freedom and foreknowledge - typepad

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Freedom and Foreknowledge

By Jack W. Provonsha

Freedom as creative act in the presence of genuine alternatives is a

conception with enormous ramifications. Nor is it easy for some of us to think

ourselves into the logical reference frame that the idea suggests. Augustine,

Boethius, and Calvin and their tradition have conditioned our understanding of

the problem far more than most of us realize. The doctrine is so crucial, however,

that it is worth a second look even at the risk of being thought by some to skirt

the borders of “heresy.” Would that we could bring to theology some of the

openness of science where one can be wrong without also being wicked!

The doctrine is important, first of all, because it provides a key to a

systematic understanding of the controversy between Christ and Satan. Note the

following statement by Ellen G. White: “In the final execution of the judgment it

will be seen that no cause for sin exists.”1 In the same passage she writes:

It is impossible to explain the origin of sin so as to give a reason for its

existence. Yet enough may be understood concerning both the origin and

the final disposition of sin to make fully manifest the justice and

benevolence of God in all His dealings with evil. Nothing is more plainly

taught in Scripture than that God was in no wise responsible for the

entrance of sin; that there was no arbitrary withdrawal of divine grace, no

deficiency in the divine government, that gave occasion for the uprising of

rebellion. Sin is an intruder, for whose presence no reason can be given. It

is mysterious, unaccountable; to excuse it is to defend it. Could excuse for

it be found, or cause be shown for its existence, it would cease to be sin….

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The law of love being the foundation of the government of God, the

happiness of all created beings depended upon their perfect accord with

its great principles of righteousness. God desires from all His creatures the

service of love—homage that springs from intelligent appreciation of His

character. He takes no pleasure in a forced allegiance, and to all He grants

freedom of will, that they may render Him voluntary service.2

These and other statements in the writings of Ellen White point up the fact

that there could be no love in the universe—at least as the agape level which is the

only dimension of love that transcends cause-effect patterns—in the absence of a

possible option for its contrary. The “Tree of Life” in the Garden of Eden loses

much of its moral relevance in the absence of the other tree in the midst of the

Garden. A thing, a phonograph can repeat the words “I love you, I love you”

again and again but without essential meaning since the phonograph cannot also

choose to say “I hate you.”

Desiring love in His universe, God created intelligent beings whose

creative acts—or choices—could render love a reality. But in so doing He also ran

the risk that those very creators might plunge themselves and much of the rest of

creation into ruin. The creation of beings who could love or hate carried with it a

responsibility—the Creator’s responsibility—to do everything possible to secure

the choice for love and life as over against the choice for death, short of

eliminating the choice itself, and to demonstrate unequivocally that it was truly a

choice. Their estimate of His character depended upon His succeeding in the

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latter. If sin could be shown to be a necessary effect resulting from causes, God as

first cause would bear the ultimate blame. A demonstration of the causelessness

of sin is thus a vindication of God. If anyone could ever meaningfully ask why

Lucifer fell, the essential structure of God’s entire universe would be threatened.

Jesus’ success in His contest with evil, as well as the final victory of the

redeemed symbolized by the 144,000 of Revelation, constitutes such a

vindication. The former without the latter could always be construed as an

exception to the general human predicament. He was, after all, the “God-man.”

But the final success demonstrates beyond a question that victory is possible to

all persons, providing they too become “God-persons” through faith, and Christ

waits for His image to be “perfectly reproduced in His people” as the occasion

for the unfolding of the final scenes of the drama. Freedom is the key. If there is

no freedom, God Himself is the ultimate source of evil.

Freedom of choice thus described is a relative quantity. Not all men are or

have been equally free to choose. Indeed, it might be said that apart from the

divine activity providing the alternative to sin, such freedom would now be non-

existent. God’s actions in history have been largely directed toward maintaining

and restoring freedom, but in spite of God’s actions there appear to be some

individuals who never achieve personhood at this level. There comes to mind the

suggestion by Ellen White that some individuals in the ante-bellum south,

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because of oppressive circumstances, would have to be treated in the hereafter as

though they had not been. There appear to be, then, circumstances in which God

cannot provide the occasion for freedom without raising serious questions about

freedom’s ultimate reality. It would seem reasonable to assume that the above

statement could be applied to other settings than that to which it is addressed.

