Across the Spectrum

3

The Foreknowledge Debate

God Foreknows Future Free Actions (The Arminian View)
God Foreknows by Sovereignly Ordaining the Future (The Calvinist View)
God Foreknows All That Shall Be and All That May Be (The Open View)

Posing the Question

Does God already know if you’re going to marry and, if so, who your spouse will be? If this were known with certainty by God before you were even born, do you and your future spouse actually choose each other of your own free will? And what if your spouse tragically ends up cheating on you or turns out to be physically abusive? Did God foreknow this as well? If he did, why didn’t he warn you and steer you toward a spouse with whom he knew you’d “live happily ever after”? In fact, if God foreknows everything ahead of time, why does he create people he knows will abuse others and even people he is certain will go to hell? Doesn’t he want everyone to go to heaven?

If, however, God doesn’t foreknow everything ahead of time, you’ve got to wonder if you can really trust him with your future. In fact, if God doesn’t foreknow all that’s going to come to pass, nobody does, leading one to wonder if anybody is in control. Is anyone steering this ship in any particular direction? Is the future just a “wide open sea” to God? Is God waiting to find out where this ship—your life and the entire history of the world—is going and how it will get there, just like we are? And if God doesn’t know everything ahead of time, why is Scripture filled with prophecies that come true and clear promises about the future that God, with absolute certainty, says will come to pass?

The Center and Its Contrasts

Christians have always agreed that God is omniscient (“all knowing”). And, though some don’t believe the future is entirely settled in God’s mind, all have always agreed that God knows “the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46:10). The future is not a “wide open sea” to him. The ship has a captain, and the captain knows where he is going!

This agrees with what Jews, Muslims, and most other theists throughout history have believed about God. But it contrasts sharply with what many other non-Christian worldviews hold. Many people today believe that the future is entirely up to us. Humans have the sole power and sole responsibility to determine the future for themselves and life on the earth. Secular humanists are an example of people who hold this view. Yet others believe in fate: “whatever will be will be.” Some of these people think that the future is settled on the grounds that everything, including human choices, is physically determined. These people are usually identified as materialists, for they believe that every event, including every human action, is the result of material cause and effect. Hence, the last effect of the universe was already determined by the first cause, if there was one. Others today think that fate is the result of spiritual laws that have always been in operation. For example, some Eastern teachers and advocates of New Age philosophies think that every event is part of one, single, timeless, divine reality. Nothing could be different than it is. This is often labeled monism.

The Christian view disagrees with all these beliefs. Christians hold that humans are responsible for their actions but deny that the future is entirely up to us to settle. God knows where history is leading. But he doesn’t know this because everything is determined by physical laws or because everything is part of one timeless, divine reality. He knows it because he is the sovereign Lord and Creator of the world.

Most Christians throughout history have believed that God knows everything that is to come. This is often referred to as the “classical” view of divine foreknowledge, and it is still what the majority of evangelicals believe. There are, however, a number of variations within the classical view. Some, called Calvinists, believe that God foreknows all that shall come to pass because he has predestined it. Others, called Arminians, believe God foreknows all things simply because they shall come to pass, though humans to some extent determine it by their free will. Some Arminians hold that God knows not only what will happen but also what would have happened under different circumstances. This is an Arminian subview known as Molinism (after its sixteenth-century originator Luis de Molina) or “Middle Knowledge” (referring to God’s knowledge of what free agents would do in every particular circumstance). “Simple Foreknowledge,” another form of the Arminian view, claims that God somehow simply knows the future in exhaustive definite detail but that people are still free in the decisions they make. Other subforms of the Arminian view exist as well.

Some, however, have questioned whether God has exhaustive definite foreknowledge of the future on both biblical and philosophical grounds. They believe that while God knows the broad outlines of world history as well as whatever he has predestined to take place, some of the definite details of the future are not known by God until humans decide them by the exercise of their free will. This theology, which has in recent times come to be known as Open Theism or the open view of the future, has had few representatives in the orthodox Christian tradition, though it became more prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet an increasing number of evangelicals have embraced this view in the last several decades, making the debate over foreknowledge one of the liveliest debates within evangelicalism today.

Terminology in this debate can become a bit confusing. With regard to the well-known “Calvinist-Arminian” debate about salvation, Open Theists are Arminian in their perspective (see chap. 8, “The Salvation Debate”). But when it comes to the question of God’s foreknowledge, Arminians, as we have seen, can hold differing subviews. The three essays contained in this chapter represent (1) the most common and broad Arminian view, which holds that God knows the future in exhaustive definite detail even though humans have libertarian free will (we are calling this the “Arminian” view), (2) the Calvinist view, and finally (3) the less-common view held by some Arminians, known as “Open Theism,” which holds that the future is only partially settled so that God knows this part only in terms of possibilities.

God Foreknows Future Free Actions
(The Arminian View)

All orthodox Christians throughout history have affirmed that God is omniscient. He knows everything perfectly. For both Calvinism and Arminianism, the “everything” that God perfectly knows includes all that shall come to pass. Arminians and Calvinists disagree, however, on how God possesses this knowledge. Calvinists contend that God knows what shall come to pass because he predestines it. Arminians believe that, while God predetermines certain aspects of the future, he leaves other aspects for free agents to determine. Yet, in contrast to Open Theism, Arminians believe God still possesses the ability to foreknow with certainty how these free agents will choose. God thus foreknows all that will come to pass without predetermining all that will come to pass.

