Some expanded notes from my recent sermon, the God who risks: Part 2. Part 1 is more important and can be heard in .mp3 format here. Please don’t comment re God & time without at least hearing part 1.
Last time we looked at the biblical evidence that shows that God has not set the future in stone, and that it the future is not already written. That God could have created a universe where he foreknew or determined everything but the bible shows that God instead chose to create a universe that did not not have a predetermined or foreknown future, and that prophecy reveals God’s intention and is not “historiography before the event”. My intention was to show that you don’t have to believe in a fully determined or foreknown future to be a good Christian – the other views have had centuries of being proclaimed – but they are not the only evangelical view of God and His relationship to time, evil and suffering. It is important to have a robust framework that can deal with evil and suffering in our lives – I found that the classic answers of “God plans evil in order to bring about good or bring glory to himself” or “it’s a mystery” were highly unsatisfactory. What then do we do when evil or suffering comes about? Did God plan evil, or just foresee it and choose to do nothing about it? What we see the life of Jesus revealing is a God that is fighting against suffering and evil, treats sickness like an enemy. Perhaps we should instead ask “I wonder what this world would be like if God wasn’t fighting against evil?”
God doesn’t plan everything, but he does have a plan for everything that happens: Romans 8v28, in all things God is working…. Despite what happens, God can make it work for good – if we’ll let him.
Does the Open View of the future limit God? No, it is the future that is limited, not God: the future does not exist to be known. There is no expectation for God to know something that cannot be known. Therefore one can maintain an Open View of the Future and still confidently proclaim that God knows everything. To think then that so often God brings about things with miraculous timing and precision without foreknowing the future or controlling people’s decisions is mindblowing, and presents a much higher view of God than one that does so by foreknowing the future or controlling people in order to bring about what He wants.
The bible does mention predestination. It appears in the NIV 4 times (Ephesians 1 and Romans 8, and can be drawn from other Pauline writings). How can God predestine a small selection of society to salvation without controlling them or foreknowing their decisions? If a certain section of society were elected to salvation did God also leave (or more honestly, predestine) the rest to hell? Did they ever stand a genuine chance to avoid hell? If God is to judge justly people must have an opportunity to act righteously.
When Paul speaks of election in Eph 1 and Rom 8 he is speaking from his understanding of election: the national election of Israel. They were a people chosen to serve God – God would stand by them as they remained faithful to God. The key is that although the nation of Israel was elected, merely being born an Israelite was no guarantee of being part of the elect, instead one had to “keep the covenant” in order to be a “true Israelite”. Saul started out inside the elected nation and found himself on the outside, Ruth, conversely, started outside the national elect and took the invitation from God to come inside it. Paul is not speaking then of God selecting which individuals to save and which to condemn, but rather God has elected the whole of humanity – though to be clear we only become part of “the elect” when we repent and believe. What then was predestined? Eph 1 is clear: God chose us [who are] in Christ to be holy and blameless – it is difficult to make the sentence mean anything else frankly, and yet…
In fact, are we comfortable with the idea that God only selects a few people from society to save? This is something we need to be really clear about: God wants to save everyone! Yet many old theologians (and some now) would insist that God chooses who to save and who to condemn to an eternity in hell on what (from our perspective) is nothing more than luck – if God chose to save or condemn us before we were born then it really is just luck. Have we ever thought about what we in heaven will think of those in hell? Some theologians call Individual Predestination the doctrine of comfort because it is comforting for Christians to know God chose them before the world began, but it is not us Christians who need the comfort frankly – it would be better spent on those not predestined to heaven!
And if people are predestined to heaven and everyone else is left to (or predestined to) hell, what will we in heaven think of them? CH Spurgeon, a highly respected preacher and theologian just over 100 years ago said the righteous in heaven will be quite satisfied with the damnation of the lost. I used to think that if I could see the lost in hell, surely I must weep for them. Could I hear their horrid wailings, and see the dreadful contortions of their anguish, surely I must pity them. But there is no such sentiment as that known in heaven. The believer shall be there so satisfied with all God’s will, that he will quite forget the lost in the idea that God has done it for the best, that even their loss has been their own fault, and that he is infinitely just in it. If my parents could see me in hell they would not have a tear to shed for me, though they were in heaven, for they would say, “It is justice, thou great God; and thy justice must be magnified, as well as thy mercy;” and moreover, they would feel that God was so much above his creatures that they would be satisfied to see those creatures crushed if it might increase God’s glory.
