#54 UNDERSTANDING FREE WILL AND FOREKNOWLEDGE + Dr. Paul Eddy

I thought I was in control, and then I lost it. You're taking us to the heart of a lot of theology.

This is like so beyond the Sunday school mentality. Why does evil happen? Like, what is the cause of suffering?

God could see the future, but he could also manipulate it. What you just said, that's terrifying.

I now realize that wouldn't work, right? I don't think love is possible without free will.

Wow, I love this discussion. Of course, I'm tempted to say, just trust me.

Where do we go from here? Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the

Bible in simple terms, with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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Bible make sense, so we can get to know God, our creator, better. Hello, hello.

This is Biblically Speaking, and I'm your host, Cassian Bellino. I'm so excited to have a discussion today with a new guest,

Paul Eddy. Welcome to the show. I'm really excited to have you on because you are friends, colleagues, longtime brothers in Christ of my guests from last week.

And today we're gonna discuss same, same, but different. Open theism, but with a little bit of a different tint because you hold a different perspective on it.

So just introing the topic today, I mean, God's knowledge of the future, free will, the reason for suffering and cause, how much does

God know? How much are we in control of? I've definitely been thinking a lot about this just recently and personally, because I thought

I was good. I thought I was in control. I had a job. It was high paying. It was my dream job.

And then I lost it. And that ended up being a blessing because now

I'm podcasting full time. But looking back on it, was it all part of God's plan to bring me into my dream job just for me to lose it?

Or was this a culmination of events that could have transpired a million ways? I am so excited that you're here,

Paul. Welcome to the show. How are you feeling? Thank you. I'm feeling great.

And boy, just some fluff questions you're posing here today. You're taking us to the heart, the heart of a lot of theology.

So I'm excited to be part of the conversation. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I'm kind of scared. Cause this is like so beyond the

Sunday school mentality. Like, why does evil happen? Like, what is the cause of suffering? Like, yeah, let's start at the easy stuff.

But before we get into it, you are more than qualified to discuss these topics. I mean, you are Bethel through and through.

You've been teaching there since 1997. You got your bachelor's in biblical and theology studies from Bethel. You got your master's in theological studies from Bethel, your

PhD in religious studies from Marquette. And from there, you would say your areas of expertise are gonna be our discussion topic today, the life of Jesus, the theology of religions, and the theology of human sexuality, which is a topic we should probably revisit in the future.

But yeah, how'd you even get into this? This is like a very niche topic. Open theism, yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, I have sort of a strange backstory to this. So I would date the kind of the explosion of the open theism controversy to probably 1994, when the book,

The Openness of God was published, right? And in every single year that the

Evangelical Theological Society met, which is the big conference that many evangelical professors go to in third week in November every year, some city in America, from 94 until 2003, almost a decade, this was the hot topic.

And each year, the tension rose until the big vote in 2003 of whether the open theist could stay in or not.

Well, before that controversy started about five, six years earlier, completely unrelated to open theism,

I happened to meet Greg Boyd. He was a guest speaker in one of my seminary classes.

And he and I somehow ended up out in the parking lot after class, strangely arguing for about an hour, but it had nothing to do with open theism.

That one had to do with Calvinism and Arminianism. Might come back to that. Then two years later,

I meet John Sanders at a ETS conference before this whole thing. And John turned out to be very central to the open theism conference because he was, of course, one of the five authors in the big book,

Openness of God. Through John, I met Clark Pinnock. He always roomed with Clark at the conferences.

I roomed with Greg. So the four of us hung out a lot. And what that did is it put me in the eye of the storm with these three gentlemen who were arguably three of the six big name open theists in the controversy.

The thing was, from day one, I disagreed with them. So I was, you know, saying, some of my best friends are open theists.

I just think they're mistaken on this particular topic. But the irony was, is that up to this day, most conversations

I have about open theism are not making a case against it, even though I have a case and don't agree with it.

Strangely, most of my conversations have been defending it. And I don't mean defending it as correct.

I simply mean defending it as not heretical, not heresy. And so that's my backstory to making sense of my experience with open theism.

It's interesting that you disagree with it and yet you defend it as non -heretical. That's really, we should explore that a bit more.

Okay, but for those that are like, like, what is open theism to you? Okay, so let me just say that I'm biased because Greg is one of my very best friends.

And, but I think I can make the case independently from our relationship that I think Greg's version of open theism, because just like any theological idea that begins to be developed and argued and counter -argued and responded to, different sub -versions of whatever perspective, you know, it could be anything, start to develop.

And so within the kind of the community of open theists, little nuances begin to diverge.

I think Greg's version is the most defensible version. If I was going to be an open theist,

I would have to go with Greg's version. Here's why. Greg is very, very clear.

I've heard him say this. He said once, a number of times, if I have to give up omniscience to be an open theist,

I'll give up open theism. In other words, he very strongly defends omniscience.

Others do, but I've never seen this argument as strong as Greg's.

So I'll articulate Greg's version because I think it's the strongest version.

And that version simply says that when we say open theism or the openness of God, we're not, we don't really mean the openness of God when it comes to foreknowledge.

