Marx Was Right

            First, let me start with the obvious: Communism did not pan out the way Marx and Engels expected it to. Not only that, but the bourgeoisie are still mostly in power. So, contrary to my title, Marx was wrong. Right? Not necessarily. Marx made his predictions from a time before much of the current technology was invented. He had no clue about, for instance, the internet. He did make one big mistake, however: his prediction assumes that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will go basically the same way as the previous class struggles have gone, expect that he predicts that they will end with the end of all class struggle. Marx assumes that the stage in the supposedly final class struggle where the oppressed rise up and become the rulers will be just like any other. The problem with that idea is that the conclusion of this class struggle is supposed to remove class struggle. It is supposed to end in there being only the one class. Thus, it must end without the oppressed overthrowing the rulers and taking their place, but by making the rulers obsolete. There can be no transitionary period where the previously oppressed class legislates communism, since that would require a further class struggle to remove the new rulers.

            Marx’s assumptions here lead to problems later on. He speaks of centralizing credit, means of communication, and providing free public education—all centralized around the state. Here, the problem is, again, that Marx is thinking in terms of classes fighting each other in the open. The centralizations around a state require a ruling class which provides these things to a ruled class, which would maintain the division of two classes, and so retain the possibility of class struggle. Instead, Marx should have expected the total decentralization of credit, means of communication, and education. Instead of a centralized bank, direct peer-to-peer financing and investments, like Gofundme and Kickstarter; instead of centralized communication, universal access to and power over personal communication, like the internet and cellphones are becoming; instead of public schooling, highly flexible shared educational resources, such as co-op groups and online education.

What Marx should have expected was that the economic forces which would fuel the final overthrow of the bourgeoisie are not so violent and obvious, but, like that of the bourgeoisie, arise from “a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange”.[i] The political advance, then, would likewise be able to take a different form than Marx expected: not violent, but subtle, almost unnoticeable.

            The point of this paper is to argue that, while Marx got some things wrong, these were primarily errors in filling in what kind of conflict, political power, communication, or other concrete details, and not errors in the actual direction things would go: the structural results. I will argue, in fact, that some of the unexpected innovations around us now are the baby stages of what Marx was talking about, although they look remarkably different than one might picture from reading The Communist Manifesto.

            The internet is of massive importance in how our world looks to us from the USA right now. It also did not exist when Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto. In that manifesto, Marx refers to how the bourgeoisie required contact with each other, union, in order to succeed in their revolution, and how “that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletariat, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years”.[ii] Now, read “the internet” there in the place of “railways.” This should make sense without showing how it has actually done the same things, simply based on the common talk of how the internet allows one to talk to someone on the other side of the world. Most of the remainder of this paper will rely on examples of people using the internet to do things which look like the baby stages of something quite similar to what Marx envisioned as the final stage of communism.

            We have libraries, but we also now have the internet. The internet is a repository of free information to which anyone may add. The producers here are largely not paid, but voluntarily produce content for sites like Wikipedia. This is a, if partial, refutation of the belief that we will all get lazy if the communist ideal is realized.

In The Starfish and The Spider, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom describe how peer-to-peer music sharing (or stealing) services keep cropping up.[iii] The early ones were sued out of existence, but later ones got clever. There are some out there without a sue-able entity to shut them down. There are just the open-source downloadable files going from one person to the next. Basically, the more of that there is, the less one will be able to speak of private property, at least in music. As Marx could have expected, the bourgeoisie sueing the proletariat only made the problem worse: that is why there is no sue-able entity for some of the peer-to-peer services. The whole book is about leaderless organizations and how they just get harder to beat the more you fight them, which sounds like the end point of communism, and yet none of socialism, communism, or Marx get tagged in the index.

