Calvinism and Compatibilism

In my previous entry, I assumed that theism entails incompatibilism and naturalism entails determinism. There are some theists that challenge my first assumption. The largest bloc of theists who do so are Calvinists. Calvinists are traditional compatibilists who derive their determinism from the omniscience and foreknowledge of God rather than the causal closure of the physical universe. The traditional name in Calvinist compatibilism is Jonathan Edwards. I have a confession to make at this point. I have yet to read any of Edwards’' works. I therefore cannot in good faith critique his views. I will devote this post instead to some critiquing of a general foreknowledge thesis I mentioned above. Here it is spelled out:

CC (The Calvinist Claim): God foreknows that one will perform action A before one performs it. If one was not to perform A, then one would render God’'s knowledge false. God’'s knowledge can never be rendered false. Therefore, one cannot do otherwise than perform A. God is also omniscient, and so every action falls under the claim above. Thus, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is false.

This seems to be sufficiently plausible prima facie. To see that it is, substitute Tony Blair for God. If Tony Blair knows, knows that you will eat pancakes tomorrow for breakfast, then there is no way you could eat waffles instead. For if you did eat waffles, Tony was quite mistaken and only thought he knew. Now, attribute omniscience to Tony Blair. This means that he knows in a strong sense everything that will happen in the world tomorrow and every day after that. Every action in the world would be determined. Thus, the conditional of CC seems sound. Now, is it the case that God foreknows every action?

Foreknowledge seems to be entailed by omniscience. If God is omniscient, then he knows all the facts about the world: every fact about the past, present, and future.

At this point, some well-intentioned, serious individuals decide to embrace open theism. Open theism is the view that God does not have the quality of omniscience. This certainly refutes CC. In my view, open theism is simultaneously too cheap and too expensive. We get a quick and easy solution to CC by paying with an attribute of God, an attribute that is part of the essence of the Judeo-Christian God. It may turn out that we do have to pay this price, but let us do some heavy lifting and see if a third way can be found.

Yet, I still believe that CC is mistaken, is built on a foundation of sand. The foundation is the definition of “foreknow”. What is it to foreknow? One necessary condition is that the knower possesses knowledge of the action prior in time to the action.

Foreknow: for super-agent S to foreknow action A, S must know at time t0 that A will occur at time t1, where t0 is the now and t1 is in the future.

Thus, for God to be one of these “super-agents”, he must know some proposition at t0. This is where CC falls apart. God, being “outside” of time, does not know anything at t0, or at t1, or t2, or any moment of time. We are limited by our experience. We are beings bounded by space and time, and our knowledge and language reflect that. To say that God knows everything at all times is to give the best estimation that we can of God’s timeless nature. It might be wise to follow the via negativa in this situation.