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Does God simply choose to limit his knowledge?

Full Question:

Dear Sir,

I consider myself a believer in the open view. Regarding foreknowledge it seems to me that the best view to take is the belief that God is indeed capable of foreknowing our future choices and how we will CHOOSE if He CHOOSES to even though our future choices do not yet exist as a reality to be known. I realize that if God was to do this our choices would be reduced to only free in the compatiblistic sense. I also believe that God is indeed capable of and often does VOLUNTARILY refrain from foreknowing what our future choices will be and how we will choose. Under this type of open view it is perfectly possible for God to foreknow as definite what some of your future choices will be and how you will choose and not know what some of your future choices will be and how you will choose. I would like to know from you if you could inform me of the names of well known open theists whose version of open theism is most like mine ( affirming God can know what our choices will be and how we will "compatiblisticly" choose if He chooses to foreknow)? Could you also inform me of the names of well known open theists who tend to believe that ALL future choices are free in the "libertarian" sense and are unknowable due to the fact that they do not yet exist as a reality to be known?

Sincerly,

Michael C.

Reply:

Michael,

In the book Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom. Basinger & Basinger ed., (IVP, 1986),

Clark Pinnock's chapter is titled: God Limits His Knowledge. But this title leads to some confusion about Pinnock's thoughts. In the chapter he argues that it would be illogical for God to foreknow, or omnipotently determine our free actions and still have them be free. God could have made creation such that he could guarantee we would always make the right choice and he would always know what we would do. What God cannot do, is foreknow our actions, or guarantee we would always choose correctly yet create us with libertarian free will. Thus, in the act of creating us truly free, it could be said that God limited his knowledge, or limited his power. It's a matter of mutually exclusive definitions. But, this is a very different thing than arguing God made us free, yet he could decide now to know or not know our unmade choices at will.

Joseph S. Holt

Reply:

Gilbert Bilezikian makes this argument on page 29 of his Christianity 101 (Zondervan 1993):

"In order to respect the integrity of human freedom and not interfere with its exercise, God often seems to limit his awareness of their actions--as if he were surrounding them with a bubble of non-interference, sheltering them from the full scope of his omniscience. Perhaps it is not too much to be expected of the transcendent God that he should be able to limit his knowledge selectively whenever he sovereignly decides to do so. God's ability to control the limits of his omnipresence, his omnipotence, and his omniscience does not minimize his sovereignty. To the contrary, that capacity enhances the infinite dimensions of his sovereignty by showing that God is sovereign even over the exercise of his own sovereignty." Of course, Bilezikian is not commonly associated with Openness, but make what you will of this! Some do seem to confuse Openness with the description above.

Blessings,

Tyler

Reply:

Michael seems to agree that, if God were to know our future choices, they would not be free. I think this is correct. God could have chosen to create a world of creatures having only compatibilist freedom, and if so he would have known exactly how every creature would choose in that world. Could God, in the actual world, choose to have us be only compatibilistically free in some instances, and thus be able to foreknow our choices in those cases, while leaving us with libertarian freedom in other cases? I see two problems with this view: (1) If God were to interfere in a number of cases, thus predetermining what we would do, this would tend to conflict with what we take to be his purposes in giving us free will in the first place. (2) Many of the circumstances leading up to our "compatibilist free choices" would be influenced by libertarian choices previously made by ourselves as well as other people. Thus, the circumstances of the choice could not be definitely known until those other choices had taken place.

William Hasker

Reply:

A similar question to the one you raise has been asked of me quite a bit recently. Many Arminians ask whether it is incompatible with openness to say that God could know the future actions of beings with libertarian freedom, but chooses not to do so. That is, God literally "limits" his knowledge. I think it problematic to say that God knows what we will do but does not act on that knowledge in dealing with us--keeps it out of his awareness. See Jon Tal Murphee's book, "Divine Paradoxes; A Finite View of an Infinite God" (Camp Hill, PA; Christian publications, 1998). He is an Arminian (affirms libertarian freedom) who wants to affirm timelessness and eternal definite foreknowledge (EDF) while claiming that God can choose not bring some of his knowledge to consciousness. Hence, God can "ignore" certain knowledge in order to interact and respond to us. So, in a sense, God does not "know" certain things. Unfortunately, he does not interact with the problems associated with this view (e.g. how can God choose not to know something?; How can a timeless deity respond?). He is not a proponent of openness though he does have much in common with us.

However, if one says that God chooses not to know the future of libertarianly free creatures, then the view would work out pretty much along openness lines regarding guidance, prayer, sin, etc. That is, the practical implications are going to be the same. Now, I'm aware that most proponents of openness argue that it is logically impossible for God to know the future acts of beings with libertarian freedom. But if one simply argues that the Bible simple portrays God as not having such knowledge, is there room in the openness camp for us to disagree as to why God does not have exhaustive definite foreknowledge? Is openness committed to a particular reason why God does not have such knowledge? I don't think so and so I see no reason why such folks would not be proponents of openness since both views agree that God does not know the future actions of beings with libertarian freedom--they just differ as to why God does not know them.

Sincerely,

John Sanders

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