Jumping from a burning building

Freewill theists often contend that allowing evil is distinct from causing evil. Suppose someone must jump from the fifth story of an apartment building to the parking lot below. Suppose there's a bystander underneath who's watching. Suppose there's a trampoline which the jumper will just miss, and the bystander can see that. Suppose the bystander can push the trampoline over so that the jumper will fall into the trampoline, but the bystander does nothing. Is there no sense in which the bystander caused the death of the jumper? Sure, freewill theists can resort to a stipulative definition of causation to deny that implication, but that's an ad hoc definition.

Causing and Not Causing Not to Occur

This is germane, both to the freewill defense as well as the oft-repeated claim that freewill theism avoids the moral liabilities of Calvinism:

One natural suggestion is that the agent who does harm causes it to occur; whereas the agent who allows harm doesn’t cause it, but simply fails to prevent it where she could have done so.[9]This suggestion has immediate moral implications. It seems true by definition (almost) that you can be causally responsible only for upshots that you cause. And it is arguably true that you can be morally responsible only for what you are causally responsible for. So, if you cause a bad state of affairs, you’ve probably done wrong; whereas if you don’t cause a bad state of affairs, you haven’t. In choosing between killing and letting die, you are choosing between doing wrong and not doing wrong. (Of course, this doesn’t apply to non-harmful cases of killing, such as, arguably, some cases of active euthanasia.) The question of what you ought to do is then tautologously easy.

This argument begins to get into trouble when we reflect on the fact that we are often responsible for upshots we allow: the death of the houseplants or the child’s illiteracy. When we notice that, in these cases, the plants die or the child remains uneducated because of some failure on the agent’s part, it becomes clear that the agent does, in some sense, cause the upshots. Moreover, most widely accepted contemporary accounts of causation imply that some event or fact involving these agents causes the deaths or illiteracy. For example, the counterfactual account of causation—according to which (very roughly) event E causes F if and only if had E not occurredF would not have occurred either—implies that it was the agent’s failure to water the plants that caused the deaths.[10] John Mackie’s INUS condition[11]—according to which E causes F if and only if E is a(n insufficient but) necessary part of a(n unnecessary but) sufficient condition for F—implies that the fact that the agent failed to water the plants causes the plants to die.[12]

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/#CausNotCausNotOccu

Can a Christian be demon-possessed?

1. If you're a freewill theist, then that commits you to the proposition that a Christian can be demon-possessed. And that's because a freewill theism believes a Christian can lose his salvation. If, a fortiori, a Christian can lose his salvation, then he can be demonically possessed. It's an argument from the greater to the lesser. If loss of salvation is possible, that's a greater case than possession. If something is possible in the greater case, then that includes the possibility of lesser cases.

Isn't subjection to demons a less radical condition than reversion to an unsaved condition? For a Christian to be possessed would be a horrific degree of subjection, yet lack or loss of salvation isn't a matter of degree but having nothing to counterbalance possession. If a believer can be possessed, that generates enormous tension between two opposing forces, but in the case of lack or loss of salvation, there is no tension because there's nothing on the other side (the Holy Spirit) to counteract the evil. 

Indeed, to be unsaved makes unbelievers liable to demonic possession. Conversion is sometimes an exorcism which liberates unbelievers from possession. So a reversal in your spiritual status, by losing you salvation, would render you vulnerable to the possession all over again. 

Now a freewill theist might object by saying that's not a case of  believer being possessed, but a former believer. But that takes us back to the a fortiori argument. 

2. So the upshot is that I think we have a clearcut answer to the question where freewill theism is concern. The answer is less clear in the case of Calvinism due to ambiguities in the concept of possession, including degrees of sin. Christians are sinners. What degree of sin is compatible with being a sinner? That's one of those sorites paradox questions. 

Is the God of open theism trustworthy?

We're all mind-numbingly familiar with objections to Calvinism, but the flip side is whether the God of open theism is a God who can be taken seriously. Say what you will about Calvinism, but that's a God to be taken seriously (if Calvinism is true). But the God of open theism is more like a comic book superhero. 

This also goes to the question of what makes God worshipful. Opponents of Reformed theism say the God of Calvinism isn't worthy of worship.

But how worshipful is the God of open theism? Is he a God you can trust? 

Christians and their loved ones can suffer terrible things in this life. In Calvinism, God is able but sometimes unwilling to protect Christians from horrible things. At we at least believe that God has a good reason for not protecting us in those situations. So he's still trustworthy.