Then there are those sites which let you rent a room or get a ride from some stranger, with little sight of a corporation. As these develop, if they can figure out how to do so, private property will slowly disappear. No fight involved except from big corporations suing and getting legislation passed—that is, the fight will be between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, via legislation, taxes, etc., for at least a long while yet. If there ever is a violent conflict, which there might not be, it isn’t likely to be anytime soon. Instead, the proletariat makes itself untouchable, unfindable, by decentralizing its institutions and making those institutions unrecognizable. The institutions of communism are leaderless, they lack countable members, and they therefore cannot be brought down, since there is no one to bring down.

Political power is also revolutionized. It is more likely to be achieved via tools like Youtube, Twitter, and blogs than via violence. These are tools which allow anybody to get their name and agenda out there. They are tools which people running for president in the past election realized they needed to use—even the pope is on Twitter now. Soon, I suspect, the only way to get elected will be by an ad campaign with viral media, rather than TV advertising. This will reduce the amount of sway that large organizations have over politics, since money is much less valuable when working with viral media than when buying air time. It also increases the power of the common person over politics, since it is up to the individual whether to share something with others or not.

Note how in each of these examples the value of money is reduced and profit is not the aim. The point of Wikipedia is that it is free, it relies on fundraising from the users. Peer-to-peer file sharing is motivated by the desire to get music and other files without having to pay for them, largely removing money from the equation. Renting rooms and seats in cars makes the supply of housing go up, reducing the cost. Indeed, since there is little or no cost for the one whose home or car it is, the cost to the renter can be very low without removing the incentive to lease. The political example shows how money loses much of its influence in power struggles, which is very helpful, if not required, if the outcome is to be a society where power is diffused, where society is leveled.

I mentioned that Marx kept thinking of the proletariat as a class, and that this is problematic insofar as its conclusion is the end of classes. This thinking results in his expected centralization to occur around the proletariat. Since this is wrong, as accentuated by the fact that spider organizations, i.e., organizations without centralization, are what is leading the communist revolution, so, too, is the centralization which Marx speaks of. I suspect that this centralization is also much of the what causes the problems which communist governments have encountered.

This means that where Marx says “centralize in the hands of the proletariat” or “…in the hands of the state” where the state is run by the proletariat, we should think “decentralize.” Thus, when he speaks of centralized banking, we should think quite the opposite. Education, too, should be decentralized—and this is happening with sites like eduPOW, where anyone can create a lecture-style course, upload it, and then anyone can download it for $5. There is a sense in which I don’t expect these sites to get much traction, however, since one can find much of the same material covered on Youtube. Nevertheless, whether by eduPOW or Youtube, educational materials are out there which allow anyone to cobble together courses to reach through at least highschool. Eventually, I expect this to broaden out through college, and thus, eventually, our whole education system will be restructured. This means that degrees of various sorts will no longer be necessary, because no one will have them. I do not know how such a revolution will prove to be possible, but insofar as one does not need a degree to start something up, it will likely be possible for a growing number of people. The ability to self-publish books, sell crafty things, and whatever else, means that anyone can generate income by selling their own products.

This also helps with Marx’s alienation problem. This alienation, according to Marx, is due to the fact that the worker does not get to enjoy the fruits of his labors. If the problem is that people are alienated from what they produce, the solution is not to alienate them further, by making them work for some greater good—this is, in fact, a classic argument against communism. The solution is, instead, to enable them to sell their products directly themselves.

The only question to be asked is, “what will become of factories and farming?” These are necessary for our life as we now know it, but it is hard to see how, say, an automotive assembly line, could be crowdsourced. As these become more and more automated, though, who knows? We might not need too many workers, and we might be able to make some viable start up auto companies. It all depends on what kinds of new technology come along.

One prediction of Marx’s that I have not shown evidence for is his prediction that women would be shared. However, this is not out of the question, given the current state of marriage and attitude toward sex. This is the point which makes me most wary of these developments, and which should remind us that not all the results of such a revolution are likely to be good. Indeed, in this fallen world, shifting from one society to another is often merely trading one set of acceptable sins for another.

