A Moment In the Mind of God

We experience, act and think sequentially, in a time-bound fashion, which seems to demand that the entire concept of change be placed squarely within the domain of time. God is not time-bound and sees omnitemporally, and yet presents himself to us within creation as one experiencing change. The paradox is confusing to say the least. Nonetheless, unless we are willing to discount God's self-revelation in scripture, it's a paradox we should accept as true.

I've written previously concerning God's experience of the moment within creation. His timeless experience of the moment in creation means that he's not only always here now, but that what was then is now and what is to be is now for him. We wait on time to unfold--past opening up to present, present becoming future. God sees the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning. He sees all things in motion through time, at once, and he interjects throughout time to affect and influence where things go, at once, and leaves no scar on time to trace that he ever did so.

It is not necessary that he dreamt all this up in the misty ages of eternity, as if he always, forever had a plan to create, and then decided to instantiate it in the moment of creation. He need only to have had a thought and said "be," and in that instant all was what it is in all its time at once before him. From his perspective, all stuff, all time, all the us there will ever be came about with one all-wise, all-seeing, all-knowing decision (or perhaps six day-long decision). The thought that precipitated that decision has not passed: this, right now, is that thought, not the echo of it as it would be if he had to perceive it through the long ages of eternity before he acted.

Really, that precipitating thought was the only one necessary for God to have undertaken regarding all creation throughout its time. Extended pre-planning, meticulous preparation, experimentation, and trial and error were not necessary to bring creation into being. God is wise enough, knows enough, is powerful enough, and is unaffected by time enough to put all this into play, and to still allow creatures free will within time. We are in that moment, the very same moment, and the only moment within the mind of God that produced all creation and in which creation is sustained.

How Does God Know the Future?

The future does not really exist (nor for that matter, does the past).

The past is merely the record of what used to be the present, and the future can only be what will be the present when the present gets to that point. It is the present where the action is and it is that action that produces either the past or the future. So the present is what is necessary for either the future or the past to have what existence they might, and never vice versa.

There are of course, circumstances which were in motion in the past and which determine the future to some degree. A huge asteroid could be hurtling toward us from ages past that will impact our future in very tangible ways. Celestial bodies move according to the laws of physics and their courses can be charted and accurately projected. Earthly bodies, and by that I mean humans, cannot--their responses to their environment, to one another, to God, or to themselves cannot be charted because their free actions are uncertain until taken (the Heisenberg principle of free agents?).

Freedom is entirely wrapped up in the present. It exists in the moment of decision. Insofar as choice is concerned, the past is inert and the future is is inaccessible. Decisions are made in the moment their action occurs, necessarily. Some choices are made which effect the future and/or are influenced by the past, but freedom to act, to choose, always and only happens in the present.

Therefore the future cannot be fixed in any real sense, because it is dependent upon a present which is in flux. A future which is dependent upon that which is in flux has to be in flux itself. It seems to me that if there is any truth at all to the notions of will, freedom and spirit (which produce flux) it is impossible for the future to be fixed, and by that fixity control the present. Nothing is actually written until it's written in its present.

That does not mean the future cannot be known. 

If an omnitemporal observer (God) could view all of the presents that will ever exist from a vantage outside of time, the future would be known to him, exhaustively, through observation of the present. That the future is known by this God would not make it fixed, in the sense that it determined the present, for it is the present in which action occurs, the uncertain becomes the established, and which God observes and thereby knows the future. God knows the future because God has seen the present timelessly, but it is never his knowing that causes what he sees.

It is, in fact, a confounding of cause and effect to assume God's knowing the future would bind the freedom of an agent in the present. That God knows an agent will act in some fashion at a particular time is not equivalent to saying that the agent must act in that fashion at that particular time because God knows that agent will. On omnitemporal observation of freewill, the act of the agent causes the knowledge, the knowledge doesn't cause the act. Seeing timelessly is out of our wheelhouse as humans, and therefore justifiably confusing, but it should be straightforward enough to perceive that seeing an act omnitemporally cannot be said to necessitate causing that act in time.

Furthermore, an infinitely wise and powerful God could shape the panorama of time by a directive interposition here and there (or as often as he saw fit) without affecting the existence of freedom, generally, in any present. He could shepherd time to an appointed end without meticulously determining anything that occurred in time. In being able to do so, I see no reason to posit that he would require a mental "trial run" (i.e middle knowledge and/or deterministic decrees) in order to do so. He saw all at once, once he created.

I see no other possible way than this for the future to be known exhaustively by God, for creaturely freedom to exist in the present (see this and this), and for God to not have conceived evil before evil existed. We'll address that last concept later, for now, suffice it to say that if the future is fixed and thereby determinative of the present, will and freedom would have to cease to exist in any meaningful fashion. I see no biblical warrant to suggest such a course. To posit such is to put the cart before the horse and totally miss how God knows the future.

