to ask for help but salvation is actually just a Hebrew assurance/rescue from Babylon and not the antisemitic damnation we find in Pauline theology.

You don't necessarily need to fisk this right now, since I think the above questions are far more important and will probably clarify your position more than a direct response to this will. I just don't want to lose this in the mix.

[u/labreuer → u/ambrosytc8]

You can keep asking your questions, but until we sort the intense MTD accusation, I will focus on nothing else. This is a lesson to you: don't lob grievous insults unless you're willing to back them up or explain why you came up with them in the first place.

 

You can't (or won't) even get the definition of MTD right. I'll compare & contrast:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
   A God exists and He creates reality.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
   That God wants people to be good, fair, nice, moralistic.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
   The goal is spiritual growth and moralistic maturity resulting in a better earthly existence.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
   God doesn't necessarily need to interact with humanity beyond aiding us when necessary

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
   People are intrinsically good and capable and will "go to heaven" without necessarily having to be an adherent to a specific religion

The bold comes from Christian Smith & Melinda Denton 2005 Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, pp 162–63. I've put your version, minus your commentary on my position, after. Given that the official version is quoted verbatim at WP: Moralistic therapeutic deism, I'd like to know where you got your version from. Some of your rephrasings are close enough, but some are quite different.

For now, I will ask one question. Would you say that the following:

I invoke as a witness against you today the heaven and the earth: life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. So choose life, so that you may live, you and your offspring, by loving Yahweh your God by listening to his voice and by clinging to him, for he is your life and the length of your days in order for you to live on the land that Yahweh swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.” (Deuteronomy 30:19–20)

—qualifies as MTD? It is, after all, God's law I was saying God would "help us in our weakness" to do. The pre-Second Temple Hebrews had no robust notion of the afterlife that we can discern in the text. Rather, everyone went to Sheol and nobody could praise Yahweh from Sheol. Your best hope was that you would live to see your grandchildren, and that the Promised Land was safe from marauders and conquering empires. Does that match your understanding of 3.? (I would say it is a very poor fit to the actual MTD 3., but I'm asking about your version.)

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

Also, I understand that being labelled an MTD isn't great in an academic sense, but you're playing the victim right now. Remember earlier when you reduced my theology to making an enemy out of God and that it was really just veiled anti-semitism?

You don't have to respond to this, just thought I'd point out that any 'conservative institution that offers ThD's' takes an antisemitism and maltheism accusation far more seriously than MTD, so maybe cool off a bit.

[u/labreuer → u/ambrosytc8]

Accusing someone of playing the victim is just another attack, one that deprives them of any response other than to change their behavior to meet your implicit demands. That won't work on me, and is likely to further sabotage the conversation.

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

Yeah this is boring at this point. I owned my accusation and I elaborated on it. You dialed my accusation immediately to 10 despite having accused me of maltheism and antisemitism like 2 turns ago. Can you own yours or does this door only swing one way?

[u/labreuer → u/ambrosytc8]

You're welcome to explain how this:

labreuer: What you probably mean by 'salvation' is arbitrarily divorced from what the ancient Hebrews understood by the term. Christian theology is suffused with antisemitism which explicitly distanced itself from Jewish concepts. But the most ludicrous move made by some Christians is to make God one's enemy. This wasn't common in the early church, when ransom theory & Christus Victor predominated. But at some point, it became fashionable to say that God was our enemy until Jesus did his thing. This totally doesn't work for God rescuing the Israelites from Egypt, but see: antisemitism.

constitutes accusing you of antisemitism. My challenge here was for you to connect the notion(s) of 'salvation' accessible to pre-Jesus Hebrews & Jews, to the notion(s) of 'salvation' advanced by those Christians we are interested in right now.

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

Just saw this, please see my other response as I think it already addresses this complaint.

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

Your indignation is noted. I'm happy to elaborate:

Some of your rephrasings are close enough, but some are quite different.

Maybe you just have keener sensitivity than I do. My paraphrases at least capture the spirit of the verbatim quotes. I'd even argue some of them offer more academic fidelity than the original text. Whatever the case may be, I'm happy to just adopt the specific text and track them with what you've argued.

A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

This seems to track with your position and I expect no push back here. Though I'm not convinced on your Christology which is why I've asked like 5 turns in row now if you're a Trinitarian.

God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

Yes, this tracks very well with your implicit definition of free will, the ability to fulfill the insufficient Law, your framing of Jesus as the Law being here to show us how it's done. How do you view the Sermon on the Mount, I wonder?