Note, finally, how all of this is the result of capitalistic tendencies. This, too, should have been expected by Marx. As an economic determinist, Marx believe that the sociocultural and religious environment of a society was a result of the economic substructure. He believed that what happened was determined by economic forces. If we construe “economic forces” as the forces of supply and demand: the force of greed, then this supports the usual capitalist contention that people cannot be forced to live the communist life because they are greedy. However, they may slip into a communist life on account of their greed.

It should go without saying that, if I am right about these things, then the Church needs to figure out how to speak to the world which I am describing. We must figure out where such people will feel their need for a savior, and how the Church must be both careful to be distinctive and open to adaptation. What is good in this development and what is bad? What will the transition be like, and how do we navigate it? What are the values of such a society, and how do they relate to Christian values. How do they either oppose or support what Christians have always claimed?

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[i] Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition. London: Verso, 1998., p. 36

[ii] Ibid., 48

[iii] Brafman, Ori, and Rod A. Beckstrom. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. New York: Portfolio, 2006.

The Problem of Evil

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This world which he created currently has much evil in it. The question is why? Most responses try to show how the evil might be permitted for the sake of some good which either results in it or from it while being unobtainable otherwise.

God created the world for the sake of his glory. Further, I believe that he governs the world sovereignly. Therefore all that occurs in the world is meant by God for his glory. Romans 8:28 "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." This places the problem of evil in the strongest light: evil exists, yet all that happens happens to the glory of God. How can this be?

There are two kinds of evil: natural evil, as in natural disasters, and moral evil, as in the evil actions of moral agents. The first can be explained as God's punishment for sin. Since no one is innocent, but all are sinners and therefore worthy of death, when bad happens to us we are only getting what we deserve. When we escape bad happening to us it is God's grace to us.

The latter kind of evil is harder to explain. If God is in control of all that happens, then that includes our actions. How can a good God will that we sin? First, we must note that it is possible for us to will something for evil, i.e., with evil intent, while God wills it for good, i.e., for his glory. Genesis 50:20 "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." The question is only how God gets glory from evil actions.

God gets glory from our evil actions in at least two ways. First, for those who remain apart from him, he shows his righteousness and justice on them by punishing them. Second, for those who repent, he shows how great his mercy and grace are to those whom he loves, whom he has called. This is an exhibition of his holiness greater than would be possible if there were no sin.

This explains how there can be sin, but it does not explain why there is so much sin. To answer that question, we may note, first, that by allowing the full extent of our depravity, the full extent of what we will tend to do apart from him, he shows how good and necessary he is for us to live as we were made to live. Secondly, by letting our evil be shown in diverse ways in various times he warns us of our evil and exhibits our own evil to us, in order that we might repent, and in order that we might recognize our need for his righteousness to work in our lives. Thirdly, we are punished for our rejection of God by the moral evil of those around us, as when the Israelites were punished by God sending foreign nations to conquer them.

In addition to these reasons why we might expect evil to be as great as it is, and why evil actually serves to glorify God, and so is involved in countering itself, we may note that the cross of Christ is a place where evil is directly confronted as evil. Our answer to the problem of evil is twofold: that it has been conquered in Christ's death, and that it is being turned to good. We, then, as the body of Christ, must be involved in the task of bringing the kingdom of God to earth in this way: combating sin and death by the power of Christ who defeated both sin and death once and for all.


Any answer to the problem of evil will imply a response to evil. The ultimate response to the problem of evil was Christ's death on the cross in which God's justice and grace were shown together. This is where we must go in responding to evil. God's justice is shown in it, and so is his grace, and in Christ God is reconciling all things to himself. We, because we are joined to Christ in his life and death, are joined to Christ in his defeat of sin and death. In light of that, we should live lives which redeem the evil in our lives by showing the power of God in our weakness.

The Relevance of God

What do humans need? What is Scripture about? What is our message?

