Remember the former things of old: for I am
God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the
end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet
done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. (Isa
46:9-10)
Recently, a
Latter-day Saint raised this passage against God having contingent, not
exhaustive, foreknowledge. Is this a good proof-text against Open Theism?
Before we discuss this text specifically, a few points to consider.
Firstly,
even within the chapters leading up to Isa 46, God is presented as having
discursive knowledge, something consistent with Open Theism but not the “traditional”
view of God’s knowledge (both then-present and future). For instance, in Isa
40:12, we read:
Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of
his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the
earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a
balance?
Isaiah is
teaching that God learns the amount of water on the earth by measuring it.
Interestingly enough, the measure of water on the surface of the earth
fluctuates, so it continuously needs to be measured by Yahweh, further
supporting the Open Theistic understanding of God and His knowledge, unless on
will argue that God counts/measures things (actions which take place in time,
not an "eternal now")
Such
discursive knowledge is seen in 1 Kgs 22:19-23 where we read of Yahweh seeking
advice from his heavenly council:
And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of
the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing
by him on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, Who shall persuade
Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner,
and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, and stood
before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him,
Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the
mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail
also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying
spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil
concerning thee.
When it
comes to the fulfllment of prophecy for Isaiah (and, I would argue, Lehi in 2 Nephi 3:15) is not that God declares the then-future, but that he will interact
in the world in a way that will guarantee the fulfillment of what he promises
to take place. Consider the following from Isaiah:
I have declared the former things from the
beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them
suddenly, and they came to pass. (Isa 48:3)
Unlike the
idols the people were attributing the saving acts taking place, God instead is
the one who performs these saving
actions, thus, fulfilling his promises. As we read in a scholarly commentary on
Isaiah 40-66 (so-called “Deutero-Isaiah”):
[3–5] The fulfillment of earlier prophecies serves as a
precedent that the future prophecies will also come to pass, specifically the
promise of redemption. Here, however, instead of using this claim of
authenticity in his usual polemic against idolaters and their gods, comparing
their impotence with God’s omnipotence and omniscience (e.g., 41:21–24; 42:8–9;
43:9–10; 46:9–11), Deutero-Isaiah castigates the people’s disbelief and their
propensity to attribute the events to their idols. For a similar theme in a
Neo-Assyrian prophecy, see Ishtar’s prophecy to King Esarhaddon: “[Esarhaddon]
… you [saw] you could trust my previous statement (dababu pānīu) to you. Now you can rely on this latter one (urkīu) as well” (Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, 10, lines 3–12). So
too in an oracle addressed to King Esarhaddon, the prophetess encourages the
king by declaring: urkīute lu kî pānīute,
“The future ones shall be like the past ones” (ibid., 6, line 37’).
[3] Long ago I
foretold things that would happen—For מאז (“long ago”) (repeated three more times throughout this unit,
vv. 5, 7, 8), see 44:8; 45:21; cf. Ps 93:2: “Your throne stands firm from long
ago (מאז).” For the verbal construction הגיד רִאשֹׁנות, see Isa 41:22; and for the term ראשֹׁנות (ה), see
41:22; 42:9; 43:9, 18; 46:9; 65:17; and the introduction, §4.)
From My mouth they issued, and I announced them—Vocalize וָאשמיעם in the past tense, parallel to הגדתי in the prior hemistich. For the expression יצא מפה (“to issue from one’s mouth”), which signifies a binding and
irrevocable proclamation, see 45:23: “From My mouth has issued truth, a word
that shall not turn back”; 55:11: “So is the word that issues from My mouth. It
does not come back to Me unfulfilled, but performs what I purpose”; cf. Judg
11:36; Jer 44:17. The Akkadian etymological and semantic equivalent, ṣīt pî, can also denote an (irrevocable)
declaration of a deity (CAD P:459; Ṣ:219).