What we mean is the openness of the future. In other words, God created a future that has open possibilities, not everything settled ahead of time in terms of God's knowledge.

And that I think is a, that's why I argue it's not heresy because it strongly argues for omniscience, which

I think is the important dogma that's connected to this particular topic. I do know some open theists who, at least as I hear them, kind of flirt with denying omniscience.

That makes me nervous. But Greg has always strongly argued that. And so that's my brief definition, that the future is composed of two things.

Actual things, those are things God already knows because he's decided them.

He's our, God can decide whatever he wants, but he does leave some things open to free choice.

And those therefore are possible things. And God perfectly knows all the possible things we might choose, but he doesn't know what we will choose until we actually choose it.

And that's Greg's view. And I think that's a fair definition. And the place that people bring heresy in is when they say

God doesn't know what you're gonna choose? Well, yes. And when they hear the words

God doesn't know, they assume that what's happening here is the doctrine of omniscience,

God is all knowing, is being violated. But Greg's is a very nuanced position.

Now, some very smart scholars totally understand Greg's view and they still think he's really wrong.

I just, my own perspective is, as someone who thinks he's wrong, I don't think it's heresy.

And I guess we gotta define heresy there. I define heresy as a violation of one of the dogmas of the faith.

And for me, a dogma is different from a doctrine. I think a dogma,

I'll use kind of a, C .S. Lewis's mirror Christianity. The dumber, the better, honestly,

Paul. Just really break it down. The dogmas, I would say, are the basics, the pillars of the faith.

Well, again, what C .S. Lewis called mirror Christianity, and the reason everyone loves that book, no matter what denomination they're from, is because he didn't get into the doctrinal debates among denominations, he stuck with the basics.

So that's what I mean by dogma. And I think omniscience is a basic, but I don't think the nature of the future is a basic.

That's never been something settled by a creed or a council, and so it's open to interpretation.

Whoa, yeah, I love that separation. It almost explains why there's been so many denominations, was just because -

Absolutely, absolutely. Way to break it down, Paul, thank you. Okay, so I think that breaks down clearly.

And I also agree with what Greg said last week, and if you haven't heard that episode, this episode will make way more sense.

I have not. Oh my gosh, it's good, it's good. But I think he also does a really great job of just kind of saying like, hey, humans, talking to us

Christians, we don't really have that much control. So this element of free will that we have is actually way more limited than we think, because I can only really control what

I can do. And so this element of free will that God and I interact over, that he's like, all right,

Cass, you got 50 million options, what are you gonna do next? That has so minute compared to the billions or trillions of options of life that God is in control of.

Just the circumstances that we live in that we don't control, God controls. And just our choices in it, they add up and they impact, but they're so much smaller than we think that we have control over it.

So it's like, God still has that omnipotence. He still has that control over us, despite this tiny sliver of free will that we exhibit.

Okay, so you've introduced an important idea, free will.

However, and this is where Greg and I, it's not the heart of our differences, we can get to that later, but this is a little point at which

Greg and I have a little friction sometimes. I do not think that the question of free will has much, let me say this carefully.

I'll put it this way. Greg and I disagree on the foreknowledge question, but we absolutely agree on the free will question.

And so I would be categorized by most people as an Arminian, as Greg would, when it comes to free will.

So neither of us are Calvinists, but we differ on how we then explain how

God's foreknowledge works with our free will. So we both defend free will very, very strongly.

Okay, let's use an example to kind of put these beliefs into place. So in the element of,

I have free will in what college I go to or who I marry. Let's go with the marriage aspect because my husband's out there, we're looking for him.

So we, let's say I have a boyfriend or I don't, I don't know, like I have the choice to get married.

Is your belief that God knows who I'm gonna marry right now? And then Greg says, he,

God's kind of waiting on me for who I'm gonna choose? Boy, it gets dicey here to explain my view, my view.

So the way my view has evolved is that because of my open theist friends that I've been very close with, they have challenged me on the view

I used to hold and what I found was that I had not accounted for all of the biblical data that they offered as defense of their view.

Now their biblical data didn't cause me to adopt open theism, but what it did do is it made me reassess my older view, my older Arminian view and forced it to evolve in ways.

And I think that's one of the beautiful things about humble dialogue around our debates as opposed to hunkering down and polarization and just arguing with each other is

Greg and I have dialogued for years and I think we've rubbed off on each other in ways that have been really good, even though we still disagree.

So I think the way I'd put it about your husband, yes, you got Greg's view right, is that Greg believes

God certainly knows all the possible husbands you could marry, but until you decide and that person decides to say

I do, God doesn't know which particular possibility or therefore person you would marry.

I hold to a view of foreknowledge that is just as Arminian as Greg's because we both believe in libertarian free will, but my view is called simple foreknowledge.

And what that means is I believe that God is able to, in a sense, we're using analogies here, right?

But in a sense, see your future, see who you will choose, not who

God ordains, but who you will choose. And because God in a sense sees that prior to, he therefore knows prior to who you will choose, but it's not his knowledge that forces you to choose in the future, it's your future choice that gives

God that knowledge. And that's why it's Arminian and not Calvinist. Oh, okay.