But in open theism you're exposed to terrible harm because the God of open theism is unable to protect you. Indeed, the God of open theism doesn't know the right thing to do because he doesn't know the future, so he doesn't know the long-term consequences of divine intervention. 

It's hard to see how you can have faith in a God like that. He's not in a position to look out for your best interests even if he wanted to. So he can't be an object of unconditional trust. 

Indeed, not knowing the future means he will be mistaken in many cases. He will entertain false expectations. Indeed, some open theist prooftexts say that. 

So following the open theist God can be unintentionally harmful, since he's making stuff up as he goes along. You can be hurt, but he can't (except emotionally). 

In open theism we are in a very real sense, on our own. That has ethical as well as religious ramifications. While that may sound liberating to the shallow-minded, it's terrifying when you consider how vulnerable human beings are. It's a recipe for ruthless self-interest, because it makes life so insecure. In open theism we're living in a minefield. 

Bishop Wright's response to the pandemic

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation. But supposing it doesn’t? 

The point of lament, woven thus into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.

God was grieved to his heart, Genesis declares, over the violent wickedness of his human creatures. He was devastated when his own bride, the people of Israel, turned away from him. And when God came back to his people in person—the story of Jesus is meaningless unless that’s what it’s about—he wept at the tomb of his friend. St. Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit “groaning” within us, as we ourselves groan within the pain of the whole creation. The ancient doctrine of the Trinity teaches us to recognize the One God in the tears of Jesus and the anguish of the Spirit.

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead.

https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/

1. N. T. Wright has always been a mixed bag. As I recall, he developed a conservative reputation by debating Jesus Seminar types, and he was pretty good on his side of the debate. He also wrote a classic defense of the Resurrection. But in addition he churns out hasty, forgettable potboilers. He spreads himself way too thin. He's overrated and overexposed. He's become an oracle who's expected to have something wise to say about everything.

Why does an omniscient God test people?

My answer to a question from a friend:

What’s your thoughts on why an omniscient God gives people tests throughout the whole Bible already knowing what they’ll do?

i) Although he knows what they will do, they don't know what they will do, and the very test may influence what they will do. There's a sense in which the exercise can make a contribution to its own outcome. Having to actually through the ordeal or experience may change the individual in the process. He ends up in a different place than where he started. The challenge is transformative. 

ii) In addition, there's a reason these events are recorded. They are not primarily for the benefit of the test-subject but the reader. It's a way for readers to learn about God's M.O. The reader is learning about God's character through the experience of the Patriarchs (among others). 

iii) People like Abraham had a pagan background. So they didn't know if Yahweh was trustworthy. They had to learn from experience what kind of God Yahweh was. Is he like the fickle, malicious gods of the pagan pantheon, or is he different? 

Wrath and redemption

These are very confused objections to Calvinism:

https://www.facebook.com/jesse.morrell.1/posts/10157008212326765

1. The Bible is written in popular language, so Reformed theology often uses biblical language and imagery about God's wrath. Nothing wrong with that.

2. When, however, it comes to systematic and philosophical theology, greater precision is required. What does God's "wrath" stand for? Is that essentially an emotional state? Or is it a colorful, anthropomorphic way to express God's disapproval of sin?

Likewise, does the atonement pacify God's emotional state, or does it satisfy divine justice? Is it psychological or ethical? The literal attribute isn't anger but justice. 

3. The point is not that the atonement is anthropomorphic, but that scripture sometimes uses anthropomorphic descriptions to represent divine salvation and judgment. That understanding is hardly unique to Calvinism. Unless you think Yahweh is actually like the pagan gods of the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman mythology, with their recognizably humanoid psychological makeup, some adjustment is required. To take a comparison, Jesus isn't literally a pascal lamb, but his redemption action is symbolized by the pascal lamb. 

4. The atonement doesn't change God's mind. It's not as if there's a prior time when he's "literally angry with sinners," and a later time when he's pacified. If God is timeless, if God knows the future, then it's not as if he has to wait for the atonement to take effect to make up his mind. Indeed, if God planned the atonement, then there was never a time when that wasn't a factor in his view of the elect. 

So it's hypothetical. Absent the atonement, all sinners would face eschatological justice. The atonement doesn't change God's mind or attitude. Rather, it changes the outcome in the counterfactual sense that absent the atonement, there'd be a different outcome: universal damnation.