Biblical Arguments

Scripture repeatedly confirms that God possesses foreknowledge of future free-will decisions made by human beings. To begin, the Lord told Abraham he would become the “father of many nations” and would be given a great land (Gen. 17:5–8 NIV). This prophecy and promise depended on Abraham’s free choice to have faith and on Abraham proving himself to be a faithful covenant partner with God (e.g., Gen. 17:9; cf. 22:12). So too, the Lord told Abraham that his offspring would be slaves in Egypt “for four hundred years” but afterward would “come out with great possessions” (Gen. 15:13–15). There were a multitude of free decisions involved in Abraham’s descendants going into Egypt, including the wicked decisions of Joseph’s jealous brothers to sell him into slavery (Gen. 37:18–28). And there were a multitude of free decisions involved in his descendants coming out of Egypt, including the reluctant decision of Moses to obey God and face Pharaoh (Exod. 3:18–4:17).

There is nothing in Scripture to indicate that God controlled these decisions. Indeed, God has to argue with Moses for some time to get him to go along with his plan! Yet God clearly foreknew how the decisions would eventually play themselves out, which is how he could tell Abraham about the captivity and liberation of his descendants four hundred years ahead of time.

Along the same lines, a number of times the Lord reveals that certain things were going to happen to various nations or cities as a result of free decisions people would make. For example, God foretells the succession of four kingdoms through Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan. 2:31–45). This was brought about by a multitude of free decisions made by kings and military leaders, yet God foreknew them. So too, the Lord reveals a number of details about the fate of Tyre (Ezek. 26:7–21). The fulfillment of this prophecy largely involved the activity of one ruler, Alexander the Great, centuries after it was given. Alexander did these things freely, but they were foreknown by God centuries before he did them.

Twice in Scripture the Lord actually names individuals long before they are born and provides some detail about choices they’ll make. Josiah would tear down the pagan altars and destroy the pagan priesthood that plagued Israel (1 Kings 13:2–3; cf. 2 Kings 22:1; 23:15–16), while Cyrus would let God’s people return to Jerusalem and help rebuild the city (Isa. 45:1–14). Yet there’s no indication that either the parents of Josiah and Cyrus or the specific actions these two would engage in once they grew up was controlled by God. In his great omniscience, God simply foreknew how things would turn out.

Similarly, Jesus told Peter he would deny him three times before the next morning (Matt. 26:34) and foretold Judas’ betrayal of him (John 6:64, 70– 71; 13:18–19; cf. 17:12), despite the fact that these two made their decisions freely. He also prophesied that Peter would follow his example and die a martyr’s death (John 21:18–19), which presupposes specific foreknowledge of the free actions of certain future persecutors of the faith.

Some of the most impressive passages of Scripture related to divine foreknowledge concern Jesus’ ministry and death. Scripture tells us that “[Christ] was destined before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20) and was “the Lamb slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8 NIV). In Zechariah the Lord says that the Jews would someday “look on the one whom they have pierced [and] . . . mourn for him” (Zech. 12:10), an apparent reference to Christ’s crucifixion, centuries before crucifixion had been invented as a form of execution. Similarly, in Isaiah we read that the “suffering servant” would die “with the wicked” though he would be buried “with the rich” (Isa. 53:9). Jesus, of course, was crucified as a common criminal but was buried in the tomb of the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea (Matt. 27:57–60). Jesus also foretold what would happen to him several times throughout his own ministry. He would suffer “at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matt. 16:21; cf. 20:17–19). When this actually happened, Scripture says it was “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23; 4:28).

Open Theists sometimes claim that God foreordained and therefore foreknew that Jesus would be crucified without foreknowing or foreordaining who specifically would do it. But consider the vast number of free decisions that were involved in the crucifixion of Christ. Had any of them chosen differently, the entire event might have turned out differently, thus thwarting God’s plan. What if Judas had decided not to betray Jesus? What if Pilate had decided to listen to his wife and set Jesus free (Matt. 27:19)? And what if Joseph of Arimathea had decided not to offer up his tomb? For the specific prophecies about Christ to be fulfilled, God had to possess foreknowledge of these and an incalculable number of other free decisions.

The same could be said about a multitude of specific prophecies fulfilled in Christ’s ministry. For example, Herod’s decision to massacre all the male infants in Bethlehem, which led to Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt, fulfilled Old Testament prophecies (Matt. 2:16–18). So did the guards’ decision to cast lots for Jesus’ garments (John 19:24); to pierce his side while refraining from breaking his legs, as was customary with crucifixions (John 19:33–37); and to give Jesus vinegar for water (John 19:28–29). The fulfillment of these and other specific prophecies presupposes that God foreknows what specific people will freely choose to do long before they make these decisions or before they even exist.

Finally, we must mention end-time prophecies in the Bible. While far too much is sometimes made of these on a popular level, it’s hard to deny that scriptural authors make predictions about specific things certain people will do at the end of history. For example, Paul says that “in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” Among other things, these people “forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods” (1 Tim. 4:1, 3). He also informs his readers at Thessalonica that before the final day, a great “rebellion” will come and a certain “lawless one” will “[exalt] himself above every so-called god or object of worship” and will “[take] his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:3–4). There is no suggestion that these actions by certain people at the end of the age are controlled by God. They are done of people’s own free volition. And yet they are foreknown by God centuries before they come to pass. Arminians thus conclude that God foreknows the future free actions of human beings.

Supporting Arguments

1. Foreknowledge of future free actions is implied in omniscience. Many theologians and philosophers define omniscience as the ability to know the truth value of all meaningful propositions. God knows all true propositions as true and all false propositions as false. In light of this, Arminians point out that propositions concerning future events, including future free decisions, are either true or false and God must therefore know this. For example, the proposition “In the year 2075 the president of the United States will declare war” is either true or false and God, being omniscient, must know which it is. God must therefore know the future free decisions of the future president and every other free agent that will ever exist. We may not be able to specify how God can know this, but that he knows it is part of what it means to be omniscient.

2. Foreknowledge is implied in divine sovereignty. If God faces an open future, as Open Theism asserts, he cannot guarantee that his will shall be accomplished in any given instance or for world history as a whole. Yet the Bible clearly asserts that God can guarantee the accomplishment of his will (Job 42:2; Rom. 8:28; Eph. 1:11). Along with Calvinists, Arminians believe that only a God who knows with certainty all that shall come to pass can remain sovereign over creation.