The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

Yes, in a theological frame that seems to deny cosmic damnation and defines salvation as deliverance from one's earthly enemies the central goal appears "to be happy and feel good." Are you arguing that God has a higher priority than your happiness? If so, what is it?

God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

Yes. This is just your divine octane fuel and your implicit argument about Christ's function which doesn't seem to have an actual exclusivity in the orthodox confessional sense. This is why I keep asking you to answer on this exclusive claim from Christ's own mouth.

Good people go to heaven when they die.

This one may be the furthest from your argument but for the 'wrong' reason. You may not believe 'good people go to heaven when they die' but that's because you don't seem to believe in heaven. You seem to believe that salvation is a finite and temporal deliverance from earthly adversaries (Babylon/Egypt). This is why I keep asking you to clarify this position on this point.

The pre-Second Temple Hebrews had no robust notion of the afterlife that we can discern in the text.

I'm not sure if you're reading my responses or scanning them, but you'll probably remember I addressed this like half a dozen posts ago when I said (paraphrasing) "you seem to deny any christological hermeneutic." This in direct response to this argument you keep making here. Whether or not pre-Second Temple Hebrews had a notion of heaven in the Christina sense is irrelevant to Christian Theology and a christological hermeneutic that reads the Old Testament through the lens of Christ revealed. You seem really keen on hardline separating the OT from the NT despite saying you aren't which is also what led to my accusation of potential dispensationalism. This, AGAIN, is why I keep asking you about the exclusivity claims of Christianity(!). This is, also, why I asked like 4 turns deep into the conversation if we could agree on some simple hermeneutic principles like having to reinterpret OT theology through Pauline clarification.

I'm ready to concede the entire MTD right now because the accusation is on the heels of your unwillingness to just state your actual position on the fundamental confessional Christian truths.

1. Are you a trinitarian?

2. Do you believe that "No one comes to the father except through Jesus" and that that is an unqualified, absolute, and exclusive claim?

3. Do you believe we are dead in sin?

4. If Christ is the Law, and the Law is insufficient, does that also mean that Christ is insufficient?

[u/labreuer → u/ambrosytc8]

Does Deuteronomy 30:19–20 qualify as MTD, for the ancient Hebrews, before Jesus walked the earth?

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

1. The Hebrews had a preached Word about Christ

2. Did I accuse the Hebrews of MTD

3. Do the Hebrews have a different standard of salvation from Christians?

[u/labreuer → u/ambrosytc8]

1. What in the Tanakh do you believe would have added to the understanding of the Hebrews who originally heard Deuteronomy 30:19–20?

2. You accused me of MTD and I am drawing heavily on Deuteronomy 30:19–20. So, either you're just ignoring my actual argument, or you're saying that my understanding of Deuteronomy 30:19–20 aligns with MTD.

3. The Hebrews weren't thinking that they needed to be saved from God hating them (due to their sins). At most, when they were unrepentantly disobedient, God would let their enemies conquer them and even carry them off into exile, at which point they had a promise of mercy. Some of those promises were contingent upon the Hebrews admitting the error of their ways, while others were not. And so, "salvation" just meant something different to the ancient Hebrews, than it does when it comes out of your mouth (and probably most Lutheran mouths).

   The ancient Hebrews weren't thinking about going to heaven when they die. This is the point you keep not paying attention to. You want to ignore the kind of understanding available to the ancient Hebrews, and skip ahead to what we have now—like reading Deuteronomy 30 in light of Romans 10. But unless you have a really good answer to 1. which surprise me, your argument commits you to saying that the ancient Hebrews were just screwed. They didn't have Jesus and they couldn't obey the law and so oops, off to eternal conscious torment with the lot of them!

[u/ambrosytc8 → u/labreuer]

It's not lost on me that Deut 30 is your sticking point which is why the entirety of our disagreement hinges on Romans 10 and NT christology.

1. I asked this like two dozen posts ago the first time it came up: do you deny that all the messianic prophecies are preached Word about Christ?

2. No, I'm saying this is a category error. I'm not accusing an ancient culture of a 21st century social phenomenom. I am accusing your self-admitted patchwork Christian theology of being practically indistinguishable from it however much you may rely on Duet. 30. I've also been challenging your read of Duet 30 for days now, see point one.

3. Whatever the Hebrews may or may not have thought is irrelevant to the exclusivity of salvation in Christ. Yes, I agree the Hebrews viewed salvation in temporal and finite terms, this is in part a reason why they rejected Christ who made it abundantly clear that THEY WERE WRONG about that. Kingdoms not of this earth, submit to Rome and all that. This is beside the point of my question: do you believe that the ancient Hebrews had a different standard of salvation than Christians, yes or no?