There are different models of providence. I'll use the metaphor of a roadmap to illustrate the differences:
1. Calvinism
On this view, God is the cartographer, and God has mapped out the entire future. However, the map is invisible looking ahead. The map becomes progressively visible as the traveler moves forward into the future. The map is retrospectively visible, but never prospectively visible. So he's always going where the map directs, but he doesn't know that in advance. The roadmap was always there, in meticulous detail, but it can only be seen with the benefit of hindsight, like a passenger seated facing the rear window. In this sense, the traveler is backing into the future. He seems to be traveling blind, yet his every step was mapped out.
2. Classical Arminianism
I'm using "classical Arminianism" as a synonym for simple foreknowledge. Like Calvinism, the future has been exhaustively mapped out, for God creates the world that he foresees. But unlike Calvinism, humans are cocartographers with God.
Because the map is a facsimile of divine foreknowledge, it's as though the human traveler has two lives, back-to-back, only he took an amnesia pill the first time around, so he doesn't remember that he's repeating the exact same journey. His future was mapped out every step of the way, like he's retracing his steps. Stepping into his own footprints. He cannot deviate from the roadmap, since foreknowledge is history ahead of time. Because his future is mapped out, it's like he's reliving the his past. Although the future trajectory of the map is invisible, it's there all along. That's the route the traveler is bound to take. That road and that road only. Once God makes a world that matches what he saw in the crystal ball, it's too late for the future to turn out any other way.
3. Molinism
In this respect, (3) is like (2). God has many different roadmaps of the future. Some are infeasible. He picks one roadmap to instantiate. Possible persons contributed to the route, but God alone chooses which map to actualize. The map charts a complete world history, so the future was mapped out in advance. It's like deja vu, only human agents drank from the River Lethe at the destination of the journey, so they've forgotten the journey when, in effect, they repeat it. As with (2), it's just like they lived twice, and the second life duplicates the first. Although the future trajectory of the map is invisible, they have, in effect, been there before–like a time loop.
4. Open theism
On this view, there is no roadmap. God is a fellow traveler. No one knows what lies around the next bend. No one knows what lies over the next hill. God and his human traveling companions are drawing the map as they go along. Both God and man discover the future as that eventuates, moment by moment. Unsuspected dangers lie ahead. No one knows what to expect. They're venturing into the undiscovered country without a map or compass. Anything could happen. The map is drawn after the fact, at which point it's always too late to use it.
5. Occamism
Some freewill theists might take issue with my characterization of (2)-(3). They say humans have counterfactual power over God's past beliefs (or timeless beliefs). If we chose to do something different, then God would have different foreknowledge. So it's not too late to redraw the map, since the ink is never dry.
But a problem with that deceptively appealing explanation is that it suffers from the same antinomies as time-travel scenarios in which a man steps into the time machine and heads back into the past to alter the future. But that's paradoxical because he thereby erases the future he came from. It's like he never existed in that future timeline, because his past action replaces the original timeline with a new timeline. Although Occamism isn't identical with retrocausation, it generates the same antinomies:
#2, but strike the last sentence. There is no reason to think God the omnipotent is limited in such a way.
ReplyDeleteHelpful metaphor. Sticking with that metaphor, would it be fair to say that the main differences between the Classical Arminian view and open theism are that (1) open theism is devoid of the “re-living” or “second life” and that (2) foreknowledge of creation on classical theism is like a second order knowledge—knowledge of the knowledge obtained in the rehearsal?
ReplyDeleteClassical Arminianism** not classical theism
DeleteYes, I think that's one way to capture the difference.
Delete" 4. Open theism
ReplyDeleteOn this view, there is no roadmap. God is a fellow traveler. No one knows what lies around the next bend. No one knows what lies over the next hill. God and his human traveling companions are drawing the map as they go along. Both God and man discover the future as that eventuates, moment by moment. Unsuspected dangers lie ahead. No one knows what to expect. They're venturing into the undiscovered country without a map or compass. Anything could happen. The map is drawn after the fact, at which point it's always too late to use it."
A very partisan, unsympathetic, inaccurate caricature of open theism - at least, as held by its most careful proponents. In brief, there is a divine road map, but it is not all-encompassing, and it may be adjusted in reaction to the decisions of free creatures. No, not anything can happen, but only the range of possibilities which God chooses to allow. God is in control - not a mere "fellow traveler" - it is just that he decides to allow some 2-way control to others, within the confines of his unchangeable plans. I would suggest reading more Boyd or Hasker or Rhoda or Sanders on this view of divine providence.
The god of open theism totes an Etch A Sketch roadmap.
DeleteLOL. Seriously, Steve, you can't give a pig-ignorant summary of open theism when critiquing it. It's like someone objecting to Calvinism that on it God is the only sinner - as if that is what "Calvinism" just *means*. If you want to do apologetics, or just intelligently navigate dueling views of divine providence, you got to read the best proponents of the various views. What I say above is basically our view. Some of us go deeper into the logic and metaphysics than others, of course, as well as in seeing how this fits with scripture.
ReplyDeleteA better way to explain the views is in terms of how God manages. On open theism, God takes risks, but not on any of the other views. And on the other views, all his work is "up front" as it were, rather than ongoing. The all-encompassing plan rules out any mid-course adjustments. See Geach's chessmaster analogy. Another way to compare is the accounts of foreknowledge.
Dale,
DeleteDo those risks include God risking his possibly failing to secure my redemption? Or redemption more broadly conceived? And if so, what would a mid-course correction on salvation look like? Another incarnation attempt after Joseph unexpectedly punched Mary in the womb? Or would the regularity of nature cease at a hypothetical moment like that?
Let's see: Dale accuses me of pig-ignorance regarding open theism, then refers me to Alan Rhoda as well as Geach's chessmaster analogy–even though Rhoda did an essay attacking the chessmaster analogy. Ironically, Dale's the one who's mired in the pigsty (his native habitat).
DeleteKarl, yes, yes but vanishingly unlikely, who knows.
ReplyDeleteSteve, you're too old for that silly insulting.
Thanks Dale.
ReplyDeleteI ask because the answer, “yes but vanishingly unlikely, who knows,” looks suspiciously and relevantly similar to the cartographer analogy. A huge, unforeseen (even if unlikely) brick wall in the middle of a highway seems about as close to “anything can happen” as I can figure.