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January 06, 2005

Does God Know The Future?

Recently I was having a theological discussion with a good friend about the mind of God and we debated over whether or not God knows the future. Though hesitant to even consider the possibility that God doesn't have fore-knowledge into the events of the future she was surprisingly open to my ramblings on the subject. As with most times when I try to explain something aloud the words came out rather jumbled with my mind trying to explicate my argument using three or four supporting premises simultaneously. In reflection on that conversation I decided to approach this somewhat touchy subject in the Christian community and explain a position that I find intriguing but am not entirely sure I have accepted it yet as my own.

On many occasions I have endeavored to explain the viewpoint that there is a possibility that God, who has the ultimate attributes of being all-good, all-knowing and all-loving, may not have the capacity to know the future. If you are a life-long Christian, like myself, you might find yourself stooping to the ground in search of a good rock to stone me with but in the spirit of debate I ask you to drop your anti-heretical weapons and humor me for a moment.

I have adopted a view of God that mirrors that closely of the Anselmian definition first suggested in the 11th century by Anselm of Canterbury. His definition states that God is the most absolutely perfect being and possesses every attribute that is favorable to have and lacks every attribute that is unfavorable. For example: it is favorable to be all-powerful, therefore God is all omnipotent but God lacks the attribute of being able to sin because that would infringe upon his being perfect. Lacking the ability to sin does not limit God's power it simply defines his purity, which is another essential attribute to a perfect being since purity is a more favorable attribute than impurity.

If taking this line of reasoning one would be astute in pointing out that it would be more favorable for God to know the future over not knowing the future therefore if one uses the Anselmian definition it is safe to say that God must know the future. At the outset this seems to make perfect sense but in doing so you are making the assumption that the future is something that can be known and forgetting the essential variable of our free will, which I will address first.

A commonly held theological belief of the Christian church is that God gave the gift of free choice (the ability to choose between right and wrong) to man which distinguishes him from beast. (I should also note here that though sin exists it was not created by God but came into being because of the result of our imperfect choices. God did not create the computer, man did, but only because of the gifts of intellect and creativity that he endowed us with.) The first major catalyst change in the history of humanity took place when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were thrown from the Garden of Eden due to their sinful actions. This shows God's displeasure in sin and His intolerance of it. How then could we truly have free-choice if God knows the future? If God knows exactly what will happen at every second of every day; knowing when we will sin, which in the Bible is defined as actions punishable by death (Romans 6:23), and when we will do right, than wouldn't it be logical to conclude that our actions are pre-destined and thusly, that we do not have free choice?

Dr. Robin Collins explicates this point with a terrific little example. He has a robotic dog that has a simple control mechanism attached to it by a cord. When he pressed one button, the dog begins to walk forward and is rewarded with praise for a job well done. When he presses the other button, however, the dog begins to yap loudly and he scolds the dog, angry that it did wrong all the while knowing that when he pressed the button he knew exactly what would happen. If God knows the exact future than when He created the entire world He would have known, far in advance, that it's inhabitants, if given the gift of free choice, would sin and therefore be punished for it; just as the designers of the robotic dog know that when pressing a certain button that the dog would bark loudly. To me that seems to me to be the antithesis of an all-loving God.

So, where do we go from here? Atheism? Gnosticism? How, after explicating these points, could one even remotely entertain the thought of the existence of the all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful traditional God of theism? If God knows the exact future how can He be all loving and how can we have free will? If He doesn't know the future how can God be all-knowing? This essay will argue that God does not know the exact future but that even in spite of this He is still omniscient.

When faced with the seemingly incongruent assertions found in scripture, theology and philosophy I have often wanted to sit down with God, across some sort of grand table and ask him a million or so questions. I have no doubt that if they were valid questions with valid answers that He would be more than apt and ready to answer them clearly and concisely (though it would be pretty rad if it was done all in the forms of mysterious koans). But what if I asked God an invalid question? One that does not have an answer like, what sort of atmosphere exists on the planet Cyrtaneous 4? There is no Cyrtaneous, never mind four of them and the answer to that question does not exist. Though the question makes sense, its subject is a product of my imagination; a figment of fantasy whose existence in my mind does not ensure it's physical reality.

A common assumption made by the human mind is that there is such thing as a future and that, in turn, it could be known by God. The future is a concept; we can never get to it because once we are there it becomes the present. We use it to explicate examples like, "when Susie turns 21 she will have a drink of alcohol" though this statement may turn out to be true only one Susie exists, and at the moment she is only 16. Barring any tangential discussions of Hawking, there is no 21 year old Susie currently enjoying a martini in the future while we wait for 16 year old Susie to come join her. The statement, "when Susie turns 21 she will have a drink of alcohol" is a prediction of action for the future when Susie reaches that determinant point in time. Because we can, to a certain degree, control our actions we, whether consciously or unconsciously, believe that there could be a future out there which exists because of our present intentions.

