Arminian conundra

According to Roger Olson:

God simply knows the future because it will happen; his knowing future free decisions and actions of creatures does not determine them. Rather that they will happen determines God’s knowing them because God has decided to open himself up to being affected by the world…Simple foreknowledge is simply future vision.

Perspectives on the Doctrine of God, 156-157.

On the face of it, this explanation generates four interrelated problems for the Arminian:

i) Olson is describing retrocausation. God knows the future because the future is the source of his future knowledge. In that case, God doesn’t know the future because he causes it (or decrees it). Rather, his foreknowledge is a retroactive effect of the future itself.

But this places God in the role of a passive observer rather than an active creator. How can God be the cause of the world if the world is the cause of God’s knowledge thereof? Doesn’t that make the existence of the world oddly independent of God’s creative fiat?

It won’t do to say this confuses the order of knowledge with the order of being, for on Olson’s scenario,the object of knowledge is also the source of knowledge.

ii) Apropos (i), this seems to make the eventuation of the future inevitable or unavoidable. God sees it coming down the pike. And not because of something he did. Rather, he’s on the receiving end.

But isn’t that necessitarian? Doesn’t that make the world metaphysically necessary? Que sera, sera?

iii) This also means that if God enters into dialogue with Abraham or Moses, God knows what they will say, as well as knowing what he will say. So his foreknowledge of that dialogue already includes or contains all his questions or replies. But in that event, it’s a rather stagey conversation. God is giving prepared answers. Reading from the indelible script of his foreseen answers.

But from an Arminian standpoint, isn’t that just as artificial as a predestined dialogue between Yahweh and Abraham or Moses?

iv) If the future causes God’s knowledge of the future, then what’s the point of praying to God–from an Arminian standpoint? God can’t change the outcome if his knowledge is predicated on the outcome. If his foreknowledge takes the outcome for granted, then the outcome is unalterable.

If he foresees what is going to happen because the future causes his prevision, then he can’t prevent the foreseen future from happening. So what does prayer accomplish, from an Arminian perspective? What are we asking God to do?

On simple knowledge, what God knows is not a hypothetical future (i.e. alternate possible timelines), but the actual future.

Why is that acceptable, but predestination is not? At least in predestination, God causes the outcome. Hence, the outcome is open for God. God was free to decree otherwise. He has total control over the end-result.