Term Paper
Metaphysics
3 December 2008
Introduction to the problem
The theological debate over God's sovereignty and man's moral responsibility has been fought in both the realms of biblical theology and philosophical theology. Though derived from systematic theology, the idea of God's having true foreknowledge of the future both affects and is affected by the philosophical analysis of these concepts. This interrelation is, in fact, crucial to the side of conservative libertarian theologians, and it is also enlisted by many of the predestinarian theologians.
This paper will analyze the argument apparently adduced by some of the more prominent predestinarians that God's exhaustive knowledge of all events, past, present, and future, determines that those events must occur. This is often criticized by libertarians on the grounds that “foreknowledge does not imply foreordination.” The position herein advocated would agree—however, a difficulty arises when the typical libertarian claim that God is outside of time, upon which their critique rests, is analyzed in relation to God's actual actions in time. It will be argued that this will indeed establish such a necessity of events as is inconsistent with libertarian freedom, and the Molinist attempt to solve the problem will also be critiqued.
The Predestinarian Argument
Luther, Foreknowledge, and Necessity
We will take a classic work of Reformed predestinarianism as our example of the argument for predestination from foreknowledge. In Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will1, a defense of exhaustive predestination written against Desiderius Erasmus's Diatribe on Free Will, Luther argues that God's foreknowledge of future events implies the necessity of those events (Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, IX). He is careful to distinguish between absolute necessity and contingent necessity here, however: the necessity of the events arises posterior to God's willing them, but is contingent upon His willing them—He could have willed otherwise. He thus avoids many of the pitfalls of such an absolute determinism as Leibniz's by attributing to actualized events a necessity absolute insofar as they proceed from the will of God, but contingent upon God's free will2.
Nevertheless, Luther asserts that if God foreknows an event, He must also will it: “Do you believe that He foreknows against His will, or that He wills in ignorance? If then, He foreknows, willing, His will is eternal and immovable, because His nature is so: and, if He wills, foreknowing, His knowledge is eternal and immovable, because His nature is so.” (De Servo Arbitrio, IX). This is open to criticism, particularly the implication that God foreknows no event that will occur contrary to His will, and will be further analyzed below.
The Libertarian Argument
God, Eternity, and Time
Libertarians reject this argument: while they affirm God's foreknowledge, they deny a necessity of action arising therefrom. They point out that the predestinarian concept of foreknowledge implies a temporal placement of God in relation to the event; most prominent libertarians instead argue that God is primarily outside of time. He can see the whole of temporal existence without tensed distinction, because it is all present to Him in His eternality. While they still tend to use the term “foreknowledge,” it would be more precise to call their conception of God's knowledge simply “omniscience” or “exhaustive knowledge” to avoid the implication of “previous” knowledge and God's temporality.
On these grounds, they can say that God merely sees all the free actions of creatures throughout history— the action and will of the creatures are primary, and God's knowledge of them is posterior to their actualization. This ostensibly avoids the force of Luther's argument, as it avoids his emphasis on the temporal progression. God can see all points of time equally, on their view—this would seem to imply a B-theory of time, at least at the ultimate level of God's experience; this will be further discussed below.
“Foreknowledge Does Not Imply Foreordination”
For the libertarian, God's knowledge of events (whether physical events or states of the will) being logically posterior to their actualization is sufficient to guarantee the liberty of the agent to perform or not to perform the event when he actually does. For them, for a person at time Z to say of God “He knows event X will occur at future time T” refers not to God's knowledge of “future,” but to a God who is always equally present at every point in the flow of time. Thus, the person can say at time Z that God “foreknows” time T because time T is still future to the person, and God can know time Z and time T because He is present at both points in time.
It is even more tenuous, the libertarian would argue, to say that God actually ordained event X at future time T, because an active foreordination assumes both a knowledge prior to event actualization (which they believe they've already debunked) and also a knowledge posterior to God's willing the event to actualize, which they reject on theological grounds. On their view, the logical order is thus: The free agent wills the event, God knows it, God determines to allow the event. This is the essence of classic Christian libertarianism.