And so the Calvinism of it all is that God is deciding. Yes. So if we had a third person, here's

Greg, here's me, and here's a Calvinist, the Calvinist would say, no, you're both wrong because the reason

God knows isn't because you chose, the reason you choose is because God ordained who you will choose.

Oh my gosh. How do you personally feel about like religious debates that come up within the last 30 years and being brand new?

Like, how do you, as a theologian, like approach these conversations that are brand new in the faith? And it's like, here's a brand new idea, you know?

Like, how do you not say like, that's kind of man -made? Well, so most of my life theologically is spent teaching undergrads at a

Christian university, but a number of those undergrads are relatively new in their faith. Many of them have been raised in the

Christian faith, but a lot of my students have come to the Lord in the last year or two, and they're kind of just coming into their first theology class.

So I do have that experience. And I have found that the, at least I believe, that the most helpful way to teach these sorts of things is to lay out the dominant views, plural, that have characterized these discussions and debates through Christian history and argue each one from a first -person perspective as if I held it.

And I tell my students, look, I have a perspective, a strong perspective on some of these things, but I'm not gonna share that with you in class unless you ask me.

I'm going to share each view as if I held it so you get the best version of each view so that you wrestle with scripture, so that you explore your church tradition and how that might be influencing things, so that you ask questions that sort of come out of your rational mind about these things, basically so that I don't indoctrinate you into what my view is, but I help you learn the perspectives, and with the guidance of scripture and the spirit of God, you wrestle with these questions.

So that's, I think, personally, I think that's the vocation of a

Christian theologian. Got it. Do you feel like it dilutes or subjugates our faith to doubt when you have new ideas that weren't there at the beginning, just like in a general sense?

Do you, how do you kind of hold that in one hand of like, this is everlasting truth, it's always true, it always will be, but we got this new idea in the 90s, how should we as Christians kind of approach this?

Okay, good. So you're particularly referring to open theism, sort of like, right? Kind of like any idea, like let's say in the next 10 years another religious idea comes up, how should we as Christians be like, it's still the living word.

Sure. Let me say two things in response to that. One is, I strongly separate the categories of faith and doubt.

I do not think they're the same thing. In fact, I think oftentimes that doubt can strengthen faith.

Yeah. And so the way I describe it in simple undergraduate terms is, doubt's a matter of the head.

What's my thinking doing? Faith is a matter of the heart. Who am I trusting? And here's the thing.

We can have lots of questions, lots of, I don't know, everything from internal controversy to questions

I have no answers to, to even, I don't know, hearing some atheist argument against God's existence and go, oh my goodness,

I don't know how to answer that. Lots of doubts. But I don't think any of that has to, has to, it can, but it doesn't have to affect our childlike trust in God and his good character.

And so that's why I separate those two.

And I, personally in my own life, I find that when I have a doubt, that usually leads me to conversations with other

Christians, going back to scripture, and these are all things that strengthen faith. And so I see them as really working together.

So I don't have much concern if some new idea pops up and someone says, well, what about this?

And someone goes, we've never heard that in 1900 years. I don't want to say, well, first off, have we?

Because oftentimes we have, we've just forgotten, oh wait, that was an idea discussed in the fourth century, but you just didn't know that, right?

A lot of things happened in the early church. So many different ideas, we don't talk much about more today.

And the other thing, yeah, and let's say it's really new. We can go back to scripture and we can test it.

So yeah, I don't have any concerns about that. I love that. I love the perspective of like versus something new and making us question the founding beliefs versus it being like the fruit of leaning into doubt and building your faith in God.

Yes, yes. Okay, I just like, it was a thought that I wanted to address, so that was a little off topic, but back to open theism.

Yeah, yeah. So understanding there are meaning views that God knows what you're going to choose, but you're not choosing it because of God.

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Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now, back to the show. Yes, exactly.

That is the Arminian view. And yet, when you say, okay, so how does that work then for foreign knowledge?

There's actually three different Arminian options there. There's Greg's Open Theism, there's my view,

Simple Foreign Knowledge, and then there's another third view called Molinism, or it's sometimes called Middle Knowledge.

And yeah, so three very different views, all of them Arminian views because they all believe in a free will that Calvinists wouldn't agree with.

And so I'll ask because I feel like that's just like an early Christian question is, is there a wrong answer?

Can I go to hell if I choose wrong? Oh, okay, two different questions here. Is there a wrong answer?

There must be because they disagree with each other so they can't all be true. On the other hand, which is the right answer, honestly, for being humble, only

God knows. And that's his business. Now, can you go to hell for that?

My perspective is, no, you cannot. But this, okay, so one

I would say, no one should even think that because I don't, at least I would make the case, none of these violate dogmas, right, not heresy.

And if we're not talking about heresy, I don't think we should even raise the question of, is someone's salvation at stake here?

If it's an opinion level debate or a doctrinal level debate, which isn't dogma,

I think these are the areas where most Christian differences happen and they shouldn't be something that decides salvation.