Against Calvinism, however, Arminians deny that foreknowledge implies meticulous divine control. The Bible consistently depicts humans (and even, to some degree, angels) as possessing the God-given ability to choose good or evil. Because God foreknows these decisions, he is able to use evil decisions to achieve his sovereign purposes. But this does not mean evil decisions come about as part of God’s sovereign purpose. Failing to distinguish between the sovereign use God makes of evil decisions on the basis of his foreknowledge, on the one hand, and the foreknown occurrence of evil decisions as part of God’s sovereign purpose, on the other, lands Calvinism in the deepest ditch of the notorious problem of evil. Because of this, Calvinists must accept that God in some sense wills everything he foreknows, including his foreknowledge of who will end up eternally suffering in hell.

3. Foreknowledge and foreordination are two different things. While God certainly foreknows all that he foreordains, there’s no reason to conclude that God foreordains all that he foreknows, as Calvinism maintains. To know something and to bring about something are two very different things. Knowledge is about having a capacity to experience reality in a certain way. It is a passive activity. By contrast, bringing about things requires a capacity to actively impact reality in a certain way. Consider that most of what we know—whether this be about the past, present, or future—concerns matters that are wholly outside our control.

While God certainly controls a great deal of what comes to pass, there’s simply no reason to think God’s knowledge of the past, present, and future is categorically different from ours. It concerns God’s ability to experience reality in a certain way. In the Arminian view, God knows all that shall occur in the same way he knows all that is now occurring and all that has occurred. He simply sees it, but doesn’t necessarily bring it about. Much of what is brought about is the result of decisions made by free agents. Yet God knows it—past, present, and future—in exhaustive, definite detail.

Responding to Objections

1. Scripture doesn’t teach exhaustive definite foreknowledge. Open Theists object that none of the passages that Arminians (or Calvinists) cite in support of their view explicitly say that God foreknows all that shall come to pass. Three considerations refute this objection, however.

First, the Lord specifies in Isaiah that he declares “the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46:10). It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that this concept encompasses the whole of the future. Second, as we have already argued, it is hard to see how God could foreknow what he explicitly says he foreknows in Scripture without foreknowing everything. The world is an interwoven tapestry of decisions. To know with certainty any part of the future presupposes certain knowledge of all of the future. And third, since God must necessarily know the truth value of all future-tensed propositions, God must know the truth value of all propositions that assert what will and what will not come to pass in the future. Along with Calvinists, Arminians therefore affirm that omniscience implies exhaustive, definite foreknowledge of all that shall come to pass.

2. But Scripture teaches an open future. Open Theists argue that while some passages show that God foreknows as settled much of the future, other passages suggest that the future is partly open. Hence, they point out that God speaks about the future in conditional terms (“if,” “perhaps,” “maybe”); that he sometimes regrets decisions he’s made; that he sometimes expresses surprise or disappointment over what happens; that he “tests” his covenant partners to find out what decisions they’ll make; and that he sometimes changes his mind in response to new circumstances.

If we take these passages literally, they suggest that the future is partly open. As many theologians (Calvinist and Arminian alike) have always argued, however, there is no reason we should take these passages literally. The Bible often depicts God in human terms, using anthropomorphisms. If we were to take these anthropomorphic passages literally we’d have to conclude not only that God doesn’t know the future perfectly but also that God doesn’t know the present perfectly. Several times the Bible depicts God as needing to “go down” to a city (e.g., Babel, Sodom, and Gomorrah) to find out what is going on (Gen. 11:7; 18:20–21). Indeed, we’d have to conclude that God literally “remembers” (Gen. 8:1), and has “eyes” (2 Chron. 16:9) and “arms” (Ps. 44:3). Open Theists, of course, don’t want to go this far with their literal reading of the Bible, but their hesitancy undermines their literalistic reading of the “openness” passages.

3. But what “grounds” God’s knowledge of future free decisions? Calvinists and Open Theists both argue that the Arminian concept of God foreknowing from all eternity what not-yet-existing free agents will choose is incoherent. Knowledge is grounded in reality, they argue. If agents are the ultimate determiners of their own decisions, as Arminians (and Open Theists) hold, then there is no reality to ground God’s knowledge of what free agents will choose an eternity before the agents themselves exist to make these decisions. Calvinists avoid this problem by grounding God’s knowledge of the future in his own will, while Open Theists avoid it by denying God possesses eternal definite foreknowledge of what free agents will decide.

Arminians have offered two responses to this objection. First, some Arminians have argued that God’s foreknowledge of future free decisions doesn’t need to be grounded in anything other than God’s own omniscience. As mentioned above, an omniscient God must know the truth value of all propositions, including propositions about what future free agents will decide once they exist and make these decisions. There is nothing more that need be said about the matter. Second, many Arminians have held that God is above time. He only foreknows the future from our perspective. From his own eternal perspective, however, he knows the future in the same timeless moment he knows the present and the past. There is, therefore, no problem of grounding God’s knowledge of free decisions before agents exist and make these decisions. God knows everything as it occurs and because it occurs, yet from an eternal, timeless perspective.

God Foreknows by Sovereignly Ordaining the Future
(The Calvinist View)

Over and against Open Theism, Calvinists agree with Arminians in affirming that God possesses exhaustively definite and eternal foreknowledge of all that shall come to pass. But while Arminians hold that God’s foreknowledge is based on how the future will unfold, Calvinists hold that God’s foreknowledge is based on how God wills the future to unfold. In the Calvinist view, this is both a clear teaching of Scripture and an unavoidable inference of reason.

