Customer Reviews

Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views

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First off, I think we owe a good deal of gratitude to Inter Varsity for their "Four Views" series of books. (Or maybe we owe it to Zondervan. I'm not sure whose came first.) The format of reasoned debate in print between representatives of current major views on a controversial topic is the best way I can think of for the interested layman to begin constructing his own views.

As for the book at hand, it presents a wide-ranging, though not exhaustive, spectrum of thought on how divine foreknowledge can be reconciled with human freedom. Gregory Boyd -- you've got to love him or hate him, it seems -- presents an "Open Theology" view, while Paul Helm takes the other extreme of pretty much traditional Calvinism. In the middle, David Hunt presents a simple foreknowledge view and William Lane Craig gives us the Molinist or "middle knowledge" perspective.

Boyd's explication of Open Theology is a clear and well-reasoned argument, starting from scripture. He answers most objections quite well, though I think he is on some shaky ground when he talks about specific prophecies such a how Jesus knew that Peter would deny him exactly three times. In any event, after reading his essay, I would think that most readers could conclude that Open Theology, thought perhaps incorrect, is not the evil heresy that it is often said to be. But, if you read many of the reviews on this page, you will see that quite a few people disagree with me here.

David Hunt gives a well-reasoned justification of the simple foreknowledge view that God simply knows what the future is going to be: He simply knows what it is that we will freely choose. After reading Hunt's essay, it seems to me that this view is the only real challenger to Boyd's open theism (or maybe vice versa).

William Lane Craig is due a great deal of credit for making Molinism accessible to the lay reader. Though I had to read his essay twice to understand it, it is the first essay I have ever read that made sense of Molinism for me at all. One weakness of Craig's argument is that he simply assumes the possibility of truth in what are known as "counterfactuals of freedom". A counterfactual of freedom would be something like "If it is Sunday, Sam will freely go to church." But he never answers the question of how Sam can go to church *freely* if his going to church is *determined* by the fact that it is Sunday. (Was that confusing? Take heart. If you understood anything I just typed, you are in a better position to understand Craig's essay than I was.) Craig's essay was also disappointing in its tone. He is by far the most belligerent of the four writers. He is informative, but he is not pleasant to read.

Paul Helm's essay from a Calvinist perspective was a bit of a disappointment. He spends alot of time arguing for why we need a compatiblist view of freedom, that is, a view in which God's foreordination and determination of our actions is completely consistent with our having the freedom to choose. But he never, as far as I can tell, bothers to answer the obvious question: Just how could this compatibilism even be possible? Whether this is a weakness in Calvinism or a weakness in Paul Helm's particular essay, I will leave to others to judge.

All in all, a good book to give a kick start to your thinking on this thorny problem. The writers, by and large, are excellent representatives of the most important views on this subject.

Most of the reviews on this page miss the boat entirely. Rather than actually reviewing or recommending DF the reviewers are merely venting their anger because their particular view is challenged.

Pay them no mind. DF is an excellent book. Buy it and read all the views with as much of an open humble mind as you can. It's better than the alternative spoon feeding that is rampant in many circles of Evangelicalism today.

The glossary is a great idea more publishers should follow.

Keep em coming Eddy, Beilby, Gannsle ....etc.

If you are looking for more of a philosophical look into the issue of God's foreknowledge at an acceptable reading level, then this is the book for you. I, however, was not. I found that Greg Boyd was the only author to present his view starting with the biblical witness and then move to the philosophical to supplement the biblical work. He was then chastised for his approach because he was not using an "objective" philosophical framework by which to defend the case of "open theism."

I found the articles by both David Hunt and William Lane Craig to be highly speculative and way too dependent upon philosophy to be helpful. BUT, I must say that the worst article was the presentation of the Augustinian view by Paul Helm. For someone who has written an entire book on the Providence of God, this article looked thrown together and showed a complete lack of passion.

If for no other reason, read the the "Open-Theist View" by Greg Boyd. Even if you don't agree with his position, it gives an excellent overview of the biblical data in favor of open-theism.