God's Nature and Creaturely Freedom

God's Nature
God has the quality of aseity. He is completely self-sufficient and utterly free. Though he is immutable, he is not inactive. He has sufficient power and complete knowledge to do or not do as he pleases.

God's Relation to Creation and Time
God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has made all that is other than himself, and having created all things, he knows them completely. God is not impassible in regard to creation, but is interactive with it. All creation is before God at every point (i.e. everywhere is in his presence), but he is not in creation nor contained by it. God can step into the limitations of space and experience that space, but always with his omniscience and omnipresence intact, apart from that point of contact.

God is timeless, and is properly outside of time just as he is outside of the rest of creation. All time is equally before him at every point, although God is not in it nor constrained by time. That which is in time (creation) experiences time and is limited by its sequential nature, but God is present with equal facility in the past, present and future, simultaneously (as it were). God can step into the limitations of the moment (time) and experience that moment in real time, but always has his omniscient, omnitemporality intact, apart from that point of contact.

God's Omniscience
God's knows all that can be known. In acting in regard to creation, from the perspective of creation in any time reference, God sees and knows that action and its consequences in all time references. We must plan before we execute our actions or be at the mercy of things ignorantly set in motion, but God is able to see all at once by virtue of his omniscience outside of time. Therefore, he can act, direct and know the end from the beginning, at once, without the necessity of a pre-planned blueprint.

God's Sovereignty
God governs by law and by intervention, of which he sees the effects at once without the limitations of sequence (time). From the viewpoint of creation, there is a quality to God's governance which appears as if the clock was wound at the beginning and is now unwinding. From God's perspective, he knows at once the shape of that unwinding, not because he has minutely determined every second, but because he understands what he has made and how it functions, and sees every second at once.

The laws of nature are the manifestation of God's will for nature. Things act according to law, but without the necessity that each action was specifically willed by God. God's sovereignty is not expressed in the minute detail of every occurrence, but in the laws that produce it. If one were to throw a ball against a wall, the ball would bounce as it does because God wanted a myriad of forces to act the way they do which resulted in such a bounce in time, rather than because God wanted that ball to bounce that way at that time.

Creaturely Freedom
All things in God's creation have a nature by which they are governed and are interacted with by the rest of God's creation by its nature. Some natures are more god-like than others, with human beings (and probably at least some of the angels) being made in the very image of God. The nature of human beings, in their degree of freedom to act, will be most reflective of God's freedom. Apart from an analogous freedom as that possessed by God, human beings would not be in God's image, but only reflect God's attributes as does all creation.

Foreknowledge and the Fixity of the Future

The Bible presents God as knowing the future exhaustively. The scriptures also record God making pronouncements about the future, which in turn cause people who hear them to respond to those announcements in such a way that God changes that pronounced future. Incidents of this sort drove Jonah nuts and led Moses to an altruistic intercession that came back to haunt him. Whereas these cases do nothing to contradict the tenet that God controls the future, they completely undermine any sense that just because God has had something said about the future, that future is fixed thereby.

A little confusing, to say the least.

We are told to "ask whatever we will" (emphasis mine) in prayer and that God will answer those prayers. In a putting-the-cart-before-the-horse scenario, the concept of answered prayer twists virtually every way theologians and philosophers look at time and foreknowledge. A future-effecting intervention from God outside of time in response to definite, self-intiated actions by agents (i.e. free choice) within time certainly puts a question mark over the concept of a fixed future. How can it be fixed if it is responsive to freely chosen actions in time?

There are instances in the Bible where God tells people they have done what they have done because he determined that they would. God has delivered quite detailed descriptions of what people, who don't even exist yet, will do in circumstances and events that were not even hinted at by circumstances and events at the time of the announcement. He often clearly states that such actions are at his beckon as well. Clearly, some things are predetermined by God. 

Hmmm, chalk one up for Determinism!

It is obvious that God is more than a mere observer and that he is not merely a determiner. God has told us some things about himself, in his timelessness, that can help us understand the mystery. For instance: he will never lie, he is not tempted by evil and will never tempt anyone else with it, he cannot be thwarted in the accomplishment of his will, even though mankind has the capacity to disappoint him and to cause him to reconsider (evidently, he is not impassible). He does know the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning (all things will conclude on his agenda), but there seems to be some wiggle room in all this.

It is obvious that people have real choices that matter. There is a quality to at least some of those choices in which God must "wait" to see what man actually does (despite God's analytical skills) for God to say that it is what man would actually do (e.g., see Genesis 18, and 22). Yet, those same analytical skills do allow God to see where alternate choice could have led. God always does as he wants, of course, but what he wants with us is interactivity with man's choice. 

