A Possible Solution to Free Will and Sovereignty

This piece is taken from a larger work comparing Arminian theology to Calvinism, highlighting important differences. I am examining works of certain prominent Arminian theologians and exploring the core of their thought and motivations.

God Limits His Knowledge

Pinnock argues against sovereignty through a series of hypothetical possibilities. If God can do anything then God could have created a world where he did not rule every minute detail. If God can do anything then God surely can limit himself. This limited God can be “sovereign” if he “anticipates” and “responds” to his creatures. If we are to “make sense” of sovereignty and human freedom, we cannot think of God as timeless.[1] Like every Arminian, Pinnock places no weight on any scriptural concept, but on what he perceives and on what he desires to be true. Man is not a slave to sin (John 8.34), nor is he clay in the hand of the potter (Isaiah 64.8; Romans 9.21), but a free agent who reflects God’s “own creative agency in being able to make plans and carry them out.”[2] Never mind James’ words:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.[3]

Pinnock understands that our freedom necessarily denies God’s sovereignty. If we are free, then God cannot be sovereign over us. If God in any way influences our choices, or even knows our choices before we make them, he can and may influence them, and therefore we are not free. Pinnock believes, however, that our rebellion proves that we are free. He says, “Human beings are creatures who have rejected God’s will for them and turned aside from his plan. This is another strong piece of evidence that God made them truly free.”[4] This is evidence that Adam was free, and our rebellion results from Adam’s and is not evidence that we are free. This rebellion proves exactly the opposite. Sin enslaves us (Romans 6.6, 17) in wickedness (Genesis 6.5), making us completely incapable of pleasing God (Romans 8.7, 8). Pinnock exclaims, “We are not dualists” and then proclaims dualism: “We must admit that history at the present time resembles the struggle of conflicting wills, as the creature strives with God in rebellion against him. The conflict between God and finite human agents is a very real one according to the biblical narrative.”[5]

Pinnock sees “conflict” where scripture declares purpose. Scripture is not as shallow as Pinnock assumes, nor is God as simple. In a truly profound statement of arrogance, Pinnock declares to God what he cannot possibly do: “It is surely not possible to believe that God secretly planned our rebelling against him.”[6] As if God is no wiser than Clark Pinnock! God cannot possibly know more than he! God cannot possibly have greater intentions, a greater purpose, a more glorious understanding of the world, of men, and of redemption than the illustrious Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College, Clark Pinnock! Preposterous! But God has purpose in the Fall (Genesis 3.15). God had purpose in the sin of Joseph’s brothers (Genesis 45.5-8). God has purpose in Israel’s failure (Romans 11.11-15). God has purpose in Christ’s death. Can God not ordain sin without committing sin? Are we not exploring dimensions of his sovereignty? Scripture defines sovereignty, not by moving away from absolute power, knowledge, and wisdom, and towards a theology that we comprehend in our tiny, proud, sin-corrupted minds, but by heading full-bore into it, towards a God who defies comprehension and demands true faith. If we are to discover a complete and true theology, we must believe all that scripture teaches and simultaneously trust God when it offends us, confounds us, or contradicts our understanding of his Creation. God can ordain sin that ultimately glorifies him.

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.[7]

Pinnock realizes he can only reconcile sovereignty with freedom if either sovereignty or freedom receive some sort of limitation. If God knows everything that will happen, then everything we do is set. Nothing can change it. Whether God ordains our actions or merely knows them, we are not free. Exhaustive, unlimited knowledge of future events, decisions, and actions sets and locks them in place. We can veer from them neither to the left or to the right. Divine foreknowledge destroys human freedom. Pinnock will not stand for this. Unwilling to place limitations on human freedom, he resorts to limiting God’s sovereignty by limiting his knowledge. “God is dependent on the world for information about the world,” he says.[8] He continues

Reality is to an extent open and not closed. Genuine novelty can appear in history which cannot be predicted even by God. If the creature has been given the ability to decide hot some things will turn out, then it cannot be known infallibly ahead of time how they will turn out. It implies that the future is really open and not available to exhaustive foreknowledge even on the part of God. It is plain that the biblical doctrine of creaturely freedom requires us to reconsider the conventional view of the omniscience of God...If history is infallibly known and certain from all eternity, then freedom is an illusion.[9]