If you’ve been part of evangelical churches for any length of time you will have come across this kind of teaching. This idea that believers will be happy in heaven because they’d be so satisfied in God, that they’d just forget about the people in hell, is cold, vacuous, heartless and is just not found in scripture. Anyone who can consider eternal conscious punishment without tears in their eyes does not understand what is being proposed. I don’t know how we could enjoy heaven if we knew people were experiencing eternal conscious punishment. How could I be happy in heaven if you’re not there? Classic theology would say that people are completely separated from God… so do we think God forgets them? Do you think a parent ever forgets about a child they lost? Going on the statistics for the UK for every believer there is at least another 10 who don’t believe. Which means every moment of bliss you enjoy is another 10 people experiencing conscious torment. Spurgeon may not weep – but I think we would. No, the idea of individuals predestined to salvation does not work at all, scripturally, historically or even logically.
So, besides the elect become holy and blameless, what else was predestined? We need to be sure when we read scripture not to outrun it. Acts 2 & 4 speaks of God’s plan and foreknowledge of Christ’s death and that wicked people would crucify Him. But scripture does not say which wicked people, we can infer then that wicked people would be used to murder an innocent man – as they always are – there are plenty of them around, so God did not need to specify which ones would do it. I think too that when God decided to make free humans he was also simultaneously deciding to send his Son to die for us. If you have kids you’re going to have to clean up their mess – it goes with being a parent. Paying for sin goes with making free beings – that’s just part of the cost, and God knew that. So in Acts 2v23, and ch4 Paul is affirming that Christ’s death was not a mistake but was always part of God’s plan.
One of the benefits of the Open View of the future is that we have a reasonable answer to the question: why would God create people that he foreknew would definitely go to hell? But if the future is unknowable the we can confidently say that God did not know when they were born whether people would reject God and sin, or would repent of their sin and follow Him. Their future was simply not foreknown. God truly does desire all people to be saved – just as the bible says he does! 1 Timothy 2v3-4 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And Peter in 2 Peter 3v9: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. With the idea that God predestines just some individuals to be saved then one cannot take Paul and Peter’s words here seriously. With an open view of the future we can assume that they mean exactly what they say.
God is attempting to draw to himself every human on the planet. Once God fully reveals himself he would be irresistible, but for us in this world God has made himself absolutely resistible – we can say no to God – the divine hiddenness has seen to that. One reason that God has hidden himself is so that people are free to say no to him. If God revealed himself fully to people then “every knee will bow”. But he doesn’t because if you’re free to say no to God then saying “Yes” to God actually means something! Why is making a free decision so important? Jesus said in Matthew 22v37, that the greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind”, that and that the whole of the Old Testament hangs on that commandment along with “love your neighbour as yourself”. Now I do a bit of computer programming and it isn’t difficult for me to make my computer tell me it loves me: I can get it to print it on the screen, I can record an audio file saying “I love you!” but that isn’t Love! The computer is just doing what it was told to do. Similarly, love, by definition, has to be freely chosen otherwise it isn’t love, it is just doing what it was told to do. Love requires the possibility that it might be withheld – that the person reaching out (in this case God) might be rejected. Love cannot be coerced – you cannot force someone to love you, to truly love you, not even God can do it – because then it isn’t love. And God being hidden from us is part of that – if God were to reveal himself fully to us he would be irresistible to us – and we wouldn’t be able to freely choose him, and our love for him would be insincere. So God, in wanting a bride that he could love and would genuinely love him back, gave us free will to choose to live as we wanted so that we could choose to reject him or love him and our decision would be genuine, our love would be genuine. And that is why free will is so important, and that is why we see so much evil & suffering in the world, because people can choose to do good and they can choose to do evil and most of us seem to do both!
