Part 4: A Preliminary Response

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the foreknowledge of God in this address from The Gospel Coalition.

Male: We were talking about theodicy, and I’m thinking one of the Puritans said the fool has said there is no God, and the fool who is standing next to him is the one who says God is the author of sin because both destroy the God of the Bible, so part of the issue here is not wanting to attribute sin to God.

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Don Carson: I agree with that.

Male: I was in Chicago, and one of the sons of one of our members was involved with four people in a brutal murder, and I went through the whole case of that. He was in trial with another fellow. In that case, the one fellow who was with him was sentenced to death also, but there was no evidence that he stabbed those three fellows who were involved.

He got the death sentence because he was aware of what was happening, he didn’t do anything to stop it, and he didn’t report it following the murder. The law said he could have maybe not done anything to prevent it because he was afraid for his own life but he should have afterwards done something about it. So not having stabbed at all he was sentenced to death along with this other fellow.

Our law system that we say is based on a Judeo-Christian base says you are responsible because you knew what was coming, you didn’t do anything to stop it, and you’re guilty. How do you answer that with a sense that somehow we know God knows what’s going to happen and doesn’t do anything to prevent it or at least what we perceive to be that way? In law there’s guilt.

Don: That’s a fundamental question, and it’s one I want to specifically address tomorrow. I’m not going to get to it today. I’ll say just a little bit about it now. It has to do with one of the most difficult elements of theodicy, but it is tied to two or three other things as well. One of them is how do we think about God talk? To what extent is the language of the Bible about God univocal or analogical?

And that right across the board. When it says God sees something he doesn’t see things the way I see things. I see it from my eyeballs. When it says God lays bare his arms, he’s not doing it the way I lay bare my arm. When it says God knows, he doesn’t know things the way I know things. The question sometimes becomes bound up with a large historically debated and very complex question of divine accommodation.

The fact of the matter is on any view of God (I don’t care whose it is, including the openness people), sooner or later people have to start saying there are some differences in the way we talk about God and the way we talk about us, so not everything that can be applied one way can be applied another way. I will come back to that question later.

I would say, and this is again anticipating something I will say tomorrow, that in my view the appeal to the sort of theodicy implicit in the question … I mean, if you take an openness of God and you preserve God from any charge of evil by saying he didn’t know about it … In fact, I don’t think it works even practically, because even if you say God foresaw the Holocaust in 1920, why didn’t he do anything about it in 1943?

You see, in Boyd’s first book on war he has this recurring theme about Zoe’s eyes. It’s a terrible, brutal thing. It was as though his eyes were plucked out by the Nazis. But granted he didn’t foresee that coming, granted the Devil was doing that, and the torture went on for hours. Was God asleep then? Why didn’t he intervene? He has the power. Why didn’t he do anything?

I don’t think even at a practical level this thing works. I think sooner or later Christians in a monotheistic universe do have to come back to some very difficult questions you can nibble at the edges of to see your way into compatibilism and then acknowledge there is some mystery that is bound up with misalignments in communication in our talk about God as compared with us. I’ll come to that tomorrow.

You buy into that because it’s taught everywhere in Scripture, and then there are some implications about how you let these things function into our lives, but if you try to deny that as a way of getting around some of these problems, you actually buy into bigger problems theologically, pastorally, and a whole lot of other ways besides contradicting Scripture.

Now that’s where I’m heading. You don’t need to come to the rest of it now. That’s what I’m going to say for the next … But your question is right at the heart of a great deal of issues to do with theodicy. Sir?

Male: How in the open view of God can they accommodate the truth that my sins in particular here in the twenty-first century were atoned by Christ’s death on the cross? Wouldn’t that open view necessitate that atonement could apply only in the first century?

Don: I think in all fairness to them what they would say is God may not have foreseen every individual sin we committed that was dependent on our overt, free-contingent future choice, but he knew that we are sinners, we are going to sin, we will sin, and the atonement covers the whole thing in sort of a blanket and check across the board in advance.

I think that’s what they would say. In other words, I don’t want to charge them with something that wouldn’t be fair to them. Obviously, you can’t have in that view a kind of vision in which somehow the cross covers specific people and specific sins. It’s sort of a blanket coverage.

Male: In ministering in the shadow of Brigham Young University, I am hearing a lot of parallels with the theology of Mormonism, and I just was wondering if you could comment on that. I’m not aware up to this point with the kinds of connections, whether or not the Mormons themselves are making the connection with the open-God view and their theology, but it won’t take long. I know they would be very encouraged by what they’re hearing.

Don: You’re right. I’m sure you know more about Mormonism than I do, but Mormonism, of course, internally is wracked with its own eternal debates. Some branches of it are really trying to become a little more evangelical and others are really sort of steeped in the old-line stuff.

The old-line stuff goes so far as to say God does have a body, so when you have a passage like, “God lays bare his arms …” Because God does have in some sense an arm. Thus in one sense, you see, you’re moving one step away from recognizing what the whole history of the church has recognized, something of the analogical nature of language when you’re talking about God, so in one sense there are all kinds of connections that could be made.

