Palantirs, Planners & Predetermination
Recently, I had an exchange with kind folks over at Triablogue regarding foreknowledge, here. They had been challenging JC to explain how God's knowledge of the future is compatible with libertarian freewill (LFW). As part of the discussion, I said I think God knows the future because He can see it. I also asked: Do you think God can see the future? Paul & Steve responded:
Paul's response:
So, we don't take "foreknow" as in "peers into the future."On the Calvinist scheme, God knows anything about his creation whatever, because he decreed it. He consults his decree, his plan. So, God's decree causes his knowledge rather than the creature causing God's knowledge.
Steve responded by comically relating my comment about God seeing the future to a Palantir as well as by saying:
Not literally. Divine "foresight" is just a picturesque and figurative synonym for divine foreknowledge or (more precisely) God's knowledge of the future.
Here goes...
First off, I agree God's seeing the future isn't literal. God doesn't have literal eyes or need a Palantir or the like. In fact, I liked Steve's way of saying it. God's seeing the future is a picturesque way of saying God knows the future. Thanks Steve!
But there's a problem here. I don't think this option is open to Steve or Paul, in any precise sense of the phrase "knowledge of the future". Because it's not the future God knows.
Let's say foreknowledge means what Paul states: God consults His decree, His plan. Isn't this like a day planner? Today, God looks at His plan for tomorrow. So if we were precise, rather than saying God knows the future we would say God knows His plan for the future. These are not equivalent, unless the plan is the future. But just as God's knowledge and plan for me are not me, so God's knowledge and plan for the future are not the future. The future is not God, nor merely one of His thoughts.
Perhaps there's another option here. Perhaps instead of a day planner we should suppose God calculates the future. In Calvinism, people are special in that they think and want things, but they do operate in such a way that given certain inputs, they produce certain outputs. God could compute what we will do just as easily as we compute 2+2=4. God's foreknowledge would work much like this site, which computes the eye color of your future children. Perhaps God knows the future through predetermination.
But knowledge though predeterminism is deductive knowledge, which doesn't add to knowledge. By knowing the principles of addition and knowing the variables are 2 and 2, your not adding anything to your knowledge by knowing the result is 4. The real question is where did the principles and variable come from? If they came from God's plan, then the "predetermination" option is actually no different than the day planner option. So again, this isn't equivalent to saying [in a precise way] God knows the future.
I did want to thank Steve & Paul for their responses, and I think the distinction they make could be helpful in alleviating equivocation problems in foreknowledge debates.
Comments
A.M. Mallett
http://travelah.blogspot.com/
Thanks for stopping by. I added a link to your blog.
God be with you,
Dan
You wrote:
“God's mind is just way cooler than ours and I think trying to figure out "how" He knows things is a bit of a mistake.”
I believe that you are absolutely correct on this. While we know from scripture (contrary to open theists) that God knows everything including the free acts of people in the future (contrary to calvinists who believe that choices resulting from the presence of LFW cannot be known even by God). We do not (and cannot) know how God knows these future free actions.
The calvinist will assert that He knows because He predetermines everything, but this is about as flagrant example of the begging the question fallacy as you will ever see (i.e., they assert their answer as the answer, e.g., 2+2=12, why? because I say 2+2=12 and that settles it! :-) ). They simply assume their answer to be true and declare it to be the answer.
A while back I corresponded with Plantinga on this very point and he agreed that we do not know, nor can we know how God knows what He knows about future free will actions involving LFW. Plantinga sees compatibilism as an extremely weak position by the way.
As creator, God is above and beyond time and space, without the limitations of created beings, so that is going to impact how he operates in the world He created as well as how he knows things. He does not have sense organs as we do, or a physical body, nor does he rely on the testimony of others, or any of the other ways that we commonly know things.
I like using the metaphor of **seeing** things. It seems to me that if God knows everything (and he does) then that would be **like** “seeing” everything at once. That helps me to grasp it, that he sees it all at once, so nothing surprises him and he can know and foretell the future without difficulty. C.S. Lewis used to talk about God being in an “eternal now” so that he saw the whole parade at once even though someone in time would only see the part of the parade immediately in front of him. Lewis was struggling to try to picture how seeing everything all at once must be. Anselm also spoke of God seeing everything at once as well.
I don’t feel too bad not knowing how it works because when it comes to God there are lots of things that He does or knows, that I cannot fully understand (e.g. I believe that he did miracles and can do miracles today, but in none of them do I understand the mechanics involved; He created ex nihilo and I believe He did so but I cannot comprehend this as well; I believe that He became flesh, Jesus, and I don’t know how that could happen either; etc. etc.)
Another thing: no matter who you are, or what you believe, there is only going to be one actual future. This one actual future will consist of all of the events that will actually occur in the future. Some of these events will involve LFW choices in which a possibility will certainly be actualized, though it did not have to be actualized. So there is no incompatibility between the one actual future that is coming and LFW.
