Counterfactuals: fact or fiction?
For the sake of argument let’s assume for a moment that God does know my future choice perfectly. The reason God knows is not because He simply foresees it in the future, for unless my choice has previously been conceived, it does not exist in order to be foreseen. The Reformed explanation for this is that God knows my future choice (and all things that will happen) because He has ordained or decreed them. God does not see future events as truths generated externally from His knowledge; His knowledge of them is their final causal agent. In our apprehension of God and His decrees, as lofty a topic as it most certainly is, we might be able to say that His knowledge of future creaturely choices and temporal events is dependant upon His decree of them. In other words, He knows them because He planned them and the certainty of their existence because He knows them. But who conceives of my future choice: God, myself, or are they self-existent? If ultimate objectivity exists then it must embodied in the existence of a being of the immutable perfection pf a personal Creator who relates to His creatures in covenantal fashion. The components of such objectivity are: the written future, ethical standards, time, truth and the like. The God of the Christian scriptures is that being and because He created, that which He has created is subject to Him and is dependant upon His continued existence. No right thinking individual would argue that God didn’t create, and because He did then He necessarily must have decreed or planned to do so. If He had only created one angelic being then the logical inference is that, prior to that creation, He had decreed or planned to do so. It is an intellectual end-run to suggest that, in order to maintain a creature’s freedom and establish its blameworthiness, God could only know all the choices and actions of that creature without having decreed or planned them. To deny such does not mean that God is the immediate cause of those actions or choices (the creature is) but it does indicate that they are a means to His ends. If this is rejected then God personally could not have a purpose in the future actions and choices of that creature. God’s holiness in part, rests on whether or not He did create with a purpose. If He did not decree or plan for everything that exists, then His purposefulness in those things that happen and exist is called into question. Their existence becomes a means only of establishing the creature’s freedom. Moreover, if one could establish that God had created any one thing or that any one event happened outside of His decree, plan or purpose, then I believe that we could gather that He has (God forbid) done something unethical. Professing Christians at least ought to agree that if a being has committed an unethical act then He could not be perfect or holy and therefore could not be God. In other words, if there was no plan or decree of the creature and its subsequent actions formed prior to its creation, then the purposefulness of its creation is challenged. And I would argue that if anything happened or anything exists without God investing purpose in it, then God couldn’t exist. If there was a purposeless event then it must have happened, not by God’s creation, ordination, or decree, but randomly, thus outside of the purview of God’s hand—rendering Him impotent.
In contrast, one might suggest that God created the natural realm yet many of the events and choices contained therein were not directly decreed but may occur “naturally” within that realm and the assurance of the future existence of said events and choices is finally caused by their antecedents that God is responsible for having decreed, thus exonerating God as the potential author of evil. Even if this suggestion were true, it does not apply to my premise because, though God is not the imminent cause of every event and choice, His decree is their final cause due to the fact that He created the realm in which these things take place therefore no event or choice is random or purposeless. I submit that God did decree all things directly, but He did not cause them all directly. He decreed all things directly but uses secondary causes to reach His intended ends, having ordained both the ends and their means.
God knew all that would occur before His first act of creation. He knew that one third of all the angels would fall into sin under the deception of Lucifer; He knew that Adam would fall by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but how did God know? God could not have known perfectly what would happen if He hadn’t decreed it. If God knew evil would exist yet He hadn’t decreed it and He created anyway, then evil ultimately has no purpose. If purposeless, gratuitous evil exists then God cannot exist. William Rowe explains gratuitous evil this way, “…not necessary for the occurrence of any greater good or the prevention of any equally bad or worse evil.[i]”
The open theist adopts such a view of evil. They claim that investing God’s purpose in evil events creates the very problem of evil, and that He can have no purpose in it or else His is not holy. Listen to what John Sanders has to say.
“The accident that caused the death of my brother was a tragedy. God does not have a specific purpose in mind for [this] occurrence…there is no point for the specific occurrence of gratuitous evil.[ii]”
But I say, without a point, God cannot exist. Hence the criticism of the Open Theist’s position that, in its attempt to solve the problem of evil they make God in the image of man. Where else would evil find its purpose if God didn’t ordain it; could God have created a universe devoid of evil, He obviously didn’t. And if it was possible and He didn’t create that universe then why do we still regard Him as holy and omnipotent? Did God have to create at all? God did have to create in order for His perfection to issue forth causing praise. As John Piper puts it, “Creation is God’s glory gone public.” It was necessary for God to create and He did so in order that His magnificence would be displayed through the joy His creatures received when they magnify His glory. So God decided to create, of that one thing we can be sure. So, regarding future events, creaturely choices and the like, there really are only three choices, either:
1. God learns the future as His creatures make choices.
2. God ordains all things: the ends and the means to those ends.
3. God knows what will occur in the future, including the future choices of His creatures but real counterfactuals exist that represent what His creatures might have done but didn’t. These counterfactuals come into existence either prior to or after God’s decrees, depending on who you ask.
[i] Rowe, William. Howard-Snyder, 116
[ii] Sanders, John E. The God Who Risks. (Intervarsity Press, 1998)
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