In His love and wisdom, God does what is appropriate for such

individuals. He also takes into account the relative freedom of each individual

who is capable of personhood. This seems to be the clear message of the Bible

(see Psalm 87.4-7). The standard of judgment is the use made of opportunities

granted. Each is accountable only for the light he has or might have had.

A second implication of the doctrine of freedom as creative act is

somewhat more controversial and I approach it with an apprehension born of

experience. I only dare to approach it because of a conviction that the imprimatur

of time does not guarantee that a belief is true and because the “stakes are high.”

The problem is an old one and may be stated in terms of the relation of divine

prescience or foreknowledge to freedom.

Many a young person, and some not so young, has wrestled with the

logical difficulty presented by a belief that God knows every person’s ultimate

destiny even before he or she is born. Presumably, such a belief would postulate

that everything that would ever happen in the universe (including, by the way,

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all the nastiness and foulness following in the train of Lucifer’s sin) eternally

existed in the mind of God from the “days of eternity.” Having always known of

the Fall of Lucifer, the very moment before He created this magnificent being

God would be able to say to Himself, “The being that I am now going to create

will become the devil.”

What an ethical problem that event placed in God’s lap! According to this

view, in His sweet fellowship with our first parents in the Garden, God was fully

conscious of their impending degradation and all that would follow. Finally, as

He walked among men—apparently risking all heaven—it was with the

comforting assurance of full and complete victory.

The question that all of this raises is, can there be freedom of action under

such circumstances? The answer out of the past is that God by foreknowing does

not cause the event to transpire. An illustration is occasionally presented of an

observer who from a height could see two trains approaching each other on the

same track, meanwhile hidden from each other by a bend in the track. The

observer would from his vantage point thus foreknow an accident which as yet

remained unknown to the participants without being the cause of it.

What users of this illustration fail to observe is that they have merely

traded one kind of determinism (predestination) for another (fatalism). There

remains the problem of the one-way, single track. Freedom as “creative act”

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implies the possibility of one train suddenly turning around and reversing its

course or even laying down a new track in another direction. Our concern, it

seems to me, has not to do with God’s knowledge, but with the nature of the free

act. Is the free act a new thing—a creation ex nihilo—or is it the following of a

pre-existing pattern?

The statement that God by “foreknowing does not necessarily cause” is at

least as old as St. Augustine and was repeated endlessly by the Augustinian

theologians and philosophers. Augustine tried to solve the problem by relegating

God to a category beyond all time-space considerations. To him, concepts such as

sequence—past, present, future—were applicable only to our own finite world.

Spirit knows no such limitations. Augustine would say, for example, that the

statement that Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father could only be

metaphor since God as spirit is beyond all spatial considerations such as right

hand or left. Those who opposed the Augustinian viewpoint were always

venturing to ask, however, whether a conception of God outside of time and

space did not thereby reduce Him to an abstraction. They also noted that the

problem is confronted precisely within time and space. Can God enter time and

space and still evade its logical dilemmas?

Augustine was worried, of course, about the downgrading of the divine

perfection that any limitations on His knowledge would suggest. If there were

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something that God did not know, He would thus be imperfect—a blasphemous

allegation.

It should be recalled that the divine attributes were conceived by the

theologians of the past as the ultimate and absolute projections of relative

qualities in humans. That such a projection of God often robbed Him of His

personality, causing Him to resemble more the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle

than the active, creative person of the Bible seemed not to have been to them a

source of anxiety. A perfect God on this model would neither feel (the impassible

God) nor act since either would imply prior need and thus limitation and

imperfection.

But do we not limit God by denying Him the capacity for self-limitation?

Let us illustrate by considering the attribute omnipotence.

God cannot be omnipotent in an absolute sense as long as there is one

individual in the universe who negates Him. To say that there is one person

seriously saying “no” to God and that God at the same time is all-powerful is a

contradiction. God might always, of course, eliminate the negator or reduce him

to a thing whose “no” was irrelevant and thus regain His omnipotence, but both

could not exist simultaneously without contradiction. Thus God’s power

included the capacity to limit that power by the creation of individuals who

could deny His power. I see no reason why some such principle is not applicable

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as well to God’s omniscience (or prescience if you will, for prescience is a

selective function of omniscience).