Biblical Arguments

Arminians, Open Theists, and Calvinists agree in affirming that, if God has decided to bring about a future state of affairs, he foreknows with certainty that this state of affairs will come to pass. Calvinism differs from Arminianism and Open Theism in affirming that every detail of history is just such a state of affairs, for nothing takes place outside the will of God.

In the Calvinist view, God leaves nothing to chance. He “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (Eph. 1:11). For example, the scope and duration of empires may seem to depend on the decisions of kings and military generals. Yet Scripture informs us that it is God who determines these matters (Acts 17:26). If God is able (as he surely is) to inspire prophecies about the future succession of nations (e.g., Dan. 2:31–45) and even provide details of a particular nation’s future destruction (Ezek. 26:7–21), this is because when it comes to achieving his will, “the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing” and no king or general “can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What are you doing?’” (Dan. 4:35; cf. Isa. 40:15, 17). God alone is “sovereign over the kingdoms of men” and he “gives them to anyone he wishes” (Dan. 4:17 NIV). God “sets up kings and deposes them” (Dan. 2:21 NIV) and directs the king’s heart “like a watercourse wherever he pleases” (Prov. 21:1 NIV).

So it is with every event in world history. God brings about national disasters (Amos 3:6) yet also decides something as small as how dice will land when tossed (Prov. 16:33). When what we call “accidents” happen, God’s will is behind them (Exod. 21:12–13) as much as when blessings come a person’s way (James 1:17; cf. Job 1:21). If a woman is barren, it is because God made her so (Gen. 20:18) as much as when a woman conceives a child (Ruth 4:11–12; Ps. 113:9; 127:3). The time and circumstances of a person’s death are controlled by God as much as a person’s birth (Job 14:5; Ps. 139:16). God’s sovereign purpose encompasses the activity of the wicked (Prov. 16:4) as much as the activity of the righteous, for God “has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses” (Rom. 9:18; cf. vv. 22–23). There are, of course, myriad decisions people make that affect accidents or blessings, infertility or fertility, birth and death, and wickedness or righteousness. Yet Scripture teaches that God’s will ultimately decides these matters.

In short, everything that comes to pass is ultimately “from him and through him and to him” (Rom. 11:36). And since God’s decisions are rooted in his eternal purposes, God foreknows every event that shall ever come to pass from the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4–13; 3:11).

Many of the passages that are most frequently cited in defense of divine foreknowledge explicitly connect this knowledge with God’s will. Undoubtedly the clearest, most-compelling, and most-frequently cited passages defending divine foreknowledge are found in Isaiah. In Isaiah 46:9–10 the Lord says:

I am God, and there is none other;

I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

Similarly, in Isaiah 48:3–5 the Lord says:

The former things I declared long ago, they went out from my mouth and I made them known; then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.

Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass, I declared them to you from long ago, before they came to pass I announced them to you,

so that you would not say, “My idol did them, my carved image and my cast image commanded them.”

Both Calvinists and Arminians affirm that these passages support belief in God’s exhaustive, definite foreknowledge. What Arminians do not notice, however, is that these passages are equally clear in teaching us how God possesses such amazing foreknowledge. God declares the end from the beginning; he doesn’t passively observe it. And then God himself ensures that what he declares will come to pass. “I made them known,” the Lord says, “then suddenly I did them and they came to pass” (Isa. 48:3, emphasis added). God foreknows the end from the beginning because God decrees and then brings about every event that moves history from beginning to end.

Along these same lines, it is important to notice why God demonstrated his foreknowledge in these passages. He was doing this to convince the Israelites that he alone is the Lord of history, not the idols they were tempted to worship. He declared events before they came to pass “so that you [Israelites] would not say, ‘My idol did them, my carved image and my cast image commanded them’” (Isa. 48:5). Notice that the question answered in these passages is not “What does God happen to foreknow?” but “Who commands and brings about the events of world history?” In other words, God demonstrates his all-encompassing foreknowledge in order to prove his all-encompassing sovereignty and thus free the Israelites from their idolatry.

The same holds true for a number of other classic texts supporting divine foreknowledge. For example, God tells Abraham that his descendants would remain in Egypt “for four hundred years” before coming out “with great possessions” to inherit the land of Canaan (Gen. 15:13–18). As the narrative unfolds, however, it becomes clear that God didn’t merely foreknow that things would happen to turn out this way. He foreknew these matters because he had decided to actively bring them about.

For example, when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, Scripture informs us that it was God who was sending Joseph to Egypt, which ultimately resulted in all Abraham’s descendants ending up there (Gen. 45:5). The brothers intended this action for evil, but “God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20). As the narrative unfolds it becomes clear that God is directly involved at every turn. From the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (e.g., Exod. 9:12; 11:10) to the sending of the plagues (e.g., Exod. 9:14), and from the unexpected favor the Egyptians showed the Israelites (Exod. 12:35–36) to the responses of kings as the Israelites invaded Canaan (e.g., Judg. 11:20), God was ensuring that his promise to Abraham would be precisely fulfilled. God doesn’t merely know how things will happen to turn out; he determines how things will turn out, which is why he knows how things will turn out.

In the same fashion, when God demonstrates his foreknowledge that the captivity of the Israelites would end after seventy years, he tells his people it’s because “I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back” (Jer. 29:10 NIV). God foreknows their future because he knows his own plans for them, “plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jer. 29:11). So too, God foreknows that a king will be named Cyrus who will let God’s people go because God himself determined to raise up a man by that name and use that man as his servant, turning Cyrus’ heart to let God’s people go (Isa. 44:28; 45:1, 13; cf. Prov. 21:1).

Many other classic foreknowledge texts also make explicit the connection with God’s will. If God foreknows the exact duration of David’s life, it’s because “all the days ordained for [him] were written in [God’s] book before one of them came to be” (Ps. 139:16 NIV). If God foreknows that Jeremiah will be a great “prophet to the nations” and that Paul will be a great messenger to the Gentiles, it’s because God himself set these two apart for this purpose when they were still in the wombs of their mothers (Jer. 1:5; cf. Gal. 1:15–16). And if Jesus foreknows that Judas is going to betray him, it’s because Judas was not among “the chosen” but rather was “doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled” (John 17:12 NIV; cf. John 6:64, 70–71; 13:18–19).

