Charge: Calvinism distorts God’s Omniscience.
Arminian Complaint: Calvinism distorts God’s Omniscience
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians explains: “Open Theists have the same understanding of God’s character as Arminians do. Open Theists believe that God is good, and that for His part, He genuinely wants everyone to be saved. But Open Theists agree with Calvinists that God can’t know the future unless He ordains it. Open Theists conflate certainty with necessity, just as the Calvinists do, but they take it the opposite way. Open Theists believe that if God knows the future, then humanity can’t make genuine decisions. But, from the Arminian view, if God can know the future without ordaining it, then Open Theism becomes unnecessary.” (SEA)
Let’s state the chart, in order to highlight the consequences of Calvinism:
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)
And there’s the problem. That statement is a self-inflicted wound upon Calvinism.
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, and which leads to the strictest form of Determinism, and ultimately the “author of sin” charge.
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians explains: “God is both omnipresent and omnitemporal. He doesn’t need to ‘look down the corridors of time’ because He exists in all times. Right now, He is just as present with David and Moses as He is with you and me right now. I see time as a dimension of space, so how God interacts with time is the same as He interacts with space. He doesn’t have to determine it, in order to know it; He can see it right now.” (SEA)
All time and space stands before God. For more on Foreknowledge, see here.
Open Theism = God didn’t decree the future and thus cannot know what is undetermined.
Calvinism = God did decree everything and thus necessarily knows what He decreed.
Arminianism = God didn’t decree everything and yet still knows everything.
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. To a deterministic Calvinist, however, 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.
Open Theism = God can’t know the future because He doesn’t ordain it.
Calvinism = God can’t know the future so He DOES ordain it.
Arminianism = God knows the future with or without ordaining it.
Question: So if God did not decree everything, and yet still knows everything, how can God know an undetermined future?
Answer: It’s not undetermined. The future is determined by those who dwell in it.