I believe these three question have a single answer: God.

We need God. We are dependent on him for life. He made us and sustains us. In him we live and move and have our being. We need Jesus Christ, in whom we now live, and who has conquered sin and death for us when we were enslaved to both. To live, we had to be given life in Jesus Christ. It is not about us, but God. Insofar as our lives are about us, about fulfilling our needs, we will fail to meet our single biggest, most important need: our need to be saved from our sins. For that, we need God. Christ must be our Lord, the one in charge of our lives, the central being in our lives.

Scripture is about God. It begins with God, and traces his dealings with people: first with Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, and forward through Noah, the people at the tower of Babel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve tribes of Israel. Scripture climaxes in God's coming to earth as a human being--the incarnation--and dying for the sins of his people, those whom he has called. It continues with that people spreading the news of what he, Jesus, did, and ends with God's final conquest over all that is, all that has rebelled.

Our message is God. We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. We make disciples of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We speak of the Word made Flesh, the perfect image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, who came and saved us. We speak of him. Our message is not that we have been saved, but that Jesus Christ, God's own Son, came to earth and died to set us free from sin and death. It is not about us, as if we earned it or as if God picked us because of anything about us, but rather, it is about God who did it, who accomplished it all.

Therefore, to be relevant, to be Biblical, to be Gospel oriented, we must speak of God. God must be the centerpoint of our faith, the one on whom it all rests. Otherwise, we will have missed the point.

Preaching is Dependent on the Word

The charge of the pastor is to feed the people of God. This means that he must feed them what people of God need for sustenance, and this is the word of God. Likewise, it is the word of God which is powerful, living and active. This is what God's people, the church, hungers for. Therefore, it is the pastor's responsibility to teach the word of God to the people of God.

The charge of the pastor comes from God. This means that the pastor speaks for God, and thus it is his responsibility to bring the word of God, and not his own word, to the people of God. This means that he is to be under the authority of God in all that he says. He is not to rely on his own understanding, but on the word of God.

Preaching from the Scriptures, then, requires sitting under the authority of God. No preaching is truly the preaching of God's word unless it is restrained by the bounds of Scripture. No preacher, indeed, no one at all, has authority to go beyond the word of God, and this means that no preacher has authority to go beyond what is in the Scriptures when he preaches to the people of God.

This means that the preaching must be from the word of God. It must be from the word of God because that is the only source of nourishment for the people of God, and it must be from the word of God because that is the only source of authority on which the preacher can legitimately stand when he speaks as preacher to the people of God. This means that the preaching must not be from some alien source, that is, it may not come from outside the word of God. This means that the preacher must approach the Scriptures themselves to discover what aim he is to have in each sermon. Any alien motive is denied, because any alien motive is illegitimate. Insofar as an aim or an outline or a message for a sermon does not come from the Scriptures themselves it is like dirt which muddies the living water meant for God's people.

This is not to deny that good historical, linguistic, philosophical, theological or other scholarship is useless to the preacher, but that it is subordinate to the word of God in preaching. But it is to affirm that all scripture is sufficient for life and godliness. It is to deny that what comes to us from outside of Scripture can be used to impose on Scripture a structure which is alien to Scripture. It is to deny preaching on the basis of what is not said in the Scriptures, but is merely hypothesized. We must be careful with God's word, respecting it as God's. We must not be careless, but examine the words of God carefully, to see what he has given us to say. We rely not on human reason or experience or tradition, but on divine revelation, given to us in Scripture. What we preach is not of human ingenuity, but of God's wisdom.

Cheap vs. Costly Grace

Cheap grace does not demand anything from us. Costly grace demands everything from us. "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer writes, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves." (The Cost of Discipleship, 44). Cheap grace remains very common--it is the one error which is common to all the churches I have visited in the town I am currently in. It is a grace which does not save from sin. Bonhoeffer:

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. (ibid., 45)

 Cheap grace is not always accompanied by an attitude which allows everything to remain as it was, though Bonhoeffer seems to focus on that sort. It is sometimes accompanied, instead, by leaving the removal of sin up to the sinner, rather than up to grace.

