Divine Foreknowledge - Musings

I just finished reading a book that I got back in my seminary days called Divine Foreknowledge. It is a book four views: open theism, simple knowledge, middle knowledge, and the Augustinian Calvinist position. Its been awhile since I have revisited the questions of divine sovereignty, human responsibility, God's knowledge, the problem of sin (what about the problem of grace?), etc., so I figure it was time to dive back in. Here are some random musings:

I find it interesting that many in the church don't even like to deal with this issue, it's too mind-bending and takes to much thought and biblical wrestling. We like to leave it alone or just say that its unimportant and not really a big deal where you come down on these issues.

However, this is a fallacy. It is important and everyone knows it. Why? Everyone deals with it or will deal with it because babies die and some don't until there 90, because men crash planes in buildings and some men build buildings, because some dad's leave their children and some mom's abort them and other dad's raise there children and go to their soccer games and other mom's nurse them at the breast and nourish and care for them till death, and on all these issues the question of how God relates to them (knows them) is no small issue. It matters. Let's not act like it doesn't.

Guys like Greg Boyd, pastor and scholar, say that God knows the future exhaustively but that it is not exhaustively definite because the future has indefinite possibilities (p. 104). Therefore God is flexible in reacting to the decisions of his free creatures, because he has "sovereignly decided to not settle all of the future" (p. 105). In other books, he has written that man in fact creates the future. To be honest, if your highest value in the universe is the free will of man (like I heard one northern California pastor say) then this view probably would fit your value-system. However, I don't think this view is biblical or even helpful, but I do think that out of the other views it "gets God off the hook" the best. Open theism in saying God doesn't know all of the future really does protect man's free will far better then those who like to affirm that man has libertarian free-will and that God knows the all of the future. And if it is God's highest value to preserve the utter freedom of those created in His image, it seems to make the most sense.

Yet, this is not the view of the Bible. God's highest value is not the free-will of man. His highest value is Himself, and because He values Himself so highly He wills that His Son be sent to restore fallen humanity to freedom, that is the freedom to see God as He is and worship Him in His glory. Man is never creator of anything, he is always created, and God as Creator is always in first place and this includes His knowledge about the future. Man's action, is always in some way subject to the action of God. This is basic 101, but that does not entail that it is simple.

Sometimes the most basic things are difficult. For instance, it is a very basic biblical concept that Adam's sin plunged all of humanity into sin, but this is not an easy idea. It is complex. It is assumed in some way by all Christians, and it seems to me on the surface of things it's very unfair.

But fairness should never be a high value for the Christian. Never. It gets us into a world of trouble, because our interpretation of fairness is never as pure as God's justice. It is not the same thing.

More to come, there are many questions and there always will be, but I just had to get some things down. I hope you are patient, dear reader, and continue reading, because God is good all the time, and that is very true and very good and simple. And at times difficult as hell, and this is good for us.