Seeking a hidden God is fraught with all kinds of difficulties and frustrations. Yet in John 20 Jesus said “blessed are you who have NOT seen yet have believed” – Jesus says there are people who haven’t seen God yet they repent & believe, maybe your relationship with God feels a lot like that. I was talking with someone last week who believes in God, loves God, was asking “why doesn’t God just zap me, or something”, just wants to see more of God in his life. Well Jesus is promising to honour/bless you for hanging in there when you don’t hear anything and you can’t see God, but you keep on believing and living as a follower of Christ.
God has withheld himself and is slowly revealing himself (not just to humanity as a whole, but to you individually too) like the delicious unwrapping of the present you’ve always wanted. As history unfolded we started out thinking God was a system or a force, then we thought there were many gods and they didn’t care for us much (as some of the early creation stories show). Then Genesis comes along and reveals an ethical monotheist – a good God who loves his creation – and ultimately, and briefly in the New Testament, is revealed in Jesus who starts building the church and sends the Holy Spirit to further reveal God. So God is slowly revealing himself to humanity like the unwrapping of the most desired present to those who will humbly repent and continually seek him, and as we pursue him we see a little bit more of him, and it is slow/frustrating but we keep on seeking, and so we see a little more of him because we don’t give up, and we receive more from him, and eventually, (if through “hope deferred the heart” has not “grown sick”), eventually the draw of sin & selfishness fades into 2D black and white next to our 3D technicolour God, eventually we get the present, we see God clearly, and we get God and he gets us! So keep on keeping on seeking God – God will not withhold himself forever, but rather he promises to be found and to fulfil your longing… eventually!
We only get to live on earth, with a hidden God once – once ever in eternity – and this is it, and we’re years into it already, who knows how long we have left. It’s only now while we’re here do we get to show God our love for him without him responding immediately in a visible and clear way. We must see that this period before we see God clearly (1 Cor 13) is intended as a blessing to us, that we can genuinely give to God while we’re here and cannot see Him in a way that profoundly blesses Him and in a way that we just can’t do in heaven because then we’ll know him fully and see Him clearly. It will be so much easier to do the right thing in heaven, to be holy and righteous, and to serve God, because he’ll be right there, we’ll be living in community with him, and it won’t really be worthy of reward then, but if you do it now before he is visible, when it is difficult, through the suffering, the sin, the evil and the tragedy, if you can bless God while he withholds himself, while we are the bride-to-be of Christ, if you prepare yourself to be a worthy bride for Christ, if you cling to him through the tough times, then you’re giving to God in a way that in future you’ll never be able to give to him, you’re blessing God in a way in the midst of difficult life on earth that you’ll never really be able to do again – how much more does it mean when you cannot see God?
Jesus said “blessed are you who have NOT seen, yet have believed”. Doing life with a hidden God is a blessing.
- May you come to see God’s desire to save the whole world … and may you weep at what God desires to save people from;
- May you be in awe of the God who so often brings things together just at the right time … who didn’t need to control or foreknow the future in order to bring it about;
- May you understand this time when God is hidden to be a profound opportunity to bless God in a way that means so much to him and will never be repeated.
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>There is no expectation for God to know something that cannot be known. Therefore one can maintain an Open View of the Future and still confidently proclaim that God knows everything.
Sorry, I dropped out at this point. This isn’t the “make a rock so heavy” argument. He’s eternal, outside time: He either knows, or He doesn’t. (He knows.) I’ll have to stick with the unsatisfying, “Can’t say why.”
The point is that Time does not exist to be known. Can God know something that does not exist? There are no aliens on Mars. So does God know what colour the aliens on mars are? It is a nonsense question, and so is the question about whether God knows time.
Your answer is that God is outside of time, my answer is that we then exist outside of time too, since time does not exist.
If God knows the future perfectly as you propose then God must know his own future too. Imprisoned by the knowledge of what he is going to do and never free to vary from it. Finally, what you propose is also against much scripture – God often tested people “to find out” what they would do – it was for his benefit, not ours. At some point you’ll need to introduce your greek-influenced concept of God to the Hebrew God.
I’m happy that you are satisfied with an unsatisfactory argument – that is your prerogative. Personally I am seeking internal consistency: faith with understanding.