A philosophical problem with Calvinism

[Guest]

...to some degree, the idea that God must force human beings to certain actions in order to accomplish his will (predetermined plan) removes the sovereignty and freedom of God. In this case, God is bound to His own predetermined will and does not have the freedom to act in relation to human circumstances. If God is locked in to His own predetermined will, and that will is irrevocable, then God is not free.

This is an aspect that most predestinationists have not really addressed. In this sense, God was actually only sovereign at the moment he issued the decrees and decided on a predetermined plan, because now he is bound by that decision no matter what other circumstances might exist. Of course, if the system is logically coherent, it could easily be countered that God does not need any further freedom since he already knew all of the outcomes anyway because of his decrees. But that is precisely the point. This reduces the sovereignty to a single instant rather than being a characteristic of God.

The above is by Dennis Bratcher and comes from his article God’s Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Human Freedom

[Guest]

Meh.

I'm not sure about the first sentence,"the idea that God must force human beings to certain actions in order to accomplish his will (predetermined plan) removes the sovereignty and freedom of God."

If it's supposed to be an active argument against the Reformed understanding of God's sovereignty, then it's rather weak. The question isn't what God "must" do, the question is what he does do. And that's a question to be answered exegetically, not philosophically.

But maybe that's not what he meant. Maybe he's responding to a Calvinist's philosophical argument. Maybe a Calvinist actually was arguing that sovereignty requires that God exhaustively, meticulously determine every detail of history. If so, then it was the Calvinist arguing on philosophical grounds, and Bratcher was just responding on the same terms. In that case I have no objection to the quotation... Except to say that I don't care for that approach.

The rest of the comments only make sense if he's an open theist--the argument about reducing God's freedom to a single instant would apply against God's foreknowledge, too. So, SoaringEagle, you could as easily have named the thread, "A philosophical problem with Arminianism".

And... OK, I found the article, and he is an open theist.

In one sense, his argument in the second paragraph is absurdly weak. That is, he's not even attempting to argue against what Calvinists actually believe. He talks about God's freedom being limited to "the moment he issued the decrees", as though Calvinists believe God issued decrees at one point in time and then has lived through each successive moment, one after the other, watching it unfold. I'm sure Bratcher knows about the idea of God being outside time, so who does he think he's arguing against? (He can disagree about whether God is outside time, and argue that, but it's just silly for him to pretend that the above argument actually applies to "predestinationist" views, as he puts it.)

I've just skimmed his article, but I did notice this line near the end: "Again, the issue is not what God can or could do, but what he actually does, and has done."

That sounds like what I said!

If he's trying to make his case for open theism using these philosophical arguments, then... Meh. But if he's just trying to clear away philosophical prejudices against open theism so that he can present a Biblical case with a clean slate, then OK. (One part of his essay is devoted to a Scriptural case, so that might be what he's trying to do.)