It is clear from the Bible that God is in control of everything- Isaiah 46:10 “Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';”- and that man has responsibility for his actions- Romans 1:20-21 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” The question is how to reconcile these to truths.
To be responsible for an action it must be possible to choose the contrary. So while I can choose to kill Caleb it must also be possible, at the same time, for me to choose not to choose Caleb. If I cannot choose not to kill Caleb then I cannot be considered responsible, for I could not have done otherwise. Suppose I created a robot which was programmed to kill Caleb on sight, would the robot be responsible Caleb's death? Well obviously not; the responsibility would fall upon his creator: myself. So if man cannot choose between killing and not killing then the responsibility would fall on his creator: God. It would follow that God was responsible for sin which is so obviously unbiblical that man must have free will in the sense I described above.
The traditional theistic position is that God is omniscient, which includes exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF)- God knows everything that will happen in the future and thus must come to pass. My contention is that this notion of omniscient is contrary free will: God has always known what will be; therefore before creation God knew all the actions individuals would commit. So EDF is temporally prior to actions of individuals, therefore actions become necessary, not contingent on the individual's will, and thus are determined; since we could not do otherwise because to do so would deny EDF. For example if God knew, before creation, that you would read this article you could not have done the contrary; if you hadn't read it God would have been wrong which is contrary to his nature, so he cannot have EDF.
This argument is responded to by saying that God is timeless, outside time. In this model God sees everything in “an unbounded now”, to use CS Lewis' words, and so only knows what I will do when I actually do it and is thus not determined; he is outside time so sees time as a line and has EDF. This is known as the B theory of time. However this theory has fundamental flaws: in this model of time all time exists concurrently. So me writing this now must have existed in the time of Moses since that was the future, relative to Moses; so conversely the time of Moses still exists. So it must follow that at the time I was in lectures today I am also writing this now. Thus I am in two places experiencing contradictory stimuli at the same time; this is obviously false. To put it in starker language I can be here now and also in hell at the same time. This raises further questions which of the mes is me. They have both had different experiences but will never eventually experience the same things since that atom of time is just replayed ad infinitum; so they are different people. The only way to avoid this is to say what the Calvinistic Philosopher Theologian Jonathan Edwards said, which was God determines who you are through this repeating time system and conducts instantaneous re-creation of time for yourself to give the appearance of going through time. However to determine who we are would also determine our actions and thus contradict my first premise that to be responsible to for an action you must be able to choose the contrary.
We must conclude therefore that the A theory of time- that only the present exists- is the only tenable theory. This requires God to be atemporal before creation and temporal thereafter; yet we can still say God is ageless since there is nowhere to start or end to age an atemporal being. This a far more intuitive and logical position. It does though necessitate, if man is free, that God does not have EDF; if we are not free EDF exists. So we need to modify the the traditional concept of omniscience to that of dynamic omniscience- so in regards the future he knows only all possibilities not what path we will actually choose; this is known as Open Theism.
Does this mean that prophecy in the Bible is pure guess work? Well no. In principle God only foretells those things he can bring to pass using his omnipotence. A good analogy was developed, I believe by Greg Boyd, in which throughout our lives we are playing everyone at chess including God. Since, though, God is the Master chess player he always wins; we, and we alone, move our own pieces- likewise God moves his pieces. This retains the free will of man and the sovereignty of God.
For anyone wishing to refute my thesis they will have to do the following: Coherently reformulate my conception of responsibility. If one cannot do this they will have to argue why the A theory of time is, at least, not necessary. If one cannot do this, assuming me deductions to be correct, my conclusions must be true.
To all those who believe I am over philosophising the Bible all I am doing is what you do implicitly. When you interpret a verse in the Bible you are using a theory, however basic, to understand it irrespective if you believe you are or not. I just do this explicitly and attempt to make my theory cogent.
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