The connection between God’s foreknowledge and will is remarkably clear in the crucifixion of Jesus. Scripture states that Jesus was “handed over . . . according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” and was “crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law” (Acts 2:23). Herod and the people “gathered together against . . . Jesus . . . to do whatever [God’s] hand and [God’s] plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28). Clearly, Jesus wasn’t just crucified the way God foreknew he would be; he was crucified according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, just as God predestined him to be. God didn’t devise a plan based on his foreknowledge. His foreknowledge was based on his plan.

Finally, perhaps the clearest and most important passages that associate God’s foreknowledge with God’s will are those that address God’s foreknowledge of who will be saved. God foreknows who his people will be because “[God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4) and “predestined us to be adopted as his sons” (Eph. 1:5 NIV). We were “destined for eternal life” (Acts 13:48) and given grace “in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Tim. 1:9). We were “chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:11 NIV). Hence, believers are referred to in the New Testament as “the elect” or “chosen ones” (eklectos; see Matt. 24:22, 24, 31; Luke 18:7; Rom. 8:33), which means we were preselected from the masses “in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” and “for the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:7, 12 NIV).

Yet God foreknows who his people will be not only because he chooses them but also because he himself ensures that they will come to him. No one can come to the Father unless God himself opens their hearts to believe and unless he himself draws them into a relationship with Christ (John 6:44; Acts 16:14). All who the Father draws come to Christ, and Christ loses none of those who are so drawn (John 6:37, 39).

It is true that in several places the New Testament seems to reverse this order. Paul says that “those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29), and Peter refers to those who are “God’s elect” as those “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God” (1 Pet. 1:1–2 NIV). But it’s important to note that neither passage says God chooses people according to his foreknowledge of their faith, as Arminianism contends. The foreknowledge referred to in Romans 8:29 can easily be interpreted as referring to God’s eternal love for his people, just as the concept is used in Romans 11:2. And the foreknowledge referred in 1 Peter 1:1–2 can easily be interpreted as referring to God’s foreknowledge of his plan of salvation, for Peter adds that the elect were saved “through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood” (1 Pet. 1:2 NIV).

The whole of Scripture, Calvinists believe, supports the conclusion that God foreknows all that shall come to pass because God foreordains all that shall come to pass.

Supporting Arguments

1. The believer’s confidence implies foreknowledge and foreordination. If God does not know with certainty all that will come to pass, as Open Theism argues, believers cannot have the assurance that God has a purpose for every event of their life. Tragedies may occur that God did not specifically ordain or allow, for he did not even know for certain that they would come about. Against such a notion, Scripture encourages believers to look for the hand of God in the midst of their hardships (Exod. 4:11; Heb. 12:3–13).

2. A clear answer to the question: “What basis is there for God’s foreknowledge of the future?” The Arminian view requires us to conceive of God knowing all the facts about what future free agents will choose an eternity before the agents themselves, or anything else in creation, actually exist. But where do these eternally existing facts about what free agents will choose come from? What “grounds” these facts? In the Arminian view, they cannot be grounded in God, for this would undermine their libertarian view of freedom. But neither does it seem that these facts can be grounded in the agents themselves, for prior to the creation of the world only God exists.

Some Arminians try to get around this problem by contending that it is simply an attribute of omniscience to eternally know the truth value of all propositions, including propositions about future free actions. But this response is inadequate, for it simply pushes the question back one step. We must now ask, “What eternally grounds the truth value of propositions regarding future free actions?”

Other Arminians try to get around the problem by appealing to the traditional view of God as timeless, but this too is problematic. Even if one grants that God exists in an “eternal now” (a point that is increasingly questioned by contemporary theologians), God’s knowledge of what agents will freely do logically precedes the agents’ free actions. Prior to the creation of the world (whether “prior” is understood chronologically or logically), only God exists. Hence, if we are going to claim God foreknows all that agents will do throughout history prior to the creation of the world, we must accept that this knowledge is grounded in God’s knowledge of himself. He foreknows what agents will do because he knows what he is going to do through these agents.

3. Mere foreknowledge doesn’t increase God’s providential control. In Scripture and throughout church history, people have appealed to God’s knowledge of the future as a means of increasing believers’ confidence that the future is in God’s hands. Yet if God’s knowledge of the future is based on how the future happens to unfold rather than in how God wills it to unfold, how does God’s foreknowledge increase this confidence? Thus, in the Arminian view the future is as much dependent on the chance decisions of free agents as it is in the open view. The mere fact that God happens to foreknow something changes nothing. Only a God who not only foreknows what will happen but is in control of what happens can give believers confidence that the future is in God’s hands.

As we noted earlier, some Arminians known as Molinists respond to this objection by arguing that God knows not only what agents will do but also what agents would have done in every other possible circumstance in which they might have been placed. Molinism holds that God chooses which future he desires to bring about based on his “middle knowledge.” In this way they believe that we can affirm, with Calvinism, that God controls the future while still affirming, with Arminianism, real libertarian freedom.

This view is problematic on a number of counts. First, it’s debatable that anything like the Molinist view is espoused in Scripture. Second, Molinism has great difficulty answering the question of what grounds God’s supposed middle knowledge. On what is God’s knowledge of what free agents would do in every conceivable situation based, since the free agents themselves don’t yet exist? And third, while there’s no question that this view gives God more control over what comes to pass than the standard Arminian view, Molinism still undermines believers’ confidence that the future is entirely in God’s hands. For God’s knowledge of what agents would do in every possible circumstance is still knowledge of libertarianly free human choices, many of which may not be choices that God would have wanted humans to make. Hence, while Molinism gives God the power to choose which “set” of free human choices (called “feasible worlds”) will make up our one actual world, God still has to put up with some choices in our world that are outside of his perfect will. To this extent, the future is not in God’s hands.

