Steve wrote:Bob,
You wrote to Homer:
"I wouldn't phrase it like 'bring about that which He foreknows?'. As I've said, I believe that God's decree is the basis for His foreknowledge."
This is something that I find very confusing about Calvinists.
They say that if God does not decree the future, then He can't certainly know it.
This seems to mean that He must determine the future (since this is what the Calvinist idea of "decree" means), or else He can not know it.
Hi Steve, glad you jumped in!
No, I don't say that God cannot know the future unless He decrees it. God could know the future if, for example, fatalism is true.
What I do say, is that God (nor anyone else) can know the future unless the future is "settled" in a sense that excludes indeterministic creaturely freedom. I know you and other non-Calvinists believe the two can co-exist, but nobody has been able to show me how that works out. Since the Scriptures don't teach indeterministic creaturely freedom (but teach compatibilistic freedom instead), and they do teach that God possesses exhaustive knowledge of the future, I reject the former and hold to the latter.
I wouldn't use Homer's phraseology "bring about that which He foreknows", because that implies (to me), that foreknowledge logically precedes decree.
Steve wrote:
If He determines the future, then either He must bring it to pass, or else leave it to other factors, like man's free will, or something else not directly controlled by God, to determine the outcome.
If He leaves it to something not directly under His control, then it might turn out differently than what He has decreed will occur.
Thus, to successfully know the future, God must decree it. But to decree (that is, determine) it, He must maintain complete control over all the causative factors.
Again, not necessarily. However, *some* form of determinism must be true. Libertarian free will doesn't fit with exhaustive divine foreknowledge, whether based on God's decree or on some other factor.
The Arminian wants to have his cake and eat it too, it seems. When it suits him, God can perfectly control the outcome of history. But on the other hand, He cannot decree the individual outcome of any individual.
Steve wrote:
If He is controlling and dictating all the causative factors, then He is "bringing it to pass" or "making it happen."
Yet, Calvinists are often squeamish (as you seem to be) about saying that God brings everything to pass, or makes it happen.
No, not at all. I'm just reluctant to base decree on foreknowledge. I embrace the doctrine that God accomplishes all things afer the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11).
Steve wrote:
I am just trying to understand what the Calvinist thinks God is and is not doing in the process of decreeing future events. Is He decreeing what He is going to "bring to pass" (and if so, why deny that this is your belief), or is He simply aware of what other wills are going to bring to pass (which is essentially the Arminian position)?
I haven't deined that God is bringing all things to pass, as I explained above.
Steve wrote:
There may be a reasonable Calvinist answer, which is why I am asking you. But up to this point, it just seems that Calvinists do not have the courage of their convictions to state plainly what are the unavoidable implications of their affirmations about decrees.
I am sincerely wanting you to help me out with this.
Next, Homer's point would seem to be:
If you are saying that God only knows about the future things that He has decreed that He will do, then He does not possess a quality called "foreknowledge" any more than any of us possess—since we can also predict what we intend to do.
If one retorts that we cannot perfectly predict what we will accomplish, because there are forces beyond our control that may thwart our intentions, this does not change my point. It is only saying that God's purposes cannot be thwarted, whereas ours can. This is an affirmation of His omnipotence, and our impotence. But that is a separate attribute from omniscience.
God knows that He can accomplish whatever He wishes, and He knows what He wishes to do. This does not confer to Him any intrinsic powers of knowledge more than what men possess. The only difference is that it is less predictable that man's purposes will succeed. God's success, on the assumption of His omnipotence, is completely predictable, but involves no greater quality of foreknowledge than my knowing that, when I step on a bug, it will certainly be squished.
You may be correct in saying that God does not possess foreknowledge other than about such things as He intends to accomplish by His superior power, but then you are saying no more about God's foreknowledge than the Open Theist is saying. They believe precisely the same thing.
Again, the entire line of argument is based on a critical underlying presupposition, namely, that indeterministic or incompatibilistic freedom is the only kind of freedom possible.
The relationship between God and His creation is not one among peers. He is the creator; we are the creation.
His decree encompasses the whole sweep of history, including the actions of volitional, morally responsible agents. These agents are free in a compatibilistic sense, which is (I believe) the biblical sense. He can accomplish His purpose in everything and still allow for secondary causes and moral responsibility.
Cheers,
Bob