Let us consider for a moment what might be known at God in an absolute

sense, even in the presence of free and thus possibly negating persons. First, God

would know Himself and His plans unequivocally. The total knowledge of His

own nature and thus of the nature of goodness would place the eventual

outcome of things beyond question. Evil is death, deprivation, non-being and

could not ultimately gain the victory against God. Second, He would have full

awareness of all “things” in the universe, from the greatest to the minutest. He

would be the intelligence described by Laplace. He would know absolutely their

course and destiny, Heisenberg notwithstanding, including erstwhile intelligent

and freedom-possessing beings whose freedom had been forfeited.

God would be fully informed, for example, about the devil and all of his

actions—past, present, and future. The same would be true of all other beings

who by character fixation or death had passed beyond probation. Moreover, if

we remind ourselves that the free act is a relatively rare or non-existent

experience in human life, we immediately conceive that there is very little which

could not in principle be foreknown.

Certainly foreknowledge would include the subject matter of the Biblical

prophecies, which for the most part are weighted by God’s own continued

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actions. Nations follow nations, kings succeed kings—but God is at work in the

process as the prophet Daniel (4.17) so clearly records. God is no absentee

landlord.

Even Cyrus, who is named long before his birth, could function

instrumentally without necessarily denying the moral freedom of creative acts—

that is, those acts related to his ultimate salvation. Most of Cyrus’ life could thus

be predestined or determined without a violation of our principle. If there were a

prediction in the Bible assuring Cyrus of a place in the kingdom of heaven the

matter, of course, would be quite different. Would it not be well for us to change

the metaphor of prophecy from that of an inexorable, universal clock read off by

the master horologist to one more accurately depicting God’s actions as the

creation of history?

A study of the background of the problem of freedom and foreknowledge

immediately relates it to the Hellenization of Christianity in the early centuries of

our era. There breathes a quite different spirit in the Scriptures. Label the picture

of God anthropomorphic if you will, but the Bible picture is that of a God who

decides, acts, changes His mind, undoubtedly in the sense of changing His plan

of operation rather than changing His character, and even appears to learn. Take

these examples: Abraham on Mount Moriah at the time of his great test and

victory hears the words, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast

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not withheld thy son, thine only son from me” (Gen. 22.12). Jeremiah 18.7-10

says,

At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a

kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation,

against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the

evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak

concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If

it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the

good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.

Note also the story of Nineveh. Such Scriptures are typical of the Bible account of

God’s activities.

But, it may be asked, does not the Bible also set up as an evidence of God’s

priority over false gods His capacity to tell the “end from the beginning?” But

from what beginning? Surely not God’s beginning since He has none. And yet if

there is a point in time short of eternity where He becomes able to foretell this

end, the traditional argument is demolished. Might we not be able to say “knows

the end from the beginning insofar as the end is in or a consequence of a

beginning?” In Deuteronomy 28-30, God outlines in great detail the

consequences of certain choices and then climaxes His pronouncements by

saying,

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have

set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose

life that both thou and they seed may live. (Deut. 30.19)

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From beginning to end the Bible presents this appeal in one way or

another. The predestinarian doctrine could only represent a special reading of a

selected portion of Scripture out of the context of the whole Bible.

The position I am suggesting may be briefly summarized as follows:

Freedom to choose as “creative act” is the sine qua non of agape love. The occasion

for agape in the universe necessitated the risk involved in creating free agents and

the distinct possibility that they would choose death instead of life. Freedom can

be real only in the presence of genuine alternatives. The creation of free,

intelligent beings represents a self-limitation both on God’s omnipotence and on

His omniscience. These beings were in a limited sense granted the God-qualities

of creativity. God assumed the risk this entailed and its concomitant

responsibilities by doing all in His power short of destroying freedom to insure

that they would choose life. He was not unprepared for the choice for death and,

after it was made in heaven and on earth, God continued to act so as to restore

freedom and thus to hold open the door of salvation. Freedom is a most tenuous

quality and sin being what it is, freedom would now have been totally lost except

for God’s continued redemptive activity. The cross itself must be understood, at

least partially, in this light. In some cases, however, it is virtually impossible

even for God to restore the creative act without destroying other, perhaps

greater, freedom in the process.