Responding to an Objection

How are humans free and morally responsible if their actions are predetermined? Arminians and Open Theists argue that if God predetermines what humans choose to do, then they aren’t free and morally responsible for their actions. Calvinists offer three responses to this.

First, while Calvinists grant that there is an element of mystery here, Scripture teaches both that God determines all that comes to pass and that humans are free and morally responsible. For example, Pilate, Herod, and many others are judged to be “wicked” for crucifying Jesus, yet everything they did was according to “the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23; cf. 4:27–28). Mystery or not, therefore, out of fidelity to Scripture Calvinists feel compelled to affirm that God predetermines the actions of agents in such a way that the agents themselves remain free and are morally responsible for their actions (this view is called “compatibilistic freedom,” in that human freedom is seen as “compatible” with the claim that God ordains all things that shall happen, including all “free” human choices).

Second, this objection is a curious one for Arminians to raise, for the belief that agents are free and morally responsible while nevertheless conforming to God’s eternal decrees is hardly more mysterious than the belief that agents are free and morally responsible while nevertheless conforming to God’s eternal foreknowledge. In both views we must accept that agents are free and morally responsible even though the fact of what they will choose is settled an eternity before they choose it. Whether their future choices are eternally settled merely in God’s mind (foreknowledge) or also in God’s will (predestination) does not substantially increase or decrease this mystery.

Third, the libertarian view of freedom presupposed in this objection, a view held by both Arminians and Open Theists, is at least as mysterious as the Calvinist view that actions are free and the actors morally responsible even though they’re predetermined by God. Arminians and Open Theists insist that agents must originate their own choices for them to be free and morally responsible. No prior cause or set of causes is allowed to determine an agent’s choices. But an action that isn’t brought about by prior causes is capricious, which is neither intelligible nor morally responsible. Calvinists thus see no advantage to embracing the mystery of libertarian free will, which is not taught in Scripture, while rejecting the mystery of a free will that is nevertheless determined and foreknown by God, which is taught in Scripture.

God Foreknows All That Shall Be and All That May Be
(The Open View)

Again, while they disagree about how God knows the future, both Arminians and Calvinists agree that an omniscient God must know the future exclusively in terms of what will certainly come to pass. For biblical as well as philosophical reasons, Open Theists depart from this view of foreknowledge and hold instead that the future is not just about what will come to pass but also about what may or may not come to pass. Since Open Theists agree with Arminians and Calvinists that God is omniscient and knows all of reality perfectly, they believe that God knows the future partly in terms of what will come to pass but also partly in terms of what may or may not come to pass. In other words, while Arminians and Calvinists both hold that the future is exhaustively known by God in an eternal and definite manner, Open Theists hold that the future, since it is partly unsettled or “open,” is known by God as such.

Biblical Arguments

Open Theists hold that the future is partly settled and partly unsettled primarily because they find this view reflected in Scripture. Certainly there are many passages that characterize the future as settled, such as when God inspires prophesies about what will come to pass in the future (though Open Theists argue that most prophecies are conditional warnings, not unconditional predictions). They affirm that God is the sovereign Lord of history who can predestine, and therefore foreknow, as much of the future as he chooses. Open Theists part with the classical tradition, however, in their denial that these settled passages tell the whole story. For there are also many other passages that depict the future as unsettled, and Open Theists believe that these passages must be taken just as seriously as the settled passages.

For example, the Lord often speaks about the future in terms of what may or may not occur. To illustrate, the Lord told Moses that the leaders of Israel “may believe” that he sent Moses after the first or second or perhaps third miracle he performed (Exod. 3:18–4:9, emphasis added). Scripture tells us the Lord decided against leading Israel along the shortest route to Canaan because he thought that if they faced the Philistines they might want to return to Egypt (Exod. 13:17). Similarly, the Lord instructed Ezekiel to symbolically enact Israel’s exile as a warning, telling him, “Perhaps they will understand, though they are a rebellious house” (Ezek. 12:3, emphasis added). The Lord also told Jeremiah to preach to the Israelites, telling him, “It may be that they will listen . . . I may change my mind about the disaster I intend to bring” (Jer. 26:3, emphasis added; cf. v. 19). Interestingly enough, the Israelites did not understand Ezekiel’s warning. If God was certain of this all along, was he not deceiving Ezekiel when he promised him that the people might understand and then using this as the motivation for him to enact the prophecy?

One final example of the Lord treating the future as a “maybe” must suffice. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus “threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me’” (Matt. 26:39, emphasis added). If anything was predestined and foreknown from the creation of the world it was that the Son of God was going to be killed (Acts 2:23; 4:28; Rev. 13:8 NIV). Indeed, Jesus himself had been teaching this very truth to his disciples (Matt. 12:40; 16:21; John 2:19). Yet here we find Jesus making one last attempt to change his Father’s plan, “if it is possible.” Does this prayer not reveal Jesus’ conviction that there was at least a theoretical possibility that another course of action could be taken at the last moment? Of course, in this instance it was not possible. There were other times in Scripture when God was unwilling to change his mind (cf. Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Ezek. 24:14; Zech. 8:14). Yet this doesn’t negate the fact that Jesus’ prayer presupposes that divine plans and possible future events are in principle alterable. And this means that the future is partly open, even if in this instance Jesus’ own fate was not.