There's nothing contradictory about the Reformed position in this regard, if you allow a modicum of intelligence to influence your hermeneutics. Critics may disagree with that explanation, but if you're going to accuse of position of internal contradiction, then the question at issue is whether it's consistent on it is own grounds and not whether you reject the paradigm. 

Models of providence

Open theism is a view relatively easy to understand. According to open theism, God simply created a world with many libertarian-free agents in it and turned them loose. Their free choices were ultimately contingent, and–the hallmark of the view–God did not know ahead of time what they would do. (A primary motivation for open theism is the conviction that, if God did know what agents  were going to do ahead of time, they would not be free.) Thus they are responsible for their deeds and, to a large extent, God is not. God governs the world by controlling the nonfree aspects of creation and by being vastly more intelligent than his creatures the way a chess grandmaster might outplay a tyro. Divine providence is exercised through God's fantastic chessmaster skills, but open theists admit that God "takes risks" in creating and in further interacting with the creation…Open theism is incompatible with divine eternity, and there is a vast swath of knowledge–knowledge of future contingents–that it entails that God does not know…

For the Molinist picture of God's creative choice can be famed this way. Imagine that, prior to creation, the set of possible free creatures forms a union and comes to God with their employment demands…Or imagine a little differently, that they have a long list of all the possible worlds, and they have crossed off a number that they refuse to cooperate with. God, then, has to work within the boundaries his "employees" have set. Less picturesquely, he has to work within the boundaries of CCFs he did not choose to be saddled with.

One way of thinking about God's relationship to his creation goes like this God created seven billion or so other agents, all with libertarian free will, and turned them loose. These seven billion agents tend to get in each other's way. We are all quite familiar with our projects' being frustrated by our recalcitrant fellow human beings. God is in much the same situation, except that he is vastly more powerful, intelligent, and long-lived than the seven billion others that he must outwit, outplay, and outlast. 

According to the theological determinist…God's position vis-a-vis other agents is not that of a grandmaster playing a ninety-dimensional chess match against seven billion opponents, not even if we add that he somehow has advance knowledge of what moves they will or would make. 

Traditionally, God is held to be not only omniscient but essentially omniscient. TD not only embraces these attributes but also has a very clear explanation of both how God is omniscient and why he is essentially omniscient. God knows what happens because he makes it happen; his knowledge of the world is through (or just is) his knowledge of his plan for the world. Since his plan is comprehensive and his power is almighty, there is no possibility of his foresight's going wrong. 

Providence is the divine attribute that says God orders the world wisely and well. It is the attribute that allows the theist to trust God and to believe that, however unwisely or badly the world seems to be going at a particular time and place, in the end God's presently hidden goodness will overcome the apparent evil. Devotionally speaking, providence is one of the most important of the divine attributes.

In No-Risk views of God's relationship to his creation (i.e., those of TD and Molinism), God knows the end from the beginning, and his creation proceeds exactly as he wills it to at all times.  This means that evils done or suffered early in the narrative of a life or a world can be planned out so as to play a positive role later on. 

[In Risk-Taking views] the analogy of an adult supervising children at a playground captures the basic idea. The adult observes from the sidelines the melee of free-willed children running around a jungle gym. She has some idea of how the children are likely to behave, without perfect powers of prediction. She may step in if the play seems to be getting too dangerous or damaging, and she may punish children who do harm to others and comfort or compensate those who have harm done to them…On the other end of the spectrum, God could just let the chips of this life fall where they may–he might turn a blind eye to the bullies on the playground, so to speak–so that sublunary life is not ordered particularly wisely or well, but then set everything right, somehow, in the next life. 

My point in going through this difference between No-Risk and Risk-Taking views of divine providence is that I believe they generate, or are capable of generating, quite different attitudes toward evil and suffering in believers. Let me illustrate this with the biblical story of Joseph. 

In the narrative, Joseph begins as an arrogant young man and parental favorite. His brothers, envious and angry, eventually retaliate by selling him into slavery and convincing their father that Joseph is dead. Joseph is enslaved in Egypt, is unjustly accused of attempting to rape his master's wife, is jailed as a result, is forgotten by a friend he helps while in jail, and then is finally released to serve Pharaoh. He rises to be Pharaohs' chief minister and provides for the country during famine. His brothers, suffering under the famine in Canaan, travel to Egypt to procure food, not knowing Joseph's fate. Incognito, he provides for them, eventually reveals himself, and the family is reunited, with Joseph forgiving his repentant brothers.

