Appendix
Introduction
In the present work I have argued that divine eternity is most plausibly construed in terms of God’s timelessness without creation and His temporality since the moment of creation. Now this view raises all sorts of interesting questions concerning divine omniscience. It implies that since the moment of creation God possesses literal foreknowledge, rather than timeless knowledge, of events which will happen in the future. Indeed, it will be recalled that God’s knowledge of tensed facts provided one of the principal reasons for thinking God to be temporal rather than timeless.1 As an omniscient being, God cannot be ignorant of future-tense facts. For example, prior to December 7, 1941, He knew the tensed fact The Japanese will attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, just as subsequent to that date He knew the tensed fact The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In virtue of His knowing all future-tense facts, as well as all present- and past-tense facts, God has literal foreknowledge of the future.
The doctrine of divine foreknowledge has been challenged principally on two grounds: (1) It is alleged that if God foreknows future events, then those events will necessarily occur, which precludes human freedom; and (2) it is claimed that if events do occur contingently, then such events cannot be known in advance. It is often said that God, therefore, does not know which future contingent events will transpire and that He is thus a “risk-taking” God. Sometimes it is claimed that such a conception of God is faithful to biblical teaching.
I have dealt with both of these challenges to divine foreknowledge in my book The Only Wise God, where I attempt to show that there is no incompatibility between God’s foreknowledge and human freedom and that foreknowledge of a contingent future is possible.2 That book was, however, somewhat ahead of the curve, and since its publication the debate over divine foreknowledge has become white-hot among Christian theologians. Therefore, I think it appropriate to re-address the question in this place.
The Biblical Doctrine of Divine Foreknowledge
The suggestion that the God described in the biblical tradition is ignorant of future contingents is on the face of it an extraordinary claim. For not only are the Scriptures replete with examples of precisely such knowledge on God’s part, but they explicitly teach that God has foreknowledge of future events, even employing a specialist vocabulary to denominate such knowledge. The New Testament introduces a whole family of words associated with God’s knowledge of the future, such as “foreknow” (proginosko), “foreknowledge” (prognosis), “foresee” (proorao), “foreordain” (proorizo), and “foretell” (promarturomai, prokatangello). Thus the claim that the biblical concept of omniscience does not comprise knowledge of the future seems frivolous.
The affirmation of God’s knowledge of the future is important in two respects. First, this aspect of divine omniscience underlies the biblical scheme of history. For the biblical conception of history is not that of an unpredictably unfolding sequence of events plunging haphazardly without purpose or direction; rather God knows the future and directs the course of world history toward His foreseen ends:
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, “My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose” (Isa. 46:9-10).
Biblical history is a salvation history, and Christ is the beginning, centerpiece, and culmination of that history. God’s salvific plan was not an afterthought necessitated by an unforeseen circumstance. Paul speaks of “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things,” “a plan for the fullness of time” according to “the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:9; 1:10; 3:11; cf. 2 Tim. 1:9-10). Similarly, Peter states that Christ “was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake” (1 Pet. 1:20). God’s knowledge of the course of world history and His control over it to achieve His purposes are fundamental to the biblical conception of history and are a source of comfort and assurance to the believer in times of distress.
Second, God’s knowledge of the future seems essential to the prophetic pattern that underlies the biblical scheme of history. The test of the true prophet was success in foretelling the future: “When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22). The history of Israel was punctuated with prophets who foretold events in both the immediate and distant future, and it was the conviction of the New Testament writers that the coming and work of Jesus had been prophesied.
The prophetic element, however, is not limited to the fulfillment of Old Testament predictions. Jesus himself is characterized as a prophet, and he predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, signs of the end of the world, and his own return as Lord of all nations (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). In the early church, too, there were prophets who told of events to come (Acts 11:27-28; 21:10-11; see also 13:1; 15:32; 21:9; 1 Cor. 12:28-29; 14:29, 37; Eph. 4:11). The Revelation to John is a mighty vision of the end of human history: “. . . the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place” (Rev. 22:6). The prophetic pattern thus reveals an underlying unity, not only between the two Testaments but beneath the entire course of human history.
The biblical view of history and prophecy thus seems to necessitate a God who knows not only the present and past but also the future. Indeed, so essential is God’s knowledge of the future that Isaiah makes knowledge of the future the decisive test in distinguishing the true God from false gods. The prophet flings this challenge in the teeth of all pretenders to deity:
Set forth your case, says the Lord;
bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.
Let them bring them, and tell us
what is to happen.
Tell us the former things, what they are
that we may consider them,
that we may know their outcome;
or declare to us the things to come.
Tell us what is to come hereafter,
that we may know that you are gods;
do good, or do harm,
that we may be dismayed and terrified.
Behold, you are nothing,
and your work is naught;
an abomination is he who chooses you (Isa. 41:21-24).
