Classical Theism
A standard idea in what is called “Classical Theism” is that God is completely unchangeable. The reason for this is that God is perfect, and any change in perfection (so the argument goes) must be a change from perfection to imperfection. This further implies that God has no potentiality; he is pure act (actus purus). He is all he can be. There is no “becoming” in God.
The word “time” simply captures the notion of potentialities becoming actual. Since all change is a consequence of actualization of potentialities, in the actus purus view God does not change. We say that God is “not in time” to express the idea that nothing in God’s existence or experience involves the actualization of potentialities (since there are no potentialities in God).
Subversion of Static View of God
In my view this is an excessively static view of God. This static notion of God is subverted in a number of Bible passages. For example, Lamentations 3:22-23 says the following:
Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
Here we see an aspect of the unchangeability of God: “His compassions fail not.” This reflects a “necessary” attribute of God: his perfect love. (A necessary attribute of God is one where its lack or contrary would make God flawed or imperfect. A God who did not love perfectly, or who was unjust, or who did not know some things that could be known, would be an imperfect God; more to the point, such a god would not correspond to the Christian idea of God at all.)
But how is this necessary attribute of compassion expressed in the passage above? Through perennial renewal. Every day God finds new ways to express his infallible compassion. We find in God a necessary, unchanging attribute expressed through unceasing novelty. This suggests the idea that a static view of perfection, one that totally denies potential or adaptability or sensitivity to God, is not the best way to think about God.
Actus Purus and God’s Knowledge
If we think about God’s knowledge, we can see that the idea of actus purus combined with the idea that everything about God is statically necessary can contaminate all of reality with a pernicious necessity. Freedom is completely eliminated from reality, including from God himself. Everything God does is necessary, including creation and the form creation takes.
Internal and External Relationships
To understand this we must understand the distinction between “internal” and “external” relationships. We say that X is internally related to Y if X is affected by the relationship between X and Y. We say that X is externally related to Y if the relationship between X and Y does not affect X.
For example, if John is the son of James, then John is internally related to James, because without James he would have no being. On the other hand, James is externally related to John in this respect, because he could continue to be James without having John as his son.
Causality is a more general case of this. If X causes Y then X is externally related to Y, and Y is internally related to X (with regard to that particular causal relationship).
Knowledge: Internally or Externally Related?
We now consider the relationship between knowledge and what is known.
Human knowledge is internally related to what is known. Agent X knows Y because Y is true. If Y was not true, then agent X could not know it. Y affects the knowledge of X.
An example is my knowledge that my wife agreed to marry me. The reason I know that she agreed to marry me is that she did, in fact, agree to marry me. If she had not agreed to marry me, any thought I might have that she did so agree would be erroneous.
The question then arises: is God’s knowledge internally related to what is known? In other words, why does God’s knowledge have the content it has?
If God’s knowledge is like human knowledge, then it is internally related to its content. God knows things because those things affect the state of God’s knowledge. God knows that my wife agreed to marry me for the same reason I know it: because she did in fact agree to do so.
See Not Foresee
But this creates a problem for Classical Theism. If God’s knowledge is internally related to its content, that would imply that God is affected by what he has created. C. S. Lewis seems to take this view when he writes, in The Screwtape Letters,
…the Enemy does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it.
Lewis’s explanation here seems incoherent to me. Lewis says that God “sees them doing so in His unbounded Now.” What does it even mean to see something happen in an unbounded Now? Events have a temporal structure. There is reality “before” the event, where there are potentialities that the event could actualize, and then the event happens, and then there is reality “after” the event where some potentialities have become actualized (that is, something has happened). But how can God see this event, which embodies such a transition from potentiality to actuality, when there is no “before” and “after”? If “unbounded Now” does not mean that “before” and “after” lose their meaning, then, again, what does it mean?
Consequence of God’s Knowledge Being Internally Related to What Is Known
But if, for the sake of argument, we grant Lewis’s point, we are still not home free. The idea that God’s knowledge is internally related to its content seems to imply that the state of God’s knowledge, which by hypothesis is a necessary aspect of God, is affected by something outside of God, namely created reality. If God sees people make free choices and, as a result of seeing those choices knows the content of those choices, then his knowledge is not necessary. It could have been different if people made different choices, and “could have been different” is the very essence of contingency. But this contingency seems essential to Lewis’s point.
