Predestination: A Solution

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catholicray

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Some time ago I asked a specific question that was causing me trouble with my understanding of God. My question was, “Does God create the damned”. I was troubled by this question because no matter how I tried to process it, I would have to limit that which God knows, or I would have to question the righteousness of God. I have spent the last several months walking by faith rather than intellect on this question. I decided to wait for a solution and maintain my faith. Now I think I have a solution.

The problem with my original question occurred, when I asked a second question. Does God know how he will judge you before he creates you? It seems logical that he does given the fact that you do exist. If you exist you are an actuality in existence, and God knows completely from beginning to end that which is actual. Right now God knows how you are judged. You are walking toward that judgement with free will in tact. How in the world does that work?

The real problem I found in all of this is that it is an easy mistake to assume the quality of time in the act of creation, or rather in the decision to create. A question that makes the picture more clear is, does God know the end before he creates the beginning? We are born into a linear timeline. Yet our being born was set in motion the moment God, in an act of Love, created the beginnings of the cosmos. We are in fact the product of Gods plan from the very beginning. At the moment God said, “Let there be light”, our birth was inevitable and a part of His design.

The solution I offer then, is that the act of creation and judgement were simultaneous and instant. God did not know how you would be judged before he created you. Rather, God knew how creation would be judged in the same moment that he decided to create. I imagine then, and I can only imagine, that God could calculate all of existence, the solution to all of existence, judgment of all creation and act in pure love to create our reality simultaneously, before a fraction of a second had a chance to occur.

“and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain.” RSVCE

Ultimately, God did not know how you would be judged before he created you. He knew your judgement in the same instance that he created you. He acted in love to create you. God did not create the damned but he also did not create slaves to his will. We are already judged but His judgement is righteous and you have been given free will to choose for yourself. Our sins are our own responsibility.

I struggled with this because I imagined God having time before I was born to decide whether I was born or not. This seems reasonable because I exist within the limits of my human being. However, I now believe that God is not sitting in heaven creating us on the fly on a linear timeline. Rather we were inevitable and known to him the moment he acted to create. We are inevitable from the very beginning.
 
catholicray said:
Does God know how he will judge you before he creates you?
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Depends on what you mean by ‘before’. There’s no ‘before’ in eternity, so from God’s perspective, there’s no ‘before’ or ‘after’ in His existence.
catholicray said:
The solution I offer then, is that the act of creation and judgement were simultaneous and instant.
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Are you talking within the context of the temporal framework in the universe? Let’s use an example: suppose you were conceived on July 4, 2000. Are you saying that God didn’t know the status of your salvation on July 3, 2000? Or, just that God didn’t know the status of your salvation ‘until’ He willed to create you, and all throughout ‘time’, He knew?

(OK – I recognize that you’re saying the former, but, for the sake of argument…) The former suggestion doesn’t hold up to reason. God isn’t bound by time in the created universe, and in fact, exists outside of it. He knows everything that happens within that context (even if, for us, we only know what we perceive of us ‘past’ and ‘present’).

The latter suggestion falls in line with the notion that God’s omniscience does not include counterfactuals (and, in fact, is not impinged by them). In other words, God knows what color your great-great-granddaughter’s eyes are, but, if you’re never going to have a great-great-grandson, He doesn’t know what color his eyes would have been if he were to have existed. See the difference? One is ‘real’ – but just not yet perceived by us – and the other is not real, and will never come to be.

If we take this understanding to your question, we come up with a solution that works: having willed to create you eternally, God knows your destiny. However, God does not ‘know’ the destiny of those who will never exist. Therefore, we can say that it is the ‘act’ of willing that provides the context for God’s knowledge. And, therefore, God does not create the reprobate solely in order to condemn them (as Calvinists would assert).

To your solution, I would say that it’s not the instant of creation, but of God’s will. It’s His willing it to be so that’s in play here…
 
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In the end the question just comes down to, can God really grant free will to created beings, or not? Are we free, or not? Should we be held morally accountable, or not? The answer to that question is true in our daily lives whether or not God even exists. His foreknowledge simply does not cancel human responsibility.
 
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Gorgias said:
Are you talking within the context of the temporal framework in the universe? Let’s use an example: suppose you were conceived on July 4, 2000. Are you saying that God didn’t know the status of your salvation on July 3, 2000? Or, just that God didn’t know the status of your salvation ‘until’ He willed to create you, and all throughout ‘time’, He knew?
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To clarify my own position, I would first say that God knew you far before you were born on July 4, 2000. Try to imagine that the whole of creation was finished the moment God said, “Let there be light”. Everything that would actually occur was present to God “in the beginning”.

The major point that I want to drive home is that your birth and your judgment were determined simultaneously and instantly before God said, “Let there be light”, as was all of creation. As long as your judgement is determined simultaneously with your existence then God is righteous because your judgement is not an act of premeditation. Or at least that is the direction that I am moving in my apologetic. I’m sure it could use some tightening.
 
catholicray said:
The major point that I want to drive home is that your birth and your judgment were determined simultaneously and instantly before God said, “Let there be light”, as was all of creation.
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I agree. In fact, I would say further that it was eternal, and not bound to a temporal instant. However, if a person will never come into existence, then God has not – does not – will not – ‘know’ him. So, the Calvinist double predestination fails on that account, IMHO.
 