Stephen Charnock in his classic Existence and Attributes of God comments on this passage:
Such a foreknowledge of things to come is here ascribed to God by God himself, as a distinction of him from all false gods. Such a knowledge that, if any could prove that they were possessors of, he would acknowledge them as gods as well as himself: “that we may know that you are gods.” He puts his Deity to stand or fall upon this account, and this should be the point which should decide the controversy whether he or the heathen idols were the true God. The dispute is managed by this medium: he that knows things to come is God; I know things to come, ergo I am God: the idols know not things to come, therefore they are not gods. God submits the being of his Deity to this trial. If God knows things to come no more than the heathen idols, which were either devils or men, he would be, in his own account, no more a God than devils or men. . . . It cannot be understood of future things in their causes, when the effects necessarily arise from such causes, as light from the sun and heat from the fire. Many of these men know; more of them, angels and devils know; if God, therefore, had not a higher and farther knowledge than this, he would not by this be proved to be God, any more than angels and devils, who know necessary effects in their causes. The devils, indeed, did predict some things in the heathen oracles, but God is differenced from them here . . . in being able to predict things to come that they knew not, or things in their particularities, things that depended on the liberty of man’s will, which the devils could lay no claim to a certain knowledge of. Were it only a conjectural knowledge that is here meant, the devils might answer they can conjecture, and so their deity were as good as God’s. . . . God asserts his knowledge of things to come as a manifest evidence of his Godhead; those that deny, therefore, the argument that proves it, deny the conclusion, too; for this will necessarily follow, that if he be God because he knows future things, then he that doth not know future things is not God; and if God knows not future things but only by conjecture, then there is no God, because a certain knowledge, so as infallibly to predict things to come, is an inseparable perfection of the Deity.3
As Charnock notes, God’s knowledge seems to encompass future contingencies. Just as God knows the thoughts humans have, so he foreknows the very thoughts they will have. The psalmist declares,
O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me!
Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up;
thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down,
and art acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou dost beset me behind and before,
and layest thy hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high, I cannot attain it (Ps. 139:1-6).
Here the psalmist envisages himself as surrounded by God’s knowledge. God knows everything about him, even his thoughts. “From afar” (m∑rahôq) may be taken to indicate temporal distance—God knows the psalmist’s thoughts long before he thinks them. Similarly, even before he speaks a word, God knows what he will say. Little wonder that such knowledge is beyond the reach of the psalmist’s understanding! But such is the knowledge of Israel’s God in contradistinction to all the false gods of her neighbors. The God of Israel was conceived to possess knowledge of the future, a property which distinguished Him from all false gods.
In light of the clear biblical affirmations of divine foreknowledge, it might seem remarkable that some otherwise conservative theologians would deny that the Bible teaches that God knows future events. They argue that God can only make intelligent conjectures about what free creatures are going to do. As a result God is ignorant of vast stretches of human history, since even a single free choice could divert history from its present course, and subsequent events would, as time goes on, depart increasingly from history’s present trajectory. At best God can be said to have a good idea of what will happen only in the very near future.
Such a view seems so unbiblical that we might be surprised to hear that some persons think that it represents faithfully the doctrine of the Scriptures. Those who hold to this view, however, typically point to passages in the Scriptures which imply that God is ignorant of some fact (Jer. 26:3; 36:3). The problem with trying to base a doctrine of divine omniscience on such passages, however, is that it underestimates the degree to which the narratives of God’s acts are anthropomorphic in character; that is to say, God is described in human terms which are not intended to be taken literally. The Bible is not a treatise in theology, much less philosophy of religion. It is a collection of stories about God’s dealings with His people. The storyteller’s art is not to reflect philosophically upon his narrative but to tell a vivid tale. Thus, the Scriptures are filled with anthropomorphisms, many so subtle that they escape our notice. There are not only the obvious anthropomorphisms, such as references to God’s eyes, hands, and nostrils, but almost unconscious anthropomorphisms, such as references to God’s seeing the distress of His people, hearing their prayers, crushing His enemies, turning away from apostate Israel, and so forth. These are all of them metaphors, since God does not possess literal bodily parts. In the same way, given the explicit teaching of Scripture that God does foreknow the future, the passages which portray God as ignorant or inquiring are probably just anthropomorphisms characteristic of the genre of narrative.
Those who deny divine foreknowledge also appeal to passages in which God predicts that something will happen, but then repents, so that the predicted event does not come to pass (Amos 7:1-6; Jonah 3; Isa. 38:1-5). Obviously, since what God predicted did not in the end happen, the predictions were not foreknowledge of the future. The problem here is how to explain that, while the authors of these passages were aware that God knew the future and could not lie (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29), yet they represent Him as relenting on impending judgments which He had commanded His prophets to proclaim.
The most plausible interpretation of such passages is that these prophecies were not simple glimpses of the future but pictures of what was going to happen unless . . . 4 The prophecies contained the implicit condition “all things remaining the same.” Certain prophecies thus are forecasts or forewarnings of what is going to happen if all things remain as they are. Such events are sometimes referred to as conditional future contingents, and God’s knowledge of such events is even more remarkable than simple foreknowledge, since it involves knowledge of what would happen were other circumstances to exist than those that will. Not all of the prophecies in the Old and New Testaments are forewarnings, however. Prophecies of events which are brought about not by God but by human beings and which could not have been inferred from present causes cannot be interpreted as forewarnings but must be considered to express simple foreknowledge on God’s part.
How do the detractors of foreknowledge explain scriptural passages which illustrate God’s knowledge of the future? Typically, they attempt to dismiss each example of divine foreknowledge as being one of the following: (1) a declaration by God of what He Himself intends to bring about, (2) an inference of what is going to happen based on present causes, (3) a conditional prediction of what will happen if something else happens.
Such an account seems inadequate, however. As far as (3) is concerned, conditional predictions, if they do not reduce to (1) or (2), must be expressions of what theologians call divine middle knowledge, which is even more remarkable than divine foreknowledge and, indeed, may provide the basis for divine foreknowledge.5 Hence, to try to explain away divine foreknowledge by means of (3) is counterproductive.
