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One of the things I think as Human Beings we get most confused about is Time. In the Evangelical/Community church I used to attend, one of the things that made up the theological ping-pong matches of the various Faith traditions represented was, "Free Will!" (smash) "No, Predestination!" (volley), back and forth, and back and forth. Even at the time, I thought I could hazily discern the form of a reconciling position in the No-Man's Land between the contending parties; when I came to Orthodoxy, I recognized, in a much clearer form, many of the hazy intermediate positions I had begun to articulate in the Orthodox teaching.
The substance of the confusion was that it seemed if God foreknew everything, then the events of a human life couldn't really be determined by the choices that the individual makes, for good or ill. It was this that led my Calvinist friends to say that the Damned were damned from all Eternity. I knew that didn't sound right, but given their starting presuppositions it was hard to argue with them; I had heard the position argued that though God forsees everything, he does not control, and though for a time, I accepted this, it seemed to me unsatisfactory. I didn't want to say that there was anything beyond God's control! For me, the key to the dilemma was realizing that, in essence, the entire controversy was a confusion over the nature of Time.
Imagine that you are inside a train, standing at one end of a long line of connected cars; each car having one large window looking out on the surrounding countryside. As you walk from one end to the other, you see various scenes through the windows; here a brook, there some trees, here a cow scratching itself against an old wooden fence, here a pleasant meadow, there a herd of feeding pigs, there a muddy bog. To you, all these scenes are disconnected, and sequential; the one coming after the other in order. But to someone sitting on a hill overlooking the same country, all the scenes which you see sequentially are seen at the same time, and the relations between the objects are clear; he will see that the herd of pigs is heading to the bog, that the cow is about to escape through a gap in the fence invisible to you, and that the patch of trees are on the bank of the stream, and overhang it.
God's foreknowledge isn't like prophecy; it's not knowing what will happen, it's knowing what happens. Lest this distinction seem too obscure, (is that possible?) I will try to further elaborate. One reason I didn't like the idea of God not compelling anyone to take a certain course of action, but just knowing beforehand which course they will choose, is that it still made it seem I wasn't free; that everything is already set in stone, and I am just walking a path already laid out. This is because I am thinking of God as an entity entirely inside of time, who sees the path that is already there, but in reality, God sees from an eternal perspective, because He is not encompassed by Time, as are we; so Past, Present, and Future are not separate, they are just Now, or rather, (since now is a designation of Time) they are just what is. God's being outside of Time means that, although he sees the path that, to me, I have yet to walk, this does not mean that these paths yet exist for those inside of Time. Furthermore, God's being outside of Time means that His control over the unfolding of events in Time is not threatened by free will, or, conversely, that free will is not threatened by God's continuous control over events unfolding in Time. The Fathers say that many aspects of our present world are because God knew Man would sin, and therefore made provision for it in shaping His Creation; Adam was not forced to sin by a capricious God who then punished him for it, but allowed to sin by a God who in mercy prepared the world for this eventuality. So we also must believe that many of the circumstances of our present lives are provisions for choices we have not yet made.
Of course, we must believe that God is not entirely outside of Time, or we will be Deists, and will not save our souls; though God is outside Time, He nevertheless walks with us through the long, dreary corridors of Time, to counsel, help, and heal us.
The substance of the confusion was that it seemed if God foreknew everything, then the events of a human life couldn't really be determined by the choices that the individual makes, for good or ill. It was this that led my Calvinist friends to say that the Damned were damned from all Eternity. I knew that didn't sound right, but given their starting presuppositions it was hard to argue with them; I had heard the position argued that though God forsees everything, he does not control, and though for a time, I accepted this, it seemed to me unsatisfactory. I didn't want to say that there was anything beyond God's control! For me, the key to the dilemma was realizing that, in essence, the entire controversy was a confusion over the nature of Time.
Imagine that you are inside a train, standing at one end of a long line of connected cars; each car having one large window looking out on the surrounding countryside. As you walk from one end to the other, you see various scenes through the windows; here a brook, there some trees, here a cow scratching itself against an old wooden fence, here a pleasant meadow, there a herd of feeding pigs, there a muddy bog. To you, all these scenes are disconnected, and sequential; the one coming after the other in order. But to someone sitting on a hill overlooking the same country, all the scenes which you see sequentially are seen at the same time, and the relations between the objects are clear; he will see that the herd of pigs is heading to the bog, that the cow is about to escape through a gap in the fence invisible to you, and that the patch of trees are on the bank of the stream, and overhang it.
God's foreknowledge isn't like prophecy; it's not knowing what will happen, it's knowing what happens. Lest this distinction seem too obscure, (is that possible?) I will try to further elaborate. One reason I didn't like the idea of God not compelling anyone to take a certain course of action, but just knowing beforehand which course they will choose, is that it still made it seem I wasn't free; that everything is already set in stone, and I am just walking a path already laid out. This is because I am thinking of God as an entity entirely inside of time, who sees the path that is already there, but in reality, God sees from an eternal perspective, because He is not encompassed by Time, as are we; so Past, Present, and Future are not separate, they are just Now, or rather, (since now is a designation of Time) they are just what is. God's being outside of Time means that, although he sees the path that, to me, I have yet to walk, this does not mean that these paths yet exist for those inside of Time. Furthermore, God's being outside of Time means that His control over the unfolding of events in Time is not threatened by free will, or, conversely, that free will is not threatened by God's continuous control over events unfolding in Time. The Fathers say that many aspects of our present world are because God knew Man would sin, and therefore made provision for it in shaping His Creation; Adam was not forced to sin by a capricious God who then punished him for it, but allowed to sin by a God who in mercy prepared the world for this eventuality. So we also must believe that many of the circumstances of our present lives are provisions for choices we have not yet made.
Of course, we must believe that God is not entirely outside of Time, or we will be Deists, and will not save our souls; though God is outside Time, He nevertheless walks with us through the long, dreary corridors of Time, to counsel, help, and heal us.
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