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. (ibid., 44)

This is what happens when we leave by grace alone at the entryway into the Christian life, and do not bring it through the whole of life in Christ.

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? (Galatians 3:2-6)

Here we see that we not only enter into Christ, but continue in him by faith. Thus, we are not only justified by faith, but also sanctified by faith. Our good works, which we are called to walk in, are not works according to the law, but according to grace--we do them, now, through the Spirit of God and not by our own power. Thus our good works are not ours, but the result of our union with Christ by faith.

Cheap grace says that we are okay. Costly grace denies this, instead it recognizes that we are sinful and calls us, graciously, to change, and in so calling us God empowers us to change. Preaching cheap grace only recognizes that we have been saved from the guilt of sin, but leaves us to live as if we were still under the power of sin. Costly grace commands us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, since it is no longer our power, but God's which acts in us to renew us into the image of his Son, whose image we truly bear.

Preaching of this kind reminds us who we are, that we are in Christ, and thus motivates us to good works--not by tricks of psychology, not by fear of earthly things, but from the love and fear of God almighty who saved us and is with us to purify us. Preaching of cheap grace leaves us where it found us: in the grip of sin. God's grace costs us our lives. Being a Christian involves the death of oneself. Preaching, therefore, cannot afford to leave us in the comfort of being in charge of our own sanctification, but must demand that God be granted authority--as he already truly has the authority--to work in us.

We like to work at our own sanctification, and we must work, but not as if it were up to us, and thus our failures are not our own. It is God who works in us, and it is therefore in him that we find the power to change. We do not change ourselves, but rather we are changed by gazing upon the lord our God. Our sanctification is accomplished by living before God. And this is not a work, but a joy, because we know that God is good.

Sanctification occurs because God is who he is. Salvation is the beginning of this, where we are made right in God's eyes by faith, that is, by trusting him. Sanctification is the continuation, or expansion of this trust, and the working out of this trust. When we preach as though we had to do good on our own, we deny the power of God, because we do not depend on God to work in us, "both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). We therefore must go to God for sanctification, not only to know what we ought to do, but to be enabled, indeed, impelled, to do it.

My conviction is that our sins are due to a lack of trust in God. We do not trust him because we do not know how good he is. We do not know how good he is because we do not seek him in his word and by prayer. Scripture is beautiful because God is beautiful, and we therefore see the beauty of God in Scripture. We are then moved to praise him and worship in every way: by prayer and by singing, but also by doing his will. And when we know who God is, that he is holy and powerful and righteous and loving and merciful and that he is with us, then we will see that, if God is for us--as he is--then we have nothing to fear. We will then act in the will of God more and more as we trust him more and more to take care of us and our concerns.

So long as we preach a "grace" which does not free people from their sins, we preach Godless works. So long as we preach works without the power of God, we preach guilt, law, death. Can this grace save? Can we depend on Christ for salvation from hell and reject his lordship in this life? And yet this is what this cheap grace does! For it denies the lordship of Christ by trying to sanctify the sinner by the power of the sinner, rather than by dependence on Christ, and it denies the authority of Christ to save from sin by refusing to let him save from the power of sin, and it removes Christ from the life of the sinner, despite what Christ said, "behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20) by leaving him out of salvation, as if he were far off. But our salvation, and so our sanctification, is always dependent on Christ's power, acknowledging his authority to work in our lives, and done in the presence of Christ, as we follow him as his disciples. It is necessary to return to Christ, then, for those who have turned to this cheap grace, lest they be rejected at that day and be among those who say to Christ

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

Christ crucified means that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sins, and he did not do the job halfway, but when he died cried out, "it is finished!" That is, sin is killed. Not only are we freed from the guilt of sin as it was killed on the cross, but we are also freed from the power of sin, since it is dead and cannot, therefore, do anything. We are in Christ. Therefore, sin is dead to us, and we are dead to sin. This does not mean that we may continue in sin, but that, to us, it is as though sin were not there to be lived in--insofar as we do live in sin, we live in a past which is fading away. We are called out of darkness and into light because we are now children of the light: it is where we belong.