No better example exists to illustrate this point than in the movie Back To The Future where Marty McFly frantically plays his guitar as he watches the picture of his family fading. He believes if he doesn't do everything exactly right that his parents will not end up falling in love and copulate to produce both his siblings and himself. If time is in fact a determinant chain of events which is built on the immediately preceding events wouldn't Marty cease to exist until the moment his parents consummated their union? Certainly Marty would be fading the moment he was hit by her father’s car and she began to fall in love with him and not just at the moment at the dance when the love between the future McFly's love seemed doomed to failure. This point may prove irrelevant to my argument but I simply can't resist expounding upon apparent inconsistencies in film.

The same can be said for the past: it simply doesn't exist. There is no magical hard-drive that chronicles all our past actions and forever replays them, hoping we will come to visit and meddle with what once was.

In terms of the Christian life these random musings can find root in the Old Testament story of when God appeared to Moses in the form of the burning bush. In Exodus 3:14 God describes himself to Moses in this fashion, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you." It's is not, the Great I WAS (though He was) or the great I'LL BE (though He will) but the great I AM. God's greatness, His love, and His involvement in our lives is taking place right now and it's only our imperfection, pride and selfishness that bars us from seeing it. Our creator is always willing to work at improving this sin-soaked world we have ruined but we must give Him license to by our unrivaled submission.

Here's a wonderful example from scripture. The story of Jonah is probably my most favorite tale in the entire Bible. Besides the undeniably cool occurrence of a prophet of God being eaten by a whale Pinocchio style it has the foundational moral pillars of submission to God, hope for change and God's grace-filled acceptance of an apology from a nation of amoral sinners.

First a brief recap of the important events: Jonah is called by God to go to the wicked nation of Nineveh and let them know they will be destroyed because of their ignorance to the edicts of God. Jonah is mortally afraid of the Ninevites so he decides to take a boat to Tarshish. God becomes angry at Jonah's defiance and sends a massive storm that threatens to destroy the ship. Jonah admits to the crew that it's his God who is causing it due to his lack of submission. Jonah jumps ship, the storm stops and he's eaten by a whale (great fish) to boot. Jonah prays and asks for forgiveness while inside the belly of the whale and God hears his plea and orders the great fish to vomit up Jonah on the shores of Nineveh. While in Nineveh Jonah warns that the people have 40 days to repent or the Lord will destroy them. Upon hearing the news they turn from their wickedness as explicated in Jonah 3:10, "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."

In the aforementioned passage it is plain to see that God acted in direct response to the contrition of the Ninevites. In verse 10 it doesn't say, 'God really knew the Ninevites were going to repent far in advance but thought it'd be fun to threaten them with some brimstone and hellfire.' God gave them fair warning and a 40 day time limit to either freely choose repentance or the pending punishment. I honestly believe that God gave the people of the nation of Nineveh the gift of free-will and that if they were not repentant they would have been destroyed.

God issued this same type of warning to Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed due to their immorality in Genesis 18:16-33. Abraham even persuaded God to search not for the original fifty righteous who would save the city but bartered him down to only ten. Though both Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed the Lord would have honored his agreement with Abraham if he had in fact found that there were ten worthy inhabitants.

As explicated in the two prior examples, God's actions can be influenced, not necessarily dictated, by our actions, which derive from an autonomous, free-willed core. I firmly believe that God has a plan for our lives but we do not necessarily have to follow it; we have been given license to do as we please through the gift of free-will. We don't have to extend to God a role in our lives though we cannot help but be intertwined into His ultimate plan.

To think that God would have a predestined 'plan' that would include the specific knowledge of our fall into sin and whether or not an individual would chose to follow Him is inconsistent with his characteristic of being all-loving. If God would allow a child to come into being that he would unequivocally know, prior to their birth, would not choose salvation through Jesus Christ He would be essentially pre-determining their place in Hell, which is inconsistent with the characteristic of being all-loving.

God's involvement in our life adjusts organically to each choice we make, whether it be the decision He would have us to make or the innumerable mistakes we choose instead. Either way He is there in the next moment, forgiving arms open welcoming us back home like the prodigal son.

So how does all this relate to the future and whether or not God knows it? Well, in a world created by God that was pure, perfect and unmarred by sin, everything in it would have a defined optimal way to behave and would thus be absolutely predictable. When God created the human race he limited it in both power and knowledge because no being can be greater or equal to God. He also endowed us with free-choice, even if that opened the door of possibility to whether or not we would choose Him, in order that we would love Him out of a conscious decision and not a robotic, instructed action. As a result of this our actions become unpredictable for at the onset of any decision of choice we have the ability to choose either right (God's way) or wrong (any other conceivable choice whose possibilities are innumerable).

