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“Adam Where Are You?”
Playing Hide and Seek With God
Don Minter
I confess, we were dancing around the living room, slapping
high fives, shouting with every replay, ecstatic over the events that
had just unfolded; and yes, we were just watching the re-plays. Over
and over again, our favorite team was victorious, and the replaying
of the key plays did nothing to dampen our thrill at seeing them repeatedly
as we flipped from station to station. Truth be told, the replays simply
fueled the joy as we pranced around the living room. Knowing how the
game would end did nothing to rob us of the elation we shared from the
first moment it occurred. And so we danced. . . .
Open Theism, as suggested by the esteemed thinkers who
promote it many of whom now reside within Arminian circles, provides
us with a future that is “open” and unknown, even to the
God who creates it. C. S. Cowles writes, “It takes a far greater
and more innovative sovereign to govern a dynamic and changing world
populated by truly free moral agents1 than it does to direct a world
of automatons where the outcome is already known in advance.”2
One would be hard pressed to find a Christian scholar who portrays life
as we know it in terms of a “world of automatons” (Google
it and see). If that is the full extent of the options available, then
Christian thinkers may be quick to opt for the “innovative sovereign”
of Open Theism, who sits beside us in the stands, locked in a time continuum
of its own creation, to see who will win.
Yet, the God of Open Theism that Dr. Cowles presented
in his support of an open-ended future may have startled even the most
causal reader. This God arrives in the garden, “curious as to
what names Adam will give to the animals”3 and calls out later,
“Adam, where are you?”4 By way of confession let me suggest
my confidence in this innovative sovereign’s ability “to
govern a dynamic and changing world populated by truly free moral agents”
is radically shaken when this innovative sovereign cannot find Adam
in the garden the innovative sovereign designed! One can only wonder
how innovative this sovereign can be? Are we really to affirm the God
of Scripture, who “chose us in Him before the creation of the
world”5 really does not know where Adam is hiding?
Are these the only options available? Is the choice available
to us limited to “automatons” or a God who resorts to hoping
Adam will come out of hiding? Open Theism, as presented by Dr. Cowles,
would have us believe those are the only options available and given
the linear philosophical model with which he works, he may be right.
Could non-linear philosophical models be more appropriate in describing
a God who knows?
Is it possible that “knowing” (omniscience)
is a much richer biblical concept as great minds like Augustine recognized?
Are biblical conceptual constructions more in tune with alternative
philosophies now being explored? Could it be new models of philosophy
and science have provided more suitable frameworks for “knowing”
than have been conceptualized previously? Perhaps neither Plato, nor
linear philosophies, provide our best foundation for conceptualizing
God. Is it possible there may be fresh conceptualizations that are more
in tune with the biblical concept of what it means for God to “know”
and yet do not require us to come out of hiding so God can know where
we are? Perhaps “quantum” models of physics and philosophy,
astronomy and its immense unfolding universe, along with “game
theory” and the so called “super-computers” have finally
provided a conceptualization model that gives access to an “image
of God” that sustains sovereignty and omniscience without surrendering
the “free will” Open Theology works so hard to protect.
Perhaps the God Open Theism seeks so desperately can be found without
reducing God to a God whose vision is blocked by the trees within the
garden God created—a God who really plays hide and seek, a God
who really does need to ask, “Adam where are you?”6
The Case for an Open Known Future
While it may be an overstatement to suggest “the
whole sweep of the biblical narrative strongly favors an open view of
the future,”7 especially if that is meant to imply God really
can play hide and seek with Adam in the garden, it remains clear God’s
interaction with God’s creation certainly contains a dimension
of freedom, limited as that may be, that needs exploration and explanation.
Consider the following:
Conceptualizations of Sovereignty and Knowing have been
constrained within linear “Neoplantonic ideas of His hyper-transcendence
and immutability”: As Cowles so rightly argues, if our conceptualizations
of God are restricted to a Neoplatonic or Aristotelian philosophy and
its linear counterparts, conceptualized thousands of years ago by philosophers
limited to the framework of their era, then we must suggest the following
as though it were a logical necessity (which it may be within that framework):
“Not knowing what cannot be known does not represent a deficiency
in God’s omniscience, but a frank acknowledgement of the unfolding
nature of the time/space continuum He himself created. Every new day
is a new creation full of virtually infinite possibilities8 that cannot
be known exhaustively until that day dawns and is actualized.”9
Linear cause and affect: If, as Cowles suggests, time
unfolds in a linear manner, and what occurs tomorrow is radically dependent
upon what occurred yesterday, and God, by necessity, cannot step outside
of the linear unfolding (to watch the entire parade), then indeed the
future must be open.10 And by necessity, God’s omniscience must
be limited to “that which can be known” (only that which
has actually occurred). Then, as suggested by Cowles, God could not
describe a parade that has not happened. Thus, God sits beside you in
the stands, locked in a time continuum God created, anxious to know
who will win the Super Bowl.11
Experiential knowledge: The above being the case (which
I would suggest it is not) then God can only “know” what
God has experienced (rather than experience being an added dimension
to what is already known); and again it is critical to note the limiting
of “knowing” to what has been “experienced.”
