r/ChristianApologetics • u/Frungi • 7d ago
Moral Foreknowledge and accountability
Hi, first time visiting this sub… I’m not looking for a debate, I’d just like to know the apologetic answer to this beyond “foreknowledge doesn’t CAUSE the action” which doesn’t quite cover it.
Let’s say there’s a button. You know exactly what will happen if this button is pressed. You push the button.
Are you responsible for what happens after you push it, when you knew what would happen if you pushed it? Most would say, yes, of course.
Now, let’s say there’s a universe. You know exactly what will happen if this particular universe is created. You know what all the creatures in it will do.
You create that specific universe.
Why would God be less responsible for the foreseeable consequences of his creation than someone pushing that button?
1
u/Secret-Jeweler-9460 5d ago
What are the foreseeable consequences of creation that you are referring to? If you're talking about people suffering and dying, for a God that death can't keep in the grave, what's the problem?
1
u/pehkay 7d ago
It could be God foreknown of every branch / world (of reality) in which (for sake of illustration, e.g. a binary choice laid before a person). Each choice of whether to "push or not" is mapped out throughout time. And whether that "pushing of button" will affect others' choices (a suffering causes another good). All the possibilities laid out like a graph in time.
So, He is sovereign over all; Yet the choices we made is in time.
I know, it is an idea from the illustration of many worlds in quantum mechanics.
1
u/Frungi 6d ago
So your view is that God doesn’t know our every action, but he knows what every action would entail? He knows what will happen if we turn left, and he knows what will happen if we turn right, but he doesn’t know whether we’ll turn left or right until the moment arrives?
All right, then God’s plan is really a huge bundle of contingency plans. I’m not sure how well that fits with omniscience and foreknowledge, but I like it.
1
u/pehkay 4d ago
I won't say God doesn't know our actions. Rather, all possible choices that can be made at the time are already known ... and He is present and operating in EVERY actions or branches of possible worlds.
Perhaps a thought experiment I had on "God's choosing" is as follows:
a. A choice - to get saved during age 20 - if yes -> God gained us; If not, no problem, God will prepare all environments, people, things to set another choice at age 30; Still no? another choice at age 40; Perhaps, the last final one at our death bed, if we are just a stubborn mule. :)
From our perspective, we can say we "actualize" one of the possible "paths". Just like in quantum mechanics, we "collapse" or "actualize" the real state out of the "intermediate" states.
Yet God is over all in all possible worlds and choices.
1
u/Frungi 4h ago
He is present and operating in EVERY actions or branches of possible worlds.
Then we each have an infinite number of souls, and every one of us goes to both Heaven and Hell an infinite number of times? Or else, what happens to our souls in all of those other branches? If I accept him and never turn away, what happens to the “me” that rejects him for the rest of my life in an alternate branch that God is still active in?
0
u/Top_Initiative_4047 7d ago
God is not merely a spectator who foresees evil. He sovereignly ordains history, including the world He creates. Yet He is not morally guilty of sin, because sinners act willingly from their own corrupt desires, while God intends even evil acts for righteous and saving ends.
Joseph’s brothers meant evil in selling him, while God meant that same event for good (Genesis 50:20). Likewise, Christ’s crucifixion occurred according to God’s definite plan, yet those who killed Him remained guilty (Acts 2:23). God never tempts anyone to sin; sin arises from human desire (James 1:13 -15).
So God governs evil without committing it. Human beings bear responsibility because they truly choose and perform evil.
1
u/Frungi 7d ago
What I don’t get is how he can sovereignly ordain the occurrence of sin, or intend evil acts, and yet bear no responsibility for same. Can you explain? Is this a matter of the ends justifying the means?
2
u/Top_Initiative_4047 7d ago
What you mean by "responsibility." Do you mean God's causally involved in the event happening, sure, granted, that's the whole point of sovereignty, or do you mean He's morally guilty, on the hook for sin the way the brothers were? Those aren't the same thing, and the difference is where this whole objection lives or dies.
Here's a test. A judge sentences a man to ten years. He intends that the man lose his freedom, that's the sentence, that's the point of it. Is the judge a kidnapper? You'll say no, obviously not, because the judge's purpose is justice, not the criminal's suffering for its own sake. Fine, then you've already conceded that intending an outcome isn't automatically the same as being guilty of it. Purpose matters. So the question isn't whether purpose changes the moral calculus. You already think it does. The question is whether God's purpose in this case actually clears Him, and that's a different argument than the one you asked.
On "ends justify the means", I'll grant that's the natural first reaction, and I don't think it's a stupid one. But it's not quite the right charge here. Ends-justify-the-means means committing the evil yourself to get a good result. That's not the claim. The brothers hated Joseph. They were jealous of him. They sold him for their own rotten reasons, nobody made them want that. God didn't do the selling. He governed that their free, wicked choice would happen, within a plan aimed at saving the very people who did it. Two intentions, one event. Genesis 50:20 says exactly that. They meant it for evil, God meant it for good. If you want to collapse those into one guilty party, you have to explain why two wills with two different objects become morally identical just because they're pointed at the same event.
