maybe this is a solution idk

this is another piece in an examination of arminian theology and its implications. what does arminianism require us to believe? what does it teach us? what are the logical extensions of its doctrine?

God Limits His Power

Reichenbach lays out the problem in six pieces. These pieces include human freedom and God’s sovereignty, omnipotence, omniscience, eternality (or lack of), and providence. Interestingly enough, but hardly surprising, he places human freedom as the first and most important piece, building every attribute of God around this.

A person is free if “given a certain set of circumstances, the person could have done otherwise than he did. He was not compelled by causes either internal to himself (genetic structure or irresistible drives) or external (other persons, God) to act as he did.”[1] Reichenbach gives two pieces of evidence to prove his definition of free will. One, our perception confirms this. He says, “There is universal, introspective evidence. We feel that we have choices.”[2] Second, we make moral choices for which we are held accountable.

First, as Christians, we do not build theology on perspective or perception. We build theology on scripture. Perspective differs from person to person. We all feel differently and we cannot use our feelings as some kind of “evidence” with which to relate to God. In Judges, the Israelites all felt like they knew what was right. The author of Judges tells us, “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17.6). Today, a doctor claims to be Christian while performing thousands of abortions because he feels that killing human beings is right.[3] Scripture tells us we are slaves to sin but we feel like we are not. Scripture tells us that without Christ, we can do nothing, but we feel that we can. Scripture tells us that God leads us (Psalm 23.1), turns our hearts towards him (Ezra 6.22; John 6.44, 65), and hardens our hearts against him (Exodus 33.19; Romans 9.15) but we feel that we turn to him or away from him on our own. Do we believe our limited, fallible, human perception, or do we believe God’s word?

Second, God does not hold us accountable because we are able to meet his demands. If any person was ever able, Adam was, but he failed. If the best human failed, how shall we fare any better? We are born into death, but Adam was not created in death. Despite being created with his life in connection with God, Adam disobeyed. Adam represented all of us, and regardless of the corrupted nature of death that he passed on to every person, God holds us accountable in him. Paul says, “By the transgression of the one the many died…judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation…by the transgression of the one, death reigned” (Romans 5.15-17). How can God do this? How can God condemn all of us for Adam’s sin? Here, Arminians echo Pelagius. If God holds each of us responsible as he did Adam, we can only conclude that each of us possesses the same moral capacity as Adam. If God holds us accountable, we must be capable. But Scripture denies this repeatedly. God holds us responsible not through some pleasant, comprehensible, philosophical assumption, but because he is God. God created us to be moral creatures, but Adam, as our representative, disobeyed. We are responsible to God not because we are able but because Adam was able, and Adam failed. Unable to choose God because of this corrupt nature we inherited, we depend on God to choose us for salvation, and he does choose some for salvation, but not all. To our human mind, this appears unjust, and unable to accuse God of injustice, we deny the plain teaching of Scripture: man must be therefore free. God cannot hold us responsible if we are not free, but Paul believes otherwise. Anticipating objections against God’s sovereign election, he asks, “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Romans 9.20). God says the same to Job:

Now gird up your loins like a man;
I will ask you, and you instruct Me.
Will you really annul My judgment?
Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?
Or do you have an arm like God,
And can you thunder with a voice like His?[4]

We are dust, grass, and insects. God loves us, but he does not concern himself with our petty objections. We are not free, but we are responsible. We cannot understand this because we do not understand God. God does not command us to understand him, but to trust him and submit to him. He is wiser than us, perfectly just, and far more loving.

After establishing human freedom, Reichenbach defines the limits of God’s sovereignty by comparing God to some human governor. Completely ignoring any kind of biblical data, he says

Sovereignty invokes the political relationship of governance. It implies that there are at least two classes of individuals, governors and the governed, between which there is an ordered relationship…The sovereign’s power is determined and limited by [the laws he has created.] …To be sovereign does not mean that everything that occurs accords with the will of the sovereign or that the sovereign can bring about anything he or she wants. The ability of the sovereign to determine the outcome depends, in part, on the freedom granted to the governed.[5]

God is not a man, and he does not rule as men rule. He is not limited, ignorant, or sinful as men are. If God acts in ways that offend us, he does not offend us because he is unjust, but because we are. Arminians define justice, truth, and love around themselves and their perceptions, and attempt to fit scripture to their limited comprehension. Reichenbach establishes free will in order to build sovereignty around that. Free will is literally the center of his theology and God’s sovereignty is an afterthought molded to fit.

