As I work through Mark 14:17-21 in preparation for this Sunday's sermon, I am wrestling with the dual reality of God's foreknowledge of Judas' betrayal and Judas' moral responsibility for his actions. There is only one solution to this dilemma: Middle Knowledge. What follows is my own attempt to think through this and disentangle my thoughts by putting them into words.
God knows the free actions that human agents will take in any given circumstance. He knows, for instance, that if Judas is placed in circumstance C, he will perform action B. He chooses which circumstances to actualize according to His own divine freedom and for His own purposes. His actualizing is not determined by our actions. By actualizing circumstance C, His foreknowledge of Judas’ action is perfect and infallible. Judas can do no other; if he were to do otherwise, God’s knowledge would be otherwise. God is sovereign over the circumstance, and uses it for His glory. But the choice remains Judas’ own free decision. Therefore, he is not absolved of moral responsibility. God chose to actualize a particular set of circumstances, and those circumstances happen to entail Judas’ betrayal. Judas is not a victim of fatalistic providence and foreordination. He is a responsible moral agent who made a free choice. God is not to be blamed for actualizing the circumstance. He is free to actualize any circumstance He desires for His own purposes. He did not determine Judas’ actions, but He determined the circumstances Judas found himself in. Therefore, God is able to bring about His own purposes through the free action of Judas, and Judas remains accountable for his action.
Now, I just have to figure out how to say that in a sermon in a way that won't be 100 stories over everyone's head.
6 comments:
Essentially, I believe, Middle Knowledge asserts that God knows all the possibilities of any given situation. So, I think something along the lines of saying that Judas had a free choice to do what he did. Yet God allowed it to happen in order to see Himself glorified. It's just a thought, I hope it helps to potentially disentangle thoughts.
Well, that may in fact overly simplify it. God is not simply a passive "allower" in this case. It is about more than His knowing and allowing. It is about His sovereign choosing and providential arrangements of circumstances, to include this entire "world" of all possible worlds. God made a sovereign choice to actualize a set of circumstances that He foreknew would include Judas' choice to betray Jesus. Judas' choice was in harmony with God's larger purpose. You would have to take your sentence and fill in the variables with different circumstances to see the difference in what you are saying and what I am saying.
Let's say Joe killed a man. Using your words it would be like this: Joe had a free choice to kill the man. Yet God allowed Joe to kill the man in order to see Himself glorified through it. I'm not sure I want to go there.
What I eventually said in the sermon was:
Now there are those who would say that it isn’t fair that Judas would have to suffer an eternity in hell because of his apostasy. After all, did Jesus not say, “The Son of Man is to go just as it is written of Him”? In other words, wasn’t Judas just carrying out God’s plan in handing Jesus over to die? So, he really didn’t have a choice did he? Why should he suffer these unspeakable consequences? Herein is the age-old conundrum of divine sovereignty and human freedom. Time does not permit us to discuss this in detail, but a little explanation is in order.
God knows the free actions that human beings will take in any given circumstance. And He providentially arranges the circumstances we find ourselves in so that our free actions further His purposes. His foreknowledge of our actions is perfect and infallible. But the moral decision to act remains our own free choice. Therefore, when we choose to sin, we are not absolved of moral responsibility. God’s foreknowledge and His providence did not force our hands to act. God chose to bring about a particular set of circumstances in creating this world and in sending His Son into this world to die for human sin. And those circumstances entailed Judas’ betrayal. Judas is not a blind victim of fatalistic providence and foreordination. He is a responsible moral agent who made a free choice. He did not determine Judas’ actions, but He determined the circumstances Judas found himself in. The choice, however, was Judas’ to make. And he chose to betray the Lord. Therefore, God is able to bring about His own purposes through the free action of Judas, and yet Judas remains accountable for his action. He will face the consequences of apostasy, and those consequences are unspeakably tragic.
That is a great way to put it. I just hope my thought was somewhat helpful in disentangling any thoughts. I have recently tackled the issue of Open Theism in relation to God's foreknowledge in a paper for class. So I guess that is why the post caught my eye more so than others.
I will be posting it shortly, and I would love any feedback if you have some time.
Yeah, I want to make sure I steer well clear of anything that smacks of Open Theism. Greg Boyd and other Openness guys point to Middle Knowledge and call their position Neo-Molinism. I think that is a misnomer, because their position is neither new, nor is it Molinist. Molina would NOT affirm that God neither knows nor exercises providential control over the future. In fact, Molinism was an attempt to prove that God does know and control the events of the future, and does so by orchestrating the circumstances in which free creatures act.
The difference between my view and classical Molinism is that I do not affirm libertarian freedom. I don't think people make arbitrarily free decisions. They are influenced by their sin nature, their surroundings, Satan, God, etc. So they are not free in the libertarian sense. The will is bound, as Luther explained, to sin, and that affects all human decisions.
As for the timing of your comment, I had already disentangled my thoughts by the time I received it. But what I did do was to "check" my thoughts with three prominent Middle Knowledge scholars to make sure I was rightly applying the doctrine in this text.
Let me know when you post your paper. Here's a question no open theist has ever been able to answer for me. They say that God sent Jonah to preach to Ninevah, not knowing if Ninevah would repent. However, Jonah 4:1-2 indicates that Jonah knew what would happen when he went to Ninevah to preach. So, does Open Theism actually believe that Jonah knows more than God? Never got a straight answer on that one.
Hey, I have posted the article on Open Theism. You are exactly right, these guys are KOOKS. Or something along those lines. They tried to prove their theory that God does not know the future by using Quantum Physics. That is outlined somewhat in the paper, but that was way over my head. By the way, it just occured to me this morning you may not know who I am...this is John Malek.
I'll check out your paper when I get a chance, and that may not be really soon. Detective blood runs in my veins, so I discerned who you were when I looked at your blog.
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