Discussion on Free-will and Determinism by Dr. Raymond Crownover (UGST)

The idea that God is involved in time, that time is in God, and that God fully, completely, and infallibly knows the future does not make Him the author of all evil things He knows about. Open Theism fails in not only making God ignorant of the future, but in assuming that He needs to be in order to protect free will. I use two examples to illustrate this: (1) the individual who "knows" the stoplight is about to turn red (because it just turned yellow) does not cause it to turn red even if his knowledge is correct; and (2) my memory of events of the past (if those memories are accurate) did not cause the events to occur any more than God's "memory" of events of the future cause those events to occur. Or, my observation of a present event does not cause the event any more than God's observation (of all events throughout time) cause all those events.

Of course, the question then arises: at what point does God cease to be passive observer and begins to directly cause events of the future to occur? He is the ultimate cause of all things (including evil), but not always the immediate cause. The Bible makes clear that God is causing all things to come to a determined end. However, there is nothing simple about it. Clearly God protects human free will as one of, if not THE most vital good of His creation. We know that because it is God's will that all humans be saved, yet the percentage of those who will be saved is small ("few there be..."). What is frustrating God's will? Not the devil (although he would love us to believe that). No angel, fallen or holy, can frustrate the divine purpose. The only thing that can prevent God's will from being done is God's will.

That is, God may desire X, but does not bring it to pass because it is logically impossible to bring about X without preventing Y, which God desires more. (Now, before someone says God can do the impossible, let me make clear that logical impossibilities are not in the same category as physical impossibilities. For example, God cannot make a square circle. If what He produces is a circle, it is not a square; if what He produces is a square, it is not a circle; and if what He produces is a hybrid circle and square, then it is neither a circle nor a square. It is also logically impossible for God to make a rock He cannot lift.) In this case, X is "all men to be saved" and Y is "whosoever will".

Because God cannot have all men saved without over-riding human will (forcing all to be saved), John Calvin concluded the only way to preserve God's sovereignty was to redefine "all" to mean only those He elects. In reality, that severely limits God's sovereignty by making Him a slave to His every desire. (Surely God's desires are perfect, holy, and all together good, but they serve Him, not the other way around. Desires that control are lusts, even if they are positive in their outcome.) Instead, God can choose from His desires, rank them according to His holy purpose, and put into effect one even when it means limiting the fulfillment of another. That doesn't stop God from wanting all human beings to be saved.

What does that tell us about moral free will? That it is the highest, most important, and most closely protected of all God's gifts to man. He would rather see a highly loved and precious person for whom He paid the price of death on the cross go to hell than to see them forced to love and serve Him. Most people would probably reply that they would rather God forced them to go to heaven than gave them free will, but the obvious response to that is they are simply saying they want to surrender their will to God, and if they really mean it, they will avoid hell. Unfortunately, most people don't really mean it.

Since free will is the ultimate good, God has to deal with literally billions of free choices every day, and still make it all come out according to His plan. The majority of these choices may be insignificant in relation to the ultimate outcome, but there are certainly a few that could derail the plan. However, God is not left hopelessly observing without influencing the outcome of our choices.

First, He is not constrained by natural laws of cause and effect. Second, He has myriads of angels who obey His every command. Third, He has willing human beings who desire to change the world to bring about His desired results. Fourth, He has equipped both those angels and (more importantly) those human servants with powers far beyond their individual ability to effect change, making the free decision of one man of God more powerful in its effect than thousands or even millions of decisions made by those who are ignorant of or actively working against His will. All of these elements add to His ability to bring about a determined end without violating human free will in doing so.

Some prophecies in the Bible (probably most) are statements of what will happen based on His foreknowledge of all events. A few are statements of what He will cause to happen by direct or indirect intervention in the affairs of humans. But, can we really call that divine intervention, or is it simply the divine interaction with the unfolding of His creation?

Musings about Open Theism

Recently I have been discussing Open Theism (heron OT) with some friends and wanted to share some of the remarks. OT assumes, eventually, that God has firmly bound every event in time. Humanity's collective will engenders future events in my understanding. God knows everything, there is nothing for the divine mind of God to yet learn. "Mind" is probably not even adequate to describe such a thing. (hmmmm, there it is again-- is "thing" inadequate?)

To the point, just because God knows the future (foreknowledge; omniscient) does not mean he has firmly bound all events of time or future. That is a presupposition of OT, IMHO. God knows everything, He does not learn. He has all knowledge. Certainly then OT challenges the fundamental nature of God as being omniscient early on. Most Pentecostals stack up to be closest to what might can loosely be called Arminianism, for the sake of this discussion. The Scriptures, along with this theological concept, understand the free-will agency of human beings, or human freedom--apart from, as C.S. Lewis would call, "automata", i.e. Calvinism. OT does not have to be maintained to understand that our sovereign God has given us free-will, indeed as an expression of Himself in His creation and in accordance with His benevolent nature. Free-will He has sovereignly decreed to His highest creation, i.e. human beings.

To the OT I would ask, are the events of our yesterday equal to uncertainty then? Did we awake and really do certain events during the day just past this one? Who did those events that cannot now be changed? This might give way to certain theories of time continuity or travel as well, but the point is made.

God foreknows as some result of His omniscience. God decreed for free-will to exist in human beings so that they determine future events and what we commonly refer to as "history". If we go much further to assume that God has fixed all historical events we can then say that the "Holocaust" was determined to be done by God. This is completely incompatible with the nature of God, namely two aspects: God is love and God is merciful.

God transcends time, all of time. Time is a creation of God as is space and matter (see Genesis 1:1ff). Time to the human mind is understood as the past, present, and future. God stands outside, He trancsends time, and has seen when it indeed BEGAN and indeed until the END of what we may know, or presently know of time. Our glorified minds and bodies will see and behold so much more one day soon, when Jesus comes back the second time.