Thus, God is reduced to an interested fan who is just as anxious to
see who will win the Super Bowl as we are.
Critical to this discussion of the linear model above is the recognition
that “experience” does not add to what is “known”
by the inclusion of another dimension of knowing (experiential), but
rather, until the experience has been “experienced” it cannot
be known by God. Thus “knowing” is restricted and redefined
according to what has been experienced, and only that which has been
experienced could possibly be known.12 Thus rather than actualization
as an extension of knowing, the object being known, actually provides
the knowing. If that is the case then the future, as Cowles has suggested,
must by necessity be “open.” But is this the biblical model
that historical theology suggested by “Omniscience”? Might
there be another approach in which actualization is the extension of
what is already known to a fuller dimension.
The Case for a Historical Biblical Concept of Knowing
A Biblical sense of knowing: For linear conceptualizations,
what can be known is restricted to what has been experienced in the
unfolding of a linear timeline. Hence, by necessity, the future must
be open as it unfolds in a linear manner, piece upon piece, effect upon
effect. However, the age of “quantum physics and philosophy”
has exposed us to a new way of knowing that expresses what historical
theology attempted to capture while embracing the experiential knowledge
“Open Theism” longs for. Interestingly enough, this new
philosophical framework actually embraces the bi-fold nature of “knowing”
as contained within the witness of Scripture (as described below). In
particular, the concept of gnosis (ginvskw) or knowledge carries two
distinct, identifiable aspects both of which are critical to comprehend
in considering “omniscience”.13
Thinkable (intelligent comprehension): The “super-computer”
and its counterpart, “game-theory,” have exposed us to the
world of realities as they exist only in the hardware of the computer.
In essence, these projected realities are the by-product of linear computers
that are capable of billions of transactions within an amazingly small
amount of space and time. Thus having played out seemingly countless14
varieties of possible outcomes the super computer suggests a most likely
scenario. Hence we have projections on global warming, pollution, war
prospects, and so on, not to mention the endless worlds that exist in
the computer games that absorb the attention of so many youth across
the world.
But, as amazing as the projections are, they are all linear based and dependent on all that has occurred previously, and still provide a very limited number of computations, all of which must be conducted in a linear manner (one after the other) regardless of how quickly they can be done. However, “quantum theory” takes this process to another level by suggesting the physical world does not interact in a linear model.
Instead our brains (cells actually) process data from
endless multiple inputs at the same time. Thus quantum computers (which
are still at least a decade away even in the most optimistic projections)
will dwarf what the most advanced linear computer can now do (even with
multiple processors). Why? It is because the quantum computer will conduct
vast multiple-variable computations simultaneously. In effect it will
compute at a scale one might be tempted to call “god-like.”
It will be able to predict potentialities in what has previously been
thought to be an un-computable manner.
In the recent past it has been suggested as inconceivable
that God, grand as God might be, could possibly project all possible
possibilities because linear was the dominant mode of thinking. Suddenly,
with the advance of computers and the possibility of a quantum computer
in the not-too-distant future, it no longer seems so outrageous to suggest
God could project all possibilities15 within the “mind of God”
(Descartes). But one is still hard pressed to ask, “Does that
make it known?” or better, “Is that the best possible form
of knowing?” and hence the need for the experiential dimension
of knowing.
Experiential: Consider the meaning of the comment, “I
know what it is like to have a baby.” When a female doctor makes
such a claim it is a very different thing than when the woman who gives
birth to the child makes the same claim. The latter adds a dimension
of “experience” that greatly enhances the description. And
in that added dimension we discover the manner by which God adds to
God’s “knowledge” (omniscience). Potential as actualization.