As for (2), while it might be claimed, say, that Jesus predicted Judas’s betrayal or Peter’s denial solely on the basis of their character and the surrounding circumstances, there can be no question that the Gospel writers themselves did not so understand such predictions. To try to explain biblical prophecies as mere inferences from present states of affairs denudes them of any theological significance. The writers of Scripture clearly saw prophecy not as God’s reasoned conjecture of what will happen but as a manifestation of His infinite knowledge, encompassing even things yet to come.
As for (1), it is true that many prophecies in Scripture are clearly based on God’s irrevocable intention to bring about certain future events on His own. In such cases, prophecy serves to manifest not so much God’s omniscience as His omnipotence, His ability to bring about whatever He intends. But the problem with (1) is that it simply cannot be stretched to cover all the cases. Divine foreknowledge of free human actions cannot be accounted for by (1), since it negates human freedom. Explanation (1) is useful only in accounting for God’s knowledge of events which He Himself will bring about. But the Scripture provides many examples of divine foreknowledge of events which God does not directly cause, events which are the result of free human choices.
Finally, none of the three explanations comes to grips with the Scriptures’ doctrinal teaching concerning God’s foreknowledge. These explanations try to account only for examples of prophecy in the Bible and say nothing about the passages which explicitly teach that God foreknows the future. Thus we have strong biblical warrant for the doctrine that God’s omniscience encompasses knowledge of future contingents.
Philosophical Grounds for Affirming Divine Foreknowledge
Not only are there biblical grounds for affirming God’s foreknowledge of future contingents, but there are good philosophical reasons for thinking that God foreknows the future. As St. Anselm saw, the concept of God is the concept of a perfect being, what Anselm termed the greatest conceivable being. (Just ask whether any being which is less than perfect would be worthy of worship.) Now the greatest conceivable being, a perfect being, must be all-knowing or omniscient. For ignorance is an imperfection; all things being equal, it is greater or better to be knowledgeable than ignorant. Therefore, if there are truths about future contingents, God, as an omniscient being, must know these truths. Since there are such truths about the future, that is to say, since statements about future contingents are either true or false, and they are not all false, God must therefore know all truths about the future, which is to say that He knows future-tense facts; He knows what will happen.
One might try to escape the force of this reasoning by contending that future-tense statements are neither true nor false, so that there are no facts about the future.6 Such a view cannot, however, be plausibly maintained. Here several points deserve mention:
First, there is no good reason to deny that future-tense statements are either true or false. Why should we accept the view that future-tense statements about free acts, statements which we make all the time in ordinary conversation, are in fact neither true nor false? What proof is there that such statements are neither true nor false?
About the only answer of any substance ever given to this question goes something like this: Future events, unlike present events, do not exist. Now, a statement is true if and only if it corresponds to what exists, and false if and only if it does not correspond to what exists. Since the future does not exist, there is nothing for future-tense statements to correspond with or to fail to correspond with. Hence, future-tense statements cannot be true or false.
Since I accept the view of time which this proposed answer presupposes (namely, the dynamic theory of time), the issue is whether, given such a view, the idea of truth as correspondence requires us to deny that future-tense statements are either true or false. Those who think that it does seem to misunderstand the concept of truth as correspondence, which holds merely that a statement is true if and only if what it states to be the case really is the case. For example, the statement “It is snowing” is true if and only if it is snowing. Although this might seem too obvious to be worth stating, it is sometimes misunderstood. Truth as correspondence does not mean that the things or events which a true statement is about must exist. Indeed, it is only in the case of true present-tense statements that the things or events referred to must exist. For a past-tense statement to be true it is not required that what it describes exist, but only that it have existed. For a future-tense statement to be true it is not required that what it describes exist, but that it will exist. In order for a future-tense statement to be true, all that is required is that when the moment described arrives, the present-tense version of the statement will be true at that moment. The idea that the concept of truth as correspondence requires that the things or events described by the statement must exist at the time the statement is true is a complete misunderstanding.
To say that a future-tense statement is now true is not, of course, to say that we may now know whether it is true or to say that things are now so determined that it is true. It is only to say that when the time arrives, things will turn out as the statement predicts. A future-tense statement is true if matters turn out as the statement predicts, and false if matters fail to turn out as the statement predicts—this is all that the notion of truth as correspondence requires. Hence, there is no good reason to deny that future-tense statements are either true or false.
Second, there are good reasons to maintain that future-tense statements are either true or false.
(i) The same facts that guarantee the truth or falsity of present- and past-tense statements also guarantee the truth or falsity of future-tense statements. Nicholas Rescher explains,
Difficulties about divine foreknowledge quite apart, it is difficult to justify granting to
1. “It will rain tomorrow” (asserted on April 12)
a truth status different from that of
2. “It did rain yesterday” (asserted on April 14)
because both make (from temporally distinct perspectives)
precisely the same claim about the facts, viz., rain on April 13.7
Think about it for a moment. If “It is raining today” is now true, how could “It will rain tomorrow” not have been true yesterday? The same facts guarantee that a future-tense statement asserted earlier, a present-tense statement asserted simultaneously, and a past-tense statement asserted later are all true.