Reichenbach describes the novelist:

The novelist creates his own characters, plot, setting, and outcome. All of the participants in the storyline do exactly what the author determines. All have their traits laid out by and have no existence apart from the author. The plot moves inexorably to the end determined by the author. What he desires is precisely what occurs; there can be no variation.[6]

What is the problem? Do we not trust the Judge of all the earth to do right? Or do we think we can do better? God has created his own characters, plot, setting, and outcome. He reveals his “novel” from Genesis to Revelation. Human history is literally his story. We do not exist apart from him (Acts 17.28; Colossians 1.17). God knew his plan before all Creation. Yes, he wanted Adam to sin. He did not cause Adam to sin nor did he tempt him, but he allowed him to in order to bring a greater glory to himself through this story of our redemption. God seeks to glorify his name and he will let nothing interfere (Psalm 115.3). Nothing can interfere.

Reichenbach redefines omnipotence by prioritizing human freedom. Orthodox Christianity teaches that “a being who is omnipotent is capable of bringing about anything.”[7] This omnipotence has limits, however, which in no way impugn the omnipotence of said omnipotent being. He says, “an omnipotent being cannot create a circle that is square nor cause another person to perform a free act.”[8]

In the most ridiculous part of this examination, Reichenbach likens a question of geometric semantics to a question about philosophy and religion. A circle cannot be described as “square” because this is how we define the words “circle” and “square.” A circle has a specific, mathematic definition. A circle is a set of points that are equally distant from a fixed center. A square has four equal sides and four right angles. These are precise, easily verified definitions. They can be measured and established by simple inspection. A child can do this. For Reichenbach to compare the definitions of shapes to a philosophical concept that opposes simple, rigid definitions betrays an immense oversimplifying and misunderstanding of the terms involved.

Any act of the will is hardly free. Many influences constrain our decisions—our biology, the behavior of our parents or caregivers, our circumstances, our needs, and so on. If I work at a certain job, earning a certain wage, and I receive an offer for increased wages in another city, how free am I to choose one option or the other? Of course, I am “free” to make either choice, but I am not actually free to make either choice. I have needs that limit my decision. Prudence limits my decision.

Scripture tells us that God turns hearts towards him (1 Samuel 10.9; Ezra 6.22), that he grants repentance (Acts 11.18; 2 Timothy 2.25), that he writes his law on our hearts (Jeremiah 31.33). Scripture also says that God renders men insensitive and dull to his word (Isaiah 6.10), and that he hardens hearts (Exodus 4.21). Whether God grants men repentance or whether he hardens hearts, he holds us responsible. God grants repentance but we do the repenting. Moses tells the Israelites, “When you return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and soul, then the Lord will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you” (Deuteronomy 30.1-3). Moses also says, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, so that you may live” (30.6). God reigns in our hearts yet we obey or disobey. How can we describe this? Is this freedom? It is not coercion if we make the decision, but for the Arminian, it is not freedom if God had any part in the decision. While the Calvinist accepts this confusing dichotomy, the Arminian does not. I cannot explain the terms or explain the mechanics because scripture does not explain them. If we attempt to add our human philosophy to scripture, we only weaken our theology and we therefore weaken God. We cannot firmly establish this coveted human freedom without destroying scriptural teaching.

My actions limit God’s knowledge. God cannot know of an event until the event happens. God does not know what I will do until I do it.[9] Clark Pinnock makes the same argument.[10] Scripturally, they both speak gibberish. We only exist because God wills it. Our very life depends on his will. He holds Creation together by “the word of his power” (Hebrews 1.3). In Christ, “all things hold together” (Colossians 1.17). At his command, fire will consume all the earth and the heavens (2 Peter 3.7,10). God knows the future because God commands the future. We believe we make plans, but God is the one who plans (Proverbs 16.33; James 4.13-16). We perceive our “human freedom,” but God alone is free (Proverbs 16.7). He directs our steps. He knows our words before we speak them (Psalm 139.4). Reichenbach acknowledges this yet he fabricates this philosophical gobbledygook so that he can assert his independence from his Creator and his Creator’s dependence on him. He says that God’s knowledge is “dependent…on the person who is the object of that knowledge.”[11] Reichenbach’s god is not the eternally self-existent “I AM,” but the possible, temporal, “Maybe, I could be, if that’s ok with you. I think.”