I don't see that at all, a teaching in scripture. There just are differences that we come to theologically.

I love the way you put that. And I agreed with you, I agree with you. I think I just need to ask so you could say it.

Yeah, yeah, I said it. I love that, okay, because I think as early

Christians, you just want to get it right. And that's why we have so many questions is because we just want to know exactly how to do it and then see if we're willing.

But I love this concept of, your salvation isn't at stake if you're questioning. And you're right, it's not blasphemous or heretical to even discuss these.

Kind of like what you just said, it's more actually more fruitful for actually for us to hold these differences and explore them. So that's amazing.

Getting into, okay, now that we're going forward with the Armenian view that you hold of God knows what you're going to choose, but you didn't choose it because of God.

And God does know the future. And would you say with the Armenian view, the future has many options kind of like what

Greg had or God knows what you're going to choose because there was only one option. Well, I think there's many.

So here's where Greg and I agree about the future. Is the future has possibilities.

I agree with that. If what Greg means is possibilities for us to choose. See, that's the free will part.

But then Greg takes another step and says, and God can't know those possibilities until the present comes.

That's where we disagree. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I'll cut to the chase of what, because Greg and I have literally argued about this for 35 years.

And I think the fundamental difference between Greg and I, and we've come down to this time after time, is

Greg and I simply disagree on what God's relationship is to time.

I think that's the big issue. So Greg holds what's called an everlasting view of God's relationship in time.

I hold what is generally called a timeless view of God's relationship with time.

So - I thought that's the same thing. No, so they're used very technically in certain theological circles.

Let me define them. This is, yes, for cookies on the lowest shelf, right? So you can think of it this way.

Greg's view believes that when God created the space time universe, time,

God, in a sense, merged with our timeframe.

So God is literally, you could say, in time with us, kind of moving through our past, present, future.

I don't think that. I think when God created the space time universe, precisely because God existed prior to the space time universe,

I don't think he merged with the space time universe. I think he's, in some sense, above our time, outside of our time.

That's not even something I've thought about. Many don't. And that's, it's funny, when

I teach this open theism thing in my undergraduate classes, and I say, hey, your decision on God and time is going to influence this, and they're all like hopped up about, oh no, open theism, that's a big deal.

I say, how many of you think it's a big deal which view of God and time you hold? Most of them say, what are you talking about, even though there's a debate?

It's like, you gotta know about that because that deeply impacts how you're gonna move.

The view you hold on God and time limits your options for what you can do with foreknowledge.

Yeah. Because if he exists outside of time, it's bigger. Whereas if he exists within your timeline, it's smaller.

Well, or you could put it this way. Greg would say, because God's in time with us, he can't see our future in definite terms.

He can only see the possibilities. Because I believe God is above our timeframe, I think he can see our future, not because he ordained it, he's simply literally perceiving it.

Here's the way I try to explain it in my classes. Imagine, and this is a loose analogy, but we'll start here.

Imagine if you're on a top of a very high mountain, and your friend is down at the bottom of the mountain, and there's a road that goes around the mountain.

Your friend, if you're on a walkie -talkie, can only see a car coming down that road within a matter of 100 yards or so.

You could see it, theoretically, from a mile away, all because of your spatial relativity to the event happening.

Well, that's a spatial dimension. Flip that into time now. I think because of God's vaster timeframe, he can, when

I say God sees you choosing your husband in the future, what I'm really saying is,

God is currently seeing you choose your husband in the future.

It's a thick present for God, I believe, that our human history is like a full, thick present moment for God.

He sees it all, all at the same time. And that's how he doesn't, he doesn't ordain it, he simply observes it in that sense.

Because if we're on that road analogy is, let's say there's a rockfall around the corner.

Yes, yes. You would see that rockfall. If you were in that position of that spatial time, he sees it in the future.

He knows when you turn that corner, you're gonna see that rockfall. Yes. In Greg's headset, before you turn that corner, you don't know about that rockfall.

Okay, so big question then. Yeah. Your take on open theism almost agrees with, evil and suffering of God would see that evil around the corner.

Like I marry my husband, God knows that in 10 years, he'll cheat on me and leave me. How do you grapple with your faith or justify it with that belief?

Yeah, before we move there, let me say one more thing about Greg and my differences. It made it sound like our main difference is only this theological time thing.

I'll say that the other main reason I haven't moved to open theism, is there's a number of scripture passages that I simply can't square with open theism.

I've told Greg, I don't think he does a very good job with them either. He thinks he does. And that's great.

Now, of course, he's gonna say, Paul, there's some scripture passages you don't do real great with. And we struggle.

But I think the passages that bother me about open theism are any predictive future prophecies that involve free human choices.

That's the tough one for open theists. Because they say that God doesn't know our free future choices definitely.

And I think this example, the prophecy of Josiah, in the Old Testament, the prophecy of Cyrus, both of these people, generations in the future who

God says are gonna be good people. How would you know that before they're born? There's also scriptural arguments that I think come into play here.