Fortunately, there is now a better book on the subject of foreknowledge and free will. It is called Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views (Perspectives)

This is a wonderful book if you are already familiar with a bit of the philosophical-debate-on-free-will lingo. If not, then it will take a little more effort to become comfortable with what each of the authors is saying. Take heed, this is not a book that is willing to spoon feed or reinforce your intuitions about the nature of God's foreknowledge-- rather, it is a book in which the authors use insightful and rigorous arguments to heartily support their claims.

Regardless of the other reviews on here about the authors, I find Craig's piece to be the most compelling. But, perhaps this claim is a bit negligent to the overall quality of the book. Foure Views is by far, a wonderful and insightful read if you are willing and wanting to take your understanding of theology a bit further.

This is not a book for the faint in heart (or should I say mind?) in that it took me a good three years just to get familiar with all the terms and issues that each of the authors understand and try (valiantly) to communicate. If you are looking for an introductory book to the various views of foreknowledge in Christian thought, this is probably the best option available, but newcomers to the debate will struggle. Seminary students or general students of the foreknowledge debate will enjoy it, though it is light on biblical exegesis (minus Boyd's chapter).

Like it or not, philosophical theology weighs heavily in the foreknowledge debate, and it cannot be ignored. Yet there is nothing wrong with editing a book that explores those philosophical presuppositions which involve some very interesting and profound questions such as:

1) Is everything in the future knowable?
2) How are human beings free if God knows what they will do?
3) Does God's omniscience include knowledge of what we would or would not do in certain circumstances?
4) If God controls everything how could we be free agents?
5) Is world history fated to happen a certain way?

Each author brings their own strengths to the debate. Paul Helm ably defends the Augustinian view from a Calvinist perspective. Craig carries the day with perhaps the best written and best argued essay on middle-knowledge. Hunt offers some helpful critiques of Augustinianism and Open theology that should not go unnoticed. And Boyd offers a biblically rooted case for Open Theism that must be dealt with seriously if it is to be rejected.

If you are a looking for a fantastic educational experience on an important attribute of the divine character, this volume should be on your shelf.

Heresy-squelching, at least the way Calvin encouraged it (by burning people at the stake), is no longer a viable, legal way of handling people with "unorthodox" views. So, the only alternative left to classical Calvinists, and the one that is frequently and effectively resorted to the most, is the tactic of defaming and attacking (ala Luther style) the character and published works of those who veer too far away from the "proper" way of viewing things.

The purpose of a book of this genre is primarily and essentially to invite dialogue and discussion. It is not necessarily the enforcement and establishment of a particular religion, thought, or ideal. Books like these are hallmarks of Americanism, beautifully eschewing the fact that the given predominance of a particular idea, however foreign, is a clarion call to their worth and value. The four views concerning divine foreknowledge represent and illustrate the current status of a sector of biblical scholarship where controversy is forthcoming and expected. Certain people will have you believe that their way is the ONLY way and arduously try to dissuade others from pursuing alternate lines of thinking while vehemently calling it heresy. Such monopoly of thought engenders the kind of stagnation and dimness of vision as displayed by the Pharisees of Jesus' day.

Nonetheless, call it heresy or novelty, debates of this sort should and must be encouraged. The reader is "free" to align him or herself with whatever idea suits his or her conscience, while permitting others the same allowance - consequences and all. Much fruit and progress will result after careful assessment of all points of views. I hope the reader would let fair judgment to preside, giving no heed to closed-mindedness and prejudice.

Read and let read.

Rather than repeat what has been written by the prior reviewers I wish to add some useful observations.

First: The exegesis of scripture in this work ignores several important facets of proper exegesis. Particularly, the English translation is referenced rather than the original Hebrew or Greek. This results in the author arguing the meaning of the English rather than considering the nuances inherent in the ancient Greek of Hebrew for which no adequate English structure exists. Along these lines, the authors tend to treat scripture as a treatise on God's Divine Attributes rather than what scripture is: a witness to Divine revelation. This divine revelation is not concerned with the issue of God and time, knowledge and foreknowledge, but of God, man and salvation history. Scripture witnesses through and by men what God has unveiled to man and what remains veiled remains beyond our accessibility.