(ii) If future-tense statements are not true, then neither are past-tense statements true. If future-tense statements cannot be true because the realities they describe do not yet exist, then by the same token past-tense statements cannot be true because the realities they describe no longer exist. But to maintain that past-tense statements cannot be true would be ridiculous. Since the two cases are parallel, one must either deny the truth or falsity of both past- and future-tense statements or affirm the truth or falsity of both.
(iii) Tenseless statements are always true or false. Recall that it is possible to eliminate the tense of the verb in a statement and specify the time at which the statement is supposed to be true.8 For example, the statement “The Allies invaded Normandy” can be made tenseless by specifying the time: “On June 6, 1944, the Allies invade Normandy,” the italics indicating that the verb is tenseless. If the tensed version is true, then so is the tenseless version.9 Thus, correlated with any true past- or present-tense statement is a true tenseless version of that statement. Furthermore, a tenseless statement, if it is true at all, is always true. This is precisely because the statement is tenseless. If “On June 6, 1944, the Allies invade Normandy” is ever true, then it is always true. Therefore, this statement is true prior to June 6, 1944. But in that case, it is true prior to June 6, 1944, that the Allies on that date will invade Normandy, which is the same as saying that the future-tense version of the statement is true. Moreover, since God is omniscient, He must always know the truth of the tenseless statement, which entails that He foreknows the future.
Third, the denial of the truth or falsity of future-tense statements has absurd consequences. For example, if future-tense statements are neither true nor false, the statement made in 1998 “George W. Bush either will or will not win the presidential election in 2000” would not be true. For this statement is a compound made up of two simple future-tense sentences—“George W. Bush will win the presidential election in 2000” and “George W. Bush will not win the presidential election in 2000.” And if neither of these individual statements is true or false, the compound statement combining them is also neither true nor false. But how can this be? Either Bush will win or he will not—there is no other alternative. But the view that future-tense statements are neither true nor false would require us to say that this compound statement is neither true nor false, which seems absurd.
Equally absurd, we could not say that a statement such as “Bush both will and will not win the presidential election in 2000” is false. For this is a compound statement consisting of two simple future-tense statements, neither of which is supposed to be true or false. Therefore, the compound statement cannot be true or false either. But surely this statement is false, for it is a self-contradiction: Bush cannot both win and not win the election!
We must conclude that with no good reason in favor of it, persuasive reasons against it, and absurd consequences following from it, the view that future-tense statements about free acts are neither true nor false is untenable. The view that God’s omniscience does not encompass foreknowledge is thereby seen to be untenable, since as an omniscient being He must know all true statements, including all true future-tense statements.
Detractors of divine foreknowledge often try to escape this conclusion by redefining the concept of omniscience in such a way that being omniscient does not entail knowing all truths. Thus, they must reject the usual definition of omniscience:
O. For any agent x, x is omniscient = def. For every statement s, if s is true, then x knows that s and does not believe that not-s.
What (O) requires is that a person is omniscient if and only if he knows all truths and believes no falsehoods. This is the standard definition of omniscience. It entails that if there are future-tense truths, then an omniscient being must know them.
So as not to deny God’s omniscience, opponents of divine foreknowledge have suggested revisionary definitions of omniscience in order to be able to affirm that God is omniscient even as they deny His knowledge of future contingents.10 William Hasker’s revisionist definition is typical:
O’. God is omniscient = def. God knows all statements which are such that God’s knowing them is logically possible.
Revisionists then go on to claim that it is logically impossible to know statements about future contingents, and so God may count as omniscient despite His ignorance of an infinite number of true statements.
As it stands, however, (O’) is drastically flawed, for it does not exclude that God believes false statements as well as true ones. Worse, (O’) actually requires God to know false statements, which is incoherent as well as theologically unacceptable. For (O’) requires that if it is logically possible for God to know some statement s, then God knows s. But if s is a contingently false statement, say, There are eight planets in the sun’s solar system, then there are logically possible worlds in which s is true and so known by God. Therefore, since it is logically possible for God to know s, He must according to (O’) actually know s, which is absurd.
What the revisionist really wants to say is something like
O’’. God is omniscient = def. God knows only and all true statements which are such that it is logically possible for God to know them.
Unlike (O’), (O’’) limits God’s knowledge to a certain subset of all true statements.
The fundamental problem with all such revisionary definitions of omniscience as (O’’) is that, as we have seen11, any adequate definition of a concept must accord with our intuitive understanding of the concept. We are not at liberty to “cook” the definition in some desired way without thereby making the definition unacceptably contrived. (O’’) is guilty of being “cooked” in this way. For, intuitively, omniscience involves knowing all truths, yet according to (O’’) God could conceivably be ignorant of infinite realms of truths and yet still count as omniscient. The only reason why someone would prefer (O’’) to (O) is due to an ulterior motivation to salvage the attribute of omniscience for a cognitively limited deity rather than to deny outright that God is omniscient. (O’’) is therefore unacceptably contrived.
A second problem with (O’’) is that it construes omniscience in modal terms, speaking, not of knowing all truth, but of knowing all truth which is knowable. But omniscience, unlike omnipotence, is not a modal notion. Roughly speaking, omnipotence is the capability of actualizing any logically possible state of affairs. But omniscience is not merely the capability of knowing only and all truths; it is knowing only and all truths. Nor does omniscience mean knowing only and all knowable truths, but knowing only and all truths, period. It is a categorical, not a modal, notion.