But to move to your very important question of evil now. This generally is where Arminians are all going to agree over and against Calvinists that any evil is not ordained by God, but rather is a product of free, well, either human free wills or Greg and I both believe we have to also consider angelic free wills.

Meaning Satan and the demonic. And so spiritual warfare, I think becomes very important here as well.

But now you're asking the question, the difference between Greg and I on how we deal with problem of evil.

Greg could say, well, God didn't know your husband would cheat on you unless that day comes where he cheats on you.

But I would say God in a sense saw that happening before, right? But here's the difference.

And this is where I had to adjust my view from the past. I used to think before this whole open theism challenged me that when

I said God could see the future that he could also manipulate it based on what he saw.

And I think a lot of people think that about God seeing the future. I now realize that wouldn't work.

I don't think it would work. That's why my thick present where God just sees everything happening at once in his timeframe.

That means he sees in a sense, you getting married and your husband cheating all at once.

So he couldn't have warned you about the cheating because it's all downloaded to God as a thick present moment.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, I definitely thought it was your former statement of like God sees this timeline and he picks and chooses and moves the chess pieces.

And that's like what full control and omnipotence means to me. So this is,

I mean, what you just said, like in that framework, that's terrifying. And I still think a lot of people, probably most people do think,

Armenians even, that if God can see the future, he can like warn you and do all. I have thought through it a lot.

I've read some stuff and I just don't think that works logically. So that's kind of a unique, not totally unique, but a distinctive of my particular view.

Interesting. So I feel like I interact with God quite a lot and I'm so grateful for it, but it feels very organic.

It feels very natural in the sense of like, God knows what my husband looks like right now.

Like he's seen kind of like my life and he knows what I'm gonna choose, but I'm not choosing it because of him. Yes.

It feels like, where does, you know, these organic moments, like God knows that I'll reach out to him tomorrow about X, Y, Z.

Okay, yeah, because it's, I'm just experiencing it in real time. So it's like, for the big things, God knows what's gonna happen, you know, like my marriage and my kids and like whatever happens.

But tomorrow, who knows, something might happen and I might need help immediately on this one. But like for you, even those little moments,

God is anticipating because he knows I'm gonna ask for them. I'm just trying to think like, is there any -

No, it's a very good question. Wiggle room. It's a very good question. You know, like organic development. And it's a question that if you understand my view is a precisely good question to ask me.

It's a potential pushback. And the way I think about it is this, that if God sort of sees it all at once, so to speak, part of what he sees in that all at once sort of timeless experience is he also sees every moment that we are at in our present moment.

And because he sees that and knows that, it's sort of, if this is the big picture, he takes that and funnels down to our present moment, which is a nanosecond thick.

And he therefore interacts intimately, converses with, interfaces with our lives actively.

It's just that he has to do it in our thin present moment, even though he has access to the thick present knowledge base.

And so the thick present doesn't prevent him from in time intimacy with us.

And I think that's a very important, that's why I call mine a relative timeless view. The classical timeless view of the ancient church,

I don't think to the degree I think is important to have this piece where the timelessness often made

God seem sort of frozen outside of time. I don't think he's frozen outside. I think he enters into, he's just not limited to.

And that's a relative dimensional balance. I think that at least that's how I think of it in my view.

Okay, that is actually a little interesting to explore like what the old traditional views are. And maybe this is like where we kind of talk about Calvinism of just like this older view is more, it feels detached.

Would that be the right word here of like, God feels detached. Detached. Like, we have a life and God has, he put the stamp on.

He's like, all right, that's Cassie's life next. And the view that you're holding is like, even within like the vastness of my entire life in those minuscule nano moments that I need him in the next second, he's still able to hold the larger life and the minuscule moments together.

And it interacts with both. Am I following your logic here? Yeah, you got mine. And now you've asked kind of the contrast with Calvinism.

The contrast with like the traditional church that you were just discussing. Oh, well, that particular view that is held by a guy named

Boethius back in the early church. And Boethius actually held a free will, but he did this sort of timeless thing.

That's kind of absolute timeless, not relative timeless. So you get all these really interesting combinations, free will, but absolute timelessness.

It's fascinating how human minds have tried to theologize God. Yeah. I think we have to say so humble because of all these ways that people have tried this.

Well, I love this discussion because I feel like, we hear these things in church of like, oh, God's so big and he's like omnipotent.

And when you break it down to like, he's able to hold the vastness of my entire life, both like largely in full scope and then also minuscule in a moment to moment basis.

Like that is unfathomable to the human mind. But when you spell it out like that, it really does show the vastness and beyond.

Yes. I wanna take a minute and say thank you to the recording service that has made this podcast possible,

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Okay, so I think like the next big topic here would be like predestination.

And I feel like that is the crux between Arminianism and Calvinism, would you say? That is certainly one of them.

I would say broadly speaking, kind of the two real touch points are one, provenance.

How does God guide history in the world and how does his sovereignty work?

And then secondly, what you're bringing up, namely salvation and how does things like election and predestination, how do those fit into the salvation dynamic?