Secondly: Logic cannot solve the problem of God's knowledge and experience of time. Logic operates inside creation and God exists outside of creation. Thus, the authors miss a key issue involving the necessary difference between the infinite creator (of which there can only be one) and the creature (of which man and time both are). As creatures, man and time cannot share in God's infinitude or in the infinite nature of any attribute. Man is not God and the author's flip back and forth carelessly between the two as if they can be considered under the same rubric. An example may be found in Adam's sin. The authors miss the biblical point that Adam sinned because he is a creature and as a creature is not infinitely perfect like his creator. When God gave Adam a choice, God made it a human possibility to choose rightly or wrongly. Adam's fall is the result of his being a creature and not God. This has nothing to do with God's foreknowledge or God's omnipotence. God saw fit to create and anything created (including time) must be finite.

Third: The authors throw around terms such as free will and quote the great authors on the subject (Augustine, Calvin) without defining what the will is or what freedom of the will means in the context of the theological discourse. The controversy over "free will" suffers more from the lack of definition concerning what the will is and what is implied by freedom and bondage. Edwards was the first to attempt to define the will and his definition affects his conclusions. The will, by being free or in bondage, is so in relation to sin and not simple choice. Luther concludes that unregenerate man's will is in bondage to sin and is free from sin through Christ and by faith. This freedom is to be free to conform the will to that of God. This concept of freedom/bondage is much different than our modern notions and we must be mindful of this.

Forth: Paul's use of "foreknew" and foreknowledge" in Romans is taken out of context by the authors who apply it universally to all knowledge. Paul's aim was to explain God's plan of salvation, Israel's salvation history and how it has come to completion in the "Christ event." His use of foreknowledge in Romans must be taken in context of the whole argument which is Christological and Soteriologic rather than philosophic and metaphysical. The one God foreknows from eternity is The Son, Christ. In Christ, God has foreordained his plan of redemption of fallen man. If a man is in Christ he is assured of receiving God's Soteriologic promise and what God promises will come to be. Outside of Christ, man is lost. This is corporate salvation and election.

Fifth: Failure to treat time as a creature and consider God's position outside time, man's limitations inside time, man's perception and understanding of time in terms of memory and anticipation is a major omission. No consideration is give to how God interacts with and within time as opposed to how God acts in eternity. Likewise, the question of how and if time is operative and/or determinative in eternity and for God is left unexplored.


Finally, as scripture is biblical witness to divine revelation it was recorded by men for man. The authors fail to consider how ancient man viewed time and how radically different the ancient perception of time was (See von Rad: Old Testament Theology Vol. II). Ancient time was seasonal and circular reflecting nature and the seasonal festivals. The concept of linear progressive time came after the exile and was not fully developed even in the 2nd Temple period. Therefore to make inferences about how the scriptural witness communicates its confession of the revelation it received to the people of the individual author's day requires an appreciation of how time was understood then and now. They fail to ask with Augustine "What is time?"

This volume does succeed in making accessible the four theories of divine foreknowledge. However, the arguments are flawed, boring and narrow. The subject deserves a better effort that should begin with answering the basic questions of creature and creator, time and perception, memory and anticipation and what the limitations of scripture and man's logic are. The authors are flagrant materialists applying post-enlightenment assumptions to an eternal question. Consider that the answer could be that we do not know the answer and cannot figure it out. The glass we look through is indeed dark.

I keep coming back to this book, re-reading the various arguments, especially Craig's and Boyd's summaries of their positions. A very useful Four Views book.

Much of the discussion of the Divine Foreknowledge of God comes from 1) the fact that God is a being we don't understand and 2) the fact that there are times when it is indispensible to defend an attack on the omniscience of God.

