The difficulty that God's foreknowledge causes to our finite and presumably free world is well captured by the epistemic argument;
1. God is omniscient
2. God has given human beings free will so that human beings can choose between good and evil.
3. But if God knows beforehand what you are going to choose, then you must choose what God knows you are going to choose. If you must choose what God knows you are going to choose, then you are not truly choosing; you may deliberate, but eventually you are going to choose exactly as God knew you would.
4. Thus if God has foreknowledge, then you do not have free will; or, equivalently, if you have free will, then God does not have foreknowledge.
Augustine, arguing from his Greco-Roman six-line framework, saw eternity (both in the garden and in heaven) not as a sequence but rather as a collection of all nows experienced totum simul. This is Plato’s higher state of timeless perfection (for change necessarily means imperfection). God timelessly decreed which counterfactual conditionals[1] would be timelessly true.
These pre-decreed world-lines then govern every circumstance, every cause, every effect - ‘whatever has happened was foreordained, and what happens to a person was also foreknown (Ecclesiastes 6:10)’. While this account affirms God’s sovereignty and gives some context for His foreknowledge it brings into question our freedom.
These pre-decreed world-lines then govern every circumstance, every cause, every effect - ‘whatever has happened was foreordained, and what happens to a person was also foreknown (Ecclesiastes 6:10)’. While this account affirms God’s sovereignty and gives some context for His foreknowledge it brings into question our freedom.
Hume softened Augustine’s hard determinism into a compatalistic[2] thesis by arguing that humans can still choose to do what was determined for there is no possibility for them to do otherwise; and so in this sense we are free. But compatabalism hardly lets God off the hook; for even if we are in some sense free, every event, whether good or evil must have been pre-ordained by God.
But there are problems with middle knowledge counterfactuals. By way of example suppose ‘Adam is free with respect to eating an apple, then it seems reasonable to say he might eat the apple, and also that he might not eat it. But if it is true that he might eat it then it if false that he would not eat it – and conversely, if it is true that he might not eat the apple, then it is false that he would eat it. So if he is free with respect to eating the apple, then it is true he might eat it and also true that he might not eat it, but it is not true either that he would eat it or that he would not eat it. [3]’
Thus if Adam is truly free to eat the apple then there are no counterfactuals to describe what he would do. It is therefore widely but not exclusively believed that middle knowledge counterfactuals (because they are not grounded) will not settle the matter.
Augustine’s determinism and Molina’s middle knowledge emerged from the Greco-Roman framework and its conception of God’s immutability; ‘I the LORD do not change; therefore you O children of Jacob have not perished (Malachi 3:6)’ but our growing understanding of quantum theory and non-linear processes now points us toward a more dynamic, perhaps even stochastic cosmos;
‘Modern physics has revealed the existence of extensive intrinsic unpredictabilities both in the microscopic realms of quantum mechanics and also in the macroscopic realm of chaos dynamics. Such intrinsic epistemological deficiencies offer the chance, if we are bold enough to take it, of trying to turn them into ontological opportunities of openness; treating them as potential loci for the operation of additional causal principles, active in bringing about the future and going beyond and complementing the causal principle of the exchange of energy between constituents that has been the conventional description used by physics. The complete set of all causal principles, including human and divine agency, will then be what brings about the future state of the world’[4].
The advantage of Polkinghorne’s open view is that it readily explains how a relational God might interact in the world. The most obvious example is Jesus who ‘emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave (Philippians 2:7)’. There were things Jesus did not know but came to learn (Mark 13:32) and his character matured through suffering (Hebrew 5:8-9). Obviously Jesus experienced change. Further John declares that ‘the Son of God has come and gives us insight to know him…the true God (1 John 5:20)’ while the author of Hebrews called Jesus ‘the radiance of his glory and the representation of His essence (Hebrews 1:3)’ so if Jesus really is the essence of God then God too must have experienced change.
The open view shifts the divine conception from Augustine’s timeless, immutable Greco-Roman god toward a dynamic, relational - one might even say Hebrew God. As one scholar put it; ‘the concern of Malachi is divine faithfulness not immutability’. After all God named Himself I will be who I will be (Exodus 3:14) which the Greek Septuagint subsequently rendered ‘I AM WHO I AM’ to fit Plato’s ‘being who was’. But the dynamic Hebrew God was not saying to Moses ‘I exist’ but rather ‘I will be faithful, dependable’.
The open view is helpful because it recovers the relational aspect of God’s character - but according to General Relativity the future is not expressed solely in temporal terms. To understand why imagine two mirrors separated by a fixed distance and a photon that bounces back and forth between them.
If an observer is stationary relative to this simple light clock then the observer will read the time between bounces to be a particular value. But if he then moves relative to the light clock the distance the light travels must increase to account for the fact that the start and end points are no longer concurrent; so if the speed of light is invariant (Maxwell) we must conclude that the time between bounces must also be relative.