So I think those are the two main points at which Calvinists and Arminians disagree. And if I'm gonna guess, which

I might as well, you would say that Calvin, like the Calvinistic view holds that God chooses who's gonna be saved and who isn't.

Versus Arminian, he knows who's gonna choose him. So it's interesting, once again, in both foreknowledge and now in the salvation debate, if you're a

Calvinist, you really only have one option, how to do foreknowledge and how to do salvation.

That's kind of the Calvinist view of foreknowledge, Calvinist view of salvation. If you're an Arminian, as we talked about before, you have three options you have to choose from on foreknowledge.

You have two options that you can choose from on election or predestination. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, and so I'll just quickly mention the two options for the election and predestination.

One of them, the difference is, if you're an Arminian, you have to decide.

When we talk about someone or God predestining or God ordaining or God electing, the question becomes, is he electing individuals or is he electing a community?

Now, some Arminians say, well, the text kind of sounds like he's particular people.

Okay, well, if you go with that route, then you're gonna have to say that the way God elects is he foreknows, because he's kind of a kind of my view thing.

He sees in the future, doesn't make them do it, but he sees. And then he says, oh, since I saw that you freely chose in the future,

I'm gonna elect you now back here because I have that big perspective. Got it. Greg and Open Theist can't go that route, right?

Because they don't believe God can see free future decisions. So they have to take the second option for Arminians, which is

God doesn't predestine individuals to salvation. He predestines communities.

And so for example, what Greg would say is, yes, God elects, ordains and predestines, but what he did is he predestines the church, not any particular individuals to be in the church.

And that way he can hold all the election predestination passages very strongly.

He just says, it's not about individuals, it's a group.

And then people are free to go in or out of that group, but the group is predestined. There will be a church.

There'll be a bride of Christ. So those are the two basic Arminian views. Whoa. Okay. Just with the

Calvinist view of him choosing, I just feel like it leaves, and this is something Greg and I discussed, of like, it leaves a lot of hate for God because what if my son, my future daughter, what if they don't get chosen by God?

I'd be pretty mad as a Christian. Yeah, so I am not a

Calvinist, but I have a lot of good Calvinist friends. And whenever I get, I told you, whenever I get asked a question about Calvinism, I feel that I am out of love for my

Calvinist sisters and brothers and the unity of the church. I must make the strongest argument possible in response to that.

So I'm putting my Calvinist hat on. What would I say to that? I don't think they would say that it magnifies

God's hate. Rather, I think what they would say is that, in fact,

J .I. Packer, very well -known Calvinist. I think he's passed away now.

If not, he's very near 100. Well -known Calvinist. He put it this way.

God loves all people in some ways and some people in all ways.

And what he meant by that is God loves everybody. The fact is he gave them life, he gives them breath, gives them food, et cetera, et cetera, everybody.

But there's this certain group of people called the elect that he loves in all ways.

And that means this group gets all that, plus they get salvation in heaven.

And so they don't wanna talk about, generally speaking, that God hates those people.

What God hates is their sin. And if they're not elect, they will bear the burden and the penalty of their sin.

And since they didn't choose Jesus, they will then suffer eternally. And I'm an

Arminian, though, so I gotta say, at this point, I do not feel, I'm not persuaded by that.

It's really hard for me to say, yeah, it's a tough one for me.

I get it, I know what they're saying, but I do feel that the clarity of God's agape love in the

New Testament, I cannot square with God choosing not to save most people because he doesn't want to save them.

I just, that's why I'm not a Calvinist. I can't buy that. Yeah, no,

I love, and again, I'm not trying to divide here. I'm really just seeking to understand how people can hold those views and how they justify them as believers.

Yeah, well, let me give you then. So John Augustine, who

I would argue is the first sort of Calvinist, but you could really call this Augustinianism because he did it 1 ,000 years before Calvin.

Calvin said, I'm just saying what Augustine said. So whether it's Augustine or John Calvin 1 ,000 years later, when asked the question for both of them, when they were asked the question, well, why, why does

God not choose everybody? They both essentially said, that is a question beyond our pay grade.

That's God's business. Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the

Lord. The things revealed belong to us. We don't know. And then a couple hundred years after Calvin, Jonathan Edwards comes along and he's a strong Calvinist.

And he says, come on guys, we can't cop out at the very most important question.

Why did God do this? So finally, a Calvinist came up with an answer. And most

Calvinist today are what I would call Edwardsian Calvinist. They go with Jonathan Edwards answer, and it's basically this.

And he thinks the answer is in Romans 9, verses 20 to 23. And the way he interprets that is this, that God to glorify himself, meaning to put on display all of his beautiful, powerful attributes.

God had to have two groups of people, one group that's saved and one group that's not saved because the people that are saved, it's through them that we will see the attributes of love and mercy and compassion and willingness to die for all those things.

But those aren't all God's attributes. God also has attributes of power and judgment and wrath.

So he needs another group of people, the non -elect to show those attributes.

And when he has both sets of people, all of God's attributes is seen throughout eternity and that glorifies all of God.

