Question:
Dear
Greg,
Can you answer this conundrum for me?
If Christians accept that God is all knowing
(not just knowing the possibilities of an event, but also its outcome) then
you must admit that God knows whether a person is going to heaven or hell.
If you accept some sort of alternative reality then I guess it’s
possible that in one reality a person goes to heaven and in another he goes to
hell.
If there aren’t any alternative realities then a person will be going
to either heaven or hell, but not both.
If God knows everything then God knows where we’ll end up.
In other words, there is no such thing as choice; it’s all
pre-determined. Yes, you can be
saved, but again there is only one outcome to any event and God knows what it
is, doesn’t he?
Simon
Answer:
Dear
Simon,
The conundrum you raise is answered in the long-standing theological
stand off between Calvinists and Arminians.
Calvinists take a similar view that you propose, with
Calvinists accepting supralapsarianism
or infralapsarianism.
Infralapsarianism posits that the fall of man was decreed by God before
that of election, and the order of his decrees is:
1. creation
of humans
2.
permitting/allowing
the fall (sin of Adam)
3.
saving
some and condemning others
4.
providing
salvation only for the elect
Supralapsarianism
posits that God’s decrees occurred in this order:
1.
saving
some humans and condemning others
2.
creating
humans who at their creation are either elect or reprobate
3.
permitting/allowing
sin (the fall)
4.
providing
salvation only for the elect
Some
Calvinists differ only in the thought that God either
condemned and saved humans before he created them, or after.
The term predestination is often used.
Reformed churches and some Presbyterian churches generally hold this
view of God’s nature and sovereignty.
PTM believes this view to be extreme—the product of the best efforts
of limited and imperfect humans to logically capture and comprehend the mind
of God. Such a goal is
impossible, for God is not like us. We
can only understand to the degree that he has allowed and created us with the
ability to comprehend. We cannot
fully fathom the mind of God, no matter how precise our logic may be.
The very act of God revealing himself to
humans involves God condescending--using our language and symbols to talk to
us. This would be much like an
adult human making animal sounds to an infant to depict the larger reality and
complexity of an animal. Because
an infant can connect the sound of an animal, that
does not mean the infant now understands all the complexities of the same.
God shares this “wholly other” part of who he is versus who we are
in many places in the Bible, the book of Isaiah in particular.
Arminianism, which is generally/popularly
taught by many other Protestant churches and is a view that PTM would be
inclined to in this discussion, sees God’s decision to give salvation to
some and not to others as based upon his foreknowledge.
That is, he does not arbitrarily (to characterize the Calvinist view)
determine the fate of all humans, but he does have foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge is then defined in many differing ways, but allows for
human choice and free will to enter the discussion.
A problem with an extreme Calvinist view is the issue you appear to
advance—what’s the use? God
is going to do what he is going to do no matter what we do.
In the specific area of prayer, some skeptically advance the idea—why
pray? But again, we are created,
mortal, time and space bound humans trying to fathom the uncreated eternal God
who exists outside of time and space (in your alternative reality, if you
like). Why pray if we can’t
“change God’s mind” is a question that begs the real reason for prayer.
It is a time for us to enter into God’s presence so that we might
yield to him, become more like him and change us—rather than a bargaining
session in which we try to change his mind.
Hope this helps. It’s a
big topic and that’s the best I can do in a short Q and A.
In Christ,