To preach a grace which addresses only the guilt of sin is therefore to deny that we are united into Christ's death. To try to be perfected "by the flesh" is foolish. We have the Spirit of God who is far more powerful, and is willing--even eager--to perfect us.

Turn, then, churches! Return to Christ and be freed!

Time: A vs B

The B-Theory holds that moments are ordered only by being before and after other moments in time. The A-Theory holds that moments also have temporal properties: pastness, presentness, and futurity. Note, then, that both A-Theory and B-Theory hold that moments are ordered identically, but A-Theory holds that there are temporal properties, i.e., that it makes a difference to the nature of a moment whether it is past, present, or future. Thus, a moment in time moves through time from being future, to being present, to being past. The problem is that for change to happen requires time. So, if A-Theory is true, then a moment in time changes from being future to being present. It does so in time, however, which it partly constitutes. This is a difficult topic to untangle, I think, due to A theorists being in a tangled theory.

Given the A-Theory, for a moment to be future, it must be future to us, now. The idea is that there is only one “now” which changes. It refers to the one moment which has the property of being present. That moment changes every moment, however. So, what happens when a moment loses the property of being future and gains that of being present? Well, just that. When does that happen? Just before that moment becomes now. When is that? What moment is that? There is no moment, except itself. This is the problem with the A-theory: it tries to allow for change in time itself. Time is the medium in which things change, however. This is related to the joke about time passing at the rate of 1 second/second. Time travel is inherently unit-less, since the units of time cancel out.

Okay, let’s back away from this for a moment and consider God. Some people believe that God was once outside of time, atemporal, and then became temporal. This means that he was once omni-present temporally, but no longer is. Thus, once he was at all times, but now he is not. How could this work? In what medium does this change take place? If it takes place in time, then God’s being in the future changes from being true to being false when he changes from being atemporal to being temporal. But he already was in the future. How can he change from being in the future to not being there? If we considered the future it as a location which someone could move in and out of, then it would be fine, but note that a person moves in and out of a room over time. There is nothing to distinguish the future where God is and the one where he is not: he once was in the future, but now is not. This might make sense if we had reached the future, but the premise is that it doesn’t matter when we are, God was still in the future once, but not anymore.

The same problem of change over time exists for moments as for God. When was the moment future? At any prior moment. When was it past? At any moment which comes after it. When was it present? At that very moment. Thus, from any moment, from its perspective it is present, which is what the B-theorist says, but the A-theorist says that moments change from having one temporal property to another. The problem is that moments, by their very nature, are the building blocks of time, and so a change to them is a change to time, or to the timeline. So, suppose there are four moments: A, B, C, and D. We begin at A. A is present, and the rest are future. Then we go on to B. A is now past, B is present, and C and D are both future. What changed? Did time change? Or did our position in time change? The B-theorist will claim the latter, but the A-theorist claims the former: that time changed. A change occurred to time. However, this change must occur timelessly. Since it is a change to time, it cannot also be a change which took place over the course of time. To refute this claim would be required to show that the A-theory is coherent. To prove this claim would prove that the A-theory is incoherent.

For time to change over time requires a time which time can change over. If time changes over a different time, then we will have to explain that time in the same way. If time changes over itself, on the other hand, then it faces the problem which an atemporal God becoming temporal faces: when was it what? That a moment was future, until itself, means that it either is always future--since that is the state of time--or never future--for the same reason. We could not notice a change in time over time, since the change would have to have occurred by that time. To note a change in time--that it is then then, and now now, and now was future then--is simply to notice that time exists, and is ordered in a certain way, completely consistent with the B-Theory--which is not to notice a change in anything.