Robert
Thanks for your comments and I agree. Two scripture passages that come to mind are:
Romans 4:17(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
and
Mathew 26:53-54
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?
In the Romans passage Paul explains God's foreknowledge as God calling things which don't yet exist as though they already did.
In the Mathew passage, Christ claims to be able to do otherwise than what He will do.
God be with you,
Dan
BTW, Plantinga's a stud.
You brought up the Matt. 26 passage:
“Mathew 26:53-54
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?
. . . .
In the Mathew passage, Christ claims to be able to do otherwise than what He will do.”
Dan do you realize that you can do a “Trilemma argument” with this claim by Jesus???
You may recall that C. S. Lewis presented an argument sometimes called the Trilemma: when Jesus claimed to be God; (1) either he sincerely but mistakenly believed this to be true in which case he would be DELUDED (i.e., “lunatic”) or (2) he said he was God but knew that he was not in which case he would be LYING (i.e., “liar”) or (3) he spoke the truth in which case he is God (i.e., “Lord”). Hence the “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” trilemma of Lewis (popularized by Josh McDowell).
Well the same thing can be done with Jesus’ claim in Matt. 26. He explicitly and clearly claimed to be able to do otherwise in that situation (while he did not actually call the legions of angels to deliver him, he could have done otherwise and done so if he had chosen to do so). Regarding his claim: (1) either he thought he really could do otherwise, but could not, in which case his belief and claim was false and he was mistaken (he really could not do otherwise (“mistaken” or “deluded”), or (2)he knew he could not do otherwise but only said that he could do otherwise, in which case he is lying and misleading people (“Liar”, deceiver), or (3)he spoke the truth, that he really could have done otherwise (truth teller). So he was “mistaken”, “lying”, or SPEAKING THE TRUTH. He was speaking the truth. As this is the case, he really could do otherwise than he ended up doing in that situation.
So he had the ability to do otherwise but chose not to do otherwise (which is exactly what it is like to have a choice when LFW is present: you have the ability and the opportunity to actualize different possibilities in the same situation, but end up actualizing the one possibility that you choose to actualize).
Actually we all experience this reality on countless occasions and Jesus experienced it as well, as did other persons in the biblical record.
This also means that Jesus was clearly and explicitly affirming that with respect to some actions we can do otherwise (which means that Jesus, God himself, was affirming LFW). I guess those calvinists who affirm there is no exegetical basis for LFW in the bible haven’t read all of the verses (and there are many) like this one very carefully. I guess they just didn’t notice them. Overlooked them in their haste to ridicule the truth about free will and instead affirm their error of exhaustive determinism/the universal negative claim that no one can ever do otherwise in any situations ever. So verses like this clearly provide evidence for LFW in scripture.
A determinist cannot allow for any situation in which any one ever has a choice and really **could do otherwise**, so a determinist cannot affirm that Jesus was telling the truth in Matt. 26. Perhaps it was just an “anthropomorphism” or figurative language so we can’t take Jesus’ LFW affirming statement as really claiming the ability to do otherwise in that situation. Or perhaps the determinist will reinterpret the meaning of the text away as they do with texts such as John 3:16. But the exhaustive determinist will also not want to affirm that Jesus was mistaken in his claim nor would he want to affirm that he was lying in his claim. They may do what the Pharisees did in another similar situation where LFW was clearly present and they had a choice and the ability to do otherwise but ended up lying and saying “we don’t know” in order to evade the truth [cf. Luke 20:1-8, note the Pharisees have at least three choices all of which they can do in that situation, two possibilities which they do not choose to actualize but could have chosen to do and the one possibility that they actually ended up actualizing: (1) admit it was from heaven, did not want to make that choice as it would have been a problem for them, (2) admit it was only from men, did not want to make that choice either as that also would have been a problem for them, and the third possibility which they actually choose to do (3) claim that they did not know, note also that Jesus had at least two possibilities which he could have chosen to do in that situation, (1) to choose to tell them by what authority he did things, or (2) refrain from telling them by what authority he did things/not tell them by what authority he did things, he choose to actualize possibility (2). But he certainly could have done otherwise had he chosen to do so, so in this incident we have “the ability to do otherwise” which is the heart of LFW all over the place, just another LFW affirming text the calvinists must have missed].
You also wrote:
“BTW, Plantinga's a stud.”
Yes I would agree with that assessment. It is very encouraging and significant that a Christian philosopher of that intelligence and caliber says that compatibilism is an extremely weak position (he makes these statements in his famous “Advice to Christian Philosophers” essay). If you want to see it for yourself I would be glad to cite it for you here. Just ask.
Robert
Thanks for your comments and I agree. I am sure Calvinists can come up with something interesting to say about Mt 26, but I am glad I don't have to.
I remember that article by Plantinga. It's a good one.
God be with you,
Dan