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The enemy has raised serious questions about the free act. He implies that

God is arbitrary, that sin is unavoidable, an effect that is caused. He thus

attempts to place on God the blame for evil. Christ’s sinless life, as well as the

victory of the redeemed symbolized by the 144,000 saints, is a vindication of God

and provides the adequate occasion for bringing the controversy to a close.

The creative moral act being what it is, it could not, in principle, be

foreknown without logically turning it into something else. The problem is thus

not one of God’s causation—predestination—but of fatalism, or the pre-

patterning of events, not by God but in the nature of things. For the course of my

life and ultimate destiny to totally exist in the mind of God prior to its existence

in my actions would necessitate a kind of fatalistic perspective or a logical

contradiction, unless sequence is to be rendered meaningless, which is precisely

what Augustine attempted to say.

The free act constitutes a novelty in the universe and does not exist

anywhere before it comes into being in creative action. God is totally aware of all

that exists but it is a logical contradiction to have an entity that both exists and

does not exist simultaneously. There can be no contradiction in God according to

the monotheistic premise. That God possesses full knowledge of what is,

including that portion of the “is” that necessarily follows in the future is, of

course, as certain as God’s existence. God would also be totally aware of the full

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consequences of each new “is” as it comes into existence by creative action, that

is, “the end from the beginning.”

Most of life is necessary and determined. The only occasion where this

creative act would ever occur would be one in which God Himself had produced

the occasion. This suggests that on such occasions all heaven waits anxiously for

the outcome and rejoices when the choice is for life. For the one facing the

moment of decision, eternity itself may hang in the balance.

This in no way disturbs the validity of divine prediction. Those prophecies

having to do with nations and final events are predictable in terms of God’s self-

knowledge and His total knowledge of those beings who have lost their freedom

to choose. For the most part, unpredictability would be confined to the soul-

struggle within the individual human heart where personal eternal destiny is at

stake. In such cases predictions are conditional and are in effect descriptions of

the present total state of the individual—the condition being that the present

state of affairs persists.

Let us summarize some of the arguments against this view and some

responses:

(1) It runs counter to the teachings of many of the great Christian

thinkers of the past, including those of our own denomination. Truth is

not a function of age or prestige, however.

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(2) It places in doubt the divine perfection by limiting God’s

knowledge. To the contrary, this is a self-limitation and thus an evidence

of God’s power. It is not limiting God to deny Him the ability to create

just such a state of affairs in order to bring into existence agape love?

Rather, perfection becomes on this view dynamic instead of passive or

static.

(3) Such a thesis is unwarranted speculation into the nature of God. I

recognize, of course, the danger of trying to look into mysteries which by

their nature transcend my ability to comprehend. But to cry “mystery,”

“stop” too soon may be a way of preserving past error, excusing

intellectual indolence, or even concealing obviously faulty logic. There are

good reasons for believing that this is the kind of information which

would be crucial to the life and vitality of the church, and thus most

significant and essential to our own period of time.

(4) To deny God absolute foreknowledge may lessen our reverence

and respect for Him. Admittedly, Calvin and others with their

predestinarian views gave enormous emphasis to the majesty and glory of

God. But they did so at a price, as is evidenced by the puritanical

moralism which everywhere accompanied this doctrine. Legalistic

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moralism is nearly always an over compensatory mechanism for feelings

of insecurity, unworthiness, and unresolved guilt. Against this, is not our

adoration for God truly awakened by knowledge of His having shared

with us something of His own creative personality?

(5) Since God’s foreknowledge of His own activity does not interfere

with it, why should his foreknowledge of ours be construed as

interference? This is the old Augustinian argument. Two things must be

noted. First, the present thesis is not aimed at predestination, which it

denies out of hand. It does not say anything about God’s interference

except to admit that God is active in human affairs precisely for the

purpose of setting up the occasion for the novel, creative act. Its chief

concern is for the nature of the act itself and to avoid the fatalistic

preposition. Secondly, God’s choices are obviously not of the same quality

as ours. God’s alternatives are never between those of good and evil.

