The reality of choice and the testimony of scripture

Arminian, on May 25, 2010 at 1:28 am Said:

**** Of course people don’t make choices if Calvinism is true. That’s one among many reasons to reject Calvinism. it is inconsistent wit hthe very conceot of “choice”, and if true means that no human beings ever have a choice nor choose. Calvinism claims to believe in people making choices. But its tenets are incompatible with that position. See Ben’s excellent article: http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/the-reality-of-choice-and-the-testimony-of-scripture/ ( also at SEA: http://evangelicalarminians.org/Henshaw-Determinism-Free-Will-The-Reality-of-Choice-and-the-Testimony-of-Scripture).

http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/fallacies-of-calvinist-apologetics-fallacy-8-calvinism-doesnt-charge-god-with-the-authorship-of-sin/#comment-4625

I’ve responded in detail to Ben’s “excellent” article, so I won’t repeat myself here. But now I’d like to make a more general point. Critics of open theism object that open theism is incompatible with Biblical prophecy. God can’t predict the future unless God knows the future.

But Arminianism represents the flip side of the same problem. Arminians traditionally affirm Biblical prophecy. But if God can predict the future, then the future can’t be open-ended. For if the future could go either way, then the outcome is unpredictable.

Let’s also keep in mind that Biblical prophecy often involves many different human agents. Indeed, a serious of human agents whose cumulative choices result in the forecast outcome. For the prophecy to come true, all these independent agents must unwittingly work in concert to yield that particular result. So the testimony of Scripture runs counter to libertarian choice.

Of course, Arminians try to get around this, but they lose any prima facie presumption for the Scripturality of their position.