FREE WILL

By Richard C. Backus

HOW may “free will” or “free agency” of man be reconciled with the “omniscience” of the Deity?

Does not divine foreknowledge connote predestination?

No. The sculptor knows exactly the result he is going to at- tain, but he takes no heed beforehand of each distinct chisel- or blow of the mallet. A moulder of clay knows precisely what form his statue will take when completed, but does not plan in advance each step.

The Deity works in terms of the whole; the whole is composed of substance which is eternal and infinite. It is the process which is finite, transitory, mortal, and temporal. The Deity takes no ac- count of time; His space is infinity. Time has no ontological existence; it is a phenomenon and as such is a factor of mortality; it is not a factor in the substance of being. We are bound by the limitations of time, and of space as well. The Deity, dealing in infinites and eternities, knows no such limitation.

This is the stumbling-block to reconcilement of “free will” and “omniscience;” that we look upon eternity as a degree of time, upon infinity as a degree of space. The difference between eternity and measured time, and between infinite and measured space, is not one of degree but of essence. The one is ontological substance, the other is phenomenal. Eternity is not limitless time, nor is infinity boundless space. Space by its very nature is nothing, re- garded even from the material viewpoint. Hence the confusion when we try to visualize infinity in terms of space. So also with time. This confusion is instanced by the saying that “a thousand years are as a day with the Lord.”

May not the first part of Genesis be taken as an outline of the entire scheme of creation which is still going forward? Under this theory, the creation of man is still in process, and his creation is in the image and likeness of his Creator will be complete when he conforms to the spiritual Idea, implanted in his soul in the begin- ning. Is this thought not borne out by John when he says that “we do not yet know what we shall become, but we know that when He comes we shall be like Him?”

Free Will

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