Third, the superiority of (O’’) over (O) depends on there being a difference between a truth and a truth which it is logically possible to know. If there is no difference, then (O’’) collapses back to (O), and the revisionist has gained nothing. But it is far from evident that there is any difference. For what is a sufficient condition for a statement to be logically knowable? So far as I can see, the only condition is that the statement be true. What more is needed? If the revisionist thinks that something more is needed, then we may ask him for an example of a statement that could be true but logically impossible to know. A statement such as “Nothing exists” or “All agents have ceased to exist” comes to mind; but on traditional theism these statements are not possibly true, since God is an agent whose non-existence is impossible. Unless the revisionist can give us some reason to think that a statement can be true yet unknowable, we have no reason to adopt (O’’). It seems that the only intrinsic property which a statement must possess in order to be logically knowable is truth.
The revisionist will claim at this point that future contingent statements are logically impossible for God to know, since if He knows them, then they are not contingent.12 We shall examine the revisionist’s argument for this latter claim below; but here we may note that even if we concede that his argument is sound, it still does not follow that future contingent statements are logically impossible for God to know. The revisionist reasons that for any future-tense statement s it is impossible that God know s and that s be contingent; therefore, if s is contingent, it is not possible that God knows s. But such reasoning is logically fallacious. From
1. Not-possibly (God knows s, and s is contingent)
and
2. s is contingent
it does not follow logically that
3. Not-possibly (God knows s)
but merely
3’. Not (God knows s).
In other words, what follows from (1) and (2) is merely that God does not know s, not that it is impossible that God knows s. Thus, even granted the revisionist’s premise that it is impossible that God know s and s be contingent, it does not follow from the contingency of s that s is such that it is logically impossible for God to know s. Therefore, even on the defective definition (O’’) proposed by the revisionist, the revisionist’s God turns out not to be omniscient, since s is a true statement which, so far as we can see, is logically possible for God to know, and yet God does not know s. Thus, the revisionist must deny divine omniscience and therefore reject God’s perfection—a very serious theological consequence, indeed.13
Philosophical Objections to Divine Foreknowledge
As I mentioned, opponents of divine foreknowledge usually raise two objections to that doctrine: (1) Divine foreknowledge implies fatalism, and (2) there is no basis on which God can know future contingents. Let us explore each of these issues in turn.
The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents
The first objection raises the issue of fatalism, the doctrine that everything we do we do necessarily and that therefore human freedom is an illusion. It is alleged that if God foreknows the future, then fatalism is true. Since fatalism is not true, it follows that God must not foreknow the future.
What is the argument that allegedly demonstrates the connection between divine foreknowledge and fatalism? Letting “x” stand for any event, the basic form of the argument is as follows:
1. Necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will happen.
2. God foreknows x.
3. Therefore, x will necessarily happen.
Since x happens necessarily, it is not a contingent event. In virtue of God’s foreknowledge, everything is fated to occur.
The problem with the above form of the argument is that it is just logically fallacious. What is validly implied by premises (1) and (2) is not (3) but
3’. Therefore, x will happen.
The fatalist gets things all mixed up here. It is correct that in a valid, deductive argument the premises necessarily imply the conclusion. The conclusion follows necessarily from the premises; that is to say, it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. But the conclusion itself need not be necessary. The fatalist illicitly transfers the necessity of the inference to the conclusion itself. What necessarily follows from (1) and (2) is just (3’). But the fatalist in his confusion thinks that the conclusion is itself necessarily true and so winds up with (3). In so doing he simply commits a common logical fallacy.
The correct conclusion (3’) is in no way incompatible with human freedom. From God’s knowledge that I shall do x, it does not follow that I must do x but only that I shall do x. That is in no way incompatible with my doing x freely.
Undoubtedly a major source of the fatalist’s confusion is his conflating certainty with necessity. One frequently finds in the writings of contemporary theological fatalists statements which slide from affirming that something is certainly true to affirming that it is necessarily true. This is sheer confusion. Certainty is a property of persons and has nothing to do with truth, as is evident from the fact that we can be absolutely certain about something which turns out to be false. (Dogmatic people often have this problem.) By contrast, necessity is a property of statements, indicating that a statement cannot possibly be false. We can be wholly uncertain about statements which are, unbeknownst to us, necessarily true (imagine some complex mathematical equation or theorem). Thus, when we say that some statement is “certainly true,” this is but a manner of speaking indicating that we are certain that the statement is true. People are certain; statements are necessary.
By confusing certainty and necessity, the fatalist makes his logically fallacious argument deceptively appealing. For it is correct that from premises (1) and (2) we can be absolutely certain that x will come to pass. But it is muddle-headed to think that, because x will certainly happen, x will necessarily happen. We can be certain, given God’s foreknowledge, that x will not fail to happen, even though it is entirely possible that x fail to happen. X could fail to occur, but God knows that it will not. Therefore, we can be sure that it will happen—and happen contingently.
Contemporary theological fatalists recognize the fallaciousness of the above form of the argument and therefore try to remedy the defect by making premise (2) also necessarily true:
1. Necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will happen.
2’. Necessarily, God foreknows x.
3. Therefore, x will necessarily happen.
So formulated, the argument is no longer logically fallacious, and so the question becomes whether the premises are true.
Premise (1) is clearly true. It is perhaps worth noting that this is the case, not because of God’s essential omniscience or inerrancy, but simply in virtue of the definition of “knowledge.” Since knowledge entails true belief, anybody’s knowing that x will happen implies necessarily that x will happen. Thus, we could replace (1) and (2’) with
1.* Necessarily, if Smith truly believes that x will happen, then x will happen.