If God were to know exactly how we would act when confronted with a particular situation (post humanity's fall to sin) then our actions would be pre-destined since God created our world and knows exactly how we would behave. If that is the case then we do not have free will. How can a person who was made by a perfect being be placed in a world that would fall to sin, which God KNEW would happen, and how it would affect their individual consciousness in a particular way, be condemned for it's actions? That doesn't characterize an all-loving nor all-perfect God!

Then you may ask, "why would God, a supposedly perfect being, create a world he knew would fall to sin?" God's greatest attribute and gift to give is that of love. God knew that in order to have a world with the highest form of love He would have to not only lavish it upon his creation but offer them the ability to freely love Him back. Because God offered us free choice He knew this world had a capacity for sin but he also understood that in order to make beings that could experience truly loving Him, He would have to also give them the option of rejecting Him. This decision to offer the ability to freely choose love is the ultimate explication of his central attribute of being all-loving.

God's gift to us of free will ensures no absolutely determined future can exist; the plane of existence known as the present is created by our immediately preceding actions that cannot be truly determined millennia in advance because of our ability to choose at any moment between right and wrong. God is ignorant of sin and doesn't know, when confronted with a given situation, how anyone could ever choose anything but the most perfect, all-loving choice. He only knows how to respond to those imperfect choices perfectly, forever maintaining absolute control and never once forfeiting even the smallest morsel of power. Therefore God is a constant state of reacting instantly to our imperfect choices with a perfect plan that he wants to actively include us in but only if we invite him to work in our lives.

The reaction to that last paragraph by any prudent, rational Christian is to bring into question how there could possibly be such thing as prophecy if this is the case. What of the book of Revelation? If it's events were to transpire today wouldn't they have needed to been set in stone at least two millennia prior? The assumption that is made in those questions is that prophecy is impossible if one cannot know the exact future, and I would argue that it does not.

Garry Kasparov, who is widely known as the greatest chess player of all time, is unequalled in his prowess of the game. He was so unbeatable in fact that IBM took up the challenge of creating a computer that would defeat him, becoming a monumental event that would pit man against machine.

The first chess computer built for the task was named 'Deep Thought' and was handily defeated by Kasparov. It's more formidable younger brother, 'Deep Blue', and it's strategy of brute force however, would prove more difficult. After each move of Kasparov's IBM's Super Computer would process 50 Million computations per second and make it's next move based on what it calculated to be the 'best possible.' It did this by analyzing every possible next move by every piece left on the board and then the next thousand or so possible moves Garry could take from there and then narrow it down to what it 'thought' to be his most likely next move. It then used this algorithm of likely predictability, based on IBM's exhaustive research into Kasparov's strategies, to forecast what it viewed to be the best possible move, from the 100-200 billion it computed over the three-minute time limit each player was given, to counter his strategy while simultaneously setting up it's own game-plan for victory.

It truly was a marvel of modern computing. The scary thing was: Garry won. Just as Deep Blue was watching and calculating Garry's every move, Kasparov was watching back, noticing the computer's near perfect reaction to his strategic maneuvering. So how did he win? Kasparov would enact one of his trademark strategies and waited for the computer to follow blindly in its wake, knowing exactly how the computer would move to best counteract his strategy. Once he had gotten Deep Blue's pieces where he really wanted them he immediately switched his approach, slowly and painstakingly bringing Deep Blue closer to it's demise. Though Kasparov ended up losing to the later versions of the computer (which he classified as unfair because he claimed they had programmed the machine not to just play chess but to play chess only against him) that first big victory by Kasparov showed that it is reactionary strategy to the present state of the pieces on the board and not painstaking planning of where they could be in the future that ensures victory. It became a catalyst event that let paranoid readers of Isimov everywhere breathe a collective sigh of relief as well as offering further proof that there must be an intelligent creator behind the marvelous design of the human mind.

The same can be said of God's omniscience and his ability to communicate the end times to the prophets even though the exact future was not yet set it stone. The end of the physical world as we know it and the game of chess have something in common: a defined ending. In chess it is when one player takes the other's king, in the end times it is when Christ returns to reclaim his church. God, like a master chess player, is constantly maneuvering his pieces; adjusting his approach and preparing for the end of the world all the while doing so in instant reaction to the events taking place on earth. Since we are only ever in the present God reacts instantly to these scenarios and is therefore always in control. Because of God's unlimited power and abilities he is able to not only guarantee the outcome but also give specifics on how it will all happen. This model of God accounts for his abilities of omniscience, omnipotence and all-loving nature while still allowing for the true existence of our free-will.

So in summation, does God know the future? If the future can be known, then yes, but to assume it's quantitative existence and therefore, it's ability to be known, is an assumption that I feel is quite dangerous to make.

Posted by Jon at January 6, 2005 04:29 AM