Charge: Calvinism distorts God’s Omniscience.
Arminian Complaint: Calvinism distorts God’s Omniscience
Calvinist, James White, writes: “How God can know future events, for example, and yet not determine them, is an important point….” (Debating Calvinism, p.163, emphasis mine)
Dave Hunt responds: “White denies omniscience in his repudiation of any ‘grounds upon which to base exhaustive divine foreknowledge of future events outside of God’s decree.’ If God must decree the future to know it, He’s not omniscient.” (Debating Calvinism, p.389, emphasis mine)
Dave Hunt is absolutely correct. According to Calvinism, God must predetermine everything in order to know anything. Therefore, for God to know everything, He had to decree everything, which inevitably leads to the strictest form of determinism, and which inevitably leads to the “author of sin” charge.
To a deterministic Calvinist, this simply means that God also predetermined all contingencies. So, in other words, what Tyre and Sidon “would have” done, but didn’t, must also be a product of predetermination. Calvinists are free to make up whatsoever story they wish, but surely it is not very convincing, nor is there any apparent Scriptural support for such a proposed understanding.
Question: Is there any evidence from Scripture which conclusively proves that God has the capacity to know something that He did not create, cause, decree or determine?
Answer: Matthew 11:20-24.
