There is no conflict with omniscence, but there is conflict between libertarian free will and the idea that God determines every choice we make, which I take to be Calvin’s position.
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i certainly don’t disagree with him in that… neither did the framers of the Westminster confession, nor any of those numerous churches or other institutions that use it as their statement of faith. the statement of those writers of that confession I at least agree with most wholeheartedly…
God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: 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.
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That means God doesn’t directly will the choice of individuals. Sounds like a Molinism formulation, which is compatible with libertarian free will.
I think you missed my point, which was about God’s omnitemporality, not his omniscience.
I doubt you’d find that given the rest of the context if the statement of beliefs…
Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.
That would be inconsistent with libertarian free will. In the LFW case, God decrees multiple possibilities, but the actuality is dependent upon man’s choice, which God does not decree.
Within the LFW perspective, there are particular events that occur and are not particularly decreed by God. Their particular occurrence is wholely dependent upon the choice of man.
Thus, there are some things that God has not decreed, contrary to the Westminster confession.
I think this is the perspective of Aquinas, who states:
Therefore to some effects He has attached necessary causes, that cannot fail; but to others defectible and contingent causes, from which arise contingent effects. Hence it is not because the proximate causes are contingent that the effects willed by God happen contingently, but because God prepared contingent causes for them, it being His will that they should happen contingently.
From what I’ve read in articles, Duns Scotus is even clearer on the independence of man’s free will from God’s will.
God’s omnitemporality is what eliminates the conflict between omniscience and free will. If God was temporal, then His perfect foreknowledge would eliminate free will.
However, even with omnitemporality, there is a conflict between God decreeing every single particular event that ever happens and man’s free will, since some of those events will be the particular choices that man makes. If each particular choice is decreed by God, then the choice cannot be said to be ultimately the product of man’s free will. Libertarian free will states that all our choices ultimately originate from our own will, nothing else.
Was anyone’s libertarian free will compromised in the several providential timings and placings in Maggie’s sequence? Were those events planned, decreed to happen? Would any of the several individuals involved complain that their free will had been suspended, not to mention the myriad of individuals involved in the necessary precursor events (analogous to the butterfly in China)?
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I don’t disagree God can divinely ordain all things to bring us to faith. But the ultimate choice is still our own in the lfw view. I don’t think that contradicts your story.
But there are plenty of places that indicate otherwise, as well. “We were dead…” The dead cannot enliven themselves nor the spiritually blind heal themselves. Ephesians 1:4-6 and 11-12, are just a couple among many others.
There is an apparent paradox between his providential will and our free will that we cannot get our heads around, nor need we. We can accept it and delight in it, and when it comes to election, we can only be beyond grateful and utterly humbled by it. Some of God’s providences are even fun, but there is no explaining how he did it. @Klax’s simplism and dismissal doesn’t cut it. By his accounting, George Müller and Rich Stearns* were insufficiently educated, as well as Maggie.
*(They have been mentioned here before.)
Yes, God is the first mover in salvation, and we cannot free ourselves. Traditional Christians are not Pelagians. But still Aquinas and others affirm our libertarian free response. Calvin and Luther affirm the opposite, there is no possibility humans can choose otherwise. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the traditional libertarian free will position, and the reformation Luther and Calvin view. Luther had a big debate with Erasmus on this issue.
I affirm both? The Bible teaches both. Incompatibility is only in our inability. We are incapable of getting our heads around how the omnitemporal God relates to us in time.
How is that possible? To be a Christian atheist? I mean I all but am, but not metaphysically.
? if I was any more British I couldn’t possibly talk. I love my country so much I can hardly breathe.
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Just a very poor attempt at a humorous pun (nation). Sorry. Glad you love your country
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Groan. Not at you. Me.
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That is no different from compatibilism. The future is either written or not. The insistence that things are one or the other is the essence of incompatibilism. This does not require absolute time or confining God to the temporal ordering of the universe. It simply means that history is a story which God and man writes together. I am incompatibilist because I do not think that the characters in a novel are conscious living beings. Without on open future with real possibilities there is no life or consciousness.
The lessons of modern physics are rather relevant here:
- There is no absolute time which God must be a part of or not. There can be many temporal orderings and one can interact with a different temporal ordering without being confined to it.
- Quantum physics shows us that knowledge and power are not at all separable and the idea that you can always know something about an object with altering the object is not the case.
- Things can exist in a state of superposition of many possible states. In fact quantum physics shows that they pretty much have to be. Thus it does not follow that being outside of the temporal ordering of the physical universe means that history is laid out as already written. The future is a superposition of many possibilities.
Absolute unconditional foreknowledge is incompatible with a God who participates in our affairs in relationship. If the story is already written then God can only read the story – which is more like Deism than theism. But if God participates and alters the course of events as in theism, writing the story as He goes along then the only question is whether we have free will and participate in the writing process with our own contribution in the choices we make. But does God respond to our choices in an authentic relationship or does God control our choices with manipulation so that He is the only one making any choices of significance? The latter is exactly the kind of sham free will which we find in compatibilism.
The reconciliation of free will with omniscience simply requires discarding incoherent definitions of omniscience along with incoherent definitions of omnipotence. Omnipotence/omniscience does not mean God can or must do/know whatever you say by whatever means you dictate - that is logically incoherent nonsense concocted by people for whom God is nothing but a tool of rhetoric for power and manipulation. The coherent definition of omnipotence/omniscience is that God can do/know whatever He chooses IF He accepts the consequence such accomplishments/knowledge entails. Quantum physics shows that any other definition of omniscient is incoherent… to say that God must know the position of every particle is to say that God must stop quantum physics from working and annihilate all atoms and molecules in the universe. Just as particles do not generally have a position before a measurement is made, so also the future does not have a fixed single sequence of events before God and man make their choices.
But doesn’t God being outside of time mean that He can simply look at the future 100 years ahead of now? Sure. But what future would that be? Would that be the future where God decided not participate in our lives for the intervening 100 years? But if God participates in those 100 years then does He do so by making His own choices? Or does God simply sit back as a distant observer like in Deism and watch not only the universe but Himself as a participant in those years as well? Sounds to me like the difference between living those 100 years as a participant and simply reflecting on those 100 years later.
God, the only one I consider worth believing in and worshiping, chooses life, love, and freedom over power and control. He neither has the need nor the desire to control everything – that is why He created life, things which live their own life making their own choices for their own reasons. God IS capable of taking the risks inherent in giving trust, privacy, or love to others. Only people obsessed with power and control (making God in their own image) would imagine that God cannot do these simple things that any human being can do. Nor is this control freak idea god compatible with the story told in the Bible where it says in Genesis 6, that God was sorry that He had made man on the Earth. Such regret means that God took a risk and was disappointed.
No, because he is not outside of time. He is omnitemporal.
The dozen or so removed posts above can be summarized as follows: Dale has a bee in his bonnet about God’s omnitemporality, and Klax has a bee in his bonnet over the fact that Dale has a bee in his.
There … now we can move on!
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