Suddenly I acted, and they came to pass—Cf. Isa 42:9: “See,
the things once predicted have come to pass.” For the expression בוא פתאֹם (“to come about suddenly”) in the context of Babylon’s
destruction, see 47:11: “Coming upon you suddenly is ruin of which you know
nothing”; cf. also, e.g., 30:13; Jer 4:20; 6:26. For the verb עשי (“to act”) without an object, see Isa 41:4; 46:4. (Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40-66: Translation and Commentary [Eerdmans Critical
Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012], 307)
Further,
there are many prophecies/predictions/promises in the Bible and uniquely LDS
Scriptures that were not fulfilled, and often, did not have any contingencies
explicitly stated. Indeed, a study of purportedly false prophecies by Joseph
Smith (and the biblical authors) was the issue that convinced me initially
of the plausibility of Open Theism. Here are some articles on the topic (if a
fellow LDS apologist can provide a consistent model for understanding such
contingent prophecies without engaging in divine deception being the logical
result and/or God being “fixed”/determined by his foreknowledge [a major
problem with “simple foreknowledge”] do let me know):
Now, as for
Isa 46:9-10, I will quote Blake Ostler’s
comments on this and related topics:
Here God reveals that he has declared the end
from the beginning and that he can thus accomplish all of his purposes. How
shall we understand this scripture? Mormons will not understand this passage as
a statement of God’s eternal decrees of predestination and determination of all
future human actions. A Calvinist theologian might be tempted to read into this
text such an interpretation to support the view that God predestines and
decrees all events. Yet this passage supports only the view that God has
adopted a plan which God can insure will be realized. Even if we took this
passage as a critical definition of God’s knowledge, it certainly would not be
hard to accommodate it to the notion of contingent omniscience. For God can
know what he intends to bring about and that he can prevail over all
challengers to his plan. God’s plans will be brought about not because he has
seen what will happen before he planned—a view that is incoherent—but because
God will bring them about. In other words, such scriptures can be understood as
a function of Go’s power and intentions rather than of God’s knowledge.
An analogy, first articulated by William
James, suggests that God is like a master chess player involved in a game with
novices (12). God does not control the moves that the challengers to the game
will make, nor does he know beforehand exactly what moves will be made.
However, he knows all possible moves that can be made and that he can meet any
such moves and eventually win the game. God may lose some pieces during the
course of the game, just as some people choose in their genuine freedom to
reject God and to thwart his plans of salvation as far as they are individually
concerned. Nevertheless, Mormonism is committed to the view that God has
established a plan which allows such losses to permit persons to make moves
that are genuinely up to them and not up to God alone. These provisions seems
to be required by the master chess player analogy:
1. God is omniscient: For every state of
affairs SA, if SA is or has been actual, then God knows that SA; if SA is possible,
then God knows that potentially SA.
2. God knows now all things, including the
present probability of all possibilities.
3. God knows now that his purposes are and
that he will achieve them.
4. God does not know now, in every case,
precisely which contingent possibility will be chosen or become actual.
5. God knows now how he will respond to
whichever contingent possibility occurs to insure the realization of his
purposes.
These features of God’s knowledge insure that
God knows all things, including all eternal truths, and events now certain given
causal implication (1, 2). It also allows for free choices among genuinely open
alternatives (2, 4). These provisions suggest that God knows all possible
avenues of choices (2, 5) and f coupled with an idea of adequate power, entails
that God’s plan and declarations of future events will be realized (3, 5). It
seems to me that God’s providence is not compromised in this view. In fact,
this view is clearly superior to the views of simple and timeless knowledge
because God can use his knowledge of all possibilities and present probabilities
to guide his decisions.
This is not the place to undertake an
exhaustive survey of all scriptural passages; nevertheless, I would like to
indicate how most, if not all, scriptural passages can be understood in a way
consistent with contingent omniscience. For example, the scripture that asserts
that all things past, present and future are continually present before the
Lord (D&C 130:7), presents no problem so long as the future “things” are
understood to refer to all things that are possible in the future rather than
both “now actual and yet also future.” (Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, Volume 1: The Attributes of God [Salt
Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2001], 300-2)
Elsewhere
(Ibid., 152-53) Ostler went into more detail about D&C 130:7:
At
first blush this statement appears to say precisely that all things past,
present and future as with God one eternal now. Such a reading supports a
conclusion that God is timeless in precisely the way intended by Boethius. However,
a closer reading shows that this cannot be the case. Reading this to say that
God is timeless so that temporal designations of "before and after"
do not apply to God is inconsistent with the statements that Jehovah
contemplated these events "before" the morning stars (i.e., the sons
of God in the heavenly council) sang for joy. Thus, we must look for another
interpretation to make sense of the context of the statement. The entire
context is describing the plan of salvation and how God preplanned and made
provision for salvation of the dead by providing the doctrine of baptism for
the dead. A more consistent reading of this statement is that in the
deliberations leading to the plan of salvation, God considered all of the
possibilities that were likely to occur. In his contemplation, God considered
all things past, present and future and he made provisions for all
possibilities that could befall the human family in adopting his plan. For
example, he contemplated the fall of Adam and knew that it could occur. If it
did occur, then God planned to provide a Savior to redeem mortals from the
fall.