It seems that God simultaneously sees exactly how man's choice and his own choice unfold through time to the end.

The only workable solution I see to all the complexity of timeless omniscience and the clarity of biblical revelation is simple foreknowledge. Nonetheless, I understand the difficulty many (e.g. determinists and Molinists) have in seeing it as a sufficient view. What I think is more of a problem in comprehending all of this, more than even our own time-bound limits of imagination and understanding, is our conception of a fixed future. God, who is outside of time, sees all of time at once; thereby, he can know the future both exhaustively and fluidly.

For us, the present is where we live unaware of temporal effects that occur outside our moment. Our choices in the here and now are real, our past is fixed and our futures are open, despite the completeness of God's timeless foreknowledge. God, outside of time, can do as he wants in time to shepherd time to an end stated before its time in time. That the future is what God has seen it outside of time to be does not necessitate that future is thereby fixed for those of us who must wait to see it inside of time.

Since God's exhaustive knowledge of the future is not time-bound, it does not require fixity in order to be exhaustive and accurate.

Foreknowledge and Counterfactuals

Counterfactual knowledge is the awareness of what would be if something other than what happened had happened--seeing, if you will, the alternate timeline that would have arisen if another choice had been made or other circumstances had existed. Is it real? It's hard to say, even in regard to God (though I will try). He is certainly analytical enough to prognosticate in that fashion (as we are under many circumstances), and he has the added benefit of being able to see everything, including our thoughts and intents and not just our outward actions.

Before we can get anywhere with this, however, we must first determine how God uses statements in the Bible we consider counterfactual. Is he actually dispensing information concerning an alternate "what-if" reality, a window on his thoughts about possibilities, or is he merely making points rhetorically? If it were any other person speaking that way we would know the answer was "rhetorical," with the all-knowing God we must pause before reaching such a conclusion. Does God know certainly what any of us would do if we were in different circumstances?

It would be easy enough to say yes, if for no other reason than not to offend God and honor our conceptions of his omniscience and sovereignty, but that isn't really the point. God is about truth, and in particular the truth he tells us about himself. Humans attributing to God what he doesn't claim for himself, even to make him appear "bigger" or "better" doesn't really honor him--at best it would be presumptuous, at worst it would be idolatrous! Is God actually, clearly telling us that he knows what we would do in any given circumstance?

There is scriptural warrant to think he does, cases in point:

Deuteronomy 31:20-22 - God knew the intents of the heart and what history those intents would end up making as a result;

Psalm 139 - God's knows the thoughts and actions of David before they occurred;
Ezekiel 3:6b-9 - God knew the hearts of Israel and took steps within Ezekiel's to counteract them;

Matthew 11:20-24 - Jesus knew that people who did not repent in the past would have repented if they had seen Christ in action. [Now, that is not to say they would have come to faith in Christ, just that the incredibly wicked would not have acted in ways that demanded their immediate destruction rather than waiting until the end of time];

John 2:24-25 - Jesus understood the inner workings of man's intents and desires, and how to thwart their consummation in action;

1 Corinthians 10:13-14 -  God knows what temptation a person can bear and does not allow more than a believer can withstand by promising an available escape.

On the other hand:
Genesis 22:12 - God had to see the determination to act and the act initiated before he could say that he knew that Abraham would not withhold Isaac;
Exodus 13:17-18 - God spoke uncertainly about what the people might do and avoided learning what they would actually do;
Deuteronomy 8:2 - God had to see the heart actualized before he knew for certain what was in it.

I don't know that God meant to establish parallel truth by making counterfactual statements in the Bible. It easy to see these statements as other than the revelation of absolute, certain descriptions of alternate reality. There are obvious other purposes to those counterfactually structured statements that may be more fundamental to their meaning than the apparent counterfactual aspect. As always in biblical interpretation, intent of the (ultimate) author is of paramount importance.

If God had to see something done before he could know it certainly, as seems to be the case in some of the texts cited above, then I think it is safe to say that counterfactuals represent the discernment of God rather than the revelation of an alternate, possible history. Is God accurate in his assessments? Absolutely, but an assessment of a person's character and reactions is not the same as the statement of fact as in a historical narrative. Therefore, counterfactuals in the Bible do not represent an unveiling of Middle Knowledge, but merely the discernment of the all-wise, all-seeing God.

Foreknowledge is based on what God actually sees outside of time, not on permutations of possibilities that he cogitated within the counsels of his own mind before he created. If we posit that God knows with certainty what we would do in any circumstance, that he deliberated through what-ifs of creaturely freedom before he chose what became, we don't have freedom but merely a different way to see Compatibilism. If God has true (that is absolutely certain) counterfactual knowledge of free human action, not founded on what humans actually did, then foreknowledge is "rigged" and compatibilism is true.

Are All Who Believe in the End of Time Fatalists?