Perhaps I will make another attempt later at making this comprehensible. As it stands, this post is hard for me to understand. The entire question of A-Theory vs. B-Theory, it seems to me, must rest on some kind of misunderstanding, but I do not know what that misunderstanding is.

Foreknowledge and Libertarian Freedom: The Self-Reference Problem

I have held a certain argument against the compatibility of libertarian free will and exhaustive divine foreknowledge which I thought I saw a way out of recently, but in writing this post discovered that the “way out” was susceptible to a modified version of the same argument.

The argument is as follows: if God has complete divine foreknowledge, then for God to do otherwise than he does would involve God causing his beliefs about the future to have been false (and thus, not knowledge). Thus, God could not choose to do otherwise than he does while retaining his complete foreknowledge. To put it another way: God’s complete foreknowledge includes foreknowledge of things which God does. Given that God knows what he will do, he must do that which he knows he will do, and so does not have libertarian free will.

The above argument works as is, however, only if God acts temporally. That is, if God’s actions follow each other in time, and are done in response to other temporal events, as is the case with our actions. If, on the other hand, God acts once, or all at one moment from his perspective, then it is possible for him to have libertarian free will with respect to his actions.

If God’s actions are temporal, then when God acts he already has the knowledge of what he is about to choose to do. He cannot, therefore, act otherwise. If God’s actions are done all at once, along with his knowing the future, then his actions may be libertarianly free. This requires more than just God’s acting in a moment, however. If God acts all in a moment, but foreknows in a prior moment, then the problem remains. If God acts without foreknowledge, then he effectively acts blindly. It is necessary, therefore, if we are to retain both God’s libertarian freedom and his foreknowledge, that God act in light of his foreknowledge of what will happen under certain circumstances. He then acts all in a moment choosing what he will do. Having done so, he may as well have complete divine foreknowledge, but it cannot affect what he does, since he has already acted. He may, in his actions, know what set of actions he is choosing and thus what the future will be, and may therefore perform each action in light of all the other actions which he is performing, and this, it seems to me, is as close to complete divine foreknowledge as we can get while retaining God’s libertarian free will—and is close enough for me (not that I endorse the position, given that I don’t actually believe that God has libertarian free will).

This counter, which I believe is a variety of Molinism, is supposed to allow for God having libertarian free will, but it is unclear as of yet whether it falls to the same argument as I started with if we modify the argument a little.

The problem is that Molinism requires God to have knowledge of what people will freely choose under certain conditions. If this includes God, then he has knowledge of what he will, in fact, do, and so is no longer libertarianly free. If it does not include God, then the question is why not? It cannot be due to the fact that his circumstances do not exist, or are unknown, since God, at least, could rigorously specify his circumstances which we have vaguely specified as choosing between various actions. If there is some fact as to what God will do in these circumstances, then, having complete foreknowledge of what would happen in various circumstances, i.e., knowledge about all facts about what will happen or be done under any possible circumstance, God will know what God will do under the circumstance at hand. Thus, even if God’s foreknowledge is limited to what will happen under various circumstances, God is still caught in his foreknowledge such that he cannot have libertarian freedom.

The point of arguing against God’s libertarian freedom is that if God does not have it, we do not need it in order to be morally responsible, or for any other purpose. If God is good and not libertarianly free, then moral agency does not require libertarian free will, else God would need it in order to be good. At this point, I believe I have shown that the options for belief regarding libertarian freedom are:

1. Open theist: deny divine foreknowledge, affirm libertarian freedom. 
2. Determinist: affirm divine foreknowledge, deny libertarian freedom.

The question is which we should choose. The choice is unproblematic for me, since I do not see libertarian freedom as logically possible. Likewise, do not think that the A-theory of time, which open theism relies on, is logically coherent either (more on that in a later post).