If
read to indicate that God is timeless, it is hard to make sense of the notion
that God was once a man as the Book of Mormon unambiguously asserts (1 Ne. 19:7-10;
Mos. 13:34; 15:1-2) or that God progresses in any manner as Joseph Smith
asserted in the King Follett discourse delivered in Nauvoo in 1844. For if God
is timeless, then there was no real time prior to which God became man nor
could there be an interval during which he experienced mortality and again
became divine. Indeed, the view that the past and the future are just as real
as the present leads to a clear absurdity: in the same moment of reality in the
eternal now (EN) Washington is both crossing the Delaware and already dead! If
God sees simultaneously with his gaze that the Apollo 11 astronauts are walking
on the moon, then it follows that Washington's crossing of the Delaware is
simultaneous in time with the Apollo 11 astronauts walking on the moon--for if
a is simultaneous with b, and b, is simultaneous with c, then the law of
transitivity requires that a is simultaneous with c (a=b, b=c, therefore a=c).
Some
Latter-day Saint critics of Open Theism often cite some comments from Church
leaders who affirm “divine timelessness” and/or the concept that God has
foreknowledge in the “traditional sense. One such LDS Church leader is that of Neal A.
Maxwell in All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1979) .”As we have seen from the above, such
is (IMO) a misreading of the relevant texts.
Further,
in personal correspondence with Blake Ostler, Maxwell was careful to argue that
his comments should not be seen as dogmatic proclamations of the Church in his
office of Apostleship and that LDS should avoid any theory of foreknowledge and
God’s experience of time that is contrary to Latter-day Saint Scripture and
theology. Writing in Dialogue Ostler wrote:
Mormons
have generally been aware that their idea of God requires that he be involved
in process even though he may stand in a different relation to time than do
mortals. For instance, Orson Pratt told the Reverend F. Austin: "God and
all his magnificant works are limited to duration and time. It could not be
otherwise." B. H. Roberts told the Reverend Vander Donckt that in taking
Jesus Christ as the revelation of the nature of God, there is necessarily a
"succession of time with God--a before and an after; here is being and
becoming." However, the notion that God is timeless has recently been
introduced into Mormon thought. Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, writes, "The past, present, and future are before God simultaneously....
Therefore, God's omniscience is not solely a function of prolonged and
discerning familiarity with us--but of the stunning reality that the past,
present, and future are part of an 'eternal now' with God" (italics in
original). The idea of God's eternity here appears to consist not in the Hebrew
notion of God's eternal duration in time without beginning or end; but of
transcendence of temporal succession. In fairness to Elder Maxwell, we must
recognize that his observations are meant as rhetorical expressions to inspire
worship rather than as an exacting philosophical analysis of the idea of
timelessness. Furthermore, in a private conversation in January 1984, Elder
Maxwell told me that he is unfamiliar with the classical idea of timelessness
and the problems it entails. His intent was not to convey the idea that God
transcends temporal succession, but "to help us trust in God's
perspectives, and not to be too constrained by our own provincial perceptions
while we are in this mortal cocoon." (Blake T. Ostler, "The Mormon
Concept of God" Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought vol.
17, no. 2 [Summer 1984]:64-93, here, p. 75)
In a footnote (no.
30), Ostler reproduces some more of his personal correspondence with Maxwell:
I refer to this
private conversation and to excerpts from Elder Maxwell's letter with his
permission. He writes, "I would never desire to do, say, or write anything
which would cause others unnecessary problems.... I would not have understood
certain philosophical implications arising (for some) because I quoted from
Purtill who, in turn, quoted from Boethius. Nor would I presume to know of
God's past, including His former relationship to time and space." Elder
Neal A. Maxwell to Blake T. Ostler, 24 Jan. 1984. My thanks to Elder Maxwell
for his helpful and generous comments on this and numerous other subjects.
Interestingly, personal associates of Joseph Smith did not hold to God existing in an “eternal now.”
One such acquaintance was W.W.
Phelps, who acted as Joseph Smith’s “ghost writer.”
So, in conclusion, does Isa 46:9-10 refute Open Theism? While I would not appeal to this passage to support Open Theism, I do believe, in light of the various issues discussed in this post, it is not a sound proof-text to use against it, too.