Views or opinions about God are too numerous to count and the topic of Divine Foreknowledge has its fair share on views. Concerning theology, the more one reads, studies, and meditate on the Holy Scriptures, the more one knows that the knowledge about God and knowing Him are never-ending tasks. The reason is that God is eternal and everything concerning Him is eternal as well. It is wise to hear other Christians who may have a different perspectives or points of views concerning God, His nature or His character. Since no one church or individual has the whole counsel of God or since no one church or individual has the monopoly on God, all views concerning Him must be heard and analyzed according to Scripture or, better stated, according to what one understands Scriptures are teaching concerning God: in this case, His Divine Foreknowledge.

The Open Theism View
The Open Theism View holds that "God knows the future partly as a realm of possibilities, not exclusively as settled facts. In this view, the sovereign Creator settles whatever he wants to settle about the future, and hence he perfectly foreknows the future as settled to this extent. He leaves open whatever he wants to leave open, and hence he perfectly foreknows the future as possible to this extent."

What this view holds, in my opinion, is that there are things that will come to pass in the future no matter who votes for it or against it. For example, the first coming of Christ to earth is something that God foreknew long before it happened and the second coming of Christ to earth is something that God foreknows long before it happens.

The positive issue with this view is that there are things that are not certain or that God has not decreed that they will necessarily happen. A good example of this deals with the salvation for everyone in the world. The uncertainty of the spiritual future of everyone has not been predetermined or decreed in advanced before a person makes the decision to reject or accept Jesus Christ as their savior. The choice or option for a person to do so is in their hands. God has already provided the way and wishes for all mankind to repent and be saved but the choice is entirely theirs. The negative issue with this view is that it limits what God knows or what He is able to know about the entire future. No matter how it is viewed, God cannot be called or viewed as omniscience in this view.

The Simple-Foreknowledge View
"Unlike the open view, the simple-foreknowledge view rejects the notion that any aspect of the future is open from God's perspective. God simply knows what free agents shall do, not what they would do in different circumstances or what he ordains them to do."

What this view holds, in my opinion, is that there are things that will come to pass in our lives even though we are doing them on our own free will, though God foreknew they will happen. No matter how this view is explained, at the end I came out confused because it is impossible for any intelligent person to believe that what God has foreknown will happen contrary to what He willed or what He foreknew.

The Problem of Human Freedom, the Problem of Divine Agency, and the Problem of Divine Providence are not necessarily solved if one totally embraces this view of the foreknowledge of God. It is very hard to accept that people are free agents that God endowed them with the power to, for example, alter their future spiritual dwelling (heaven or hell) while at the same time believing that God has foreknown, since the beginning of times, what their spiritual dwellings will be. It sounds as though people are not really free agents with free will. It is as if people are following a written script which they can't deviate from. Though I identify myself more with this view, this is too big for me to fully understand God's foreknowledge and man's free will.

The Middle-Knowledge or Molinist View
"In the middle-knowledge view, God know not only what shall come to pass, he knows what would have come to pass if he had chosen to create any other world - this is his "middle knowledge. He simply has an innate eternal knowledge of how free agents would behave in all possible circumstances."

What this view holds, in my opinion, is that no matter what a person chooses to do, whether "A" or "B", God has already taken into consideration the outcome of either one. In other words, God is not taken by surprise but knows ahead of time, what will a person choose to do while, at the same time, that person remains a free agent. What this view also holds is that God may create all the necessary circumstances for people to choose freely what He wants them to do without coercing or forcing them to perform them. I think this view is very well debated for but it did not answer to my satisfaction the relationship between man's free will and God's Divine Foreknowledge. It is like we are back to the drawing board to try to figure out how these two can be reconciled.

The Augustinian-Calvinist View
"In this view, God knows all that shall come to pass because he preordains all that shall come to pass. Agents are free to do as they want and are morally responsible for the choices they make. But all their choices nevertheless fall within the sovereign plan of God, which governs all things."

What this view holds, in my opinion, is that though people are free agents, what they do is what God has preordained from the foundation of the world. In other words, they are free to do whatever they choose to do but they are morally responsible for their doing even though what they did was preordained. Human freedom, in this view, and God's Divine Foreknowledge are incompatible. No matter how it is debated for, this view holds that what God foreknew in the past concerning a futuristic event, that event will necessarily has to happen; there is no other way.

