Category: Fate or Freewill

In this article I would like to submit a simple logical proof that we do in fact have a free will. In so doing it is my intention to also falsify any form of what has become known in recent months as the “Settled View”, which includes both Calvinism and Arminianism as well as any other perhaps unnamed theological system which teaches, whether it be simply in the mind of God or in actual fact, that the future is settled in any way or by any means.

Because such arguments have been bantered around for centuries and because many are somewhat familiar with them and have thus formed preconceived notions as to the flaws in such arguments, I feel it is important at the outset to point out that the argument that I am making here isn’t that God causes things by knowing them. Whether or not God knowing something causes that thing is an altogether separate issue that has to do with God being the first cause of all that happens and if God knew it and didn’t cause it then who did, etc. But the point is that I do not make any such argument in this article, nor does the argument presented here have any such notion as one of its underlying premises.

My argument has simply to do with the definition of free will and the logical implications of a future act being known (i.e. settled), or even knowable for that matter. For clarities sake I offer the argument in the form of a logical syllogism and I remind the reader that if we are to have a rational theology then we must not be afraid to accept the conclusions of sound reason.

We start with the definition of a couple of terms:

Premise 1a: Free will is defined as having the ability, by an act of that will, to do or do otherwise.

Premise 2a: If something is known, it is apprehended with certainty.

Premise 3a: If a future action is known by whatever means then there is no ability to do other than what is known or else it could not be said to have been known.

Conclusion A: If the future is known, by whatever means, then I do not have free will.

Now, that only gets us to an “If then” statement. It does not answer for us whether we do or do not have free will nor does it answer whether or not God knows the future. All it does is prove that IF God does know the future THEN we are not free. To prove we do have free will we have to take a few more steps:

Premise 1b(Conclusion A): If the future is known, by whatever means, then I do not have free will.

Premise 2b: Love, by definition, is a choice. Love must be volitional. Love must be a product of a free will. (Whichever way you want to put it, these are all equivalent statements.)

Conclusion B: If I do not have free will then I cannot love.

Conclusion B is another “if then” statement, which then yields the following…

Premise 1c(Conclusion A): If the future is known, by whatever means, then I do not have free will.

Premise 2c(Conclusion B): If I do not have free will then I cannot love.

Premise 3c: The Christian faith demands the ability to love. Or put in more logically formal terms: Love is a necessary condition of the Christian faith.

Conclusion C: Either I have free will or the law of non-contradiction rationally falsifies Christianity.

And finally…

Premise 1d (Conclusion C): Either I have free will or the law of non-contradictionrationally falsifies Christianity.

 Premise 2d: Christianity is true because of the rational impossibility of the contrary. (As this article is aimed primarily at Christians, I will not bother to establish this premise here. But for those of you who are interested you can get a taste for it by reading THIS.)

Conclusion D: I do have free will.

Conclusion E (From Conclusions A and D): The future is not known.

Now, that’s the whole argument in a nutshell. I won’t bother with putting it into a syllogism but it is important to point out, and I will simply trust that the reader is able to see intuitively, that if the future is not known by God, it certainly cannot have been predestined by Him either and thus this argument falsifies the Calvinist version of the Settled View and much as it does the Arminian and any other version of the Settled View that one might be able to conjure up and that therefore the Open View must be true because of the rational impossibility of the contrary (i.e. because all other options have been rationally falsified).

Some of you will instinctively begin to quote Scripture in an attempt to refute the conclusions offered but I remind you again that our theology must be BOTH biblical and of sound reason. Scripture does not trump sound reason, nor reason the Scripture. If both are true then both must be in agreement with each other. We know that Scripture is true and so if my reasoning is in error then whatever Biblical argument is offered in refutation of it must be presented in the context of addressing a specific premise in this argument prior to ‘Conclusion C’ because if Christianity is falsified then so is the Bible and thus any Biblical argument offered would fail on that single point alone.

It is my contention and firm belief that the Bible must be read in the context of this free will paradigm in order to make any rational sense whatsoever, and so you can expect that I will reject any interpretation of the Bible that contradicts this line of reasoning (without this line of reasoning having first been demonstrated to be fallacious), in favor of an interpretation that maintains this rationally coherent paradigm.

