The bible, openness, and the spaces between (concluded)
Consider this, if God perfectly knew that Adam would sin then one must conclude that, from God’s perspective, it was impossible for him not to sin. If it was impossible for him not to sin then God’s knowledge of this necessarily negated non-event would be trivial and gratuitous—why would He bother to know it? Is it actually knowledge if it is of something that defiantly would not occur? In other words, if God knew for certain that Adam would sin then God’s knowledge of an alternate strand of reality wherein Adam would not sin was not an actual possibility at all—in fact it was an eternal non-possibility. Even if God, as Middle Knowledge affirms, knows what we will do regardless of our choice, and even if He knows beforehand and He has made a different plan or response for each possible choice, that view then argues against His omnipotence—his ability to affect His creation to whatever end He wills. Rather than presenting God as the Omnipotent One who does as He pleases in His creation, (in an attempt to separate God so far from sin and evil) the mediate theologian presents a God who doesn’t ordain any event, but simply approves or disapproves by being the “Omnipraeoptor”, or the One who chooses all things beforehand from a set of preexisting items. This is not an affirmation of the biblical portrayal of the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God but rather, it is an attack on it.
In the face of all the biblical evidence to the contrary, many evangelicals (practically speaking if not formally) espouse a view of God’s sovereignty that does not believe that things are going just as He had planned. We must agree that God’s moral will is broken all the time. There isn’t a day that goes by when His the commands of His law are not flagrantly violated, but as for the will of God’s decree, that will by which He has ordained all the future and by which He knows all its intricacies, no one can undermine—thus the reformed faith has the theological basis and desire to proclaim that things are going as God had planned. Clark Pinnock objects:
“We do not see how one can have genuine freedom (human and divine) and exhaustive definite foreknowledge. Future free acts, by definition, cannot be known in every detail and with certainty even by God. It is enough to say that God knows everything any being could possibly know. This leaves room for human persons to act and room for God to act, since the future is open to them both. The future is still being formed; that is, everything has not been decided.[i]”
The assumption in Pinnock’s position and the position of the person who does not believe that things are going as planned are, in this respect, the same—that humans have libertarian free will—the capacity for contrary choice; the freedom to act contrary to their own nature and without any such internal or external boundaries. Perhaps God would prefer a world without sin but because He has (in his sovereignty some would inconsistently assert) given His creatures “real” freedom He must endure their sins against His desires. Pinnock maintains that there are things that God does not know, but others who reject the Reformed notion of God’s sovereignty claim that God is omniscient. They both uphold libertarian freedom and they both share Pinnock’s conclusion that there is room for God to act and room for human persons to act. Pinnock just arrives at this conclusion more consistently because he understands that in order for humans to actually be free and have the power of contrary choice, and in order to establish their freedom, no being can have prescient knowledge of their choices. I think that the logical implication of many Evangelical views on this topic should be Open Theism, but thank God they remain inconsistent.
Let’s take a closer look at how the Middle Knowledge theory plays out. If within God’s own consideration of the future, Adam had equal capacity and opportunity to either sin or not, yet God knew that Adam would definitely sin, then there was no real possibility that Adam would not sin. So in contrast, the Open Theist consistently concludes that God didn’t know whether Adam would sin or not, thus Adam really did have the possibility of contrary choice because God’s perfect knowledge of that choice didn’t determine the future for him. In fact, if Open Theism were true then the outcome of Adam’s choice had nothing to contradict. If God didn’t know it, then either choice Adam made would have no prescient knowledge with which to be contrary. Unfortunately, at this particular point, the Middle position renders many professing evangelicals apathetically inconsistent. It is a farce to say that God actually knew perfectly that Adam would sin, yet Adam still had the real possibility of not sinning, the two assertions are mutually exclusive.
[i] Pinnock, Clark. Same source as endnote 4.
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