The Analysis
Predestinarianism and the Critique
The libertarian critique of the predestinarian connection of exhaustive knowledge and necessity is correct insofar as it goes, based as it is on God's eternality and timelessness. It misses the point of the argument for a predestinarian to assert that an event is necessary because it is foreknown, precisely because a libertarian would reject the temporal implication. If God does exist completely outside of time, and if the B-theory of time upon which this seems to rest is true, then He can see the entire history of time as one undistinguished existence and can know all events at all times without a temporal distinction in His own mind. Thus, as per the example above, if a person says God “foreknows,” it is only a reference to the passage of time relative to the speaker, not to any distinction in God's own mind.
However, it is truly the libertarian who is missing the point in the discussion. “Foreknowledge” is essentially a term of temporal reference and it is used for a reason. Most predestinarians would, in fact, agree that God is fundamentally outside of time, though this was not made explicit by Luther. However, though God is outside of time and is Himself timeless, yet He acts inside of the time He has created, and not only does He know what will occur at times future relative to people existent at moments of time, but He also transmits that knowledge into time via prophecy.
God, Eternity, and Time Revisited
To review and clarify: Both sides agree, for the purposes of our argument (we are chiefly dealing with the classical examples) that God is outside of time. Conservatives of both the libertarian and predestinarian camps would hold that God yet acts within the time structure He has created. They are bound to both transcendence and immanence. In their conception of God's transcendence and thus at the ultimate level of reality, they would seem to agree on something similar to a B-theory of time; but in their shared conception of God's immanence, God's action can be described in the same senses as are proper to events inside of time. That is, God's ultimate existence is tenseless and transcendent of the time He has created—after all, time itself derives its existence from Him Who has eternally existed—but His action in time is tensed relative to those in time.
On these points the two sides are agreed. But it is precisely on these points that the combination of immanence, exhaustive knowledge derived from transcendence, and libertarian
freedom3 become fatal to each other.
The Options
The three cannot exist simultaneously. One can have any combination of two, but not all three. This may seem a radical claim, but there are three coherent options. One can have a sort of deism, wherein God creates the world, then is no longer active in its ordering—this would be distinguished from the historically deterministic Deism in that this position could theoretically have the libertarian freedom, as well as the exhaustive knowledge derived from transcendence, while denying God's immanence. Open Theism is another philosophically plausible option: it would deny God's exhaustive knowledge, but would allow Him to act inside of time and people to act inside of time without God's interference. Or one could have the combination of immanence and exhaustive knowledge derived from transcendence, without the libertarian freedom, which is the position of classical Calvinism.
No conservative Christian with a high view of Scripture would deny God's immanence or His exhaustive knowledge4. The biblical proof of these concepts would seem unassailable. We thus have remaining the position of classical Calvinism, and in the next section we will endeavour to prove why the three propositions, the combination composing classical Arminianism, cannot all coexist.
The Wrench in the Cog
Put simply, the problem lies in the combination of Proposition A: the formulation of omniscience as proceeding from transcendence of time discussed above, and Proposition B: that God does act inside of time. We will work on two main issues here: God's knowledge of His acting at a point in time and God's transmission of His knowledge into time via prophecy.
The first issue can be stated thus: if God knows that He will act in a particular way at time T in response to circumstances C, then circumstances C must obtain; for circumstances C to obtain, all choices and events leading up to circumstances C must be such as will infallibly result in circumstances C. For this we will take the example of Christ's death; in 1 Peter 1:18-20 it is said, “you were not redeemed with perishable things...but with...the blood of Christ, for He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you.”