Neither does Pinnock find any comfort in God’s omnipotence. He says, “I recognize that this belief in strong omnipotence gives one a feeling of security, but it also communicates a denial of the dynamic reality of the lives we are living.”[10] Pinnock prefers this “dynamic reality” where God remains ignorant of the future and we control our lives to a reality where God rules his Creation by his wisdom, might, and love. Adhering to this biblical reality “mystifies” Pinnock.[11]

God cannot know anything about the future because the future does not exist. Never mind every prophetic book. Never mind eternity. Never mind every verse in the Bible that declares emphatically that God not only knows what will happen, but directs it precisely. I can skim through the first book of the Bible and find a number of prophecies, some rather specific, that cast serious doubt on Pinnock’s claims.

• ·         God prophesies Christ’s victory over Satan and Satan’s murder of Christ (Genesis 15.3).
• ·         The limit of men’s lifespans and his destruction of the human race (6.3,13).
• ·         The enduring existence of the planet (8.22).
• ·         The redemption of all men through Abraham’s lineage (12.3; 22.18).
• ·         Abraham’s descendants will become a great nation and he will have a son (15.6; 22.17).
• ·         The length of Israel’s slavery in Egypt (15.13).
• ·         The Arabic nation and where they will settle (16.10,12).
• ·         Joseph’s future status as ruler over his family (37.5-11).
• ·         Joseph prophesies the fate of the baker and the cupbearer (40.1-23).
• ·         Joseph prophesies the deliverance of Israel and the return of his remains to Canaan (50.24-25).

We find all of this in the first book of the Bible. These prophecies include both generic and specific details, and both near and distant future events. They include decisions of both God and men, and even future decisions of Satan. Even if we accept that God does not know the future, a ridiculously dubious claim at best, we must concede that God directs the future, and in directing the future, he directs the decisions of men to accomplish his purposes.

Clark Pinnock dismisses the predictive elements of prophecy with a slight wave of his hand of less than fifty words. Predictive prophecy does not prove that God knows the future.

A very high percentage of prophecy can be accounted for by one of three factors: the announcement ahead of time of what God intends to do, conditional prophecies which leave the outcome open, and predictions based on God’s exhaustive knowledge of the past and the present.[12]

First, Pinnock admits here that God knows the future. He says he can account for “a very high percentage of prophecy” with these three factors. What about the rest? He does not even mention them. He cannot account for all of predictive prophecy with these “factors” of his. Pinnock does not believe God knows the future yet he cannot account for when God does know the future. When Pinnock says he can account for a high percentage of God’s predictions by denying divine foreknowledge, he admits that he cannot account for all of God’s predictions by denying foreknowledge, and therefore God knows at least some future events. Second, if God knows what he’s going to do at some point in the future, then he either knows what we will do (for God must respond to our actions and accommodate his plans to us[13]), or he knows that he will disregard what we will do in order to accomplish his purposes. Pinnock’s god cannot merely tell us what he will do, for he does not know what we will do. He does not know how we will interfere with his plans, and therefore does not know how to respond to our actions. He can make no promises to us without knowledge of the future unless he plans to either completely override our will or completely ordain it. Every human opposes him (Genesis 6.5; Psalm 53; Romans 8.7,8), so for God to do his will, he must change ours or run roughshod over it. Not a single one of Pinnock’s hypothetical, unbiblical propositions fits.[14]

We can examine the implications of Pinnock’s ideas in Genesis. God appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15 and promised him that he would one day be the father of a great nation that would endure forever. Later, in Genesis 18, God reveals the exact time Abraham and Sarah would have their son. He says, “I will surely return to you at this time next year; and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son” (18.10). This tells us one of two things: either God knew when Sarah would become pregnant and when she would have her son, or that God planned to cause Sarah and Abraham to have relations at a specific time, knowing that nine months later Isaac would be born. If God knew when Isaac would be born, Pinnock is wrong about God’s knowledge of the future and this incident proves that God’s knowledge includes future events. If God did not know when Isaac would be born, then God caused Isaac to be born at a specific time by causing his parents to have relations, disproving Pinnock’s assertion that our acts are uncaused by God. Either way, we see that Pinnock has severely misinterpreted scripture in order to favor this idea that man is free because God is not God. But God is God, omnipotent over all of creation, including our desires, intentions, thoughts, and actions, and omniscient over everything that happens in his creation, past, present, and future.