If time is relative then it follows that the flow of time (whatever that means) must also be relative. But if that is true motion between two observers will dictate whether the observers drift into each other’s past or future. But how can an observer experience someone else’s future before they experience it for themselves?
The most convincing way to resolve this dilemma is to accept that the past, present and future do not really exist in the way we experience them. Time cannot really flow so our experience of now cannot be ontologically significant. Instead time must be a brain dependant illusion - an artefact of how we experience the world.
Similarly cosmologists point out that the Hamiltonian[5] of the universe does not have a position (so we cannot say there is potential energy) or a speed (so we cannot say there is kinetic energy) so;
If an observer is stationary relative to this simple light clock then the observer will read the time between bounces to be a particular value. But if he then moves relative to the light clock the distance the light travels must increase to account for the fact that the start and end points are no longer concurrent; so if the speed of light is invariant (Maxwell) we must conclude that the time between bounces must also be relative.
If time is relative then it follows that the flow of time (whatever that means) must also be relative. But if that is true motion between two observers will dictate whether the observers drift into each other’s past or future. But how can an observer experience someone else’s future before they experience it for themselves?
The most convincing way to resolve this dilemma is to accept that the past, present and future do not really exist in the way we experience them. Time cannot really flow so our experience of now cannot be ontologically significant. Instead time must be a brain dependant illusion - an artefact of how we experience the world.
Similarly cosmologists point out that the Hamiltonian[5] of the universe does not have a position (so we cannot say there is potential energy) or a speed (so we cannot say there is kinetic energy) so;
H=0
This equation is known as the Hamiltonian constraint. The idea that a closed universe has no net energy requires that all the matter in the universe, which provides positive energy, to be exactly cancelled by all the negative gravitational energy of the universe.
The next step is to shift from this macro-smooth description of classical field theory to the graininess of quantum theory. According to quantum theory the total energy of a closed system can be expressed in terms of its ‘system’ wave-function;
The next step is to shift from this macro-smooth description of classical field theory to the graininess of quantum theory. According to quantum theory the total energy of a closed system can be expressed in terms of its ‘system’ wave-function;
EΨ = i ħ δΨ / δt
To account for the total energy of the universe this wave-function is taken over the entire universe; but since the energy of the wave-function is equivalent to the Hamiltonian of the universe we can also say;
EΨ = 0
This result known as the Wheeler – DeWitt equation can be expressed as;
δΨ / δt = 0
In words - the rate of change of the state of the universe equals zero. This result is known as eternalism; and again suggests that time does not really flow. Instead this universe looks like a four dimensional frozen block that consists of three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension.
To imagine the frozen four dimensional block universe, picture three dimensional objects smeared across a fourth temporal dimension. If your imagination falters then consider the essentially two dimensional picture of the earth orbiting around the sun which returns year after year to the same position. According to eternalism rather than the earth orbiting the sun along a closed ellipse that repeats infinitum the orbit is stretched out into a frozen helix. In this way each orbit returns to the same position but because of the newly instated temporal axis each revisited position has shifted one rung (one year) along the helix. It all simply exists, the past, the present, and even the future.
On first pass this seems to be a description of a world that cannot permit free will. But while it is true to say 'what will be will be' it does not follow that what will be will have to be. When considered more deeply it turns out that the block universe representation gives no warrant to suppose that the future must be one way; rather it requires that the universe will be some way.
It then follows that since eternalism does not have to be one way it could in principle be some other way - and so in principle at least eternalism does not have to collapse into fatalism. Furthermore, free will never entails that we can change anything, past, present or future. We do not change the present, rather we make the present be the way it is, and will be.
So while it is true that I cannot change the future in the block universe, my free acts still make the future be what it will be. Just as my free acts in a temporal universe make the present what it is and the past what it was. It is the sum of all free acts coupled with determined action that will make the future what it will be.
So eternalism turns out to be consistent with free will - and as such preserves both God's foreknowledge and our free agency. In so doing, this description of the world effectively rebuts the epistemic argument - even if it does come at a price - namely the way we experience the world, more specifically the way we experience 'now' must ultimately be illusionary.
[1] Counterfactuals are conditional statement in the subjunctive mood. For example if I could run fast I could go to the Olympics. If I ask her for a date she would say yes. The antecedent and consequent are typically contradictory; I am not fast; but sometimes the antecedent and consequent are true; for examples she does say yes.
[2] Libertarian Free Will; an agent is free with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is within the agent’s power to perform the action and also in the agents power to refrain from the action (consistent with non-determinism); Compatibilist Free Will; an agent is free with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is true the agent can perform the action if she decides to perform it and she can refrain from the action if she decides not to perform it. (consistent with determinism).
[3] The Openness of God Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, Hasker, Basinger 1994 Intervarsity Press
[4] The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis Polkinghorne J 2001 Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co
[5] The Hamiltonian represents the sum of kinetic and potential energy in a closed system
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