Open Theism and Theological Fatalism

So it's rainy Memorial Day here in western Nebraska. I wanted to paint my house today, but so much for that. I'm already done with the scraping! However, instead of painting, I guess that I'm going to blog some more about William Craig's book The Only Wise God. In this book, Craig addresses the doctrine of God's foreknowledge. Lately this doctrine has fallen upon hard times from skeptics and even some "evangelicals" like Gregory Boyd.

I was eighteen when I first heard about open theism when reading Boyd's book Letters from a Skeptic. This was my first experience with someone that denied God's knowledge of the future. Of course, the Bible makes it very clear that God indeed does know the future. The whole concept of prophecy makes absolutely no sense if God is ignorant of future events. As the early church father Tertullian writes, "God's foreknowledge has as many witnesses as He has prophets."

Open theism is basically an overreaction to theological fatalism. Theological fatalism hold that since God knows the future, humans are not free agents. If God knows what will happen, then it must happen as such and it couldn't have happened any other way. This, of course, does severe damage to human freedom and responsibility.

In order to understand Craig's argument, we must remember that Craig is dealing with theological fatalism. This should be distinguished from determinism. Craig explains the difference by saying,

"Now fatalism should not be confused with determinism, the view that all our choices and actions are determined by prior causes. Given a series of causes up to some point, the effect at that point is completely predetermined. There is at that point no freedom to act in another way, for, given the prior series of causes, one's choice is causally necessary; that is to say, the causes determine one's choice. By contrast, fatalism does not necessarily hold that everything is causally determined....Fatalism does not appeal to causal factors to deny human freedom; rather it holds that from the very fact that we shall do some action, we must do that action" (14).

Now Craig also rejects determinism, but for different reasons. The open theist's problem is that he buys into the validity of the theological fatalist's argument. And thus, he rejects the Biblical doctrine of God's foreknowledge. Instead Craig offers a different approach. He challenges us to reexamine the fatalist's argument. There are logical weaknesses here that we need to point out.

The problem is that fatalist confuses certainty with necessity. Just because something is certainly true does not make it necessarily true. Let me illustrate what I mean. It is certain that President Clinton became in 1992; however this was not a necessity. It is possible that George Bush could have been reelected. In contrast, something is necessarily true if it is based on it's own definition. For instance, 2+2 is necessarily 4 in every possible world. All dogs are canines. This is necessarily true in every possible world.

The fatalist's argument is as follows:

Necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will happen.
God foreknows x.
Therefore, x will necessarily happen.

However, it doesn't follow that x must necessarily happen. All we can conclude is that x is certain to happen. The argument should be written.

Necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will happen.
God foreknows x.
Therefore, x will happen.

X is certain to happen, but it's not necessary that x must happen.

Well, I better get going. I'll post some more about it soon.