It could be said that God foreknew Christ's redemptive act because of His transcendence of time, but a temporal description is necessary here because Christ's redemptive act necessitated a temporal response by God—the advent of Christ, and the punishment of Christ by God the Father for the sake of His people, were both accomplished at moments in time and were thus acts of God in time. Further, the circumstances surrounding Christ's death necessitated certain states of affairs involving moral choices by human beings. There are many, but the most crucial one here is a fallen world in need of redemption—hence Christ's character of Redeemer. For Christ to redeem, there had to be someone to redeem from fallenness, hence fallenness, hence a Fall. A Fall of Man was logically necessary before God could know Christ as a Redeemer. One may object that this in no way means Adam had to fall; granted, but this is only to shift the burden to another morally responsible human. The point is that it was necessary for someone to make the choice that would result in fallenness. It is not possible for all people to have made the choice for good in the face of God's knowing that Christ would come to redeem a fallen people. If it is not possible for all people to have chosen otherwise, then libertarian freedom does not exist, at least for that one person.
The second issue can be stated thus: if God knows timelessly circumstances C1 to obtain at time T1, and transmits that knowledge to beings in time at time T2
Molinism's Attempted Answer
A modern attempt to solve this problem is the theory of God's middle knowledge. According to this theory, God knows what any person would do in a given set of circumstances, and, according to the circumstances that He knows will obtain at any given time, knows what any given person will do. However, this position does not seem to protect a libertarian definition of freedom. Crucial to the concept of libertarian freedom is that the agent has the absolute possibility in any given circumstances to do otherwise than what he does. But if God knows what a person would do in any given situation, then the person could not do otherwise than what he does. It is not possible that he would do anything else. If it is possible that he would do anything else, then God's knowledge is erroneous or indefinite; if it is not possible that he would do anything else, then the agent lacks freedom as defined by libertarianism. Thus Molinism does not seem to solve the problem. This weakness has even less to do with temporal progression than does the classical libertarian argument; the argument fails simply because of its definition of what exactly God knows and the limits this places upon human freedom. While this is not a problem for a compatibilist, it utterly fails to promote a libertarian conception of freedom and thus defeats the stated purpose of the Molinist argument.
Conclusion
It seems that the classical libertarian critique of a Calvinistic necessity sows the seeds of its own downfall. Because God is transcendent of His created time, their theory initially seems successful, but the consideration of His immanence in time, and especially the transmission of His knowledge into time, causes the theory to break down and exclude a libertarian freedom. The Molinist theory itself negates human freedom because it binds an agent's possible options in a given circumstance, which undermines the very libertarian theory it ostensibly defends. While this essay has not gone so far as to prove God's active predestination, nor attempted to prove the compatibility of this with the moral responsibility of agents, it has reached its objective of proving at least that libertarian freedom is philosophically incompatible with the incontestable theological doctrines of omniscience and immanence.
1Though the work is primarily theological, he does deal with some of the philosophical implications, this being one of the first Protestant works to do so. It is thus cited here as a classic example of Protestant discussion on the matter.
2Thus, this is a modified compatibilism: for the events are necessary, but not absolutely so. Further, because the necessity arises from the will of God, some of the moral objections to hard compatibilism are avoided.
3Libertarian freedom is defined as “given choices A and B, one can literally choose to do either one, no circumstances exist that are sufficient to determine one's choice; a person's choice is up to him, and if he does one of them, he could have done otherwise, or at least refrained from acting at all.” (Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 240).
4Many would argue that no conservative Christian with a high view of Scripture would deny man's libertarian freedom, either, but since 1) this has to do with anthropology, and only indirectly with theology proper and 2) this position on God's providence was held by nearly all the early Reformers, whether or not “Calvinist,” who are as “conservative” as one can get and inarguably had a high view of Scripture, we will treat this concept differently from the other two and place less of a burden of proof upon it as upon the others.
Reference List
Luther, Martin. De Servo Arbitrio “On the Enslaved Will” or The Bondage of Will, trans. Henry Cole. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2005. Accessed at http://www.lgmarshall.org/Reformed/luther_bondagewill.pdf
Moreland, J.P., and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.