2.* Necessarily, Smith truly believes that x will happen.
And (3) will follow as before. Therefore, if any person ever holds true beliefs about the future (and surely we do, as we smugly remind others when we say, “I told you so!”), then, given the truth of premise (2*), fatalism follows from merely human beliefs, a curious conclusion!
Indeed, as ancient Greek fatalists realized, the presence of any agent at all is really superfluous to the argument. All one needs is a true, future-tense statement to get the argument going. Thus, we could replace (1) and (2’) with
1.** Necessarily, if it is true that x will happen, then x will happen.
2.** Necessarily, it is true that x will happen.
And we shall get (3) as our conclusion. Thus, philosopher Susan Haack quite rightly calls the argument for theological fatalism “a needlessly (and confusingly) elaborated version” of Greek fatalism; the addition of an omniscient God to the argument constitutes a “gratuitous detour” around the real issue, which is the truth or falsity of future-tense statements.14
In order to avoid the above generalization of their argument to all persons and to mere statements about the future, theological fatalists will deny that the second premise is true with respect to humans or mere statements, as it is for God. They will say that Smith’s holding a true belief or some future-tense statement’s being true are not necessary in the way that God’s holding a belief is necessary.
That raises the question as to whether premise (2’) is true. Now at face value, premise (2’) is obviously false. Christian theology has always maintained that God’s creation of the world is a free act, that God could have created a different world, in which x does not occur, or even no world at all. To say that God necessarily foreknows any event x implies that this is the only world God could have created and thus denies divine freedom.
But theological fatalists have a different sort of necessity in mind when they say that God’s foreknowledge is necessary. What they are talking about is temporal necessity, or the necessity of the past. Often this is expressed by saying that the past is unpreventable or unchangeable. If some event is in the past, then it is now too late to do anything to affect it. It is in that sense necessary. Since God’s foreknowledge of future events is now part of the past, it is now fixed and unalterable. Therefore, it is said, premise (2’) is true.
But if premise (2’) is true in that sense, then why are not (2*) and (2**) true as well? The theological fatalist will respond that Smith’s belief’s being true or a future-tense statement’s being true are not facts or events of the past, as is God’s holding a belief.
But such an understanding of what constitutes a fact or event seems quite counterintuitive. If Smith believed in 1997 that “Bill Clinton will be impeached,” was it not a fact that his belief was true? If Smith held that same belief today, would it not be a fact that his belief is no longer true (since Clinton no longer holds office)? If Smith’s belief thus changed from being true to being false, then surely it was a fact that it was then true and is a fact that it is now false. The same obviously goes for the mere statement “Bill Clinton will be impeached.” This statement once had the property of being true and now has the property of being false. In any reasonable sense of “fact,” these are past and present facts.
Indeed, a statement’s having a truth value is plausibly an event as well. This is most obvious with respect to statements such as “Flight 4750 to Paris will depart in five minutes.” That statement is false up until five minutes prior to departure, becomes true at five minutes till, and then becomes false again immediately thereafter. Other statements’ being true may be more long-lasting events, such as “Flight 4750 to Paris will depart within the next hour.” Such statements’ being true are clearly events on any reasonable construal of what constitutes an event.
No theological fatalist that I have read has even begun to address the question of the nature of facts or events which would make it plausible that Smith’s truly believing a future-tense statement and a future-tense statement’s being true do not count as past facts or events. But then we see that theological fatalism is not inherently theological at all; if the theological fatalist’s reasoning is correct, it can be generalized to show that every time we hold a true belief about the future or even every time a statement about the future is true, then the future is fated to occur—surely an incredible inference!
Moreover, we have the best of reasons for thinking that premise (2’) is defective in some way, namely, fatalism posits a constraint on human freedom which is unintelligible. For the fatalist admits that the events foreknown by God may be causally indeterminate; indeed, they could theoretically be completely uncaused, spontaneous events. Nevertheless, such events are said to be somehow constrained. But by what? By fate? What is that but a mere name? If my action is causally free, how can it be constrained by the mere fact of God’s knowing about it?
Sometimes fatalists say that God’s foreknowledge places a sort of logical constraint on my action. Even though I am causally free to refrain from my action, there is some sort of logical constraint upon me, rendering it impossible for me to refrain. But insofar as we can make sense of logical constraints, they are not analogous to the sort of necessitation imagined by the theological fatalist. For example, given the fact that I have already played basketball at least once in my life, it is now impossible for me to play basketball for the first time. I am thus not free to go out and play basketball for the first time. But this sort of constraint is not at all analogous to theological fatalism. For in the case we are envisioning, it is within my power to play basketball or not. Whether I have played before or not, I can freely execute the actions of playing basketball. It is just that if I have played before, my actions will not count as playing for the first time. By contrast the fatalist imagines that if God knows that I shall not play basketball, then even though I am causally free, my actions are mysteriously constrained so that I am literally unable to walk out onto the court, dribble, and shoot. But such non-causal determinism is utterly opaque and unintelligible.