It’s funny because I remember talking to you the last time I brought this topic up and we ended up debating time more than anything. I was too dense to understand what you were saying then but it was seamless with what I’m saying here. Thank you for the good discussions.

I remember the last conversation though and my problem was with the notion that God knew your judgment before he created you. I see now how that is a logical impossibility.For some reason in my mind God knew the end before he knew the beginning my logic was flawed but I am very grateful to overcome that because the devil sure wanted me to give up.

Ultimately the Calvinist is wrong and I agree with you. If God knew how you were to be judged before he created you and your destiny was hell then God would be unjust, since he could save you from hell by simply not creating you.

You also made a great point that I could not fathom until now. You said previously that God created those who would perish in hell because the benefit was so great to those who would be saved. That sounded so harsh before but I definitely get it now.
 
catholicray said:
The solution I offer then, is that the act of creation and judgement were simultaneous and instant. God did not know how you would be judged before he created you. Rather, God knew how creation would be judged in the same moment that he decided to create. I imagine then, and I can only imagine, that God could calculate all of existence, the solution to all of existence, judgment of all creation and act in pure love to create our reality simultaneously, before a fraction of a second had a chance to occur.

“and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain.” RSVCE

Ultimately, God did not know how you would be judged before he created you. He knew your judgement in the same instance that he created you. He acted in love to create you. God did not create the damned but he also did not create slaves to his will. We are already judged but His judgement is righteous and you have been given free will to choose for yourself. Our sins are our own responsibility.
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Interesting. I think your solution is reasonable and probably on the right track and I personally tend to agree with it as something favorable. Most importantly, I don’t believe there is something in it that is explicitly contrary at least to divine revelation and the catholic faith. It’s a very deep subject that involves a number of theological doctrines of the catholic faith and of divine revelation. However, I would make the following point or modification that stands out to me from what I gather of what you said and which Gorgias I believe touched on or mentioned.

God knows everything about creation from beginning to end and into eternity from eternity. By one eternal act of his understanding or intellect, God simultaneously knows everything that can possibly be known. So, even before God created the universe of creatures, for the universe is not eternal but has had a beginning, God knew his plan of the universe in his knowledge or mind from beginning to end - and into eternity - from all eternity before he actually created the universe in its own being or existence. What I’m getting at is that God doesn’t need to actually create human beings, for instance, in their own being and existence to know what they will do with their free will choices. He can determine or know by his transcendent knowledge or knowledge of vision in his intellect what they will do if he wills or decides to create them even before he actually creates them in their own being and existence.
 
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(continued)

I think this thought is what your getting at or actually saying but I’m making the point that God has this knowledge of creatures and all their actions in his intellect before he creates them in their own being and existence. The creatures and what they do, even the free actions of human beings, exist in God’s eternal knowledge and intellect before God creates them in their own being and existence. But, I tend to agree that it seems that God wills or decides to create a particular person in his eternal knowledge, for instance, before He knows or can know what that person will freely do such as with his grace as well as with his own causality as the first efficient cause. This way of knowing in God is according to an order of nature and not that of time or duration since God knows everything simultaneously together by one eternal act of his intellect or understanding. By order of nature, I mean that before as it were God can know the actions of some creature, the creature needs to exist at least in his mind.

God’s eternity spans the whole of time. St Thomas Aquinas argues that God knows infallibly future contingents in time such as free will actions from his eternity or what is called God’s knowledge of vision. God sees all of time in its presentiality so that if God sees Socrates sitting, for example, at some moment in time, than it is true that Socrates is sitting and God has infallible knowledge of this. In this connection, the CCC#600 says “To God all moments of time are present in their immediacy.” The catechism continues seemingly consistent with what were talking about here “When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace.”
 
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Okay I have questions now. If God knows every detail of creation and it’s judgement eternally, wouldn’t creation be inevitable? Wouldn’t God have to create us because the knowledge of us is eternal? I hope I have worded that well enough.
 
catholicray said:
Okay I have questions now. If God knows every detail of creation and it’s judgement eternally, wouldn’t creation be inevitable? Wouldn’t God have to create us because the knowledge of us is eternal? I hope I have worded that well enough.
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Well… strictly speaking, the universe itself is eternal. After all, God created it in a context devoid of time. Note that I’m not saying that the temporal dimension inside the universe is eternal; it’s not. It had a beginning. Within the frame of reference of the universe (and its temporal framework), there was a t=0. Outside that frame of reference – that is, in God’s eternal frame of reference – there is no t, let alone a t0.

Anyway, that’s the idea I’ve been toying with lately.
 
Hmmmmmmm 🤔

That is interesting indeed. Puts fist to chin and resumes thinking
 
The Church teaches that God freely created the world, i.e., he wasn’t under any necessity of his nature to do so, he freely chose to do so and he also could freely annihilate it back into nothingness. However, God willed and chose to create the world from all eternity in that one eternal act of his will through which whatever he wills, he wills. Now, God’s will is unchangeable so in this sense the creation of the world was ‘inevitable’ so to speak from eternity on the presupposition that God freely determined and willed to create the world in that one eternal act of his will and at that ‘time’ he willed to do so from all eternity.
 
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