The Bible is true and therefore it is rational; any irrational interpretation must and will therefore be rejected as false. I would pray that you adopt this same attitude toward the Scripture for yourself.

May God bless you as you grow in His wisdom and grace.

Resting in Him,

Clete Pfeiffer

 P.S.

 This will be my first article submitted to this website and so let me start off by saying thank you to Pat for giving me the opportunity and for doing all the work that is necessary in putting together a website of this nature. It is my hope that this and whatever other contributions I make to this site will work for the furtherance of the Gospel of the Grace of God and to the edification of the Body of Christ in its understanding of the Word of God rightly divided.

There is no scripture anywhere in the Bible that tells us that God knows all of the future. There is no doubt that God does know some future events, but does he know all of it? Most importantly, did he know Adam and Eve would fall? It may be shocking, but it is true. There is no verse that tells us that God knows all of the future. Some to show some future knowledge, yet we take some to mean all. Why do we conclude that he knows all of the future? In part, because of tradition, but we also use logical reasoning.

This equation shows the logical thought process used to prove God has 100% future knowledge:

“A” knows all of the future because “A” predicted that “B” would happen with accuracy.

 “A” = ‘God’, “B” = ‘some bible prophecy’, such as ‘Peter denying Christ’.

So with this logical thinking, God knows all of the future because God predicted Peter would deny Christ. But is this really true? Does predicting a future event mean someone knows all of the future?

If you substitute “A” with an actual person and “B” with an event they predicted, the conclusion is not they knew all of the future.

“A” = My mother
“B” = Get married

 My mother predicted that one day I would get married. Therefore my mother knows the all of future.

Did it happen? Yes. Therefore “A” (mom) knows all of the future. This logic fails big time. But there are other logical conclusions that try to prove God’s unending future knowledge.

If the we can repeatedly show someone knows future events it is more likely or true that that person knows all of the future.

“A” knows the future because of the large number of accurate predictions.

Thus it is said that because God predicted Peter and Judas, the crucifixion, and the book or revelations, thus God knows the all of future.

But, again, my mom predicted that one day I would go to high school, that I would have a broken heart from a girl turning me down, that one day I would learn to drive a car, and that I would go to the prom and graduate. She said I would go to college, despite my non-willingness to go. And to this day she thinks me and my wife will have children. Therefore, mom knows all of the future?

Do you see? It is obvious my mother does not know the future, yet if you plug her into the equation, she does! But we know there is some other explanation… that is she knows me well enough, and she knows life of the typical American boy growing up. She knows what happens when you get married, and she believed and hoped I would find someone.

 But there is one more logical conclusion to consider that we use to prove God’s future knowledge includes every event in time:

 “A” is powerful. Thus “A” can do “A-Z” (i.e. everything).

But there are problems with this, because we know God doesn’t do everything just because he is powerful. For example, God is powerful, can he be the worst sinner? No. Some things are impossible for God, and sin is one of them. His inability to sin does not make him weaker, or less of a God.

Yet we also know God is so powerful that know he knows everything. But what is time? Is time a thing to be known by God? The truth is we do not know a lot about time. There are so many theories, each with their own sets of proofs, that science does not understand time. We must rely on what God tells us to understand the future, and What he knows about it, without assuming.

When it comes to future knowledge, we can only say God knows what he says he knows. We shouldn’t take it to the next level and say he knows everything.

 Here are those equations again:

1. knows the future because”accurately predicted. “
2. knows the future because of the large number of accurate predictions.
3. is powerful. Therefore A can do A-Z (i.e. everything).

 “A” knows everything. Therefore, “A” knows all of the future (even though isn’t a thing)

 We cannot prove through logical thinking with the evidence that we have how much of the future God knows. All we can do is say God knows the future event’s he says he knows. Which brings us back to Adam and Eve…

So many people struggle with one question. “Why would God create a world like this one if he is so loving?” But what if God didn’t know how things would turn out? We have no evidence to say God knew our world would come to this when he created it. What we do know is He created it to be “very good.” But it is obvious this world is not very good any more.

Man is truly to blame. God created us to take care of the world he created, thinking we would follow him. God didn’t know Adam and Eve wouldn’t follow him. So when man turned his back on God and took this world in his own hands, God let him, but had no part of it, nor did he see it happening.