In commenting on whether or not there was any substantial difference as to how determinism or fatalism view a predetermined end, I said, "...if the end is predetermined, the circumstance is fatalistic--regardless of whether or not one envisions the steps that lead to it as determined or not." That concept is worth exploring a bit further, so let's give it a go.

If one believes that God not only knows the end from the beginning but can, Babe Ruth-like, point to a desired end to events and then "hit the ball" to that spot, we certainly have the makings of a fatalistic viewpoint. That would just about include all Bible believing Christians I would think. By that reasoning, if one takes seriously the biblical concept of the "End of Time," that one would have to be generalized as a fatalist. Are all who believe in the end of time thereby fatalists?

If God were merely speaking on the basis of prescience, that is foresight, when such things were prophesied maybe we could say no and leave it at that. In that case, he would only be telling us what unfolds in time rather than what he was causing to unfold: determination would be removed from the equation. That, however, clearly is not the flavor of at least some of what he says. For example:

“Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done. Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it." (Isaiah 46:9-11 NASB)

It appears from this passage that not only did God see what would happen, but he knew what he wanted to happen and made it so. Much of eschatology seems to me to be of this ilk. Despite this apparent difficulty, there are two factors which keep biblical Christianity from being truly fatalistic: (1) time and temporal sequence is of the created order not of the Creator's, and (2) there is nothing to say that God's determination and the indeterminacy of free agents can act on cause and effect without being co-opted by each other.

The first factor is hard for the human mind to grasp. We don't have the context to understand it--we're creatures of time and everything happens in our existence by temporal sequence. God, however, is outside of time: it's a characteristic of creation but not of the Creator. He is capable of reasoning, and seeing, and understanding in ways we are not, ways which are not limited or timebound. Just because he knows and sees all that for us is in time (past, present, or future), it doesn't follow that he must thereby have determined all that he knows and sees in time. 

If we project our experience upon God, and try to force him into the box we live in, we not only do not see him as he is, we also misinterpret, miss, or make inconsistent all that he says about himself and about stuff in his Word. We think that God has to do things ordered, as in temporal and/or logical sequence as do we, without a shred of evidence other than our own experience. The truth is we don't know how God thinks. Whether God reasons with us or we reason with him, we do so within human constraints--as for God in himself, who can know his mind?

In identifying the second factor, I am not referring to compatibilism. Compatibilism requires that the choices of free agents are made freely by those agents in a way that is foreordained (determined) by God. Those are really mutually exclusive concepts which cannot be contemporaneous anywhere but in the mind of Lewis Carroll. A better concept is concurrence, which posits that the free agent chooses and acts and God concurs (i.e preserves and allows). Of course, either construct envisions God as able to direct things toward a chosen end, so long as, generally, free agents remained free, which is the heart of the matter.

The point is that without freewill everything is most definitely fatalistic. With freewill and God not bound by time, not so much. Is it possible to have true freewill and a predetermined end? I think that is what the Bible describes. So yes, but in order for us to accept it we have to abandon our ability to mentally grasp the way it was reasoned out. Thankfully, we have adequate warrant from the scripture to do that very thing.

Is There a Difference Between Fatalism and Determinism?

Fatalism refers to inevitability. What happens could not have happened otherwise; or in other words, what will be will be because it is preordained, or necessary. Efforts of agents to thwart a fated end (e.g. Greek tragedy) or their efforts to produce any end are not the governing issues in determining what ends will be--fate is. This seems to me an inherently religious perspective.

Determinism refers to pre-existing causes. What will be will be, because causes and conditions that have "gone" before have set forth cause and effect chains that determine the end. Secular determinism is the framework of Godless science (not that science is necessarily godless). Theological determinism is the framework of Calvinism.

By way of illustration, let's say there is a person who sees the probability of an unpleasant future looming ahead of her. She decides to take action and change the course of her future. She takes what action she can, and experiences a chain of events she would not have if she had not taken action. It appeared she had changed the course of affairs and the initial probability wasn't so probable anymore. Unfortunately, the thing she feared came upon her anyway.

A fatalist would say, "I told you so, there is nothing that can be done to avert or change what is fated." The outcome proves the premise. What would the religious determinist say about that end that would be different in any useful way? The thought to avert the future was predetermined; the course of mitigation attempted was predetermined; the apparent success of that course was predetermined; and the ironic result of the whole affair was predetermined. How is the analysis of the end result any different for one viewpoint as opposed to the other?

If a theological determinist is to be a determinist, that one is also, ultimately, a fatalist. Whether one looks at an end occurring regardless of intervening actions, or examines consequent actions step by step, the result is the same--what ends up happening happens because it was necessary and it could not have occurred otherwise. That one cares more about the steps to get there than the other, seems to me to make precious little useful difference, in the end, at all.