(6) The Scriptures and the Spirit of Prophecy appear to support the

view that God foreknows even men and women’s moral decision. What,

for example, of Peter’s denial? Christ foretold to him the precise

circumstances of his denial, including the sound of a crowing cock as

background accompaniment. Can it not equally be said, however, that

Peter’s actions were necessitated by his imperfect character and that Jesus,

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reading his heart, was in effect providing an accurate description of that

character, and thus setting up the occasion wherein something new could

enter Peter’s life?

The suggested self-limitation of God’s knowledge in no Mway extends to

His awareness of the state of a person’s character. Jesus’ predictions regarding

the actions of the Jewish leaders can be similarly understood. Indeed, the Old

Testament Messianic prophecies possess the certainty of God’s total self-

knowledge and His knowledge of the enemy. Luke 22.22 says, “And truly the

Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is

betrayed!”

This seems to imply that the events of the controversy are written in the

characters of the great antagonists, but also that there is a certain openness

concerning the allegations of those caught up in the midst of that conflict. This

appears not inconsistent with the following statement by Ellen White:

Each actor in history stands in his lot and place; for God’s great work after

His own plan will be carried out by men who have prepared themselves

to fill positions for good or evil. In opposition to righteousness men

become instruments of unrighteousness. But they are not forced to take

this course of action. They need not become instruments of

unrighteousness, any more than Cain needed to. God said to him, “If thou

doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” Cain would not hear the voice of

God: and as a result, he became his brother’s murderer.

Men of all characters, righteous and unrighteous, will stand in their

several positions in God’s plan. With the characters they have formed,

they will act their part in the fulfillment of history. In a crisis, just at the

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right moment, they will stand in the places they have prepared

themselves to fill. Believers and unbelievers will fall into line as witnesses

to confirm truth that they themselves do not comprehend. All will

cooperate in accomplishing the purposes of God, just as did Annas,

Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod. In putting Christ to death, the priests

thought they were carrying out their own purposes, but unconsciously

and unintentionally they were fulfilling the purpose of God. He

“revealeth the deep and secret things: He knoweth what is in the

darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.”

Heaven and earth will pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the word of

God will fail. It will endure forever. All men, whatever their position,

whatever their religion, loyal or disloyal, wicked or righteous, are fitting

themselves for a part in the closing scenes of this history. The wicked will

trample one another down as they act out their attributes and fulfill their

plans, but they will carry out the purposes of God.3

There are two ideas expressed in this quotation which should be noted in

connection with the present discussion: (1) the certainty of God’s purposes, and

(2) that people prepare themselves, form their characters, and fit themselves to be

on one side or the other. It is this latter reference to which the present usage of

the word freedom here applies.

That persons necessarily act in keeping with their characters is

unquestioned. But that they necessarily have to develop certain characters is

what the position I am suggesting rejects. It is only during the process of

character formation that the kind of freedom and principle of unpredictability we

are discussing prevails. God’s prophecies regarding individuals are predicated

on the basis of His full knowledge of their characters and to the extent that

character is as yet unfixed, they may be conditional. It is character which

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determines the future behavior, not God. God’s omniscience thus becomes the

basis of what is called prescience. But the forming of character involves the

possibility of novelty.

It seems to me that all of the statements of the Bible and by Ellen White

bearing on this subject can be interpreted in this light—indeed, must be so

interpreted if consistency and coherence is to be achieved. This includes such

statements as the following: “God and Christ knew from the beginning, of the

apostasy of Satan and of the fall of Adam through the deceptive power of the

apostate”4 and “From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of

Satan, and of the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate. God

did not ordain that sin should exist, but he foresaw its existence, and made

provision to meet the terrible emergency.”5

Again we might ask, what is meant by the term “beginning.” Also, in

what sense is sin’s “existence” foreseen? Does this mean as actualized or as

potential? If the latter, God’s emergency provision is the assumption of the

responsibilities of creatorship, and may also express the reality of the option for

sin. It is a real possibility. But to see Satan actually sinning prior to his creation

leaves serious ethical questions unanswered.

The following illustrates the point I am trying to make. “The prophecies

do not shape the characters of the men who fulfill them. Men act out their own

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free will, either in accordance with a character placed under the molding of God

or a character placed under the harsh rule of Satan.”6 Please note that THIS

assumes that the free creative act occurs not at the level of what is here called

“free will” but at the point of the “placing” of the character either under the

molding of God or the rule of Satan.

