That God, in a single moment of
duration, does all the feeling, thinking, willing, and acting which his
universe requires from everlasting to everlasting, is too incredible for any intelligent
being to believe. And unless that he be admitted, there must be a before and an
after in the existence of God. If he can not distinguish the past from the present,
and the present from the future, his intelligence is less than ours. The
doctrine of God’s immutability, as conceived by many, would take from all
personal life, resolves and experiences, and all availing interest in a
repenting race and an ever unfolding universe. But granting to him the most perfect
immutability as to his natural and moral perfections, what objection can be
conceived to the supposition that there may be changes in his mental states in
respect to a changeable universe? If the mode of the divine existence allows
the formation and the execution of an infinite number of purposes, why not it
also allow of changes in those purposes? Change in thought, feeling, purpose,
and act, under justifiable circumstance, instead of implying limitation or imperfection,
is an indispensable condition of perfection in the divine nature. Indeed, God
could not continue to remain perfect without such changes after he had created
a sentient and accountable universe wholly dependent upon him for its existence
and well-being. In creating a being endowed freedom and the power of original,
unantecedented causation, the capacity of putting forth free volitions and
moral or immoral forces into the universe of things, God laid upon himself the
necessity of change the very moment that his voluntary creature disobeyed his
commandments and rebelled against his authority. Perfection not only demands
but necessities changes in the Ruler appropriate to the changes in the moral accountable
subject. Moreover, to affirm that in God there can be no change is really to
exclude him from his government over his accountable universe, or to affirm
that his government is only a pretense, destitute of all reality.
Men in speculation may, like Berkeley,
deny existence to material objects, but in practical life they never fail to
recognize and affirm it. And thus in theory men may deny the existence of a
world of pure contingencies, but in practice they can not ignore it if they
would. All their warnings addressed to the wayward, all their anxieties addressed
to their own hearts, and all their prayers addressed to Deity, imply a world of
contingency. And, if there be a world of contingencies, then there must
necessarily be a contingent side to God’s thoughts, feelings, actions, plans,
and purposes.
An intelligent being must necessarily
think; and, if he thinks, he must have succession of thoughts. To affirm that
there is no succession in God is to affirm not only that God never changes in
feeling, Purpose, or conduct, but also that he has no sequential thoughts. But
he who makes such denials not only disregards all philosophy, but ignores the
teachings of the Holy Scriptures, which represent God as the One “who was, and
is, and is to come.” And that there are motion, change, duration, and
succession in God, the common sense of theologians and philosophers of the first
rank is rapidly coercing them to admit and fearlessly to proclaim.
When, therefore, a moral agent does
wrong, the displeasure of his conscience is the reflex of that of him to whom
that agent is responsible. Yesterday I was wicked, and he ought then to have
been displeased with me. Today I am good, and he ought now to approve of me.
But if all is one eternal now, if with him there be no past and no future, if
with him there be no succession, if he sees all the future as he sees the
present, then, necessarily, he is subject to the most conflicting emotions toward
me at the same moment of time. Love, hate, approval, disapproval, admiration,
contempt, and every variety of feeling, corresponding, admiration, contempt,
and every variety of feeling, corresponding to every successive variety of my
character from birth to death, exist in him at the same instant. Isaiah
exclaimed, “Though thou wast angry with me, thine angry is turned away, and
thou comfortedest me.” And what was true of Isaiah is true of all the individuals
of our race. But are the contradictions above noted possible? Is not such a supposition
absurd? Could we attribute a greater imperfection to God’s character, or do a
great injustice to the equanimities and harmonies of his eternally blissful
nature, than to suppose that he is the subject of such conflicts of emotion and
such endless contrariety of feelings at the same moment toward the same individuals.
God’s feelings and perceptions, like
our own, follow according to the law of cause and effect. And however much I
may merit his love on account of my present obedience, he can not really love
me if he foresees that I am to be numbered with the incorrigibles, with those
who disobey and hate him, in outer darkness forever. How could one love another
today, however worthy he now is of his love, if he were certain that that
person on the morrow would murder his mother? I know that I have the divine
favor now, but if God sees that I will eventually apostatize from the faith,
deny the blood that bought me, count it an unholy thing and crucify the Son of God afresh, must shudder
at and abhor the deep depravity, the fiendish wickedness, of my future
character.
Are, then, all his present
manifestations of love to my soul, all these hallowed communions, and all this
sweet witness of the Holy Spirit bearing testimony to my spirit that I am a
child of God, mere hollow pretenses? Manifestly, then, in guarding with such
jealous care the perfection of divine foreknowledge, theologians overlook the
equal necessity for perfection, appropriateness, and successiveness in the feelings
and moral judgment of God respecting his intelligent subjects.
If God be such a being as the
Christian really contemplates and adores, then universal prescience can not be
true; for, as we have seen, that theory would compel us to confess to vast
imperfections in his sensitive states and judgments. It would render it impossible
for us to discover, to conceive as existing in him, the appropriate feelings
and purposes toward the ever varying character of his free accountable subjects.
But this constant appropriateness of feeling and conduct toward the struggling,
self-determining subject, is one of the indispensable perfections of a righteous
Ruler, which we must never surrender if we would escape distressing
contradictions. Surely, then, this is another strong presumption, if not a
proof, that God does not foreknow all the actions of accountable creatures. (Lorenzo
McCabe, The Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy,
repr. Two Books on Open Theism: Divine Nescience and Future Contingencies a
Necessity AND The Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN Theology and
Philosophy, ed. Christopher Fisher [2024], 558-61)
