OK guys, I need your brilliant minds again.  But remember, talk in terms I can understand J (which you usually do when I ask a question).  But when I peek in on some of your conversations, it’s like… “What the heck are these guys talkin’ about!?”

I’ve been talking to a guy who believes that no part of the future is settled (it’s entirely open), but that God can predict all the future with 100% accuracy.  He believes that God uses phrases like “if,” “hope,” and “to find out” and says He changes His mind as His way of lovingly relating/communicating His thoughts and feelings to us in the moment.  That just because He knows what we will choose doesn’t mean He’ll go around acting like He knows, because that would show a lack of respect for our free will (i.e. it is the best way to honor free will while speaking to a free moral agent).  For example, if God said, “When you eat of this tree (AND YOU WILL), you will die,” that would not be the most loving way for a Father to relate to His children.  By using words like “if” God acknowledges and validates our very existence, our power of choice, and the reality and importance of the present moment compared to the past and future.  He explains God’s emotions like grief and frustration as real, but that even though He has known all along what would happen, God is still grieved when it happens in the moment.

 

So I asked him the following:

If God can predict with 100% accuracy who will go to hell before He creates them, why would He create them in the first place?

 

His reply (let me know what you think of it):

God did not create a heard of buffalos, (please bear with me), God created two buffalos with the ability to pro-create. And God (technically) did not create the entire human race. (decide who would be born)

God created Adam and Eve, a perfect pair, made in His image, and gave them three very special gifts. The gift of life everlasting, (yes, this one came with a clause), the gift of freewill, and the gift of pro-creation. And these last two gifts were given un-conditionally, with no fine print, and no clauses.

I completely reject the idea that God’s foreknowledge of our future means history is following a script. I believe God created us, and then gave each of us our own pen, so to speak, and from that point on, we (all freewill agents) have been writing the book of history, one choice at a time.

We (the corporate race of Adam) are the ones who have chosen who to pro-create. (And yes, sadly, who to rape, and who to abort.)

In other words, God created Adam and Eve (hands on) but He (technically) did not create you, or any of the rest of us. You were pro-created by your parents.

Therefore, God could foreknow all of our choices, including who would be pro-created, without ever personally deciding to create anyone who He knew would sin and then be lost/“go to hell.”

It has taken quite a while for me to see this, but I believe God created us and everything else, in the most loving way possible. And therefore, I believe that if anyone disagrees with God’s plan which He Himself called “Very Good,” then it would be on them to come up with a better/more loving plan.

So far I have only been able to come up with two possible alternative plans, (to eliminate the birth of people who would be lost) both of which I believe are obviously inferior. God could have created a race of mature adults, minus the gift of sex and pro-creation, or He could have used selective breeding, and bread us like a farmer breeds cows.

Secondly, the argument that God says "if" and "maybe" in the Scripture just to accommodate himself to us relationally immediately FAILS once WE admit that these if's and maybe's do NOT represent the truth from God's point of view but only from ours; for once we admit that God knows all the future as a single story line or blueprint, then THAT becomes the truth for us as well and all the if's and maybe's get flushed out. They come to express just our ignorance about what God knows for certain. And THAT kind of "if" or "maybe" cannot accommodate the relational weight of freedom and love. No. The relational connection needed for us to really (existentially) engage and involve God (and be enaged by God) via these if's and maybe's ONLY WORK IF we believe they represent the divine side of the equation (i.e., known by God AS if's and maybe's). Otherwise there IS NO connection, no accommodation. But once we commit to the beleif that God knows the future entirely as "certainly this" and "certainly not that" then there is no accommodation. If God's using "if" validates our existence, it's because the "if" is real to God as well as to us; "if" validates our existence TO GOD as well as to us by being true as an "if." Essentially, God TRUTHFULLY says "if" to us; that IS our freedom to choose. But once WE embrace the belief that "if" is just God pretending, that what the REAL truth is is not "if" but "certainly this" or "certainly not that," then by your friend's logic our existence before God would be undermined and not validated.

Ask your friend to show you HOW he supposes God makes providential use of his foreknowledge. I'm assuming he insists upon such foreknowledge because God makes use of his knowledge of the future to rule and relate to the world providentially. Ask him to give you an example of God's putting such foreknowledge to use. He can't offer any examples of course, because there are none. If God eternally (or timelessly) foreknows that I fall and break my leg, then what God foreknows is ALREADY the result of whatever God did to prevent or bring about the event. God can THEN use this bit of knowledge to affect outcomes, for outcomes are already by definition the result of divine and creaturly influence. Such foreknowledge is absolutely useless to God, even IF he possessed it.


Tom