There are only two serious problem statements by Ellen White that I know

about. One is in Story of Redemption, p. 87

God knows the end from the beginning. He knew, before the birth of

Jacob and Esau, just what characters they would both develop. He knew

that Esau would not have a heart to obey Him. He answered the troubled

prayer of Rebekah and informed her that she would have two children,

and the elder should serve the younger. He presented the future history of

her two sons before her, that they would be two nations, the one greater

than the other, and the elder should serve the younger.

I feel somewhat uncertain as to how this passage should be interpreted.

Taken at its face value, it seems to imply a fatalistic determinism of the severest

sort—that is, that the pattern of a person’s life exists even before his or her birth.

On the other hand, if we remind ourselves of the individual genetically and

environmentally conditioned differences in potential for freedom and of the fact

that God was here in the process of selecting a people who would play a certain

historic role in providing the context for the promised Messiah, this passage can

be interpreted to indicate that genetically there was a relative difference between

these two boys in their potential to fulfill God’s particular purposes. Esau, even

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genetically, lacked the characteristics which would allow him to cooperate fully

with God in His plan.

This need, of course, says nothing about Esau’s ultimate destiny, in which

case, my whole thesis would collapse. It might say a great deal about Esau’s

fitness for the task that God had in mind. Although unusable as the progenitor of

the chosen people, Esau might still be “safe to save” as an individual should he

live up to his relatively inferior potential. If this be the meaning, the statement

remains consistent with my thesis. God’s choice of Jacob in preference to Esau is

in effect His choice of Israel, “the choicest of vine.”

The other passage is found in Volume 1 in the Seventh-day Adventist

Bible Commentary, p. 1099 (MS 5a, 1895),

I AM means an eternal presence; the past, present, and future are

alike to God. He sees the most remote events of past history, and the far

distant future with as clear a vision as we do those things that are

transpiring daily. We know not what is before us, and if we did, it would

not contribute to our eternal welfare. God gives us an opportunity to

exercise faith and trust in the great I AM.

There are several things that can be said about this passage which may aid

in our understanding. In the first place, the last two sentences seem to place the

events of the future in the category of “things-that-happen-to-us” which is not

what we have been indicating by the word freedom. Freedom, as we are using

the term, refers not “to react” or to “be acted upon” but “to act.” Things that

happen to us might be entirely a part of a closed causal system.

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Augustine used almost the identical words, “the past, present, and future

are alike to God.” But taken in total context it becomes apparent that Augustine

and Ellen White do not mean precisely the same things. To Augustine this was

the prerogative of Spirit totally other than and outside of space-time categories.

In other words, this was Platonic Greek thinking.

Ellen White, standing squarely within the context of Biblical monotheism,

saw reality as a whole. There was in her thought little of the enormous Hellenic

conceptual gulf between supernatural and natural, between spirit and matter,

mind and body. Time-space considerations were omnipresent in her conception

of God. Some would even call her crassly anthropomorphic, as they would the

writers of the Bible.

It is a fact of history that Augustine, steeped in the Greek weltanschauung,

had difficulty accepting the Christianity of his mother until he could remodel the

Biblical picture of God in Hellenic—especially Platonic—categories. And what a

flood that maneuver let in through the gates of Christian theology. Put this

passage within the context of statements like,

It is the privilege of every Christian not only to look for, but to hasten the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Were all who profess His name bearing

fruit to His glory, how quickly the whole world would be sown with the

seed of the gospel. Quickly the last harvest would be ripened and Christ

would come to gather the precious grain.7

And again, “We are not only to look for but to hasten the coming of the

day of God.”8 Note also the repetition of the expression, “Had the

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purposes of God been carried out by His people in giving to the world the

message of mercy, Christ would, ere this, have come to the earth….”9 The

following is from The Testimony of Jesus, pp. 78-80:

Our Savior did not appear as soon as we hoped. But has the word of the

Lord failed? Never! It should be remembered that the promises and

threatenings of God are alike conditional….Had Adventists, after the

disappointment of 1844, held fast their faith, and followed on unitedly in

the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel

and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world, they

would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought

mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and

Christ would have come ere this to receive His people to their

reward….had the whole Adventist body united upon the commandments

of God and the faith of Jesus, how widely different would have been our

history!