That's Edwards answer. Wow. Yeah. Okay, I really love the way you phrase it with the

Deuteronomy 29, because to me that directly plays into Job and how the book of Job should be approached.

And I spoke with Dr. John Moulton about that. And I was like, well, you know, why does, you know, God even let all these things happen?

And, you know, all these things, whatever. And, you know, God kind of responds at the end, like, well, were you there when

I marked off the dimensions of the earth, when I laid the foundation of the soil, you know, how dew works. And I love that chapter, but it kind of makes it like, it puts us

Christians back in our seat of like, okay, well, just some things you don't get to know about God, but my whole platform is

I wanna know, you know? Like, what do you mean? And that's the tough balance in theology, right?

So you're saying - I always, oh, go ahead. Does this Edwardian, Edward Norton?

Edwardian, yeah. Edwardian. Does that perspective apply to Job then? Of like, you need the good and the bad to -

Yeah, I think it would. I think Edwards could extrapolate it to basically say this, that like Edwards' main thing is how to explain elect and non -elect people.

But you can kind of open that up and say, well, then why does anything bad at all happen?

And I think he would definitely say for the glory of God, that every single thing, whether good or bad,

God will use in the end to bring glory to himself.

Augustine, and in a sense, the intuition goes back to Augustine. When Augustine said something to this,

I'm just paraphrasing, but the basic gist is, God is like painting a tapestry with history, with cosmic history, a beautiful tapestry.

And in that tapestry, there are both light colors and dark colors and hues, and you need that for a beautiful tapestry.

Problem with us is, when something bad happens in our life, and let's say bad correlates to dark colors, you get so close, because he correlated it this way, you get so close, because we're so finite, we're so close to our lives, that when something doesn't look beautiful, we go, oh, this is terrible,

God, why would you do this? And he says, but wait a minute, God sees it from here and how that intertwines with other events that, and once you see

God's perspective, you'd say, oh, I get it now. Even if what I get is that my life had to have pain there in order for the cosmic tapestry to be as beautiful as it is, we have to trust

God. That's the Calvinist answer on this. Is there any room for Arminian beliefs in that?

Yes, in this sense. The only adjustment I think we need to make for Arminianism here is, wait a minute, it's not

God ordaining this perfect tapestry. That would mean he makes all the decisions, and we're just, in essence, robots, at least that's my feeling.

With Arminianism, you say, and part of what God wants in the tapestry is us to co -author it with him, free will.

Now, I might make, all of us do, make really bad choices sometimes, and those become the not -so -great parts of the tapestry, but out of love for us and wanting to have free will so we can love him, right?

I don't think love is possible without free will. Because he wants love, he puts up with.

All the negative stuff. Love is not possible without free will. That's an insane sentence.

I don't think so. That would be my argument. Okay, so just staying on that, then open theism, what

Greg believes, God wouldn't know what the tapestry's gonna look like. We're building a tapestry, he just doesn't know what it's gonna look like.

So what Greg could say is, if God wants the tapestry to look a certain way, he can ordain everything he wants to about that tapestry.

But whatever he leaves up to us to do with the free will parts, that he just knows what we possibly might do.

But even there, and I think you alluded to this earlier when you said Greg said, hey, not everything's free will, right?

Like, God could really limit our free will, and he has, and I think Greg's said once to me, yeah, probably 98 % of our lives are not free will, something like that.

And so that's how God limited it, is he just, we can only do so many things. But within that limitation, yes, we can,

God doesn't know exactly what we'll do for Greg. Me, I think he does know, but it's still free will, and he still has to put up with it.

That's where Arminians say, God has to put up with some of the really bad choices we make.

Wow. I love this discussion. I can see how you're like finding -

Well, you're asking all the right questions. You just serve me up softballs here. I can see how this could like end up in pretty lengthy debates, but I feel like we just barely scratched the surface.

Like you mentioned like sovereignty and predestination, and I'm like, I haven't even wrapped my head around those individually, let alone how they can apply in these different circumstances.

So my gosh, where do we go from here? Like, what if you're listening to this right now as somebody, and you're like,

I think I'm leaning more towards Calvinism, or maybe I'm leaning on the side of what Greg is, or maybe I'm in the middle with Paul.

Is there like a denomination that supports each one? Like, how do you like, where do you go from here?

Yeah, well, of course I'm tempted to say, just trust me. Yeah, sign up for your class in the fall.

Yeah, yeah, no, but of course I'm not, I mean, to whatever degree I'm tempted to say that, I can easily fight that temptation because of my conviction that, and this is really, you know, this is my conviction for theological debates.

It is certainly my conviction for the ethical debates the church is facing today.

For example, gay marriage, or a lot of other topics we could have here. My proposal is when you see smart, godly,

Jesus -loving, Bible -believing Christians, particularly Christian leaders, Christian theologians who spent their lives doing this, disagreeing about these things, even though they trust the same

Bible, worship the same Jesus. I think that should be a red flag to say, wait a minute, I might have a personal inclination when

I hear these, like, oh, I kind of like that one. Or my church might say, well, that's the right one.

