Gregory A. Boyd’s book God of the possible is where I found my tagline for the MostMovedMover website. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in openness and how the Bible testifies of God’s relation to man’s agency. It is thorough in its detail around the biblical references and theology related to God and a contingent future. I recently found a short YouTube video from Greg that provides an excellent six-minute summary of his book and what ‘God of the possible’ means. This post contains an edited transcript.

Transcript

Boyd was asked, ‘Does God know what we will decide?'

Okay, very good question. If we have free will, Does God know what we’re going to decide, and if so, what’s the purpose for being here? Now, again I want to preface this by saying there are differences of opinion on this. And my views are not the only view. And there’s room for disagreement on this, of course. I’ll just give you my perspective.

Three general views

Knows but no conflict with agency

1. Most Christians throughout history, not all, but most have believed that yes, we have free will. But God still knows what we’re going to choose an eternity ahead of time before we choose it. And there’s no conflict there. Although a good percentage of the Christians believe that God knows what we’re going to choose because he predestines it. And yet in such a way that we’re responsible for it now, I could never make any sense out of.

Knowledge is different in timelessness

2. Some say that God is timeless; he’s above time, so he sees much than he foresees what we’re going to do. He just sees it from an eternal present, and we can talk endlessly about that.

Reality contains contingencies

3. But I’ll just give you my two cents here. For what it’s worth, and it works for me but may not work for you. But as I said, God, God knows everything. I have every biblical and philosophical reason for believing that God is omniscient. He is all-knowing. Now, if he’s all-knowing, he knows all of reality, and he knows all of reality perfectly. And he knows all of reality exactly as it is. That is my view.

The question is - what is contained in all of reality?

And I believe that if we have free will. Then part of the future of reality that God perfectly knows are possibilities. If I have free will, I can choose this way, or I can choose that way. And that’s what God knows. I can choose this way, and I can choose that way. And so what I’m going to choose isn’t a fact that’s out there to be known.

So, it doesn’t take away from God’s omniscience to say that he doesn’t know it any more than it takes away from God’s omniscience that he doesn’t know that there’s a unicorn in the middle of the stage right now. You wouldn’t say, ‘Oh God doesn’t know everything, he doesn’t know there’s a unicorn in the middle of the stage right now.’ Well, that’s because there’s not a unicorn in the middle of the stage right now. So you wouldn’t expect God to know that there is a unicorn when there’s not.

So also, if we have free will, in my view, we have the possibility of doing this or doing this. Which means the fact of what we’re going to do, isn’t there yet. We create that fact by what we decide. Once we create it. God knows it.

Now, at the same time, a lot of our decisions… the longer you live, the more your character is formed, the more predictable you become and so you still have a choice, but your probabilities get inclined in one direction and there comes a time when, when your character is so formed, that you can’t choose otherwise. You could have chosen otherwise, so you’re still responsible for what you’re choosing, but at the moment, at that point, you’ve used up your freewill as it were. We are always in the process of becoming.

Biblical examples

So whenever that is the case, God, of course, knows that because God knows all of reality perfectly. What impresses me, I can’t go into this all right now, a book I wrote on it called, ‘The God of the possible’, where I fleshed this whole thing out biblically. But I was always impressed by the fact, not always, but when I first started or discovered in the 80s that;

• God changes his mind.

• A number of times, God is disappointed.

• He sometimes seems almost surprised by things.

• He’s frustrated a lot of time; he tries to do things that aren’t successful. He tries to find someone to intervene on behalf of Israel and Ezekiel 22, but he can’t find anyone. How can you try to find something that you eternally know it’s not there? Because I sought someone to stand in the gap to repair the wall and keep this judgment from happening, but I couldn’t find anybody. how do you genuinely look for something that you know is not there?

• He speaks about the future and the Bible quite a bit in terms of what might or might not happen. They may believe they may not believe it. And so that tells me that God created a world where the future, to some degree, consists of possibilities. And that’s the domain of our freedom.

Conclusion

Now that [background] becomes important for the second part of this question - [what’s our purpose for being here?]. Because if all the facts of world history are eternally settled - from all eternity, what you will choose has been settled, even before you were created, then you can’t choose otherwise.

If it’s a settled fact that I will In 2012 decide to buy a red car and then crash it into a wall… If that is a settled fact from all eternity, then, obviously, I am not free to choose the red car or not. I will choose the red car; it is a settled fact. … At that point in life can seem like you’re just playing out a script. The script was eternally there. It is a form of fatalism it seems to me, and that can begin to feel like a pro forma thing, which is why this person is saying why do we even exist. Why not just skip this thing called history, and since God’s effects are already settled, then let’s jump to the end, we’re not really doing anything new in the process of living out history. We’re just kind of unfolding the facts that are eternally settled.

Now, this is one way of looking at it. The other thing I couldn’t understand is this - Why would God create people that he knows ahead of time were going to go to hell. Why bother, and it’s just you foresee it, say, Okay, forget it just keep the good and get rid of the bad.

Why would God create people that he knows they’re going to go to hell, and then he spends their whole life trying to get them to go to Heaven? He is frustrated by it. All-day long, He says in Romans 10 I’ve stretched all my hands to these stubborn people, but they would not come unto me. If you knew that they wouldn’t come to you from all eternity. And why are we wasting your time?

So, there are philosophical reasons, and for Biblical reasons, I think the future partly consists of possibilities that are open. Still, many people disagree with me, and I’m fine with that.

Video

• openness
• excerpt