You may remember Philosophy 101 and the question, “Do
I have the image of a chair in my mind because I saw the chair, or was
the chair created because it was first seen in my mind (Platonic Forms)?”
As Bultmann notes, the Greek mind was conflicted but tended to suggest
what is known, is known because the knower has experienced the object
of knowing (Aristotle). Thus what is known is rooted in the experience
of an object. “For the Greeks the eye is a more reliable witness
than the ear and sight is above hearing . . . knowledge is achieved
by inspection from without.”16 However Bultmann then moves on
to suggest Hebraic conceptions take this a step further to suggest that,
“It (knowledge) is possessed only in its exercise or actualization”.17
That is to say, the best form of knowing is achieved when it is actualized
and experienced in addition to a mere conceptualization. Hence God has
learned in the fullest sense only as God actualizes the conceptions
in the mind of God and then experiences those actualizations.
This is no small matter for the biblical concept of “omniscience”
and “knowing” in that it suggests an “incarnational”
view of knowledge in which the dimension of “learning” for
the Godhead is the actualization of what already exists in the mind
of God. As poor as the metaphor may be, it is the female doctor who
knows (because she has seen so many births) what it is like to have
a baby—actually giving birth to a child and thereby finally “knowing”
birth. It is the very essence of incarnation and the final dimension
of omniscience. Thus experience is a dimension of divine knowing but
not a limitation of knowing as expressed by Open Theism. Open Theism
would suggest it cannot be known until actualization while historical
constructs of omniscience would suggest it is simply known in a fuller
manner.
Omniscience in a Freely Actualized World: Philosophically
the word “free” creates immense difficulties in any dialogue
essentially because it implies radical neutrality (again, give Wikipedia
on the internet a try and see where “free” takes you). For
Christians this is an especially difficult concept in that most forms
of Christianity (if not all) seem to agree any sense of philosophical
“freedom” was lost in the Fall and regardless of what definition
of freedom one uses it must be restored by God to exist in any form
at all. Reformed thinkers offer one solution (TULIP) while Arminians
suggest another (Prevenient Grace).
A common misunderstanding of Arminian thought is the extrapolation
of the restoration of freedom in creating the “Adamic Moment,”
in which each person is “free” to respond to the salvific
grace provided by God, unhindered by the devastating affects of the
Fall, into a restoration of freedom that is much broader than Jacob
Arminius ever intended (I am free to have vanilla ice cream). The restoration
of the “Adamic Moment” ought not to be taken to imply each
person has been restored to a pre-fall state (sinlessness) or a return
to radical neutrality in which I am now “free” to eat vanilla
ice cream or not. To the contrary, your propensity toward vanilla, chocolate,
or even strawberry does away with any sense of radical neutrality. Prevenient
grace does not make for neutrality toward ice cream. Instead it creates
an “Adamic Moment” or state that creates the potential for
a salvific moment or state in which one receives the grace of God initiated
by God in spite of the devastating affects of the Fall. Thus freedom
in an Arminian sense is radically restricted to a very small dimension
of the human experience: a salvific encounter. Further, and this is
critical to comprehend, no act of freedom by one person can endanger
the freedom of another in this salvific experience. Freedom is discussed
in such a small arena, that is, acceptance or rejection of the salvific
grace of God, that further descriptions of the human experience as “free”
requires volumes of clarification. As Wesley notes, the natural man,
untouched by the prevenient grace of God simply does not exist but must
never be taken to imply more than the creation of the “Adamic
Moment” or state thereby avoiding the creation of an infinite
supply of free flowing variables in the life of each and every person.
Hence what Arminius argued for was not a world where every
“day is a new creation full of virtually infinite possibilities”18
but where every day is created with the singular purpose of initiating
the unfolding of an “Adamic Moment” guaranteed by the Creator
whose intention for the creation is to ensure a salvific opportunity
for each and every person. Thus the free world of Arminius is not nearly
so free as some later followers seem to imply, nor are the possibilities
so infinite; even without the reconstructing of quantum physics or philosophy.
The freedom for which Arminius fought so fervently was not an understanding
of whether or not you have infinite choices in your life; but rather,
you are free to make the only free choice that really has significance,
to receive or reject the salvific grace of God.