For this reason Lewis’s contention that God is outside of time just adds unnecessary complication to the issue of God’s knowledge. Lewis wants to argue that God has complete definite knowledge. But he also wants to maintain counterfactual freedom. He feels he can do this by making God’s knowledge a-temporal, but this seems to destroy the before-and-after structure of counterfactual choices for God, and that structure is essential for the contingent transition from indefinite to definite that a choice embodies.
Classical Theism: God’s Knowledge is Externally Related to What Is Known
The alternative view, that God’s knowledge is externally related to its content, creates another problem. If God’s knowledge is not affected by its content, where does it originate?
The answer from Classical Theism is that God’s knowledge is self-knowledge. God knows everything because he knows himself as the origin of everything that occurs. Here is a typical example of this viewpoint:
God knows all things before they happen in time because he knew them before anything came into being. The reason anything is future or not future is because God knew it. God does not know things because they are future, things are future because God knows them. The future is dependent on the decree of God that preceded all things. This is also how God’s knowledge worked in creation. God did not create and then know the things we created. He knew his creation and then he created it.
Here is where aseity ties in with the doctrine of omniscience. The doctrine of aseity is that God is independent of creation and has need of nothing. All things depend on him. He depends on nothing. He is also unchangeable. He is the perfect being. Nothing can be added or subtracted from his essence. Therefore the creation of the world cannot be understood to cause God to increase in knowledge, nor can the flow of time add anything to his understanding that he did not already know. God knew all things in and of himself before they themselves came into being. There is no increase, change, or factors outside of God himself, that could alter what he determined would happen. Again, before the world, God knew what he would do to create and govern the world and therefore he knows what will happen in time. God’s knowledge is in and of himself.
(Quotation from Mike Hovland, THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD: THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, retrieved 30-Apr-2021 from https://abideintheword.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/the-attributes-of-god-the-knowledge-of-god/)
This seems to be a consistent expression of the consequences of the postulates of Classical Theism. God’s knowledge is not affected by reality; instead, reality is what it is because God knows it by knowing his own decree.
Pernicious Effects of God’s Necessity
But the effect of this, as I stated above, is to infect all things, including God himself, with a pernicious necessity. Not only is creation not free, God himself cannot be free. Every aspect of God is necessary; there is no contingency in him. Therefore even his own decree could not have been other than what it was; his knowledge could not have been other than what it is; there is no counterfactual freedom or contingency anywhere in the system. This is expressed by the notion that “this is the best of all possible worlds.” God literally had to do exactly what he did; reality had to take exactly the form it takes because reality itself is perfect according to the metric of that which most glorifies God. I ask the reader to believe that this is not a straw man argument, but one I have repeatedly encountered.
Even if one denies the notion that God’s unchangeability somehow constrains God himself, the effect from our perspective is that counterfactual freedom is still excluded from creation. There are numerous statements in various versions of Christian doctrine to this effect. In every case, even the most deterministic view wants to maintain human moral responsibility. God has purposed from eternity to allow evil in the world, and to condemn some to hell, but those he so condemns are still responsible for their own condemnation. Here is an example from the Westminster Confession:
God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
This is eating one’s cake and having it with a vengeance.
“Neo-Classical” View
An alternative view sees God as experiencing and participating in the stream of events. The future is at least partially indefinite, having open possibilities that cannot be exactly known, by contrast with the past which is fully definite and completely knowable by God.
This does not mean that there are things that can be known that God does not know. Since the future has no definite ontological status, God cannot know it definitely. He can, on the other hand, know it completely in its indefiniteness. He knows what might happen but (in some cases) not what will happen.
The very distinction between past and future turns on this point. The past is fully definite. All possibility has been removed from it by the actions and events that have occurred. Contrary to C. S. Lewis’s argument in Mere Christianity that God loses part of his reality as it slips into the past, God more perfectly knows the past because it is completely actual and definite. The indefinite future is the realm of possibility and freedom, but as that freedom is exercised its indefiniteness becomes definite.
But since in this view both God and humans make choices and actualize possibilities, people become co-creators with God. While God is omni-influential—his influence extends unsurpassably over all creation—individuals have varying degrees of local influence where what they do makes a difference. God embraces this exercise of freedom by individuals, incorporating it into his plan for moving creation to the ends for which he has made it. Even evil actions are redeemed as God strives for the good of all.