Foreknew: Three Views

[Arial]

Reformed (Calvinist) View: God cannot foreknow without also decreeing.

• God's knowledge is causal and comprehensive, not passive or observational.
• He knows all things because he ordained all things (Eph 1:11).
• Foreknow in this sense means he knows it because he decreed it to be.
• His decree is the foundation of his foreknowledge.

This view of God's foreknowledge stays true to his aseity (it is from himself and not from anything else), his being eternal and immutable. He cannot increase in knowledge since he is pure act. It also keeps true the simplicity (his knowledge, will and being are identical.)

If God did not decree it, it would have no being to be known.

Arminian, classical free-will view. God can foreknow without decreeing.

• God's foreknowledge is not causative, but intuitive. IOW he knows what free creatures will freely choose.
• His foreknowledge does not make thing happen but, it reflects what will happen.

God's foreknowledge depends on the choices of free agents, and his decree allows those choices to occur but does not determine them.

Molinist view also known as middle knowledge.

• God knows all possible worlds and what any free creature would do in any circumstance (that is the middle knowledge).
• God then decrees to actualize one specific world based on that knowledge.

His foreknowledge is logically prior to his decree to create the world, and his decree determines which foreknown possibilities become actual.

I propose that the second two views violate God's aseity and his simplicity. And that they go off the rails at the get go by introducing an unexplained and unsupported (at least here): Free will. If any care to support the idea of free will, that is, a part of mankind that is independent of God or his own desires, please do so. I would also like points and counter points presented by all "sides".

 

[makesends]

Love that.

This view of God's foreknowledge stays true to his aseity (it is from himself and not from anything else), his being eternal and immutable. He cannot increase in knowledge since he is pure act. It also keeps true the simplicity (his knowledge, will and being are identical.)

"Identical" is a tricky word, there. His knowledge, will and being are different aspects by which we humans consider the facts. His will (Decree) and his knowledge are indeed one and the same, but result from his being. In the human arrangement of thought, they come from him but are not him, while his being is him. For example, we have no basis to say that what comes to pass IS God, though every detail of it is his will. We might have reason to say that what comes to pass is OF him, but it is not Him.

"The Simplicity of God" indeed does use terms of the unity of God to his attributes, but that is why I say that his attributes are the characteristics/abilities WE attribute to him. (When God himself attributes them to himself, it is for the sake of OUR comprehension—we who look at everything backwards.

I propose that the second two views violate God's aseity and his simplicity. And that they go off the rails at the get go by introducing an unexplained and unsupported (at least here): Free will. If any care to support the idea of free will, that is, a part of mankind that is independent of God or his own desires, please do so. I would also like points and counter points presented by all "sides".

I know of some who would not claim that their free will is independent of God or his desires, but that he desired and created their free will. That being self-contradictory doesn't stop them from saying it.

 

[Arial]

"Identical" is a tricky word, there. His knowledge, will and being are different aspects by which we humans consider the facts.

They are identical in the sense that they are him. All equal all of the time in him. and in his actions. Everything created is outside of him and is created from his simplicity and is subject to him. We consider the facts in our world by these things that he has revealed about himself.

In the human arrangement of thought, they come from him but are not him, while his being is him.

Of course. But what does "the human arrangement of thought" have to do with it?

For example, we have no basis to say that what comes to pass IS God, though every detail of it is his will. We might have reason to say that what comes to pass is OF him, but it is not Him.

I don't think anyone here has that problem.

"The Simplicity of God" indeed does use terms of the unity of God to his attributes, but that is why I say that his attributes are the characteristics/abilities WE attribute to him.

If we are doing the job right, the attributes we attribute to him are the ones he attributes to himself in his word. The Bible is God revealing himself to his children.

(When God himself attributes them to himself, it is for the sake of OUR comprehension—we who look at everything backwards.

God revealing himself to us. Who else would he be revealing himself to in our world? We came from him, we can only look at it upwards (not backwards).

I know of some who would not claim that their free will is independent of God or his desires, but that he desired and created their free will. That being self-contradictory doesn't stop them from saying it.

True that. Here is the analogy that is often used of how God foreknowing as knowing the choices every person would make, and how it does not have God learning.
It is as though God sees the whole movie all at once.

However, that still has God learning something that is outside of himself from a source that is outside himself.