It is a thought that only recently occurred to me. And there are so many things that bear upon it (does God judge actions or is it deeper than just that, for example) that the idea of libertarian free will seems (to me) to be raising a minor objection and willfully minimizing some of the major objections. If we were really left to ourselves to choose, does that mean God has given all the unseen powers free reign as well -
Let me just interject a small point here but possibly a very big one. You know that the phrase 'free rein' is a metaphor from horse riding. It is not spelled 'free reign'. Perhaps just an innocuous slip on your part. But giving free rein is not at all the same as giving free reign (freedom to reign). Horses that are given free rein are a) only in control of themselves, not others, albeit the driver of the carriage is left at their mercy to an extent and b) the driver willingly gives the horses free rein and can pull them back at any time.
to do what they will to us (generally) faithless and unbelieving people? Or does God restrict them in order to allow us a totally free arena in which to make our choices?
The concept of choice or freedom only has a meaning in a world where there are constraints. The mere fact that something else exists is a constraint on your own choices. This applies to God as well. As I said before, I am not too bothered over what the exact definition of free will is or whether that is an appropriate term to describe how we make choices. I am interested in the nature of reality such that choices are possible or meaningful in the first place. We say (often glibly) that God can do anything, but God is also constrained. God can build a hyperspace bypass through where Earth is at the moment (idea courtesy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy) but in order to do so he must first destroy the Earth. The fact that the Earth exists is a constraint on his ability to build the by-pass. You are free to eat the choloate bar sitting on the shop shelf but it comes with a constraint: you must pay for it. Even if your 'unseen powers' left us alone, our choices would still be subject to constraints. The only way for there to be no constraints is if nothing exists. Even if you are the only being that exists, you are are still a constraint
upon yourself. So freedom doesn't mean that we can do anything we want.
The constraints make the choices meaningful: you buy the chocolate because you like it more than the candy bar but you don't buy only chocolate because you know that you also need bread, lettuce and meat to survive. You jump in front of an oncoming train to save your wife because you know it is your duty to give up your life to protect her.
How you make those choices is perhaps just a red herring. What is important to understand is that the real world
as a whole is a very big set of mutually constraining constraints. Including God himself - because God is also real. God must logically be included in this picture. This is because of what I said earlier: there is only one truth, there is only one reality.
Our free will should either come with consequences we can't fathom (and so to try and hold to IT is foolishness) or mean God has created a sort of space and restricted the free wills of other agents that are above us in the hierarchy of all Creation.
There is no hierarchy. Everything is mutually self-constraining. This is not the same question as who is more powerful than someone else.
The question of babies means God has to make some Sovereign choice that directly determines their salvation (at least as far as I can see). So if that's the case, then the only elect people in the strong Calvinistic sense of the word have to be those who die before some "age of accountability".
I am not a huge fan of the doctrine of anihilation but it does offer a morally acceptable solution to this one. I favour anihilation over eternal conscious torment mostly on grounds of the biblical evidence but I don't have a hard and fast view either way.
If God is eternal - the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last who declares things that are not as though they are and knows ALL His works from the beginning, then as hard as it may be to accept, the concept you just outlined making the future not open has to be considered - certainly from God's point of view. Dealing with eternal perspective as temporal creations is inevitably going to lead to some level of limited understanding if not outright false assumptions and conclusions. That's why holding to scripture on matters like this is essential to limit that sort of error.
Most people I know who, like myself, have open views of reality, base their views on two things, both of which are extremely important:
one: openness conforms to everyday experience. Determinists must
explain away everyday experience and the notion that we have a different perspective from God on this is not an answer. It does not explain anything. In fact it only engenders despair because of the obvious implication that there is something wrong with us in that our experiences of reality are fundamentally flawed. It also engenders mistrust in both ourselves and our environment for the same reason and finally for the same reason it deprives us of moral reasons for the choices we make, rendering life meaningless and purpose of no effect.
two: openness conforms to the plain reading of scripture and determinism must be
read into scripture. This is a surprising conclusion because it has been drummed into Christians for over a thousand years that their election (or not, as the case may be) has already been determined and scripture has been interpreted in that light, whatever any particular passage says. Scripture is made to conform to the principle and is not allowed to speak for itself. Most of the leading openists I know of are thoroughgoing biblical exegetes or at least very well versed in the biblical text, much more so than most Calvinists I have ever debated with, and I guess it has been a love for the scriptures and to let them speak for themselves, that has led many such people to reject determinism and promote an openness theology. This has certainly been so in my case.
That's all I have time for now.