I am not personally aware of any direct dependencies either way, which is not to say there aren’t any. I’m just not personally aware of them, so I think your analysis about what could develop in the future is probably pretty shrewd, but I’m not personally aware of that sort of connection.

Male: Specifically there is the idea that open-God theologians are looking at the Bible texts and saying, “We’re just being a lot more honest here.” When it comes to those anthropomorphisms, you know, why not be honest there?

Don: That’s exactly right.

Male: That’s the thing with what is being called Mormon neoorthodoxy. There really has never been a denial that God has a body and that he’s literal, but a lot of the things I’m hearing here are just so, so close, and you throw the Book of Mormon in and these guys are Mormons. I don’t know.

Don: One has to be careful about making all of those connections, of course, because it’s a bit like the charge some made that these guys are all process theologians, and the fact of the matter is in some respects their thoughts are very parallel but there are some differences, so as a result, the openness-of-God theologians feel a great deal of umbrage when you accuse them of being process theologians.

In classic Mormon thought, of course, you’re going through these cycles of things, and God is not … Yahweh is not the univocal God; he’s one God on the way and that sort of thing. That’s very different from anything to do with anything in open theism and so forth. There are lots of differences as well, so when one sees the parallels one wants to be careful to allow the differences so one does not tar people indiscriminately with the wrong brush.

This same sort of thing happens when you get popular books being written about how New Age thought is just like ancient Gnosticism, and I want to get up on my hind legs and say, “Yes, but …” That’s the scholar in me who still likes footnotes. The preacher in me wants to say the same thing because it scores points, but on the other hand, in all fairness, the more able preachers are going to put in a few footnotes too.

Of course, it’s not exactly the same, but there are some real parallels here. You can get away with that sort of thing. If that’s all you’re saying, that’s fine, but I just wouldn’t want somehow the ministers of the Free Church to be accused of claiming Greg Boyd is a secret Mormon or something. It wouldn’t be quite fair.

Male: Could you possibly role-play or give, maybe, Boyd’s counter-argument in the Cyrus with the strict parameter issue. I mean, I’ve read Weir’s book and our discussions today … What’s he going to come back with in seriousness?

Don: I gave what both he and Sanders say to that point as far as they have gone in print on it.

Male: With the parents truly looking for names or thinking it through and God putting those options out there?

Don: They haven’t worked it all out in that sort of detail. I’m the one who has pushed it that far, but all I’m saying is in principle they have already allowed for the kind of control that issues in a foreordained result by speaking of the establishment of strict parameters.

Male: And they counter and say, “Yeah, you’re right”?

Don: Yeah. In that case they were right.

Male: Okay. So they do punt on that, admittedly.

Don: Of course.

Male: They say, “I have to punt on that one”?

Don: No. What they would say is in this case this is the way God did it. God had to do it in this case to bring about his prophecy, but that doesn’t mean every baby who’s ever born automatically has a name God has ordained before the foundation of the earth. It just means in that case God did it that way.

My argument back is the fact that God does do it that way, while these people still think they’re choosing the name in perfect freedom, shows God can do it that way without in any sense overthrowing God’s control and human notions of freedom as long as you don’t define freedom in a libertarian sense.

Male: What would he say after that?

Don: Then you’re back to fundamental issues about what freedom is, and you’re back to all the other issues we’re talking about. I don’t think any of these debates can finally be resolved on only one passage. It’s not as if I’m going to land a blow from one passage that is a knock-down-drag-’em-out. At the end of the day I would want to argue the openness of God has now become sufficiently sophisticated that it is reasonably internally consistent.

I don’t think it’s very consistent with Scripture. I think it has huge other problems, but it is reasonably internally consistent. That means ultimately it’s not a question of tweaking a bit here; it’s a worldview clash, because I’m claiming what I’m teaching is consistent with Scripture and internally consistent and more faithful to Scripture and pastorally wiser and has the whole heritage of the church and more biblically sanctioned and all the rest.

But at the end of the day, just at the level of internal consistency, you’re not going to knock down a whole system by just one proof text. There are all the structures that go with it. It is why in these sorts of theological debates nothing is ever solved by simply one address on a certain passage. It’s almost a worldview formation.

Male: I know the open view or open theism takes issue with compatibilism in a sense, saying it’s sort of sticking its head in the sand trying to avoid the hard realities. In your definition of compatibilism it struck me that you said the exercise of their responsibility never makes God absolutely contingent. Is that a bit like being a little bit pregnant if God is only marginally contingent? Does that run aground some of the other arguments? Can you just address that?

Don: The reason why I said absolutely contingent … If you recall I made a small aside at the time saying the reason I was saying absolutely contingent was because there are some passages where, in the dynamic of the interchange, God does appear to be contingent so that you’re really making a judgment call on whether you think this really does result in a finite God in a particular passage, in part on the basis of what else the Bible is saying.

In other words, there are some passages where God enters into personal interaction and if we knew nothing at all about God at all (supposing we came in from Mars and had absolute blank slates about religion on earth) and took one pericope out of the Bible where God interacts … Even Genesis 3: “Where are you, Adam?”