But I just strongly believe our calling is to hear out the various perspectives.

Again, Bible -believing, Jesus -centered views. I'm not saying entertain all the heresies out there.

I'm saying the ones that hold the Christian dogmas, the mere Christianity. In that diversity of perspectives,

I would encourage people to find the best books written by the top people for each of the views that have the best scriptural arguments for each view, that explain how the traditions of the various churches inform these, that talk about the strengths and weaknesses of their own views.

Those are the people you wanna find either their podcast or their article or their book.

And let yourself simply be immersed in the tension and the uncomfortableness of having to face the fact there's tough questions.

And at the end of the day, it might be the case that you end up saying, I have no idea.

Good news, we're not saved because we figure out the right theological perspective. We're saved because we trust

Jesus as our Lord like a little child on his lap. That's what's wonderful about this, is we can have space to explore and wonder, say,

I don't know, but we don't have to. Let that in any way affect our basic trust in Jesus Christ and his covenant love for us.

So I say, enjoy and explore. Oh, I love that. Okay, so again, like early

Christians, who are the top people? What are some names that you could drop that's how I could easily YouTube, Google, look at books?

Yeah, if you wanted to go back to the early church, I would say that the fourth century becomes very important for this discussion.

I would say that Augustine is far and away the guy on the sort of Augustinian Calvinist side of things.

Someone else on the, what we'd call Arminian, 1 ,000 years before Arminius, would be

John Cashion. Very close to your name. Is that my name, doctor? In fact, it is your name.

John Cashion, there you go. One of your, no doubt, one of your heroes from this day forward, Cassie. He just had the other intuition, said, no,

I think we have free will. And their writings are kind of the Calvinist -Arminian bait 1 ,000 years before Calvin and Arminius.

Jump ahead 1 ,000 years, and yeah, there's John Calvin, there's Jacob Arminius, there's also

Luther, who basically ends up with Calvin on the side of sovereignty and predestination. There's the

Anabaptists. And both Greg and I are what we would consider part of the

Anabaptist tradition. They were strongly free will with Arminius and Cashion.

Jump ahead to today. I think, I'm biased, but I think Greg does a really good job on Arminianism.

Don't agree with him on that one part. I think Roger Olson, another really important name for Arminianism.

And on the Calvinist side, I would say hard to beat John Piper. He was actually my very first Bible professor at Bethel.

And who else? Michael Horton. So there's four names, two on each side,

Boyd and Roger Olson, Piper and Michael Horton. Wonderfully, brilliant, dedicated,

Bible -anchored, deeply theological, and they just fundamentally disagree on this question.

Cool. Okay, that is a lot to work with if you wanna go a little bit deeper on this. But for you, how do we support you?

How does somebody learn more from you if they agree or disagree, or they're just intrigued by everything you said? How can we plug you?

Well, I tell you, I am, I was gonna say almost,

I'm entirely, apparently, unavailable on social media. That might have something to do with the fact that it's 2025 and I still have a flip phone.

Good for you. So that's just not my world. My world is primarily academics in terms of writing, and so journal articles, books.

But a big part of my academic life, six books, seven books, has been trying to help the church wrestle with some of the most challenging topics that were these sorts of things.

And in fact, one of my books is on this foreknowledge debate called Four Views. And so I've got a series of books out with my good friend,

Jim Bilby at Bethel. We've co -edited six books on six different topics where we bring together people who absolutely disagree.

We ask them, can you write an essay and then respond to the other people's essays in gentle and loving tone?

And if they say yes to that, we invite them to write this book together. And it's an opportunity to see, so that we did foreknowledge, spiritual warfare, atonement, justification, transgender identities, all bringing these different perspectives together just to have a loving, gracious dialogue.

And that's been a lot of my scholarly work is helping facilitate those conversations. So I encourage people to check those books out because I think it models how we can do this well as Christians.

Wow, that's exactly what we need. That's some of the feedback that I've gotten, like, oh, I can't believe you could talk about these things and disagree with such love.

And it's like, we need more of that, so. Amen, amen, Cassie. And that's all available on Amazon or with the title so I can link that below.

Absolutely, they're all like Four Views or Five Views books on any of those topics. And then Greg and I did a book called

Across the Spectrum where we pulled together 17 chapters and 15 appendices.

So 32 debates. And we write each one from a person's perspective, the various views, so that if we did it well, you have no idea which view we hold.

And we've had some reviews done that say, man, they did a pretty good job. We don't know what view they hold. I mean, they know from other writings, but not in the book.

And that helps people, too, to wrestle through the various perspectives and really listen.

Honor each one with listening and understanding before deciding what do I think of this view.

Wow, that is amazing. Yeah, Across the Spectrum. I will link that all below if anybody wants to read that. Paul, I definitely wanna have you back on the show to talk about sexual identities because I think you can offer some really amazing insights there.

But I just wanna say thank you for your time and broadening my mind beyond what I thought was possible to discuss something so complicated, even though we just scratched the surface.

So just thank you so much for your time to come on the show. Oh, thank you, Cassie. It's an honor to be joining you here.