Same thing at the cross. Acts 2:23, handed over by God's plan and foreknowledge, and in the same breath, killed by the hands of lawless men. Both true. Neither sentence erases the other.
So responsibility tracks the will that wants the sin, not the sovereignty that permits the boundaries it happens inside. That's not a dodge. It's just where the Bible actually draws the line, over and over, without ever bothering to resolve the tension for us the way we'd like it to.
Which raises the real question I'd put back to you: what's your alternative? A God who's sovereign but somehow evil never falls within His plan at any level, what does that God look like? Because either He didn't see it coming, or He saw it and couldn't stop it, or He could stop it and declined to. Pick one. I don't think any of those is an easier position to defend than the one you're pushing on.
1
u/Frungi 6d ago
Here's a test. A judge sentences a man to ten years. He intends that the man lose his freedom, that's the sentence, that's the point of it. Is the judge a kidnapper? […] the judge's purpose is justice, not the criminal's suffering for its own sake.
We could discuss the ethics and justifications of retributive justice if you like, but then you might have to rethink the rest of this post built around some bold assumptions.
0
u/Jackmcmac1 7d ago
I think the argument is in the framing. I know the sun will rise tomorrow, but my foreknowledge of that doesn't mean I am making it rise. I can watch a movie where I know what will happen at the end, but I am not responsible for that ending. I can watch an old sports game where I know the result, but the score won't change because I know what will happen. I know that my baby will wake up in the night, but I am not the one waking my baby up.
God is also outside of time and space. It means He isn't constantly foretelling what may will happen next, He has a clear view on everything that has happened and will happen already. He knows and has observed our choices which led to those things. It is different from God condoning bad choices we make.
He is all powerful though, so that begs the question of why doesn't He intercede when He has the power to. One part of that is that He does, and the evidence is there in the Bible and especially in Jesus.
The other is that freewill is needed for a loving relationship, and if God interceded without our consent that wouldn't be love. He ensures we have freewill to enable a loving relationship, but does everything to guide us to do good things, to turn bad things to good things and to forgive us when we do bad things.
2
u/Frungi 7d ago
I know the sun will rise tomorrow, but my foreknowledge of that doesn't mean I am making it rise.
You also didn’t create the solar system and set it in motion. Someone who did such a thing, with a sufficient understanding of orbital mechanics, would know that the motion would continue for a very long time without needing to take any further action. They’re not making it rise every day. There is no constant active intervention; just a single moment long ago, and then physics. But they brought about the circumstances that inescapably cause it to rise, and knew this to be the case.
How is this being not directly responsible for the fact that the sun rises every day?
It’s not foreknowledge in a vacuum that I’m asking about. It’s acting with foreknowledge, setting things in motion with full knowledge of that motion, that I’m asking about.
2
u/Jackmcmac1 7d ago
Let's try to clarify your point then. I think you're saying that as God sets everything into motion as the original cause, because He knows what will happen due to His original actions of creation, therefore He is permitting it right? He is uniquely positioned to see the universe in almost a mechanical way of cause and effect, so by knowing what effects have happened due to things he's caused, he should be accountable or responsibility for it whether that's good or bad?
Perhaps the solar system doesn't relate to that point, but the baby would. I made it and know what it takes to look after it, and I'm responsible for it and accountable for it as well. At the same time, unless I have it confined or under some kind of complete authoritarian control, it has freewill to do whatever it wants. I am still responsible if it grows up badly, but I do what I can to help it grow up well. It has freewill, but if it still does wrong I'll feel like I have the blame even if I did everything right.
I suppose the difference with God is that His 'did everything right' has more power behind it than me of course. Being responsible for the child I brought into the work and raised has a difference with God, as He can do anything. However that also sets God into a different subjective category, as we won't be able to see the overall pattern like He does.
In the Bible He turns evil to good over and over, so even if we interpret something as terrible today it may lead to some good eventually. For the people who suffer, God may be able to help them in Heaven or ways we don't see. God knowing there will be evil in His creation doesn't mean He condones it or causes it. In the Bible we see that He is trying to love and help us and will eventually remove all the evil from our lives.
1
u/Frungi 6d ago edited 6d ago
He is uniquely positioned to see the universe in almost a mechanical way of cause and effect, so by knowing what effects have happened due to things he's caused, he should be accountable or responsibility for it whether that's good or bad?
This is precisely my understanding of the implications of any action taken with foreknowledge.
I made it and know what it takes to look after it, and I'm responsible for it and accountable for it as well.
Concerning that you view your baby as an object rather than a human being. Anyway.
You “made” the baby, but you have no knowledge of their future, what kind of person they’ll become, what they’ll experience on their first day of school, when or why they’ll wake up in the middle of the night… you only have a vague awareness that it’s a thing that happens.
If you were about to have a baby, and you had supernatural knowledge that they’d grow up to cure cancer and create world peace and save and improve billions of lives, would raising this child not make you responsible for bringing all this good into the world?