Other aspects of the way God talks about the future also suggest that it is partly open. For example, the Lord often expresses surprise or disappointment when events he considered improbable occur (Isa. 5:1–5; cf. Jer. 3:7, 19; 7:31; 19:5; 32:35). Similarly, the Lord tells us he sometimes regrets the way decisions turn out that even he himself made (Gen. 6:6; 1 Sam. 15:11, 35). One can only experience surprise, disappointment, and regret when things turn out differently than one originally expected or hoped. But this is impossible if God is eternally certain of how everything will turn out.

Moreover, God often expresses frustration as he strives with people to get them to align themselves with his will (e.g., Isa. 63:10; cf. Acts 7:51; Eph. 4:30; Heb. 3:8, 15; 4:7). Why would God earnestly try to get people to do things he’s eternally certain they will never do? And how could God genuinely grow frustrated with people’s stubbornness if he was eternally certain they’d remain stubborn? Similarly, at one point the Lord says, “I sought for anyone among [the Israelites] who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one” (Ezek. 22:30, emphasis added). Can one genuinely seek for something they are certain is not there to be found? Of course not. Hence, Open Theists conclude it could not have been a settled fact that the Lord would not find an intercessor before he went earnestly searching for one.

Furthermore, Scripture frequently describes God as testing people to find out what they will decide to do (e.g., Gen. 22:12; Deut. 8:2; 13:1–3; Judg. 3:4; 2 Chron. 32:31). If God eternally foreknows exactly what people are going to do, how can he—and why would he—test them to find this out? And Scripture often says that God changes his mind in response to new circumstances or the prayers of his people (e.g., Exod. 32:14; Num. 11:1–2; 14:12–20; 16:20–35, 41–48; Deut. 9:13–14, 18–20, 25; Judg. 10:13–15; 2 Sam. 24:17–25; 1 Kings 21:27–29; 2 Kings 13:3–5; 20:1–6; 1 Chron. 21:15; Jer. 18:7–10; 26:2–3, 19). Indeed, God’s willingness to adjust his plans in light of new circumstances is described as one of God’s attributes of greatness (Joel 2:12–13; Jon. 3:10). It’s hard to understand what these passages mean if God faces an exhaustively settled future.

The only one who knows the nature of the future with certainty is God and, as shown, he speaks about it both in terms of what will come to pass and in terms of what may or may not come to pass. Open Theists thus conclude that the future is partly settled and partly open—and God knows it as such.

Supporting Arguments

1. The nature of freedom. How can we be free and morally responsible for what we do if our future has been settled in God’s mind from all eternity, as both Arminians and Calvinists teach? No one holds that we are morally responsible for events that occurred before we were born, for we have no power to influence the past, and we can’t be morally responsible for events we cannot influence. If God has known from all eternity everything I shall choose to do in the future, however, then the fact that I shall choose something in the future has been settled in God’s mind at every moment in the past. Hence, it seems I have no more power to alter the past-settled fact of what I shall choose than I have to alter any past fact. And it therefore seems I cannot be free to make, or morally responsible for, choices God has eternally known I shall make. For me to be free and morally responsible, the possibility of my choosing otherwise must be real. And since God is omniscient and knows reality exactly as it is, God must know my free future choice as a possibility, not as an eternally settled fact.

2. The problem of evil. One has to wonder why God would create beings like Satan and Hitler if he was certain they’d turn out as evil as they did and certain they would end up in hell. We can easily understand why God must allow free agents to do evil and eventually go to hell once he gives them free will, for to revoke this gift once it is given is disingenuous. But why would God give this gift in the first place if he were certain ahead of time that the agent would misuse it to destroy themselves and others?

3. The urgency of prayer. If one accepts that the future is not exhaustively settled, prayer and godly living become extremely important. We are not just waiting for the future to be revealed; we are partnering with God to help determine what the future will be. Because the future is not exhaustively settled, things really hang on the decisions we make, including the decision to pray or not pray. The open view thus infuses the Christian life with a sense of passion, significance, and urgency.

4. Practical living. The open view of the future is the most plausible view because it squares with our everyday life. Whatever philosophy we might embrace, we all live as though the open view were true. With every decision we make we assume that much of our immediate future is settled (e.g., we take for granted the ongoing reality of our world and the laws of physics) but that some of it is up to us to decide. The open view simply says that this common-sense assumption is accurate.

Responding to Objections

1. The open view denies omniscience. It is often argued that the open view denies the omniscience of God. This is a misunderstanding. Along with Arminians and Calvinists, Open Theists unequivocally affirm that God is omniscient—that is, God perfectly knows everything there is to know! The disagreement is not about the scope or perfection of God’s knowledge but rather about the content of reality that God perfectly knows. Open Theists simply believe that possibilities are real and that God knows them as such.

Some philosophers and theologians object that an omniscient God must know the truth value of all future-tensed propositions, including propositions about what future free agents will choose. In response, some Open Theists argue that future-tensed propositions about what free agents will choose to do have no definite truth value until agents resolve their decisions one way or another. Other Open Theists, however, grant that God must know the truth value of all future-tensed propositions but go on to point out that future-tensed propositions regarding what agents may or may not do also have truth values that an omniscient God must know.

2. The open view undermines confidence in God’s sovereignty. If God doesn’t foreknow all that shall come to pass, some argue, the future is largely left to chance; people’s suffering may be meaningless and God can’t assure us he can bring good out of evil or triumph over evil in the end. How can you trust a God who faces a partly open future?

It is true that Open Theists reject the Calvinist belief that God ordains or even “allows” every specific thing that happens for a specific divine reason. Not everything happens “for a divine purpose” in the open view (and many Arminians agree). Far from being an objection to this view, however, Open Theists see this as one advantage of their view. If a person believes every specific thing happens for a specific divine reason, they must accept that every horror in world history—from the raping of children to the gas chambers of Auschwitz to specific individuals going to hell—takes place “for a divine purpose.”