If you know nothing about the Bible, nothing about God, and somebody comes in and reads this pericope (presuming he can read Hebrew, but that’s all he can do and knows nothing about the background), he would probably presuppose God doesn’t know because he’s calling him just the way somebody calls for Johnny to come in for dinner. “Where are you, Johnny?”

But even in this case, Boyd would say God does know. He’s not asking in this case because he doesn’t know, because in Boyd’s understanding of God, based on all his understanding of the rest of the passages, God knows what’s going on now certainly. He’s omniscient in that sense, so he is forced to say in that passage when God asks a question it’s not because he doesn’t know the answer but for a rhetorical effect.

All a compatibilist is doing is saying in some other passages where God may be asking a question about the future, it may not be because he doesn’t know but also for a rhetorical effect. Both of us have done the same thing. We have appealed to a larger canonical context to make sense of something. He has drawn the line at a different place.

What I’m really saying by this is there are all kinds of interactive contexts in Scripture where God is certainly projected as in some sense relatively contingent, but against the background of all Scripture says about God there is no passage that shows him to be definitively, absolutely contingent. That’s all I meant by the absolutely.

Male: It kind of blends into another way in which I wrestle with these issues in the sense that God being fully capable and can do these things doesn’t necessitate that he does them. I’m not comfortable with the idea that God decides not to know things, like he sort of chooses to forget.

Don: That has projected a whole literature in just that one question.

Male: But the fact that God is able to make a predictive prophecy and can affect it in the case of Cyrus, does it make it normative in all other situations that he would do so, and maybe even more fundamentally, I guess the question is the degree of specificity and the fundamental nature of the work of the cross as the whole substructure upon which the faith is built, is that normative for the way God operates in all other circumstances, and if so, what leads us to conclude that or what drives us to that conclusion?

Don: I haven’t dealt with that sort of evidence yet, but it’s not only that in concrete instance after concrete instance you get these. It’s not just the work of the cross but the Assyrians in the Old Testament or Jacob … Every passage where there’s a possibility of coming up to compatibilism, compatibilism works through. It’s not as if the passage backs off and says, “In this case God didn’t know.”

In addition, there are these sweeping passages that are more generic. The lot is cast into the lap of the whole disposing, “Thereof is of the Lord.” In modern idiom, you throw a die and which side comes up depends on his sovereignty. That in the context, no doubt, of the lot being used in the judicious framework, but still it’s, humanly speaking, which side comes up depends on God’s sovereignty.

Not a sparrow falls from the heavens without his sanction. All the hairs on your head are numbered. He is able to turn the heart of the king. He knows your thoughts in your heart before you think them. Passage after passage that deals with that kind of thing in a generic sort of way …

Then you tie those sorts of passages into the concrete passages I gave you where compatibilism surfaces right within the concreteness and then passages we haven’t come to about the Lord’s sweeping knowledge and counsel seeming to be without control, you start building up all of this background, and that’s part of the baggage you bring with you when you interpret the next text.

Male: That’s very true, and I guess some of the challenges we face are if we willingly accept God’s exhaustive knowledge of the number of hairs on my head yesterday, today, tomorrow, and into the future, does that press us to the limit of God causing those hairs to fall out one at a time? Was the intention of that biblical statement to assert causation or was it to assert something else?

Don: You’ve changed your argument, because your argument was about foreknowledge, so I answered that question. Now you changed the foreknowledge to causation, which is fair in a dialogue, but I just want you to see that nevertheless the issue does move on. They are tied to different levels of things.

Within an orthodox framework there, the levels of causation are often thought to bring in matters of secondary causation, or in an Arminian scheme there’s much more talk of different wills of God (the decorative will of God versus the permissive will of God, and things like that, whatever they’re called … they’re called slightly different things in the different heritages of the church), but there’s a recognition that such language is necessary to deal both with those texts that speak of God’s sweeping sovereignty and of those passages that distance God from evil.

One way or the other, you have to deal with that. You’re back to the question of theodicy again, and the only way to duck that finally … As someone at break was talking about, one theologian who raised the question … Let’s assume God is sovereign over all the sweeping things and the way we’ve talked about the cross and the Assyrians and Joseph and all the redemptive, historical events and all the big things here, but maybe when it comes to which potato you pick up in the supermarket he doesn’t care.

My answer to that is, quite apart from the texts that I think rule that out but we haven’t come to yet, it doesn’t solve Boyd’s problem because the kinds of issues Boyd and Sanders raise have nothing to do with picking out potatoes in the supermarket; they have to do with whether or not God knew in advance Eichmann was going to kill all those Jews at Auschwitz and that I would say, worse, when it went on for years and years and years and he didn’t stop it.

You see, even if you start putting in those caveats and find it more convenient to think which potato you pick up really is entirely within your domain, then quite apart from texts I would set up against that and quite apart from the fact it could just be out of chaos theory that that particular potato turns out to be a long chain of events that actually does affect a whole lot of other things, quite apart from all of that I’d say it doesn’t solve anything because the kinds of issues the openness-of-God theologians are talking about that God knows or doesn’t know have to do with major moral dimensions and not with you picking up a potato. It doesn’t solve a thing.