In the course of reassuring his brothers of his good intentions at the end of the narrative, Joseph makes a remarkable theological assertion: "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today". That is, Joseph views his kidnapping and enslavement not, or not merely, as the results of created free wills acting contrary to God's desires, but as part of a divine plan to provide for his family during famine and to ensure their prosperity across generations. God does not intervene to prevent these evils, and he does not compensate for them afterward. Rather, they form an intrinsic part of a narrative in which even the events that we would ordinarily describe as evil are revealed to have good aspects, planned from the beginning by the divine mind though inscrutable to the humans in the midst of events. 

This is a view that can really be held only with No-Risk assumptions. It gives suffering a meaning in a way that Risk-Taking views cannot do, I think, for in Risk-taking views, the bullies on the playground or the slavetraders in the desert are not agents of the divine plan but confounding factors God has to work around. There is no point, no deeper meaning, in the suffering they inflict. There can only be the promise that its victims will not be forgotten. Heath White, Fate and Free Will: A Defense of Theological Determinism  (Notre Dame 2019).

Predestination and prayer

A stock objection to Calvinism is that it renders petitionary prayer pointless. My stock response is that in Calvinism, prayer and answered prayer are means by which the future is realized. To put it counterfactually, some events will happen in answer to prayer that wouldn't happen absent prayer. That's entirely consistent with predestination. However, I'd like to go beyond that to address the objection from a different angle. 

i) The Bible contains a number of blanket prayer promises. There is, however, a class of unanswerable prayers, and that's contradictory prayers. That's true for Calvinism and freewill theism alike. So there's an implicit exception to the prayer promises in reference to contradictory prayers. That doesn't call into question God's sincerity since God can't perform contradictions, so it should be understood that contradictory prayers aren't included in the promises. 

ii) Mind you, the Calvinist God might prearrange history to reduce the number of contradictory prayer promises. However, that has to be counterbalanced by other considerations. A world history with more unanswerable prayers might be better overall than a world history with fewer unanswerable prayers. Prioritizing circumstances to minimize contradictory prayers would marginalize other goods. 

iii) That said, freewill theism adds another class of unanswerable prayers. According to freewill theism, God has made prayer promises that he cannot keep because God's ability to make good on his prayer promises is often conditional on the independent cooperation of human agents. This means that in many cases, God can't grant your petition even if it's a perfectly legitimate request. In Calvinism, God is able but unwilling to answer some prayers while in freewill theism, God is willing but unable to answer some prayers. 

In that regard, freewill theism calls into question the sincerity of God's prayer promises. Unlike contradictory prayers, which are necessarily unanswerable, these prayers are contingently unanswerable. As a rule, God won't answer them because he must "violate" the freewill of human agents to grant the request. 

If freewill theism is true, there must be a vast number of prayers that God cannot answer if granting the request hinges on the independent cooperation of all parties to the petitioned outcome. Consider prayers for salvation, prayers for persecuted Christians, prayers to halt the wicked from harming the innocent. Since all concerned parties have libertarian freedom, God can't grant the request if they refuse to cooperate unless he overrides their freewill. 

So that creates an enormous loophole in prayer promises. It's unclear how the prayer promises were made in good faith when so many situations we pray about aren't actually covered by the promises. The God of freewill theism was never in a position to deliver on prayers that fall under that incalculably huge, but unstated class of prayer requests. 

It's like offering everyone who shows up at a certain time and place a free laptop, when only 30% of those who show up get the laptop. If the God of freewill theism knows that a vast number of prayer requests are automatically disqualified, should he not word the promise to make it more realistic?  

N.B. Don't compare that to the relationship between special redemption ("limited atonement") and the well-meant offer of the Gospel. To continue the illustration, 100% of those who show up for the laptop receive a laptop. Everybody responding to the offer gets what was offered. 

Freewill theism and evil

The problem of evil is often locked into two-sided debate between Calvinists and freewill theists. The freewill theists are confident that evil is a particular, indeed intractable problem for Calvinism–from which freewill theism is luckily exempt. There are, however, outside observers who think freewill theism operates within the same flawed framework:

One thing I noticed that many of the contributors had in common is a dissatisfaction with the very structure of typical defenses or theodicies, because (the thought goes) the very idea that God allows evil for the sake of some good (even one, as the skeptical theists might say, that we should not expect to be able to identify) would put God into an immoral relationship with those who suffer, because he'd be trading off their suffering for some other good, which would be an immoral way to treat someone. Those who endorsed some version of this line of thought reacted to it in a variety of ways: some wanted to rethink the personality of God in order to deny that he is part of our moral community, while others wanted to rethink the perfection of God so that we can think of him as an imperfect parent. I do think that this line of thought reflects a general turn in the literature on the problem of evil, from arguing about whether we can identify goods that outweigh and require evils, to discussing the ethical principles that would apply to God himself. I myself have most often encountered this turn in some critiques leveled by Abrahamic theists against other Abrahamic theists: the common argument against theological determinism, namely, that it entails that God bears some morally objectionable relation to evil and suffering, even if there is a great good that requires him to allow the evil.[3] The fact that so many in this volume see the problem as applying not just to theological determinists but to any standard theist is striking, and seems to me correct: everyone needs to address the question of God's own ethics. Unfortunately, none of the contribution addresses that question in any real depth, certainly not coming even close to the depth of Mark Murphy's God's Own Ethics.[4] So one useful lesson of this book is that we should try to explore the issue of what ethical principles should apply to God. However, we'll need to look elsewhere for a deep and thorough exploration of that subject.

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-problem-of-evil-eight-views-in-dialogue/

Open theism and prayer

Here is God just about to make it rain for the sake of the farmers and their crops in the fields around Clyst Honiton when he overhears the urgent prayer of the vicar who is running his garden party that afternoon and changes his mind. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 24.

Blood on my hands

In theodicy, freewill theists lean on the notion that God merely permits evil to happen. The intuition is that if an agent directly causes or determines an event, then that makes him morally complicit in a way that just allowing, or not preventing, an event caused by another agent does not. A cliché comparison is the distinction between killing a patient and letting him die, in medical ethics. 

And sometimes that's a morally salient distinction. But sometimes not. Suppose I'm a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. Suppose I secretly despise Hitler and the Third Reich. I'm not there because I signed up. I was conscripted. I'm there against my will. I privately hope the Allies will win. 

Suppose the commandant has a plan. If it becomes unmistakable that German lost the war, and the Allies are marching into Germany, the prisoners, including Jews, as well as Allied war captives, will be executed so that the Allies can't liberate the camp. After executing all the prisoners, the Nazi personnel will evacuate the camp. Even though the Nazis lost, they will kill as many Jews and Allied war captives as they can on the way out. A final act of spiteful revenge. 

Suppose I have a choice: I can stand by and let the prisoners be mowed down, or I can turn my machine gun on my nominal comrades and save the prisoners. Under that scenario, is inaction morally preferable to action? If I do nothing to prevent the massacre, does that let me off the hook? Conversely, if I take direct action by shooting the commandant and his henchmen to prevent them from murdering the prisoners, am I culpable? 

Two doors

I've discussed this before, but I'd like to use a different example to illustrate the point. Freewill theism touts the necessity of having freedom of opportunity. To have "real" freedom or a "real" choice means having alternate courses of action available to you. 

But here's the problem. Say you're standing in front of two doors. You can choose between Door A and Door B. In a sense, that's freedom of opportunity. You have two options to choose from. 

But here's the catch: the doors don't have windows. They're opaque. So you don't know what lies behind each door. You don't know in advance where each door will take you. 

Moreover, whichever door you go through locks behind you. So you're trapped by the choices you make. 

Even though you can pick one or the other, it's a blind choice. You might as well flip a coin. 

What if you go through Door A and find out that as a bad choice. But you couldn't know that before you did it, and once you do it it's too late to try Door B instead. You're stuck with the choice you made even though you couldn't foresee what you were getting into.

In addition, you didn't get to choose what your options are. Rather, you're confronted with options, and you have to make a choice from the options you're given. But what if none of them are the options you wanted? 

And this isn't just a metaphor. This is what happens to us in real life. This is how "choice" actually plays out. Open theism is so shallow in that regard. 

At least in Calvinism, there's the promise that everything happens for a good reason, even if you have to go through hell on earth in this life. But in freewill theism, you make conscientious decisions with catastrophic unintended consequences for yourself or your loved ones, and it may be utterly pointless. Just your hard luck. 

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and open theism

On Facebook I got into an impromptu debate about open theism. It started out in response to a question about the binding of Isaac, but quickly developed into a discussion about open theism:

Hays

1. It was a counterfactual command, but to be a test, God couldn't let Abraham in on the secret.

2. To be a test of faith, it has to be something Abraham values. 

3. The ordeal is ultimately for the benefit of the reader. In a sense, the reader knows how the story ends before Abraham does. It gives the reader insight into God's trustworthiness, even when–or especially when, he makes apparently unreasonable demands. 