Conclusion
I wish very much that Christians view Scriptures from God's point of view and not from the point of view of others, especially people like John Calvin. Calvinists believe that they themselves were chosen by God and that they will go to heaven because they are the elect. Those who hold on to the Augustinian-Calvinist View of God's Divine Foreknowledge believe that they are saved because not only God willed it (which the Bible clearly states) but it was bound to happen because God foreknew it.

In my opinion, all the views on God's Divine Foreknowledge failed to take into great consideration that God is outside our time dimension and that the future is ever present before Him. To us God foreknows the future but the Bible seems to portrait a God that foresees the future.

Just one Scripture from Jesus settles the Foreknowledge Issue once for all:

"I AM TELLING YOU NOW BEFORE IT HAPPENS SO THAT WHEN IT DOES HAPPEN YOU WILL BELIEVE THAT I AM HE." (John 13:19)
Not forecasting, possibilizing, but TELLING. Not if, but WHEN.
Not may,might,could,perhaps should, but DOES happen. 0% Uncertain. 100% definite. That's genuine Omniscience. Amen.

Interesting that this book would present as one of the "evangelical" options of what God knows and when He can know it:
the curious notion that God possesses EXTENSIVE INDEFINITE FORECASTING (a la weather prognosticator or chess grandmaster) subject to all the iffiness and unknowable randomness of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory working themselves out in a fallen world unbeknownst in advance to the Creator! Boyd's presupposition is THE FUTURE DOES NOT EXIST YET, EVEN FOR THE OMNISCIENT/ETERNAL CREATOR GOD, except as mere possibilities yet to be freely actualized.
Therefore He is the deity of what is humanly,logically possible.

Boyd's Neo-Processistic philosophical theorizing becomes more incoherent with each book. How can God know how He will definitely act in the future if He doesn't know how sinners and demons will definitely behave? If our decisions don't exist until we freely make them, how can God's decisions exist until He freely makes His in response to ours in response to others in response to the devil's in response to... ad infinitum?? If all God can know are ultimately possibles (not actuals, definites), then ALL He can know about future agency is INDEFINITE (MAYBE). Thus Boyd teaches EXTENSIVE INDEFINITE FORECASTING - which he calls Omniscience! Talk about verbal legerdemain! God can only know what is humanly,finitely knowable

A careful study of the Bible shows rather the truth that there is NO LIMIT to the extent (past,present,future) of God's knowledge. It is ETERNALLY EXHAUSTIVE DIVINE DEFINITIVE FOREKNOWN FACTUALITY OF ALL FREE FUTURES-OMNIPRESCIENCE
His understanding is INFINITE. That God definitely knows in advance precisely what sinners and demons WILL/WILL NOT do doesn't mean therefore that they are thus forced to, or thereby lose their agency/moral responsibility. Neither is God to blame for the foreknown exercise of their agency. He retains full final say, ultimate control and awareness as definite in advance of ALL they will choose to do. Because some mortal minds can't reconcile this profundity, Open Theory (Ajarism) is the misbegotten result. With all due respect to sincere but sincerely wrong Gregory Boyd, there is little about Neo-processism or EIF (EXTENSIVE INDEFINITE FORECASTING) that can be understood in any sense as Biblical or Orthodox Truth about God's Attributes such as OMNISCIENCE/OMNIPRESENCE. God is ever PRESENT at every point/moment of space/time, including ALL the FUTURE. The I AM is ALREADY THERE/THEN waiting for us just as He IS with us HERE/NOW.

Otherwise well-written. 1 star for attempting to resurrect the long-discredited 'Nescience' pseudo-theology of the late 19th Century (with some elements of 16th Cent. Socinianism) via a self-refuting misunderstanding of how God interacts with ALL FUTURE MORTAL AGENCY: Comprehensively, and for Open Theorists, Incomprehendible.