Reichenbach vaguely defines the orthodox position on God’s relationship with time. Perhaps even he finds his position odd, but Reichenbach believes that traditional orthodoxy teaches that God cannot act in time. He tries to refute what he thinks is the orthodox belief by saying that God does act in time. Traditional Christianity believes that God is “timeless,” rather than eternal. He cannot act within our world because he exists outside of time. Reichenbach refutes a very bizarre belief that I have never heard of nor read anywhere within orthodoxy. He says that since God acts, he must have duration.[12] “Productive actions are necessarily time-bound and sequential,” he says.[13] Reichenbach thinks that explaining how actions take place in time proves that God must exist in time. Explaining his view seems ridiculous in itself. Explaining how events occur in time, he says

There is a time prior to the causal event when the person had not acted to produce and there is a subsequent time when he acts to produce the effect. Otherwise one cannot account for the production of the effect at a given time.[14]

God acts within our time and therefore he exists in and is limited by time. He believes that since the effects of salvation take place in an orderly manner, that God must be limited by time.[15] God could not have “chosen us before the foundation of the world if he did not exist in time,” he continues.[16] This very sentence contradicts itself. Time did not exist before the foundation of the world!

Scripture describes events in sequence not because God acts in time, but because we exist in time. Scripture tells us that God acts in our world but this does not mean that he is limited by the time-space dimensions of our world. Reichenbach has taken his limited, human understanding of his perception and assumes that God has the same limits. This is absolutely baffling. Salvation has an order because each effect of salvation has a requirement. Since we are dead in sin, God must give us new hearts (regeneration). We then believe in Christ (repentance), are set apart in Christ (sanctification), declared righteous by God (justification), and will be glorified with Christ. We are time-bound but God is not. To say that because God acts in our world that he is therefore limited by its limitations is like saying that because Adam and Eve heard God “walking in the garden” he must therefore have legs and feet. It is complete nonsense. A being that exists in time cannot create time just as a being that exists in the natural world cannot create the natural world. No entity can create the space that contains him. This is preposterous to imagine. Can I create my mother? Or my body? Charles Hodge says, “As God is not more in one place than in another, but is everywhere equally present, so he does not exist during one period of duration more than another.”[17]

Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Of old You founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. Even they will perish, but You endure; and all of them will wear out like a garment; like clothing You will change them and they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not come to an end.
With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.[18]

Wayne Grudem defines God’s relationship to time very differently than Reichenbach: “God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time.”[19] God’s eternity “can be concluded from the fact that God created all things, and that he himself is an immaterial spirit.”[20] God must exist outside of time. If God exists in time, then he cannot have existed any earlier than the beginning of time. He began when time began. How then has he created existence? How has he created time if he began with time? If God began with time, then he will end with time. Puritan minister Stephen Charnock says

Time began with the foundation of the world; but God being before time, could have no beginning in time…To be in time is to have a beginning; to be before all time is never to have a beginning, but always to be…It is as easily deduced that he that was before all creatures is eternal, as he that made all creatures is God. If he had a beginning, he must have it from another, or from himself; if from another, that from whom he received his being would be better than he, so more a God than he…If he had given beginning to himself, then he was once nothing; there was a time when he was not; if he was not, how could he be the cause of himself?[21]

Finally, Reichenbach tries to mutilate God’s providence. Reichenbach believes that God’s purposes can be thwarted.[22] He says that God has entrusted his purposes to human activity. According to Reichenbach, God “does not purpose or dispose everything that happens; his purposes are both general and specific, but they do not include every detail of human existence.”[23] God does not want humans to suffer, but he allows it because he does not want to interfere in his creation. God does not often act directly; instead, he “calls, woos, cajoles, remonstrates, inspires and loves.”[24] God indirectly attempts to work his purposes in our lives, and if he is successful, great! If not, too bad for him.