4. There are parallels between the ordeal of Abraham and the ordeal of Job.

Ben

The text suggests that the test/ordeal was for the benefit of God, to see whether Abraham feared Him and would be obedient to his command.

11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

Hays

If you're an open theist. Is that your position?

Ben

Texts like this which suggest God learns lead me to lean in that direction.

Free fire zone

In the past I've discussed how freewill theism generates moral dilemmas. Here's a definition:

What is common to the two well-known cases is conflict. In each case, an agent regards herself as having moral reasons to do each of two actions, but doing both actions is not possible. Ethicists have called situations like these moral dilemmas. The crucial features of a moral dilemma are these: the agent is required to do each of two (or more) actions; the agent can do each of the actions; but the agent cannot do both (or all) of the actions. The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what she does, she will do something wrong (or fail to do something that she ought to do).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas/#ConMorDil

I've quoted Roger Olson as a freewill theist who concedes the reality of moral dilemmas. BW3 is another example:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2019/06/25/pros-and-cons-of-the-pro-life-issue-part-five/

BW3 uses moral dilemmas as a wedge issue to justify abortion in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. It isn't clear if by the life of the mother he means situations where one must die for the other to survive or where both will die unless one is killed. If moral dilemmas are a fixture of your worldview, then the world becomes a free fire zone where anything is permissible under dire circumstances. Freewill theists rail against the morality of Calvinism but it's ironic what their own position commits them to. 

Sleeping with a python

1. A self-identified open theist calling himself Christopher Fischer responded to my post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/05/open-theisms-blind-watchmaker.html

in a rambling two-part series:

https://godisopen.com/2019/05/25/podcast-m020-triablogue-ignorant-about-calvinism/

https://godisopen.com/2019/06/01/podcast-ep262-responding-to-triablogue/

It's unclear what his actually position is since he also says:

We only have one life to live. We have one life to make the best sense of the world and figure out what is real. 

https://realityisnotoptional.com/about/

That's more characteristic of atheism. Perhaps he started out more orthodox and has been drifting ever further until he's now on the brink of atheism. 

Does God know the future?

Peter van Inwagen is one of the most brilliant philosophical theologians of his generation. I'd say he's the equal of Alvin Plantinga. He's a freewill theist, and here he concedes that libertarian freedom is incompatible with knowing the future:

https://www.closertotruth.com/series/does-gods-knowledge-quash-free-will#video-48360

Open theism's blind watchmaker

A friend drew my attention to this post, from two years ago, by an anonymous open theist:

https://godisopen.com/2017/04/13/triablogues-use-of-annotated-prooftexts/

Triablogue does not offer commentary on how the quotes that he does use can be considered supportive or consistent with Reformed theology, so each verse quote is a lesson in guesswork into Triablogue’s thoughts. 

The post isn't just a list of bare prooftexts, but prooftexts with exegesis by scholars. It's true that apart from my initial introduction, I didn't offer any editorial comments on the prooftexts. That was be design. The purpose of the post is twofold: (i) to sample the breadth of exegetical evidence for Calvinism (ii) and also provide exegetical arguments for their legitimacy as Reformed prooftexts, from a variety of scholars. 

A few things of note, just the text of Genesis 45:5-8; 50:20 negates Reformed theology on its own, much less the wording of the associated quote. The main issue is that Calvinists, Reformed, and often Arminians do not tend to talk about God as they actually believe God is. In Reformed theology, God is simple, outside of time, pure actuality. God cannot “do” things, but forever remains immutable. God cannot speak or interact with creation. God cannot be related to creation in any sense, for that would defy is transcendence and simplicity.

1. Here the critic is confounding Calvinism with Reformed Thomism. But Reformed Thomism isn't synonymous with Calvinism. Reformed Thomism is just one school of Calvinism, albeit an influential and well-represented school of thought. But there are Augustinian Calvinists, Cartesian Calvinists, Scottish Common Sense Calvinists, &c. Jonathan Edwards wasn't a Reformed Thomist. Cornelius Van Til wasn't a Reformed Thomist. Vern Poythress isn't a Reformed Thomist. Greg Welty isn't a Reformed Thomist. A Reformed philosopher can be eclectic in his philosophical appropriation. 

2. It's no secret that I'm critical of Thomistic simplicity. As for pure actuality, depending on what that means, I agree that God himself is fully realized. God is not a contingent being.