I know the future. I know that tomorrow the sun will rise. I know that one day I will finish writing this little book. I know that one day I will die. Gamblers can find the odds that a certain sports team will win the pennant, and these odds are fairly accurate. Physicists know that the movement of every particle within the universe can be predicted, given the current position and velocity. A first-year physicist can calculate particle movement given this data using basic algebra. If a college student can make predictions about the nature of the universe, why can God not do this? Pinnock believes God is no greater than a man. God is less, actually, for God cannot counter our will. Any man can counter the will of another man, through argument or violence, but God cannot, according to Pinnock. He has limited himself to preserve our creaturely freedom.

Satan whispered to Eve that she “will be like God” (Genesis 3.5). Indeed, Pinnock seeks exactly this. “God summons us into partnership with himself in running the universe. His plan is open. God actually accepts the influence of our prayers in making up his mind,” he says.[15] God needs our help. He is not wise enough to make decisions regarding the universe without our input. We provide what he lacks. We make God complete. Pinnock lies. God does not command us to pray because he needs our prayers, because he values our input, or because we offer him something he is missing. We need, not God. God commands us to pray because we lack, because we are selfish, proud, and independent, and prayer changes us, creating humility and dependence on him. There is no situation where God has need of anything that we give him. Pinnock wants not only to remove God from his sovereign position, but to place himself there. God limits himself and not Pinnock. God does not order his Creation but responds to the whims of men. We determine our destiny and God waits for us. We control life and death, heaven and hell, redemption and condemnation.

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[1] Ibid, 145-146.

[2] Ibid, 147.

[3] James 4.13-16.

[4] Basinger and Basinger, 149.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Romans 9.18-23. If you disregard scripture on sin, then you can make any passage about anything. Arminians say that this passage speaks of nations with no regard to individuals, though plainly transitioning from a nation to four individuals and plainly anticipating and answering the objections to God hardening individuals. Paul uses these individuals as an example of God’s election to illustrate Paul’s statement that “they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.” God must elect individuals within Israel if “all are not Israel.” All are not Israel because God elects certain individuals within the physical descendants of Abraham, because he has compassion on some and hardens the rest.

[8] Basinger and Basinger, 146.

[9] Ibid, 150.

[10] Ibid, 154.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, 158. Newtonian physics tells us that exhaustive knowledge of past and present necessarily leads to exhaustive knowledge of the future, though some physicists will cite Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to deny this kind of determinism. If Pinnock in his gracious wisdom grants God this exhaustive knowledge of past and present (including even the uncertain past and present position of any and every subatomic particle), he has unwittingly also granted to God knowledge of the future.

[13] Ibid, 152, 154-155.

[14] Conditional prophecies neither help nor hurt Pinnock on this point. God prophesies that he will bless or curse the Israelites, knowing exactly what they will do (Deuteronomy 28-29). If our faith only comes from God, why does God allow Israel to stray from him? He has his reasons (Romans 11). I can easily answer Pinnock’s last factor by remarking that if we have already established that God possesses at least a partial knowledge of the future, it is no large leap from God’s “exhaustive knowledge of the past and present” to that of the future, especially if we are humble enough to actually believe scripture. Furthermore, if God merely uses his exhaustive knowledge of past and present to declare all future events, then what is the functional difference between God predicting all future events with perfect accuracy and him possessing perfect knowledge of the future? If all of his predictions about future events come true 100% of the time, what is the difference between God not knowing but perfectly predicting and God knowing and perfectly predicting? He predicts the future because he knows the future, whether he uses the past and present to know the future (as Pinnock incorrectly asserts, even though his assertion leads him to the same self-defeating conclusion) or because he actually directs it.

[15] Ibid, 153.

David Basinger and Randall Basinger, editors, Predestination and Free Will: Four Views on Divine Sovereignty, (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1986).