What quantum theory provides for the Christian thinker
is a new metaphor in comprehending a God who visualizes and conceptualizes
to a depth that seemed unfathomable just a few decades ago. With “game
theory” and super computers, linear though they may be, comes
the realization that God, and only God, can envision all possibilities
including the creation of a “free” possibility for each
person and play them all out in the “hard drive” of God’s
mind. God, and only God, has played out all of those possible “worlds”
in God’s mind and has chosen to actualize the best of all possible
worlds in which all possible scenarios have been played out prior to
actualizing one. Thus the world is freely unfolding just as God envisioned
it would.
Ultimately the freedom that really matters is not the
freedom you have to eat vanilla ice cream (which really does not exist
in the true sense of “free”) but the freedom God has to
create “Adamic Moments” for all of God’s created human
beings. And God, as “quantum theory” suggests, can do that
simultaneously at a level beyond what we previously could comprehend.
Thus God really can see the parade as it freely unfolds. And God will
not allow one parade to ruin the opportunities for another.
So what?
Scott Peck caught the attention of a lot of people by
suggesting that life is difficult (The Road Less Traveled). I would
go a step further by suggesting life is really difficult. Further, in
the end, the only thing that enables us to survive, as Peck argued,
is to understand all of life, even the tiniest details, has meaning
and purpose. It is not just the unfolding of the “infinite variety
of possibilities” inflicted upon us by the sin of deranged human
beings who busy themselves with activity on a randomly spinning planet.
To the contrary, it is the unfolding of a divine plan in which the very
purposes of God are unfolding right on schedule in creating the best
of all possible worlds by which the ultimate purpose of God is actualized
over and over again: The creation of the optimum circumstance by which
each person is given an “Adamic moment” to make the only
free decision that really matters, to receive the salvific grace of
God.
While we are at it, let me offer one more confession.
I never was very good at hide and seek. Truth be told, I always peeked
while counting to 100. It is just my opinion, but I really do think
God knew where Adam was hiding. Oh, by the way, ready or not here God
comes . . . and God knows where to find you!
1. The scope of this brief rebuttal to Cowles article does not
allow for an exploration of what is meant by ‘free moral agents’.
However, one does need to ask if the concept of ‘moral agent’
implies the Arminian sense of the restoration of an “Adamic Moment”
in which one is truly free to respond to God’s overtures of salvific
grace (discussed in the last section of this article), or if it is being
suggested that I am somehow ‘free’ to eat vanilla ice cream
free from all the genetic and historical predispositions that impair
any true sense of freedom concerning my decision to eat vanilla ice
cream. It is important that we not turn this discussion into the latter,
which is clearly outside the realm of a philosophical discussion of
moral autonomy.
2. Cowles, C. S., “Is the Future a Done Deal?
Reconsidering Divine Omniscience,” Preacher’s Magazine
(Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 2006-2007).
3. ibid., pg. 40
4. ibid., pg. 40
5. Ephesians 1:4
6. To be fair in this discussion, it ought to be
noted that Open Theism, unlike its philosophical cousin, Process Theology,
tends to argue that God’s poor vision and lack of knowing is self-inflicted.
A discussion for a later day might be, “Can God’s poor vision
be corrected by God should God choose to?”
7. Cowles, pg. 40
8. The concept of “virtually infinite possibilities”
is a linear constraint that quantum philosophy has begun to challenge.
The concept of ‘quantum calculations’, multiple calculations
being done and analyzed simultaneously has challenged the very idea
of “infinite possibilities.”
9. Ibid., pg. 41
10. An interesting combination of ideas that reflects
more determinism than freedom. It appears that what happens next is
radically determined by what just happened previously.
11. I am always fascinated by my Open Theism friends
who want to tell me that God does not know which team wins the “Super
Bowl,” but God does guarantee a ‘good’ outcome concerning
God’s salvific purposes. That always strikes me as an odd combination.
12. This description of knowing is Greek in construction.
See Bultmann’s discussion of the Greek usage of knowing, Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Vol. 1 pp.
689-692.
13. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
ed. Gerhard Kittel, Vol. 1 pp. 689-719.
14. It is fascinating to note that what seemed “uncountable”
just 50 years ago is now easily counted. Caution must be given to assuming
that a staggering number of variables are in fact uncountable in their
possible interactions, when in fact, it just takes a linear computer
a long time to do it. It will be interesting to see how the quantum
computer re-writes the rules of “uncountable.”
15. This is certainly not a new idea. See the work
of the philosopher Alvin Plantiga and his “Best of Possible Worlds”
scenarios.
16. Kittel, p. 691
17. Kittel, p. 698
18. Cowles, p. 40
