“On the one hand, we acknowledge that God could have created a world that he would totally control, a world whose future would have been completely settled. On the other hand, we believe on scriptural grounds that he chose something very different. He made a world that is not all-determined, the future of which would not be exhaustively foreknown. He did it in order to let finite creativity flourish. In the end, there is no “loss” for God in this view since it is only a question of how God chooses to utilize his power. This choice remains entirely his alone. …God knows everything that can be known, but that future free decisions are not knowable in their entirety. They are not yet real and are nothing to be known. Therefore, it cannot be an imperfection not to know them. In other words, some aspects of the future are not yet settled or fixed but open to what God (and humans) may yet decide to do. Some things are certain while other things are possible, and God knows the difference. God made the world in this way because he wants us to collaborate with him in bringing open aspects of the future into being. …No being can know in advance exactly what a free agent will do, although he may predict it with high probability.[i]”
Given that Open Theism were true or even plausible, in that system is God a “free agent” acting as freely as His creatures—I should hope so or the proponents of that position have conceded far more than I believe even they would care to admit. One would have to ask Pinnock, does God know His own future choices? If so, then why are His choices free? And if not, then God could not be the Uncaused Cause. He then is like the rest of us, subject to a vastly unknown and unknowable future. True, God may be able with even infinitely more accuracy, predict what He will do, but the Open Theist should admit that He must be caught in the struggle to second guess Himself.
Regarding the first few statements, it sounds similar to that non-Calvinistic presentation of providence that goes a bit like this, well we know that God could have created a world in which He retained His sovereign control over the will of man but we know that He decided to withhold His sovereign reign over the will of man and His choices in order to establish human culpability. The evidence for this is the fact that evil exists. I have heard similar arguments from several persons, and though they would stand whole-heartedly with us against Pinnock’s claims, the similarity to the tenor of the first few sentences in the Pinnock quote above is striking. In the earlier statement I quoted from Pinnock and he said this, “It is settled in that much can be foreseen and God’s victory is assured.” But his statement above seems to contradict that. Why is God’s victory among those things that can be known? Assuming that his statement about God is true, that He chose to make a world that is not “all-determined”, there are still many yet future choices that men must make before the victory of God is realized in time. So how can the open theist suggest that God knows that His victory is certain if He doesn’t know the future choices of men (because they are not real) on which His victory is contingent. Some try to make man a little bit like God in their assumptions about humanity’s capabilities, but this theology seems to make God like man—perhaps the most impressive superhero you can imagine, a bit like Dr. Manhattan in “Watchmen”.
As I see it the ultimate problem with open theism is that (according to their view) in order for man to be free and responsible for his actions and in order to exonerate God of the charge of being the author of evil, He necessarily cannot know what we will choose. Though Pinnock would say that God infallibly knows everything that is knowable, He cannot know His creature’s free choices beforehand, because those choices do not exist in order to be known; they are not yet real and thus not yet knowable. As Pinnock would say, God has not ordained them or decreed them because if He had then they would be known to Him and determined by Him, rendering His creatures without the freedom to do otherwise. I find it very difficult to imagine how any event could be certain in God’s knowledge if He does not have certain knowledge of all the future choices of His creatures because most events (excluding natural disasters as a whole) are inseparably linked to the free choices that men make. I suggest that the certainty of any event is based on God’s certain knowledge of that event and by extension, the future en toto. Conversely, if an event will certainly occur then God’s knowledge of it is also certain. As a matter of fact, events certainly happen because He knows them. Because God has decreed a particular event He then (and only then) knows it will happen. This is an essential element to establishing the existence of the Christian God—omniscience. Even so, God is not the primary cause of all the events He decrees but rather, He uses secondary causes to affect His plans in time. Take for instance the way He used Satan in the life of Job, or Joseph’s brothers in his life, or Pontius Pilot in the trial of Christ. The secondary causes sinned against Job, Joseph and Jesus. So God knew it would happen because He ordained it but whether you believe that God decreed those things to happen or that He simply allowed them to happen, He did not sin. Nor did He make Satan, Joseph’s brothers or Pontius Pilot to act evilly against their will by His decree—His decree was that they do as they wished.
Even the Molinist or the proponent of middle knowledge faces only a slightly less severe charge of unorthodoxy than that of the open theist. If God (as suggested of the Molinist’s claims in the quote from gotquestions.com) had to consider multiple possible outcomes generated by the possible, future choices of men, and He created men knowing that evil would exist, then He is not any more insulated from the Open Theist charge that God would be the author of evil, if in fact He knows what will occur—not even the open theist system can escape this charge. Whether this is the claim of the Molinist or just those who reject both the Compatibilistic and Open view, their position needs to be scrutinized at this point. Many will say to the Calvinist that if you believe everything happens because or within the purview of God’s providence or His ordination, then that makes Him the author of sin. So in an attempt to acquit God of this charge they claim that God has not ordained one single strand of outcomes but instead, He has perfect knowledge of all the possibilities that result from all of man’s possible choices. So in effect (and this is my commentary on their position) according to the Molinist, the proponent of Middle Knowledge, God created Adam with the distinct future possibility that he could either have sinned or not sinned. Though God knew that Adam would sin, because of the existence of real counterfactuals, the fact that he might not have sinned was equally possible from God’s perspective. Thus God knows all the future choices of men in the alternate world history that was possible if Adam hadn’t sinned. Though God knew he would sin, it was still really possible for Adam never to have sinned because God knew all the resulting effects and contingencies of his having never chosen to sin. This in effect renders God as the passive observer of history rather than the sovereign One over it. In fact, both things cannot be true. This is different than saying Adam was simply capable of not sinning (this we know to be true) and I think is the sentiment of Augustine’s significant phraseology in his fourfold description of human nature throughout redemptive history, “posse non peccare”. The open theist rightly critiques this position by saying that if God actually knew whether or not Adam was going to sin, then Adam couldn’t actually have done otherwise. I share their critique. Alternatively, the Middle position is a frustration of the very omniscience of God, suggesting that He bothers to know something that certainly will not happen. What seems true from the human perspective may not really be true; our senses are basically reliable, not absolutely reliable.
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