It was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be thus

delayed, God did not design that His people Israel should wander forty

years in the wilderness. He promised to lead them directly to the land of

Canaan, and establish them there a holy, healthy, happy people. But those,

to whom it was first preached, went not in “because of unbelief.” Their

hearts were filled with murmuring, rebellion, and hatred and He could

not fulfill His covenant with them.

For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient

Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance

of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the

promises of God at fault. It is the unbelief, the worldliness,

unconsecration, and strife among the Lord’s professed people that have

kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years

.

In a letter dated December 7, 1901, Mrs. White wrote:

We may have to remain here in this world because of insubordination

many more years, as did the children of Israel; but for Christ’s sake, His

people should not add sin to sin by charging God with the consequence of

their own wrong course of action.10

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All of this is about as devoid of Augustinian determinism regarding the

future as it can possibly be. Even the “great event” in Ellen White’s mind

possessed a certain open-endedness insofar as it was conditioned by human

freedom.

It seems to me that this is the crux of the whole freedom problem. Divine

prediction as to the actions of God, and as involving determined patterns of

nature and unfree beings. is absolute. Insofar, however, as human freedom is

creative, moral action in the presence of genuine alternatives, the predictions are

conditional.

God’s omniscience takes in all that is. It cannot without contradiction also

include what is not. Prediction is a statement of what is as it projects itself into the

future and only God who is omniscient can know all of the complicated causal

patterns which are involved in what truly is.

The above statements by Ellen White bring us to some of the reasons for

risking a new look at the problem of God’s foreknowledge. There are several of

these. First, it adds to the majesty of God the dimension of His active personality.

Aristotle’s unmoved mover and the God of Abraham and of Jesus are poles

apart. Second, it increases our sense of devotion to a God who not only is a

person, but has created us with the ability to share in some of His personal

qualities—namely, creativity (ex nihilo, if you please). Third, by radically rejecting

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the ways of thinking that imply either the determinisms of predestination or

fatalism, it is possible to bring new emphasis to human responsibility.

My attempt to reinterpret problem passages in the Bible and in the

writings of Ellen White may be seen by some as unnecessarily perverse.

However, let me state that its only purpose is to apply to the search of the

inspired sources the conviction derived from a study of God’s revelation in the

natural world, that is, that God and His universe are ultimately rational—they

make sense. The quest is for coherence of all the evidence—the whole body of

inspired writings plus the evidence from human behavior and the natural

sciences. The alternative is to place God in a category beyond rationality, logic,

and consistency.

I do not intimate that human reason can encompass God; far from it.

Rather, I insist that the universe be seen as just that and not a multiverse. What I

do know of God’s revelation must be in harmony with what I cannot now know.

God seems to have revealed to us at least that. I believe my proposals provide a

proper basis for a coherent view of reality, and in a world of increasing

intellectual sophistication, a less rational view of God would seem to be selling

Him short. As to responsibility, on this view the whole ethical enterprise

becomes at once meaningful. Kant’s dictum “ought” presupposes “can” remains

as valid as ever.

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But beyond the question of ethics there is the deadly serious picture of a

church increasingly losing its sense of commitment to an unfinished task. May I

point out that the logical consequence of a fatalistic frame of mind, “What will be

will be,” is non-involvement in the effort to bring to pass. The picture of an

inexorable prophetic time clock must give way to a new sense of urgency

derived from a rediscovery that God has placed the future to an important extent

in our hands. We are to be responsible agents and not mere passive participants

in the work of redemption. This is the real significance of freedom as creative act.

1 The Great Controversy, p. 503. 2 Ibid. 3 Review and Herald, June 12, 1900. 4 Ibid, April 5, 1906. 5 Desire of Ages, p. 22. 6 Review and Herald, Nov. 13, 1900. 7 Testimonies to the Church, Vol. 8, pp. 22-23. 8 Desire of Ages, pp. 633-34. 9 Testimonies to the Church, Vol. 6, p. 450. See also Review and Herald, October 6,

1896 and General Conference Bulletin, Vol. 5, no. 1, March 30, 1903 and

Testimonies to the Church, Vol. 9, p. 29; Vol. 2, p. 194. 10 Letter 184, 1901.

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