The argument for fatalism therefore must be unsound. Since premise (1) is clearly true, the trouble must lie with premise (2’). And premise (2’) is notoriously problematic, for the notion of temporal necessity appealed to by the fatalist is so obscure a concept that (2’) becomes a veritable mare’s nest of philosophical difficulties. For example, since the necessity of premise (1) is logical necessity and the necessity of premise (2’) is temporal necessity, why think that such mixing of different kinds of modality is valid? If the fatalist answers that logical necessity entails temporal necessity, so that premise (1) can be construed merely in terms of temporal necessity, then how do we know that such necessity is passed on from the premises to the conclusion, in the way that logical necessity is? Indeed, since x is supposed to be a future event, how could it be temporally necessary? Since x is neither present nor past but has yet to occur, it could not possibly be characterized by the temporal necessity that is supposed to inhere in events once they have occurred. Thus, we have every reason to think that temporal necessity is not transitive.
And even if this peculiar sort of necessity were transitive and so x were temporally necessary, how do we know that this sort of necessity is incompatible with an action’s being free? It is plausible that so long as a person’s choice is causally undetermined, it is a free choice even if he is unable to choose the opposite of that choice.15 Imagine a man with electrodes secretly implanted in his brain who is presented with the choice of doing either A or B. The electrodes are inactive so long as the man chooses A; but if he were going to choose B, then the electrodes would switch on and force him to choose A. If the electrodes fire, causing him to choose A, his choice of A is clearly not a free choice. But suppose that the man really wants to do A and chooses it of his own volition. In that case his choosing A is entirely free, even though the man is literally unable to choose B, since the electrodes do not function at all and so have no effect on his choice of A. What makes his choice free is the absence of any causally determining factors of his choosing A. This conception of libertarian freedom has the advantage of explaining how it is that God’s choosing to do good is free, even though it is impossible for God to choose sin, namely, His choosing is undetermined by causal constraints. Thus, libertarian freedom of the will does not require the ability to choose other than as one chooses. So even if x were temporally necessary, such that not-x could not occur, it is far from obvious that x would not be freely performed or chosen.
All of the above problems arise even if we concede (2’) to be true. But why think that this premise is true? What is temporal necessity anyway, and why think that God’s past beliefs are now temporally necessary? Theological fatalists have never provided an adequate account of this peculiar modality. I have yet to see an explanation of temporal necessity, according to which God’s past beliefs are temporally necessary, which does not reduce to either the unalterability or the causal closedness of the past.
But interpreting the necessity of the past as its unalterability (or unchangeability or unpreventability) is clearly inadequate, since the future, by definition, is just as unalterable as the past. By definition the future is what will occur, and the past is what has occurred. To change the future would be to bring it about that an event which will occur will not occur, which is self-contradictory. It is purely a matter of definition that the past and future cannot be changed, and no fatalistic conclusion follows from this truth. We need not be able to change the future in order to determine the future. If our actions are freely performed, then it lies within our power to determine causally what the course of future events will be, even if we do not have the power to change the future.
The fatalist will insist that the past is necessary in the sense that we do not have a similar ability to causally determine the past. The non-fatalist may happily concede the point: Backward causation is impossible. But the causal closedness of the past does not imply fatalism, for freedom to refrain from doing as God knows one will do does not involve backward causation.
One may happily admit that there is nothing I can now do to cause or bring about the past. Thus I cannot cause God to have had in the past a certain belief about my future actions. But it may well lie within my power to freely perform some action A, and if A were to occur, then the past would have been different than it in fact is. Suppose, for example, that God has always believed that in the year 2001 I would accept an invitation to speak at the University of Regensburg. Let us suppose that up until the time arrives I have the ability to accept or refuse the invitation. If I were to refuse the invitation, then God would have held a different belief than the one He in fact held. For if I were to refuse the invitation, then different future-tense statements would have been true, and God, being omniscient, would have known this. Thus, He would have had different foreknowledge than that which He in fact has. Neither the relation between my action and a corresponding future-tense statement about it, nor the relation between a true future-tense statement and God’s believing it, is a causal relation. Thus, the causal closedness of the past is irrelevant. If temporal necessity is merely the causal closedness of the past, then it is insufficient to support fatalism.
No fatalist, as I say, has to my knowledge explicated a conception of temporal necessity which does not amount to either the unalterability or the causal closedness of the past. Typically, they just appeal gratuitously to some sort of “Fixed Past Principle” to the effect that it is not within my power to act in such a way, that if I were to do so, then the past would have been different—which begs the question. On analyses of temporal necessity which are not reducible to either the unalterability or the causal closedness of the past, God’s past beliefs always turn out not to be temporally necessary.16 It is interesting that, as I have tried to show elsewhere17, precisely parallel conclusions follow with respect to the temporal necessity of past events in cases of time travel, backward causation, precognition, and the Special Theory of Relativity, which provide intriguing analogues to the theological scenario of God’s holding beliefs about future contingents.
Thus, the argument for theological fatalism is unsound. It provides no cogent basis on which to deny the biblical doctrine of divine foreknowledge.
The Basis of Divine Foreknowledge of Future Contingents
What, then, about that second question raised by divine foreknowledge, namely, the basis of God’s knowledge of future contingents? Detractors of divine foreknowledge sometimes claim that because future events do not exist, they cannot be known by God. The reasoning seems to go as follows:
1. Only events which actually exist can be known by God.
2. Future events do not exist.
3. Therefore, future events cannot be known by God.
Now premise (2) is not uncontroversial. A good many physicists and philosophers of time and space argue that future events do exist. They claim that the difference between past, present, and future is merely a subjective matter of human consciousness. For the people in the year 2015 the events of that year are just as real as the events of our present are for us, and for those people, it is we who have passed away and are unreal. On such a view God transcends the four-dimensional space-time continuum, and thus all events are eternally present to Him. It is easy on such a view to understand how God could therefore know events which to us are future.