Puritan Thomas Watson writes that “Providence is god’s ordering all issues and events of things, after the counsel of his will, to his own glory.”[25] God must order all things. How can he place his purposes in the hands of men? We are sinful, impotent, unreliable creatures. Reichenbach believes that we are free, but scripture does not. Job says, “No purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42.2). In Isaiah, God says, “There is none who can deliver out of my hand; I act and who can reverse it?” (43.13). Watson continues

God’s providence reaches to all affairs and occurrences in the world. There is nothing that stirs in the world but God has, by his providence, the over-ruling of it...Providence reaches to the least of things, to birds and ants. Providence feeds the young raven, when the dam forsakes it, and will give it no food. Providence reaches to the very hairs of our head.[26]

It is impossible that it should be otherwise. God knows all. God is wiser than all. Why should he let men interfere in his plans? How can they? God can do all. No one can stop what he is doing. King Nebuchadnezzar, after losing his sanity, repented of his arrogance and humbly submitted to God’s sovereignty. He said, “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4.35). God does not seek our counsel, nor does he need our help (Isaiah 40.13-14). He does not allow us responsibility over his purposes, but he commands us to do works that he has prepared, not that we do independently of him (Ephesians 2.10).

There is absolutely no sense in which Reichenbach is correct. God at times intends our suffering. He closed up Hannah’s womb, so that she would humbly and desperately seek him (1 Samuel 1.6-7), and then he blessed her with many children. He disciplines us through suffering (Psalm 119.71,75; Hebrews 12.10). Reichenbach says that God does not act to change our desires, but instead “cajoles” and “inspires.” How can any man resist if God “cajoles”? If God desired, could he not overpower our desires with this “cajoling”? If at times he persuades to the point of repentance, and at other times with other people does not, is this not equivalent to him accomplishing exactly what he desires?

God in no way limits his power. God is God and his power has no limits. Reichenbach needs a limited god in order to be independent from God, but scripture does not describe God in this way. We are limited. We are limited by our humanity, by our sin, by our lifespan, by our physical bodies, by our needs, by our circumstances, etc. Any theologian who seeks to limit God does not trust the God of scripture but instead seeks to create a god that will bend to his will and submit to his sinful, selfish, arrogant whims. God does not do this because he is wise, just, and knows who we are. He alone sits on the “mount of the assembly” (Isaiah 14.13). John Gill says, “There is a time fixed for every purpose; a time to be born, and a time to die; and for every thing that befalls men between their birth and death: all which open in time, in providence.”[27] God alone must order the world, completely and without exception, lest we drag all Creation down into the death of our corruption.

---

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

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume I: Theology, (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishers: 2016)

[1] Ibid, 102. Even secular philosophers struggle with this definition. We exist conditioned by many things, by our past, by our environment, by our biology. Var Narain eventually concludes that we must hold to free will, not because it is a fact (he seems to lean evidentially toward determinism), but because society requires it: “Pragmatic humanism must assume that every person bears moral responsibility for his or her actions. Any other course is bound to have disastrous social consequences.” Var Narain, “Determinism, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility,” The Humanist, October 21, 2014. Retrieved from https://thehumanist.com/magazine/november-december-2014/philosophically-speaking/determinism-free-will-and-moral-responsibility

[2] Ibid, 103.

[3] Amanda Prestigiacomo, “‘Christian’ Abortionist Admits To Killing ‘Human Beings’ In Shock Video: ‘What Does It Matter?’”, The Daily Wire, February 25, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.dailywire.com/news/christian-abortionist-admits-killing-human-beings-amanda-prestigiacomo

[4] Job 40.7-9

[5] Basinger and Basinger, 105.

[6] Ibid, 106.

[7] Ibid 107.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid, 110-111.

[10] Ibid, 150.

[11] Ibid, 111.

[12] Ibid, 112.

[13] Ibid, 113.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 114.

[17] Hodge, 385.

[18] Psalm 90.2; 102.25-27; 2 Peter 3.8;

[19] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing: 1994), page 168.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Stephen Charnock, The Existence and the Attributes of God: Volume 1, (Grand Rapids, Baker Books: 1996), pages 281-282.

[22] Ibid, 117.

[23] Ibid.

[24] ibid.

[25] Watson, 119.

[26] Ibid, 121.

[27] John Gill, A Body of Divinity, (Grand Rapids, Sovereign Grace Publishers: 1971), page 71.

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).