That said, there's divine potential in the sense that creation doesn't exhaust or coincide with divine omnipotence. Take the classic distinction between God's absolute power and his ordinate power. 

In addition, God assumes contingent relations. God's economic roles are optional rather than necessary. 

Does Genesis talk with this Reformed theology in mind, or does it talk like this Reformed theology is not even a consideration in the minds of the writers. Is God pure actuality or active and dynamic? Is God incomprehensibly transcendent, or does God interact with people? Let the verses speak for themselves.

1. To begin with, there's such a thing as progressive revelation.

2. In addition, inspiration doesn't make Bible writers omniscient. There are lots of things they don't know. But ignorance doesn't contradict truth. 

3. This also goes to the difference between open theist hermeneutics and classical theist hermeneutics. If you take everything Scripture says about God at face-value, you end up with contradictory representations of God. So that leaves certain options:

i) Assume that Scripture really is contradictory. But in that event it would be arbitrary for open theists to privilege their prooftexts–since there'd no reason to think the Bible accurately represents God, assuming there is a God. Likewise, the prooftexts for each side would cancel out the other side's prooftexts.

ii) Leave the tensions as they stand. Make no effort to harmonize them. Again, though, that would be self-defeating for an open theist.

iii) Interpret one set of passages relative to the other.

iv) Apropos (iii), which passages should we take literally? It's much easier understand how the God of classical theism adapts to human understanding than to understand why Scripture would often depict the God of open theism as if he was the God of classical theism. So there's an asymmetry between these two approaches. 

The text of both Genesis and the quote depict God in a vastly different manner than Reformed theology. God “sends” (v 5). God takes precautions (v 7). God actively positions people into preferred places, as opposed to eternal decrees in which free actors are not a concern (v 8). God repurposes other people’s plans (v 20). None of these are actions of an immutable, simple, pure actuality God, not affected by creation and wholly transcendent.

That reflects a very simplistic or uninformed grasp of Reformed theology. Take someone who designs a video game. He exists outside the game. Yet he's responsible for every detail: characters, plot, setting, dialogue. Indirectly, he's totally involved in everything that happens.

At the same time, there's a distinction between the action of the gamer and action within the world of the game. The characters act on each other as well as their environment. 

The mere fact that the authors of Genesis have to point out this specific working of God suggests all listeners in the story do not automatically assume all things are the work of God. If they did, there would be no reason to attribute this specific action to God. Joseph and his audience are not Calvinists, but believe that God works within creation in specific instances to ensure success in His goals.

This isn't an isolated example. There are many examples in Scripture where the writer pulls back the veil to show the audience how God is directing events behind-the-scenes. 

Likewise, the associated quote by Mathews is not a Calvinistic concept. God specifically acting in one instance to assure success is antithetical to Calvinism, which believes all things (no matter how minute) are the eternal decree of God.

That's a fallacy. Showing God acting in one particular instance doesn't imply that God only acted in that one instance. 

Triablogue might not understand the logical fallacy of Composition, assuming something true of a part can be extrapolated to the whole. Yes, a car window is made out of glass, but this doesn’t suggest the entire car is made out of glass. Pointing out a car window is made of glass even suggests the entire car is NOT made out of glass or else it would be easier to just explain that the entire car is glass.

i) Sorry, but that's just obtuse. The post presents a cumulative case for Calvinism, citing a battery of prooftexts and exegesis. 

ii) Moreover, the Bible also has passages about God's universal predestination and meticulous providence. Individual examples serve to illustrate that general principle. 

Yes, God might work a specific purpose in one instance, but that doesn’t mean God works every instance no matter how remote for some secretive purpose. God working to save Joseph from his brothers to make him powerful does not mean God gives children cancer for some sort of goal in mind. That is a terrible stretch of logic. The context does not even assume God controlled the intentions of Joseph’s brothers, much less most the actions in the story that worked counter to God’s plans. The point is that God overcame obstacles and used them to His advantage, and interesting action for a supposedly “immutable, impassible” God.

i) The Joseph cycle begins with the protagonist receiving two prophetic dreams. This implies that the future was already set. The reader knows in advance how the story will end. In a sense, everything that happens in-between is working back from that fait accompli, like running a motion picture in reverse. 

ii) God had no obstacles to overcome. Joseph had obstacles to overome. 

iii) The actions of his brothers don't work counter to God's plan–any more than the actions of a storybook villain work counter to the intentions of the storyteller. 

iv) What's the open theist justification for children with cancer? Even if you subscribe to libertarian freewill, cancer is not a rational agent. So why doesn't the God of open theism cure cancer in children? It wouldn't violate the (nonexistent) freewill of cancer, and it wouldn't violate the freewill of the young cancer patient, who'd rather not die of cancer. 

Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God

WTS theology/systematics prof. Scott Oliphint is facing a heresy trial:

https://www.theaquilareport.com/a-charge-brought-against-dr-scott-oliphint-professor-of-apologetics-at-westminster-seminary/

A few brief observations:

i) I lack in-depth knowledge of Oliphint's theology. It's one of those situations where you read enough of somebody to make a preliminary judgment about whether it's worthwhile to read more of their stuff. From what I've read of him, Oliphint doesn't strike me as a high-level thinker, so I haven't bothered to deepen and broaden my familiarity with his writings. It's my impression, from what I've read, that he's out of his depth. So my knowledge of his theology is admittedly cursory. Life is short, so we make investment decisions about where to put our time. He has a son (Jared Oliphint) who strikes me as having a sharper mind than his old man. 

ii) Ironically, WTS has made it very impractical to have a detailed knowledge of Oliphint's position by withdrawing his controversial book from circulation, which makes remaining copies prohibitively expensive. Not that I don't buy expensive books, but for the price of that one book I could buy several different books that actually interest me. 

Parenthetically, I question the ethics of WTS buying the rights to the book from the publisher, like a product recall. Is that an appropriate use of seminary funds? Likewise, is it appropriate to conceal his position from public view and scrutiny by making the evidence inaccessible? 

iii) Here's an excerpt from his controversial book:

When Scripture says that God changes his mind, or that he is moved, or angered by our behavior, we should see that as literal. It refers us to God and to his dealings with us. It is as literal or as real as God being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Scott Oliphiint, God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Crossway 2011), 123-24.

In a way this seems to be readjudicating the Clark controversy. To judge by the excerpt, Oliphint is adopting Murray's position, but taking it to a logical extreme. It becomes similar to open theist hermeneutics. Assuming that's a representative sample, he's staking out a position more characteristic of freewill theism than Calvinism. Calvinism and freewill theism are competing theological paradigms. A position that rejects divine aseity, immutability, and impassibility is on the opposing side of the spectrum.  

Now Oliphint tries to nuance that, but the question is whether he's attempting to have it both ways. Can you have it both ways? I don't think so. 

iv) In fairness to Oliphint, this goes back to perennial debates about the relationship between exegetical theology and philosophical theology. The role of anthropomorphism and all that. Certainly there's a danger, and not just a hypothetical danger, of filtering biblical theism through an extraneous interpretive grid. Take debates over divine simplicity, or the way Aquinas glosses Exod 3:14. 

v) This becomes, in part, an issue of theological method. Do we interpret narrative theology in terms of what Scripture says about the divine attributes in more didactic genres? If there are passages which teach divine aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, and impassibility, then those are logically and literally irreconcilable with narrative or poetic passages that depict God as shortsighted, short-tempered, blindsided, reactionary, &c. Take passages about absolute predestination. Well, that can't be true if God is surprised by the turn of events or angered by the outcome.    

By the same token, the OT indictment of pagan polytheism loses most of its force if Yahweh is typical of the high gods in the pagan pantheon, the primary difference being that there's just one deity of that kind rather than many–who happens to be the God of Israel. 

To be the absolute Creator, God had to exist apart from time and space if time and space are modes of creation. If everything unfolds according to a master plan, then there's an asymmetrical relation between God and creation, where the world has no effect on God. The influence goes one way. That's not philosophical theology. Rather, that's exegetical theology. That's biblical creation, predestination, and providence. Of course, freewill theists demur, but that illustrates the competition between two incompatible approaches. Different reading strategies, divergent theological paradigms. 

The alternative is to say that Scripture is inconsistent. But if we affirm inerrancy, then it's necessary to make allowance for anthropomorphism. And if, indeed, the God of classical theism is approximately correct, then we'd expect God to relate to us on our level. That's not special pleading. Admittedly, appeals to anthropomorphism can be too facile and reflexive. We need to be circumspect about that principle. But it's not imported from philosophical theology. 

vi) That said, the resurgence of Reformed Thomism and Nicene subordination is animated by tribal loyalties and crowd psychology rather than fidelity to the witness of Scripture. Perfunctory profession of sola Scriptura while chauvinistic tradition carries the day. There's blame to go around in this controversy. It's not one-sided.