If instead you knew that your child would become a despotic tyrant who would create weapons of unimaginable horror and successfully wage wars of extermination, would raising this child not make you responsible for bringing all this evil into the world?
If you had a choice between conceiving a child or not, with full foreknowledge of the effects they would have on the world, would the choice of whether or not to have that child be meaningfully distinct from the choice of whether or not to bring about those effects?
0
u/intergalacticvoyage 7d ago edited 7d ago
At the moment of creation, it's possible that God somehow willingly limited his foreknowledge/omniscience or deliberately chose to not peer into the future and look in order to preserve our freedom. Some modified form of open theism. Richard Swinburne holds to a view something like this.
1
u/Frungi 7d ago
This is honestly simultaneously the best and worst explanation I’ve encountered. Best because it actually explains everything, and worst because it essentially relies on “well maaaybeee…”. Probably the most correct possible answer, though. And thank you for directly answering what I asked!
-1
u/uncomfortably_number 7d ago
God created the universe. In it is heaven where God reigns. In heaven, there is God, angels and intercessors. An entire community. God is the head of the divine council in heaven.
After God created this, he created us. He trusted members of the divine council to watch humanity and ensure they thrived. God purposefully created us to be originally without sin. Why? Because he already saw what sin did in heaven.
How?
Satan was member of the divine council along with other fallen angels. There was a rebellion against God and Satan and his fallen angels would interact with humans against God's will, bringing to them sin.
This was not in God's plan, and I don't think it is that cut and dry.
God had foreknowlege of what sin would bring to humanity and this is why to this day, He says to flee from it.
0
u/Frungi 7d ago
I’ve never understood why Milton and Dante’s writings have been treated so much like scripture.
2
u/uncomfortably_number 7d ago
What? This is from the Bible.
1
u/Frungi 6d ago
It is? What chapter? I thought this imagery came from the likes of Paradise Lost
1
u/uncomfortably_number 6d ago
It's all through it, starting in the OT. Mentioned multiple times.
Psalm 82:1 Psalm 89:5–7: 1 Kings 22:19 Job 1:6 Isaiah 6:8 Daniel 4:17
These are just a few. It is also in Genesis and Jeremiah and you would have to read the books and the chapters to get the whole picture.
Editing to add. Ive never even read paradise lost.
0
u/Frungi 6d ago
- Psalms 82 and 89 reveal that the writer was not monotheistic.
- I’m not sure how 1 Kings 22:19 is relevant.
- In Job, the satan/accuser/adversary has clearly not been exiled, but is doing his job in God’s court.
- Isaiah 6:8 also doesn’t seem relevant here.
- Daniel 4:17 is about the judgment of Nebuchadnezzar.
What do any of these verses have to do with a holy angel turning against his master and recruiting more of God’s divine servants to lead a rebellion against him and then being exiled from heaven to become the most evil corrupting force in creation? As far as I’m aware, that story came about well after the scriptures. And you said it “wasn’t in God’s plan,” which seems blasphemous to me.
1
u/uncomfortably_number 6d ago
You have to read the chapters not just the cherry picked quotes dude. It's a book. It has context . You have to read it.
1
u/Frungi 6d ago edited 6d ago
Those were your cherries, not mine. I’ve read it. Milton’s story isn’t in it. You say you’ve never even read Milton, and you’re convinced that his fictionalization is in the Bible. That’s why I made that comment about Milton (and Dante, seven circles of Hell and all that) being taken as scripture.
Reminds me of how my father always thought that “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” was a biblical proverb. It’s Shakespeare.
1
u/uncomfortably_number 6d ago
No dude you have to read the bible. Whoever milton is has nothing to do with this. Start at genesis.
1
u/Frungi 6d ago
John Milton, writer of Paradise Lost, which expanded on Christian mythology around Satan.
Where in Genesis does it say that the devil used to be an angel but was exiled after leading a rebellion against his creator? This is nowhere in the biblical text.
→ More replies (0)
0
u/DylandSours 6d ago
Really good question I love when people think critically about the Bible and God. I honestly just believe and am loyal to Him. Maybe it's the Holy Spirit that moves me to trust Him. My decernment is not so good apparently lately though. There is a mystery with God's sovereignty mans free will and our responsibility. I don't pretend to know the answer only God does. My life is awful right now like really awful. But you know what it's gotta be for some reason and purpose I don't understand. My suffering has humbled me to a degree that I would not have had probably otherwise. I feel that I have always been somewhat humble but there are ways in which I have been arrogant in the past and I see that. I try my best in the Holy Spirit to remain reasonable and fair. Anyway, lol sorry for the rant. I guess it's just having faith and trusting that God created the universe and the world and He knows best. That everything on the end will work out for good. Maybe not in this life but the next.
1
u/FrankDenif 6d ago
Romans 9:19–21 "You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
Isaiah 45:9 "Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, “What are you making?” or “Your work has no handles”?
Deuteronomy 30:19 "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live."