At the same time, Open Theism offers at least as much assurance to believers as the Arminian view, which allows for the free will of agents while affirming exhaustively definite foreknowledge. If God has unlimited intelligence, as Christians have always affirmed, then he can anticipate and plan a response to possible future events as effectively as he can to certain future events. The only reason we humans can more effectively anticipate a certain future event than we can a number of possible future events is because we have a limited amount of intelligence. The more possibilities we have to anticipate, therefore, the thinner we have to spread our limited intelligence to anticipate each possibility. So of course we’re less effective at anticipating possibilities than we are certainties.

Open Theists submit, however, that any view that thinks God is more in control of the future merely because he knows it entirely as a certainty rather than partly as a domain of possibilities is bringing God down to a human level by limiting his intelligence. A God of unlimited intelligence doesn’t have to spread thin his intelligence to cover possibilities the way we do. Rather, a God of unlimited intelligence is able to anticipate each and every one of a gazillion possibilities as effectively as he does a single certainty. In fact, he can anticipate each and every one of these possibilities as though each one were an absolute certainty. Only a God of limited intelligence would gain an advantage by foreknowing certainties rather than possibilities.

Thus, if we trust in God’s unlimited intelligence, it should not affect our confidence in God in the least, whether we believe God anticipates one certain future story line, as classical theism holds, or a multitude of possible future story lines, as Open Theism holds. Whatever comes to pass, the Open Theists can affirm as confidently as the Arminians and Calvinists that God was preparing a perfect response to this very event from the foundation of the world. It’s just that Open Theists are so confident of God’s infinite wisdom that they deny that God had to be certain the event was going to take place for this to be true. Any number of other things could have happened, and if they had, the Open Theists would be saying the exact same thing about them.

In the open view, not everything happens for a divine purpose, but everything does happen with a divine purpose, for God brings to every event that comes to pass a wise purpose and plan he’s been preparing from the foundation of the world in case this event takes place. And this plan and purpose is exactly what it would have been had God known with certainty that this event was going to happen.

In this respect, the open view arguably gives God more power to control the future than the common Arminian view. For if God faces an eternally settled future, there’s nothing God or anyone else can do to change it. If God faces a partly open future, however, then God can intervene to influence agents toward the best possible outcomes.

3. God cannot foreknow only some of the future. It is often argued that for God to be certain of anything about the future, he must be certain of everything about the future. This is an unfounded assumption. Sociologists, biologists, advertisers, and insurance agents accurately predict group behavior all the time without predicting what specific individuals will do. Moreover, quantum physics, chaos theory, complexity theory, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and other branches of science are now revealing that all of reality is structured as an interplay between determinism and spontaneity. Our own experience reveals the same thing. With every decision we make we reflect a deep conviction that some of the future is settled while some of it is unsettled, left up to us to decide. Far from being problematic, therefore, the balance Open Theists find in Scripture between predestined and foreknown aspects of the future, on the one hand, and open aspects of the future, on the other, is consistent with both modern science and our own experience.

In this light, we should have little trouble accepting that the sovereign God is able to foreordain and foreknow that Jesus would be crucified, for example, without having to foreordain or foreknow exactly who would carry this out (Acts 2:23; 4:27). Nor should we find it hard to accept that God can predestine and foreknow that he will have a beloved church without predestining or foreknowing which individuals will and will not choose to belong to his church (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4–5).

4. The supposed “openness passages” in the Bible are merely examples of anthropomorphic language. Many have argued that the passages to which Open Theists appeal for support can be explained as anthropomorphisms (i.e., depicting God in human terms). There is, however, nothing in any of these passages that suggests they are merely anthropomorphic. None of the texts suggest it is as though God changes his mind, regrets previous decisions, is surprised or disappointed, and so on. Nor is there anything in the rest of Scripture that requires or even warrants that we interpret all passages that depict a partly open future as anthropomorphic. Scripture describes God’s character as unchanging (Mal. 3:6), but it never teaches that God is unable to change in any respect (e.g., his intentions, experiences). It teaches that the future is settled to the extent God wills it, but it never teaches that the future is exhaustively settled. And it teaches that God sometimes chooses not to change his mind (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Ezek. 24:14; Zech. 8:14) but never that he cannot change his mind. Indeed, passages that reveal God choosing not to change his mind only make sense if God can change his mind when he chooses.

Further, the passages cited in support of the open view do not readily lend themselves to an anthropomorphic interpretation. Like all figures of speech, anthropomorphisms must connect with reality at some point if they are to communicate anything truthful. Expressions like “the right hand of God” or “the eyes of the Lord,” for example, communicate something true about God’s strength and knowledge. But what does the concept of God “changing” his mind communicate if indeed it is merely an anthropomorphism? If God in fact never changes his mind, saying he does change his mind doesn’t communicate anything truthful: it is simply inaccurate. This observation is especially important when we consider that some passages of Scripture were written for the expressed purpose of encouraging us to believe God is capable of changing his mind (Jer. 18:1–10; 26:2–3, 13) while others depict God’s willingness to change as one of his praiseworthy attributes (Joel 2:13–14; Jon. 4:2).

Finally, interpreting openness passages as anthropomorphisms sometimes results in undermining the integrity of Scripture. For example, Scripture says that because of Moses’ intercession, “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (Exod. 32:14, emphasis added; cf. Deut. 9:13–14, 18–20; Ps. 106:23). If the Lord didn’t really change his mind, then neither did he really plan to bring disaster on his people. If this is merely anthropomorphic, then Scripture misleads us when it explicitly tells us what the Lord was planning before he changed his mind. Similarly, 1 Chronicles 21:15 tells us that the Lord in righteous anger dispatched “an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it” (emphasis added). But “when he was about to destroy it, the Lord . . . relented.” If God never really changes his mind, the explanation Scripture explicitly offers as to why the Lord sent the angel in the first place cannot be correct, for God never really intended to destroy Jerusalem. For all these reasons, Open Theists do not find the anthropomorphic interpretation of openness passages to be compelling.