Nevertheless, I have argued that such a four-dimensional view of reality faces insuperable philosophical and theological objections.18 Therefore, I am inclined to agree with premise (2) of the above argument. So the question becomes whether there is good reason to think that premise (1) is true.
In assessing the question of how God knows which events will transpire, it is helpful to distinguish two models of divine cognition: the perceptualist model and the conceptualist model. The perceptualist model construes divine knowledge on the analogy of sense perception. God looks and sees what is there. Such a model is implicitly assumed when people speak of God’s “foreseeing” the future or having “foresight” of future events. The perceptualist model of divine cognition does run into real problems when it comes to God’s knowledge of the future, for, since future events do not exist, there is nothing there to perceive.19
By contrast, on a conceptualist model of divine knowledge, God does not acquire His knowledge of the world by anything like perception. His knowledge of the future is not based on His “looking” ahead and “seeing” what lies in the future (a terribly anthropomorphic notion in any case). Rather God’s knowledge is self-contained; it is more like a mind’s knowledge of innate ideas. As an omniscient being, God has essentially the property of knowing all truths; there are truths about future events; ergo, God knows all truths concerning future events.
So long as we are not seduced into thinking of divine foreknowledge on the model of perception, it is no longer evident why knowledge of future events should be impossible. A conceptualist model furnishes a perspicuous basis for God’s knowledge of future contingents.
Thus, neither the problem of theological fatalism nor the question of the basis of divine foreknowledge provides adequate grounds for denying the testimony of both Scripture and reason to the truth of the doctrine of divine omniscience and, in particular, God’s knowledge of future contingents.
Conclusion
Despite the impression conveyed by certain theologians, then, divine knowledge of what will take place in the future is not a package deal with divine timelessness. It is perfectly coherent to maintain that God is, at least since the moment of creation, temporal and also that God’s omniscience extends to future contingents. Indeed, it is precisely in virtue of His omniscience that God must possess foreknowledge of such events. For if there are future-tense truths, these must be known to God. But that implies both God’s temporality and His knowledge of things to come. Together these features of God entail divine foreknowledge. Such foreknowledge is wholly compatible with contingency and, in particular, human freedom and is best understood in terms of a conceptualist model of divine cognition, according to which God simply possesses essentially knowledge of all truth, including truths about future contingents.
1 See chapter 3, pages 97-109.
2 William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987; rep. ed.: Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2000).
3 Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (1682; reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1979), vol. 1, 431-432.
4 Witherington calls these conditional prophecies (Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Seer (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999), 3; cf. 134.
5 Middle knowledge involves knowledge of subjunctive conditionals such as If Goldwater had been elected in 1964, he would have won the Vietnam War. See my article “Middle Knowledge,” in Four Views on Divine Knowledge, ed. James Beilby and Paul Eddy (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, forthcoming).
6 It is very important here that we realize that by a “statement” I do not mean a sentence token (recall the distinction between sentence tokens and types made in chapter 4, note 4). Otherwise we should have to say that during the Jurassic Age, when no human beings were about, there were no future-tense statements (and so no facts about the future), but that now there are! Rather by “statement” I mean something more like a sentence type, which may or may not ever be uttered or written. So, for example, even though the sentence token “No sentences exist” can never be true, clearly the statement that No sentences exist can be and often has been true. The question before us does not concern whether there happen to be true future-tense sentences either uttered or written, but whether there are truths about the future, and so I use the term “statement” to ask this question.
7 Nicholas Rescher, Many-Valued Logic (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 2-3.
8 See chapter 3, page 99.
9 For a good discussion see Thomas Bradley Talbott, “Fatalism and the Timelessness of Truth” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1974), 153-154.
10 For the following definition see William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downer’s Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 1994), 136.
11 See chapter 3, page 104.
12 Hasker, “Philosophical Perspective,” 147-148.
13 Notice, too, that the revisionist’s position is ultimately logically incoherent. For by his own lights it is logically possible to know any true, present-tense statement. But if future-tense statements are true or false, then there will be present-tense statements such as “Future-tense statement s is presently true” which must be known to God. It cannot reasonably be denied that God must know such present-tense statements, for God knows what properties presently inhere in existing things. But then He must know that “Truth presently inheres in future-tense statement s.” Hence, the detractor of divine foreknowledge cannot coherently affirm that there are true future-tense statements and yet deny that God knows such statements—he must deny the truth or falsity of future-tense statements, a radical position.
14 Susan Haack, “On a Theological Argument for Fatalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1974): 158.
15 See Harry Frankfurt, “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829-839; Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151-152. For an application to theological fatalism see David P. Hunt, “On Augustine’s Way Out,” Faith and Philosophy 16 (1999): 3-26.
16 See, for example, Alfred J. Freddoso, “Accidental Necessity and Logical Determinism,” Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983): 257-278.
17 Craig, The Only Wise God.
18 Recall chapters 4 and 5.
19 Notice, however, that if we think of statements or facts as within God’s purview, then even on a perceptualist model, God can know the future, for He perceives which future-tense statements have the property of truth inhering in them or which future-tense facts presently exist. Thus, by means of His perception of presently existing realities, He knows the truth about the future. Cf. Note 13, above.